UNIVERSITY INSTITURE OF LEGAL STUDIES,
PANJAB UNIVERSITY
This project-report is submitted in requirement as per the syllabus of
2nd SEMESTER on the topic:
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE LIBERTY
Submitted to: Submitted by:
DR. SARABJIT KAUR POOJA MALIK
(ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, POLITICAL SCIENCE) [Link].B. (Hons.)
1st Year, Section B
Roll. No. 88/20
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PREFACE
I feel great pleasure in presenting this term project entitled: Positive
and Negative Liberty. I hope that the readers will find the paper
interesting and that the paper in its present form shall be well
received by all. The purpose of the paper is to provide with good
knowledge of Liberty and its Positive and Negative aspects. This
paper contains the detailed analysis of the topic in very simple
language. It states that Liberty is the state of being free within
society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's
way of life, behaviour, or political views.
Every effort is made to keep the paper error-free. I would gratefully
acknowledge the suggestions to improve the paper so as to make it
more useful.
UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LEGAL STUDIES, POOJA MALIK
PANJAB UNIVERSITY [Link].B.
(Hons.)
2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher,
Dr. Sarabjit Kaur whose insightful leadership and knowledge
benefited me to steer out this project successfully. This project
helped me in doing a lot of research and I came to know about so
many things. I express deep and sincere gratitude to my parents
whose guidance, encouragement, suggestion and very constructive
criticism have contributed immensely to the evolution of my ideas on
the project. I must also thank my friends who have always been a
major source of support when things would get a bit discouraging.
Lastly, I would like to thank the Almighty for giving me enough
strength and wisdom to finish the project.
I AM REALLY THANKFUL TO ALL THOSE WHO HELPED ME!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Liberty 5-6
Dimensions of Liberty 6
Aspects of Liberty 7
Negative Liberty 8-10
Negative Liberty and Authority: Hobbes and Locke 10
Positive Liberty……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11-13
Historical Background………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………….11
Abuse of Political Liberty………………………………………………………………………………………………………12-13
The Contemporary Debate………………………………………………………………………………………………………..13
Difference between Negative and Positive Liberty……………..………………………………………………………14
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16
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LIBERTY
“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
-George Washington 1
The concept of 'liberty' or 'freedom' denotes a very important principle of
political philosophy. Liberty is sometimes regarded as the distinctive principle
of liberalism, but freedom is acclaimed as a universal principle. Freedom is
eulogized by liberal, idealist as well as Marxist theory. Nobody quarrels with
freedom as an end, but different schools of thought differ on the means and
mode of realizing freedom. Even the champions of absolutism,
authoritarianism and slavery pay lip service to freedom, claiming that for
ordinary men, submission to authority—regarded as the symbol of some sort
of excellence—is the best way to realize freedom.2
The word ‘Liberty’ is derived from the Latin word ‘liber’, which means free. It is
a word of negative meaning denoting absence of restraint. Its primary
significance is to do what one likes, regardless of all consequences. But this is
obviously an impossibility. Liberty in the sense of a complete absence of
restraint cannot exist. We cannot live together without common rules. The
presence of common rules of behaviour is the consequence of our
gregariousness.
If I choose to do all that I wish, regardless of the interests of others among
whom I live, there is likely to be perpetual strife and conflict in society,
conditions of chaos and anarchy. Such a society does not provide freedom for
me or for others. "Historic experience," as Laski has said, "has evolved for us
rules of convenience which promote right living; and to compel obedience to
them is a justifiable limitation of freedom." By liberty, therefore we mean
freedom to do everything provided it does not injure the freedom of others.
But liberty is not a mere negative condition. It has a positive aspect, too, which
is, indeed, significant and important. It involves the opportunity for many-sided
cumulative growth which consists in capacity to act, availability of an effective
range of choices and spontaneity, that is, the ability to act in accordance with
one's own personality, "without having to make a great effort at self-denial or
self-control and without being subjected to external constraints." According to
1
[Link]
2
O.P. Gauba, 2010, An Introduction to Political Science. New Delhi, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., Pg. 348
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Laski, liberty is "the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have
the opportunity to be their best selves." It constitutes the enjoyment of those
rights and the creation of such opportunities as help man to grow to be the
best of himself, to develop his faculties, and to plan his life as he deems best.
The true test of liberty lies in the laws of the State and extent to which they
help a citizen to develop all that is good in him. Liberty is, thus, a product of
rights. It thrives best where rights are guaranteed to all without any distinction
of sex, creed, caste, colour or status in society.3
DIMENSIONS OF LIBERTY:
CIVIL LIBERTY:
Civil liberty is the liberty of man in the capacity of an individual person—his
personal liberty. This consists in three somewhat differently expressed articles:
(a) physical freedom from injury or threat to the life, health, and movement of
the body; (b) intellectual freedom for the expression of thought and belief; (c)
and practical freedom of the play of will and the exercise of choice in the
general field of contractual action and relations with other persons.
POLITICAL LIBERTY:
Where a man enjoys civil liberty in the capacity of an individual person, he
enjoys political liberty in the capacity of a citizen. In modern democracy, where
government is constituted by the people themselves, political liberty is “liberty
not of curbing government, but of constituting and controlling; constituting it
by a general act of choice or election, in which we all freely share on the basis
of universal suffrage; controlling it by a general and continuous process of
discussion, in which we all freely share according to our capacities.”
ECONOMIC LIBERTY:
Economic liberty, broadly speaking, belongs to man in his capacity as a worker
whether with hand or brain, engaged in some gainful occupation or service. In
this sense, Barker suggests that economic liberty is implied in the articles of
civil liberty already enumerated. In fact, however, economic liberty is a ticklish
issue.4
3
Dr. A. C. Kapoor, 2016, Principles of Political Science. New Delhi, S. Chand Publications, pp. 253-254
4
O.P. Gauba, 2010, An Introduction to Political Sci. New Delhi, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., pp. 352-354
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ASPECTS OF LIBERTY:
The conceptual domain of liberty, for both research and teaching, was
mapped out in the post-1945 era. The Ur-frame of the concept has
antecedents, nevertheless it was set out with dan in a duly famous essay by
Isaiah Berlin in 1958. This has been used subsequently to superimpose
backwards over previous centuries of political theory, even though the
terminology was not then available. The frame nonetheless does enable a
rapid conceptual encapsulation, which is pedagogically expedient. Accordingly,
the terms Negative and Positive liberty, coined in Berlin's essay, formed the
key cartographical reference points for the concept. Furious discussions have
subsequently subsisted within this capacious binary. The binary became, in
effect, the alpha and omega of conceptual sparring over liberty.
At its sketchiest, Negative Liberty shifts (from Berlin onwards) between, on the
one hand, being without restraint or obstacles, and on the other hand, a
description of a negative space that one is entitled to occupy without
interference. Positive Liberty, which is more often caricatured in the literature,
indicates a compendium of ideas, usually summoning themes of will, self-
mastery, moral conduct and self-direction, and is occasionally associated with
aspects of German Idealism.5
Hence, there are two aspects of Liberty:
1. Negative Liberty
2. Positive Liberty
5
Maria Dimova-Cookson, 2020, Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty, Global Intellectual History.
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1. NEGATIVE LIBERTY:
In Berlin's words, we use the negative concept of liberty in attempting to
answer the question “What is the area within which the subject — a person or
group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be,
without interference by other persons?”
As Norman P. Barry, in his ‘An Introduction
to Modern Political Theory’ (1989), has
elucidated: "The negative conception of
liberty flourished at a time when individuals
were struggling to be free from the
unnecessary restraints of arbitrary
government and when individual choice
determined the allocation of resources. The
main political axiom of the negative liberty
doctrine was that 'everyone knows his own
interest best' and that the state should not
decide his ends and purposes." The
champions of negative liberty not only
believed in individual choice of resources
and techniques, but also the choice of
parties to deal with in their transactions.
Thus 'freedom of contract' was recognized
as an essential requirement.
(Image: Torch of Liberty from antiquity at the
Istanbul Archaeology Museums)
This idea of negative liberty led to the doctrine of laissez-faire, that is freedom
from government interference in economic affairs. Hence most of the
advocates of negative liberty, such as Adam Smith (1723-90), Jeremy Bentham
(1748— 1832), James Mill (1773-1836), Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) and
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), favoured the minimal state. The exponents of
laissez-faire individualism saw society as an aggregate of atomized, alienated
individuals, joined together by a bond of mechanical unity. Liberty was seen as
the freedom of trade, freedom of enterprise, freedom of contract, a free
competition of the market forces of supply and demand. The state was viewed
as a negative state, a necessary evil, which was required not to interfere with
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the natural liberty of men, but only to maintain their liberty by protecting their
person and property from the onslaught of other individuals. 6
For Berlin, negative liberty represents a different, and sometimes
contradictory, understanding of the concept of liberty, which needs to be
carefully examined. Its later proponents (such
as Tocqueville, Constant, Montesquieu, John Locke, David Hume and John
Stuart Mill, who accepted Chrysippus' understanding of self-
determination) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of
liberty and so were less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the
manner of rationalists and the philosophical harbingers of totalitarianism. This
concept of negative liberty, Berlin argued, constitutes an alternative, and
sometimes even opposed, concept to positive liberty, and one often closer to
the intuitive modern usage of the word. Berlin considered negative liberty one
of the distinguishing concepts of modern liberalism and observed.
"The fathers of liberalism--Mill and Constant--want more than this minimum:
they demand a maximum degree of non-interference compatible with the
minimum demands of social life. It seems unlikely that this extreme demand
for liberty has ever been made by any but a small minority of highly civilized
and self-conscious human beings."7
NEGATIVE LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY: HOBBES AND LOCKE
Hobbes and Locke give two influential and representative solutions to this
question. As a starting point, both agree that a line must be drawn and a space
sharply delineated where each individual can act unhindered according to their
tastes, desires, and inclinations. This zone defines the sacrosanct space of
personal liberty. But they believe no society is possible without some
authority, where the intended purpose of authority is to prevent collisions
among the different ends and, thereby, to demarcate the boundaries where
each person's zone of liberty begins and ends.
Where Hobbes and Locke differ is the extent of the zone. Hobbes, who took a
rather negative view of human nature, argued that a strong authority was
6
O.P. Gauba, 2010, An Introduction to Political Sci., New Delhi, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., pg. 357
7
Isaiah Berlin, 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty, Clarendon Press.
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needed to curb men's intrinsically wild, savage, and corrupt impulses. Only a
powerful authority can keep at bay the permanent and always looming threat
of anarchy. Locke believed, on the other hand, that men on the whole are
better than wicked and, accordingly, the area for individual liberty can be left
rather at large.
Locke is a slightly more ambiguous case than Hobbes because although his
conception of liberty was largely negative (in terms of non-interference), he
differed in that he courted the republican tradition of liberty by rejecting the
notion that an individual could be free if he was under the arbitrary power of
another:
"This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely
joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what
forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of
his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any
one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take
away his life, when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has
himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power
over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that
deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his
power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does
him no injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh
the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw
on himself the death he desires."8
8
John Locke, 2012, Second Treatise of Government, C.B. McPherson, Hackett Publishing Company,
Indianapolis and Cambridge, Ch. 4
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2. POSITIVE LIBERTY:
In Berlin’s words, Positive Liberty "is involved in the answer to the question
'What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine
someone to do, or be, this rather than that?' The two questions are clearly
different, even though the answers to them may overlap."
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: The concept of negative liberty played an
important historical role. It proved instrumental in the establishment of
capitalist system in Europe. It released the forces of production which were
blocked by the feudal system inherited from the Middle Ages. But by the
middle of the nineteenth century, it became evident that the capitalist system
supported by negative liberty had brought about miserable conditions for
workers and consumers. The appalling disparities of wealth and power—
mounting oppression, exploitation and injustice in society—amply
demonstrated contradictions in this concept of liberty.
Humanist writers, socialists, Marxists and positive liberals came forward to
demand a new definition of liberty. They argued that the non-interventionist
policy of the state, particularly in the economic sphere, was not compatible
with liberty as a universal principle. The employer's freedom to hire and fire
workers at his will in the face of a rapidly rising labour force in industrial cities
had made a mockery of the freedom of contract; the workers were forced to
live under constant insecurity and threat of unemployment, to work under
uncongenial conditions, and to live a life of abject poverty at a sub-human
level. The benefit of 'liberty' was now sought to be extended to the working
class, largely because of the mounting pressure from the working class itself.
It was John Stuart Mill (1806-73) who introduced the conception of positive
liberty and consequent transition from negative liberalism to positive
liberalism.
Mill advocated complete freedom of conduct for the individual in the sphere of
self-regarding actions unless he was proceeding on a self-destructive path due
to ignorance. He was contemplating a positive role for the state in securing
social welfare even if it implied curbing liberty of the individual to some extent.
It was Mill who gave a sound theory of taxation, pleaded for the limitation of
the right of inheritance, and insisted on state provision of education.
After J.S. Mill, T.H. Green (1836-82), L.T. Hobhouse (1864-1929) and H.J. Laski
(1893-1950) further developed the positive concept of liberty. Green
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postulated a theory of rights and insisted on the positive role of the state in
creating conditions under which men could effectively exercise their moral
freedom. Hobhouse and Laski postulated that private property was no
absolute right, and that the state must secure the welfare of the people—no
matter if it is constrained to curtail economic liberty of the privileged few.
Norman P. Barry in his An Introduction to Modern Political Theory (1989) has
elaborated Berlin's view as follows: "Positive liberty . . . does not interpret
freedom as simply being left alone but as 'self-mastery'. The theory is a special
theory of the self—the personality is divided into a higher and lower self and a
person is free to the extent that his higher self, the source of his genuinely
rational and long-term ends, is in command of his lower self, wherein lie his
ephemeral and irrational desires. Thus, a person might be free in the sense of
not being restrained by external forces but remain a slave to irrational
appetites; as a drug-addict, an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler might be said
to be unfree." 9
Hence, Positive liberty is the possession of the capacity to act upon one's free
will, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint
on one's actions. A concept of positive liberty may also include freedom from
internal constraints.10
ABUSE OF POLITICAL LIBERTY:
Isaiah Berlin notes that historically positive liberty has proven particularly
susceptible to rhetorical abuse; especially from the 18th century onwards, it
has either been paternalistically re-drawn from the third-person, or conflated
with the concept of negative liberty and thus disguised underlying value-
conflicts.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and G. W. F. Hegel, modern political thinkers often
conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge
to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. This
rationalist conflation was open to political abuses, which encroached on
negative liberty, when such interpretations of positive liberty were, in the
nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, paternalism, social
9
O.P. Gauba, 2010, An Introduction to Political Sci., New Delhi, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., pp. 357-359
10
Steven J. Heyman, 1992, Positive and Negative Liberty, 68 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 81.
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engineering, historicism, and collective rational control over human destiny.
Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom
paradoxically could become demands for forms of collective control and
discipline—those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or "self-
determination" of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even
humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between
positive liberty, when it is rhetorically conflated with goals imposed from the
third-person that the individual is told they “Should" rationally desire, and the
justifications for political totalitarianism, which contrary to value-pluralism,
presupposed those values exist in Pythagorean harmony.11
THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE:
It is significant that political thought of the early exponents of positive liberty is
associated with the theory of welfare state, which first appeared in England
and then spread to other parts of the world. Positive liberty is now regarded as
an essential complement of negative liberty in all modern states. However,
some contemporary liberal thinkers, known as Libertarians, have sought to lay
renewed emphasis on negative liberty. Of these, Isaiah Berlin (1909-97), F.A.
Hayek (1899-1992), Milton Friedman (1912-2006) and Robert Nozick (1938-
2002) are the most prominent.
11
Isaiah Bern, 2004, Liberty, Oxford, pg. 257
13
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE LIBERTY:
A logical distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty is one that
focuses on the role of the state under different situations. According to this
view, negative liberty consists in the 'absence of restraint', i.e., non-
interference by the state in certain activities of the individual, to enable him to
pursue his own happiness so long as he does not obstruct others in their
similar freedom to pursue their happiness. Positive liberty, on the other hand,
consists in extending the opportunity to the individual to pursue his happiness
where he is obstructed in doing so for want of the means or capacity due to
the prevailing socio-economic conditions.12
NEGATIVE LIBERTY POSITIVE LIBERTY
It defines and defends the area of an It defines area of security where an
individual’s life where no external individual can be free with some
authority can interfere. constraints made by the society and
the government.
It is not concerned with the conditions It is concerned with the enabling
of the society. conditions of the society.
It is concerned with explaining the idea It is concerned with explaining the idea
of ‘freedom from’. of ‘freedom to’.
This area comes into personal domain This area comes into social domain of
of the individual. the individual.
More negative liberty leads to more More positive liberty checks excess of
freedom. freedom to an individual, which could
be an obstruction for social stability.
12
O.P. Gauba, 2010, An Introduction to Political Sci., New Delhi, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., pg. 360
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CONCLUSION:
To sum up, conception of positive and negative freedom had acquired certain
shape before Berlin’s lectures introduced them into political science. Later
discussion concluded that “freedom from” and “freedom to” tend to clash with
each other, as noticed by Isaiah Berlin (1998). However, close link between
them cannot be denied. For instance, in order to ensure the freedom of
education, the state needs to both restrict forcing foreign ideas of education
(negative freedom) as well as provide means to be able to provide education
according to one’s needs and wishes (positive freedom). Another example is
freedom of religion in which case not only does restriction of favouring any
religion need to be implemented, but also measures to freely practice one’s
chosen religion have to be introduced. The third example is freedom of speech
as the negative freedom stance is that nobody should restrict one’s efforts to
speak their mind and positive freedom adds that one’s efforts to do so should
be assisted.
Every modern political ideology needs to establish their position to the
mentioned freedoms and does so through their political programmes. As a rule
of thumb, the left of the political spectrum holds positive liberty in high
remarks while the right focuses the most on negative aspect of freedom. In the
case of two main parties in America, Democratic and Republican, the former
advocates for positive liberty while the latter calls for respecting and
preserving negative freedom. As it was mentioned earlier throughout the
project, positive and negative freedom need to be balanced since overload of
positive freedom tends to lean towards totalitarian notions while insufficient
both negative and positive liberty leads to social inequality and as a result,
social unrest and dissatisfaction with the state governing a given country.
Taking those aspects into consideration, one may question and argue where
the balance between those two aspects of freedom is. The answer is not easy
and requires in-depth analysis of both economic health of a country as well as
the transparency of its procedures and actions.13
13
[Link]
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
BOOKS:
1. Gauba, O.P., 2010, An Introduction to Political Science, New Delhi,
Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.
2. Kapur, A.C., 2016, Principles of Political Science, New Delhi, S. Chand and
Co.
3. Heywood, Andrew, 2017, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, London,
Red Globe Press.
4. Heywood, Andrew, 2002, Politics, New York, Palgrave.
5. Isaiah Berlin, 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty, Clarendon Press.
6. John Locke, 2012, Second Treatise of Government, C.B. McPherson,
Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge.
7. Isaiah Bern, 2004, Liberty, Oxford.
ARTICLES:
1. Maria Dimova-Cookson, 2020, Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty,
Global Intellectual History.
2. Steven J. Heyman, 1992, Positive and Negative Liberty, 68 CHI.-KENT L.
REV. 81.
WEBSITES:
1. [Link]
2. [Link]
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