Positive freedom creates schizophrenia-like symptoms as it divides the proponent into a part that dominates and a part that submits. Free to be self-directed, as it seeks freedom for its true or preferred self to be one’s own master has traditionally taken one of two paths to independence: self-abnegation and self-realization or “total self-identification with a specific principle or ideal”.
In the case of self-abnegation, one wishes to become one’s own master, but circumstances prevent one from achieving self-mastery to the degree sought. Such a person may say to themselves “I must liberate myself from desires that I know I cannot realise… I choose to avoid defeat… I determine myself not to desire what is unattainable”. Such a person shrinks their expectations of freedom. “This is the traditional self-emancipation of ascetics and quietists, of stoics or Buddhist sages, men [and women] of various religions or of none, who have fled the world, and escaped the yoke of society or public opinion, by some process of deliberate self-transformation that enables them to care no longer for any of its values”. In short, it is an attempt to no longer be vulnerable. It is a quest for security, for control over a minimum of that which can be conceivably controlled. “All political isolationism, all economic autarky, every form of autonomy, has in it some element of this attitude.”
Immanuel Kant, most famously proposed a modern version of this doctrine when he described freedom as purposely choosing the constraints imposed from outside: “I identify myself with the controller and escape the slavery of the controlled….Freedom is obedience”. These are the people who routinely vote for their oppression and/or against their best interest. In the extreme these are the people, like Victor Frankel, that can be happy in a concentration camp. Utilitarian rulers love these kind of people because they respond very favourably to carrot and stick manipulation techniques. In the best case this positive freedom of self-abnegation can give great strength in hard times; in middle cases it is the survivalist mentality; in the worst cases people become the useful idiots of repression.
Psychologically speaking, this schizophrenic condition in which a person hates a part of themselves (often called the lower or base part) and identifies with only a deemed positive part of themselves (one’s higher or true nature) is a creed that is found at the very heart of liberal individualism just as much as negative freedom is there. “The doctrine that maintains that what I cannot have I must teach myself not to desire, that a desire eliminated, or successfully resisted, is as good as a desire satisfied, is a sublime, but, it seems to me, unmistakable, form of the doctrine of sour grapes: what I cannot be sure of, I cannot truly want.”
Positive freedom as self-abnegation is diametrically opposed to negative freedom. Where negative freedom is concerned with preserving a scope or frontier of non-interference this positive freedom is a favorite of enlightened tyrants and advertiser. “If the tyrant (or ‘hidden persuader’) manages to condition his subjects (or customers) into losing their original wishes and embracing (‘internalising’) the form of life he has invented for them, he will, on this definition, have succeeded in liberating them. He will, no doubt, have made them feel free…But what he has created is the very antithesis of political freedom.” This attitude is seductive because it can offer a feeling of security and freedom – it can even help you survive a very difficult situation. “Ascetic self-denial may be a source of integrity or serenity and spiritual strength, but it is difficult to see how it can be called an enlargement of liberty.”
A proponent of negative freedom would counter the positive self-abnegation creed of freedom in three ways. First, the positive quest for security can only end in death – death is the point at which one cannot be hurt anymore: perfect security. Death is not the point or end of freedom. Second, self-abnegation is one way of overcoming obstacles, but there is a better way. It is also possible by to overcome obstacles so by removing them: in the case of non-human objects, by physical action; in the case of human resistance, by force or persuasion. Force here should include wars of conquest such as for example in WWII after the point in which the Allies made the decision go beyond merely liberating conquered territories and to invade, conquer, force the unconditional capitulation and occupation of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan. That decision was a successful endeavor to destroy 3 national ethnic groups in whole or in part. WWII was a just war and a proper use of force in the fight to preserve negative freedoms. Third, it is a great but uncomfortable truth that force and violence (or just their threat) can maintain or produce greater amounts of freedom in both senses. “It is an irony of history that this truth is repudiated by some of those who practise it most forcibly, men who, even while they conquer power and freedom of action, reject the ‘negative’ concept of it in favour of its ‘positive’ counterpart. Their view rules over half our world”: positive freedom as self-realization.
Positive freedom as self-realization is similar to its self-negation counterpart in that it too seeks independence by the elimination of desires but differs in that it the only way to know what to do is through reason and knowledge. In such a way adherents of positive freedom also identify with their oppressors but they put a positive spin on it. Two examples that routinely are drawn on by supporters are in music and in math. A mathematician is free and happy when he or she follows the rules and solves a problem; like wise a musician is free and happy when they have learned a piece and mastered it within the rules. Thus, the greatest amount of freedom and happiness comes from understanding the rules of life and society. “What applies to music or mathematics must, we are told, in principle apply to all other obstacles which present themselves as so many lumps of external stuff blocking free self-development. That is the program of enlightened rationalism from Spinosa to the latest (at times unconscious) disciples of Hegel.” These disciples of Hegel are not only all the followers of Marx and Lenin but also scientific determinists – those who believe that scientific knowledge can inform us of what is possible and impossible and with that knowledge we will not waste our time on what is impossible. “Knowledge liberates not by offering us more open possibilities amongst which we can make our choice, but by preserving us from the frustration of attempting the impossible…. That is the metaphysical heart of rationalism.” The internal logic of such a mind continues: “I am a rational being; whatever I can demonstrate to myself as being necessary, as incapable of being otherwise in a rational society – that is, in a society directed by rational minds, towards goals such as a rational being would have – I cannot, being rational, wish to sweep out of my way. I assimilate it into my substance as I do the laws of logic, of mathematics, of physics, the rules of art, the principles that govern everything of which I understand, and therefore will”. This total self-identification with reason is pervasive in all societies today and yet there is huge differences, distrust, and arguments between east and west as well as within each block.
Positive freedom would be just a personality quark if it were just applied to one’s inner life. As a mater of course all of its proponents eventually come to ask: how do we order society to maximize the rationality of society; rationality being connected with the maximum of freedom. “The common assumption of these thinkers [Spinoza, Montesquieu, Kant, Burke, Rousseau, Marx etc.] is that the rational ends of our ‘true’ natures must coincide, or be made to coincide, however violently our poor, ignorant, desire-ridden, passionate, empirical selves may cry out against this process...To force empirical selves into the right pattern is no tyranny, by liberation.” The common practical solution proposed was always some form of public education. The uncomfortable truth that follows a support for public education is that some people do know better than others and therefore should be in a place of at least authority if not power over others who are not so rational or knowledgeable. Everyone who supports public education comes to some sense that compulsion is education, that “If you cannot understand your own interest as a rational being, I cannot be expected to consult you, or abide by your wishes, in the course of making you rational. I must, in the end force you to be protected against smallpox, even though you may not wish it.” This is the basic justification used by all adherents of positive freedom as self-realization from the kindest public school teacher to the most brutal dictator. The sidebar development of this line of thought is the prevalence of rule by experts. Over varying degrees we are ruled by experts of law, health, safety, ethics, etc.
How is it that for over 2000 years of the western tradition in ethics and politics the quest for freedom as self-realization has always led to an end in despotism? Four ultimately false but seductively compelling assumptions are at the root of this problem: 1) everyone has one true purpose: rational self-direction; 2) contradictions are indications of error therefore all rational people will “fit into a single universal, harmonious pattern”; 3) conflict and error are due to lack of knowledge and/or understanding 4) when people become fully rational in a rational world, each and every one will be perfectly law abiding and perfectly free.