[4.1.4.] Berlin on Negative Liberty.

 

Again, Berlin defined negative liberty as follows:

 

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

 

Berlin held that the best way of thinking about political liberty was negatively, as freedom from interference by others. So he accepted liberalism in the narrow sense described earlier [notes section 4.1.1.]

 

He made the following points about this sort of freedom (here he is describing with approval the views of “the classical English political philosophers”):

 

·         Negative liberty cannot be completely unlimited; it must to be bounded by law. The government cannot extend the maximum amount of negative liberty to its citizens, since it must prohibit individuals from interfering with each other:

 

[Negative liberty] could not … 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. (219-220)[1]

 

[Frithjof Bergmann made a similar point; see notes 4.1.3.]

 

·         There is a “minimum area of personal freedom” into which government should not intrude. This is because, if the sphere of negative freedom is too “narrow,” human natural faculties will not develop fully and we will be unable to pursue our goals.

 

…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. (220)[2]

 

·         Some things are more important than negative liberty, e.g., the basic material necessities of life (food, clothing, etc.).

 

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 understand, or make use of, an increase in their freedom. What is freedom to those who cannot make use of it? (220)[3]

 

·         We should not confuse negative liberty with other things we value (e.g., equality, well-being, or happiness), especially when it is necessary to sacrifice some degree of negative liberty to help ensure those other values.

 

…a sacrifice is not an increase in what is being sacrificed, namely freedom, however great the moral need or the compensation for it. Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral. But if I curtail or lose my freedom, in order to lessen the shame of such inequality, and do not thereby materially increase the individual liberty of others, an absolute loss of liberty occurs. This may be compensated for by a gain in justice or in happiness or in peace, but the loss remains, and it is a confusion of values to say that although my ‘liberal,’ individual freedom may go by the board, some other kind of freedom—‘social’ or ‘economic’—is increased. (221)[4]

 

Berlin has in mind claims made in, e.g., the Soviet Union, that by giving up one’s personal liberty you are increasing “social” or “economic” liberty. His point is that giving up some freedom might be morally required at times, but it is important to recognize that it is indeed freedom that is being sacrificed and other values that are being ensured.

 

 

[4.1.5.] The Difference Between Negative and Positive Liberty.

 

Again, Berlin defined positive liberty as follows:

 

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)

 

He identified the central difference between negative and positive liberty to be as follows:

 

·         Negative liberty concerns the question (a) how far do others (including the government) interfere with me? The less such interference there is, the more negative liberty you have.

 

a)      Positive liberty concerns the question (b) who governs me? The greater the degree to which you govern yourself, the more positive liberty you have.

 

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 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, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my 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. (227)[5]

 

 

[4.1.6.] From Positive Liberty to Totalitarianism.

 

Berlin suggests that, on their face, there might seem to be very little difference between the negative liberty (freedom from external control) and positive liberty (control over oneself).

 

But these two concepts have developed in very different directions over the course of history... such different directions, in fact, that they eventually came to be in direct conflict with one another.

 

As a result, when today we conceive of political liberty as positive liberty, we are inviting government to exercise undue control over individuals. In short, we are inviting totalitarianism:

 

totalitarianism (df.): “form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individual's life to the authority of the government.”[6]

 

To illustrate these claims, Berlin sketches the history of the development of the idea of positive freedom:

 

1.      Different types of slavery are identified:

 

·         being the slave of other humans

·         being the slave of “nature”

·         being the slave of one’s own passions.

 

The second and third ideas of slavery begin as harmless metaphors, but then gain “independent momentum” (227)[7] …

 

2.      The idea that a person might be “liberated” from his slavery to nature or to his own passions suggests the following distinction:

 

The Empirical Self   ·         lower nature; irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires ·         aims at immediate gratification ·         requires discipline to raise it to the level of my real self

The Ideal Self   ·         higher nature; reason ·         aims at what will satisfy me in the long run ·         my self at its best; my real, ideal, autonomous self

 

3.      Eventually, the ideal self is conceived as something larger than the individual self… e.g., as the community, tribe, church, race or state.

 

Proponents of positive liberty now make a further claim:

 

4.      Despite appearances, individuals really are aiming for the good (i.e., for what the proponent of positive liberty judges to be good); although their conscious self resists it, their “latent rational will” (the real self) really wants it, and it is this self whose wishes ought to be respected.

 

And then the final step…

 

5.      The state is free to bully and torture individuals to help bring about this positive freedom.

 

Berlin suggests that this idea sometimes strikes us as plausible because

 

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. (228)[8]

 

About this conception of positive liberty, Berlin writes:

 

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. (228, emphasis added)[9]

 

That is, it is at the heart of all theories that take self-realization (positive liberty) to be a form of political freedom.

 

Berlin acknowledges that this same “sleight of hand” could be performed with regard to negative liberty. For example, it could be said that

 

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. (228-29)

 

But as a matter of historical fact, it has been the second concept of freedom that has led to totalitarianism.

 

 

 

Stopping point for Friday March 16. For next time (Monday March 26, after spring break), pp.229-32.