What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty

Hobbes and Bentham see freedom simply as the absence of external physical or legal obstacles. As we know from Isaiah Berlin’s essay the negative theories want to define freedom in terms of individual independence from others; but the positive also want to identify freedom with collective self-government. Behind this lie some deeper differences of doctrines.

Isaiah Berlin points out that negative theories are concerned with the area in which the subject should be left without interference, whereas the positive doctrines are concerned with who or what controls. Doctrines of positive freedom are concerned with a view of freedom which involves essentially the exercising of control over one’s life. On this view, one is free only to the extent that one has effectively determined oneself and the shape of one’s life. On the other hand, negative theories can rely simply on an opportunity-concept, where being free is a matter of what we can do, of what it is open to us to do, whether or not we do anything to exercise these options. This certainly is the case of the crude, original Hobbesian concept we mentioned above Freedom consists just in there being no obstacle. It is a sufficient condition of one’s being free that nothing stand in the way.

The point discussed in Tylor essay is an exercise-concept of freedom. According to the wiev point of Tylor, “being free cannot just be a question of doing what you want in the unproblematic sense. It must also be that what you want does not run against the grain of your basic purposes, or your self-realization. Or to put the issue in another way, which converges on the same point, the subject himself cannot be the final authority on the question whether he is free; for he cannot be the final authority on the question whether his desires are authentic, whether they do or do not frustrate his purposes.” For the restrictions on our libertiy, Tylor is giving an obstract sample. In his sample “our freedom is restricted if the local authority puts up a new traffic light at an intersection close to my home; so that where previously I could cross as I liked, consistently with avoiding collision with other cars, now we have to wait until the light is green. By contrast a law which forbids me from worshipping according to the form I believe in is a serious blow to liberty; even a law which tried to restrict this to certain times (as the traffic light restricts my crossing of the intersection to certain times) would be seen as a serious restriction.[1]

Why this difference between the two cases? Because we have a background understanding, too obvious to spell out, of some activities and goals as highly significant for human beings and others as less so. One’s religious belief is recognized, even by atheists, as supremely important, because it is that by which the believer defines himself as a moral being. By contrast my rhythm of movement through the city traffic is trivial. We do not want to speak of these two in the same breath. We do not even readily admit that liberty is at stake in the traffic light case. There are discriminations to be made; some restrictions are more serious than others, some are utterly trivial. About many, there is of course controversy. But what the judgement turns on is some sense ot what is significant for human life.

Restricting the expression of people’s religious and ethical convictions is more signficant than restricting their movement around uninhabited parts of the country; and both are more significant than the trivia of traffic control. But we have to say that negative theories can rely on an opportunity-concept, rather than that they necessarily do so rely, for we have to allow for that part of the gamut of negative theories mentioned above which incorporates some notion of self-realization.. And this must be so, for the capacities relevant to freedom must involve some self-awareness, self-understanding, moral discrimination and self-control, otherwise their exercise could not amount to freedom in the sense of self- direction; and this being so, we can fail to be free because these internal conditions are not realized. But where this happens, where, for example, we are quite self-deceived, or utterly fail to discriminate properly the ends we seek, or have lost self-control, we can quite easily be doing what we want in the sense of what we can identify as our wants, without being free; indeed, we can be further entrenching our unfreedom.

Yalçın TORUN Attorney at Law

[1] The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Alan Ryan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 175–93

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