The Shift From Negative Liberty to Positive Liberty

Its characteristic institutions. Education, health care, social security, regulation of unequal bargaining, and democratic participation.

Its advocates. Rousseau, Kant in one strand, Hegel, Green, and in the twentieth century the theorists of the welfare state.

The shift, and what caused it

The shift is a historical development and MU asks for it as one.

The negative conception was formed against a particular enemy, absolute government, established religion and legal privilege, and it was well designed for that fight: what those things did was interfere.

The industrial conditions of the nineteenth century produced a different problem. People whose liberty nobody was interfering with, and who could do almost nothing. The negative conception could not describe their situation as one of unfreedom at all, and that is what broke it.

Green made the theoretical move by defining freedom as a positive power or capacity of doing something worth doing, and by insisting that it is exercised in common with others, so that a society which does not supply the conditions of that capacity is not supplying freedom.

The programme followed. Compulsory education, public health, factory legislation, social insurance and, in the twentieth century, the welfare state.

Berlin's warning, which is the heart of the topic

Berlin drew the distinction in order to warn against the second conception, and an answer that gives the warning is a much better answer than one that treats positive liberty as simply an improvement.

The argument in four steps.

1. Positive liberty as self-mastery divides the self into a higher, rational self and a lower, empirical self driven by appetite and ignorance.

2. Being free then means being governed by the higher self.

3. Somebody may know better than you what your higher self would choose: a teacher, a party, a state, a doctrine.

4. Coercing you into what your higher self would have chosen can then be described as making you free.

And this is not a hypothetical. Rousseau's own sentence at chapter 330 says that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body, and that this means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free. Berlin's point is that the sentence is not an aberration but the natural conclusion of the positive conception, and that regimes which suppressed people in the name of their real interests were using exactly this structure.

The answer to Berlin, which an answer should also give.

The capacity sense does not require the self to be divided. Providing schools, hospitals and a subsistence income does not tell anybody what they really want; it lets them pursue what they say they want. Green's version, and the welfare state, rest on that sense.

Negative liberty is not innocent either. A conception which counts only obstacles placed by people treats a starving person as free, and that description has been used to resist every measure of social reform for two centuries.

The two are needed together. The right without the capacity is empty; the capacity without the right is dependence on whoever supplies it.

Where India stands

The Indian Constitution contains both conceptions, in two Parts, and its history is the argument between them.

Negative liberty is Part III. Article 19's freedoms are stated as protections against interference, subject to reasonable restrictions. Article 21 protects life and personal liberty against deprivation except by procedure established by law.

Positive liberty is Part IV. The Directive Principles direct the State to secure an adequate means of livelihood, to prevent the concentration of wealth, to secure a living wage, to make provision for just and humane conditions of work, and to raise the level of nutrition and public health. Every one of these is about capacity.

And the two have been fused by interpretation. Article 21's guarantee of life has been read to include what a life requires, and article 21A now makes free and compulsory education for children between six and fourteen a fundamental right, which puts a positive obligation on the State inside the chapter of negative rights.

The Indian answer to Berlin, in effect. Positive obligations were created as enforceable rights of individuals rather than as powers of the State to decide what people really need. That is the structural safeguard: the citizen enforces the capacity against the State, rather than the State supplying it and defining it.

A worked example

Two women in the same city each wish to start a small business.

A has capital, an education, a family that will look after her children, and access to a bank. B has none of these.

On the negative conception both are equally free. No law prevents either from starting a business, no official refuses either a licence, and if either is obstructed she has a remedy.

On the positive conception they are not remotely equally free. A can do the thing she is free to do; B cannot.

What each conception says should be done. The negative liberal asks whether any rule is obstructing B, finds the licensing requirements, the paperwork and the inspections, and works to remove them, which is a real answer and does help. The positive liberal asks what B lacks, and points to credit, training, and childcare.

And the case for both together. Remove every obstacle and B still cannot start. Provide credit and childcare while leaving a licensing regime that requires four visits to an office in working hours, and she still cannot. The two conceptions identify different obstacles, and both sets are real.

And Berlin's warning applied. If the scheme requires B to attend a training course that tells her which businesses are suitable for women, decides on her behalf that she should not attempt something ambitious, and conditions the credit on her compliance, then positive liberty has begun to do what Berlin feared. The safeguard is that the assistance should enlarge what she can choose rather than narrow it.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this distinction is NOT

It is not freedom against equality. Both are conceptions of freedom, which is exactly why the argument matters.

It is not old against new. Both are old. Berlin's contribution was to name them, not to invent either.

Positive liberty is not the same as welfare. Welfare is one thing positive liberty may require; the concept is about capacity and self-direction.

Berlin did not say positive liberty is worthless. He said it is more easily perverted, and he was arguing about a danger rather than denying the value.

Quick revision

1. Berlin, 1958. Negative liberty answers: what is the area within which I am left alone? Positive liberty answers: who or what is the source of control that determines what I do?
2. Negative: absence of obstacles placed by other people. Its blind spot is that a starving person counts as free.
3. Positive has two senses: capacity, which is Green's, and self-mastery, which is where the danger lies.
4. The shift happened because industrial conditions produced people whom nobody was interfering with and who could do almost nothing.
5. Berlin's warning in four steps: the self is divided; freedom becomes rule by the higher self; somebody else may claim to know it; coercion is then described as liberation. Rousseau's "forced to be free" is the text he has in mind.
6. The answer: the capacity sense divides no self, negative liberty is not innocent either, and the two are needed together.
7. In India: Part III is negative, Part IV is positive, and the two were fused by reading article 21 to include what a life requires and by article 21A. The safeguard is that positive obligations were made enforceable rights of individuals.

Test yourself

1. State Berlin's two questions and the two conceptions they identify. Negative liberty answers the question what is the area within which I am left to do what I want without interference by others, so that freedom is the absence of obstacles placed by other people. Positive liberty answers the question who or what is the source of control that determines what I do, so that freedom is the presence of the capacity, resources and self-mastery to act on one's own purposes. They are answers to different questions rather than opposites, and a person may have a great deal of one and almost none of the other.

2. Why did the shift from negative to positive liberty occur? Because the negative conception had been formed against a particular enemy, absolute government, established religion and legal privilege, all of which operated by interfering, and it could not describe the situation produced by industrial conditions. A population without land, dependent on wages, uneducated, unhealthy and without provision for unemployment or old age was free on the negative conception, since nobody was legally stopping them from anything, and yet could do almost nothing. Green made the theoretical move by defining freedom as a positive power of doing something worth doing, and the welfare programme followed.

3. State Berlin's warning about positive liberty. That the self-mastery sense divides the person into a higher rational self and a lower empirical self; that being free then means being governed by the higher self; that another person, party, doctrine or state may claim to know what the higher self would choose; and that coercion can then be described as making the person free. Berlin's point is that this is not an aberration but the natural conclusion of the conception, and Rousseau's own statement that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled and thereby forced to be free is the text that shows it.

4. How is Berlin answered? By separating the two senses of positive liberty. The capacity sense does not divide the self at all: providing schools, hospitals and a subsistence income does not tell anybody what they really want but enables them to pursue what they say they want, and that is the sense on which Green and the welfare state rest. It is added that negative liberty is not innocent either, since a conception counting only obstacles placed by people describes a starving person as free and has been used to resist social reform for two centuries. And that the two are needed together, since a right without the capacity is empty and a capacity without the right is dependence on whoever supplies it.

5. Where do the two conceptions appear in the Indian Constitution, and what safeguard did India adopt? Negative liberty appears in Part III: article 19's freedoms stated as protections against interference subject to reasonable restrictions, and article 21's protection of life and personal liberty. Positive liberty appears in Part IV: directives to secure an adequate means of livelihood, prevent the concentration of wealth, secure a living wage, provide just and humane conditions of work, and raise nutrition and public health. The two were fused by reading article 21 to include what a life requires and by article 21A. The safeguard against Berlin's danger is structural: the positive obligations were made enforceable rights of the individual against the State, rather than powers of the State to determine what people really need.