Introduction
Liberty or freedom is arguably one of the most valuable things to man. Those without it may be willing to argue, fight or even lose their lives in pursuit of what they feel is so vitally important to their lives. In general when talk of liberty we mean the right to live our lives on our terms, not under the power of some external agent. That liberty is considered such a significant value is not called into question. The fact that it is thought to be so important to so many people however has meant that there has been a great deal of discussion on what exactly it is we mean by the term liberty, and under what conditions would we consider people to be ‘free’. Political philosophers have many theories in response to this and it is necessary to analyze some of the main arguments and concepts to get a clearer idea of how to be more precise about the idea of liberty.
It is possible to identify three main strands of thought on the meaning and nature of liberty, although we must recognize that there are variations of beliefs about the specifics within each classification. First there is what David Miller calls the Republican family. Here liberty is set within a political framework. A person is free when there are certain political arrangements which allow for people to be self governed and for them to play an active role in this governance. (Carter, 2007) Secondly, there is the liberal tradition which conceives of liberty as something people may possess when there is no interference or restraints place upon individuals. (Warburton, 2000) Here the government may play two roles. It may either act as a constraint on freedom if it acts to interfere with individuals too much or it may serve as a protector of freedom by ensuring that peoples liberties are not infringed upon.
As such, the emphasis is not on the type of political arrangements or government such as in the Republican tradition, but on the scope of government. Lastly, we have what we may call the Idealist view where the focus is more on the individual. It highlights the importance of internal forces which determine how an individual behaves as opposed to external or social arrangements. Freedom here is defined as when a person is autonomous. (Silier, 2005) By this it is meant that an individual must be following his authentic beliefs which require politics to ensure that people are encouraged to lead a lifestyle that results in rational and authentic or choice, or alternatively to discipline individuals to do so.
Main text
One of the main distinctions of liberty has been drawn by Isaiah Berlin. According to him we are able to think about liberty in two ways. Firstly we can look at liberty in the sense that there are no external obstacles in an individual’s path that will prevent him from doing something. (Santoro, 2003) Alternatively we can say that freedom consists in an individual being able to control and decide what he does or wants. Most simply put, negative freedom is the freedom from, or in the absence of something, whereas positive freedom is freedom to do or be something.
Negative liberty sees political liberty existing in the area where an individual is able to act unobstructed by others. Coercion or the deliberate interference to the attainment of a goal by other human beings will render an individual unfree. As such, this conception of liberty would appear to fall under the umbrella of liberal views on what constitutes freedom. On such a view, what is important are external obstacles and as such it is the scope of the government that matters as well as the need for it to establish a minimum area of personal freedom. Individual choice here is seem to be very important and freedom is not present if a person feels like his choice is restricted by external barriers.
Berlin’s distinction between such negative theories and positive views of freedom was that positive theories focus on freedom to do or be something and raises the question of by whom people are ruled. (Carter, 2007) It is based upon the need for our decisions and choices to be based upon our own will rather than the imposed will of another and therefore would seem to belong to the idealist conception of liberty. The departure from negative theories lies in the concept of self mastery. This implies that people may have two selves or natures, with our higher nature which is associated with rationality and reason and our lower selves which is ruled by emotions.
However, if we have two selves this then means that we might be ruled by our lower or less rational self. This then would not be true self mastery as we may be held back by our irrational feelings or desires. One is free only when the higher self is in control. In addition, this idea of a true self may be extended to societal institutions which we are apart of. It may be claimed that we are only true free in the form of a collective will in the manner of Rousseau’s social contract or more extreme Republican theories of liberty. (Warburton, 2000) The dangerous implications should be apparent. It could be claimed that a leader was more rational and therefore feel as if he should be able to coerce individuals in the name of a collective goal or the wishes of the ‘higher’ self. It then could be said that their rational selves would not oppose what the rational leader was doing.
A despotic leader could then justify his actions by saying that it would not even be coercion in the first place as the ‘real’ self would have willed it whether the individual realizes it or not. The notion of the rational self or self mastery would thus lead to an apparent jump from individual responsibility to an authoritarian state.
Therefore critics of positive theories of freedom argue that freedom must be defined to be a state where only external barriers are obstacles to an individual’s liberty. F. A. Hayek also emphasizes the importance of the minimization of coercion for freedom. He attempts to clarify more clearly the constraints and coercion that may legitimately be restraints upon an individual’s liberty. (Carter, 2007) Coercion is to apply only in the scope of men. An individual may be described as not being free only when he is interfered with by another man’s action that consciously attempts to impose a foreign will on his own. Mere circumstance is not enough to qualify as a constraint to freedom.
Moreover the range of choice available to a person in irrelevant to freedom in this view as how much choice a person has is seen to be a different concept to if he may follow his own choice. (Silier, 2005) Poverty therefore can not be viewed an obstacle and therefore any claims for redistribution must be rejected. The only ground for such an action by the government is in the case where something as essential for life is held by a single agent which then can exercise coercive power which can limit freedom. In Hayek’s view however, although the government may act in certain coercive ways but these laws will not be restrictive on liberty as these acts are can not be classified as an arbitrary will are predictable as in the case of taxes and as such people will be able to make their life choices taking this into account. (Santoro, 2003) As such it will not be the case that individuals are subject to the arbitrary will of another.
Negative theorists, who fear a slide into totalitarianism, appear to define freedom in a very strict sense of constraints being purely physical of external. In an effort to cut positive theories off at the stem they appear to embrace a very crude version of their theory. (Wempe, 2004) Liberals such as J S Mill however, while arguing vehemently for protection of the individual against outside interferences brought in the argument that this was required on the grounds that personal freedom was necessary if men were to develop all his faculties and lead a worthy life. (Warburton, 2000) The problem is that this seems to bring in positive ideas such as self mastery into the picture. Indeed this is the type of problem that Charles Taylor attempts to address. Here positive theories can be referred to as ‘exercise-concepts’ in that under this concept, individuals exercise control over their own lives. By contrast, negative doctrines are ‘opportunity-concepts’ where freedom is not a matter of what we do but what we can do. (Santoro, 2003) However, a modern view of why liberty is so valuable is that it allows self determination, which needs the individual himself to work out what his own good is.
What emerges therefore is the view that internal factors may also be a deciding factor in a person’s liberty. Negative theory should not there be seen as pure opportunity concept. (Carter, 2007) If it is to be defendable in modern society there must be some degree of the exercise concept in that we must be exercising our freedom when it comes to internal constraints. Negative theories should therefore be supplemented with some aspects of positive theories. In trying to defend against any positive variations, negative theorists claim that there should be no discrimination of motivations as this is what can lead back to the possibility of authoritarian states. (Alford, 2005) However by taking this line, without any discrimination it may appear that state which restricts many trivial freedoms is less free than a state which may interfere with only one thing, but one which people feel is a significant or fundamental freedom. What has to be recognized therefore is that there are discriminations to be made, not only on actions but also on feelings as everyone is able to identify certain feelings or desires that they feel hold them and prevent them from being the person they want to be.
Capitalist society can be seen as a prime example of the negative view of freedom. The notion of private property is ingrained into capitalist theory. The state should act to protect this sphere of privacy. (Santoro, 2003) State incursion into our private property is seen as reduction in our liberty. G. A. Cohen argues that this conception of freedom overlooks an inherent lack of freedom that it brings along with it, or ignores one half of the effects on freedom. (Carter, 2007) It is important to note that while state interference with private property will be an interference with the owner’s freedom, in the same way when it prevents an outsider from using the private property, this should be seen as interfering with this persons freedom.
Reducing this private property element through a form of socialism may be able to increase freedom. The distribution of resources can therefore be seen to be relevant to liberty which is a contrast to Hayek’s position. (Alford, 2005) One of the main charges against capitalist society is that which cannot be mutually owned such as means of production forces people (workers) to sell their labor. Workers therefore are individually free not to sell their labor by attempting to move up to non-proletarian positions but the limited number of such positions means as a class they are collectively unfree as they will not be able to move up a class if everyone is attempting to exercise their freedom to do so.
A major challenge to these theories of negative and positive concepts of is the argument that asks if there is a distinction at all. Gerald MacCallum argues that that there is no need to distinguish between negative and positive freedom and that freedom is just one basic concept. His definition of freedom takes the following form: X (an agent) is or is not free from Y (preventing conditions such as barriers or interferences) to do or not do, or become or not become Z (actions or character). (Santoro, 2003) Liberty is therefore a triadic function and statements about freedom can be formulated to show that it can fit into the above form. (Carter, 2007) The differences arise in disagreements about what counts as these variables. For example, for negative theorists, X would correspond to an individual but for theorist this individual can be seen as split into higher or lower selves. When freedom for an agent is spoken of, when if you take into account both external and internal barriers, there is always both freedom to do something and freedom from something. The distinction between them is therefore false according to him.
Conclusion
Therefore we can see that there are many arguments over the concept of liberty which fall under the overarching strands of thought. Liberty is such a complex subject that it is difficult to make a definite statement on what the correct concept of it should be or how many there are exactly. Personally, I feel most comfortable with the idea that there are negative and positive aspects to freedom and the fact the liberty may consist in both the opportunity to have it and the exercise of it, that they are not the same thing but that there may sometimes need to be a mingling of the two when u talk about liberty. It may be the case that these different traditions of thought are able to be reconciled with each other and are interrelated. It is possible to say that the liberal view of freedom requires the institutions set up by the republican conception, or that the idealist view of self determination requires the liberal notion of the absence of barriers for this to be realized. To have a proper concept of the idea of liberty therefore it is necessary to take into account all these views.
References
Alford, Fred. (2005) Rethinking Freedom: Why Freedom Has Lost Its Meaning and What Can Be Done to Save It. Palgrave Macmillan.
Carter Ian, Kramer Matthew & Steiner Hillel. (2007) Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell.
Santoro, Emilio. (2003) Autonomy, Freedom and Rights: A Critique of Liberal Subjectivity. Springer.
Silier, Yildiz. (2005) Freedom: Political, Metaphysical, Negative, and Positive (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy). Ashgate Publishing.
Warburton, Nigel. (2000) Freedom: An Introduction with Readings. Routledge.
Wempe, Ben. (2004) T.H. Green’s Theory of Positive Freedom (British Idealist Studies). Imprint Academic.