READING 1 ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ Isaiah Berlin Isaiah Berlin’s essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’* is one of the most important pieces of post-war political philosophy. It was originally given as a lecture in Oxford in 1958 and has been much discussed since then. In this extract from the lecture Berlin identifies the two different concepts of freedom – negative and positive – which provide the framework for his wide-ranging discussion. Negative freedom is, roughly, a matter of which doors lie open to you, it is concerned exclusively with opportunities; positive freedom is a question of whether or not you can go through the doors, whether you are master of your life. Berlin points out that historically the concept of positive freedom has been used to control and repress individuals in the name of liberty. I To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom – freedom from what? Almost every moralist in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. I do not propose to discuss either the history or the more than two hundred senses of this protean word, recorded by historians of ideas. I propose to examine no more than two of these senses – but those central ones, with a great deal of human history behind them, and, I dare say, still to come. The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the ‘negative’sense, is involved in the answer to 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?’ The second, which I shall call the positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What, or who, is the source of control or interference, that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?’ The two questions are clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap. 155 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM The notion of ‘negative’ freedom I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no human being interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by other persons from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings.1 Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political freedom.2 This is brought out by the use of such modern expressions as ‘economic freedom’ and its counterpart, ‘economic slavery’. It is argued, very plausibly, that if a man is too poor to afford something on which there is no legal ban – a loaf of bread, a journey round the world, recourse to the law courts – he is as little free to have it as he would be if it were forbidden him by Law. If my poverty were a kind of disease, which prevented me from buying bread or paying for the journey round the world, or getting my case heard, as lameness prevents me from running, this inability would not naturally be described as a lack of freedom, least of all political freedom. It is only because I believe that my inability to get a given thing is due to the fact that other human beings have made arrangements whereby I am, whereas others are not, prevented from having enough money with which to pay for it, that I think myself a victim of coercion or slavery. In other words, this use of the term depends on a particular social and economic theory about the causes of my poverty or weakness. If my lack of material means is due to my lack of mental or physical capacity, then I begin to speak of being deprived of freedom (and not simply of poverty) only if I accept the theory.3 If, in addition, I believe that I am being kept in want by a specific arrangement which I consider unjust or unfair, I speak of economic slavery or oppression. ‘The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will does’, said Rousseau. The criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes. By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of noninterference the wider my freedom. This is what the classical English political philosophers meant when they used this word.4 They disagreed about how wide the area could or should be. 156 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ They supposed that it could not, as things were, be unlimited, because if it were, it would entail a state in which all men could boundlessly interfere with all other men; and this kind of ‘natural’ freedom would lead to social chaos in which men’s minimum needs would not be satisfied; or else the liberties of the weak would be suppressed by the strong. Because they perceived that human purposes and activities do not automatically harmonize with one another; and, because (whatever their official doctrines) they put high value on other goals, such as justice, or happiness, or culture, or security, or varying degrees of equality, they were prepared to curtail freedom in the interests of other values and, indeed, of freedom itself. For, without this, it was impossible to create the kind of association that they thought desirable. Consequently, it is assumed by these thinkers that the area of men’s free action must be limited by law. But equally it is assumed, especially by such libertarians as Locke and Mill in England, and Constant and Tocqueville in France, that there ought to exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual will find himself in an area too narrow for even that minimum development of his natural faculties which alone makes it possible to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends which men hold good or right or sacred. It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority. Where it is to be drawn is a matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely interdependent, and no man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others.5 Still, a practical compromise has to be found. Philosophers with an optimistic view of human nature, and a belief in the possibility of harmonizing human interest, such as Locke or Adam Smith and, in some moods, Mill, believed that social harmony and progress were compatible with reserving a large area for private life over which neither the state nor any other authority must be allowed to trespass. Hobbes, and those who agreed with him, especially conservative or reactionary thinkers, argued that if men were to be prevented from destroying one another, and making social life a jungle or a wilderness, greater safeguards must be instituted to keep them in their places, and wished correspondingly to increase the area of centralized control, and decrease that of the individual. But both sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control. To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism. The most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy, Benjamin Constant, who had not forgotten the Jacobin dictatorship, declared that at the very least the liberty of religion, opinion, expression, property, must be guaranteed 157 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM against arbitrary invasion. Jefferson, Burke, Paine, Mill, compiled different catalogues of individual liberties, but the argument for keeping authority at bay is always substantially the same. We must preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature’. We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating. What then must the minimum be? That which a man cannot give up without offending against the essence of his human nature. What is this essence? What are the standards which it entails? This has been, and perhaps always will be, a matter of infinite debate. But whatever the principle in terms of which the area of non-interference is to be drawn, whether it is that of natural law or natural rights, or of utility or the pronouncements of a categorical imperative, or the sanctity of the social contract, or any other concept with which men have sought to clarify and justify their convictions, liberty in this sense means liberty from: absence of interference beyond the shifting, but always recognizable, frontier. ‘The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way’, said the most celebrated of its champions. If this is so, is compulsion ever justified? Mill had no doubt that it was. Since justice demands that all individuals be entitled to a minimum of freedom, all other individuals were of necessity to be restrained, if need be by force, from depriving anyone of it. Indeed, the whole function of law was the prevention of just such collisions: the state was reduced to what Lassalle contemptuously described as the functions of a night-watchman or traffic policeman. What made the protection of individual liberty so sacred to Mill? In his famous essay he declares that unless men are left to live as they wish ‘in the path which merely concerns themselves’, civilization cannot advance; the truth will not, for lack of a free market in ideas, come to light; there will be no scope for spontaneity, originality, genius, for mental energy, for moral courage. Society will be crushed by the weight of ‘collective mediocrity’. Whatever is rich and diversified will be crushed by the weight of custom, by men’s constant tendency to conformity, which breeds only ‘withered capacities’, ‘pinched and hidebound’, ‘cramped and warped’ human beings. ‘Pagan self-assertion is as worthy as Christian self-denial.’ ‘All the errors which a man is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem is good.’ The defence of liberty consists in the ‘negative’ goal of warding off interference. To threaten a man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his 158 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ own to live. This is liberty as it has been conceived by liberals in the modern world from the days of Erasmus (some would say of Occam) to our own. Every plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organized propaganda, springs from this individualistic, and much disputed, conception of man. Three facts about this position may be noted. In the first place Mill confuses two distinct notions. One is that all coercion is, in so far as it frustrates human desires, bad as such, although it may have to be applied to prevent other, greater evils; while non-interference, which is the opposite of coercion, is good as such, although it is not the only good. This is the ‘negative’ conception of liberty in its classical form. The other is that men should seek to discover the truth, or to develop a certain type of character of which Mill approved – fearless, original, imaginative, independent, non-conforming to the point of eccentricity, and so on – and that truth can be found, and such character can be bred, only in conditions of freedom. Both these are liberal views, but they are not identical, and the connection between them is, at best, empirical. No one would argue that truth or freedom of self-expression could flourish where dogma crushes all thought. But the evidence of history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued by James Stephen in his formidable attack on Mill in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) that integrity, love of truth and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined communities among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies; and if this is so accepted, Mill’s argument for liberty as a necessary condition for the growth of human genius falls to the ground. If his two goals proved incompatible, Mill would be faced with a cruel dilemma, quite apart from the further difficulties created by the inconsistency of his doctrines with strict utilitarianism, even in his own humane version of it.6 In the second place, the doctrine is comparatively modern. There seems to be scarcely any discussion of individual liberty as a conscious political ideal (as opposed to its actual existence) in the ancient world. Condorcet has already remarked that the notion of individual rights is absent from the legal conceptions of the Romans and Greeks; this seems to hold equally of the Jewish, Chinese, and all other ancient civilizations that have since come to light.7 The domination of this ideal has been the exception rather than the rule, even in the recent history of the West. Nor has liberty in this sense often formed a rallying cry for the great masses of mankind. The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been a mark of high civilization both on the part of individuals and communities. The sense of privacy itself, of the 159 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM area of personal relationships as something sacred in its own right, derives from a conception of freedom which, for all its religious roots, is scarcely older, in its developed state, than the Renaissance or the Reformation.8 Yet its decline would mark the death of a civilization, of an entire moral outlook. The third characteristic of this notion of liberty is of greater importance. It is that liberty in this sense is not incompatible with some kinds of autocracy, or at any rate with the absence of self-government. Liberty in this sense is principally concerned with the area of control, not with its source. Just as a democracy may, in fact, deprive the individual citizen of a great many liberties which he might have in some other form of society, so it is perfectly conceivable that a liberal-minded despot would allow his subjects a large measure of personal freedom. The despot who leaves his subjects a wide area of liberty may be unjust, or encourage the wildest inequalities, care little for order, or virtue, or knowledge, but provided he does not curb their liberty, or at least curbs it less than many other regimes, he meets with Mill’s specification.9 Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy or self-government. Self-government may, on the whole, provide a better guarantee of the preservation of civil liberties than other regimes, and has been defended as such by libertarians. But there is no necessary connection between individual liberty and democratic rule. The answer to the question ‘Who governs me?’ is logically distinct from the question ‘How far does government interfere with me?’ It is in this difference that the great contrast between the two concepts of negative and positive liberty, in the end, consists.10 For the ‘positive’ sense of liberty comes to light if we try to answer the question, not ‘What am I free to do or be?’, but ‘By whom am I ruled?’ or ‘Who is to say what I am, and what I am not, to be or do?’ The connection between democracy and individual liberty is a good deal more tenuous than it seemed to many advocates of both. The desire to be governed by myself, or at any rate to participate in the process by which my life is to be a controlled, may be as deep a wish as that of a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is not a desire for the same thing. So different is it, indeed, as to have led in the end to the great clash of ideologies that dominates our world. For it is this – the ‘positive’ conception of liberty: not freedom from, but freedom to – which the adherents of the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny. The notion of positive freedom The ‘positive’sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of 160 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ 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. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer – deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by reference to his own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realize that it is not. The freedom which consists in being one’s own master, and the freedom which consists in not being prevented from choosing as I do by other men, may, on the face of it, seem concepts at no great logical distance from each other – no more than negative and positive ways of saying the same thing. Yet the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ notions of freedom historically developed in divergent directions not always by logically reputable steps, until, in the end, they came into direct conflict with each other. One way of making this clear is in terms of the independent momentum which the, initially perhaps quite harmless, metaphor of self-mastery acquired. ‘I am my own master’; ‘I am slave to no man’; but may I not (as, for instance, T. H. Green is always saying) be a slave to nature? Or to my own ‘unbridled’ passions? Are these not so many species of the identical genus ‘slave’ – some political or legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience of liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature, and do they not in the course of it become aware, on the one hand, of a self which dominates, and, on the other, of something in them which is brought to heel? This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher nature’, with the self which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the long run, with my ‘real’, or ‘ideal’, or ‘autonomous’ self, or with my self ‘at its best’; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my ‘lower’ nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my ‘empirical’ or ‘heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’ nature. Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an even larger gap: the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living 161 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or ‘organic’, single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’, achieves its own, and, therefore, their, ‘higher’ freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a ‘higher’ level of freedom have often been pointed out. But what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational, and as wise as I, and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity – their latent rational will, or their ‘true’ purpose – and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their ‘real’ self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account.11 Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, fulfilment of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom – the free choice of his ‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self. This paradox has been often exposed. It is one thing to say that I know what is good for X, while he himself does not and even to ignore his wishes for its – and his – sake; and a very different one to say that he has eo ipso chosen it, not indeed consciously, not as he seems in everyday life, but in his role as a rational self which his empirical self may not know – the ‘real’ self which discerns the good, and cannot help choosing it once it is revealed. This monstrous impersonation, which consists in equating what X would choose if he were something he is not, or at least not yet, with what X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart of all political theories of self-realization. It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty; it is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free – or ‘truly’ free – even while my poor 162 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek however benevolently to impose it, with the greatest desperation. This magical transformation, or sleight of hand (for which William James so justly mocked the Hegelians), can no doubt be perpetrated just as easily with the ‘negative’ concept of freedom, where the self that should not be interfered with is no longer the individual with his actual wishes and needs as they are normally conceived, but the ‘real’ man within, identified with the pursuit of some ideal purpose not dreamed of by his empirical self. And, as in the case of the ‘positively’ free self, this entity may be inflated into some 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. But the ‘positive’ conception of freedom as self-mastery, with its suggestion of a man divided against himself, has, in fact, and as a matter of the history of doctrines and of practice, lent itself more easily to this splitting of personality into two: the transcendent, dominant controller, and the empirical bundle of desires and passions to be disciplined and brought to heel. This demonstrates (if demonstration of so obvious a truth is needed) that the conception of freedom directly derives from the view that is taken of what constitutes a self, a person, a man. Enough manipulation with the definition of man, and freedom can be made to mean whatever the manipulator wishes. Recent history has made it only too clear that the issue is not merely academic. Notes * This version of the essay is from A. Quinton (ed.) Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1967, pp.141–52. The quotations from ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in the main text sometimes have a slightly different wording from this version of the essay. 1 I do not, of course, mean to imply the truth of the converse. 2 Helvétius made this point very clearly: ‘The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment ... it is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale.’ 3 The Marxist conceptions of social laws is, of course, the best-known version of this theory, but it forms a large element in some Christian and utilitarian, and all socialist, doctrines. 4 ‘A free man’, said Hobbes, ‘is he that ... is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do.’ Law is always a ‘fetter’, even if it protects you from being bound in chains that are heavier than those of the law, say, arbitrary despotism or chaos. Bentham says much the same. 5 ‘Freedom for an Oxford don’, others have been known to add, ‘is a very different thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant.’ This proposition derives its force from something that is both true and important, but the phrase itself remains a piece of political claptrap. It is true that to offer political rights, or safeguards, against intervention by the state, to men who are half-naked, illiterate, underfed, and diseased is to mock their condition; they need medical help or education before they can 163 How to Write a One‐Page Response NOTE: There is no reason to have a heading on a response, not even your name. Your name automatically shows in the instructor’s grade center and even a name takes up valuable space in a one-page response. Thesis Statement – This should be a one‐sentence statement of the position you take on the question or the argument you intend to make. This statement should specifically lay out what you intend to prove in your response. It should not be a vague generalization. First paragraph begins with a topic sentence that exactly corresponds to the first point you are trying to prove as stated in your thesis statement. Then, you present facts, details, and evidence to prove your point or analysis. The paragraph should end with a good transition sentence. Subsequent paragraphs should begin with a topic sentence that corresponds to the second, third, etc. points you make in your thesis statement, corresponding exactly to the order in which you state them in your thesis statement. In each paragraph, present facts, details, and evidence in support of your argument. Each paragraph ends with a transition sentence. Conclusion – This is where you restate your thesis and review the main points. NOTE: Organization, flow, structure, grammar, and spelling checks are important. Questions to ask before submitting an assignment: 1. Have you proofread your response? 2. Have you met the requirements of the assignment? 3. Does your thesis statement have a specific idea, debatable assertion, or argument? 4. Does your paper have supporting paragraphs to support and prove your thesis? 5. Does a topic sentence in each paragraph address the purpose of the paragraph? 6. Does each paragraph contain evidence, facts, and details to support your thesis argument? 7. Does your analysis explain the significance of the evidence, facts, or details and specifically connect to your thesis statement? 8. Do you have logical transitions between paragraphs? 9. Have you organized your ideas? 10. Does your conclusion restate your thesis statement and contain a review of your main points? 11. Have you maintained consistent verb tense, subject‐verb agreement, pronoun‐antecedent agreement, and sentence structure? 12. Do you use proper punctuation (no sentence fragments, run‐on sentences, comma splices, or confusing passages) in your response paper? 13. Are there any spelling errors? For more information or instruction, please go to a campus Writing Center, or use the SMARTHINKING tutoring service: http://eli.nvcc.edu/smarthinking.htm Thesis Statement ‐ Arguing a Point 1. All thesis statements are really arguments. In an essay you are advancing and supporting a point of view. 2. Argument is about persuading a reader to take a side on an issue. 3. An argument is an organized series of facts and material to support a point of view. 4. Arguments support opinions. 5. Arguments are not right or wrong, but graded on the basis of being well or poorly supported. 6. A well‐written argument essay should use clear, logical reasoning to persuade. 7. Argument should always focus on facts, not emotions. Compare these two thesis statements: The Congress is an example of a bicameral legislative body. The Congress is a legislative body made up of opposing interests constantly forming new coalitions in support of or opposition to the legislative agenda. Note the difference in implied intent in these two statements. One expresses a point of view; the other advances a position. Be aware of your audience‐‐open‐minded, but skeptical and critical. Audience does not turn its brains off when it reads or listens to an argument. Student responses should: List arguments in favor of the thesis statement. List arguments in opposition to the thesis statement. Note that your reader will be perfectly capable of generating reasons to support the side opposite the side you take. You need to anticipate and defuse opposing arguments. Steps to Writing a Thesis Statement 1. Choose a topic of interest. 2. Focus your topic on a specific point or aspect of the issue of interest that you feel you can support. 3. A method of narrowing a topic is to define your terms. 4. List reasons in support of your thesis. 5. List reasons in opposition to your thesis. 6. Group the reasons by issue details or subject areas. 7. Organize the issue details. 8. Save the most powerful issue/argument as your last point. This step‐by‐step process will help you write a strong, focused thesis statement. More information on argument: Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Source Material When you incorporate material or direct quotes from outside source materials, you must site that source giving credit to the author or source of the material or quote. An excellent resource is: Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Some things to remember: 1. Select focused passages to quote or paraphrase in support of your argument. 2. It is your job to “unwrap” the quote. It doesn’t stand alone as proof. You must explain why it is significant to your argument. 3. Quotes should be “woven” into the fabric of your essay. It should connect to the material. 4. You are the author, the dominant voice. The quote is there to support your thesis. 5. Do not sprinkle your essay with unexplained quotations. 6. Introduce your quotations by naming the source. 7. Tell the reader the significance, or the reason for your reference. 8. A direct quotation must be copied exactly as it appears in the original work, with every mark of punctuation, every capitalization, every peculiarity of spelling preserved. 9. You must as a matter of honor use the quote in its proper context, and respect the intended meaning. How to Incorporate Outside Sources into Your Writing Summary – If a long passage supports your argument, you may condense the main idea and edit the supports used in your own words. Note: A good summary is accurate, comprehensive, and independent (in the order of the points in the original document and of the emphasis of the original document). Paraphrase – This is restating the content of a short passage of material phrase by phrase. You rewrite the author’s wording choice in your own words. Note: Why would you paraphrase instead of directly quote the material? Sometimes a great point for your argument is written in difficult language that serves you better if simplified. Sometimes a passage or an idea is very important to your argument, but it isn’t necessary or desired to use the author’s exact wording. Direct Quotation – This is a precise word‐for‐word use of the author’s original statement. Note: Too many quotes dilute the overall effectiveness of your essay. Quotations should be used sparingly to make great impact. Quotes must be accurate. As a general rule, no more than 10 to 20 percent of your essay should be composed of direct quotations. When to Use Direct Quotations 1. When you want to use precise, excellently written language, as well selected content in the quote. In short, when, as a writer, you believe that no other words could adequately express the meaning conveyed. Usually the style is perfect, vivid, and cannot be improved upon. 2. To ensure the greatest accuracy for material that is significant, or controversial, or authoritative. 3. To set up an argument that adds to, or takes exception to the quoted source. 4. Like in a debate, when the contrast of opposing ideas makes precise wording of the author’s ideas essential to your argument. When You Use Too Many Quotes It makes your essay appear to have no purpose—it looks like you added everything verbatim in hopes of finding a purpose. To pad the length of an essay because you failed to adequately develop a topic. There is always the possibility that you don’t know anything about your topic, so you quote others. Remember that quotations supplement, but can never replace your work. Purpose of Quotations 1. To help you amplify or clarify a point of argument. 2. To prove a specific point, or to attach weight to a theory or an opinion. Format of Quotations 1. Use quotation marks to enclose direct quotes. 2. Set off long quotations (4 or more lines) by indenting 10 spaces from the left margin. 3. Use single quotation marks to enclose a quotation within a quotation. 4. Use quotation marks around titles of short works or italicize. 1. Periods and commas always come inside quotation marks; all other punctuation (unless part of the quoted material) belongs outside the quotation marks. 2. If the quoted material and the entire sentence you write each require the same mark of punctuation, use only the mark that comes first. If the punctuation marks are different, use the stronger mark. 3. When quoting a complete sentence, capitalize the first word. 4. Do not capitalize the first word if you are quoting a fragment, or if you are introducing a short complete sentence with a similar construction. 5. Capitalize when you introduce quoted material. Plagiarism Using another author’s ideas, interpretations, or words as your own is plagiarism. This is why you must cite your source with in‐text documentation that includes a specific page reference. A good way to introduce an outside source is to use a signal phrase alerting the reader that an outside reference follows. Such phrasing also helps integrate an idea or direct quotation into your writing and argument. Omissions Any material that isn’t essential to your argument maybe omitted. To do this properly, use the ellipses, (…) that are three spaced periods to indicate to the reader that some of the original material has been omitted. If the ellipsis comes at the end of a sentence, then use the three periods and any period marking or other punctuation that comes at the end of the sentence. Make sure that the quotation that remains is grammatically correct. You must not distort the meaning of the original passage. Example: “The United States was attacked on 9‐11 by terrorists, nineteen of whom were from Saudi Arabia.” You cannot change it to read: “The United States was attacked…by…Saudi Arabia.” Interpolations (Required Changes in Quotations) These changes are made when it is necessary to relate a pronoun to its antecedent, or to insert a personal comment. To do this properly, you must insert the word “sic” – meaning a word of correction. You may also make the quotation grammatically consistent with what you have written surrounding the quotation. It’s important not to confuse your reader with a change in tone, tense, or perspective. All interpolations must be enclosed in square brackets, [ ]. Keys to Writing a Successful One Page Response Incorporate Factual Points from the Readings as Proofs for Your Argument It is important to demonstrate you have read and understand the arguments of the authors. You should state the author's argument in the response. This does not mean that you should just write a summary, remember you also need to argue a point. Write a Proper Thesis Statement Remember, a thesis statement is not the same as a research question. It is one sentence that explains what you are arguing. Write One Full Page (double spaced, 12 point font - no heading required) It is important to learn how to write a one page argument for today’s professional world. Generally, people are too busy to read multiple pages. One page responses teaches students to write succinctly and make sharp arguments. Avoid Using First Person (as in “I,” or “in my opinion,” etc.) Only on rare occasions should you use first person, such as: when you are an expert, or have personally witnessed an event, or have unique personal knowledge about an issue. It should not be used when giving your opinion. The reader knows you are the author of the response. At this level, it is best to avoid using it altogether. 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READING 1 ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ Isaiah Berlin Isaiah Berlin’s essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’* is one of the most important pieces of post-war political philosophy. It was originally given as a lecture in Oxford in 1958 and has been much discussed since then. In this extract from the lecture Berlin identifies the two different concepts of freedom – negative and positive – which provide the framework for his wide-ranging discussion. Negative freedom is, roughly, a matter of which doors lie open to you, it is concerned exclusively with opportunities; positive freedom is a question of whether or not you can go through the doors, whether you are master of your life. Berlin points out that historically the concept of positive freedom has been used to control and repress individuals in the name of liberty. I To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom – freedom from what? Almost every moralist in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. I do not propose to discuss either the history or the more than two hundred senses of this protean word, recorded by historians of ideas. I propose to examine no more than two of these senses – but those central ones, with a great deal of human history behind them, and, I dare say, still to come. The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the ‘negative’sense, is involved in the answer to 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?’ The second, which I shall call the positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What, or who, is the source of control or interference, that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?’ The two questions are clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap. 155 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM The notion of ‘negative’ freedom I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no human being interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by other persons from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings.1 Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political freedom.2 This is brought out by the use of such modern expressions as ‘economic freedom’ and its counterpart, ‘economic slavery’. It is argued, very plausibly, that if a man is too poor to afford something on which there is no legal ban – a loaf of bread, a journey round the world, recourse to the law courts – he is as little free to have it as he would be if it were forbidden him by Law. If my poverty were a kind of disease, which prevented me from buying bread or paying for the journey round the world, or getting my case heard, as lameness prevents me from running, this inability would not naturally be described as a lack of freedom, least of all political freedom. It is only because I believe that my inability to get a given thing is due to the fact that other human beings have made arrangements whereby I am, whereas others are not, prevented from having enough money with which to pay for it, that I think myself a victim of coercion or slavery. In other words, this use of the term depends on a particular social and economic theory about the causes of my poverty or weakness. If my lack of material means is due to my lack of mental or physical capacity, then I begin to speak of being deprived of freedom (and not simply of poverty) only if I accept the theory.3 If, in addition, I believe that I am being kept in want by a specific arrangement which I consider unjust or unfair, I speak of economic slavery or oppression. ‘The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will does’, said Rousseau. The criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes. By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of noninterference the wider my freedom. This is what the classical English political philosophers meant when they used this word.4 They disagreed about how wide the area could or should be. 156 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ They supposed that it could not, as things were, be unlimited, because if it were, it would entail a state in which all men could boundlessly interfere with all other men; and this kind of ‘natural’ freedom would lead to social chaos in which men’s minimum needs would not be satisfied; or else the liberties of the weak would be suppressed by the strong. Because they perceived that human purposes and activities do not automatically harmonize with one another; and, because (whatever their official doctrines) they put high value on other goals, such as justice, or happiness, or culture, or security, or varying degrees of equality, they were prepared to curtail freedom in the interests of other values and, indeed, of freedom itself. For, without this, it was impossible to create the kind of association that they thought desirable. Consequently, it is assumed by these thinkers that the area of men’s free action must be limited by law. But equally it is assumed, especially by such libertarians as Locke and Mill in England, and Constant and Tocqueville in France, that there ought to exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual will find himself in an area too narrow for even that minimum development of his natural faculties which alone makes it possible to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends which men hold good or right or sacred. It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority. Where it is to be drawn is a matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely interdependent, and no man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others.5 Still, a practical compromise has to be found. Philosophers with an optimistic view of human nature, and a belief in the possibility of harmonizing human interest, such as Locke or Adam Smith and, in some moods, Mill, believed that social harmony and progress were compatible with reserving a large area for private life over which neither the state nor any other authority must be allowed to trespass. Hobbes, and those who agreed with him, especially conservative or reactionary thinkers, argued that if men were to be prevented from destroying one another, and making social life a jungle or a wilderness, greater safeguards must be instituted to keep them in their places, and wished correspondingly to increase the area of centralized control, and decrease that of the individual. But both sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control. To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism. The most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy, Benjamin Constant, who had not forgotten the Jacobin dictatorship, declared that at the very least the liberty of religion, opinion, expression, property, must be guaranteed 157 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM against arbitrary invasion. Jefferson, Burke, Paine, Mill, compiled different catalogues of individual liberties, but the argument for keeping authority at bay is always substantially the same. We must preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature’. We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating. What then must the minimum be? That which a man cannot give up without offending against the essence of his human nature. What is this essence? What are the standards which it entails? This has been, and perhaps always will be, a matter of infinite debate. But whatever the principle in terms of which the area of non-interference is to be drawn, whether it is that of natural law or natural rights, or of utility or the pronouncements of a categorical imperative, or the sanctity of the social contract, or any other concept with which men have sought to clarify and justify their convictions, liberty in this sense means liberty from: absence of interference beyond the shifting, but always recognizable, frontier. ‘The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way’, said the most celebrated of its champions. If this is so, is compulsion ever justified? Mill had no doubt that it was. Since justice demands that all individuals be entitled to a minimum of freedom, all other individuals were of necessity to be restrained, if need be by force, from depriving anyone of it. Indeed, the whole function of law was the prevention of just such collisions: the state was reduced to what Lassalle contemptuously described as the functions of a night-watchman or traffic policeman. What made the protection of individual liberty so sacred to Mill? In his famous essay he declares that unless men are left to live as they wish ‘in the path which merely concerns themselves’, civilization cannot advance; the truth will not, for lack of a free market in ideas, come to light; there will be no scope for spontaneity, originality, genius, for mental energy, for moral courage. Society will be crushed by the weight of ‘collective mediocrity’. Whatever is rich and diversified will be crushed by the weight of custom, by men’s constant tendency to conformity, which breeds only ‘withered capacities’, ‘pinched and hidebound’, ‘cramped and warped’ human beings. ‘Pagan self-assertion is as worthy as Christian self-denial.’ ‘All the errors which a man is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem is good.’ The defence of liberty consists in the ‘negative’ goal of warding off interference. To threaten a man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his 158 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ own to live. This is liberty as it has been conceived by liberals in the modern world from the days of Erasmus (some would say of Occam) to our own. Every plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organized propaganda, springs from this individualistic, and much disputed, conception of man. Three facts about this position may be noted. In the first place Mill confuses two distinct notions. One is that all coercion is, in so far as it frustrates human desires, bad as such, although it may have to be applied to prevent other, greater evils; while non-interference, which is the opposite of coercion, is good as such, although it is not the only good. This is the ‘negative’ conception of liberty in its classical form. The other is that men should seek to discover the truth, or to develop a certain type of character of which Mill approved – fearless, original, imaginative, independent, non-conforming to the point of eccentricity, and so on – and that truth can be found, and such character can be bred, only in conditions of freedom. Both these are liberal views, but they are not identical, and the connection between them is, at best, empirical. No one would argue that truth or freedom of self-expression could flourish where dogma crushes all thought. But the evidence of history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued by James Stephen in his formidable attack on Mill in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) that integrity, love of truth and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined communities among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies; and if this is so accepted, Mill’s argument for liberty as a necessary condition for the growth of human genius falls to the ground. If his two goals proved incompatible, Mill would be faced with a cruel dilemma, quite apart from the further difficulties created by the inconsistency of his doctrines with strict utilitarianism, even in his own humane version of it.6 In the second place, the doctrine is comparatively modern. There seems to be scarcely any discussion of individual liberty as a conscious political ideal (as opposed to its actual existence) in the ancient world. Condorcet has already remarked that the notion of individual rights is absent from the legal conceptions of the Romans and Greeks; this seems to hold equally of the Jewish, Chinese, and all other ancient civilizations that have since come to light.7 The domination of this ideal has been the exception rather than the rule, even in the recent history of the West. Nor has liberty in this sense often formed a rallying cry for the great masses of mankind. The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been a mark of high civilization both on the part of individuals and communities. The sense of privacy itself, of the 159 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM area of personal relationships as something sacred in its own right, derives from a conception of freedom which, for all its religious roots, is scarcely older, in its developed state, than the Renaissance or the Reformation.8 Yet its decline would mark the death of a civilization, of an entire moral outlook. The third characteristic of this notion of liberty is of greater importance. It is that liberty in this sense is not incompatible with some kinds of autocracy, or at any rate with the absence of self-government. Liberty in this sense is principally concerned with the area of control, not with its source. Just as a democracy may, in fact, deprive the individual citizen of a great many liberties which he might have in some other form of society, so it is perfectly conceivable that a liberal-minded despot would allow his subjects a large measure of personal freedom. The despot who leaves his subjects a wide area of liberty may be unjust, or encourage the wildest inequalities, care little for order, or virtue, or knowledge, but provided he does not curb their liberty, or at least curbs it less than many other regimes, he meets with Mill’s specification.9 Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy or self-government. Self-government may, on the whole, provide a better guarantee of the preservation of civil liberties than other regimes, and has been defended as such by libertarians. But there is no necessary connection between individual liberty and democratic rule. The answer to the question ‘Who governs me?’ is logically distinct from the question ‘How far does government interfere with me?’ It is in this difference that the great contrast between the two concepts of negative and positive liberty, in the end, consists.10 For the ‘positive’ sense of liberty comes to light if we try to answer the question, not ‘What am I free to do or be?’, but ‘By whom am I ruled?’ or ‘Who is to say what I am, and what I am not, to be or do?’ The connection between democracy and individual liberty is a good deal more tenuous than it seemed to many advocates of both. The desire to be governed by myself, or at any rate to participate in the process by which my life is to be a controlled, may be as deep a wish as that of a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is not a desire for the same thing. So different is it, indeed, as to have led in the end to the great clash of ideologies that dominates our world. For it is this – the ‘positive’ conception of liberty: not freedom from, but freedom to – which the adherents of the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny. The notion of positive freedom The ‘positive’sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of 160 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ 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. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer – deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by reference to his own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realize that it is not. The freedom which consists in being one’s own master, and the freedom which consists in not being prevented from choosing as I do by other men, may, on the face of it, seem concepts at no great logical distance from each other – no more than negative and positive ways of saying the same thing. Yet the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ notions of freedom historically developed in divergent directions not always by logically reputable steps, until, in the end, they came into direct conflict with each other. One way of making this clear is in terms of the independent momentum which the, initially perhaps quite harmless, metaphor of self-mastery acquired. ‘I am my own master’; ‘I am slave to no man’; but may I not (as, for instance, T. H. Green is always saying) be a slave to nature? Or to my own ‘unbridled’ passions? Are these not so many species of the identical genus ‘slave’ – some political or legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience of liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature, and do they not in the course of it become aware, on the one hand, of a self which dominates, and, on the other, of something in them which is brought to heel? This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher nature’, with the self which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the long run, with my ‘real’, or ‘ideal’, or ‘autonomous’ self, or with my self ‘at its best’; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my ‘lower’ nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my ‘empirical’ or ‘heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’ nature. Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an even larger gap: the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living 161 ARGUMENTS FOR FREEDOM and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or ‘organic’, single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’, achieves its own, and, therefore, their, ‘higher’ freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a ‘higher’ level of freedom have often been pointed out. But what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational, and as wise as I, and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity – their latent rational will, or their ‘true’ purpose – and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their ‘real’ self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account.11 Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, fulfilment of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom – the free choice of his ‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self. This paradox has been often exposed. It is one thing to say that I know what is good for X, while he himself does not and even to ignore his wishes for its – and his – sake; and a very different one to say that he has eo ipso chosen it, not indeed consciously, not as he seems in everyday life, but in his role as a rational self which his empirical self may not know – the ‘real’ self which discerns the good, and cannot help choosing it once it is revealed. This monstrous impersonation, which consists in equating what X would choose if he were something he is not, or at least not yet, with what X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart of all political theories of self-realization. It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty; it is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free – or ‘truly’ free – even while my poor 162 READING 1 ‘TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY’ earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek however benevolently to impose it, with the greatest desperation. This magical transformation, or sleight of hand (for which William James so justly mocked the Hegelians), can no doubt be perpetrated just as easily with the ‘negative’ concept of freedom, where the self that should not be interfered with is no longer the individual with his actual wishes and needs as they are normally conceived, but the ‘real’ man within, identified with the pursuit of some ideal purpose not dreamed of by his empirical self. And, as in the case of the ‘positively’ free self, this entity may be inflated into some 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. But the ‘positive’ conception of freedom as self-mastery, with its suggestion of a man divided against himself, has, in fact, and as a matter of the history of doctrines and of practice, lent itself more easily to this splitting of personality into two: the transcendent, dominant controller, and the empirical bundle of desires and passions to be disciplined and brought to heel. This demonstrates (if demonstration of so obvious a truth is needed) that the conception of freedom directly derives from the view that is taken of what constitutes a self, a person, a man. Enough manipulation with the definition of man, and freedom can be made to mean whatever the manipulator wishes. Recent history has made it only too clear that the issue is not merely academic. Notes * This version of the essay is from A. Quinton (ed.) Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1967, pp.141–52. The quotations from ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in the main text sometimes have a slightly different wording from this version of the essay. 1 I do not, of course, mean to imply the truth of the converse. 2 Helvétius made this point very clearly: ‘The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment ... it is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale.’ 3 The Marxist conceptions of social laws is, of course, the best-known version of this theory, but it forms a large element in some Christian and utilitarian, and all socialist, doctrines. 4 ‘A free man’, said Hobbes, ‘is he that ... is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do.’ Law is always a ‘fetter’, even if it protects you from being bound in chains that are heavier than those of the law, say, arbitrary despotism or chaos. Bentham says much the same. 5 ‘Freedom for an Oxford don’, others have been known to add, ‘is a very different thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant.’ This proposition derives its force from something that is both true and important, but the phrase itself remains a piece of political claptrap. It is true that to offer political rights, or safeguards, against intervention by the state, to men who are half-naked, illiterate, underfed, and diseased is to mock their condition; they need medical help or education before they can 163 Positive v. Negative Liberty -- Does it Matter? There is considerable debate about the distinction between negative and positive liberty. It matters because each defines a different view of what is permissible for the state to do, and in establishing what the state exists to do in the name of governing. Negative Liberty means "freedom from” (absence of constraints or the interference of government) • John Locke's theory of Natural Rights is in the tradition of Negative Liberty. It is defined as limited government - restraint of government obstacles placed on individual liberty and a person's property. Government exists to protect the people's liberty by not interfering in the individual's right to pursue what they value. Negative Liberty strongly limits government restraint of the individual. • This does not mean doing as one likes, but doing what one ought to do. . Positive Liberty means "capacity to” (freedom and ability to pursue one's goals with government) President Franklin Roosevelt added the concept of Positive Liberty in 1941 when he said the U.S. would fight for four freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. • Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship are traditional American Negative Liberties that no one can take away from individuals. • Freedom from Want was a new twist-a Positive Liberty-Roosevelt was trying to pass his New Deal to meet the Great Depression. • Justifies government action to give people what they lack that would make them free. • Government provides the necessities of life. Positive Liberty means that in order to give some people what they want to have, government must take those resources from others. This is a violation of the citizen's negative liberty. Who determines what people need to be given—who decides the necessities of life? Traditionally, Americans define social welfare as help for those who through no fault of their own deserve assistance. How do you view liberty in these examples? • The government wants you to stop smoking so they pass multiple laws and impose multiple taxes on cigarettes, banning smokers from public areas, and in some states, banning smoking in private homes to force people not to smoke. • The Mayor of New York City imposed a ban on 20 ounce "super-sized" drinks, and New York restaurants are not permitted to keep salt on tables. • The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted over 1000 political interest groups applying for tax exempt status, if their name or political materials included words such as “patriot,” Tea Party," or "liberty." These group applications were put on hold while they were told to answer pages and pages of "extra" questions in order for their applications to be processed by the IRS. • U.S. District Court judge imposed a $500.00 fine on Massachusetts fisherman Robert J. Eldridge for untangling a giant whale from his nets to free it. According to the court, Eldridge was supposed to call state authorities and wait for them. Philadelphia requires all bloggers to purchase a $300 business privilege license. The city fined a woman who earned only $11.00 from her blog over the past two years. • Texas requires every new computer repair technician to be a licensed private investigator. That means a person must have a degree in criminal justice or complete a three year apprenticeship with a licensed private investigator. A computer repair technician found violating the law, or a regular citizen that has a computer repaired by someone not in compliance with the law, will be fined $4,000 and/or jailed for a year. U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates the food service industry will spend an additional 14 million hours per year to comply with federal regulations mandating all vending machines and restaurants label all products they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer. In a growing number of school districts, students as young as kindergartners who even use the word “gun" are suspended or even expelled from school.
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