Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty - Essay Example

Negative liberty and positive liberty Liberty is a topic that has no boundaries whatsoever. It is expressed in the very confines of different individuals’ mindset and views of their social contextual setting. To make literal sense it can be defined as a quality approach of individuals to control their own actions based on their ideal ideological subscription. Liberty delineates the societal structure into individual’s roles, responsibility and accountability. It captures the individuals’ free will aspect and the role they each play as holistic mannerism beings in any given society that exudes any form of oppression whether internally or externally. In a political landscape it entails upholding citizens’ rights and freedoms. Various philosophers over time in history right from Aristotle have come up with various theses to best explain the matter however one of the most important names that have left a landmark in this particular field of understanding the concepts of liberty is one Isaiah Berlin. In the year 1958 to be precise Berlin’s vast knowledge and wisdom as a liberal philosopher and a lecturer in University of Oxford took center stage and saw him impact a change in approach of understanding the two concepts of liberty from a broader perspective. This led to the publication of ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, which subsequently got compiled in Berlin’s collection ‘four essays on liberty’. In the compilation, the philosopher distinguished positive liberty and negative liberty. Positive liberty may be put or understood as acting in a way to show importance of self-mastery, a platform that entails one seizing and realizing one’s control in one’s life and achieving the ultimate fundamental purpose. It is infused with the mere role of one’s choosing of whom takes head or control of the society that one is part of. According to Berlin in his essay, Berlin on Liberty (pp. 131) the “positive” prefix on the term liberty connotes to the fact that individuals wish to be their own masters and not be slaves of external forces. He went on further to state that one should feel free to the degree that he or she believes that to be true and enslaved to the utmost degree that one is made to realize that it is not (Berlin 131). Positive liberty is seen to empower a rational individual to decide for himself as opposed to being influenced in his decision making by external extremities.one is supposed to identify himself as a human being of his own free will with a proper self-identity that separates him from the rest of the world and makes him special. Berlin highlights the term “rational” under positive liberty as being conscious of one’s self as a willing, thinking, active being or individual that bears responsibility and accountability for one’s choices and is able to refer to these choices as one’s own ideas and purpose. Negative liberty refers to freedom being curtailed by external factors or forces. The condition “negative liberty” results from imposture by man and not by restricting natural causes hence the external force in this context refers to man’s influence. Berlin quotes “liberty in a negative sense involves an appropriate answer to the query: 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 the interference by other persons” (Berlin 133) Another philosopher by the name of Helvetius adds a point to expound on this analogy by saying “the free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by fear of punishment… it is lack of freedom, not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale.”(Cumming 92). Negative liberty concept is perceived to constitute to an alternative opposing concept to the positive liberty concept counterpart. In a political concept, negative liberty has everything to do with the laws legislation, executions and adherence by the citizens it is bound to, failure to respect this law results to “negative” consequences in the name of punishment. A good example is a monarchy which stands for superiority in decision making level that surpasses any other minority decision making structure or being. Absence of barriers and obstacles in one’s line of discussion making is what characterizes negative liberty or negative freedom as other social philosophers would say. These two concepts of liberty which contain the positive aspect and negative aspect of liberty were borne and published in 1958 by Isaiah Berlin. The positive aspect appears to call for a felt presence of a medium or something substanciable which stands for the self-mastery or self-realization and actualization (Berlin 132). Negative liberty aspect is portrayed to bring out the absence scenario of something like barriers and obstacles. In a more detailed overview the co-relation between the two analogies can be approached from the external factors and internal factors that affect their perception. This means that in negative liberty external factors hold more ground and affect the choices individuals under such setting face as extremities for instance rules made by fellow man that tends to be restrictive in nature. Positive liberty is more inclined towards internal factors that affect how individuals under this ideological structure make their decisions based on an autonomous platform. In a society political setting one would wonder and ask, does democracy as an active and popular form of government in most the continents of the world contain the negative aspect of liberty and freedom or positive aspect of liberty and freedom? From a solid political angle, democracy is perceived to employ positive freedom as opposed to negative freedom. This is true according to Rousseau, a social philosopher and a modern conceptualist who is for popular sovereignty that stands for collectivity. Collectivity of individual freedom practiced and achieved through the societal and communal participation process that culminates in each of these societal blocks running their affairs as long as it is representing the utmost will of its people (Cumming 210). However when a democracy is intricately scrutinized and the obvious terminology that states “a democratic government is for the people and by the people” attached to the fins of the very democracy put aside. Minorities are more protected by negative freedom as this front’s for the protection of their rights. The constitution makes sure of this particular freedom by acting as umbrella body that protects the fundamental rights and freedoms of the nation’s liberties. Paradox of positive liberty is a connotation that suggests that positive aspect of liberty harbors the looming of authoritarianism. Berlin shares in this view as well as other liberals. This is seen as mentioned above as the minorities in place that exercised democracy are usually oppressed in real sense because their liberties are hardly recognized. Berlin notices this when he is doing his liberal writings during the cold war where freedoms to self-actualization were curtailed by totalitarian dictators and governments like the Soviet Union. Recently challenge for the negative freedom and positive freedom distinction basing philosophers like Bosanquet that are more inclined towards the positive liberty and freedom to be merely limited the fact that freedom is facilitated by absolute absence of any obstacle of any kind towards one self-realization and self-actualization. The ideal of freedom lies in self-actualization, self-realization through empowerment of individuals by protecting their fundamental aims, rights and liberties. The oppressed as a minority in any societal setting need to be made a platform that avoids any obstacle for the minority to achieve self-realization while balancing the same with the majority. Both positive liberty and negative liberty play an important role in governing a collectivity of people’s will. Works Cited Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty . 1969: Oxford University Press, New York. —. "Berlin on Liberty." Social and Political philosophy (2014): 1-3. Cumming, Ian. Helvetius: His Life and Place in the History of Educational Thought. New York: Routledge, 2013. Read More