Give a clear account of Isaiah Berlin's "two concepts of liberty"

Isaiah Berlin suggests that the concept of liberty can be separated into two related but distinct concepts: "positive" and "negative", each the answer to a different question. Positive freedom addresses the question "What, or who ... can determine someone to do or be one thing rather than another" [AFF: p155]. Negative freedom addresses the question "What is the area within which [a person] should be left to do or be what [he/she is] able to do or be" [AFF: p155]. Or to put it another way: positive freedom addresses "What can I do"; negative freedom addresses "What am I not prevented from doing".

Negative liberty is determined by the number of options available. The more options available, the greater the negative liberty. When the number of my available options is reduced below a certain minimum, I may say I am oppressed.

Note that negative liberty is only concerned with my not being prevented by external forces such as the state, society or other individuals. In particular, physical laws stopping me travelling faster than light do not affect my freedom. Nor does my inability to run 100m in less than 10 seconds, nor the drug addiction that prevents me going 24 hours without a fix. It is only imposed restrictions that apply. This may be a mother preventing a child from staying up late, society making it impossible for a woman to become a professional boxer, or laws forbidding murder. All are restrictions on negative freedom.

As this last example suggests, it is logically impossible to have a society with unlimited negative freedom. If all individuals have complete negative freedom, this must include the freedom to limit other individuals' negative freedom, which is a contradiction. "Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow" [AFF: p24]

Thus, if negative freedom is to be advocated, a line must be drawn between acceptable limits of negative freedom and anarchy. Discussion between proponents of negative liberty focuses on where to draw this line.

"Positive" liberty is concerned not with the number of options available, but with the power to choose between those options. The greater my capacity to make my own choices, the greater my positive liberty. While initially the two concepts seem compatible, interpretations of positive liberty can develop in a very different way.

If I am a drug addict, or apathetic, or obese, this does not affect my negative liberty, as I am not being prevented by outside forces from taking the options that are open to me. "[Negative] freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself" [AFF: p14] However, it is fair to say that these considerations do affect my decisions. If a door is open to me but I am unable to pass through it, my positive liberty is diminished even if my negative liberty is unaffected. I am a slave to my failings just as much as if I were a slave to the state.

This apparently minor logical step can lead to more extreme interpretations. If anything that reduces my capacity to make a clear and rational decision decreases my positive liberty, then this includes such diverse influences as insanity, tiredness, or love. As in any of these scenarios I am in no fit state to determine whether or not I am capable of making a rational decision, someone else must determine it for me.

This suggests the idea of a 'responsible' party (e.g. the state) deciding what is best for an individual who is deemed incapable of making clear and rational decisions for himself.

This idea of a conflict between a 'higher' self that is capable of making rational decisions and a 'lower' self that is swayed by lusts and cravings can be taken still further. A more radical interpretation extends it to claim that the rational 'higher' self is part of a wider 'society' entity. What is best for society is the rational choice, and the individual would freely choose this option if he were entirely rational. Anyone who does not choose this option is therefore not entirely rational, and society should choose for him. He should be forced to conform on the understanding that this is what his higher self would want if it were not enslaved to the lower self. An individual can thus, in the words of Rousseau, be forced to be free.

While Berlin does stress that negative freedom is not immune to abuse of interpretation, he makes it clear that historically it is positive freedom that has most often been misinterpreted, and that has lead to some of the most unforgiving oppression.

Gerald McMallun questions Berlin's model, and argues that liberty cannot in fact be separated into two separate concepts, claiming that Berlin's "distinction between them has never been made sufficiently clear" [AFF: p31]. He instead proposes a single triadic (three-part) model, proposing that any scenario in which freedom is considered will always feature, in varying degrees, all three of the following: freedom for someone, freedom from constraint, and freedom to do or not to do something.

For example, I might feel oppressed because of a lack of freedom of speech. Here we are considering my freedom, my freedom from the constraints of the state, and my freedom to say what I want to say.

Berlin counters this argument by suggesting that not all scenarios deal with all the three aspects. He gives the example of an enslaved people, who merely want to rid themselves of their enslavement (i.e. to increase their negative freedom). They give little or no consideration as to whether they will be in a position to make use of that freedom when it arrives (i.e. their positive freedom or lack thereof). "A man need not know how he will use his freedom; he just wants to remove his yolk" [AFF: p31]. If accepted, this counter example refutes McCallum's argument that all scenarios must feature all aspects of freedom.

Bibliography

Course Texts
• Book One: "Arguments for Freedom" [AFF].