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Distinguish Between Positive and Negative Freedom

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Thomas Barlow

Distinguish between positive and negative freedom

Freedom is the ability to think or act as one wishes in a capacity that can associated with the individual, social group or a nation. Both Modern and Classical Liberals believe in freedom and promote individual autonomy, however don’t believe in unlimited freedom as this may affect other people’s liberties. Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between negative freedom and positive freedom in his book ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. Since this, Classical liberals have endorsed Negative Freedom. While Modern Liberals revised their view of freedom and supports Positive Freedom.

The negative view advocates freedom with regard to independence of an individual from interference by institutions or governments, and fundamentally the absence of eternal restrictions or constraints upon the individual. Berlin argued that "I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others”. It follows that the human incapacity to attain a goal, is not lack of political freedom. This is not to say, however, that state intervention in the form of economic management or social welfare can never be justified, but only that it cannot be justified in terms of freedom. Locke, for example, is normally thought of as one of the fathers or classical liberalism and therefore as a staunch defender of the negative concept of freedom. He indeed states explicitly that freedom is to be free from restraint and violence from others’.

Positive freedom, by contrast, refers either to self-mastery or self-realisation, is linked to the achievement of autonomy and the development of human capacities. From the perspective of positive freedom, freedom is typically constrained by social

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