Positive liberty

Positive liberty is an idea that was first expressed and analyzed as a separate conception of libertyby John Stuart Millbut most notably described by Isaiah Berlin. It refers to the ability to act to fulfill one's own potential, as opposed to negative liberty, which refers to freedom from the interference of others in one's affairs.

Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as freedom from external coercion. The idea of positive liberty is often emphasized by those on the left-wingof the political spectrum, whereas negative liberty is most important for those who lean towards libertarianism. However, not all on either the left or right would accept the positive/negative liberty distinction as genuine or significant.

Among the right-wing, conservativesalso embrace some forms of positive liberty. Most notably, Puritanssuch as Cotton Matheroften referred to liberty in their writings, but focused on the liberty from sin(e.g. sexual urges) even at the expense of liberty from the government. Many anarchists, and others considered to be on the left-wing, see the two concepts of positive and negative liberty as interdependent and thus inseparable.

While he described the concept of positive liberty, Isaiah Berlin was deeply suspicious of it. He argued that the pursuit of positive liberty could lead to a situation where the stateforced upon people a certain way of life, because the state judged that it was the most rational course of action, and therefore, was what a person should desire, whether or not people actually did desire it.

Defenders of positive liberty say that there is no need for it to have such totalitarianundertones, and that there is a great difference between a government providing positive liberty to its citizensand a government presuming to make their decisions for them. For example, they argue that any democraticgovernment upholding positive liberty would not suffer from the problems Berlin described, because such a government would not be in a position to ignore the wishes of people or societies. Also, many on the left see positive liberty as guaranteeing equal rights to certain things like education and employment, and an important defense against discrimination— here, positive liberty could be the right of (for example) a woman to be considered on equal terms with a man in a job interview.

Bibliography

• Isaiah Berlin: Four Essays on Liberty (especially Two Concepts of Liberty)

See also

• Negative liberty
• Negative and positive rights

External link

• Positive and Negative Liberty from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyfi:Positiivinen vapaus

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive+liberty Wikipedia article Positive liberty.