Narrowly, or negatively, freedom is thought of as the absence of constraint: ‘Freedom’, said Hobbes, ‘is the silence of the law.’ Positively, freedom is a condition of liberation from social and cultural forces that are perceived as impeding full self-realization. To become free is therefore a challenge that is only met by personal transformation, in Romantic and individualistic thought, or by social transformation, for instance in Hegel. The political expression of positive freedom can topple into totalitarianism, when the leadership believes that the collective voice demands that they ‘force people to be free’. See also general will.