Relation to others· Power and justice
Negative liberty
Axis: Political liberty — What is it to be politically free?
To 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.
Movements 2
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)
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
Philosophers 1
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
Characters 1
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
Argument
- Human ends are plural and often incompatible: sainthood, creation, success, pleasure, or the service of others cannot be ranked or combined into a single good life.
- No third party, whether state, majority, or sage, can claim superior knowledge of the end I ought to pursue: to presume otherwise is already .
- Any "thicker" definition of liberty (, realizing one's true self, living virtuously) builds in one particular conception of the good life: it thereby makes it possible to declare those who live otherwise "unfree", and to coerce them in the name of their own freedom, a slope history has slid down more than once.
- The definition is the one that prejudges ends least: free is the person whom others do not prevent from acting on their own choices. It assumes only that this latitude matters, not any conception of the good life.
Therefore To be free is to be unhindered by others: society must guarantee each person's perimeter, not prescribe the use they make of it.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position Thought experiment
- By hypothesis, the kind master never interferes: by the criterion of non-interference, his slave is fully free.
- Yet the defender of negative liberty himself hesitates to count this slave as a free man: servitude is precisely what the status of a free man is meant to rule out.
- What the slave lacks is not the absence of present hindrance but protection against arbitrary power, that is, power uncontrolled and uncontestable: his liberty depends on a mood, not on a right.
Therefore Actual non-interference is not enough to define liberty: a definition must be able to say why the kind master's slave is not free.
See the page- 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 - 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