Philosophy of Positive Liberty - Essay Example

In many ways it is easy to interpret the philosophy of positive liberty as a critique of negative liberty - which is as it was formulated. Negative liberty, as it is often characterized by liberalism and those who support this interpretation of freedom, is generally the notion that freedom - which is most commonly recognized as a political ideal to aspire to - is a quality that should be maximized by the individual, and that any system of government is morally obligated to impinge upon this freedom as little as possible or not at all. Positive freedom-based theories point out a very obvious weakness of this position; namely, that one of the activities that most often limits the freedom of some individuals is the expression of freedom in others and as well as within themselves. This is a problem for political theorists because while it seems relatively straightforward to argue in favor of limiting political power in the name of liberty, it is not at all straightforward how to limit individual liberties in the name of, well, individual liberties. So, doubtlessly, the concepts of positive liberty and negative liberty are inexorably linked; yet it is difficult to truly contend that positive liberty is a comprehensive critique of negative liberty, or, more pointedly, that they are incompatible at all. Broadly, positive liberty and negative liberty are simply different sides of the same coin. Liberty - as a pure concept or an ideal - can come in many forms or varieties. And even if we choose to only accept the notion of individualistic freedom as the foundation of our political philosophies, we still must admit that defining it in terms of either all that an individual is capable of or all that an individual is permitted to do comprise merely opposite ends of a wide range of controls upon an individual's ability to act freely. In the real world, for example, we find a hybrid of these two extreme views - and this is true regardless of which nation or society in which a person lives. A person in the United Kingdom who lives in poverty, for example, has his freedoms limited by laws, by the extension of other people's freedoms, and by his own internal inclinations. He may be prevented from killing his neighbor's barking dog simply because it is illegal to do so; meanwhile, he may be prevented from traveling to New York City simply because the distribution of wealth is such that others can do this while he cannot; and, at the same time, he may be prevented from reading Kant because he is unable to read. Ultimately, the reason why the concept of positive liberty is not a comprehensive critique of negative liberty is that while one is concerned with the limitations on individual freedom imposed by an abstract governing force, the other subject to the limitations on individual freedom imposed an individual's mental circumstances, which are often external as well. This makes it troublesome to argue that the two theories are fundamentally incompatible; they may be virtually impossible to reconcile in a coherent political theory, but they actually exist, in practice, on a daily basis in the real world. In other words, to say that positive liberty does not exist is to deny the innate inequalities and limitations of human beings - which will be assumed to exist in this paper - but on the other hand, to deny the existence of negative liberty is to deny the existence of social or political controls. So while it may be impossible to ground a political philosophy in some combination of these ideas - the importance of which Berlin convincingly points out - it is certainly possible that both ideas can be used as lenses through which to perceive the actual functioning of any society that exists or could ever be expected to exist. Berlin describes positive freedom in the following manner: "The 'positive' sense of the word 'liberty' derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind."1 This way of characterizing freedom recognizes that even in the complete absence of external limitations that have been placed on my actions by other individuals, there may still be limitations placed upon me by the environment or even my own irrational tendencies. If I happen to have an addiction of some kind - whether to cigarettes, poker or whatever - then the actions that are truly "free" for me to choose are not the same as they would be without the imposition of these qualities. In this way, Berlin argues, it is not realistic for enlightened thinkers to truly say that they know what is best for others and that these others do not - out of ignorance, perhaps - because people may be subject to irrational desires that the external world cannot every fully comprehend. Furthermore, this manner of formulating a theory of liberty seems to automatically segregate itself from the common negative understanding of what liberty may be in the philosophical realm: "While theorists of negative freedom are primarily interested in the degree to which individuals or groups suffer interference from external bodies, theorists of positive freedom are more attentive to the internal factors affecting the degree to which individuals or groups act autonomously."2 This immediately presents a problem for anyone contending that positive liberty - and its associated conclusions - truly offers any sort of critique of negative liberty. Ultimately, this is because positive liberty is forced to relegate itself to the realm of cognitive science or psychology. And at the same time, political philosophies - most often - attempt to ignore these characteristics of humankind specifically because they cannot be significantly altered or controlled. In other words, a man who is slave to his heroine addiction can only be expected to be given a full capacity to explore that addiction through lack of limitations on his freedom, but nothing more. He cannot, from a political perspective, be freed of this coercive capacity simply because it is internal to himself. Pointing out this clear difference between positive and negative freedom has been the most often utilized method for contending that the positive version of liberty fails to offer a solid critique of negative liberty. However, as Berlin points out, even if the characteristics of these coercive traits are largely internal, recognizing their existence can easily - and perhaps frighteningly - be turned into a tool of oppression. Subsequent analysts of Berlin's essay have recognized this as well: "When the 'higher' self is identified with institutions, churches, nations, races, and so forth, the doctrine of positive freedom turns into a doctrine of authority, or at times, of oppression."3 Broadly, this is drawn from the fact that a mechanism of authority - be it a king, a military ruler or even a democratic government - could recognize these internal weaknesses in the masses and argue that it knows what is best for its subjects, even if its subjects do not know themselves. In this way, notions of positive liberty can be utilized to justify extreme incursions against negative liberty. George Orwell portrays this scenario exceedingly well when he writes, "I express your real wishes. You may think that you know what you want, but I, the Fhrer, we, the Party Central Committee, know you better than you know yourself, and provide you with what you would ask for if you recognized your 'real' needs."4 Accordingly, it is not difficult to contend that positive freedom and its associated theories actually have real-life importance to political philosophy. Yet to argue that it offers a full-scale critique is problematic, simply because most political philosophers are still quite likely to believe that minimizing social or political controls on individual's actions should be the foundation of supporting overall liberty. And even in the face of the positive theory's critique, this fundamental premise remains largely unchanged. Many theorists have recognized that notions of liberty have alternated between these two versions of liberty through history; emphasizing one as more important than the other, and then, more recently, falling upon negative liberty as the dominant perspective through which to view political philosophy. It has been common to argue that historical trends have influenced the dominance of negative liberty over positive liberty more directly than the idea that one interpretation is truly superior to the other. Some argued that traditional forms of moral and social stability were desiccating in the light of corruption, economics, science, and the pursuit of power during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Durkheim makes this notion explicit when he writes that modern development "has swept cleanly away all the older forms of organization. One after another they have disappeared either through the slow erosion of time or through great disturbance, but without being replaced."5 Perhaps the most famous formulation of this historical degradation was put forward by Nietzsche. He also connected the progression of history with a movement towards disorder and subjectivity, though he justified this on differing grounds. He believed that the fundamental truths arrived at by Western thought were nothing but the evaporating remnants of objective reality. Thought itself, to Nietzsche, had aided in the degeneration of general truth. This form of argument is made most explicit in The Anti-Christ, in which he puts forward his famous argument displaying the progressive degradation of Christ as a reliable image of spirituality. Yet, even though many great thinkers of Durkheim's time addressed the same moral and sociological troubles with modern times, Durkheim remained quite unique in the solution he saw to this problem. He was convinced that a reestablishment of social authority could come about through the assertion of specific economic groups; these would encourage interdependence and solidarity. Ultimately he believed, "No form of community or association we participate in can remain for long external to us."6 This is significant because he simultaneously believed that society continually made ordinary things into sacred entities; accordingly, if these economic institutions survive, then they can form a moral base for society. Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, in particular, placed virtually no faith in the role of corporations to fill the void; and overall, Durkheim's ray of hope is very exclusive to his line of reasoning. The hope the Dostoyevsky finds is faith in Christ. Dostoyevsky's philosophical position with relationship to religion made it difficult for him to reach any ultimate conclusions regarding the truth of faith. Dostoyevsky is at once the innocent child, seeking for a reason to believe in Christ, and the impartial pragmatist who questions the functioning of the Church and his own faith.7 Yet, he clings to the image of Christ-his infinite kindness, compassion, and love-in the face of demonstrative assertions made against Christianity. Durkheim seems to be sympathetic towards religion for this same capacity; yet he remains emphatically secular, possibly because of the historical trends that Nietzsche illustrates. Similarly, Karl Marx argued that society was replacing established norms of morality with a vacuum - which might be interpreted as being the ultimate expression of liberty from the negative point of view. Marx, however, took the reverse of Durkheim's approach to the topic of human reality. He held that human knowledge automatically begins from our experiences with the outside world-from our sensations and perceptions-consequently, interaction between man, the situation, and the material object is what conglomerates to form reality. Therefore, by contrast to Durkheim, objective truth is not utterly attainable-as with Durkheim's notion of "society"-because these perspectives are so fundamentally unique to each individual. This premise leads Marx to the conclusion that previous philosophers were merely successful in describing the world, but the task implied by his materialistic views is that the setting in which human reality plays itself out needs to be changed if the goal is to improve human life.8 So, it is reasonable to wonder specifically why Durkheim's analysis of society has been both celebrated and broadly unaccepted. Certainly, he situated himself both philosophically and sociologically in good company. Though differentiating himself from many of the other scholars who began with similar premises, many today argue that his works deserve a new look within the context of modern society. After all, the underlying question that Durkheim's writing brought to light remains contentious: what is the specific balance between state power and cultural norms that make stable society possible According to Durkheim, "State and civil society enjoy roughly equal amounts of power; if either one were in a position to dominate the other, the political tension or balance between them would be upset."9 This idea might be interpreted as suggesting that individual, subjective beliefs and actions tend to balance the institutions granted direct control over society; but in fact, Durkheim believed that the true society possesses a delicate network of norms and collective assumptions that make coexistence possible. This balance seems to make democratic society reasonably attractive. After all, although the state retains the right to violently subjugate revolutions, the fact that it fundamentally refrains from doing so implies that the abstract ideologies of democracy hold substantial sway over members of society, such that the populous understands the natural limits of social behavior. Additionally, his repeated rejection of psychology as a source of understanding social truths automatically paints a picture of mankind as a mass easily swayed by one political movement or another, and categorically denies the existence of positive liberty. Essentially, it is Durkheim's position that the lack of widely accepted moral norms in society leaves the door open for new-and possibly detrimental-philosophical or religious notions to take hold. These notions, in turn, could became the "sacred" norms of society; also, since they may be lacking in tradition, they could have unforeseen or disastrous consequences. It would be tempting to disagree with Durkheim's seemingly simplistic view of the individual moral conscious within the context of society, but history demands otherwise. The social conditions that facilitated the Jewish Holocaust must be seen through the lens of Durkheim's holistic theory. Anti-Semitism had ancient beginnings throughout Europe, but the Nazi's added a more modern scientific twist to these long-held beliefs: "The adversary is not Judaism, but Jewish genes. Nazism inverts the crucial diagnosis: the carrier of pollution is not ideology, religious dogmatism, discrete beliefs in and about God, it is, instead, the carnal being of the Jew, his or her very physical presence, that incorporates the ontological and normative antitheses of history and metahistory."10 It could be argued that with the loss of moral or religious conscience that followed the First World War, a willingness to embrace new and flawed social philosophies filled the void needed for social solidarity in Germany. So the Jew, to many German citizens, became something that was loathsome because of the new moral philosophy that excluded him from the German social environment. Obviously, there have been many lessens to be taken from the Jewish Holocaust; perhaps one of them, with respect to sociology, should be that Durkheim formulated a workable model for economically and politically based social stabilizers and their associated philosophies. Nevertheless, it remains unclear precisely what variables are involved for such a detrimental outcome to come about. For instance, can such moral breakdowns be seen as causally related to low levels of social integration Or should they be understood as consequences of high social integration and, therefore, social consciousness The answer does not seem apparent. Using Durkheim's own methodology, either end of the spectrum could be argued with respect to Nazi Germany. Yet, if the first position is taken-that low social integration can lead to grievous breeches of morality-then should we be concerned for our current form of society Since we live in a world where people can lead their lives without any meaningful interpersonal relationships, there remains the possibility that all social truths may be revealed as fallacies. Already by the mid portion of the twentieth century, many leading scholars were formulating their own answers to the questions raised by Durkheim. Albert Camus, in particular, sought to reassert the moral position of the human being in spite of the apparently arbitrary political forces to which he routinely ascribes. Camus believed that throughout history, man has made the world his place of slaughter. Nevertheless, he emphatically asserts that although rational approaches to the world have repeatedly been used to justify human slaughter, they fail to coincide with the humanistic qualities determined and demanded by existence itself.11 To be a human, then, is to be compassionate towards other humans; so we must all use our freedom to revolt against those factors that limit humanity. In other words, Camus attempted to address Durkheim's idea that social truth consists of moral norms, and lays the foundation for a humanistic set of values, unassailable by competing values or powerful political leaders. In this light, the existentialist movement can be understood as a reaction to the troubling balance between civil society and government illustrated by Durkheim. Overall, these conceptions of political philosophy present a fascinating lens through which to view liberty. In general, almost every ancient and early modern western philosopher has attempted to rationally construct foundations for human society. Necessarily, all of these notions have rested upon each philosopher's conceptions of the way human beings interact, their internal tendencies, their moral obligations to each other, and their relationship with the infinite. For each, out of these understandings grows a political system that facilitates appropriate human actions. In short, every philosophical political structure must adequately compliment the moral status of the individual. Although Thomas Paine was not the first to arrive at the basic premises of humankind's rights, he was one of the most gifted speakers and essayists to bring these philosophical ideals to the general populous. The major distinctions between these three perspectives can be seen in the nature of the social contract once a society has been formed. To Rousseau, once a social agreement has been formed it is possible for all the constituents of that society to be upon equal ground-with no distinctions between the rulers and the citizens.12 Locke, however, contends that a society will become obligated to elect a representative government that merely exists so long as it adheres to the trust of the people.13 Hobbes believes that a society's best interests can be carried out by positioning an all-powerful sovereign who accurately represents the wants of the citizenry. Paine, ultimately, was more concerned with righting the injustices he directly perceived in his time. Because of this, his philosophy is lacking in a straightforward definition of the natural law, but still exhibits the strong ties between him and philosophers like Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes. But this historical weight of these theories must nonetheless be grounded in negative forms of freedom, and it seems that these early political theorists at least subconsciously recognized this. This approach is almost essential because although it may be important to realize that human beings are not purely rational beings, and my be slaves to their own desires, this cannot form the foundation of any workable political - or even social - theory. Furthermore, positive conceptions of freedom run the additional risk of devolving into theories emphasizing the environment or setting within which decisions are made by the individual. In social theory, it is certainly valid to argue that a child born in the slums of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. probably is less free - he has fewer choices of how to act open to him - than a child born into the Windsor family in the U.K. This is largely obvious. However, this basic idea can be extrapolated to assert that a child born with certain mental tendencies - which could be termed a mental setting, as opposed to a environmental, social or economic setting - is less free than a child born with other mental tendencies or capacities. In the modern word, is it then desirable to insist that every child born must possess the same mental capabilities in order to maximize freedom in such a manner Although such an interpretation may seem to be yet another manner in which positive freedom may critique negative freedom, in fact, it emphasizes a weakness of positive freedom as a truly workable political theory. Specifically, this is because there is no obvious place to draw the line when it comes to an individual's environment or setting and maximizing freedom in the positive liberty perspective. Do we stop at eliminating the use of behavior-altering drugs, such as heroine, so everyone can be free of that hindrance Or do we stop at manipulating the genetic codes of our descendents to make everyone's access to decision-making as equal as possible In short, adopting positive freedom as a doctrine begins society down the path of a slippery slope. Meanwhile, negative liberty perspectives have a clear answer of where we stop: We only concern ourselves with the external. Works Cited: Berlin, Isaiah. "Two Concepts of Liberty." In Isaiah Berlin's Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. 1950. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Random House. Liberty - Contemporary Conceptions. Net Industries, 2009. Available: http://science.jrank.org/pages/9967/Liberty-Contemporary-Conceptions.html. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. London: Everyman Publishing, 1993. Nisbet, Robert A. 1975. The Sociology of Emile Durkheim. London: Heinemann. Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Roth, John K. 1992. Great Thinkers of the Western World. New York: Harper Collins. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "The Social Contract." Social Contract. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Positive and Negative Liberty." SEP, 2009. Available: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/. Strathern, Paul. 2001. Marx in 90 Minutes. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publishers. Werner, Gregory P. 1997. "The Historical Roots of Anti-Semitism." International Journal of Social Education. v. 12 no. 2. (Fall/Winter): 46-59. Read More