Concept of positive and negative Liberty.
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Answer:
Positive liberty is the possession of the capacity to act upon one's free will, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint on one's actions.[1] A concept of positive liberty may also include freedom from internal constraints.[2]
The concepts of structure and agency are central to the concept of positive liberty because in order to be free, a person should be free from inhibitions of the social structure in carrying out their free will. Structurally, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism and racism can inhibit a person's freedom. As positive liberty is primarily concerned with the possession of sociological agency, it is enhanced by the ability of citizens to participate in government and have their voices, interests, and concerns recognized and acted upon.
Isaiah Berlin's essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958) is typically acknowledged as the first to explicitly draw the distinction between positive and negative liberty
Explanation:
history
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of freedom, according to which individual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby one's community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accordance with the "general will".[5] Some interpret The Social Contract to suggest that Rousseau believed that liberty was the power of individual citizens to act in the government to bring about changes; this is essentially the power for self-governance and democracy.[citation needed] Rousseau himself said, "the mere impulse to appetite is slavery, while obedience to law we prescribe ourselves is liberty."[6] For Rousseau, the passage from the state of nature to the civil state substitutes justice for instinct gives his actions the morality they had formerly lacked.[7]
G. F. W. Hegel wrote in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right (in the part in which he introduced the concept of the sphere of abstract right) that "duty is not a restriction on freedom, but only on freedom in the abstract" and that "duty is the attainment of our essence, the winning of positive freedom.
Explanation:
What is liberty? Much of the contemporary philosophical debate
over this question revolves around the issues raised in Isaiah Berlin's Two
Concepts of Liberty.I In this essay, first delivered as his inaugural lecture
at Oxford in 1958, Berlin distinguishes between a negative and a positive
sense of liberty. In broad terms, negative liberty means freedom from-
from interference, coercion, or restraint-while positive liberty means
freedom to, or self-determination-freedom to act or to be as one wills.
Berlin acknowledges that, on the surface, these two concepts may
seem to be "at no great logical distance from each other-no more than
negative and positive ways of saying much the same thing."'2 But he
argues that historically the two notions have developed in very different
directions. Theories of negative liberty recognize that there is a core area
in which individuals must be free from state interference if they are to
live a truly human life. The positive view of freedom as self-determina-
tion, on the other hand, implies a distinction between two selves-a
higher self that determines and a lower self that is subject to determina-
tion. Berlin argues that, in the history of political thought, it is all too
easy for this higher self to become identified with society or the state, or
with a particular thinker's view of an ideally good or rational life. Free-
dom may then come to be defined as obedience to the will of the state or
conformity with a preconceived pattern of conduct. In this way, Berlin
contends, under the positive view freedom tends to be transformed into
its opposite-into tyranny or even totalitarianism.
Two Concepts of Liberty is justly regarded as a classic, which bril-
liantly illuminates the negative and positive notions of liberty. To one
who rereads the essay today, however, perhaps the most striking thing is
the way in which Berlin's analysis of liberty is distorted by the political
circumstances in which the essay was written. As I have noted, Berlin
* Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology;
A.B. 1979, J.D. 1984, Harvard University. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the
Faculty Dedication held at Chicago-Kent College of Law on March 17, 1992.
1. Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, in FOUR ESSAYS ON LIBERTY 118 (1969).