If freedom is nothing else but the absence of restraint, then how can we be free at the point where a law restrains us from doing what we want? This was the view taken by Hobbes, and his follower Jeremy Bentham, but the point at issue requires us to realize that the law (by contrast with a command) is purely abstract and leaves the discretion unfettered. Most people, for example, are not powerfully constrained by sanctions against solving one’s problems by murder.