Liberty or freedom as a primary social, political and economic ideal which should be strived for is a relatively recent development in world history. The idea that the individual should be the primary subject and that individual freedom is a universal good and something which determines the quality of life and the quality or lack thereof of a government. Freedom is conceived in two different and opposite ways. Positive freedom and negative freedom. The concept of positive freedom is encapsulated by the idea of agency. The idea which a person or subject has agency which means that they have the ability to achieve their goals. This conception of freedom is a much more philosophical one because it touches the ideas of free will and subjectivity. Negative freedom, on the other hand, is much less about the individual but about circumstances. Negative freedom is defined as freedom from encumbrances or obstacles to freedom. Negative freedom is about negation, that is, the denial of the individual the ability to reach their full potential without undue pressure from government or society. The nuance difference between the two different versions of freedom as defined by many different thinkers composes the separation of rights which are given and the ability to usufruct of those rights. The conflict between those two separate concepts of freedom is important because they define how societies work to delineate their relationship with power structures.
Freedom as an idea has mostly been an idea which has been of historical importance and a significant category for a limited time in world history which arose with modernity. The modern period mostly coincides with the end of the Middle Ages or the beginning of the Renaissance and the rise of humanism and the Protestant Reformation. The category of the individual and the ability for subjects to achieve their goals is one of the defining characteristics of humanity as it has developed since the Renaissance and especially since the Enlightenment. Erich Fromm a Frankfurt School thinker and somewhat of a Marxist historian pinpoints where the categories of the individual, freedom and liberty have their origins. Fromm’s book Escape from Freedom argues that the growth of positive freedom. Fromm connects the growth of freedom to growth of capitalism during the early modern period and how it created a new category the individual. Fromm says that capitalism allowed the individual to take the forefront and allowed him to become “the master of his fate, his was the risk, the gain. The individual effort could lead him to success and economic independence. Money became the great equalizer of man and proved to be more powerful than birth and caste.” (Fromm, 1994, “Medieval Background and the Renaissance”) The rise of capitalism and the fracturing of the Medieval status quo was according to Fromm the moment where the individual became a meaningful category which had the power to achieve whatever they could unencumbered by restricting outside forces.
Modernity, defined here as the period after the Medieval period is explained as a cultural, social and political moment. The rise of the market and capitalism advocated for the individual to become ever freer and to have agency outside of political structures and within the market. Fromm’s analysis of the current ideology of freedom he claims has its origins in the “period in which the foundations of modern culture were laid” which he characterizes as the “growing independence of man from external authorities” coupled with a growing sense of isolation, feelings of insignificance and powerlessness. (Fromm, 1994, “Emergence of the Individual”) Fromm’s conception of the individual in Escape from Freedom lies heavily on the idea that there was a unique process in human history characterized by the ideas of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and later of the Enlightenment. These events are ontological because they necessitated the transition from a Medieval, pre-capitalistic structure in which the individual was not a category to a Modern, capitalistic society in which the individual and “freedom to” became the ruling principles of the day and of Western society in general.
The ideas of freedom explicated by Fromm within a critical theory standpoint using historical materialism as well as psychoanalysis as the basis of his inquiry. Both of these approaches are valuable insofar as it tries to question to what extent some of these ideas have their origins in both macro-historical processes as well as in the personal realm. Freedom then can be defined positively or negatively and it can also be described as the result of macro-historical processes or as psychological phenomena which only adds to the complexity of the issue which is posed by attempting to deconstruct the meaning of freedom.
The importance of attempting to find a satisfactory answer to the question of what the meaning of freedom was became very important during the second half of the twentieth century as it investigated the meaning of liberalism and freedom. One of the landmark pieces of work written which inform much of the discussion the categories of positive and negative freedom was written by Isiah Berlin who attempted to deconstruct their origins and their meanings. Berlin in his famous work “Two Concepts of Liberty” endeavored to try to give a satisfactory answer to the question of what liberty meant in both its negative and positive connotations.
Berlin’s goal to try to explain the two concepts of liberty in his essay are valuable in their plain language and the simple manner in which attempts to analyze what each of the versions of liberty entails. Berlin describes the positive conception of freedom as a “wish on the part of the individual to be his own master.” (Berlin, 1969, p.8) Freedom in this sense is defined by Berlin as an individual wishing his life and decisions to:
depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men's, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside.” (1969, p.8)
Additionally, Berlin (1969) posits this concept as something which put agency, the ability to do in the hands of the individual and furthermore advanced that one of the things which separates human beings from animals is the drive to self realization. (1969) This conception of freedom is often reduced to the ability of subjects to self-realization. Positive freedom is somewhat analogous to free will and an individual’s role as either as an agent who has the power to decide for itself. Although there is another definition of positive freedom which transcends the individual and instead gives other entities the agency to reach an objective.
This is the second point made by Berlin regarding positive freedom. The importance of the self in this construction of freedom allows that any “super-personal entity - a State, a class, a nation, or the march of history itself, regarded as a more 'real' subject of attributes than the empirical self” (Berlin, 1969, p.10) This leads Berlin to conclude that there are two “selves” one which transcends the empirical world and that controls the other self which is driven by wants, urges and thought to be needed to be controlled. (Berlin, 1969) These concepts are largely congruent with the Freudian concept of the superego and the id as parts of the human psyche which represent the conflict between transcendental agency and empirical needs and desires. These two ideas, of agency and the fragmentation of the self, largely represent how Berlin deals with the question of positive freedom and its limitations.
If positive liberty is the ability by human beings or even other entities to have agency to achieve their goals and to be fully self-determined entities, then it is easy to predict what he would characterize as negative liberty. Berlin defines negative liberty first by characterizing what it is and what it isn’t. Berlin defines political liberty as simply “the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.” (Berlin, 1969, p.3) If an individual is prevented by others to reach his goals, he can be described as unfree and if that area of political liberty is shrunken even further then the individual an be described as being coerced or even enslaved. (Berlin, 1969) This is the simple definition of negative liberty, the freedom to act without restriction from others Berlin expands this idea which posited that coercion does not explain inability. He gives the example of a man not being to jump ten feet it the air, and he says “it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced.” Berlin adds that coercion “implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act.” Which is outside of the realm of inability.
Berlin’s construction of negative liberty as a concept follows a construction which seeks to answer the question “'What is the area within which the subject - a person or group of persons - is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?” (Belin 1969, p.2) Berlin ascertains that thinkers like Mill, Locke and Montesquieu reached a conclusion that there should be enough space carved out where individuals are allowed to live their lives outside of the constraint government and if that boundary is crossed individuals won’t be able to develop their “natural faculties” and to go after “the various ends which men hold good or right or sacred.” (Berlin, 1969, p.4) This logic calls for a very clear line to be drawn between the private and the public. This area within where individuals can easily be defined as civil society, all of the fields of human endeavor which work outside of the constraints of the political sphere and rights. This delineation of the public and the private and the importance of negative freedom is one of the hallmarks of liberalism. Negative liberty being one of the hallmarks of liberalism is an interesting concept and one which is expanded upon by one of the leading thinkers and formulators of liberal thought in the twentieth century John Rawls.
John Rawls place as one of the most important liberal thinkers and theorists of the twentieth century makes his commitment to the negative conception of freedom rather unsurprising. The trenchant relationship described by negative freedom is between the individual and the state. Rawls describes liberty in the following manner: “this or that person (or persons) is free (or not free) from this or that constraint (or set of constraints) to do (or not to do) so and so.” (Rawls, 1971, p.177) The relationship between the state and the individual is vitally important for Rawls’ conception of liberty because of his emphasis on defining liberty “in connection with constitutional and legal restrictions.” (Rawls, 1971, p.178) The state, in this case, is the most important agent. Rawls gives the example of freedom of conscience and he claims that those freedoms are protected by law. Giving the men to have whatever moral, philosophical, or religious interests without the state obstructing their rights or interfering in their beliefs. (Rawls, 1971) Rawls’ theory of liberty is very liberal and appropriately embedded within the logic of negative liberty and the presupposition of the separation of the separation between the state and society and the rights of individuals to have lives outside of the scope of state power. Liberty in this sense is much less about the individual than it is about the state’s relationship to its subjects.
Charles Taylor asks a very important question in the title of his essay “What’s wrong with Negative Liberty?” In this article, Taylor investigates why thinkers have such a problem with the concept of negative liberty. Taylor describes an oversimplified version of negative freedom which goes back to Hobbes or Bentham “which sees freedom simply as the absence of external physical or legal obstacles” (Taylor, 1979, p.212) According to Taylor this view has no room to deal with other fewer obstacles to freedom such as inner factors, ideology or repression. (Taylor, 1979). Taylor defends this concept of negative liberty as a “strategic” one. His argument basically underlies the belief that may of the concepts which are forwarded by proponents of positive liberty such as self-realization as “metaphysical hog-wash” which precipitates the necessity to define freedom as merely “as the absence of external obstacles.” (Taylor, 1979, p.214-215) Taylor finally claims “freedom cannot just be the absence of external obstacles, for there may also be internal ones” (Taylor, 1979, p.228) The importance of motivation is very important for Taylor and the fact that the subject’s desires and motivations and emotions may actually be a constraint to achieving freedom and this ultimately weakens the claims made by negative liberty because of the relationship of the self to restrictions. (Taylor, 1979) Although negative freedom is more easily defended one cannot dismiss the arguments made by positive freedom because of its importance to liberal theory.
The relationship between negative and positive freedom as put forward by these thinkers can easily be reduced to simple arguments. Negative freedom is defined by the ability of the individual to live in a society where there are no obstacles to his freedom and in which there is a separation between the public and private or the gamut of the state and the individual or society. This concept of negative liberty is an important political point regarding the relationship between liberal states and its citizens. On the other hand, positive liberty is much a more a concept driven by metaphysical concerns and the elevation of the individual as a category. As Fromm argued, modernity and the rise of capitalism was in large part responsible for the rise of the concept of positive freedom and the related ideas of self-realization, agency and the elevation of the individual and subjectivity as a value of society.
References
Berlin, I. (1969). Two concepts of liberty. Berlin, I, 118-172.
Fromm, E. (1994). Escape from freedom. Macmillan.
Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice (1971). na.
Taylor, C. (1979). What’s wrong with negative liberty? (pp. 175-194). na.
