Introduction to Political Theory

• Positive libertyis involved in the answer to the question: ‘what, or who, is the
  source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this
  rather than that?’ (Berlin, 1991: 122).
  So, negative liberty is about being left alone, whereas positive liberty is about
  being in control of one’s life. For example, a person may be unfree to leave her
  home because she is under ‘house arrest’; alternatively, she may be unfree to leave
  because she has a phobia that makes her fearful of leaving. In the first case, she is
  negatively unfree to leave, whereas in the second she is positively unfree. Of course,
  elements of both types of ‘unfreedom’ may be evident: she may be fearful about
  leaving her home because she suspects she is under surveillance and is at greater
  harm away from home. Perhaps she is slightly paranoid, but if that paranoia has
  been caused by actual past experience, then the source of the unfreedom, or ‘control’,
  is not straightforwardly internal or external. Even if we cannot determine the source
  of unfreedom we can still make an analytical distinction between such sources, and
  therefore also between positive and negative freedom.
  Berlin was hostile to the concept of positive liberty. He thought it implied a belief
  in psychological sources of unfreedom concealed from the person who is deemed
  unfree – this belief forms the basis of a political theory in which people are ‘forced
  to be free’. Although he identifies the presence of the concept in the work of a long
  line of thinkers we can take the work of one as representative of positive liberty:
  Immanuel Kant. Kant defines freedom as self-government or self-direction: to be
  free is to act from laws (or reasons) that one gives oneself. The self is split in two


• or bifurcated – meaning that each of us possesses a lower self driven by desires,
  and a higher self that is motivated by reasons that transcend desire. A ‘reason’ is
  something categorical: one can have a reason to do something that one has no desire
  to do. For example, if you plan to spend six months in Italy one year from now
  and at present speak no Italian you have reasonto enrol now in an Italian class
  even if you have no desireto do so (Nagel, 1970: 58–9). Of course, a rational
  person will desire to enrol in that class but the point is that the reason is not
  explained by the desire, but rather the desire follows from the reason. For Kant,
  the rational is not something political, but Berlin sees in Kant’s conception of
  freedom the danger that the ‘rational’ will become identified with the state, for if
  your desires are not a guide to what you should do then perhaps another agency –
  the state – can help you achieve ‘true freedom’.
  Some political theorists have sought to dispense with Berlin’s two concepts and
  argue for one. Gerald MacCallum suggests that ‘freedom is... always ofsomething
  (an agent or agents), fromsomething, todo, not do, become, or not become
  something’ (MacCallum, 1991: 102). Freedom is therefore a ‘triadic’ relationship


• meaning, there are three parts to it: (a) the agent, or person, who is free (or
  ‘unfree’); (b) the constraints, restrictions, interferences and barriers that make the
  agent free or unfree; and (c) what it is that the person is free to do, or not do. It
  is important that (c) means a person is free to do ornot do something – that is,
  they have a choice: an inmate of a jail is not prevented from residing in that jail,
  but has no choice whether or not they reside there. MacCallum’s definition is useful,
  but it leaves open a couple of important issues. First, what is the source of (b)?
  Must it be another person (or persons) who constrains or restricts your action?
  Could the source of your unfreedom be yourself – that is, your own weaknesses

Chapter 2 Freedom 37