Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This reflection on Ian Shapiro's recent book, Politics against Domination, argues that there are strengths to conceiving of politics as a struggle against domination but the argument neglects the actual democratic politics of actual movements such as the African American freedom struggle. In the civil rights movement, in particular, nonviolence added to older understandings of politics as engagement across difference a view of positive liberty, recently described by theorists such as Karuna Mantena and Danielle Allen. This understanding of nonviolence as positive liberty has enormous relevance for our time. It finds expression in significant actual civic practices.

It would not, I think, be entirely misleading to suggest that doctrines of laissez faire and attacks upon reasoned state intervention in political and social life have tended to emanate from two extremes in social philosophy—ultra individualism and an extreme organicism. In the first case, and we may take Locke as an example, society is made up of a heap of individuals who came together to form the state for the limited purpose of the protection of property. Man is not seen as a part of a larger whole, influenced by the structure of that whole, but as an isolated individual; thus any state interference beyond the protection of property is viewed as a restriction of individual liberty. On the other hand are thinkers who regard society as such a complicated and delicate organism that they can only—and governments should only—sit back and gasp at the complexity of it all. Any attempt to improve one aspect will affect the balance of the whole in ways impossible to predict. It is difficult to point to a pure instance of this opinion, but this is the impression left with the reader after perusing such works as Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bradley's Ethical Studies and the works of some more modern conservatives. All that governments can be expected to do is to prevent the worst collisions and any attempt to pursue a positive policy is doomed to failure.

Berlin's account contains a powerful argument in support of the claim that freedom consists in the non-restriction of options. This is seen when we consider his treatment of freedom, the concept and its rival conceptions, his discussion of descriptive and evaluative aspects of judgements about freedom, his account of the relations between freedom, power and the real will, his argument for the dependency of judgements about freedom on social theories, and his views on the place of a negative conception of freedom in the liberal tradition. Berlin is right to reject positive conceptions of freedom which depend on a rationalist doctrine; but mistaken in his view that all forms of positive libertarianism necessarily involve such commitments.

THE AUTHOR EXAMINES SIR ISAIAH BERLIN'S ACCOUNT OF THE NATURE OF FREEDOM, PARTICULARLY HIS ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE CLAIM THAT FREEDOM CONSISTS IN THE NON-RESTRICTION OF OPTIONS. THE PAPER EXAMINES BERLIN'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM, HIS ACCOUNT OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN FREEDOM, POWER AND THE WILL, HIS ARGUMENT FOR THE DEPENDENCY OF JUDGMENTS ABOUT FREEDOM ON SOCIAL THEORIES.

In 'Two Concepts of Liberty', Berlin wavered between two readings of the concept of positive liberty. In the first one, 'positive liberty' is a distinct concept, different from that of 'negative liberty'. Those who advocate liberty in the negative sense and those who advocate it in the positive sense do not disagree on which interpretation of the same thing – 'liberty' – is the correct one; they speak about different things. Both defend valid ideals, although those ideals may not be simultaneously achievable. In the second reading, negative and positive liberty are competing interpretations of the same concept, the defenders of negative liberty being involved in a substantive disagreement with the advocates of positive liberty on what the same term – 'liberty' – really means. On this understanding, negative and positive liberty cannot both be valid ideals: one of them (negative liberty) is a genuine value, the other (positive liberty) being nothing but the perversion of it. My article aims to uncover the roots of this ambiguity in unresolved difficulties in Berlin's account of the history of the ideas of negative and positive liberty and, more importantly, in his conception of value pluralism.

In 'Two Concepts of Liberty', Berlin wavered between two readings of the concept of positive liberty. In the first one, 'positive liberty' is a distinct concept, different from that of 'negative liberty'. Those who advocate liberty in the negative sense and those who advocate it in the positive sense do not disagree on which interpretation of the same thing -- 'liberty' -- is the correct one; they speak about different things. Both defend valid ideals, although those ideals may not be simultaneously achievable. In the second reading, negative and positive liberty are competing interpretations of the same concept, the defenders of negative liberty being involved in a substantive disagreement with the advocates of positive liberty on what the same term -- 'liberty' -- really means. On this understanding, negative and positive liberty cannot both be valid ideals: one of them (negative liberty) is a genuine value, the other (positive liberty) being nothing but the perversion of it. My article aims to uncover the roots of this ambiguity in unresolved difficulties in Berlin's account of the history of the ideas of negative and positive liberty and, more importantly, in his conception of value pluralism. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

I. Introduction -- 1. Berlin's Distinction -- 2. MacCallum on Positive and Negative Liberty -- 3. The Strategy of the Argument -- II. The Freedom to do a Particular Thing: The Objective Side -- 4. Restraint and Incapacity -- 5. Coercion -- 6. Coercion and the Wage Agreement -- 7. The Probability of Doing ? -- III. The Freedom to do a Particular Thing: The Subjective Side -- 8. Belief and Information -- 9. Psychological Barriers, Autonomy, and Freedom -- 10. The Desire to Do ? -- IV. Personal Freedom -- 11. Berlin's Five Factors -- 12. The Number and Variety of Alternatives -- 13. The Probability of the Alternatives -- 14. The Value of the Alternatives -- V. Social Liberty -- 15. The Characterization -- 16. Outlines of a Positive Libertarian Social Program -- 17. A Positive Approach to Speech -- 18. Redistribution -- 19. Left and Right Libertarianism -- VI. Criticisms of Positive Liberty -- 20. That Positive Liberty Extends the Notion to Meaninglessness -- 21. Liberty and its Conditions of Exercise -- 22. Liberty and the Conditions that Give it Worth -- 23. "Liberty" in Ordinary Language -- 24. The Special Evils of Restraint and Coercion -- 25. Human Rights, Coercion, and Non-Aid -- VII. The Value of Liberty -- 26. The Consequences of Liberty -- 27. Intrinsic Value Defined -- 28. The Intrinsic Value of Autonomy and Liberty -- 29. Value and the Structure of Positive Liberty -- 30. An Egalitarian Argument for Positive Liberty -- VIII. The Costs and Limits of Liberty -- 31. Decision Costs -- 32. Personal Costs and Paternalism -- 33. Social Costs -- 34. Individual Decision and Collective Decision -- Notes.