libertarian

What it means

1. One who advocates liberty, either generally or in relation to a specific issue.

   civil libertarian

   one who favours civil liberties

   1 more example

   cultural libertarian

   one who favours cultural freedom

   Synonyms: eleutheromaniac · Antonyms: antilibertarian, nonlibertarian

2. human sciencesA believer in the freedom of thinking beings to choose their own destiny (the doctrine of free will) as opposed to those who believe the future is predetermined (the doctrine of necessity).First known use late 18th c.

   [W]here is the difference betvveen the Libertarian, vvho ſays that the mind chuſes the motive; and the Neceſſarian, vvho aſſerts that the motive determines the mind; if the volition be the neceſſary reſult of all the previous circumſtances?

   1789, [William Belsham], “Essay I. On Liberty and Necessity.”, in Essays, Philosophical, Historical, and Literary, London: […] C[harles] Dilly, […], →OCLC, page 11

3. One who advocates libertarianism (“a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others that same liberty”); also, a member of a political party supporting libertarianism.
   1. IrelandUKgovernmentAn antiauthoritarian believer in left-libertarianism, a political doctrine that stresses both individual freedom and social equality, and advocates shared ownership of natural resources.

      While anarchism and socialist libertarians have a rich history of revolutionary thinkers ranging from Emma Goldman to George Orwell, the best-known socialist libertarian thinker of today is probably Noam Chomsky.

      2012, Jennifer D. Carlson, “Libertarianism”, in Wilbur R. Miller, editor, The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, →ISBN, page 1008, column 1

      1 more example

      [Gustav] Landauer's reorientation of anarchist theory and practice in the direction of idealist and völkisch thought was often incomprehensible to the more traditional libertarians, and in the period of the second Sozialist Landauer no longer felt entirely comfortable with the simple "anarchist" label. For Landauer anarchism and socialism had always been different expressions of the same view; now he regarded anarchism as "merely the negative side of what is positively called socialism."

      1973, Eugene Lunn, “The Romantic as Socialist”, in Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.; London: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 200

      Antonyms: antilibertarian, nonlibertarian

In a sentence

civil libertarian

one who favours civil liberties

Where it comes from

The noun is derived from liber(ty) + -arian (suffix denoting an advocate of or believer in something). The adjective is derived from the noun. sense development The word was first attested in English in 1789 in William Belsham’s Essays: see the quotation. This was contrasted with necessitarian, in the context of free will, and was not used in the more frequently encountered modern sense. Compare French libertaire (“person with extreme left-wing beliefs, anarchist”), from liberté (“freedom”) + -aire (suffix forming nouns). Libertaire is derived from Latin libertas. The French word was first attested in a May 1857 letter by the French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque (1821–1865) to the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), reading: “Anarchiste juste-milieu, libéral et non LIBERTAIRE [A centrist anarchist, liberal and not LIBERTARIAN] […]”. It was popularized as a euphemism for anarchiste in the 1890s, following the French lois scélérates (literally “villainous laws”) under which anarchist publications were banned. Sense 3.2 (“believer in right-libertarianism”) developed in the United States in the 1940s and was popularized in the 1950s. In the 1940s, Leonard Read (1898–1983), the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank, began calling himself “libertarian” in contrast with a “classical liberal”. In 1955, Dean Russell also promoted the use of the word, writing: “Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word ‘libertarian’.”

First known use: late 18th c.