Week 1 (2): Two Concepts of Liberty - Isaiah Berlin

The Notion of Negative Freedom

Political liberty is the area in which a man can act unobstructed by others. This is coercion in the sense that human beings have prevented someone from doing something they would otherwise have been able to do(e.g. not jumping 10 ft in the air);

"You lack liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings. Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political freedom"

If I am deprived of economic freedom due to my lack of mental/physical capacity, I describe this as being deprived of freedom. However if there are insitutions which prevent me from ahcieving economic freedom, I am a victim of economic slavery.

Classical English political philosophers believed man's interests were not wholly symbiotic, therefore chaos would ensue in a state of nature. However, libertarians such as Locke and Mill believed in a minimum personal area of freedom which must under no circumstances be violated

Philosophers with optimistic views of human nature (Locke, Smith, Mill) believed social harmony and progress were compatible with a large area of private life which the state or authority could not regulate. Even Hobbes believes that humans should have some form of freedom outside of social control. Benjamin Constant (in reference to Jacobin dictatorship) believed liberty of religion, expression and property should be safeguarded. Constant believed a minimum area of personal freedom was required to not 'degrade or deny our nature'.

Lasalle thought the state should be reduced to the role of nightwatchman/policeman

3 main points of negative freedom

Mill argued that truth can only be found in a condition of freedom. However, there are notable examples of eccentrics coming out of severely disciplined communities e.g. under military rule

This individualism and privatism came from the restoration and Renaissance; this was a paradigmatic shift

This form of liberty is incompatible with the absence of self-government: liberty is principally concerned with the area of control, not it's source

The Notion of Positive Freedom

Being one's own master.

The real self is considered to be something larger than the individual and this real self can only be created by a social whole which the individual is a part of; 'higher freedom': it is possible to coerce others for their own sake, to remove them from ignorance. People can choose things for us on the grounds that we should do so subconsciously as a rational self. Collective identity is a super personal identity

Issue polarizes over hedonism and the real mans wishes, according to those supporters of positive freedom

Rationality is underlined by solidarity - a like freedom for all; "rational mean will respect the principle of reason in one another"

"if the universe is governed by reason, there will be no need for coercion"

Spinoza claims that children aren't slaves because they are only coerced with respect to their own development

"the subject of a true commonwealth is no slave, because the common interests must include his own"

Such thinkers as Mill, Montesquei and Burke believe our rational ends must coincide

Rosseau "in giving myself to all, i give myself to none"

Education, says Fichte, must inevitably work in such a way that 'you will later recognise the reasons for what I am doing now'.