A common utopian mistake is the notion that if we can at least agree on political ends or goals then the only discussion left is means; and means arguments, being technical, are reduced to those kind of arguments that engineers or doctors have: professional expert debate, that is, ones in which disagreement will, once enough time is put into the problem, result in conclusions that will be nearly identical by all who will look into it. Academia, in 1958, seems to have assumed that we can agree on political ends even though the world was locked in a struggle of political theory between East and West. This struggle “is being fought between two systems of ideas which return different and conflicting answers to what has long been the central question of politics – the question of obedience and coercion.” This question is doubly important since we are unlikely to understand our own attitudes and activities without clarity on this issue.
To coerce is to take away freedom. To understand what is this “freedom” that is lost, the author will “call the ‘negative’ sense [of freedom that which], is involved in the answer to 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?’ The second, which I shall call ‘positive’ sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What, or who is the source of control of interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?’”
In the first case, negative freedom, the big evil is coercion: the deliberate interference with human beings in an area that they could or should normally act freely. This ranges from direct physical violence to a situation which prevent you from achieving your goal – that is, direct and indirect frustration of goals by humans is coercion: from assault and war to concepts of economic slavery. (Note, that if humans are not involved, we do not think the frustration of our goals is a lack of freedom, i.e. not being able to fly or walk on water). “The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will does, said Rousseau. The criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes. By being free in this [negative] sense I mean not being interfered with by others.”
However, since freedom is not the only value, many philosophers are willing to “curtail [negative] freedom in the interests of other values and, indeed, of freedom itself. For, without this, it was impossible to create the kind of association that they thought desirable. Consequently, it is assumed by these thinkers that the area of men’s free action must be limited by law. But equally it is assumed…that there ought to exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated….a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority.” The most optimistic philosophers such as Rousseau, John Locke, John Stuart Mill conceived of a frontier that should maximize the private sphere and minimize the public sphere; while others such as Thomas Hobbes argued for the reverse: a frontier that minimized the private freedoms while maximizing public authority. This frontier has clearly changed over time. Hobbes having lived during the insecurity of the English civil wars clearly saw the worst of unrestrained human freedom in action while John Stuart Mill living safely during the Pax Britannica and during unprecedented growth in living standards in Britain would naturally value personal autonomy much higher than Hobbes. They disagreed with the line’s demarcation; they agreed on the line.
What necessarily follows from having a frontier to this negative sense of freedom is that “the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others.” This is because the law that demarcates this frontier is conceived as a universal (even if it fails sometimes – its goal and object is universal) but the diversity of humans and their situations and stations in life means that the equal application of a universal law on unequal people necessitates that there cannot be an equality of liberty. This should be both a painful and thankful realization. Painful because it feel somehow unjust that liberty is not equally distributed and thankful because most of us find ourselves on both sides of the frontier from time to time as we occasionally break the law (but hopeful not too much). Further, when this inequality of freedom happens between classes of people, one might feel shame, but giving up one’s freedom to share in the lot of the less free is not a solution since it reduces the absolute amount of freedom. This frontier between the private and public spheres is always a political compromise. The argument for negative freedom that is “the argument for keeping authority at bay is always substantially the same. We must preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature’. We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest.” Among the tools used to argue for a particular demarcation are: Natural Law (by early renaissance philosophers – adaptations of church and ancient philosophers), Natural Rights (Thomas Hobbes and America’s founding fathers), Utility (the utilitarians), a categorical imperative (Immanuel Kant), or social contract theory (Rousseau). “[L]iberty in this sense means liberty from; absence of interference beyond the shifting, but always recognisable, frontier….The defence of liberty consists in the ‘negative’ goal of warding off interference….This is liberty as it has been conceived by liberals in the modern world from the days of Erasmus (some would say of Occam) to our own. Every plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organised propaganda, springs from this individualistic and much disputed, conception of man.”
Three issues that are often ignored or glossed over by proponents of negative freedom are, first that not all coercion is bad. This is especially so when it leads to greater freedom. Second, negative freedom as expressed in the modern world is a new idea historically. It dates to the renaissance and was not held in the Middle Ages or the ancient world. Nor was it held in any of the traditions of China, India, Persia, or the Moslem worlds. Third, “Liberty in this [negative] sense is principally concerned with the area of control, not with its source.” In other words, negative liberty is not conditional on any sort of government – it is quite conceivable that totalitarian dictatorships may allow for a wider frontier of personal freedom than a democracy. As we shall see when we look at positive freedom, this claim may be more true the more positive freedom is in place. “For it is this, the ‘positive’ conception of liberty, not freedom from, but freedom to – to lead one prescribed form of life – which the adherents for the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny.”
“The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master….of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realising them…I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world.” The negative and positive senses may sound similar but they evolved in very divergent directions. Positive freedom is much older and can be seen in many cultures around the world. It has Buddhist and Platonic roots with the notion of being one’s own master and liberating oneself from slavery, be it slavery of spirit, nature, society, passions or vices. “Have not men had the experience of liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature, and do they not in the course of it become aware, on the one hand, of a self which dominates, and, on the other, of something in them which is brought to heel? This dominate self is then variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher nature’, with the self which calculates…, with my ‘real’, or ‘ideal’, or ‘autonomous’ self ‘at its best’” which is then contrasted with my base or lower nature. Every time that a good that requires the elimination of a bad is identified a proscriptive political agenda is implied. This is a very seductive train of thought in practice because “we recognise that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing other for their own sake, in their, not my, interest. I am claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational and as wise as I and understood their interests as I do. Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, to oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, performance of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfillment) must be identical with his freedom.” Despite the flaws and this idea’s bloody history it retains its extremely compelling power. This desire to be master of oneself, to get to the true self has historically taken one of two paths: self-abnegation or self-realization.