'h'm

Two concepts of freedom

INTRODUCTION
What are the limits of individual freedom in a civilized society? Should we
tolerate unlimited freedom of speech, no matter how offensive the views
expressed? Can the state ever be justified in interfering with what consenting
adults choose to do in private? When, if ever, is coercion acceptable? Are all laws
ubstacles to freedom, or are they the very condition of achieving it? Shuuld we
sometimes force people to be free, or is that a contradiction in terms? These are
serious questions. They're not merely abstract puzzles for philosophers to ponder
in comfortable armchairs. They are the sorts of issues that people are prepared to
die for.
Even if you choose to ignore them, the way other people answer these questions will impinge on your life. Philosophers at least since Plato's time have put
forward answers to them. Here we'll be examining the arguments some of them
have used. Huwever, this won't just be a suney of sume interesting thoughts on
the subject. The point is to engage ,'Vith the arguments - to examine their

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structure and content to see if they really support their conclusions. You needn't
agree \'Vith these conclusions. As long as you think critically about the concept of
freedom and are capable of arguing your case rather than simply stating your prejudices, you will be reading this book in the spirit in which it is intended.
To live in a society requires all kinds of co-operation. Usually this means
curbing some of our more selfish desires in order to accommodate other people's
interests. That is an element of the human situation. Given that our desires often
conflict, it would be impossible for us to live in a society which imposed no limits
whatsoever on what we do. It would be absurd to argue that we should all have
complete licence to do vllhatever takes our fancy, no matter who is affected by
our actions. I shouldn't be allowed to walk into your house and help myself to
your stereo and television. Hardly anyone would argue that I should be free to
steal your possessions simply because I want them; but deciding where to set the
limits on individual freedom in less extreme cases is no easyJ task.

THE WORD 'FREEDOM'

The word 'freedom' can have powerful emotive force, that is, the power to arouse
strong emotions. Its connotations are almost exclusively positive. If you describe
a group as 'freedom fighters' this suggests that you approve of the cause for which
they are fighting; call them 'terrorists' and you make clear your disapproval.

EXERCISE 1.1
EMOTIVE WORDS

The following statements all use language calculated to arouse emotion. Circle
the words which are particularly emotive.

2
3
4

Meat is murder.
The workers in this factory are little more than beasts of burden driven on by
an evil capitalist master.
I am firm, you are obstinate, he is pigheaded.
Television is entertainment for philistines.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Check your answers against the ones at the back of the book before reading on.

'Freedom' is not usually a neutral term. Freedom seems noble and worthy. It
is hard to imagine anyone declaring that they are fundamentally opposed to it.
Many people have laid dovlln their lives in the name of freedom, or of liberty (like
most writers on the subject, I'll be using the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' interchangeably here); yet we should not lose sight of the fact that 'freedom' is used to
mean many different and sometimes incompatible things. Just because one word
(or two, if you count 'liberty') is used, it does not follow that there is one thing

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to which it refers. A quick perusal of the philosophical writing about freedom

vlfill reveal the \'lfide variety of approaches to political life which have been
defended in the name offreedom.
The arguments vlfe'll be examining are arguments for political or social
freedom: the freedom of the individual in relation to other people and to the
state. The aim is to explain and unravel some arguments for this kind of freedom.
In the process \'lfe'll be examining some of the classic philosophical defences of
particular types of freedom. The stress \'lfill always be on the arguments used
rather than on the detailed historical context in which the views were originally
expressed. Many of the central arguments transfer readily to the contemporary
situation, if you make appropriate changes. They contribute to the pressing
debates about the limits of individual freedom that affect us today.
You might think that the meaning of 'freedom' is straightforward: at an individual level it means not being imprisoned. If I'm imprisoned then, obviously,
I'm not free. I can't choose to go out for a stroll, eat a pizza, go to the cinema
and so on. But on the other hand, even as a prisoner, I am likely to be free in
many respects. I am free to think about whatever I want to think about. In all but
the cruellest prison regimes I \'lfill be free to pace around my cell, do a few pushups or stare blankly at the wall; I'll also be free to write a letter to my family,
perhaps even to study for a qualitication. and so on. However, this ma)" be a sentimental view of what prison life is actually like for most prisoners. Several of the
activities I have described, particularly studying, require a certain amount uf
concentration. For most of LIS concentration requires relative quiet. Here is one
prisoner's account of trying to study:
One of the main problems is that of noise. Jail is a very noisy place and it is rarely quiet. The
quietest periods are after 8.30 at night and the normal lockup times. At other times it is
vel'y hard to concentrate with all the noise. I can't study during communal periods because
of the loudness of the TV. Noise is a major problem.
(Ashley et al. (1994). p. 12)

So is this prisoner really free to study? Although the prison authorities don't
actively prevent him from doing so, the noise in the prison at some times of the
day does. A prisoner's freedom may be curtailed in many ways beyond preventing
him or her leaving the prison, and not all of those curtailments of freedom are
necessarily a result of someone delibemtely imposing restrictions on behaviour.
Nevertheless, most prisoners have considerably more freedom in most respects
than did Gulliver, in Swift's novel
Ji'avels (1726), when he woke up after
being shipwrecked on the shore of Lilliput:
I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for as I happened to lie on my back, I found my

arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the gl'Ound; and my hair, which was
long and thick, tied down in the same mannel. I likewise felt several slender ligatures
across my body, from my armpits to my thighs. I could only look upwards, the sun began to
gl'Ow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me, but in the
postul"e I lay, could see nothing except the sky.
(Swift 1986 edn, p. 55)

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In this condition, Gulliver had virtually no freedom of movement. Even physical

freedom is not a matter of all or nothing, but rather of degree. You may be
imprisoned, but there are still further freedoms that you can lose.
For a nation, 'freedom' may mean not being occupied. France during most of
the Second World War was not a free country in this sense as it \'\las occupied by
the Nazis or controlled by the Vichy government. The Resistance saw themselves
as fi'eedom fighters, risking their lives to liherate France. Their aim was quite
simply a free France, which meant a France which was free from Nazi occupation. Yet when France was liberated it did not miraculously become free in every
respect; nor were the French completely constrained in \",hat they could do while
the Nazis were in occupation.
However, 'a free nation' or 'a free state' may also mean one that is not totalitarian. A totalitarian state is one in which the state authorities, in principle at
least, exercise control over most aspects of subjects' lives. Totalitarianism may
take many different forms. Its essence, in its most extreme form, is captured in
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-foUl': because the state authorities want to
have complete control over individuals' lives, there is an elaborate mechanism for
surveillance, summed up in the slogan 'Big Brother isWatchingYou':
A Party Member lives from birth to death under the eye otthe Thought Police. Even when he
is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake,
working or r"esting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without
knowIng that he rs being inspected, Nothing that he does rs indifferent. His fr-iendships, his
relaxations. his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression of his face when he
is alone, the wor-ds he mutters in sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body, are
all jealously scrutinised. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentr-icity, however
small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of
an inner str"uggle, is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction
whatever.
(Orwell 1989 edll, p. 219)

In such a totalitarian state there is no significant private realm in which individuals can exercise free choice: every area of life is subject to control by the state
authorities. Here, then, is another sense in which a state or nation can lack
freedom.
What these examples show is that freedom isn't a matter of all or nothing. You
can be free in some respects and not in others (usually the context in which
freedom is being discussed makes clear what kind of freedom is at stake). And you
can have a greater or lesser degree of a particular freedom.
When philosophers ask 'What is political freedom?' they are not asking for a
dictionary definition. 'Political freedom', unlike, say, 'aardvark', isn't the sort of
phrase that a dictionary definition is likely to shed much light upon. There is, as
far as I know, no controversy about what an aardvark is. It is a species of animal;
my dictionary says 'the ant bear, a South African edentate'. If I were unsure
whether or not the animal in front of me was an aardvark, a competent zoologist
could easily set me straight. There are established criteria for determining which
animals are aardvarks; if an animal meets these criteria, then it must be an aard-

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vark. But political freedom is a notion that has been argued about for centuries:
there is no uncontroversial way of defining it. The definition you give usually
implies a particular view about human beings and about the things we do or
should value most. In this respect it is more like 'art' than like 'aardvark'. There
are numerous, conflicting definitions of what art is. Similarly there are many
different views about what political freedom is, and in particular about where its
should he set.

ISAIAH BERLIN'S 'TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY'

(1958)
In a ground-breaking lecture, the philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin
(1909-97) argued that there are two basic types of freedom which have been
defended by philosophers and political theorists: negative freedom and positive
freedom. Within each category there is scope for a wide range of positions; but
most theories of freedom fit quite comfortably into one category or the other.
Berlin's article is important for three reasons. First, it provides a useful
distinction between these two types of freedom. Second, it makes a case for the
view that theories of positive freedom have often been used as instruments of
oppression. Third, by describing the incompatibility of various fundamental
human aims in life, it suggests a reason why we put such a high value on freedom.
For our purposes, the most important feature is the first, the distinction between
the two types of freedom: negative and positive.

NEGATIVE FREEDOM

The concept of negative freedom centres on .Feedom .Fom interference. This type
of account of freedom is usually put forward in response to the following sort of
question: '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
interference by other persons?' (Berlin 1969, pp. 121-2; see Reading 1, p. 127).
Or, more simply, 'Over what area am I master?' (Berlin 1969, p. xliii). Theories
of negative freedom spell out the acceptable limits of interference in individuals'
lives. You restrict my negative freedom when you restrict the number of choices I
can make about my life. The extent of my negative freedom is determined by
how many possible choices lie open to me, or, to use one of Berlin's metaphors,
how many doors are unlocked. It is also determined by the types of choices that
are available. Clearly not every sort of choice should be given equal status: some
choices are of greater importance than others. For most of us having freedom of
speech, even if we don't take advantage of this opportunity, is a more important
freedom than the freedom to choose between ten different sorts of washing
powder. This is how Berlin puts it: 'The extent of a man's negative liberty is, as it
were, a function of what doors, and how many are open to him; I upon what
prospects they open; and hO\v open they are' (Berlin 1969, p. xlviii).
It doesn't matter whether or not I actually take advantage of the opportunities
open to me: I am still free to the extent that I could, if I chose, take advantage of
them:

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The freedom of which I speak is opportunity for action, rather than action itself. If, although
I enjoy the right to walk through open doors, I prefer not to do so, but to sit still and vegetate, I am not thereby rendel-ed less free. Freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself.
(Berlin 1969, p. xlii)

So, if you park your car across my drive, thereby preventing me from getting
my car out, you restrict my freedom; and this is true even if I choose to stay in
bed listening to my CDs all day, and would have done so even if you hadn't
parked there. Or, if the state prevents me from going on strike by making my
actions illegal, even if I don't have anything to strike about, and even if I don't
ever intend to strike, my freedom is still curtailed. Negative freedom is a matter
of the doors open to me, not of whether I happen to choose to go through
them.
HO\'I!ever, not all restrictions on my possible choices are infringements of my
negative freedom. Berlin states that 'only restrictions imposed by other people
affect my freedom.' Colloquially, we might say that because we are human we
aren't free to jump ten feet in the air or free to understand what an obscure
passage in a book by the notoriously difficult philosopher Hegel means. But \'I!hen
discussing political freedom, the sort we are interested in here, these sorts of
restrictions on what we can do aren't counted as obstacles to freedom, however
distressing they may be. Other people limit our freedom by what they do.
Limitations on our action brought about by the nature of the universe or the
human body aren't relevant to the discussion of political freedom. Political
freedom is a matter of the relations of power which hold between individuals and
between individuals and the state.
The clearest cases in which freedom is restricted are \'I!hen someone forces
you to do something. You might be forced to join the army, for instance, if you
live in a country which has compulsory military service. The la",; might force you
to wear a crash helmet every time you ride your motorcycle. Your partner might
force you to stay in rather than go out to the cinema, or to tidy up the kitchen
rather than do another hour's study.
Read the following extract from Berlin's article. Then do the exercise below.
I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man

01-

body of men intel-feres with

my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act
unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by othel-s f!'Om doing what I could otherwise do, I
am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain
minimum, I can be described as being coerced. or. it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not.
however, a term that covers every form of inability_ If I say that I am unable to jump more
than ten feet in the air, or cannet read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darkelpages of Hegel, it would be eccelltl-ic to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced.
Coercior implies the deliberate interter-ence of other human beings within the al-ea in which
I could othel-wise act. You lack political liberty or fl-eedom only if you are prevented from
attaining a goal by human beings. Mere incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political
freedom. [The philosopher Helvetius (1715-71) made this point very clearly: 'The free man is
the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear

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of punishment ... it is not lack of fl"eedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale'
(Berlin's note).]
(Berlin 1969, p. 122; see Reading 1, p. 128)

EXERCISE 1.2
NEGATIVE FREEDOM
Which of the following involve limitations on an individual's negative freedom in
the sense outlined by Berlin above? Not all the cases are clear-cut.
The state prevents you from purchasing certain kinds of pornography.
2

You aren't tall enough to pick quinces from the tree in your garden.

You aren'ttall enough to join the police force.

You aren't rich enough to buy a private island.

You aren't permitted to own a handgun.

The law forces you to wear a seatbelt when driving.

No one has ever selected you to play football for your country.

You are forced to study philosophy against your will.

Someone has handcuffed you to a lamp-post.

10

You can't read because you are blind. Officers of an evil totalitarian regime
blinded you to prevent you reading and writing subversive literature. You are
denied access to braille books and audio tapes.

11

You are too poor to buy a loaf of bread because you've spent all your money on
champagne.

12

You are simply too poor to buy a loaf of bread, not through any fault of your
own.

Compare your answers with the answers and explanations at the back of the book
before reading on. Don't worry if your answers differ from the ones I have given,
provided that you can give good reasons to back up your position and can see why
I have given the answers I have done.

It might have seemed to follow from Berlin's account of negative freedom that
poverty couldn't count as a limitation on individual freedom. True, poverty effectively locks many doors. But these dours aren't necessarily lucked by other
people's actions; poverty may have other, non-human, causes. It may he due to
the effects of freak weather conditions leading to famine; or perhaps to sudden
illness or accident. Whether or not poverty is to count as a limitation of negative
freedom depends entirely on your view of the causes of the poverty in question.
This becomes clear in the following passage from Berlin's essay:
It is argued, very plausibly, that if a man is too poor to afford something on which there is no
legal ball - a loaf of bl"ead. a journey round the world. recourse to the law courts - he is as
little free to have It as he would be if it wel"e forbidden him by law. If my poverty wel"e a kind

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of disease, which prevented me from buying bread, or paying for the journey round the world
or getting my case heard, as lameness prevents me from running, this inability would not
naturally be described as a lack of freedom, least of all political fr-eedom. It is only because I
believe that my inability to get a given thing is due to the fact that other human beings have
made arrangements whereby I am, whereas others are not, prevented from having enough
money with which to pay for it. that I think myself a victim of coercion or slavery.

[... J
'The natur-e of things does not madden

LIS,

only ill will does', said Rousseau. The cr-ite

rion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or
indir-ectly with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes. By being free
in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom.
(Berlin 1969, pp. 122-3; Reading 1, p. 128)

If the man described ahove is too poor to buy a loaf of hread as a consequence of
other people's actions, then, whether these other people intended this effect or
not, his freedom has been curtailed. But if his poverty is a result of non-human
causes, such as a drought-induced famine, or some natural disaster, terrible as his
plight might be, it would not limit his negative freedom.

POSITIVE FREEDOM

Positive freedom is a more difficult notion to grasp than negative. Put simply it is
ji'eedom to do something rather than ji'eedom ji'om interference. Negative freedom is
simply a matter of the number and kind of options that lie open for you and their
relevance for your life; it is a matter of what you aren't prevented from doing; the
doors that lie unlocked. Positive freedom, in contrast, is a matter of what you can
actually do. All sorts of doors may be open, giving you a large amount of negative
freedom, and yet you might find that there are still obstacles to taking full advantage of your opportunities. Berlin sometimes talks of positive liberty in terms of
the question 'Who is
I want to be in control of
life, hut there may,
for example, be internal obstacles to my living the way I really want to. Here we
might talk of m} increasing my freedom (in the positive sense) by overcoming my
less rational desires.
This is easier to understand if you consider some examples. I might recognize
the value of study for making my life go well, but keep getting sidetracked by less
important, immediately gratifying activities, such as going out for a drink, or
staying in and spending the whole evening watching 'soaps' on television. I knm'V
that studying is important to me, and will increase my control over my life. But I
really enjoy going out for a drink and I really enjoy watching television 'soaps'. So
the short-term gratifications tend to seduce me away from activities which are
better for me in the long term. My positive freedom would be increased if my
'higher' rational side could overcome my 'lower' tendency to be sidetracked. It is
not a question of having more, or more signiHcant, opportunities: the opportunity for me to study is there now. Rather it is a question of being able to take
advantage of the opportunity by being in control of my life. Positive freedom in
this example is a matter of my having the capacity to take the rational option as

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well as having the opportunity; whereas, according to a concept of negative

freedom, the opportunities that I have alone determine the extent of my
freedom. I am free to study in the negative sense since no one is preventing me
from doing it; no one has locked away my books, or hidden my pen and paper; no
one has dragged me out of the door to go to the pub, or chained me to my
armchair in front of the television. However, I am not free in the positive sense; I
am not truly free, hecause I am a slave to my tendency to be sidetracked. True
positive freedom vl/ould involve seizing control of my life and making rational
choices for myself. Those who defend positive freedom believe that just because
no one is preventing you from doing something, it does not follow that you are
genuinely free. Positive freedom is a matter of achieving your potential, not just
having potential.
Consider another example, a real one this time. James Boswell, the eighteenth-century diarist and biographer of Dr Johnson, included the following in
his journal for Sunday 31 March 1776. [t descrihes how he spent a night in
London following a dinner with friends:
I behaved pretty decently. But when I got into the stt"eet, the whol"ing rage came upon me. I
thought I would devote a night to it. I was weary at the same time that I was tumultuous. I
went to Charing Cross Bagnio with a wholesome-looking, bouncing wench, stripped, and
went to bed with her. But after my desires were satiated by repeated indulgence, I could
not rest; so I parted hom her after she had honestly delivered to me my watch and I"ing and
handkerchief, which I should not have missed I was so drunk. I took a hackney-coach and
was set down in Berkeley Square, and went home cold and disturbed and dreary and vexed.
with remorse rising like a black cloud without any distinct form; for in truth my moral principle as to chastity was absolutely eclipsed for a time. I was in the miserable state of those
whom the Apostle repl"esents as working all uncleanness with gl-eediness. I thought of my
valuable spouse with the highest regard and warmest affection, but had a confused notion
that my corporeal connection with whol-es did not intel"fere with my love for her. Yet I
considered that I might injure my health, which there could be no doubt was an injury to
her. This is an exact state of my mind at the time. It shocks me to review It.
(Boswell 1992 edn, p.295)

Here Boswell's confession reveals clearly the tension between two sides of his
character. In his sober reflection he can see the foolishness of his having spent the
night with a prostitute. Even soon after the event he is stricken with remorse,
which he attempts to dispel by means of the transparent rationalization that
somehow, despite breaking his principle of chastity, his infidelity does not interfere with his love for his wife. Yet he can't hide behind self-serving justifications
for long, when he realizes that he has risked catching a venereal disease, something that undoubtedly has the potential to harm her. His higher self endorses a
principle of chastity and fidelity; his lower self succumbs to temptations of the
flesh. According to some theories of positive freedom, Boswell's 'true' freedom
could only be realized by achieving a greater degree of self-mastery. To achieve
'true' freedom, your higher self must have control over the impulses of the lower
self. Otherwise, you are simply a slave to passing emotions and desires; lusts in
this case. Sober, Boswell is shocked by his actions of the previous night. Perhaps

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the only way he could have achieved 'true' freedom in the circumstances, given
his lustful nature, would be to have been forced to go straight home to bed after
dining with his friends. This would certainly have infringed his negative liberty in
the sense of reducing his opportunities, but it would have allowed him to do what
at some level he felt was best for him, and thereby to enjoy positive freedom in
this respect.
From this it should be clear that the notion of positive liberty may rely on the
belief that the self can be split into a higher and a lo\'ver self, and that the higher
or rational self's priorities should be encouraged to overcome the lower, less
rational self's inclinations - the passing desires that, if acted on, can so upset a
life-plan. The higher self has desires for what will make the individual's life go
well; it wishes to pursue worthwhile and noble goals. The lower self is easily led
astray, often by irrational appetites. Consequently, advocates of positive liberty
argue, we need to be proteL1:ed against our own lower selves in order to realize
the goals of our higher, 'true' selves. In many cases this can only be achieved by
coercing us to behave in \'vays which seem to go against our desires; in fact this
coercion is necessary to allow us to fulfil our rational higher desires, desires
\'I!hich we may even be lmaware of having. On this view, the freedom which is
self-mastery, or positive freedom, may only be achievable if our lower selves are
constrained in their actions. By preventing me from going out for a drink or from
watching television all night, you may help me to realize my 'true' freedom which
is achievable only if I spend a significant purtion of my available time studying.
This is what I would have wanted had I been truly free. If Boswell had he en forced
to go home straight after dinner rather than given the opportunity to spend the
night with a prostitute, his positive freedom might have been significantly
extended.
This is Berlin's description of positive liberty and its origins:
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 INhatever 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 PUI-poses
which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside, I wish to be
somebody, not nobody; a doel- - deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted
upon by extel-nal nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role - that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and
realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it
is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the I-est of the world. I wish,
above all, to be consCIOUs of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by reference to his 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.
(Berlin 1969, p. 131; see Reading 1, p. 133)

It is important to realize that Berlin's notion of positive liberty doesn't just apply
to self-mastery at the individual level; it also encompasses theories of freedom
which emphasize collective control over common life. So, for example, when

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someone calls a society a free society because its members play an active role in
controlling it through their participation in democratic institutions, they are
appealing to a notion of positive freedom rather than of negative freedom. In this
example the people as a whole are free because they, collectively, have mastery
over the life of their society. A free society based upon the concept of negative
freedom would typically be one in which state interference in individual lives is
kept to a minimum. This would not necessarily he a democratic society, since a
benevolent dictator might be concerned to provide an extensive realm of individual negative freedom for each of his or her subjects.

EXERCISE 1.3
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FREEDOM

Which sort of conception of freedom, positive or negative, is appealed to in each

case? Bear in mind that not all the answers are clear-cut.

2
3
4
5
6

The state intervenes to prevent an alcoholic drinking himself to death on the

grounds that this is what, in his sober and rational moments, he would clearly
desire and so is a basic condition of his gaining true freedom.
The state protects an alcoholic's freedom to consume huge amounts of
whisky in the privacy of his or her own home.
I cease to be free when I follow my baser sensual appetites: I am in thrall to
mere passing desire.
It is an infringement on my freedom to prevent me from engaging in consensual sado-masochism in the privacy of my own dungeon.
I don't need the nanny state forcing me to have fluoride in my drinking water
for my own good: that infringes my freedom.
You can only really be free in a well-governed state with harsh but wellchosen laws which shape your life in a rational way, thereby encouraging you
to flourish. Increasing your opportunities to make a mess of your life doesn't
increase your freedom in any meaningful sense.

Turn to the back of the book and compare your answers with the answers there
before reading on.

Berlin's distinction between negative and positive freedom remains a useful

one, and much of this book is structured around it. However, his aim in the paper
was not simply to make the distinction, but rather to make a claim about the
ways in which theories of positive freedom have been misused.

THE MISUSE OF THE CONCEPT OF POSITIVE LIBERTY

One of the main claims that Berlin makes in 'Two Concepts of Liberty' is a
historical one. It is that positive theories of freedom, or perversions of them,
have been more frequently used as instruments of oppression than have negative

GERALD C. MAcCALLUM, JR.

influenced by a genuine confusion concerning the concept of

freedom. The confusion results from failure to understand fully
the conditons under which use of the concept of freedom is
intelligible.

Whenever the freedom of some agent or agents is in question, it

is always freedom from some constraint or restriction on, interference with, or barrier to doing, not doing, becoming, or not
becoming s0mething.l Such freedom is thus always of something
(an agent or agents), from something, to do, not do, become, or
not become something; it is a triadic relation. Taking the format
"x is (is not) free fromy to do (not do, become, not become) z,"
x ranges over agents, y ranges over such "preventing conditions"
as constraints, restrictions, interferences, and barriers, and
z ranges over actions or conditions of character or circumstance.
When reference to one of these three terms is missing in such a
discussion of freedom, it should be only because the reference is
thought to be understood from the context of the disc~ssion.~
Admittedly, the idioms of freedom are such that this is sometimes not obvious. The claim, however, is not about what we
say, but rather about the conditions under which what we say
is intelligible. And, of course, it is important to notice that the
claim is only about what makes talk concerning the freedom of
agents intelligible. This restriction excludes from consideration,
for example, some uses of "free of" and "free fromm-namely,
those not concerned with the freedom of agents, and where,
The need to elaborate in this unwieldy way arises from the absence in this
paper of any discussion of the verification conditions for claims about freedom.
The elaboration is designed to leave open the issues one would want to raise
in such a discussion.
a Of writers on political and social freedom who have approached this view,
the clearest case is Felix Oppenheim in Dimensions of Freedom (New York,
1961); but, while viewing social freedom as a triadic relation, he limits the
ranges of the term variables so sharply as to cut one off from many issues
I wish to reach. Cf. also T. D. Weldon, The Vocabulary of Politics (Harmondsworth, 1g53), esp. pp. 157 ff.; but see also pp. 70-72.

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FREEDOM

consequently, what is meant may be only "rid of" or "without."

Thus, consideration of "The sky is now free of clouds" is excluded
because this expression does not deal with agents at all; but
consideration of "His record is free of blemish" and "She is
free from any vice" is most probably also excluded. Doubt
about these latter two hinges on whether these expressions might
be thought claims about the freedom of agents; if so, then they
are not excluded, but neither are they intelligible as claims about
the freedom of agents until one is in a position to fill in the
elementsof the format offered above; if not, then althoughprobably
parasitic upon talk about the freedom of agents and thus perhaps
viewable as figurative anyway, they fall outside the scope of this
investigation.
The claim that freedom, subject to the restriction noted above,
is a triadic relation can hardly be substantiated here by exhaustive
examination of the idioms of freedom. But the most obviously
troublesome cases-namely, those in which one's understanding
of the context must in a relevant way carry past the limits of
what is explicit in the idiom-may be classified roughly and illustrated as follows:
( a ) Cases where agents are not mentioned: for example, consider
any of the wide range of expressions having the form "free x"
in which (i) the place of x is taken by an expression not clearly
referring to an agent-as in "free society" or "free will"-or
(ii)the place of x is taken by an expression clearly not referring
to an agent-as in "free beer." All such cases can be understood
to be concerned with the freedom of agents and, indeed, their
intelligibility rests upon their being so understood; they are thus
subject to the claims made above. This is fairly obvious in the
cases of "free will" and "free society." The intelligibility of the
free-will problem is generally and correctly thought to rest at
least upon the problem's being concerned with the freedom of
persons, even though the criteria for identification of the persons
or "selves" whose freedom is in question have not often been
made sufficiently clear.3 And it is beyond question that the ex3 Indeed, lack of clarity on just this point is probably one of the major
sources of confusion in discussions of free will.

GERALD C. MAcCALLUM, JR.

pression "free society," although of course subject to various
conflicting analyses with respect to the identity of the agent(s)
whose freedom is involved, is thought intelligible only because
it is thought to concern the freedom of agents of some sort or
other. The expression "free beer," on the other hand (to take
only one of a rich class of cases some of which would have to be
managed differently), is ordinarily thought intelligible because
thought to refer to beer that People are free from the ordinary
restrictions of the market place to drink without paying for it.
For an expression of another grammatical form, consider
"The property is free of (or from) encumbrance." Although this
involves a loose use of "property," suppose that the term refers
to something like a piece of land; the claim then clearly means
that owners of that land are free from certain well-known restrictions (for example, certain types of charges or liabilities consequent
upon their ownership of the land) to use, enjoy, dispose of the
land as they wish.
(b) Cases where it is not clear what corresponds to the second term:
for example, "freedom ofchoice," "freedom to choose as I please."
Here, the range of constraints, restrictions, and so forth, is
generally clear from the context of the discussion. In political
matters, legal constraints or restrictions are most often thought
of; but one also sometimes finds, as in Mill's On Liberty, concern
for constraints and interferences constituted by social pressures.
It is sometimes difficult for persons to see social pressures as
constraints or interferences; this will be discussed below. It
is also notoriously difficult to see causal nexuses as implying
constraints or restrictions on the "will" (the person?) in connection with the free-will problem. But the very fact that such
difficulties are the focus of so much attention is witness to the
importance of getting clear about this term of the relation before
such discussions of freedom can be said to be intelligible.
One might think that references to a second term of this
sort could always be eliminated by a device such as the following.
Instead of saying, for example, (i) "Smith is free from legal restrictions on travel to leave the country," one could say (ii)
"Smith is free to leave the country because there are no legal
restrictions on his leaving." The latter would make freedom

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FREED0 M

appear to be a dyadic, rather than a triadic, relation. But we

would be best advised to regard the appearance illusory, and this
may be seen if one thinks a bit about the suggestion or implication
of the sentence that nothing hinders or prevents Smith from
leaving the country. Difficulties about this might be settled by
attaching a qualifier to "freeH-namely, "legally free." Alternatively, one could consider which, of all the things that might
still hinder or prevent Smith from leaving the country (for
example, has he promised someone to remain? will the responsibilities of his job keep him here? has he enough money to buy
passage and, if not, why not?), could count as limitations on
his freedom to leave the country; one would then be in a position
to determine whether the claim had been misleading or false.
I n either case, however, the devices adopted would reveal that
our understanding of what has been said hinged upon our
understanding of the range of obstacles or constraints from which
Smith had been claimed to be free.
(c) Cases where it is not clear what corresfionds to the third term:
for example, "freedom from hunger" ("want," "fear," "disease,"
and so forth). One quick but not very satisfactory way of dealing
with such expressions is to regard them as figurative, or at least
not really concerned with anybody's freedom; thus, being free
from hunger would be simply being rid of, or without, hunger-as
a sky may be free of clouds (compare the discussion of this above).
Alternatively, one might incline toward regarding hunger as a
barrier of some sort, and claim that a person free from hunger
is free to be well fed or to do or do well the various things he
could not do or do well if hungry. Yet again, and more satisfactorily, one could turn to the context of the initial bit of
Rooseveltian rhetoric and there find reason to treat the expression
as follows. Suppose that hunger is a feeling and that someone
seeks hunger; he is on a diet and the hunger feeling reassures
him that he is losing eight.^ Alternatively, suppose that hunger
is a bodily condition and that someone seeks it; he is on a Gandhistyle hunger strike. In either case, Roosevelt or his fellow orators
might have wanted a world in which these people were free
4

I owe this example to Professor James Pratt.

GERALD C. MAcCALLUM, JR.

from hunger; but this surely does not mean that they wanted
a world in which people were not hungry despite a wish to be
so. They wanted, rather, a world in which people were not victims
of hunger they did not seek; that is, they wanted a world without
barriers keeping people hungry despite efforts to avoid hunger-a
world in which people would be free from barriers constituted
by various specifiable agricultural, economic, and political
conditions to get enough food to prevent hunger. This view of
"freedom from hunger" not only makes perfectly good and
historically accurate sense out of the expression, but also conforms
to the view that freedom is a triadic relation.
In other politically important idioms the range of the third
term is not always utterly clear. For example, does freedom of
religion include freedom not to worship? Does freedom of speech
include all speech no matter what its content, manner of delivery,
or the circumstances of its delivery? Such matters, however, raise
largely historical questions or questions to be settled by political
decision; they do not throw doubt on the need for a third term.
That the intelligibility of talk concerned with the freedom of
agents rests in the end upon an understanding of freedom as a
triadic relation is what many persons distinguishing between
positive and negative freedom apparently fail to see or see clearly
enough. Evidence of such failure or, alternatively, invitation to
it is found in the simple but conventional characterization of the
difference between the two kinds of freedom as the difference
between "freedom from" and "freedom to"-a
characterization
suggesting that freedom could be either of two dyadic relations.
This characterization, however, cannot distinguish two genuinely
different kinds of freedom; it can serve only to emphasize one
or the other of two features of euey case of the freedom of agents.
Consequently, anyone who argues that freedomfrom is the "only"
freedom, or that freedom to is the "truest" freedom, or that one
is "more important than" the other, cannot be taken as having
said anything both straightforward and sensible about two
distinct kinds of freedom. He can, at most, be said to be attending
to, or emphasizing the importance of only one part of what is
always present in any case of freedom.
Unfortunately, even if this basis of distinction between positive

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FREEDOM

and negative freedom as two distinct kinds or concepts of

freedom is shown to collapse, one has not gone very far in understanding the issues separating those philosophers or ideologies
commonly said to utilize one or the other of them. One has,
however, dissipated one of the main confusions blocking understanding of these issues. I n recognizing that freedom is always
both freedom from something and freedom to do or become
something, one is provided with a means of making sense out of
interminable and poorly defined controversies concerning, for
example, when a person really is free, why freedom is important,
and on what its importance depends. As these, in turn, are matters
on which the distinction between positive and negative freedom
has turned, one is given also a means of managing sensibly the
writings appearing to accept or to be based upon that distinction.

The key to understanding lies in recognition of precisely how

differing styles of answer to the question "When are persons
free?" could survive agreement that freedom is a triadic relation.
The differences would be rooted in differing views on the ranges
of the term variables-that is, on the ("true") identities of the
agents whose freedom is in question, on what counts as an
obstacle to or interference with the freedom of such agents, or on
the range of what such agents might or might not be free to do
or become.5 Although perhaps not always obvious or dramatic,
such differences could lead to vastly different accounts of when
persons are free. Furthermore, differences on one of these matters
might or might not be accompanied by differences on either of
the others. There is thus a rich stock of ways in which such
accounts might diverge, and a rich stock of possible foci of
argument.
They might also be rooted in differing views on the verification conditions
for claims about freedom. This issue would be important to discuss in a fullscale treatment of freedom but, as already mentioned, it is not discussed in
this paper. I t plays, at most, an easily eliminable role in the distinction between
positive and negative freedom.

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universal sense - these are the fOlmdations of liberal morality. Liberty is not the
only goal of men. I can, like the Russian critic Belinsky, say that if others are to be
deprived of it - if my brothers are to remain in poverty, s<:jualor and chains - then
I do not want it for myself, I reject it with both hands and infinitely prefer to
share their fate. But nothing is gained by a confusion of terms. To avoid glaring
ine<:juality ur widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all, of my
freedom: I may do so willingly and freely; but it is freedom that I am giving up
for the sake of justice or e<:juality or the love of my fellow men. I should be guiltstricken, and rightly so, if I were not, in some circumstances, ready to make this
sacrifice. But 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 e<:juality or fairness or justice or culture, or
human happiness or a <:juiet 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 ine<:juality, 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. Yet it remains true that the freedom of some must at
times be curtailed to secure the freedom of others. Upon what principle should
this be done? If freedom is sacred, untouchahle value, there can he no such principle. One or other of these conflicting rules or principles must, at any rate in
practice, yield: not always for reasons which can be clearly stated, let along
generalised into rules or universal maxims. Still, a practical compromise has to be
found.
Philosophers with an optimistic view of human nature and a belief in the possibility of harmonising human interest, such as Locke or Adam Smith or, in some
moods, Mill, believed that social harmony and progress were compatible with
reserving a large area for private life over which neither the State nor any other
authority must be allowed to trespass. Hobbes, and those who agreed with him,
especially conservative or reactionary thinkers, argued that if men v,,ere to be
prevented from destroying one another and making social life a jungle or a
wilderness, greater safeguards must be instituted to keep them in their places; he
wished correspondingly to increase the area of centralised control and decrease
that of the individual. But both sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control. To invade that
preserve, however small, would be despotism. The most elo<:juent of all defenders
of freedom and privacy, Benjamin Constant, who had not forgotten the Jacobin
dictatorship, declared that at the very least the liberty of religion, opinion,
expression, property must be guaranteed against arbitrary invasion. Jefferson,
Burke, Paine, Mill compiled different catalogues of individual liberties, but the
argument for keeping authority at bay is always substantially the same. We must
preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to 'degrade or deny
our nature' .7 We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our
liberty to preserve the rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating. What then

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must the mInImum be? That which a man cannot give up without offending
against the essence of his human nature. What is this essence? What are the standards which it entails? This has been, and perhaps always will be, a matter of
infinite debate. But whatever the principle in terms of which the area of noninterference is to be drawn, whether it is that of natural law or natural rights, or
of utility, or the pronouncements of a categorical imperative, or the sanctity of
the social contract, or any other concept with which men have sought to clarify
and justify their convictions, liberty in this sense means liberty fiom; absence of
interference beyond the shifting, but always recognisable, frontier. 'The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own
way', said the most celebrated of its champions. 8 If this is so, is compulsion ever
justified? Mill had no doubt that it was. Since justice demands that all individuals
be entitled to a minimum of freedom, all other individuals \'I!ere of necessity to
be restrained, if need be by force, from depriving anyone of it. Indeed, the whole
function of law was the prevention of just such collisions: the State was reduced
to what Lassalle contemptuously described as the functions of a night-watchman
or traffic policeman.
What made the protection of individual liberty so sacred to Mill? In his
famous essay he declares that, unless the individual is left to live as he wishes in
'the part [of his conduct] which merely concerns himself' ,9 civilisation cannot
advance; the truth will not, for lack of a free market in ideas, come to light; there
will be no scope for spontaneity, originality, genius, for mental energy, for moral
courage. Society will be crushed by the weight of 'collective mediocrity' .10
Whatever is rich and diversified will be crushed by the weight of custom, by
men's constant tendency to conformity, which breeds only 'withered' capacities,
'pinched and hidebOlmd', 'cramped and dwarfed' human beings. 'Pagan selfassertion' is as worth), as 'Christian self-denial'. II 'All errors which [a man] is
likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of
allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.' 12 The defence of
liberty consists in the 'negative' goal of warding off interference. To threaten a
man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices
of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the
prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who
arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his
own to live. This is liberty as it has been conceived by liberals in the modern
world from the days of Erasmus (some would say of Occam) to our own. Every
plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and
humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis
of custom or organised propaganda, springs from this individualistic, and much
disputed, conception of man.
Three facts about this position may be noted. In the first place Mill confuses
two distinct notions. One is that all coercion is, in so far as it frustrates human
desires, bad as such, although it may have to be applied to prevent other, greater
evils; while non-interference, which is the opposite of coercion, is good as such,
although it is not the only good. This is the 'negative' conception of liberty in its
classical form. The other is that men should seek to discover the truth, or to
develop a certain type of character of which Mill approved - critical, original,

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imaginative, independent, non-conforming to the point of eccentricity, and so on

- and that truth can be found, and such character can be bred, only in conditions
of freedom. Both these are liberal views, but they are not identical, and the
connection between them is, at best, empirical. No one would argue that truth or
freedom of self-expression could flourish where dogma crushes all thought. But
the evidence of history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued by James Stephen in
his formidable attack on Mill in his Libeny, Equa]iry, Fwremiry) that integrity, love
of truth and fiery individualism grow at least as often in severely disciplined
communities, among, for example, the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New
England, or under military discipline, as in more tolerant or indifferent societies;
and if this is so, Mill's argument for liberty as necessary condition for the growth
of human genius falls to the ground. If his two goals proved incompatible, Mill
would be faced with a cruel dilemma, quite apart from the further difficulties
created b)' the inconsistency of his doctrines with strict utilitarianism, even in his
own humane version of it. I
In the second place, the doctrine is comparatively modern. There seems to be
scarcely any discussion of individual liberty as a conscious political ideal (as
opposed to its actual existence) in the ancient world. Condorcet had already
remarked that the notion of individual rights was absent from the legal conceptions of the Romans and Greeks; this seems to hold equally of the Jewish, Chinese
and all other ancient civilisations that have since come to light. 14 The domination
of this ideal has been the exception rather than the rule, even in the recent
history of the West. Nor has liberty in this sense often formed a rallying cry for
the great masses of mankind. The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to
oneself, has been a mark of high civilisation on the part of both individuals and
communities. The sense of privacy itself, of the area of personal relationships as
something sacred in its own right, derives from a conception of freedom which,
for all its religious roots, is scarcely older, in its developed state, than the
Renaissance or the Reformation.lsYet its decline would mark the death of a civilisation, of an entire moral outlook.
The third characteristic of this notion of liberty is of greater importance. [t is
that liberty in this sense is not incompatible "vith some kinds of autocracy, or at
any rate with the absence of self-government. Liberty in this sense is principally
concerned with the area of control, not with its source. Just as a democrac)' may,
in fact, deprive the individual citizen of a great many liberties which he might
have in some other form of society, so it is perfectly conceivable that a liberalminded despot would allow his subjects a large measure of personal freedom. The
despot who leaves his subjects a wide area of liberty may be unjust, or encourage
the wildest inequalities, care little for order, or virtue, or knowledge; but
provided he does not curb their liberty, or at least curbs it less than many other
regimes, he meets with Mill's specification. 16
Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy
or self-government. Self-government may, on the ''I!hole, provide a better guarantee of the preservation of civil liberties than other regimes, and has been
defended as such by libertarians. But there is no necessary connection between
individual liberty and democratic rule. The answer to the question 'Who governs
me?' is logically distinct from the question 'How far does government interfere

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with me?' It is in this difference that the great contrast between the two concepts
of negative and positive liberty, in the end, consists. 17 For the 'positive' sense of
liberty comes to light if we try to answer the question, not 'What am 1 free to do
or be?', but 'By whom am 1 ruled?' or 'Who is to say what 1 am, and what 1 am
not, to be or do?' The connection between democracy and individual liberty is a
good deal more tenuous than it seemed tu many advocates of both. The desire to
be governed by myself, or at any rate to participate in the process by which my
life is to be controlled, may be as deep a wish as that for a free area for action,
and perhaps historically older. But it is not a desire for the same thing. So
different is it, indeed, as to have led in the end to the great clash of ideologies
that dominates our world. For it is this, the 'positive' conception of liberty, not
freedom from, but freedom to - to lead one prescribed form of life - which the
adherents of the 'negative' notion represent as being, at times, no better than a
specious disguise for brutal tyranny.

II
THE NOTION OF POSITIVE FREEDOM

The 'positive' sense of the word 'liberty' derives from the wish on the part of the
individual to be his own master. 1 wish my life and decisions to depend on myself,
not on external forces of whatever kind. 1 wish to be the instrument of my own,
not of other men's, acts of will. , 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. 1 wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external
nature or by other men as if 1 were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of
playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realising them. This is at least part of what 1 mean when 1 say that 1 am rational, and
that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the
world. 1 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 reference to my own ideas and purposes. , feel Free to the degree that' believe this to
be true, and enslaved to the degree that 1 am made to realise that it is not.
The freedom which consists in being one's own master, and the freedom
which consists in not being prevented from choosing as 1 do by other men, may,
on the face of it, seem concepts at no great logical distance from each other - no
more than negative and positive ways of saying much the same thing. Yet the 'positive' and 'negative' notions of freedom historically developed in divergent
directions, not always by logically reputable steps, tmtil, in the end, they came
into direct conflict with each other.
One way of making this clear is in terms of the independent momentum
which the, initially perhaps quite harmless, metaphor of self-mastery acquired. "
am my own master'; 'I am slave to no man'; but may 1 not (as Platonists or
Hegelians tend to say) be a slave to nature? Or to my own 'unbridled' passions?
Are these not so many species of the identical genus 'slave' - some political or
legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience of liberating