Positive and Negative Liberty

[tHEwALRUS]

In class the other day we were discussing the works of Isaiah Berlin. I found his discussion of positive and negative liberty fascinating and though it might be worth some discussion.

Positive Liberty is the idea that you are free to do certain things. For example, I have the right to vote for whoever I want.

But positive liberty, while it sounds nice on the surface, conceals authoritarianism. The government gives you the right to do only those things that are within its vision of what it means to be good. Yes, you have the right to vote, but you can only participate in government by voting. You are being implicitly forced to adhere to a specific system of government and a specific set of beliefs. If you do anything outside of the government's idea of good, you will be punished and corrected until you are back on the "right" path. Positive Liberty is saying, "There is only one correct way to do things, and this is it."

Negative Liberty is the idea that everyone should be free to do however he pleases. Negative liberty is saying, "there is no single correct way to do things, everyone should do as they please."

But by making the statement above, you are saying that there is only one way to do things and that is there not being only one way to do things. (Does everyone follow that?)

So if you are a Negative Libertarian, you are really a Positive Libertarian. It's quite the paradox. Berlin believed that it is that paradox that separates us from mere machines. A machine has no paradoxes. It does its job and that's it. Our ability to think enough to come to a paradox is what puts us at a higher level. We should revel in our paradoxes.

Fascinating stuff. Thoughts?

[Seeker]

It almost seems to me that the paradox there is semantic, rather than conceptual.

With what you've defined as "positive liberty," it seems like the default is considered to be a state of no rights, to which specific rights are then applied by the governing body. "Negative liberty," by contrast, seems to start with a baseline state wherein everything is considered a right, and from that point restrictions may or may not be applied. If I've interpreted correctly what you've described, I'm not sure that the paradox still exists--though I could be wrong.

[Isaac]

I have to agree with Seeker..... the paradox looks like pure semantics.

[tHEwALRUS]

Any given law equates to positive liberty. Any given law defines what we may or may not do. The law says, "this is the correct way to do things."

Negative liberty says that there is no correct way to do things, that all ways are equally viable.

The paradox lies in the fact that by saying, "there is no correct way to do this," you are really saying, "the correct way to do this is to believe that there is no correct way to do this."

By refusing to take a stance, you're still taking a stance.

And this idea of positive and negative liberty doesn't only apply to law making bodies or governments. There is no law that says that I can't fart in public, but it is considered extremely rude to do so. Most people are positive libertarians in terms of farting in public. But here's the paradox. Someone who claims that everyone can choose when, where and how they will fart, that there is no correct time or place for farting would be considered a negative libertarian. But by making a claim that the only right way is to let everyone choose how, when and where they will fart, this person has become a positive libertarian.

In the end, it really doesn't effect our daily life. Life goes on whether we think about it or not, but I do believe that it is more than just semantics.

I think some of the Libertarians might be able to get what I'm trying to say, as they often think of laws as government coercion anyway.

Here's an example that's been talked about a lot recently around here:

The government believes that a good person does not smoke marijuana. The government passes laws that make it illegal to do so. You may or may not agree that smoking marijuana is morally bad, but you are not given the choice in the matter.

[Office_Shredder]

Only if there exists a body that can specifically make the claim that there is no correct way to do things

[tHEwALRUS]

Not necessarily; as I talked about earlier, these things can be entirely social (as in my silly example about farting). A complete lack of government and laws is also a situation of negative liberty.