[4.] Freedom.

 

[4.1.] Negative and Positive Liberty.

 

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997)[1]

·         Jewish; born in Latvia, relocated to Russia then to England

·         educated at Oxford University

·         began teaching at Oxford in 1932 and continued there (apart from a period during WWII) until 1967; from 1957 until 1967 he held Oxford’s Chichele Chair in Social and Political Theory (“Two Concepts of Liberty” was his inaugural address in this position).

·         widely lauded for his criticism of authoritarianism and totalitarianism

 

In “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958), Berlin described two different ways of conceiving of political liberty or freedom (he did not think that these are the only two such concepts).

 

Negative Liberty: freedom from; the absence of external constraints, obstacles or impediments; “not being prevented from choosing as I do by other men.” (227)

 

An illustration: Suppose you are driving down the road and come to an intersection. There is no other traffic and no obstacles in the road. You turn right. There is nothing stopping you from making this turn. In the negative sense, you made the turn freely.

 

Positive Liberty: Berlin describes it in two ways—

1.       freedom to; the ability (not simply the opportunity) to do what one wants to do

2.       autonomy, self-rule; “being one’s own master” (227)

 

Continuing the illustration: suppose you made the turn because you have a cigarette addiction and to get to the gas station where you buy cigarettes, you had to turn that way. You don’t want to smoke; you wish you weren’t addicted. In a sense, you are not free but are under the control of your addiction. You did not turn freely in the positive sense of the term.[2]

 

Negative freedom might seem more obviously relevant to philosophy of law. For example, many of the liberties secured in the Constitution seem to be negative liberties. The first amendment reads:

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The freedoms enumerated herein are negative: they guarantee that no laws will be made that will prevent a citizen from (among other things) worshipping, speaking, and assembling peacefully.

 

And it might be thought that positive freedom is a topic better left to psychology, or perhaps to metaphysics and ethics.

 

But a number of philosophers have asked whether the government is able to promote or encourage freedom in the positive sense. Some philosophers have suggested that the government might even have an obligation to promote positive liberty.

 

 

[4.1.1.] Liberalism.

 

Earlier in the semester, we saw that the word “liberalism” refers to the view that the central focus of political and legal systems ought to be the individual:

 

liberalism (df.) the political viewpoint that values individual liberty/freedom as being more important than the state. On this view, the function of the state is to protect individual liberty and freedom, and individuals should be allowed to pursue their own goals. The state should respect diversity and should not attempt to impose a single lifestyle on all individuals.

·         In this sense, liberalism is the opposite of communitarianism, according to which the central focus of political and legal systems ought to be communities.

 

But we also saw that liberalism can be understood in two different ways, corresponding to two the two conceptions of freedom:

 

negative conception of freedom/liberty (freedom from): greatest threat to personal liberty is unwarranted interference by other human beings   John Locke John Stuart Mill Robert Nozick Isaiah Berlin John Hospers

positive conception of freedom/liberty (freedom to): greatest threat to personal liberty is unjust distributions of wealth, resources, and opportunity   Jean-Jacques Rousseau Karl Marx John Rawls

 

Confusingly, sometimes the word “liberalism” is used in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the form of liberalism (in the board sense defined above) that emphasizes negative liberty:

 

liberalism (df.; narrow sense): the tradition according to which (1) political liberty is best viewed as negative liberty, and (2) the government should not promote positive liberty but should instead confine itself to the protection of negative liberty.

 

 

[4.1.2.] Negative Liberty: Hospers.

 

John Hospers (b.1918)

·         Ph.D., Columbia University (1944)

·         professor emeritus, University of Southern California

·         first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party (1972); also ran as a libertarian candidate for governor of California in 1974

·         endorsed George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election[3]

 

Hospers adopted

 

libertarianism (df): the view that “[t]he only proper role of government ... is that of the protector of the citizen against aggression by other individuals.” (217)[4]

 

Hospers distinguishes three types of law:

1)      laws meant to protect people from themselves: e.g., against “fornication and other sexual behavior, alcohol, and drugs”;

2)      laws meant to protect people from each other: e.g., against “murder, robbery, and fraud”; and

3)      laws that require people to help each other, e.g., welfare laws.

 

Libertarians maintain that only type (2) laws are justified: “These are laws whose function is to protect human beings against encroachment by others; and this, as we have seen, is (according to libertarianism) the sole function of government.” (218)

 

Libertarians maintain that type (1) laws are unjustified...

·         there should be no laws against intoxication (although there should be laws against drunk driving—these are type (2) laws, since they would serve to protect others from the drunk driver)

·         there should be no laws against drug use except where the use of a drug by one person would pose a risk to others (and again, such laws are type (2) laws) [Hospers also says that those under 18 ought to be legally prohibited from buying drugs.]

 

...and that type (3) laws are unjustified and constitute “moral cannibalism.”:

 

                All such laws constitute what libertarians call moral cannibalism. A cannibal in the physical sense is a person who lives off the flesh of other beings. A moral cannibal is one who believes he has a right to live off the “spirit” of other human beings—who believes that he has a moral claim on the productive capacity, time, and effort expended by others. (218)

 

 

[4.1.3.] Negative Liberty: Bergmann.

 

In On Being Free (1977), Frithjof Bergmann (professor emeritus of philosophy, University of Michigan) takes a very different view than Hospers.

 

He considers the claim “the government that governs least is best.” (222)

 

This is a reference to Thomas Paine’s statement that “That government is best which governs least”; about which Henry David Thoreau wrote: “I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

 

Bergmann points out an initial implausibility of this claim by comparing it to analogous ones, e.g., “the best gardener is the one who gardens the least,” and “the best doctor is the one who cures the least.”

 

He then says that if it is true that the government that governs least is best, then the best situation regarding government is anarchy: complete absence of government.

 

He then denies this consequence. In a state of anarchy, e.g., Hobbes’ state of nature, most people would have less (negative) freedom than otherwise:

 

Not all of us would be completely free in the ‘natural condition’ prior to the state. Some of us might be far more constrained than we are now, and the story that we have traded in some part of our freedom for security is therefore just a myth. But if this is true, if we never possessed this incommensurately precious good to barter it away, then our resisting and begrudging attitude also is not obviously justified. Then at least some kinds of government—though certainly not all—give us not just material safety for a spiritual sacrifice, but do much more and get their reward. (222)

 

His view seems to be that if it weren’t the government restricting our negative liberty (to some degree), then others (the stronger and less meek) would do so, and those others would restrict our negative liberty even more than government does.

 

So we should not think of the government as limiting our negative liberty in order to ensure some greater goods, like security. Laws that constrain our actions do not result in a net loss of negative liberty; they actually increase our negative liberty.

 

He goes on to enumerate a number of constraints on our behavior other than those imposed by a state, including:

·         poverty

·         poor health

·         poor education

Bergmann suggests that these other obstacles grow larger when the obstacles directly imposed by a government are diminished: “If you diminish hindrances in one sphere, those in other areas will go up. So your weakening of the state [would] change[] only one weight in a complicated clockwork mechanism.” (223)

 

The view that says we should weaken the state in order to increase (negative) liberty is completely backwards. The state is the one force that we have some control over (by, for example, voting in elections), and we should strengthen it rather than letting the other potential obstacles grow stronger: “you should have strengthened the one force over which you have some hold, so that through it you might have kept the rest in check” (223).

 

Bergmann concludes by pointing out a double-standard maintained by the defender of negative freedom against government encroachment. This person is actually concerned to prevent government interference into only one specific area: property ownership / economics.

·         With regard to economics, defenders of negative freedom characterize lack of government interference as free enterprise; but in all other areas they describe it as anarchy.

·         With regard to economics, they characterize government interference as socialism; but in all other areas (e.g. compulsory education, noise ordinances, laws against “fornication and homosexuality,” the right to declare war, conscription), they characterize government interference as “law and order.”

Bergmann’s challenge: why view government interference as justified in all spheres other than economics?

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday March 14. For next time, read pp.227-29.