Relation to others· Power and justicedifficulty
Political liberty
What is it to be politically free?
To be free, is it to be unhindered, to govern oneself, or to depend on no one's good will? Depending on the answer, what a society must guarantee, and what it must protect us from, changes entirely.
Negative liberty
4To be free is the absence of hindrance: no one prevents me from acting as I see fit. Liberty is measured by the space left without interference, and the law itself should confine itself to protecting that space rather than narrowing it.
Explore this position →Calliclesexplicit
Liberty, for him, is the absence of all restraint; he expressly rejects liberty as self-government, judging it servitude: how could one be happy who is a slave to anything, even to one's own temperance? The only freedom is to do as one pleases, appetites unfurled.
Plato, Gorgias, 491e-492c
Millexplicit
The principle of On Liberty is negative: the only legitimate ground for constraining an individual is to prevent harm to others. Over himself, over his own body and mind, each is sovereign. Liberty is measured by the space shielded from interference.
On Liberty, ch. I
Liberalismexplicit
The liberty that classical liberalism foregrounds is first of all : a space where each acts as they see fit without hindrance, which the law should protect rather than restrict. opposes it to the liberty of the ancients, makes it his negative liberty, bounds it by the harm principle alone. Its social wing adds the real means to exercise it, , without giving up the primacy of non-interference.
Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns (1819) · Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
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The Enlightenmentexplicit
The political liberty of the century comes in several voices. For the liberal strand descended from , it is first of all negative: a sphere of security and property in which the individual is unhindered. For , it is non-domination, « the right to do everything the laws permit », secured against arbitrariness by the . proposes its positive version, the autonomy of a people that gives itself its own laws. These distinct, sometimes rival accents share the refusal of arbitrary subjection.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XI, 3-6 · Rousseau, The Social Contract, book I
Arguments and objections (2)
Positive liberty
2To be free is to govern oneself: to be master of one's desires and, as a citizen, to share in making the laws one obeys. Liberty is not merely being left alone, but being the author of one's life and one's city.
Explore this position →Hegelexplicit
To be free is not to follow one's caprice: the arbitrary will (Willkür) that chooses among given desires does not produce their content; it is only an apparent freedom, the freedom of the void that, in politics, turns into the frenzy of destruction. True freedom is the will that wills itself and finds itself at home in the other: it is fulfilled in rational institutions, not against them.
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Introduction §§4-29 (§5 the freedom of the void, §15 Willkür)
Rousseauexplicit
Liberty is not the absence of hindrance or the right to do anything, but obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself: a positive liberty, the autonomy of the citizen. Civil man exchanges his natural independence for moral liberty, the only kind that truly makes him master of himself. This is why whoever refuses to obey the , Rousseau writes in a formidable phrase, shall be « forced to be free ».
Rousseau, The Social Contract, I, 7-8
Arguments and objections (2)
Republican non-domination
1To be free is to depend on no one's arbitrary power. The slave of a kind master who never interferes is still a slave: he lives under an ever-possible domination. Liberty requires protections that make arbitrariness impossible, not merely its present absence.
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Machiavelliinferable
The people, in the , desire one thing only: not to be commanded or oppressed. The liberty they defend is first of all independence from any arbitrary power, abroad as at home. This vivere libero, upheld by mixed government and by laws born of the conflict of the orders, makes Machiavelli a source of the republican tradition of , more than of mere liberty-as-absence-of-interference.
The Prince, ch. IX (the people and the great) · Discourses on Livy, I.4 and I.16
Arguments and objections (2)
Capability freedom
2To be free is not merely to be unhindered, it is to have the real means to act: without health, education or resources, a purely formal liberty stays a dead letter. Liberty is measured by the effective capabilities to be and to do.
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Marxinferable
Formal liberty is worthless without the material conditions to exercise it: true emancipation requires overcoming alienation and the realm of necessity, so that the free development of each becomes the condition for the free development of all. A positive, real freedom, an effective capacity to act.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Capital, III; The Communist Manifesto
Marxisminferable
Formal rights (to vote, to contract, to own) leave economic compulsion intact: the worker "free" to sell his labor power is just as free to starve if he refuses. Marxism therefore holds political emancipation to be real but insufficient, and sets against it a concrete freedom, the effective capacity for self-realization, which presupposes abolishing the rule of economic necessity and alienation. Freedom is not a legal status but a material condition to be won: the free development of each becomes possible only where that of all is too, which subordinates political liberty to the transformation of the relations of production.
Marx, 1844 Manuscripts; Capital, III
Arguments and objections (2)
See the problem map in the Atlas →
- PrescriptivePolitical & legal SituationThe limits of speech
Speech that demeans without striking a blow: must a free society protect it in the name of freedom itself, or restrain it in the name of the freedom of those it targets?
public speech
Sub-problems to deepen this axis's discussion
- DescriptiveFreedom on paper
The law forbids no one to travel, study, or start a business, yet without money, health or connections none of it is within reach. Is the penniless person unfree, or merely unable? And does calling poverty a lack of freedom sharpen the idea of liberty, or dissolve it?
rights on paper - PrescriptivePolitical & legalFreed against one's will
From seatbelt laws to compulsory schooling to the addict weaned off against their will: can coercion make a person free? And if my "true" will can be invoked against the will I actually express, who decides which one is me?
benevolent coercion - DescriptiveFree from the law, or free through the law?
Every law takes something from what I may do; where laws fall silent, I do as I please. Yet without law the weak are at the mercy of the strong, and a people gives itself laws precisely to be free. Does law limit freedom, protect it, or constitute it?
the law - DescriptiveTaking part, or being left in peace
One age placed freedom in sharing public power, another in the quiet enjoyment of private life. If the moderns desert the assembly to cultivate their independence, do they hand over the very guarantee of that independence?
the city
Related problems to broaden toward other axes
- PrescriptivePolitical & legalFree in chains?
If freedom is won within, a clear-eyed person can be free even under a tyrant. Is that inner refuge the one thing no power can confiscate, or a consolation that teaches the oppressed to put up with their chains?
inner freedom - PrescriptivePolitical & legalEquality against liberty?
Does every redistribution restrict the liberty of those it taxes, or does real liberty already presuppose a certain equality of means?
the political orderDistributive justice - PrescriptivePolitical & legalInner freedom or outer freedom?
What weighs most in our freedom: our inner dispositions, or the outer constraints of power and society? And does one make the other possible: can one be free in spirit under oppression, or free outwardly without being free within?
the social orderFreedom of the will - PrescriptiveMoralBetween consenting adults
If no one is wronged without their consent, does morality have nothing left to say? Mill himself refuses to let anyone sell themselves into slavery: is consent enough to permit everything, or are there wrongs we do to ourselves?
the consented actMoral demandingness
The impulse of mere appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.Rousseau · The Social Contract, I, 8