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Positive Liberty

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Should the Government Promote Positive Liberty?

The idea of liberty, or freedom, varies between different theorists. One theorist, Isaiah Berlin, focused on the difference between two different ways of thinking about political liberty (Cherniss & Hardy, 2010). Berlin called these two different concepts negative and positive liberty. According to Berlin, negative freedom can be defined as ‘freedom from’, that is, freedom from constraint or interference of others. In contrast, positive freedom can be defined in two ways: ‘freedom to’, that is the ability to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to the dependence on others (Cherniss & Hardy, 2010). Keeping the idea of positive liberty at the forefront, this essay will focus on what positive liberty is and whether the government should promote it.
As already mentioned, positive liberty can be defined as the ‘freedom to’ (Cherniss & Hardy, 2010). Smith (2008) adds that positive liberty is “the idea of self-government”. Under positive liberty, a person may decide how they wish to live, but they may unconsciously conform to the beliefs of society, religion or their parents (Smith, 2008). Positive liberty asks the question of “Who, or what, is the source of control or interference?” (Garner et al., 2012). Positive liberty therefore emphasizes the source of control, rather than the area of control associated with negative liberty (Garner, Ferdinand & Lawsom, 2012).
Positive liberty is the view that freedom consists of living a certain type of lifestyle or being a certain type of person (Carter, 2008). In contrast to negative liberty, which focuses on lack of constraint or coercion, positive freedom focuses on people realizing a certain goal or attaining a certain lifestyle (Haworth, 1991). For example, religious people who restrict their activities in order to

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