Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
T h e Lib e r t y Re a d e r
13 Routledge
Taylor & Francis Croup
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2006 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an rnjorma business
Copyright © 2006, Taylor & Francis.
Parts of this book were originally published as Liberty by Oxford University Press
in 1991.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Introduction i
David Miller
1. Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract 2i
T. H. Green
2. Two Concepts of Liberty 33
Isaiah Berlin
3. Freedom and Politics 58
Hannah Arendt
4. Freedom and Coercion 80
F. A. Hayek
5. Negative and Positive Freedom 100
Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
6. Individual Liberty I23
Hillel Steiner
7. W hat’s Wrong with Negative Liberty i4 i
Charles Taylor
8. Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat i63
G. A. Cohen
9. Constraints on Freedom i83
David Miller
10. Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 200
NancyJ. Hirschmann
11. The Republican Ideal of Freedom 223
Philip Pettit
12. A Third Concept of Liberty 243
Quentin Skinner
Index 267
v
In t r o d u c t io n
David Miller
1
2 David Miller
as those referred to previously. Th ere cannot be a purely philo
sophical analysis of liberty, even though philosophical analysis
can help us think m ore clearly and avoid confusing liberty with
other political values such as justice or dem ocracy.1
I have chosen essays composed in the last hundred or so years—
chosen on grounds of their intellectual quality, but also to reflect
a wide range of views about what liberty means and how it can
be achieved—but thinking about liberty goes back m uch further
in time. We can better understand these contributions by placing
them in the context of longer-standing traditions of thought about
liberty. There are three m ain traditions, which I shall refer to as
families of ideas, since they do not am ount to three cut-and-dried
conceptions of freedom , but rather are clusters o f ideas held to
gether by a fam ily resem blance am ong their m embers. Moreover,
as I shall illustrate, there can be fruitful interm arriages where an
idea of freedom combines elements from two or even perhaps all
three of these lineages.
Th e first and oldest family, I shall call republican. This is the most
directly political conception of freedom , since it defines freedom
b y reference to a certain set of political arrangements. To be a
free person is to be a citizen o f a free political community. A free
political community, in turn, is one that is self-governing. This
means, first of all, one that is not subject to rule by foreigners,
second, one in which the citizens play an active role in govern
ment, so that the laws that are enacted in some sense reflect the
wishes of the people. Th at does not im ply strict democracy. There
is a long-running fam ily argument about precisely w hich politi
cal arrangements are best suited to preserving liberty, and about
the related question concerning the qualifications necessary for
a person to be a citizen. T h e G reek political philosophers, who
originated this w ay of understanding freedom, generally assumed
that large classes o f people were disqualified from citizenship by
nature or b y social role—wom en, slaves, m anual labourers. So not
everyone was capable of achieving freedom. A gain, the repub
1 The essays are about ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’ (I shall use these terms interchange
ably) in the social-cum-political sense and not about freedom in the metaphysical
sense of freedom of the will, which is indeed a purely philosophical issue. Whether
these two forms of freedom can ultimately be kept separate is itself a disputed ques
tion. This topic is touched upon in the contributions by Arendt and Hayek reprinted
here (chs. 3 and 4, respectively).
Introduction 3
lican tradition as a w hole does not exclude the possibility that
freedom m ight exist in, say, a constitutional monarchy, provided
that the citizens were properly consulted before legislation was
enacted (more radical m em bers of the fam ily would contend that
this is too weak a view of citizenship). T h e opposite of freedom,
in this tradition, is despotism—the arbitrary rule of a tyrant who
disposes of his subjects’ lives and possessions by means that they
are powerless to resist.
T h e second fam ily of views about freedom I shall call liberal.
Freedom here is a property of individuals and consists in the ab
sence of constraint or interference by others. A person is free to
the extent that he is able to do things if he wishes—speak, worship,
travel, m arry—without these actions being blocked or hindered
b y the activities of other people. This conception of freedom is
also directly related to politics, but in a quite different w ay from
the first. In the liberal view, governm ent secures freedom by pro
tecting each person from the interference o f others, but it also
threatens freedom by itself im posing laws and directives backed
up b y the threat o f force. So whereas the republican sees freedom
as being realized through a certain kind of politics, the liberal
tends to see freedom as beginning where politics ends, especially
in various forms of private life. T h e extrem e view here is that of
the anarchist, who holds that freedom can only be fully realized
when the coercive powers of governm ent are destroyed. A s we
shall see, other m em bers of the liberal fam ily have quite different
beliefs about the proper role of governm ent activity—depending
in particular on what they see as constraints on or interferences
with people’s lives—but they all share the view that freedom is a
matter of the scope or extent of governm ent rather than of its
form or character.
Finally, we have those views of freedom that I shall collectively
label idealist. Here the focus shifts from the social arrangements
within which a person lives to the internal forces that determine
how he shall act. A person is free when he is autonomous—when
he follows his own authentic desires, or his rational beliefs about
how he should live. The struggle for freedom is no longer directly
with the external environment, but with elements within the person
himself that thwart his desire to realize his own true nature—weak-
nesses, compulsions, irrational beliefs, and so forth. Now it might
at first seem as though this conception of freedom has nothing to
4 David Miller
do with politics. But a connection is made as soon as the idealist
identifies certain political conditions as necessary for freedom in
this sense—and in the history of political thought such connections
have often been made. However, the political implications of idealist
views of freedom are very diverse indeed; members of this family
often barely acknowledge one another, let alone debate. Some seem
hardly to recognize politics at all, except as a distraction and interfer
ence with a life properly led in artistic spontaneity, in meditation,
and the like.2 Others see political arrangements as providing the
conditions under which individuals m ay achieve their own freedom,
for instance, by encouraging the cultural diversity that alone makes
an authentic choice of lifestyle possible. Yet others see politics as the
means whereby people can be disciplined to follow a rational mode
of life. It is this last possibility that has preoccupied liberal critics of
the idealist conception of freedom. A s they see it, ordinary liberal
freedoms—of speech, movement, and so on—may be sacrificed in the
pursuit of a ‘higher’ form of freedom, as the state eliminates all those
options that it would not be rational for people to choose. Thus, in
the liberal view, there is a close connection between idealism as I have
defined it here and totalitarianism in politics, whether of the Right
(Nazism) or of the Left (Stalinist Communism). This connection is
eloquently spelt out in Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’,
reprinted in this volume (chapter 2). Equally, republicans will claim
that, by turning the spotlight inward and conceiving of freedom as
a condition of the self, idealists neglect those public institutions that
alone safeguard worldly freedom from totalitarian despotism. Han
nah Arendt’s ‘Freedom and Politics’, also reprinted here (chapter 3),
advances this claim.
Later we shall want to ask how far these charges are justified.
Let me now illustrate how a political theorist m ay interbreed from
the different families in the course of w orking out a particular
conception of liberty. Jean Jacques Rousseau drew heavily on
the republican tradition in developing a view of liberty under the
social contract.3 A person is free, he argued, when he is subject
(note 7continued)more adequately the two-sided character of his view of liberty. Skinner is,
however, undoubtedly right in his main contention, that the republican writers did not
invoke a positive view of freedom if that connotes what I have called an idealist view.
8 B. Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Mod
erns,” in B. Constant, Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
Introduction 7
m eaningful and vivid experience for each person. T h e second
point (sometimes overlooked by those wanting to draw straightfor
w ard liberal conclusions from Constant) was that a diluted form
of ancient liberty—diluted through the interposition of a system
of political representation—was nonetheless essential if m odern
liberty was to be secured. Constant warned his compatriots against
being seduced b y private enjoyments away from exercising their
proper share of political power.
Constant’s distinction corresponds almost precisely to the con
trast drawn here between republican and liberal ideas of freedom.
His thesis therefore raises two key questions: is the liberal view
of freedom exclusively a product of the m odern period? Has
the republican tradition any relevance to m odern debates about
liberty, or has it now becom e anachronistic?
A s far as the first question is concerned, Constant’s claim appears
with some qualifications to hold good. A lthough (as he himself
concedes) the ancient city-states, and especially Athens, did in
practice grant their citizens a measure of civil liberty, this was not
the attribute that they prim arily thought of and valued when they
spoke of liberty. Freedom meant for them a social status, first and
foremost the position of someone who was not a slave, but beyond
that the status of citizen in a self-governing state.9 T h e liberal view
first came to the fore at the time of the Renaissance. We have seen
already how republican and liberal ideas of freedom coexisted and
complemented one another in the works of Machiavelli; Hobbes,
writing just over a century later, was able vigorously to repudiate the
republican view as involving a blatant confusion between the free
dom of the commonwealth and the freedom of the individual.10This
was an extreme position, and the tradition of republican liberalism
continued to flourish for m any years to come, but it demonstrates
that a conception of freedom as consisting simply in the absence of
external constraints was no longer unthinkable. C om ing down to
our time, this has becom e the dominant view of liberty in practical
politics and in the writing of m any liberal theorists.
19 These phrases all occur within the space of a single paragraph in Berlin, ‘Two
Concepts of Liberty’, pp. 34-35.
20 Berlin’s formulations cannot be made wholly consistent with one another, but
they may be reconciled to some degree through his claim that our understanding
of freedom will depend upon our beliefs about the causes of the obstacles that lie in
our path; what we count as constraint, in other words, will depend upon our social
theory, which tells us which aspects of our environment are to be regarded as human
artifacts and which as natural conditions.
Introduction 15
There are a number of problems with Hayek’s analysis. It is often
difficult to see what justifies his drawing the boundaries in the places
that he does. Why, for instance, analyze freedom simply in terms of
coercion in the first place? Someone who physically restrains me—
shackles me to a wall, for instance—surely impedes m y freedom just
as much as another who makes me perform some action by issuing
a threat, the paradigm case of coercion. There are difficulties, too,
with the claim that rules of law do not coerce those who are subject
to them—Hayek’s argument here seems to rest on a conceptual er-
ror.21 A number of libertarian critics have pointed out that Hayek’s
claim about liberty and the rule of law overlooks the possibility that
a law might be general and abstract and yet highly restrictive of the
behaviour of those subject to it—consider, for instance, the American
prohibition laws.22 Finally, Hayek appears to put the cat among the
pigeons when he concedes that in certain circumstances economic
power might be used in a coercive manner.23Once the possibility has
been conceded, why restrict the circumstances as narrowly as Hayek
does, confining them to extreme cases where an individual enjoys a
m onopoly of a vital resource? W hy not admit that the distribution of
resources is always going to be relevant to the distribution of negative
liberty in a society?
Both Steiner and Cohen would endorse this last suggestion.24
Steiner’s paper (chapter 6) presents a conception of negative liberty
that is in many respects the direct opposite of Hayek’s. It defines
freedom as ‘the personal possession of physical objects’ and denies
that coercive threats interfere with freedom, since, Steiner argues,
such threats make courses of action less desirable without making
them impossible to follow. This view descends directly from Hobbes,
who, as we saw earlier, was the first to present an unequivocally lib
eral or negative concept of freedom. Hobbes defined liberty as the
21 See D. Miller, Market, State, and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market So
cialism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989), chapter i, s. 2, and C. Kukathas, Hayek
and Modern Liberalism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989), chapter 4, s. 4, for two
slightly different diagnoses of where the error lies.
22 See especially R. Hamowy, ‘Freedom and the Rule of Law in F. A. Hayek’, Il
politico 36 ( 1971), 349- 377; J. N. Gray, ‘Hayek on Liberty, Rights and Justice’, Ethics
92 (i98i - i 984 73- 84.
23 See his discussion of the water monopolist in The Constitution of Liberty (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, i 960), chapter 9, s. 3, reprinted here as ‘Freedom and
Coercion’, chapter 4, s. 2.3.
24 As would P. Jones, ‘Freedom and the Redistribution of Resources’, Journal of
Social Policy ii (1982), 217- 238, and Miller, Market, State, and Community, chapter i.
16 David Miller
absence of external impediments to motion, and Steiner likewise
argues that B only impinges on A ’s freedom when he renders one or
more of A ’s actions impossible by controlling the physical space in
which it could occur.
This conception of liberty has a number of advantages deriving
from the clear and robust notion of constraint that it embodies.
We can establish whether a person is at liberty to perform some ac
tion without making any assumptions about their psychology—for
example, about the deterrent effect on them of legal sanctions or
threats of other kinds. We are never placed in the somewhat awk
ward position of having to say that a person was not free to do what
they have actually done, as we are by more conventional negative
conceptions.25 A n d Steiner’s view allows us to compute the extent
of a person’s liberty simply by summing up the objects he controls,26
thus avoiding the difficulties faced by Berlin, for instance, in making
such a computation,27 and which critics of the negative view such as
Charles Taylor seize upon as a way of dislodging it.28
Corresponding to these advantages, however, are some major
drawbacks. The impossibility criterion seems too restrictive a way
of characterizing human freedom. W hat if someone prevents me
from embarking upon a course of action by threatening m y life if I
proceed with it? Is my freedom not diminished here, even though I
do of course still make a choice in complying with the threat? A nd
is it not equally strange to conclude, as Steiner does, that the total
amount of freedom present in a society can never be increased or
decreased, but only distributed in different ways? The physicalist
approach advocated by Steiner appears in the end to detach the
concept of liberty too radically from assumptions about human aims
and purposes that normally give point to that concept.
Cohen (chapter 8) agrees with Steiner that the distribution of
freedom in a society depends upon the distribution of property, but
he rejects the implication that the sum total of freedom is fixed. In
25 For instance, given that there is a law prohibiting bodily assault backed up by
substantial penalties, we would normally say that people are not free to assault one
another; nevertheless some attacks do take place, and we are then in the position of
having to say that the assailants did what they were not free to do.
26 See further H. Steiner, ‘How Free: Computing Personal Liberty’, in A. Phillips
Griffiths (ed.), OfLiberty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
27 As he concedes in ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, chapter 2, n. 17 .
28 I shall shortly come to discuss Taylor’s argument.
Introduction 17
particular, he considers the possibility that a certain form of social
ism would extend freedom more widely than the private property
system characteristic of capitalism. One of the incidental virtues of
Cohen’s paper is that it demonstrates how an argument for socialism
can be mounted simply in terms of the negative or liberal notion of
freedom.29 It is sometimes alleged that socialists must have recourse
to a ‘positive’ view of liberty; Cohen’s paper proves otherwise.
We have still not found a satisfactory way of distinguishing between
restrictions of (negative) freedom and other kinds of obstructions that
may prevent us from acting as we would like. In the paper reprinted
as chapter 9, I argue that the distinction can only be made by intro
ducing the notion of moral responsibility; constraints on freedom are
those obstacles for which other human beings can be held morally
responsible, either because they have created them, deliberately or
negligently, or because they have failed to remove them, despite being
under an obligation to do so. Thus poverty or disease will be seen as
restricting the freedom of those who suffer from them i f we believe
that someone else—the government, say—has an obligation to remove
these evils. If this analysis is correct, it suggests one reason why people
who share the liberal view of freedom continue to argue so much
about its political implications—in particular whether it supports a
capitalist or a socialist economic system: they cannot agree about
the limits of social obligation, and therefore about whether human
agents should be held responsible for the persistence of poverty and
other such disabling conditions.
But can we say everything we want to say about individual freedom
using only some version of the negative idea? Two essays included
here suggest otherwise. Charles Taylor (chapter 7) agrees with Berlin
that there is a contrast between the negative and positive senses of
freedom, but he believes that we cannot do without some form of
the positive concept. In particular, he claims that we cannot make
sense of judgments about the relative degrees of freedom enjoyed
29 I should stress, therefore, that when I label this view of freedom ‘liberal’, I do
not intend the label to be interpreted in any narrow, party-political sense. Many
socialists have used the negative conception, as have many conservatives. Political
disputes about liberty can take many forms without thereby becoming disagreements
about the concept itself: disputes about what should count as ‘constraint’, disputes
about how much liberty different classes of people should enjoy, disputes about how
valuable liberty is in comparison to other social goods (justice, authority, etc.). Berlin
also recognizes this point (see Liberty, Introduction, pp. 38- 39).
18 David Miller
in different societies without evaluating the significance of actions to
those who perform them. He also defends the central idealist claim
that a person who does not act on his most significant desires is to
that extent unfree, and so it matters in assessing freedom not only
what opportunities people have but also what they actually choose to
do. However, the political implications of this position are not traced
through; Taylor does not tell us who decides which desires are most
significant or what we might be justified in doing about people who
act on a distorted view of their own desires.
Compare the position taken by John Stuart M ill in his essay ‘On
Liberty’.30 Mill wanted to defend negative liberty, in particular by
invoking the principle that the state had no right to interfere with
what he called ‘self-regarding’ conduct. Like Taylor, however, Mill
was keenly aware that people might fail to recognize and act upon
their most significant aims in life, and to that extent we can say that
there are strong idealist (or ‘positive’) elements in M ill’s conception
of liberty. But since he at the same time believed that each person
had to discover his own best path in life, there was no practical con
flict: protecting negative liberty in the form of each person’s right
to their private space gave the best chance for liberty in the form
of self-determination to flourish.31 This suggests that shifting from
a liberal view of freedom as the absence of external constraints to a
more complex position that includes ‘positive’ or idealist elements,
as Taylor does, does not mean abandoning liberalism as a general
political creed.
A stronger challenge to liberalism is posed by Nancy Hirschmann’s
feminist view of freedom in chapter 10. Hirschmann argues that
reflecting on practical cases in which women’s freedom is at issue
reveals that neither negative nor positive conceptions, as normally
understood, are adequate to explain how women are made unfree
by patriarchal societies. External constraints and women’s own self
consciousness interact to create barriers that women cannot cross.
But at the same time we cannot postulate an ‘authentic’ female self in
opposition to the socially constructed selves that we find around us.
Instead we need to identify circumstances under which women will
A c k n o w le d g m e n t s
L ib e r a l L e g is l a t io n a n d
F reedom of C on tract
T H. Green
21
22 T H. Green
the progress o f a society by its grow th in freedom , w e m easure
it by the increasing developm ent and exercise on the w hole o f
those powers o f contributing to social good w ith w hich we
believe the m embers o f the society to be endowed; in short, by
the greater pow er on the part o f the citizens as a body to m ake
the most and best o f themselves. T h u s, though o f course there
can be no freedom am ong men w ho act not w illin gly but
under com pulsion, yet on the other hand the mere rem oval o f
com pulsion, the mere enabling a m an to do as he likes, is in
itself no contribution to true freedom. In one sense no m an is
so well able to do as he likes as the w andering savage. H e has
no master. T h ere is no one to say him nay. Y e t w e do not
count him really free, because the freedom o f savagery is not
strength, but weakness. T h e actual powers o f the noblest
savage do not adm it o f com parison w ith those o f the hum blest
citizen o f a law -abiding state. H e is not the slave o f m an, but
he is the slave o f nature. O f com pulsion by natural necessity
he has plenty o f experience, though o f restraint by society
none at all. N or can he deliver h im self from that com pulsion
except by subm itting to this restraint. So to subm it is the first
step in true freedom, because the first step tow ards the full
exercise o f the faculties w ith w hich m an is endowed. B ut we
rightly refuse to recognise the highest developm ent on the part
o f an exceptional individual or exceptional class, as an
advance towards the true freedom o f m an, if it is founded on a
refusal o f the same opportunity to other men. T h e powers o f
the hum an mind have p robably never attained such force and
keenness, the proof o f w hat society can do for the individual
has never been so strikingly exhibited, as am ong the sm all
groups o f men w ho possessed civil privileges in the sm all
republics o f antiquity. T h e w hole fram ework o f our political
ideas, to say nothing o f our philosophy, is derived from them.
B ut in them this extraordinary efflorescence o f the privileged
class w as accom panied by the slavery o f the m ultitude. T h a t
slavery was the condition on w hich it depended, and for that
reason it w as doom ed to decay. T h ere is no clearer ordinance
o f that suprem e reason, often dark to us, w hich governs the
course o f m an’s affairs, than that no body o f men should in the
long run be able to strengthen itself at the cost o f others’
weakness. T h e civilization and freedom o f the ancient w orld
Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract 23
w ere short-lived because they w ere partial and exceptional. I f
the ideal o f true freedom is the m axim um o f pow er for all
m embers o f hum an society alike to m ake the best o f
themselves, we are right in refusing to ascribe the glory o f
freedom to a state in w hich the apparent elevation o f the few is
founded on the degradation o f the m any, and in ranking
m odern society, founded as it is on free industry, w ith all its
confusion and ignorant licence and w aste o f effort, above the
most splendid o f ancient republics.
I f I have given a true account o f that freedom w hich forms
the goal o f social effort, we shall see that freedom o f contract,
freedom in all the forms o f doing w hat one w ill w ith one’s own,
is valuable only as a means to an end. T h a t end is w hat I call
freedom in the positive sense: in other w ords, the liberation o f
the powers o f all men equally for contributions to a com m on
good. N o one has a right to do w hat he w ill w ith his own in
such a w ay as to contravene this end. It is only through the
guarantee which society gives him that he has property at all,
or, strictly speaking, any right to his possessions. T h is
guarantee is founded on a sense o f com m on interest. Everyone
has an interest in securing to everyone else the free use and
enjoym ent and disposal o f his possessions, so long as that
freedom on the part o f one does not interfere w ith a like
freedom on the part o f others, because such freedom contrib
utes to that equal developm ent o f the faculties o f all w hich is
the highest good for all. T h is is the true and the only
justification o f rights o f property. Rights o f property, how ever,
have been and are claim ed w hich cannot be thus justified. W e
are all now agreed that men cannot rightly be the property o f
men. T h e institution o f property being only ju stifiab le as a
means to the free exercise o f the social capabilities o f all, there
can be no true right to property o f a kind w hich debars one
class o f men from such free exercise altogether. W e condem n
slavery no less when it arises out o f a volun tary agreem ent on
the part o f the enslaved person. A contract by w hich anyone
agreed for a certain consideration to becom e the slave o f
another we should reckon a void contract. H ere, then, is a
lim itation upon freedom o f contract w hich we all recognize as
rightful. N o contract is valid in w hich hum an persons,
w illingly or unw illingly, are dealt w ith as com m odities,
24 T H. Green
because such contracts o f necessity defeat the end for w hich
alone society enforces contracts at all.
A re there no other contracts w hich, less obviously perhaps
but really, are open to the sam e objection? In the first place,
let us consider contracts affecting labour. L ab ou r, the
econom ist tells us, is a com m odity exchangeable like other
comm odities. T h is is in a certain sense true, but it is a
com m odity w hich attaches in a p articular m anner to the
person o f man. H ence restrictions m ay need to be placed on
the sale o f this com m odity w hich w ould be unnecessary in
other cases, in order to prevent labour from being sold under
conditions w hich make it im possible for the person selling it
ever to becom e a free contributor to social good in any form.
T h is is most plainly the case w hen a m an bargains to w ork
under conditions fatal to health, e.g. in an unventilated
factory. E very injury to the health o f the individual is, so far as
it goes, a public injury. It is an im pedim ent to the general
freedom; so m uch deduction from our power, as m em bers o f
society, to m ake the best o f ourselves. Society is, therefore,
plainly within its right w hen it limits freedom o f contract for
the sale o f labour, so far as is done by our laws for the sanitary
regulations o f factories, workshops, and mines. It is equally
w ithin its right in prohibiting the labour o f wom en and young
persons beyond certain hours. I f they w ork beyond those
hours, the result is dem onstrably physical deterioration;
which, as dem onstrably, carries w ith it a low ering o f the m oral
forces o f society. For the sake o f that general freedom o f its
m embers to make the best o f themselves, w hich it is the object
o f civil society to secure, a prohibition should be put by law ,
w hich is the deliberate voice o f society, on all such contracts o f
service as in a general w ay yield such a result. T h e purchase
or hire o f unwholesom e dw ellings is properly forbidden on the
same principle. Its application to com pulsory education m ay
not be quite so obvious, but it w ill appear on a little reflection.
W ithout a com m and o f certain elem entary arts and know ledge,
the individual in modern society is as effectually crippled as
by the loss o f a lim b or a broken constitution. H e is not free to
develop his faculties. W ith a view to securing such freedom
am ong its m embers it is as certainly w ithin the province o f the
state to prevent children from grow ing up in that kind o f
Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract 25
ignorance w hich practically excludes them from a free career
in life, as it is w ithin its province to require the sort o f building
and drainage necessary for public health.
O u r modern legislation then w ith reference to labour, and
education, and health, involving as it does m anifold inter
ference w ith freedom o f contract, is justified on the ground
that it is the business o f the state, not indeed directly to
prom ote moral goodness, for that, from the very nature o f
m oral goodness, it cannot do, but to m aintain the conditions
w ithout w hich a free exercise o f the hum an faculties is
im possible. It does not indeed follow that it is advisable for the
state to do all w hich it is justified in doing. W e are often
w arned now adays against the danger o f over-legislation; or as
I heard it put in a speech o f the present home secretary1 in
days when he was sowing his political w ild oats, o f ‘gran d
m otherly governm ent’ . Th ere m ay be good ground for the
w arning, but at any rate we should be quite clear w hat we
mean by it. T h e outcry against state interference is often
raised by men whose real objection is not to state interference
but to centralization, to the constant aggression o f the central
executive upon local authorities. A s I have already pointed
out, com pulsion at the discretion o f some elected m unicipal
board proceeds ju st as m uch from the state as does com pulsion
exercised by a governm ent office in London. N o doubt, m uch
needless friction is avoided, m uch is gained in the w ay o f
elasticity and adjustm ent to circum stances, by the independent
local adm inistration o f general laws; and most o f us w ould
agree that o f late there has been a dangerous tendency to
override m unicipal discretion by the hard and fast rules o f
London ‘departm ents’ . B ut centralization is one thing: over
legislation, or the im proper exercise o f the pow er o f the state,
quite another. It is one question w hether o f late the central
governm ent has been unduly trenching on local governm ent,
and another question w hether the law o f the state, either as
adm inistered by central or by provincial authorities, has been
unduly interfering with the discretion o f individuals. W e m ay
object most strongly to advancing centralization, and yet wish
that the law should put rather m ore than less restraint on
T w o C o n c e p t s o f L ib e r ty
Isaiah Berlin
Abridged from Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in I. Berlin, Liberty, ed.
Henry Hardy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 168-181, 191-200.
Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd., London, on behalf of
the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust. Copyright © Isaiah Berlin, 1958, 1969, 1997.
33
34 Isaiah Berlin
recorded b y historians of ideas. I propose to exam ine no more
than two of these senses—but they are central ones, with a great
deal o f hum an history behind them, and, I dare say, still to come.
T h e first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use
both words to m ean the same), which (following m uch precedent)
I shall call the ‘negative’ sense, is involved in the answer to the
question ‘W hat is the area within w hich 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 b y other persons?’ T h e second,
w hich I shall call the ‘positive’ sense, is involved in the answer to
the question ‘W hat, or who, is the source of control or interference
that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?’
T h e two questions are clearly different, even though the answers
to them m ay overlap.
3 The M arxist conception of social laws is, of course, the best-known version
of this theory, but it forms a large element in some Christian and utilitarian,
and all socialist, doctrines.
4 Emile, book 2: vol. 4, p. 320, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and
others (Paris, 1959-95).
5 ‘A free m an’, said Hobbes, ‘is he that . . . is not hindered to do what he has
a will to’. Leviathan, chapter 21: p. 146 in Richard Tuck’s edition (Cambridge,
1991). Law is always a fetter, even if it protects you from being bound in chains
that are heavier than those of the law, say some more repressive law or custom,
or arbitrary despotism or chaos. Bentham says much the same.
36 Isaiah Berlin
and this kind of ‘natural’ freedom would lead to social chaos in
w hich m en’s m inim um needs would not be satisfied; or else the
liberties of the w eak would be suppressed b y the strong. Because
they perceived that hum an purposes and activities do not auto
m atically harm onise with one another, and because (whatever
their official doctrines) they put high value on other goals, such
as justice, or happiness, or culture, or security, or varyin g degrees
of equality, they were prepared to curtail 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 m en’s free action must be lim ited b y law. But equally it is
assumed, especially by such libertarians as Locke and M ill in Eng
land, and Constant and Tocqueville in France, that there ought
to exist a certain m inim um area of personal freedom w hich must
on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual
will find him self in an area too narrow for even that m inim um
developm ent of his natural faculties which alone makes it possible
to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends w hich m en hold
good or right or sacred. It follows that a frontier must be drawn
between the area o f private life and that of public authority.
W here it is to be drawn is a m atter of argument, indeed of hag
gling. M en are largely interdependent, and no m an’s activity is so
com pletely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any
way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the m innows’;6 the liberty
of some must depend on the restraint of others. Freedom for an
O xford don, others have been known to add, is a very different
thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant.
This proposition derives its force from som ething that is both
true and important, but the phrase itself remains a piece of politi
cal claptrap. It is true that to offer political rights, or safeguards
against intervention by the State, to m en who are half-naked, illit
erate, underfed, and diseased is to m ock their condition; they need
m edical help or education before they can understand, or make
use of, an increase in their freedom. W hat is freedom to those who
cannot make use of it? W ithout adequate conditions for the use
of freedom, what is the value of freedom ? First things come first:
8 J. S. Mill, ‘On Liberty’, chapter 1: vol. 18, p. 226, in Collected Works of John Stuart
Mill, ed. J. M. Robson and others (Toronto/London, 1963-91).
9 Ibid., p. 224.
10 Ibid., chapter 3, p. 268.
11 Ibid., pp. 265-266. The last two phrases are fromJohn Sterling’s essay on Simonides:
vol 1, p. 190, in his Essays and Tales, ed. Julius Charles Hare (London, 1848).
40 Isaiah Berlin
likely to com m it against advice and warning, are far outweighed
b y the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem
his go o d ’.12 T h e defence of liberty consists in the ‘negative’ goal
of w arding off interference. To threaten a m an with persecution
unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his
goals; to block before him every door but one, no m atter how
noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the
motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that
he is a m an, a being with a life of his own to live. This is liberty
as it has been conceived b y liberals in the m odern world from
the days of Erasmus (some would say of Occam ) to our own.
E very plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest
against exploitation and hum iliation, against the encroachm ent
of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organised
propaganda, springs from this individualistic, and m uch disputed,
conception of man.
Three facts about this position m ay be noted. In the first place
M ill confuses two distinct notions. O ne is that all coercion is,
in so far as it frustrates hum an desires, bad as such, although it
m ay have to be applied to prevent other, greater evils; while non
interference, w hich is the opposite of coercion, is good as such,
although it is not the only good. This is the ‘negative’ conception
of liberty in its classical form. T h e other is that m en should seek
to discover the truth, or to develop a certain type of character of
which M ill approved—critical, original, imaginative, independent,
non-conform ing to the point of eccentricity, and so on—and that
truth can be found, and such character can be bred, only in con
ditions of freedom. Both these are liberal views, but they are not
identical, and the connection between them is, at best, empirical.
No one would argue that truth or freedom of self-expression could
flourish where dogm a crushes all thought. But the evidence of
history tends to show (as, indeed, was argued b y Jam es Stephen
in his form idable attack on M ill in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity)
that integrity, love o f truth, and fiery individualism grow at least
as often in severely disciplined communities, among, for example,
the puritan Calvinists of Scotland or New England, or under
m ilitary discipline, as in m ore tolerant or indifferent societies;
and if this is so, M ill’s argum ent for liberty as a necessary condi
16 Indeed, it is arguable that in the Prussia of Frederick the Great or in the Austria
ofJoseph II men of imagination, originality and creative genius, and, indeed, minori
ties of all kinds, were less persecuted and felt the pressure, both of institutions and
custom, less heavy upon them than in many an earlier or later democracy.
17 ‘Negative liberty’ is something the extent of which, in a given case, it is
difficult to estimate. It might, prim a facie, seem to depend simply on the power
to choose between at any rate two alternatives. Nevertheless, not all choices
are equally free, or free at all. If in a totalitarian State I betray my friend un
der threat of torture, perhaps even if I act from fear of losing my job, I can
reasonably say that I did not act freely. Nevertheless, I did, of course, make a
choice, and could, at any rate in theory, have chosen to be killed or tortured
or imprisoned. The mere existence of alternatives is not, therefore, enough
to make my action free (although it may be voluntary) in the normal sense of
the word. The extent of my freedom seems to depend on (a) how many pos
sibilities are open to me (although the method of counting these can never be
more than impressionistic; possibilities of action are not discrete entities like
apples, which can be exhaustively enumerated); (b) how easy or difficult each
of these possibilities is to actualise; (c) how im portant in my plan of life, given
my character and circumstances, these possibilities are when compared with
each other; (d) how far they are closed and opened by deliberate hum an acts;
(e) what value not merely the agent, but the general sentiment of the society in
which he lives, puts on the various possibilities. All these magnitudes must be
‘integrated’, and a conclusion, necessarily never precise, or indisputable, drawn
from this process. It may well be that there are many incommensurable kinds
and degrees of freedom, and that they cannot be drawn up on any single scale
Two Concepts of Liberty 43
liberty comes to light if we try to answer the question, not ‘W hat
am I free to do or be?’, but ‘By w hom am I ruled?’ or ‘W ho is to
say what I am, and what I am not, to be or do?’ T h e connection
between dem ocracy and individual liberty is a good deal more
tenuous than it seemed to m any advocates of both. T h e desire to
be governed by myself, or at any rate to participate in the process
b y w hich m y life is to be controlled, m ay be as deep a wish as that
for a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is
not a desire for the same thing. So different is it, indeed, as to have
led in the end to the great clash of ideologies that dom inates our
world. 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 of the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times,
no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny.
18 ‘[T]he ideal of true freedom is the maximum of power for all members of
hum an society alike to make the best of themselves’, said T. H. Green in 1881:
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, ed. Paul Harris and
John Morrow (Cambridge, 1986), p. 200. Apart from the confusion of freedom
with equality, this entails that if a man chose some immediate pleasure—which (in
whose view?) would not enable him to make the best of himself (what self?)—what
he was exercising was not ‘true’ freedom: and if deprived of it, he would not lose
anything that mattered. Green was a genuine liberal: but many a tyrant could
use this formula to justify his worst acts of oppression.
46 Isaiah Berlin
be identical with his freedom—the free choice of his ‘true’, albeit
often submerged and inarticulate, self.
This paradox has been often exposed. It is one thing to say that
I know what is good for X , while he him self does not; and even to
ignore his wishes for its—and his—sake; and a very different one
to say that he has eo ipso chosen it, not indeed consciously, not as
he seems in everyday life, but in his role as a rational self which
his em pirical self m ay not know—the ‘real’ self which discerns the
good, and cannot help choosing it once it is revealed. This m on
strous impersonation, w hich consists in equating what X would
choose if he were something he is not, or at least not yet, with what
X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart of all political theories
of self-realisation. It is one thing to say that I m ay be coerced for
m y own good, which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion,
be for m y benefit; indeed it m ay enlarge the scope of m y liberty. It
is another to say that if it is m y good, then I am not being coerced,
for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free (or
‘truly’ free) even while m y poor earthly b o d y and foolish m ind
bitterly reject it, and struggle with the greatest desperation against
those who seek, however benevolently, to impose it.
This m agical transform ation, or sleight of hand (for w hich
W illiam Jam es so justly m ocked the Hegelians), can no doubt be
perpetrated just as easily with the ‘negative’ concept of freedom,
where the self that should not be interfered with is no longer the
individual with his actual wishes and needs as they are norm ally
conceived, but the ‘real’ man within, identified with the pursuit of
some ideal purpose not dreamed of by his empirical self. A nd, as in
the case of the ‘positively’ free self, this entity m ay be inflated into
some super-personal entity—a State, a class, a nation, or the march
of history itself, regarded as a more ‘real’ subject of attributes
than the em pirical self. But the ‘positive’ conception of freedom as
self-mastery, with its suggestion of a m an divided against himself,
has in fact, and as a m atter o f history, of doctrine, and of practice,
lent itself m ore easily to this splitting of personality into two: the
transcendent, dom inant controller, and the em pirical bundle of
desires and passions to be disciplined and brought to heel. It is
this historical fact that has been influential. This demonstrates (if
dem onstration of so obvious a truth is needed) that conceptions
of freedom directly derive from views of what constitutes a self,
a person, a man. Enough m anipulation of the definition of man,
Two Concepts of Liberty 47
and freedom can be m ade to m ean whatever the m anipulator
wishes. Recent history has m ade it only too clear that the issue is
not m erely academic.
Th e consequences of distinguishing between two selves will
becom e even clearer if one considers the two m ajor forms which
the desire to be self-directed—directed by one’s ‘true’ self—has
historically taken: the first, that of self-abnegation in order to
attain independence; the second, that of self-realisation, or total
self-identification with a specific principle or ideal in order to at
tain the selfsame end. . . .
(note 35 continued) which possesses the greatest liberty . . . and also the most exact
determination and guarantee of the limits of [the] liberty [of each individual] in
order that it may co-exist with the liberty of others—that the highest purpose of
nature, which is the development of all her capacities, can be attained in the case
of m ankind’. ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht’ (1784),
in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1900-), vol. 8, p. 22, line 6. Apart from the
teleological implications, this formulation does not at first appear very different
from orthodox liberalism. The crucial point, however, is how to determine the
criterion for the ‘exact determination and guarantee of the limits’ of individual
liberty. Most m odern liberals, at their most consistent, want a situation in which
as many individuals as possible can realise as many of their ends as possible,
without assessment of the value of these ends as such, save in so far as they may
frustrate the purposes of others. They wish the frontiers between individuals or
groups of men to be drawn solely with a view to preventing collisions between
hum an purposes, all of which must be considered to be equally ultimate, uncriti-
cisable ends in themselves. Kant, and the rationalists of his type, do not regard all
ends as of equal value. For them the limits of liberty are determined by applying
the rules of ‘reason’, which is much more than the mere generality of rules as
such, and is a faculty that creates or reveals a purpose identical in, and for, all
men. In the name of reason anything that is non-rational may be condemned,
so that the various personal reasons which their individual imaginations and
idiosyncrasies lead men to pursue—for example, aesthetic and other non-rational
kinds of self-fulfilment—may, at least in theory, be ruthlessly suppressed to make
way for the demands of reason. The authority of reason and of the duties it lays
upon men is identified with individual freedom, on the assumption that only
rational ends can be the ‘true’ objects of a ‘free’ m an’s ‘real’ nature.
I have never, I must own, understood what ‘reason’ means in this context; and
here merely wish to point out that the a priori assumptions of this philosophical
psychology are not compatible with empiricism: that is to say, with any doctrine
founded on knowledge derived from experience of what men are and seek.
Two Concepts of Liberty 57
impossible; finally, that when all m en have been m ade rational,
they will obey the rational laws of their own natures, w hich are
one and the same in them all, and so be at once w holly law-abid
ing and w holly free. C an it be that Socrates and the creators of
the central W estern tradition in ethics and politics who followed
him have been mistaken, for m ore than two m illennia, that virtue
is not knowledge, nor freedom identical with either? Th at despite
the fact that it rules the lives of m ore m en than ever before in its
long history, not one of the basic assumptions of this fam ous view
is dem onstrable, or, perhaps, even true?
three
F r e e d o m a n d P o l it ic s
Hannah Arendt
This lecture was first published in the Chicago Review, 14 ( 1 ) (Spring i 960),
18- 46 . Expanded versions later appeared as ‘Freedom and Politics’, in
A. Hunold (ed.), Freedom and Serfdom (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1961 ), and as
‘W hat is Freedom?’, in H. Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York:
Viking Press, 2nd edn., 1968).
58
Freedom and Politics 59
freedom was denied, into an inwardness to w hich no other has
access. T h is inw ard space where the self is sheltered against
the world must not be m istaken for the heart or the m ind, both
o f w hich exist and function only in interrelationship w ith the
w orld. N ot the heart and not the m ind, but inw ardness as a
place o f absolute freedom w ithin one’s own self w as discovered
in late antiquity by those w ho had no place o f their own in the
world and hence lacked a w orldly condition w hich, from early
antiquity to alm ost the m iddle o f the nineteenth century, w as
unanim ously held to be a prerequisite for freedom .1
H ence, in spite o f the great influence w hich the concept o f
an inner, non-political freedom has exerted upon the tradition
2 See Esprit des lois, xn. 2 : ‘La liberte philosophique consiste dans
l’exercice de la volonte . . . La liberte politique consiste dans la surete.’
62 Hannah Arendt
condition o f all liberty is freedom from fear), but a security
w hich should perm it an undisturbed developm ent o f the life
process o f society as a whole. T h e life process is not bound up
w ith freedom but follows its own inherent necessity; and it can
be called free only in the sense that we speak o f a freely flow ing
stream . H ere freedom is not even the non-political aim o f
politics, but a m arginal phenom enon— w hich som ehow forms
the boundary governm ent should not overstep unless life itself
and its im m ediate interests and necessities are at stake.
T h u s not only we, w ho have reasons o f our own to distrust
politics for the sake o f freedom, but the entire m odern age has
separated freedom and politics. I could descend even deeper
into the past and evoke older memories and traditions. T h e
pre-m odern secular concept o f freedom certainly was em phatic
in its insistence on separating the subjects’ freedom from any
direct share in governm ent; the people’s ‘liberty and freedom
consisted in having the governm ent o f those laws by w hich
their life and their goods m ay be most their ow n ’— as C harles I
sum med it up in his speech from the scaffold. It was not out o f
a desire for freedom that people even tually dem anded their
share in governm ent or adm ission to the political realm , but
out o f m istrust in those w ho held pow er over their life and
goods. T h e C hristian concept o f political freedom , m oreover,
arose out o f the early C h ristian s’ suspicion and hostility
against the public realm as such, from whose concerns they
dem anded to be absolved in order to be free. A n d does not this
C hristian definition o f freedom as freedom from politics only
repeat w hat we know so w ell from ancient philosophy,
nam ely, the philosopher’s dem and o f oxoXri, o f ‘leisure’ , or
rather o f abstention from politics w hich since Plato and
A ristotle was held to be a prerequisite for the Jttoc;
08(OQriTLx6g, the philosopher’s ‘contem plative life’, only
that now the Christians dem anded for all, for ‘the m an y’,
w hat the philosophers had asked for only ‘the few ’ .
D espite the enormous w eight o f this tradition and despite
the perhaps even m ore telling urgency o f our own experiences,
both pressing into the sam e direction o f a divorce o f freedom
from politics, I think you all believed you heard not m ore than
an old truism when I first said that the raison d'etre o f politics is
freedom and that this freedom is prim arily experienced in
Freedom and Politics 63
action. In the following, w e shall do no m ore than reflect on
this old truism.
3
O b viously, this notion o f an interdependence o f freedom and
politics stands in contradiction to the social theories o f the
modern age. U nfortunately, it does not follow that we need
only to revert to older pre-m odern traditions and theories.
Indeed, the greatest difficulty in reaching an understanding o f
the relation o f freedom to politics arises from the fact that a
sim ple return to tradition, and especially to w hat we are w ont
to call the great tradition, does not help us. N either the
philosophical concept o f freedom as it first arose in late
antiquity, where freedom becam e a phenom enon o f thought
by w hich m an could, as it were, reason him self out o f the
w orld, nor the C hristian and m odern notion o f free w ill have
any ground in political experience. O u r philosophical tradition
is alm ost unanim ous in holding that freedom begins where
men have left the realm o f political life inhabited by the m any,
and that it is not experienced in association w ith others but in
intercourse with oneself— w hether in the form o f an inner
68 Hannah Arendt
dialogue w hich, since Socrates, we call thinking, or a conflict
w ithin myself, the inner strife betw een w hat I w ould and w hat
I do, whose m urderous dialectics disclosed first to Paul and
then to A ugustine the equivocalities and im potence o f the
hum an heart.
For the history o f the problem o f freedom , C h ristian
tradition has indeed becom e the decisive factor. W e alm ost
autom atically equate freedom w ith free w ill, that is, w ith a
faculty virtu ally unknown to classical antiquity. For w ill, as
C hristian ity discovered it, had so little in com m on w ith the
w ell-know n capacities to desire and intend that it claim ed
attention only after it had come into conflict w ith them. I f
freedom were actually nothing but a phenom enon o f the w ill,
we w ould have to conclude that the ancients did not know
freedom. T h is, o f course, is absurd, but if one w ished to assert
it he could argue that the idea o f freedom played no role in the
works o f the great philosophers prior to A ugustine. T h e
reason for this striking fact is that, in G reek as w ell as Rom an
antiquity, freedom was an exclusively political concept,
indeed the quintessence o f the city-state and o f citizenship.
O u r philosophical tradition, beginning w ith Parm enides and
Plato, was founded explicitly in opposition to this polis and
this citizenship. T h e w ay o f life chosen by the philosopher
w as understood in opposition to the jStog JtoXmxog, the
political w ay o f life. Freedom , therefore, the very centre o f
politics as the G reeks understood it, w as an idea w hich alm ost
by definition could not enter the fram ew ork o f G reek
philosophy. O n ly when the early C hristians, and especially
Paul, discovered a kind o f freedom w hich had no relation to
politics, could the concept o f freedom enter the history o f
philosophy. Freedom becam e one o f the ch ief problem s o f
philosophy when it was experienced as som ething occurring in
the intercourse between me w ith myself, and outside o f the
intercourse between men. Free w ill and freedom becam e
synonym ous notions,3 and the presence o f freedom was
5 Among modern political theorists, Carl Schmitt has remained the most
consistent and the most able defender of the notion of sovereignty. He
recognizes clearly that the root of sovereignty is the will: Sovereign is who
wills and commands. See especially his Verfassungslere (M unich, 1928),
7 ff., 146.
Freedom and Politics 73
can exist together or, to put it another w ay, how freedom
could have been given to men under the condition o f non
sovereignty. A ctu ally, it is as unrealistic to deny freedom
because o f the fact o f hum an non-sovereignty as it is
dangerous to believe that one can be free— as an individual or
as a group— only if one is sovereign. T h e fam ous sovereignty
o f political bodies has alw ays been an illusion w hich,
m oreover, can be m aintained only by the instrum ents o f
violence, that is, w ith essentially non-political m eans. U nd er
hum an conditions, w hich are determ ined by the fact that not
m an but men live on the earth, freedom and sovereignty are so
little identical that they cannot even exist sim ultaneously.
W here men wish to be sovereign, as individuals or as
organized groups, they m ust subm it to the oppression o f the
w ill, be this the individual w ill w ith w hich I force m yself or the
‘general w ill’ o f an organized group. I f men w ish to be free, it
is precisely sovereignty they m ust renounce.
4
Since the whole problem o f freedom arises for us in the
horizon o f C hristian traditions on the one hand and o f an
originally anti-political philosophic tradition on the other, we
find it difficult to realize that there m ay exist a freedom w hich
is not an attribute o f the w ill but an accessory o f doing and
acting. L et us therefore go back once m ore to antiquity, i.e., to
its political and pre-philosophical traditions, certainly not for
the sake o f erudition and not even because o f the continuity o f
our traditions, but m erely because a freedom experienced in
the process o f acting and nothing else— though, o f course,
m ankind never lost this experience altogether— has never
again been articulated w ith the sam e classical clarity.
T h is articulation is ultim ately rooted in the curious fact that
both the G reek and the L atin language possess two verbs to
designate w hat we uniform ly call ‘to a ct’ . T h e two G reek
words are a q %e i v : to begin, to lead, and, finally, to rule, and
jTQaxxeiv: to carry som ething through. T h e correspond
ing L atin verbs are agere: to set som ething in m otion, and
gerere, w hich is hard to translate and som ehow m eans the
74 Hannah Arendt
enduring and supporting continuation o f past acts w hich
result in the res gestae, the deeds and events w e call historical.
In both instances, action occurs in two different stages; its first
stage is a beginning by w hich som ething new comes into the
world. T h e G reek w ord a q %zw w hich covers beginning,
leading, and even ruling, that is, the outstanding qualities o f
the free man, bears witness to an experience in w hich being
free and the capacity to begin som ething new coincided.
Freedom , as we w ould say today, w as experienced in
spontaneity. T h e m anifold m eaning o f 6lq % e iv indicates the
following: only those could begin som ething new w ho w ere
already rulers (i.e. household heads w ho ruled over slaves and
fam ily) and had thus liberated them selves from the necessities
o f life for enterprises in distant lands or citizenship in the
polis; in either case, they no longer ruled, but w ere rulers
am ong rulers, m oving am ong their peers whose help they
enlisted as their leaders in order to begin som ething new, to
start a new enterprise; for only w ith the help o f others could
the a Q%wv, the ruler, beginner, and leader, really act,
j t q (x t t £i v , carry through w hatever he had started to do.
In L atin, to be free and to begin are also interconnected,
though in a different w ay. Rom an freedom w as a legacy
bequeathed by the founders o f Rom e to the R om an people;
their freedom was tied to the beginning their forefathers had
established by founding the C ity , whose affairs the descendants
had to m anage, whose consequences they had to bear, and
whose foundations they had to ‘augm en t’ . A ll these together
are the res gestae o f the Rom an republic. Rom an historiography
therefore, essentially as political as G reek historiography,
never w as content w ith the mere narration o f great deeds and
events; unlike T h u cydides or H erodotus, the R om an historians
alw ays felt bound to the beginning o f R om an history, because
this beginning contained the authentic elem ent o f R om an
freedom and thus m ade their history political; w hatever they
had to relate, they started ad urbe condita, w ith the foundation
o f the C ity, the guarantee o f Rom an freedom.
I have already m entioned that the ancient concept o f
freedom played no role in G reek philosophy precisely because
o f its exclusively political origin. Rom an w riters, it is true
rebelled occasionally against the anti-political tendencies o f
Freedom and Politics 75
the Socratic school, but their strange lack o f philosophic talent
apparently prevented their finding a theoretical concept o f
freedom w hich could have been adequate to their own
experiences and to the great institutions o f liberty present in
the Rom an res republica. I f the history o f ideas w ere as
consistent as its historians sometimes im agine, we should have
even less hope to find a valid political idea o f freedom in
A ugustine, the great C hristian thinker w ho in fact introduced
P au l’s free will, along w ith its perplexities, into the history o f
philosophy. Y e t we find in A ugustin e not only the discussion
o f freedom as liberum arbitrium, though this discussion becam e
decisive for the tradition, but also an entirely differently
conceived notion w hich characteristically appears in his only
political treatise, in D e civitate Dei. In the City o f God,
Augustine, as is only natural, speaks m ore from the background
o f specifically Rom an experiences than in any o f his other
w ritings, and freedom is conceived there, not as an inner
hum an disposition, but as a character o f hum an existence in
the world. M an does not possess freedom so m uch as he, or
better his com ing into the w orld, is equated w ith the
appearance o f freedom in the universe; m an is free because he
is a beginning and was so created after the universe had
already come into existence: ‘ [In itiu m ju t esset, creatus est
homo, ante quem nemo fu it’ (book xn, ch. 20). In the birth o f
each m an this initial beginning is reaffirm ed, because in each
instance som ething new comes into an already existing w orld
which w ill continue to exist after each in d ivid u al’s death.
Because he is a beginning, m an can begin; to be hum an and to
be free are one and the same. G od created m an in order to
introduce into the w orld the faculty o f beginning: freedom.
T h e strong anti-political tendencies o f early C h ristian ity are
so fam iliar that the notion that a C hristian thinker was the
first to form ulate the philosophical im plications o f the ancient
political idea o f freedom strikes us as alm ost paradoxical. T h e
only explanation seems to be that A ugustin e w as a R om an as
w ell as a C hristian, and that in this part o f his w ork he
form ulated the central political experience o f R om an antiquity,
w hich was that freedom qua beginning becam e m anifest in the
act o f foundation. Y et, I am convinced that this im pression
w ould considerably change if the sayings o f Jesus o f N azareth
76 Hannah Arendt
w ere taken more seriously in their philosophic im plications.
W e find in these parts o f the N ew Testam ent an extraordinary
u nderstanding o f freedom and particularly o f the pow er
inherent in hum an freedom; but the hum an cap acity w hich
corresponds to this power, w hich, in the w ords o f the gospel, is
capable o f rem oving m ountains, is not w ill but faith. T h e w ork
o f faith, actually its product, is w hat the gospels called
‘m iracles’, a w ord w ith m any m eanings in the N ew T estam en t
and difficult to understand. W e can neglect the difficulties
here and refer only to those passages w here m iracles are
clearly not supernatural events— although all m iracles, those
perform ed by men no less than those perform ed by a divine
agent, interrupt a natural series o f events or autom atic
processes in whose context they constitute the w holly un
expected.
I f it is true that action and beginning are essentially the
sam e, it follows that a cap acity for perform ing m iracles m ust
likewise be w ithin the range o f hum an faculties. T h is sounds
stranger than it actually is. It is in the nature o f every new
beginning that it breaks into the w orld w holly unexpected and
unforeseen, at least from the view point o f the processes it
interrupts. E very event, the m om ent it comes to pass, strikes
us w ith surprise as though it w ere a m iracle. It m ay w ell be a
prejudice to consider m iracles m erely in religious contexts as
supernatural, w holly inexplicable occurrences. It m ay be
better not to forget that, after all, our w hole existence rests, as
it were, on a chain o f m iracles, the com ing into being o f the
earth, the developm ent o f organic life on it, the evolution o f
m ankind out o f the anim al species. For from the view point o f
processes in the universe and their statistically overw helm ing
probabilities, the com ing into being o f the earth is an ‘infinite
im p rob ab ility5, as the natural scientists w ould say, a m iracle
as w e m ight call it. T h e sam e is true for the form ation o f
organic life out o f inorganic processes or for the evolution o f
m an out o f the processes o f organic life. E ach o f these events
appears to us like a m iracle the m om ent we look at it from the
view point o f the processes it interrupted. T h is view point,
m oreover, is by no means arbitrary or sophisticated; it is, on
the contrary, most natural and indeed, in ordinary life, alm ost
com m onplace.
Freedom and Politics 77
I chose this exam ple to illustrate that w hat w e call ‘real5 in
ordinary experience has come into existence through the
advent o f infinite im probabilities. O f course, it has its
lim itations and cannot sim ply be applied to the realm o f
hum an affairs. For there we are confronted w ith historical
processes where one event follows the others, w ith the result
that the m iracle o f accident and infinite im p robability occurs
so frequently that it seems strange to speak o f m iracles at all.
H ow ever, the reason for this frequency is m erely that
historical processes are created and constantly interrupted by
hum an initiative. I f one considers historical processes only as
processes, devoid o f hum an initiative, then every new
beginning in it [history], for better or worse, becom es so
infinitely unlikely as to be w ell-nigh inexplicable. O b jectively,
that is, seen from the outside, the chances that tom orrow w ill
be like yesterday are alw ays overw helm ing. N ot quite so over
w helm ing, o f course, but very nearly so as the chances are that
no earth w ould ever rise out o f cosm ic occurrences, that no life
w ould develop out o f inorganic processes, and that no m an
w ould ever develop out o f the evolution o f anim al life. T h e
decisive difference between the ‘infinite im probabilities’, on
w hich earthly life and the w hole reality o f nature rest, and the
m iraculous character o f historical events is obvious; in the
realm o f hum an affairs we know the author o f these ‘m iracles’ ;
it is men w ho perform them, nam ely, in so far as they have
received the twofold gift o f freedom and action.
5
From these last considerations, it should be easy to find our
w ay back to contem porary political experiences. It follows
from them, that the com bined danger o f totalitarianism and
mass society is not that the form er abolishes political freedom
and civil rights, and that the latter threatens to en g u lf all
culture, the w hole w orld o f durable things, and to abolish the
standards o f excellence w ithout w hich no thing can ever be
produced— although these dangers are real enough. Beyond
them we sense another even m ore dangerous threat, nam ely
78 Hannah Arendt
that both totalitarianism and mass society, the one by means
o f terror and ideology, the other by yielding w ithout violence
or doctrine to the general trend tow ard the socialization o f
man, are driven to stifle initiative and spontaneity as such,
that is, the elem ent o f action and freedom present in all
activities w hich are not mere labouring. O f these two,
totalitarianism still seems to be m ore dangerous, because it
attem pts in all earnest to elim inate the possibility o f ‘m iracles’
from the realm o f politics, or— in m ore fam iliar language— to
exclude the possibility o f events in order to deliver us entirely
to the autom atic processes by w hich w e are surrounded
anyhow . For our historical and political life takes place in the
m idst o f natural processes w hich, in turn, take place in the
m idst o f cosm ic processes, and w e ourselves are driven by very
sim ilar forces in so far as we, too, are a part o f organic nature.
It w ould be sheer superstition to hope for m iracles, for the
‘infinitely im probable’, in the context o f these autom atic
processes, although even this never can be com pletely
excluded. But it is not in the least superstitious, it is even a
counsel o f realism , to look for the unforeseeable and un
predictable, to be prepared for and to expect ‘m iracles’ , in the
political realm w here in fact they are alw ays possible. H um an
freedom is not m erely a m atter o f m etaphysics but a m atter o f
fact, no less a reality, indeed, than the autom atic processes
w ithin and against w hich action alw ays has to assert itself. For
the processes set into m otion by action also tend to becom e
autom atic— w hich is w hy no single act and no single event can
ever once and for all deliver and save a m an, or a nation, or
m ankind.
It is in the nature o f the autom atic processes, to w hich m an
is subject and by w hich he w ould be ruled absolutely w ithout
the m iracle o f freedom, that they can only spell ruin to hum an
life; once historical processes have becom e autom atic, they are
no less ruinous than the life process that drives our organism
and w hich biologically can never lead anyw here but from
birth to death. T h e historical sciences know such cases o f
petrified and declining civilizations only too well, and they
know that the processs o f stagnation and decline can last and
go on for centuries. Q u an titatively, they occup y by far the
largest space in recorded history.
Freedom and Politics 79
In the history o f m ankind, the periods o f being free w ere
alw ays relatively short. In the long epochs o f petrification and
autom atic developm ents, the faculty o f freedom , the sheer
cap acity to begin, w hich anim ates and inspires all hum an
activities, can o f course rem ain intact and produce a great
variety o f great and beautiful things, none o f them political.
T h is is probably w hy freedom has so frequently been defined
as a non-political phenom enon and eventually even as a
freedom from politics. Even the current liberal m isunder
standing w hich holds that ‘perfect liberty is incom patible w ith
the existence o f society’, and that freedom is the price the
individual has to p ay for security, still has its authentic root in
a state o f affairs in w hich political life has becom e petrified
and political action im potent to interrupt autom atic processes.
U n d er such circum stances, freedom indeed is no longer
experienced as a m ode o f being w ith its own kind o f ‘virtu e’
and virtuosity, but as a suprem e gift w hich only man, o f all
earthly creatures, seems to have received, o f w hich w e can find
traces in alm ost all his activities, but w hich, nevertheless, can
develop fully only where action has created its own w orldly
space w here freedom can appear.
W e have alw ays known that freedom as a m ode o f being,
together w ith the public space w here it can unfold its full
virtuosity, can be destroyed. Since our acquaintan ce w ith
totalitarianism , we m ust fear that not only the state o f being
free but the sheer gift o f freedom, that w hich m an did not
m ake but w hich w as given to him, m ay be destroyed, too. T h is
fear, based on our know ledge o f the newest form o f governm ent,
and on our suspicion that it m ay yet prove to be the perfect
body politic o f a mass society, w eighs heavily on us under the
present circum stances. For today, m ore m ay depend on
hum an freedom than ever before— on m an ’s cap acity to turn
the scales w hich are heavily w eighed in favour o f disaster
w hich alw ays happens autom atically and therefore alw ays
appears to be irresistible. N o less than the continued existence
o f m ankind on earth m ay depend this time upon m an ’s gift to
‘perform m iracles’ , that is, to bring about the infinitely
im probable and establish it as reality.
four
F reed o m an d C o e r cio n
F. A. Hayek
80
Freedom and Coercion 81
It so happens that the m eaning o f freedom that w e have
adopted seems to be the original m eaning o f the word. M an,
or at least E uropean m an, enters history divided into free and
unfree; and this distinction had a very definite m eaning. T h e
freedom o f the free m ay have differed w idely, but only in the
degree o f an independence w hich the slave did not possess at
all. It m eant alw ays the possibility o f a person’s acting
according to his own decisions and plans, in contrast to the
position o f one w ho w as irrevocably subject to the w ill o f
another, w ho by arbitrary decision could coerce him to act or
not to act in specific w ays. T h e tim e-honoured phrase by
w hich this freedom has often been described is therefore
‘independence o f the arbitrary w ill o f another’ .
T h is oldest m eaning o f ‘freedom ’ has sometim es been
described as its vu lgar m eaning; but when w e consider all the
confusion that philosophers have caused by their attem pts to
refine or im prove it, we m ay do w ell to accept this description.
M ore im portant, however, than that it is the original m eaning
is that it is a distinct m eaning and that it describes one thing
and one thing only, a state w hich is desirable for reasons
different from those w hich m ake us desire other things also
called ‘freedom ’ . W e shall see that, strictly speaking, these
various ‘freedom s’ are not different species o f the sam e genus
but entirely different conditions, often in conflict w ith one
another, w hich therefore should be kept clearly distinct.
T h o u gh in some o f the other senses it m ay be legitim ate to
speak o f different kinds o f freedom, ‘freedom s from ’ and
‘freedoms to’ , in our sense ‘freedom ’ is one, varyin g in degree
but not in kind.
In this sense ‘freedom ’ refers solely to a relation o f men to
other men, and the only infringem ent on it is coercion by men.
T h is m eans, in particular, that the range o f physical possib
ilities from w hich a person can choose at a given m om ent has
no direct relevance to freedom. T h e rock clim ber on a difficult
pitch w ho sees only one w ay out to save his life is
unquestionably free, though w e w ould hard ly say he has any
choice. A lso, most people w ill still have enough feeling for the
original m eaning o f the w ord ‘free’ to see that if that sam e
clim ber were to fall into a crevasse and w ere unable to get out
o f it, he could only figuratively be called ‘unfree’ , and that to
82 F. A. Hayek
speak o f him as being ‘deprived o f lib erty5 or o f being ‘held
cap tive5 is to use these terms in a sense different from that in
w hich they apply to social relations.
T h e question o f how m any courses o f action are open to a
person is, o f course, very im portant. B ut it is a different
question from that o f how far in acting he can follow his own
plans and intentions, to w hat extent the pattern o f his conduct
is o f his own design, directed tow ard ends for w hich he has
been persistently striving rather than tow ard necessities
created b y others in order to m ake him do w hat they w ant.
W hether he is free or not does not depend on the range o f
choice but on w hether he can expect to shape his course o f
action in accordance w ith his present intentions, or w hether
som ebody else has pow er so to m anipulate the conditions as to
m ake him act according to that person’s w ill rather than his
own. Freedom thus presupposes that the individual has some
assured private sphere, that there is some set o f circum stances
in his environm ent with w hich others cannot interfere.
T h is conception o f liberty can be m ade m ore precise only
after we have exam ined the related concept o f coercion. T h is
we shall do system atically after w e have considered w h y this
liberty is so im portant. B ut even before w e attem pt this, we
shall endeavour to delineate the character o f our concept
som ew hat more precisely by contrasting it w ith the other
m eanings w hich the w ord liberty has acquired. T h e y have the
one thing in comm on w ith the original m eaning in that they
also describe states w hich most men regard as desirable; and
there are some other connections betw een the different
m eanings w hich account for the sam e w ord being used for
them. O u r im m ediate task, how ever, m ust be to bring out the
differences as sharply as possible.
N e g a t iv e a n d P o s it iv e F r e e d o m
100
Negative and Positive Freedom 101
O f those w ho agree that freedom is a benefit, most w ould
also agree that it is not the only benefit a society m ay secure its
m em bers. O th er benefits m ight include, for exam ple, econom ic
and m ilitary security, technological efficiency, and exem plifica
tions o f various aesthetic and spiritual values. O n ce this is
adm itted, however, disputes o f types (2) and (3) are possible.
Q uestions can be raised as to the logical and causal
relationships holding between the attainm ent o f freedom and
the attainm ent o f these other benefits, and as to w hether one
could on some occasions reasonably prefer to cultivate or
em phasize certain o f the latter at the expense o f the former.
T h u s, one m ay be led to ask: can anyone cultivate and
em phasize freedom at the cost o f realizing these other goals
and values (or vice versa) and, secondly, should anyone ever do
this? In practice, these issues are often m asked by or confused
w ith disputes about the consequences o f this or that action
w ith respect to realizing the various goals or values.
Further, any o f the above disputes m ay stem from or turn
into a dispute about w hat freedom is. T h e borderlines have
never been easy to keep clear. B ut a reason for this especially
w orth noting at the start is that disputes about the nature o f
freedom are certainly historically best understood as a series
o f attem pts by parties opposing each other on very m any
issues to capture for their own side the favourable attitudes
attaching to the notion o f freedom. It has com m only been
advantageous for partisans to link the presence or absence o f
freedom as closely as possible to the presence or absence o f
those other social benefits believed to be secured or denied by
the forms o f social organization advocated or condem ned.
Each social benefit is, accordingly, treated as either a result o f
or a contribution to freedom, and each liab ility is connected
som ehow to the absence o f freedom. T h is history o f the m atter
goes far to explain how freedom cam e to be identified w ith so
m any different kinds o f social and individual benefits, and
w hy the status o f freedom as sim ply one am ong a num ber o f
social benefits has rem ained unclear. T h e resulting flexibility
o f the notion o f freedom, and the resulting enhancem ent o f the
value o f freedom, have suited the purposes o f the polem icist.
It is against this background that one should first see the
issues surrounding the distinction betw een positive and
102 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
negative freedom as two fundam entally different kinds o f
freedom. Nevertheless, the difficulties surrounding the distinc
tion should not be attributed solely to the interplay o f
M ach iavellian motives. T h e disputes, and indeed the distinc
tion itself, have also been influenced by a genuine confusion
concerning the concept o f freedom. T h e confusion results from
failure to understand fully the conditions under w hich use o f
the concept o f freedom is intelligible.
1 The need to elaborate in this unwieldy way arises from the absence in
this paper of any discussion of the verification conditions for claims about
freedom. The elaboration is designed to leave open the issues one would
want to raise in such a discussion.
2 O f writers on political and social freedom who have approached this
view, the clearest case is Felix Oppenheim in Dimensions of Freedom (New
York, 1961 ); but, while viewing social freedom as a triadic relation, he limits
the ranges of the term variables so sharply as to cut one off from many issues
I wish to reach. Cf. also T. D. W eldon, The Vocabulary o f Politics
(Harmondsworth, 1953 ), esp. pp. 157 ff.; but see also pp. 70- 2 .
Negative and Positive Freedom 103
freedom o f agents intelligible. T h is restriction excludes from
consideration, for exam ple, some uses o f ‘free o f and ‘free
from ’— nam ely, those not concerned w ith the freedom o f
agents, and where, consequently, w hat is m eant m ay be only
‘rid o f or ‘w ithou t5. T h u s, consideration o f ‘T h e sky is now
free o f clouds5 is excluded because this expression does not
deal w ith agents at all; but consideration o f ‘H is record is free
o f blem ish5 and ‘She is free from any vice 5 is m ost p robably
also excluded. D oubt about these latter two hinges on w hether
these expressions m ight be thought claim s about the freedom
o f agents; if so, then they are not excluded, but neither are
they intelligible as claim s about the freedom o f agents until
one is in a position to fill in the elements o f the form at offered
above; if not, then although probably parasitic upon talk about
the freedom o f agents and thus perhaps view able as figurative
anyw ay, they fall outside the scope o f this investigation.
T h e claim that freedom, subject to the restriction noted
above, is a triadic relation can hard ly be substantiated here by
exhaustive exam ination o f the idioms o f freedom. B ut the most
obviously troublesom e cases— nam ely, those in w hich one's
understanding o f the context m ust in a relevant w ay carry
past the limits o f w hat is explicit in the idiom — m ay be
classified roughly and illustrated as follows:
((a) Cases where agents are not mentioned: for exam ple, consider
any o f the w ide range o f expressions h aving the form ‘free *' in
w hich (i) the place o f x is taken b y an expression not clearly
referring to an agent— as in ‘free society5 or ‘free w ill5— or
(ii) the place o f x is taken by an expression clearly not
referring to an agent— as in ‘free beer5. A ll such cases can be
understood to be concerned w ith the freedom o f agents and,
indeed, their intelligibility rests upon their being so understood;
they are thus subject to the claim s m ade above. T h is is fairly
obvious in the cases o f ‘free w ill5 and ‘free society5. T h e
intelligibility o f the free-will problem is generally and correctly
thought to rest at least upon the problem 's being concerned
w ith the freedom o f persons, even though the criteria for
identification o f the persons or ‘selves' w hose freedom is in
question have not often been m ade sufficiently clear.3 A n d it is
3 Indeed, lack of clarity on just this point is probably one of the major
sources of confusion in discussions of free will.
104 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
beyond question that the expression ‘free society5, although o f
course subject to various conflicting analyses w ith respect to
the identity o f the agent(s) whose freedom is involved, is
thought intelligible only because it is thought to concern the
freedom o f agents o f some sort or other. T h e expression ‘free
b eer5, on the other hand (to take only one o f a rich class o f
cases some o f w hich w ould have to be m anaged differently), is
ordinarily thought intelligible because thought to refer to beer
that people are fret from the ordinary restrictions o f the m arket
place to drink w ithout paying for it.
For an expression o f another gram m atical form, consider
‘T h e property is free o f (or from) encu m bran ce.5A lth ou gh this
involves a loose use o f ‘p roperty5, suppose that the term refers
to som ething like a piece o f land; the claim then clearly means
that owners o f that land are free from certain w ell-know n
restrictions (for exam ple, certain types o f charges or liabilities
consequent upon their ow nership o f the land) to use, enjoy,
dispose o f the land as they wish.
( b) Cases where it is not clear what corresponds to the second term:
for exam ple, ‘freedom o f choice5, ‘freedom to choose as I
please5. H ere, the range o f constraints, restrictions, and so
forth is generally clear from the context o f the discussion. In
political m atters, legal constraints or restrictions are m ost
often thought of; but one also sometim es finds, as in M ill's On
Liberty, concern for constraints and interferences constituted
by social pressures. It is sometim es difficult for persons to see
social pressures as constraints or interferences; this w ill be
discussed below. It is also notoriously difficult to see causal
nexuses as im plying constraints or restrictions on the ‘w ill5
(the person?) in connection w ith the free-will problem . B ut the
fact that such difficulties are the focus o f so m uch attention is
witness to the im portance o f getting clear about this term o f
the relation before such discussions o f freedom can be said to
be intelligible.
O n e m ight think that references to a second term o f this sort
could alw ays be elim inated by a device such as the following.
Instead o f saying, for exam ple, (i) ‘Sm ith is free from legal
restrictions on travel to leave the coun try5, one could say
(ii) ‘Sm ith is free to leave the country because there are no legal
restrictions on his leavin g5. T h e latter w ould m ake freedom
Negative and Positive Freedom 105
appear to be a dyadic, rather than a triadic, relation. B ut we
w ould be best advised to regard the appearance as illusory,
and this m ay be seen if one thinks a bit about the suggestion or
im plication o f the sentence that nothing hinders or prevents
Sm ith from leaving the country. D ifficulties about this m ight
be settled by attaching a qualifier to ‘free5— nam ely, ‘ legally
free5. A ltern atively, one could consider w hich, o f all the things
that m ight still hinder or prevent Sm ith from leavin g the
country (for exam ple, has he prom ised someone to rem ain?
w ill the responsibilities o f his jo b keep him here? has he
enough m oney to buy passage and, if not, w h y not?), could
count as lim itations on his freedom to leave the country; one
w ould then be in a position to determ ine w hether the claim
had been m isleading or false. In either case, how ever, the
devices adopted w ould reveal that our understanding o f w hat
has been said hinged upon our understanding o f the range o f
obstacles or constraints from w hich Sm ith had been claim ed
to be free.
(c) Cases where it is not clear what corresponds to the third term: for
exam ple, ‘freedom from hun ger5 (‘w an t5, ‘fear5, ‘disease5, and
so forth ). O ne quick but not very satisfactory w ay o f dealing
w ith such expressions is to regard them as figurative, or at
least not really concerned w ith an ybod y's freedom; thus,
being free from hunger w ould be sim ply being rid of, or
w ithout, hunger— as a sky m ay be free o f clouds (com pare the
discussion o f this above). A ltern atively, one m ight incline
tow ard regarding hunger as a barrier o f some sort, and claim
that a person free from hunger is free to be w ell fed or to do or
do well the various things he could not do or do w ell if hungry.
Y e t again, and more satisfactorily, one could turn to the
context o f the initial bit o f R ooseveltian rhetoric and there find
reason to treat the expression as follows. Suppose that hunger
is a feeling and that someone seeks hunger; he is on a diet and
the hunger feeling reassures him that he is losing w eigh t.4
A ltern atively, suppose that hunger is a bodily condition and
that someone seeks it; he is on a G andhi-style hunger strike.
In either case, Roosevelt or his fellow orators m ight have
w anted a w orld in w hich these people w ere free from hunger;
3
T h e key to understanding lies in recognition o f precisely how
differing styles o f answer to the question ‘W hen are persons
free?5 could survive agreem ent that freedom is a triadic
relation. T h e differences w ould be rooted in differing view s on
the ranges o f the term variables— that is, on the (‘true’)
identities o f the agents whose freedom is in question, on w hat
counts as an obstacle to or interference w ith the freedom o f
such agents, or on the range o f w hat such agents m ight or
m ight not be free to do or becom e.5 A lth ou gh perhaps not
alw ays obvious or dram atic, such differences could lead to
vastly different accounts o f w hen persons are free. F urther
more, differences on one o f these m atters m ight or m ight not
be accom panied by differences on either o f the others. T h ere is
thus a rich stock o f w ays in w hich such accounts m ight
diverge, and a rich stock o f possible foci o f argum ent.
It is therefore crucial, w hen dealing w ith accounts o f w hen
5 They might also be rooted in differing views on the verification
conditions for claims about freedom. The issue would be im portant to
discuss in a full-scale treatm ent of freedom but, as already mentioned, it is
not discussed in this paper. It plays, at most, an easily eliminable role in the
distinction between positive and negative freedom.
108 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
persons are free, to insist on getting quite clear on w h at each
writer considers to be the ranges o f these term variables. Such
insistence w ill reveal w here the differences betw een writers
are, and w ill provide a starting-point for rew arding considera
tion o f w hat m ight ju stify these differences.
T h e distinction between positive and negative freedom has,
however, stood in the w ay o f this approach. It has encouraged
us to see differences in accounts o f freedom as resulting from
differences in concepts o f freedom. T h is in turn has encouraged
the w rong sorts o f questions. W e have been tem pted to ask
such questions as ‘W ell, w ho is right? W hose concept o f
freedom is the correct one?’ or ‘W hich kind o f freedom do we
really w ant after all?’ Such questions w ill not help reveal the
fundam ental issues separating m ajor writers on freedom from
each other, no m atter how the w riters are arranged into
‘cam ps’ . It w ould be far better to insist that the sam e concept
o f freedom is operating throughout, and that the differences,
rather than being about w hat freedom is, are for exam ple about
w hat persons are, and about w hat can count as an obstacle to
or interference w ith the freedom o f persons so conceived.
T h e appropriateness o f this insistence is easily seen w hen
one exam ines prevailing characterizations o f the differences
between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ freedom. O n ce the alleged
difference between ‘freedom from ’ and ‘freedom to’ has been
disallowed (as it m ust be; see above), the most persuasive o f
the rem aining characterizations appear to be as follow s:6
1. W riters adhering to the concept o f ‘negative’ freedom
hold that only the presence o f som ething can render a
person unfree; writers adhering to the concept o f
‘positive’ freedom hold that the absence o f som ething m ay
also render a person unfree.
2. T h e former hold that a person is free to do x ju st in case
nothing due to arrangements made by other persons stops him
from doing x\ the latter adopt no such restriction.
6 Yet other attempts of characterization have been offered—most recently and no
tably by Sir Isaiah Berlin in Two Concepts ofLiberty (Oxford, 1958) [repr. with revisions
in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)]. Berlin also offers the
second and (more or less) the third of the characterizations cited here.
Negative and Positive Freedom 109
3. T h e former hold that the agents whose freedom is in
question (for exam ple, ‘persons5, ‘m en’) are, in effect,
identifiable as A nglo-A m erican law w ould identify
‘natural5 (as opposed to ‘artificial5) persons; the latter
sometimes hold quite different views as to how these
agents are to be identified (see below).
T h e most obvious thing to be said about these ch arac
terizations, o f course, is that appeal to them provides at best
an excessively crude justification o f the conventional classi
fication o f writers into opposing cam p s.7 W hen one presses on
the alleged points o f difference, they have a tendency to break
dow n, or at least to becom e less dram atic than they at first
seem ed.8 A s should not be surprising, the patterns o f
6 See Berlin, Two Concepts, pp. 17 ff. [pp. 44 ff. this volume] (though Berlin signifi
cantly admits also that this move can be made by adherents of negative freedom;
see p. 19 [p. 46 this volume]).
Negative and Positive Freedom 113
these m atters requires a painstaking investigation and evalu a
tion o f the argum ents offered— som ething that can hard ly be
launched w ithin the confines o f this paper. B ut w hat should be
observed is that this set o f seem ingly radical departures by
adherents o f positive freedom from the w ays ‘w e’ ordinarily
identify persons does not provide us w ith any reason w hatever
to claim that a different concept o f freedom is involved (one
m ight as well say that the shift from ‘T h e apple is to the left o f
the oran ge’ to ‘T h e seeds o f the apple are to the left o f the
seeds o f the oran ge’ changes w hat ‘to the left o f m eans).
Furtherm ore, that claim w ould draw attention aw ay from
precisely w hat we should focus on; it w ould lead us to focus on
the w rong concept— nam ely, ‘freedom ’ instead o f ‘person’ .
O n ly by insisting at least provisionally that all the writers
have the same concept o f freedom can one see clearly and keep
sharply focused the obvious and extrem ely im portant differ
ences am ong them concerning the concept o f ‘person’ .
2. Sim ilarly, adherents o f so-called ‘positive’ freedom
purportedly differ from ‘us’ on w hat counts as an obstacle.
W ill this difference be revealed adequately if we focus on
supposed differences in the concept o f ‘freedom ’ ? N ot likely.
G iven differences on w hat a person is, differences in w hat
counts as an obstacle or interference are not surprising, o f
course, since w hat could count as an obstacle to the activity o f
a person identified in one w ay m ight not possibly count as an
obstacle to persons identified in other w ays. B ut the differences
concerning ‘obstacle’ and so forth are p robab ly not due solely
to differences concerning ‘person’ . If, for exam ple, we so-
called adherents o f negative freedom, in order to count
som ething as a preventing condition, ordinarily require that it
can be shown a result o f arrangem ents m ade by hum an
beings, and our ‘opponents’ do not require this, w h y not? O n
the w hole, perhaps, the latter are saying this: if one is
concerned with social, political, and econom ic policies, and
w ith how these policies can rem ove or increase hum an m isery,
it is quite irrelevant w hether difficulties in the w ay o f the
policies are or are not due to arrangem ents m ade by hum an
beings. T h e only question is w hether the difficulties can be
rem oved by hum an arrangem ents, and at w hat cost. T h is
view , seen as an attack upon the ‘artificiality’ o f a borderline
114 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
for distinguishing hum an freedom from other hum an values,
does not seem inherently unreasonable; a close look at the
positions and argum ents seems called fo r.14 B ut again, the
issues and argum ents w ill be m isfocused if w e fail to see them
as about the range o f a term variab le o f a single triadic
relation (freedom ). A dm ittedly, we could see some aspects o f
the m atter (those w here the differences do not follow m erely
from differences in w hat is thought to be the agent w hose
freedom is in question) as am ounting to disagreem ents about
w hat is m eant by ‘freedom ’ . B ut there is no decisive reason for
doing so, and this m ove surely threatens to obscure the
socially and politically significant issues raised b y the arg u
m ent suggested above.
3. C oncern ing treatm ent o f the third term b y purported
adherents o f positive freedom , perhaps enough has already
been said to suggest that they tend to em phasize conditions o f
character rather than actions, and to suggest that, as w ith ‘u s’
too, the range o f ch aracter conditions and actions focused on
4
I f the im portance o f this approach to discussion o f freedom
has been generally overlooked, it is because social and
political philosophers have, w ith dreary regularity, m ade the
mistake o f trying to answer the unadorned question, ‘W hen
are men free?’ or, alternatively, ‘W hen are men really free?’
These questions invite confusion and m isunderstanding, largely
116 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
because o f their tacit presum ption that persons can be free or
not free simpliciter.
O ne m ight suppose that, strictly speaking, a person could
be free simpliciter only if there were no interference from w hich
he was not free, and nothing that he was not free to do or
become. O n this view, however, and on acceptance o f
common views as to w hat counts as a person, w hat counts as
interference, and w hat actions or conditions o f character m ay
m eaningfully be said to be free or not free, all disputes
concerning whether or not men in societies are ever free w ould
be inane. Concerning such settings, where the use and threat
of coercion are distinctively present, there w ould always be an
air o f fraud or hocus-pocus about claims that men are free—
ju st like that.
Y e t one m ight hold that men can be free (simpliciter) even in
society because certain things w hich ordinarily are counted as
interferences or barriers are not actually so, or because certain
kinds o f behaviour ordinarily thought to be either free or
unfree do not, for some reason, ‘count5. T h u s one m ight argue
that at least in certain (conceivable) societies there is no
activity in w hich men in that society are not free to engage,
and no possible restriction or barrier from w hich they are not
free.
Th e burden o f such an argum ent should now be clear.
Everything from w hich a person in that society m ight
ordinarily be considered unfree must be shown not actually an
interference or barrier (or not a relevant one), and everything
which a person in that society m ight ordinarily be considered
not free to do or become must be shown irrelevant to the issue o f
freedom. (Part o f the argum ent in either or both cases m ight
be that the ‘true5 identity o f the person in question is not w hat
it has been thought to be.)
Pitfalls m ay remain for attem pts to evaluate such argum ents.
For exam ple, one m ay uncover tendencies to telescope
questions concerning the legitimacy o f interference into
questions concerning genuineness as interference.15 O n e m ay
also find telescoping o f questions concerning the desirability o f
6
In the end, then, discussions o f the freedom o f agents can be
fully intelligible and rationally assessed only after the specifica
tion o f each term o f this triadic relation has been m ade or at
least understood. T h e principal claim m ade here has been
that insistence upon this single ‘concept5 o f freedom puts us in
a position to see the interesting and im portant ranges o f issues
separating the philosophers w ho write about freedom in such
different w ays, and the ideologies that treat freedom so
differently. These issues are obscured, if not hidden, when we
122 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr.
suppose that the im portant thing is that the fascists, com
munists, and socialists on the one side, for exam ple, have a
different concept o f freedom from that o f the ‘libertarians’ on
the other. These issues are also hidden, o f course, by the facile
assumption that the adherents on one side or the other are
never sincere.
six
I n d iv id u a l L iberty
H illel Steiner
A n individual is unfree if, and only if, his doing o f any action is
rendered impossible by the action o f another individual.1 T h a t
is, the unfree individual is so because the particular action in
question is prevented by another. In the following essay I shall,
first, briefly defend this ‘negative5 conception o f individual
liberty, and then proceed to elicit several o f its im plications—
particularly those w hich touch upon our understanding o f the
relation between liberty and threats. T h e nature o f m y
argum ent will be such as to suggest that m any o f the kinds o f
circum stance in w hich an individual is said, by the proponents
o f the negative conception, to lack the liberty to do a certain
action, cannot be held to be so w ithout self-contradiction.
Argum ents about the nature o f individual liberty— and they
are legion— are usually disputes concerning either the relation
between a prevented action and its subject, or that w hich is to
count as prevention. Q uite clearly, the two issues are
connected. Hence w hat occasions this essay is m y b elief that
m any writers who have argued for w hat I take to be the
correct position on the first issue, have nevertheless failed to
draw the appropriate conclusions concerning w hat is to count
as prevention. In so doing they have failed to appreciate an
im portant aspect o f the concept o f individual liberty itself. M y
defence o f the negative conception w ill thus be ‘b rie f
inasm uch as I shall only c ursorily rehearse the argum ents
establishing the correct position on the relation between
prevented actions and their subjects, and shall refer the reader
123
124 Hillel Steiner
to those writings in w hich these argum ents are set out in
greater detail.
ascending
degrees .5
of .2 norm
desirability .3
.4 .6
130 Hillel Steiner
where the vertically ordered pairs o f points represent the
alternative consequences posed by offers, threats, and
throffers, respectively; and w here the odd-num bered points
represent com pliance-consequences, even-num bered points
representing non-com pliance-consequences. H ence it w ould
appear that the answer to our first question is an affirm ation
that we can distinguish offers from threats, and that the
grounds for doing so consist in the fact that the alternative
consequences posed by the form er occupy a different position
relative to the norm than do those posed by the latter.
W e m ay now consider our answer to the second question in
the light o f this distinction. Does this distinction, between
those interventions w hich are offers and those w hich are
threats, im ply any difference between the w ays in w hich each
affects the practical deliberations o f their recipients? T h e short
answer to this question is ‘N o ’ . T h e w ay in w hich both offers
and threats affect the practical deliberations o f their recipients
consists in the reversal o f the relative desirability o f doing a
particular action with that o f not doing it. W hereas in the
norm al course o f events— in the absence o f an intervention—
4
X*s desire to do A is greater than his desire to do not-^ , in the
presence o f an intervention his desire to do A is less than his
4
desire to do not-^ . N ow w hat is consequential for the
deliberations o f the recipient o f an intervention is not w hether
the pair o f alternatives confronting him is above (and on) or
below the norm. Rather it is the fact— true o f both offers and
threats— that com pliance leaves him in a m ore desired
position than does non-com pliance. T h e modus operandi o f an
intervention— its method o f prom oting a com pliant response—
consists in effecting a positive rem ainder when the degree o f
desirability attached to the non-com pliance-consequence is
subtracted from that o f the com pliance-consequence. T h is is
true irrespective o f w hether that pair o f consequences lies
above (and on) or below the norm, that is, irrespective o f
whether that intervention is an offer or a threat. A nd w hile it
is necessarily true that an action com plying w ith an offer is
more desired than an action com plying w ith a threat, it is very
far from being necessarily true that the difference in desirability
between com pliance and non-com pliance w ith offers is o f a
lesser m agnitude than the corresponding difference pertaining
Individual Liberty 131
to threats. T h is m eans, as w ill be shown, that it is not
necessarily true that offers are more resistible or exert less influ
ence than threats. W ith respect to any intervention, it is the
existence o f this difference w hich affects the practical delibera
tions o f the recipient, and not the kind o f intervention involved.
I f (and only if) this argum ent is correct, it should be true
that the factor determ ining the strength o f a recipient’s desire
to com ply w ith an intervention is the m agnitude o f this
difference, and not the position o f either o f its consequences
relative to the norm. T h a t this is indeed the case can be seen
by com paring the following threatening interventions:
3
T h e preceding argum ents have been brought in support o f a
single claim: that since an individual is unfree to do— is
prevented from doing— a p articular action if and only i f the
action o f another renders it im possible for him to do it, an
Individual Liberty 135
intervening action on the part o f one individual in b eh alf o f
another’s not doing an action does not render the latter unfree
to do that action. T h e intervention does not count as the
prevention o f his doing that action. W e have now to consider
w hat does count as prevention.
Prevention is a relation between the respective actions o f
two (or more) individuals such that the occurrence o f one o f
those actions rules out, or renders im possible, the occurrence
o f the other (or others). I f there are two in divid uals’ actions
w hich can both occur, neither can be preventive o f the other.
H ence w hat we w ant to know is the kind o f condition under
w hich either o f two individuals’ actions can occur, but not
both. A cknow ledging the immense diversity o f actions and o f
the circum stances o f their prevention, can we nevertheless
specify a universally valid description o f the conditions o f
prevention? T h e grounds for an affirm ative answ er to this
question should furnish us w ith the conceptual equipm ent to
form ulate more positively w hat it is to be free to do a
particular action.
C onsider the case o f an individual incarcerated in a locked
gaol cell w hich is ten feet high, w ide and long, w hich is devoid
o f any furniture or fittings, and for the lock o f w hich he lacks a
key. T h ere is, we m ight say, an indefinitely long list o f actions
w hich this individual is prevented from doing. It is also true
that there is an indefinitely long list— though not as long as
the previous one— o f actions w hich this individual is not
prevented from doing. H e is not prevented from ju m p in g up
and down, nor from singing ‘W altzin g M a tild a ’ , nor from
tw iddling his thum bs in a clockwise direction, nor from
tw iddling his thum bs in a counter-clockw ise direction, and so
forth. N ow consider the change that w ould be w rought, in the
extent to w hich he is subject to prevention, w ere his gaolers to
place in his cell a (ventilated) m um m y-case and to lock him
inside it. W e should say that his list o f prevented actions,
how ever indefinitely long it had been, w ould lengthen; and his
list o f unprevented actions w ould shorten. It is true, how ever,
that there w ould now (in the m um m y-case) be certain actions
possible for him to do w hich were not so before. Before, he was
prevented from, am ong other things, rubbing his foot against
the inside o f a m um m y-case. Indeed, one could com pile a
136 Hillel Steiner
considerable inventory o f actions now open to him by virtue o f
his access to the m um m y-case, w hich w ere previously
rendered im possible by the denial o f such access by his
gaolers. Hence, in order to establish a clear-cut com parison
between any two hypothetical situations in terms o f the
relative am ount o f prevention each w ould involve, we m ust
elim inate as m any differences between them as possible,
w ithout rendering them exactly alike. L et us say then, that in
the first situation the incarcerated individual finds him self in
the aforem entioned locked cell, w hich also contains a m um m y-
case w hich is not locked though w hich he can lock from the
inside. A n d in the second situation the individual is locked
inside the m um m y-case (not lockable/unlockable from inside)
w hich is, in turn, located w ithin the locked cell. It seems clear
that how ever indefinitely long are the lists o f prevented and
unprevented actions respectively pertaining to the individual
in each o f these situations, the extent o f prevention is greater
in the second than in the first.
N ext, com pare the extent o f prevention obtaining in the
case o f an individual confined in a cell like the one ju st
m entioned and w hich is devoid o f any furnishings, to that
obtaining in the case o f an individual sim ilarly confined but
who can secure w riting m aterials for lim ited periods o f time
w hen he requests them from his gaolers. W e should not
hesitate to say that prevention is greater in the form er case
than in the latter. A sim ilar judgem ent w ould be rendered in
com paring the circum stance in w hich an individual is
com pelled to pay a fine o f £1,000, w ith that in w hich he is
fined only £100. For even if the m oney econom y in w hich he
lives and works were to cease to exist w hile he w as still in the
court-room , there would still be more actions open to him
were he to be deprived o f only £100 than there w ould be if he
were deprived o f £i ,000. A gain, an individual is more free if he
is chained to a dungeon w all by a shackle on only one w rist,
than if both wrists are shackled. A n d finally, the num ber o f
actions rendered im possible for one individual by another, is
less if the preventer has crippled only one o f his victim ’s legs
than if he has crippled both o f them.
In all o f these cases we should, o f course, be hard pressed to
specify precisely the extent to w hich one in d ivid u al’s action
Individual Liberty 137
prevents the other from acting. T h is is because the num ber o f
actions w hich the prevented individual is and is not thereby
prevented from doing, is incalculably great. N evertheless, the
fact that this num ber cannot be specified does not constitute
an insurm ountable obstacle to any further analysis o f the
m anner in w hich one action m ay stand in a preventive
relation to others. For the fact that w e are able to com pare at
least some hypothetical situations where prevention occurs,
and to form judgem ents as to the relative am ounts o f
prevention respectively obtaining in these com pared situations,
indicates that— despite the vast diversity o f preventive condi
tions— there is some lim itedly quantifiable com m on elem ent
present in them.
T h e reason w hy we ju d g e an individual to be subject to less
prevention in the cell with the unlocked m um m y-case than in
the cell w ith the locked one is, obviously enough, that he is
unprevented from doing all those actions w hich w ould be
open to him were he to be locked inside the case, as w ell as
others w hich w ould not be open to him w ere he so confined.
Y e t upon w hat grounds is this com parative ju dgem en t made?
W h at is the nature o f the difference, betw een these two
situations, w hich enables us to claim w ith com plete confid
ence— and in the absence o f an actual com parative inventory
o f prevented actions— that the one allows o f greater freedom
than the other? T h e difference is, sim ply and solely, that in the
form er situation the incarcerated individual can m ake use o f a
greater am ount o f physical space and m aterial objects than his
confinement in the locked case w ould perm it. N o other
difference exists between these two situations. T h e sam e kind
o f claim can be m ade about the other hypothetical situations
com pared above. In other words, the greater the am ount o f
physical space and/or m aterial objects the use o f w hich is
blocked to one individual by another, the greater is the extent
o f the prevention to w hich that form er individual is subject.
T h is is because to act is, am ong other things, to occupy
particular portions o f physical space and to dispose o f
particular m aterial objects including, in the first instance,
parts o f one’s own body. I shall call the particular portions o f
physical space occupied in a p articular action, and the
particular m aterial objects disposed o f in that action, the
138 Hillel Steiner
‘physical com ponents’ o f that action. T h u s, pursuing the
universally valid description desiderated at the beginning o f
this section, the kind o f condition under w hich the occurrence
o f one action renders im possible the occurrence o f another is
that at least one o f the physical com ponents o f one action is
(sim ultaneously) identical w ith one o f the physical com ponents
o f another. I f two agents’ respective actions (sim ultaneously)
have no comm on physical com ponents, there is no reason w h y
they cannot both occur. It follows that to prevent an
individual from doing a particular action is (sim ultaneously)
to occupy and/or to dispose o f at least one o f the physical
components o f that in divid ual’s action. T o be free to do A
therefore entails that all o f the physical com ponents o f doing A
are (sim ultaneously) unoccupied and/or disposed o f by
another.
T h e relation between an agent and a portion o f physical
space w hich he occupies, and between an agent and a m aterial
object o f w hich he disposes, is com m only called possession. A n
individual is said to possess an object w hen he enjoys
exclusive physical control o f it, that is, w hen w hat happens to
that object— allow ing for the operation o f the laws o f
physics— is not subject to the determ ination o f any other
agent and is therefore subject only to his own determ ination.
Possession is thus a triadic relation obtaining between an
agent, an object, and all other agents. Statem ents about the
freedom o f an individual to do a p articular action are therefore
construable as claim s about the agential location o f possession
o f the particular physical com ponents o f that action. T h e
statem ent that ‘Z is free to do A ’ entails that none o f the
physical components o f doing A is possessed by an agent other
than X . T h e statem ent that ‘X is unfree to do A ’ entails that at
least one o f the physical com ponents o f doing A is possessed
by an agent other than X. M y theorem is, then, that freedom is
the personal possession o f physical objects.
A t least one interesting inference m ay be draw n from this
theorem. It has to do w ith w hat is im plied by any statem ent
about either the expansion or dim inution o f his personal
liberty that m ay be experienced by an individual. I f X s
freedom consists in the physical objects X possesses, any
expansion in his freedom m ust consist in an increase in the
Individual Liberty 139
physical objects X possesses. But if a physical object P is in X s
possession, it cannot be in the possession o f any agent other
than X . In this circum stance, another agent F is prevented
from doing any action o f w hich P is a physical com ponent. F
is unfree to do any action o f w hich one or m ore o f the physical
components are possessed by X. I f there w ere only two agents,
X and F, the extent o f X s freedom and o f F s unfreedom w ould
both be functions o f the extent o f X s possessions. A n y
expansion in the freedom o f X w ould constitute a dim inution
in the freedom o f F: it w ould extend the list o f actions w hich F
is prevented from doing. In a universe o f more than two
agents, any increase in the num ber o f physical objects
controlled by one agent m ust constitute an increase in the
num ber o f physical objects the control o f w hich is denied to
other agents. C onversely, any decrease in the num ber o f
physical objects controlled by one agent, m ust constitute a
decrease in the num ber o f physical objects the control o f
w hich is denied to other agents. T h is m uch at least is
analytically true and, perhaps, reasonably obvious.
H ence it is often asserted, w ith some justification , that the
paradigm instance o f being unfree is that in w hich an
individual is im prisoned. C ertain ly it is true that, for most
people, im prisonm ent involves a very considerable decrease in
the am ount o f physical objects they control. (W here it does
not, im prisonm ent m ay fail to penalize.) A nd, in the case o f
any one individual, this decrease im plies a corresponding
increase in the am ount o f physical objects over w hich other
individuals enjoy control. N evertheless the paradigm atic
character o f im prisonm ent is doubtful since, as w as noted
previously, certain actions are possible even in prison and, to
that extent, a prisoner does enjoy control over some physical
objects. Therefore the true paradigm o f prevention, the
condition under w hich an individual is m axim ally unfree, is
that in w hich another individual controls his volun tary
nervous system and thereby renders it im possible for him to
dispose o f the various parts o f his body in a m anner
appropriate to the doing o f any action w hatever. In such a
case it is readily apparent that the dim inution in the extent o f
control enjoyed by the one individual corresponds to the
expansion in the extent o f control enjoyed by the other. It does
140 Hillel Steiner
not stretch our conceptual capacities too far, even if it is
som ewhat unidiom atic, to say that the latter possesses the
body o f the former. O f course, most instances o f prevention
are rather less drastic and thus less thoroughgoing. B ut the
paradigm does serve to exem plify the nature o f the relation
obtaining between the extent o f one agen t’s freedom and that
o f others.
Berlin observes, in a figurative vein, that ‘ “ Freedom for the
pike is death for the m innow s” 5 and interprets this epigram
literally to mean that ‘the liberty o f some m ust depend on the
restraint o f others5.7 It is thus inconsistent as w ell as m istaken
to suggest, as he does ju st slightly further on in his argum ent,
that there can be circum stances in w hich ‘an absolute loss o f
liberty occurs5, i.e. that one individual can lose freedom
w ithout thereby increasing the individual liberty o f others
{Four Essays, p. 125 [p. 38 this volum e]). W ithin the universe o f
agents, that is, w ithin the class o f beings w ho count as authors
o f actions and who are therefore the subjects o f statem ents
concerning freedom and prevention, there can be no such
thing as an absolute loss o f (or gain in) individual liberty.
7 Four Essays, p. 124 [p. 36 this volume]; see also S. I. Benn and
R. S. Peters, Social Principles and the Democratic State (London, 1966), 213.
seven
W h a t ’s W r o n g W ith
N e g ative L iberty
Charles Taylor
141
142 Charles Taylor
genuine. T h e destruction o f ‘bourgeois freedom s’ is no real
loss o f freedom, and coercion can be justified in the nam e o f
freedom if it is needed to bring into existence the classless
society in w hich alone men are properly free. M en can, in
short, be forced to be free.
Even as applied to official Com m unism , this portrait is a
little extreme, although it undoubtedly expresses the inner
logic o f this kind o f theory. B ut it is an absurd caricature if
applied to the w hole fam ily o f positive conceptions. T h is
includes all those views o f m odern political life w hich owe
som ething to the ancient republican tradition, according to
w hich m en’s ruling themselves is seen as an activity valuab le
in itself, and not only for instrum ental reasons. It includes in
its scope thinkers like T ocq ueville, and even a rgu ab ly the
J. S. M ill o f On Representative Government. It has no necessary
connection with the view that freedom consists purely and simply
in the collective control over the com m on life, or that there is
no freedom w orth the nam e outside a context o f collective
control. A nd it does not therefore generate necessarily a
doctrine that men can be forced to be free.
O n the other side, there is a corresponding caricatural
version o f negative freedom w hich tends to com e to the fore.
T h is is the tough-m inded version, going back to H obbes, or in
another w ay to Bentham , w hich sees freedom sim ply as the
absence o f external physical or legal obstacles. T h is view w ill
have no truck w ith other less im m ediately obvious obstacles to
freedom, for instance, lack o f awareness, or false consciousness,
or repression, or other inner factors o f this kind. It holds
firm ly to the view that to speak for instance o f som eone’s being
less free because o f false consciousness, is to abuse words. T h e
only clear m eaning w hich can be given to freedom is that o f
the absence o f external obstacles.
I call this view caricatural as a representative portrait o f the
negative view, because it rules out o f court one o f the most
powerful motives behind the m odern defence o f freedom as
individual independence, viz., the post-Rom an tic idea that
each person’s form o f self-realization is original to him/her,
and can therefore only be w orked out independently. T h is is
one o f the reasons for the defence o f individual liberty by
am ong others J. S. M ill (this time in his On Liberty). B ut if we
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 143
think o f freedom as including som ething like the freedom o f
self-fulfilment, or self-realization according to our own pattern,
then we plainly have som ething w hich can fail for inner
reasons as well as because o f external obstacles. W e can fail to
achieve our own self-realization through inner fears, or false
consciousness, as well as because o f external coercion. T h u s
the m odern notion o f negative freedom w hich gives w eight to
the securing o f each person’s right to realize him /herself in
his/her own w ay cannot m ake do w ith the H obbes/Bentham
notion o f freedom. T h e m oral p sychology o f these authors is
too sim ple, or perhaps we should say too crude, for its
purposes.
N ow there is a strange asym m etry here. T h e extrem e
caricatural views tend to come to the fore in the polem ic, as I
m entioned above. B ut whereas the extrem e ‘forced-to-be-free’
view is one w hich the opponents o f positive liberty try to pin
on them, as one w ould expect in the heat o f the argum ent, the
proponents o f negative liberty themselves often seem anxious
to espouse their extreme, H obbesian view . T h u s even Isaiah
Berlin, in his eloquent exposition o f the two concepts o f
liberty, seems to quote B entham 2 ap provin gly and H obbes3 as
well. W h y is this?
T o see this we have to exam ine more closely w hat is at stake
between the two views. T h e negative theories, as w e saw, w ant
to define freedom in terms o f individual independence from
others; the positive also w ant to identify freedom w ith
collective self-governm ent. B ut behind this lie some deeper
differences o f doctrines.
Isaiah Berlin points out that negative theories are concerned
w ith the area in w hich the subject should be left w ithout
interference, whereas the positive doctrines are concerned
w ith w ho or w hat controls. I should like to put the point
behind this in a slightly different w ay. D octrines o f positive
freedom are concerned w ith a view o f freedom w hich involves
essentially the exercising o f control over one’s life. O n this
view , one is free only to the extent that one has effectively
determ ined oneself and the shape o f one’s life. T h e concept o f
freedom here is an exercise-concept.
2 Four Essays, 148 n. 1 [n. 24 this volume].
3 Ibid. 164.
144 Charles Taylor
B y contrast, negative theories can rely sim ply on an
opportunity-concept, where being free is a m atter o f w hat we
can do, o f w hat it is open to us to do, w hether or not we do
anything to exercise these options. T h is certainly is the case o f
the crude, original H obbesian concept. Freedom consists ju st
in there being no obstacle. It is a sufficient condition o f one’s
being free that nothing stand in the w ay.
But we have to say that negative theories can rely on an
opportunity-concept, rather than that they necessarily do so
rely, for we have to allow for that part o f the gam ut o f negative
theories mentioned above w hich incorporates some notion o f
self-realization. P lainly this kind o f view can ’ t rely sim ply on
an opportunity-concept. W e can ’t say that someone is free, on
a self-realization view , if he is totally unrealized, if for instance
he is totally unaware o f his potential, if fulfilling it has never
even arisen as a question for him , or i f he is paralysed by the
fear o f breaking w ith some norm w hich he has internalized but
which does not authentically reflect him. W ithin this concep
tual scheme, some degree o f exercise is necessary for a m an to
be thought free. O r if we w ant to think o f the internal bars to
freedom as obstacles on all fours w ith the external ones, then
being in a position to exercise freedom, having the opportunity,
involves rem oving the internal barriers; and this is not
possible w ithout having to some extent realized myself. So
that with the freedom o f self-realization, having the oppor
tunity to be free requires that I already be exercising freedom.
A pure opportunity-concept is im possible here.
But if negative theories can be grounded on either an
opportunity- or an exercise-concept, the sam e is not true o f
positive theories. T h e view that freedom involves at least
partially collective self-rule is essentially grounded on an
exercise-concept. For this view (at least partly) identifies
freedom w ith self-direction, i.e. the actual exercise o f directing
control over one’s life.
But this already gives us a hint towards illum inating the
above paradox, that w hile the extrem e varian t o f positive
freedom is usually pinned on its protagonists by their
opponents, negative theorists seem prone to em brace the
crudest versions o f their theory them selves. For if an
opportunity-concept is incom binable w k h a positive theory,
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 145
but either it or its alternative can suit a negative theory, then
one w ay o f ruling out positive theories in principle is by firm ly
espousing an opportunity-concept. O n e cuts off the positive
theories by the root, as it were, even though one m ay also pay
a price in the atrophy o f a w ide range o f n egative theories as
well. A t least by taking one’s stand firm ly on the crude side o f
the negative range, w here only opportunity concepts are
recognized, one leaves no place for a positive theory to grow.
T a k in g one’s stand here has the advantage that one is
holding the line around a very sim ple and basic issue o f
principle, and one where the negative view seems to have
some backing in comm on sense. T h e basic intuition here is
that freedom is a m atter o f being able to do som ething or
other, o f not having obstacles in one’s w ay, rather than being
a capacity that we have to realise. It naturally seems more
prudent to fight the T o talitarian M enace at this last-ditch
position, digging in behind the natural frontier o f this simple
issue, rather than engaging the enem y on the open terrain o f
exercise-concepts, w here one w ill have to fight to discrim inate
the good from the bad am ong such concepts; fight, for
instance, for a view o f individual self-realization against
various notions o f collective self-realization, o f a nation, or a
class. It seems easier and safer to cut all the nonsense off at the
start by declaring all self-realization view s to be m etaphysical
hog-wash. Freedom should ju st be tough-m indedly defined as
the absence o f external obstacles.
O f course, there are independent reasons for w an ting to
define freedom tough-m indedly. In p articular there is the
imm ense influence o f the anti-m etaphysical, m aterialist,
natural-science-orientated tem per o f thought in our civilization.
Som ething o f this spirit at its inception induced H obbes to
take the line that he did, and the sam e spirit goes m arching on
today. Indeed, it is because o f the prevalence o f this spirit that
the line is so easy to defend, forensically speaking, in our
society.
Nevertheless, I think that one o f the strongest m otives for
defending the crude H obbes—Bentham concept, that freedom
is the absence o f external obstacles, physical or legal, is the
strategic one above. For most o f those w ho take this line
thereby abandon m any o f their own intuitions, sharing as
146 Charles Taylor
they do w ith the rest o f us in a post-R om antic civilization
w hich puts great value on self-realization, and values freedom
largely because o f this. It is fear o f the T o talitarian M enace, I
w ould argue, w hich has led them to abandon this terrain to
the enemy.
I w ant to argue that this not only robs their eventual
forensic victory o f m uch o f its value, since they becom e
incapable o f defending liberalism in the form we in fact value
it, but I w ant to m ake the stronger claim that this M agin ot
Line m entality actually ensures defeat, as is often the case
w ith M aginot Line m entalities. T h e H o b bes-B en th am view , I
w ant to argue, is indefensible as a view o f freedom.
T o see this, let’s exam ine the line m ore closely, and the
tem ptation to stand on it. T h e advantage o f the view that
freedom is the absence o f external obstacles is its sim plicity.
It allows us to say that freedom is being able to do w hat you
w ant, where w hat you w ant is u nproblem atically understood
as w hat the agent can identify as his desires. B y contrast an
exercise-concept o f freedom requires that w e discrim inate
am ong m otivations. I f w e are free in the exercise o f certain
capacities, then we are not free, or less free, w hen these
capacities are in some w ay unfulfilled or blocked. B ut the
obstacles can be internal as well as external. A n d this m ust be
so, for the capacities relevant to freedom m ust involve some
self-awareness, self-understanding, m oral discrim ination, and
self-control, otherwise their exercise couldn’ t am ount to
freedom in the sense o f self-direction; and this being so, we can
fail to be free because these internal conditions are not
realized. But w here this happens, w here, for exam ple, w e are
quite self-deceived, or utterly fail to discrim inate properly the
ends we seek, or have lost self-control, w e can quite easily be
doing w hat we w ant in the sense o f w hat w e can identify as our
wants, w ithout being free; indeed, we can be further en
trenching our unfreedom.
O n ce one adopts a self-realization view , or indeed, any
exercise-concept o f freedom, then being able to do w hat
one w ants can no longer be accepted as a sufficient condition
o f being free. For this view puts certain conditions on
one’s m otivation. Y o u are not free if you are m otivated,
through fear, inauthentically internalized standards, or false
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 147
consciousness, to thw art your self-realization. T h is is som e
times put by saying that for a self-realization view , you have to
be able to do w hat you really w ant, or to follow your real will,
or to fulfil the desires o f your own true self. B ut these form ulas,
particularly the last, m ay m islead, by m aking us think that
exercise-concepts o f freedom are tied to some p articular
m etaphysic, in particular that o f a higher and low er self. W e
shall see below that this is far from being the case, and that
there is a m uch w ider range o f bases for discrim inating
authentic and inauthentic desires.
In any case, the point for our discussion here is that for an
exercise-concept o f freedom, being free can ’t ju st be a question
o f doing w hat you w ant in the unproblem atic sense. It must
also be that w hat you w ant doesn’t run against the grain o f
your basic purposes, or your self-realization. O r to put the
issue in another w ay, w hich converges on the sam e point, the
subject him self can ’ t be the final authority on the question
w hether he is free; for he cannot be the final authority on the
question w hether his desires are authentic, w hether they do or
do not frustrate his purposes.
T o put the issue in this second w ay is to m ake more
palpable the tem ptation for defenders o f the negative view to
hold their M aginot Line. For once we adm it that the agent
him self is not the final authority on his own freedom , do we
not open the w ay to totalitarian m anipulation? D o we not
legitim ate others, supposedly w iser about his purposes than
himself, redirecting his feet on the right path, perhaps even by
force, and all this in the nam e o f freedom?
T h e answer is that o f course we don ’t. N ot b y this
concession alone. For there m ay be good reasons for holding
that others are not likely to be in a better position to
understand his real purposes. T h is indeed plausibly follows
from the post-Rom antic view above that each person has his/
her own original form o f realization. Som e others, w ho know
us intim ately, and w ho surpass us in w isdom , are undoubtedly
in a position to advise us, but no official body can possess a
doctrine or a technique w hereby they could know how to put
us on the rails, because such a doctrine or technique cannot in
principle exist if hum an beings really differ in their self
realization.
148 Charles Taylor
O r again, we m ay hold a self-realization view o f freedom,
and hence believe that there are certain conditions on m y
m otivation necessary to m y being free, but also believe that
there are other necessary conditions w hich rule out m y being
forcibly led towards some definition o f m y self-realization by
external authority. Indeed, in these last two paragraphs I
have given a portrait o f w hat I think is a very w idely held view
in liberal society, a view w hich values self-realization, and
accepts that it can fail for internal reasons, but w hich believes
that no valid guidance can be provided in principle by social
authority, because o f hum an diversity and originality, and
holds that the attem pt to impose such guidance w ill destroy
other necessary conditions o f freedom.
It is how ever true that totalitarian theories o f positive
freedom do build on a conception w hich involves discrim in
ating between m otivations. Indeed, one can represent the
path from the negative to the positive conceptions o f freedom
as consisting o f two steps: the first moves us from a notion o f
freedom as doing w hat one w ants to a notion w hich
discrim inates m otivations and equates freedom w ith doing
w hat we really w ant, or obeying our real w ill, or truly
directing our lives. T h e second step introduces some doctrine
purporting to show that we cannot do w hat we really w ant, or
follow our real will, outside o f a society o f a certain canonical
form, incorporating true self-governm ent. It follows that we
can only be free in such a society, and that being free is
governing ourselves collectively according to this canonical
form.
W e m ight see an exam ple o f this second step in R ou sseau ’s
view that only a social contract society in w hich all give
themselves totally to the whole preserves us from other-
dependence and ensures that we obey only ourselves; or in
M a rx ’s doctrine o f man as a species-being w ho realizes his
potential in a mode o f social production, and w ho m ust thus
take control o f this mode collectively.
Faced w ith this two-step process, it seems safer and easier
to stop it at the first step, to insist firm ly that freedom is ju st a
m atter o f the absence o f external obstacles, that it therefore
involves no discrim ination o f m otivation and perm its in
principle no second-guessing o f the subject by any one else.
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 149
T h is is the essence o f the M aginot L ine strategy. It is very
tem pting. B ut I w ant to claim that it is w rong. I w an t to argue
that we cannot defend a view o f freedom w hich doesn’ t involve
at least some qualitative discrim ination as to m otive, i.e.
w hich doesn’t put some restrictions on m otivations am ong the
necessary conditions o f freedom, and hence w hich could rule
out second-guessing in principle.
T h ere are some considerations one can put forw ard straight
off to show that the pure H obbesian concept w on ’t w ork, that
there are some discrim inations am ong m otivations w hich are
essential to the concept o f freedom as w e use it. E ven where we
think o f freedom as the absence o f external obstacles, it is not
the absence o f such obstacles simpliciter. For we m ake
discrim inations between obstacles as representing m ore or less
serious infringem ents o f freedom. A nd we do this, because we
deploy the concept against a background understanding that
certain goals and activities are more significant than others.
T h u s we could say that m y freedom is restricted if the local
authority puts up a new traffic light at an intersection close to
m y home; so that where previously I could cross as I liked,
consistently w ith avoiding collision w ith other cars, now I
have to w ait until the light is green. In a philosophical
argum ent, we m ight call this a restriction o f freedom , but not
in a serious political debate. T h e reason is that it is too trivial,
the activity and purposes inhibited here are not really
significant. It is not ju st a m atter o f our having m ade a trade
off, and considered that a sm all loss o f liberty was w orth fewer
traffic accidents, or less danger for the children; we are
reluctant to speak here o f a loss o f liberty at all; w hat w e feel
w e are trading o ff is convenience against safety.
B y contrast a law w hich forbids me from w orshipping
according to the form I believe in is a serious blow to liberty;
even a law w hich tried to restrict this to certain times (as the
traffic light restricts m y crossing o f the intersection to certain
times) w ould be seen as a serious restriction. W h y this
difference between the two cases? Because we have a back
ground understanding, too obvious to spell out, o f some
activities and goals as highly significant for hum an beings and
others as less so. O n e ’s religious b elief is recognized, even by
atheists, as suprem ely im portant, because it is that by w hich
150 Charles Taylor
the believer defines h im self as a m oral being. B y contrast m y
rhythm o f m ovem ent through the city traffic is trivial. W e
don’t w ant to speak o f these two in the sam e breath. W e d o n ’t
even readily adm it that liberty is at stake in the traffic light
case. For de minimis non curat libertas.
But this recourse to significance takes us beyond a
H obbesian scheme. Freedom is no longer ju st the absence o f
external obstacle tout court, but the absence o f external obstacle
to significant action, to w hat is im portant to man. T h ere are
discrim inations to be made; some restrictions are m ore serious
than others, some are utterly trivial. A b o u t m any, there is o f
course controversy. B ut w hat the judgem en t turns on is some
sense o f w hat is significant for hum an life. R estricting the
expression o f people’s religious and ethical convictions is m ore
significant than restricting their m ovem ent around uninhabited
parts o f the country; and both are more significant than the
trivia o f traffic control.
But the H obbesian scheme has no place for the notion o f
significance. It w ill allow only for purely quantitative ju d g e
ments. O n the toughest-m inded version o f his conception,
where H obbes seems to be about to define liberty in terms o f
the absence o f physical obstacles, one is presented w ith the
vertiginous prospect o f hum an freedom being m easurable in
the same w ay as the degrees o f freedom o f some physical
object, say a lever. L ater w e see that this w o n ’t do, because we
have to take account o f legal obstacles to m y action. B ut in
any case, such a quantitative conception o f freedom is a non
starter.
C onsider the follow ing diabolical defence o f A lb a n ia as a
free country. W e recognize that religion has been abolished in
A lb an ia, whereas it hasn’t been in Britain. B ut on the other
hand there are p robably far fewer traffic lights per head in
T ira n a than in London. (I h aven ’t checked for myself, but this
is a very plausible assum ption.) Suppose an apologist for
A lb an ian Socialism were nevertheless to claim that this
country was freer than Britain, because the num ber o f acts
restricted was far smaller. A fter all, only a m inority o f
Londoners practise some religion in public places, but all have
to negotiate their w ay through traffic. T h ose w ho do practise a
religion generally do so on one day o f the week, w hile they are
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 151
held up at traffic lights every day. In sheer quantitative terms,
the num ber o f acts restricted by traffic lights m ust be greater
than that restricted by a ban on public religious practice. So if
Britain is considered a free society, w h y not A lbania?
So the application even o f our negative notion o f freedom
requires a background conception o f w hat is significant,
according to w hich some restrictions are seen to be w ithout
relevance for freedom altogether, and others are ju d g ed as
being o f greater and lesser im portance. So some discrim ina
tion am ong m otivations seems essential to our concept o f
freedom. A m inute’s reflection shows w h y this m ust be so.
Freedom is im portant to us because w e are purposive beings.
B ut then there must be distinctions in the significance o f
different kinds o f freedom based on the distinction in the
significance o f different purposes.
B ut o f course, this still doesn’ t involve the kind o f discrim ina
tion m entioned above, the kind w hich w ould allow us to say that
someone w ho w as doing w hat he w anted (in the unproblem atic
sense) w asn ’t really free, the kind o f discrim ination w hich
allows us to put conditions on people’s m otivations necessary
to their being free, and hence to second-guess them. A ll we
have shown is that we m ake discrim inations betw een m ore or
less significant freedoms, based on discrim inations am ong the
purposes people have.
T h is creates some em barrassm ent for the crude negative
theory, but it can cope w ith it by sim ply adding a recognition
that we m ake judgem ents o f significance. Its central claim
that freedom ju st is the absence o f external obstacles seems
untouched, as also its view o f freedom as an opportunity-
concept. It is ju st that we now have to adm it that not all
opportunities are equal.
B ut there is more trouble in store for the crude view when
we exam ine further w hat these qualitative discrim inations are
based on. W hat lies behind our ju d g in g certain purposes/
feelings as more significant than others? O n e m ight think that
there was room here again f6r another quantitative theory;
that the more significant purposes are those we w ant more.
B ut this account is either vacuous or false.
It is true but vacuous if we take w anting more ju s t to m ean
being more significant. It is false as soon as w e try to give
152 Charles Taylor
w anting more an independent criterion, such as, for instance,
the urgency or force o f a desire, or the prevalence o f one desire
over another, because it is a m atter o f the m ost banal
experience that the purposes we know to be m ore significant
are not alw ays those w hich we desire w ith the greatest
urgency to encom pass, nor the ones that actually alw ays w in
out in cases o f conflict o f desires.
W hen we reflect on this kind o f significance, w e come up
against w hat I have called elsewhere the fact o f strong
evaluation, the fact that w e hum an subjects are not only
subjects o f first-order desires, but o f second-order desires,
desires about desires. W e experience our desires and purposes
as qualitatively discrim inated, as higher or lower, noble or
base, integrated or fragm ented, significant or trivial, good and
bad. T h is means that we experience some o f our desires and
goals as intrinsically m ore significant than others: some
passing comfort is less im portant than the fulfilm ent o f our
lifetime vocation, our amour propre less im portant than a love
relationship; w hile we experience some others as bad, not ju st
com paratively, but absolutely: w e desire not to be m oved by
spite, or some childish desire to impress at all costs. A n d these
judgem ents o f significance are quite independent o f the
strength o f the respective desires: the cravin g for com fort m ay
be overw helm ing at this m oment, we m ay be obsessed w ith
our amour propre, but the judgem ent o f significance stands.
But then the question arises w hether this fact o f strong
evaluation doesn’t have other consequences for our notion o f
freedom, than ju st that it perm its us to rank freedom s in
im portance. Is freedom not at stake w hen we find ourselves
carried aw ay by a less significant goal to override a highly
significant one? O r when we are led to act out o f a m otive we
consider bad or despicable?
T h e answer is that we sometimes do speak in this w ay.
Suppose I have some irrational fear, w hich is preventing me
from doing som ething I very m uch w ant to do. Say the fear o f
public speaking is preventing me from taking up a career that
I should find very fulfilling, and that I should be quite good
at, if I could ju st get over this ‘han g-up ’ . It is clear that we
experience this fear as an obstacle, and that we feel we are less
than we w ould be if we could overcom e it.
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 153
O r again, consider the case where I am very attached to
comfort. T o go on short rations, and to miss m y creature
comforts for a time, makes me very depressed. I find m yself
m aking a big thing o f this. Because o f this reaction I can ’t do
certain things that I should like very m uch to do, such as
going on an expedition over the A ndes, or a canoe trip in the
Y ukon. O nce again, it is quite understandable if I experience
this attachm ent as an obstacle, and feel that I should be freer
w ithout it.
O r I could find that m y spiteful feelings and reactions
w hich I alm ost can ’ t inhibit are underm ining a relationship
w hich is terribly im portant to me. A t times, I feel as though I am
alm ost assisting as a helpless witness at m y own destructive
behaviour, as I lash out again w ith m y unbridled tongue at
her. I long to be able not to feel this spite. A s long as I feel it,
even control is not an option, because it ju s t builds up inside
until it either bursts out, or else the feeling som ehow
com m unicates itself, and queers things betw een us. I long to
be free o f this feeling.
Th ese are quite understandable cases, where w e can speak
o f freedom or its absence w ithout strain. W h at I have called
strong evaluation is essentially involved here. For these are
not ju st cases o f conflict, even cases o f painful conflict. I f the
conflict is between two desires with w hich I have no trouble
identifying, there can be no talk o f lesser freedom , no m atter
how painful or fateful. T h u s if w hat is breaking up m y
relationship is m y finding fulfilm ent in a jo b w hich, say, takes
me aw ay from home a lot, I have indeed a terrible conflict, but
I w ould have no tem ptation to speak o f m yself as less free.
Even seeing a great difference in the significance o f the two
terms doesn’t seem to be a sufficient condition o f m y w anting
to speak o f freedom and its absence. T h u s m y m arriage m ay
be breaking up because I like going to the pub and playin g
cards on Saturday nights w ith the boys. I m ay feel quite
unequivocally that m y m arriage is m uch more im portant than
the release and com radeship o f the Saturday night bash. B ut
nevertheless I w ouldn’t w ant to talk o f m y being freer if I
could slough off this desire.
T h e difference seems to be that in this case, unlike the ones
above, I still identify w ith the less im portant desire, I still see
154 Charles Taylor
it as expressive o f m yself, so that I couldn’t lose it w ithout
altering w ho I am, losing som ething o f m y personality.
W hereas m y irrational fear, m y being quite distressed by
discom fort, m y spite— these are all things w hich I can easily
see m yself losing w ithout any loss w hatsoever to w hat I am.
Th is is w hy I can see them as obstacles to m y purposes, and
hence to m y freedom, even though they are in a sense
unquestionably desires and feelings o f mine.
Before exploring further w h a t’s involved in this, let’s go
back and keep score. It w ould seem that these cases m ake a
bigger breach in the crude negative theory. For they seem to
be cases in w hich the obstacles to freedom are internal; and if
this is so, then freedom can ’t sim ply be interpreted as the
absence o f external obstacles; and the fact that I ’m doing w hat
I w ant, in the sense o f follow ing m y strongest desire, isn’t
sufficient to establish that I ’m free. O n the contrary, we have
to make discrim inations am ong m otivations, and accept that
acting out o f some m otivations, for exam ple irrational fear or
spite, or this too great need for comfort, is not freedom , is even
a negation o f freedom.
But although the crude negative theory can ’t be sustained
in the face o f these exam ples, perhaps som ething w hich
springs from the same concerns can be reconstructed. For
although we have to adm it that there are internal, m otiva
tional, necessary conditions for freedom, we can perhaps still
avoid any legitim ation o f w hat I called above the second-
guessing o f the subject. I f our negative theory allows for strong
evaluation, allows that some goals are really im portant to us,
and that other desires are seen as not fully ours, then can it not
retain the thesis that freedom is being able to do w hat I w ant,
that is, w hat I can identify m yself as w anting, w here this
means not ju st w hat I identify as m y strongest desire, but
w hat I identify as m y true, authentic desire or purpose? T h e
subject w ould still be the final arbiter o f his being free/unfree,
as indeed he is clearly capable o f discerning this in the
exam ples above, where I relied precisely on the subject’s own
experience o f constraint, o f m otives w ith w hich he can ’t
identify. W e should have sloughed off the untenable H obbesian
reductive-m aterialist m etaphysics, according to w hich only
external obstacles count, as though action w ere ju st move-
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 155
ment, and there could be no internal, m otivational obstacles
to our deeper purposes. But we w ould be retaining the basic
concern o f the negative theory, that the subject is still the final
authority as to w hat his freedom consists in, and cannot be
second-guessed by external authority. Freedom w ould be
modified to read: the absence o f internal or external obstacle
to w hat I truly or authentically w ant. But we w ould still be
holding the M aginot Line. O r w ould we?
I think not, in fact. I think that this hybrid or m iddle
position is untenable, w here we are w illing to adm it that we
can speak o f w hat we truly w ant, as against w hat we most
strongly desire, and o f some desires as obstacles to our
freedom, while we still w ill not allow for second-guessing. For
to rule this out in principle is to rule out in principle that the
subject can ever be w rong about w hat he truly wants. A n d
how can he never, in principle, be wrong, unless there is
nothing to be w rong about in this matter?
T h a t in fact is the thesis our negative theorist will have to
defend. A nd it is a plausible one for the sam e intellectual
(reductive-em piricist) tradition from w hich the crude negative
theory springs. O n this view , our feelings are brute facts about
us; that is, it is a fact about us that we are affected in such and
such a w ay, but our feelings can ’t themselves be understood as
involving some perception or sense o f w hat they relate to, and
hence as potentially veridical or illusory, authentic or in
authentic. O n this scheme, the fact that a certain desire
represented one o f our fundam ental purposes, and another a
mere force w ith w hich we cannot identify, w ould concern
m erely the brute quality o f the affect in both cases. It w ould be
a m atter o f the raw feel o f these two desires that this was their
respective status.
In such circum stances, the subject’s own classification
w ould be incorrigible. T h ere is no such thing as an im percept
ible raw feel. I f the subject failed to experience a certain desire
as fundam ental, and if w hat we m eant by ‘fundam ental’
applied to desire w as that the felt experience o f it has a certain
quality, then the desire couldn’t be fundam ental. W e can see
this if we look at those feelings w hich we can agree are brute in
this sense: for instance, the stab o f pain I feel when the dentist
jab s into m y tooth, or the craw ling unease when someone runs
156 Charles Taylor
his fingernail along the blackboard. T h ere can be no question
o f m isperception here. I f I fail to ‘p erceive’ the pain, I am not
in pain. M igh t it not be so w ith our fundam ental desires, and
those w hich we repudiate?
T h e answer is clearly no. For first o f all, m any o f our
feelings and desires, including the relevant ones for these
kinds o f conflicts, are not brute. B y contrast w ith pain and the
fingernail-on-blackboard sensation, sham e and fear, for
instance, are emotions w hich involve our experiencing the
situation as bearing a certain im port for us, as being
dangerous or sham eful. T h is is w hy sham e and fear can be
inappropriate, or even irrational, w here pain and a frisson
cannot. Th u s we can be in error in feeling sham e or fear. W e
can even be consciously aw are o f the unfounded nature o f our
feelings, and this is when we castigate them as irrational.
T h u s the notion that we can understand all our feelings and
desires as brute, in the above sense, is not on. B ut more, the
idea that we could discrim inate our fundam ental desires, or
those w hich we w ant to repudiate, by the q uality o f brute
affect is grotesque. W hen I am convinced that some career, or
an expedition in the A ndes, or a love relationship, is o f
fundam ental im portance to me (to recur to the above
exam ples), it cannot be ju st because o f the throbs, elans, or
tremors I feel; I m ust also have some sense that these are o f
great significance for me, meet im portant, long-lasting needs,
represent a fulfilm ent o f som ething central to me, w ill bring
me closer to w hat I really am, or som ething o f the sort. T h e
whole notion o f our identity, w hereby we recognize that some
goals, desires, allegiances are central to w hat we are, w hile
others are not or are less so, can m ake sense only against a
background o f desires and feelings w hich are not brute, but
w hat I shall call im port-attributing, to invent a term o f art for
the occasion.
T h u s we have to see our em otional life as m ade up largely o f
im port-attributing desires and feelings, that is, desires and
feelings w hich we can experience m istakenly. A n d not only
can we be m istaken in this, we clearly must accept, in cases
like the above w here we w ant to repudiate certain desires, that
we are mistaken.
For let us consider the distinction m entioned above betw een
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 157
conflicts w here we feel fettered by one desire, and those w here
we do not, where, for instance, in the exam ple m entioned
above, a m an is torn between his career and his m arriage.
W h at m ade the difference w as that in the case o f genuine
conflict both desires are the agen t’s, whereas in the cases
w here he feels fettered by one, this desire is one he w ants to
repudiate.
B ut w hat is it to feel that a desire is not truly mine?
Presum ably, I feel that I should be better off w ithout it, that I
don’ t lose anything in getting rid o f it, I rem ain quite com plete
w ithout it. W h at could lie behind this sense?
W ell, one could im agine feeling this about a brute desire. I
m ay feel this about m y addiction to sm oking, for instance—
wish I could get rid o f it, experience it as a fetter, and believe
that I should be well rid o f it. B ut addictions are a special
case; we understand them to be unnatural, externally induced
desires. W e couldn’t say in general that we are ready to
envisage losing our brute desires w ithout a sense o f dim inu
tion. O n the contrary, to lose m y desire for, and hence
delectation in, oysters, m ushroom pizza, or Peking duck
would be a terrible deprivation. I should fight against such a
change w ith all the strength at m y disposal.
So being brute is not w hat makes desires repudiable. A n d
besides, in the above exam ples the repudiated desires aren ’t
brute. In the first case, I am chained by unreasoning fear, an
im port-attributing em otion, in w hich the fact o f being
m istaken is already recognized w hen I identify the fear as
irrational or unreasoning. Spite, too, w hich moves me in the
third case, is an im port-attributing em otion. T o feel spite is to
see oneself and the target o f one’s resentm ent in a certain
light; it is to feel in some w ay w ounded, or dam aged, by his
success or good fortune, and the m ore hurt the m ore he is
fortunate. T o overcom e feelings o f spite, as against ju st
holding them in, is to come to see self and other in a different
light, in particular, to set aside self-pity, and the sense o f being
personally w ounded by w hat the other does and is.
(I should also like to claim that the obstacle in the third
exam ple, the too great attachm ent to comfort, w hile not
itself im port-attributing, is also bound up w ith the w ay
we see things. T h e problem is here not ju st that we dislike
158 Charles Taylor
discom fort, but that we are too easily depressed by it; and this
is som ething w hich we overcom e only by sensing a different
order o f priorities, w hereby sm all discom forts m atter less. B ut
if this is thought too dubious, w e can concentrate on the other
two exam ples.)
N ow how can we feel that an im port-attributing desire is
not truly ours? W e can do this only if we see it as m istaken,
that is, the im port or the good it supposedly gives us a sense o f
is not a genuine im port or good. T h e irrational fear is a fetter,
because it is irrational; spite is a fetter because it is rooted in a
self-absorption w hich distorts our perspective on everything,
and the pleasures o f venting it preclude any genuine satisfac
tion. Losing these desires we lose nothing, because their loss
deprives us o f no genuine good or pleasure or satisfaction. In
this they are quite different from m y love o f oysters,
m ushroom pizza, and Peking duck.
It would appear from this that to see our desires as brute
gives us no clue as to w hy some o f them are repudiable. O n
the contrary it is precisely their not being brute w hich can
explain this. It is because they are im port-attributing desires
w hich are m istaken that we can feel that we w ould lose
nothing in sloughing them off. E veryth ing w hich is truly
im portant to us w ould be safeguarded. I f they were ju st brute
desires, we couldn’t feel this u nequivocally, as w e certainly do
not when it comes to the pleasures o f the palate. T ru e, w e also
feel that our desire to smoke is repudiable, but there is a
special explanation here, w hich is not availab le in the case o f
spite.
T h u s we can experience some desires as fetters, because we
can experience them as not ours. A n d w e can experience them
as not ours because we see them as incorporating a quite
erroneous appreciation o f our situation and o f w hat m atters to
us. W e can see this again if we contrast the case o f spite w ith
that o f another em otion w hich p artly overlaps, and w hich is
highly considered in some societies, the desire for revenge.
In certain traditional societies this is far from being considered
a despicable emotion. O n the contrary, it is a duty o f honour
on a m ale relative to avenge a m an ’s death. W e m ight im agine
that this too m ight give rise to conflict. It m ight conflict w ith
the attem pts o f a new regim e to bring some order to the land.
What's Wrong with Negative Liberty 159
T h e governm ent w ould have to stop people taking vengeance,
in the nam e o f peace.
B u t short o f a conversion to a new ethical outlook, this
w ould be seen as a trade-off, the sacrifice o f one legitim ate
goal for the sake o f another. A n d it w ould seem m onstrous
were one to propose reconditioning people so that they no
longer felt the desire to avenge their kin. T h is w ould be to
unm an them .4
W h y do we feel so different about spite (and for that m atter
also revenge)? Because the desire for revenge for an ancient
Icelander w as his sense o f a real obligation incum bent on him,
som ething it w ould be dishonourable to repudiate; w hile for
us, spite is the child o f a distorted perspective on things.
W e cannot therefore understand our desires and emotions
as all brute, and in particular we cannot m ake sense o f our
discrim ination o f some desires as m ore im portant and
fundam ental, or o f our repudiation o f others, unless we
understand our feelings to be im port-attributing. T h is is
essential to there being w hat we have called strong evaluation.
C onsequently the half-w ay position w hich adm its strong
evaluation, adm its therefore that there m ay be inner obstacles
to freedom, and yet w ill not adm it that the subject m ay be
w rong or m istaken about these purposes— this position
doesn’t seem tenable. For the only w ay to m ake the sub ject’s
assessment incorrigible in principle w ould be to claim that
there w as nothing to be right or w rong about here; and that
could only be so if experiencing a given feeling w ere a m atter
o f the qualities o f brute feeling. B ut this it cannot be if w e are
to make sense o f the whole background o f strong evaluation,
more significant goals, and aims that we repudiate. T h is
w hole scheme requires that we understand the em otions
concerned as im port-attributing, as, indeed, it is clear that we
must do on other grounds as well.
But once we adm it that our feelings are im port-attributing,
then we adm it the possibility o f error, or false appreciation.
A nd indeed, w e have to adm it a kind o f false appreciation
w hich the agent him self detects in order to m ake sense o f the
C apitalism , F r e e d o m , and
the P roletariat
G. A. Cohen
163
164 G. A. Cohen
T h e force removes the second freedom, not the first. It
puts no obstacle in the path o f your doing A , so you are still
free to. Note, too, that you could frustrate someone w ho
sought to force you to do A by m aking yo u rself not free to do
it.
I labour this truth— that one is free to do w h at one is forced
to do— because it, and failure to perceive it, help to explain
the character and persistence o f a certain ideological disagree
ment. M arxists say that w orking-class people are forced to sell
their labour power, a thesis w e shall look at later. Bourgeois
thinkers celebrate the freedom o f contract m anifest not only in
the cap italist’s purchase o f labour pow er but in the w orker’s
sale o f it. I f M arxists are right, then workers, being forced to
sell their labour power, are, in an im portant w ay, unfree. B ut
it m ust rem ain true that (unlike chattel slaves) they are free to
sell their labour power. A ccordingly, the unfreedom asserted
by M arxists is com patible w ith the freedom asserted by
bourgeois thinkers. Indeed: if the M arxists are right, the
bourgeois thinkers are right, unless they also think, as
ch aracteristically they do, that the truth they em phasize
refutes the M arxist claim. T h e bourgeois thinkers go w rong
not w hen they say that the w orker is free to sell his labour
power, but w hen they infer that the M arxist cannot therefore
be right in his claim that the w orker is forced to. A n d
M a rx ists1 share the bourgeois thinkers’ error w hen they think
it necessary to deny w hat the bourgeois thinkers say. I f the
w orker is not free to sell his labour power, o f w hat freedom is a
foreigner whose w ork perm it is rem oved deprived? W ould not
the M arxists w ho w rongly deny that workers are free to sell
their labour pow er nevertheless protest, inconsistently, that
6 See n. 3 above.
7 ‘Libertarianism without Foundations’, p. 191.
Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat 169
them from indulging their individual inclinations. T h e general
point is that incursions against private property w hich reduce
ow ners’ freedom and transfer rights over resources to non
owners thereby increase the latter’s freedom. T h e net effect on
freedom o f the resource transfer is, therefore, in advance o f
further inform ation and argum ent, a m oot point.
L ibertarians are against w hat they describe as an ‘inter
ventionist’ policy in w hich the state engages in ‘interference’ .
N agel is not, but he agrees that such a policy ‘intervenes’ and
‘interferes’ . In m y view , the use o f w ords like ‘interventionist’
to designate the stated policy is an ideological distortion
detrim ental to clear thinking and friendly to the libertarian
point o f view. It is, though friendly to that point o f view ,
consistent w ith rejecting it, and N agel does reject it, vigorously.
But, by acquiescing in the libertarian use o f ‘intervention’ , he
casts libertarianism in a better light than it deserves. T h e
standard use o f ‘intervention’ esteems the private property
com ponent in the liberal or social dem ocratic settlem ent too
highly, by associating that com ponent too closely w ith
freedom.
11 Unless the last act of this scenario qualifies as a contract: in the course
of a general strike a united working class demands that private property in
m ajor means of production be socialized, as a condition of their return to
work, and a demoralized capitalist class meets the dem and. (How, by the
way, could libertarians object to such a revolution? For hints, see Robert
Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat 175
M ost o f the rest m ust hire out their labour pow er to m em bers
o f that m inority, in exchange for the right to some o f the
proceeds o f their labour on facilities in whose ow nership they
do not share.
So we reach, at length, the third item in the title o f this
paper, and an im portant charge, w ith respect to liberty, w hich
M arxists lay against capitalism . It is that in capitalist society
the great m ajority o f people are forced to sell their labour
power, because they do not own any means o f production.
T h e rest o f this paper addresses a pow erful objection to that
M arxist charge.
T o lay the ground for the objection, I m ust explain how the
predicate ‘is forced to sell his labour pow er’ is used in the
M arxist charge. M arxism characterizes classes by reference to
social relations o f production, and the claim that workers are
forced to sell their labour pow er is intended to satisfy that
condition: it purports to say som ething about the p roletarian ’s
position in capitalist relations o f production. B ut relations o f
production are, for M arxism , objective: w hat relations o f
production a person is in does not turn on his consciousness.
It follows that if the proletarian is forced to sell his labour
pow er in the relevant M arxist sense, then this m ust be
because o f his objective situation, and not m erely because o f
his attitude to himself, his level o f self-confidence, his cultural
attainm ent, and so on. It is in any case doubtful that
lim itations in those subjective endowm ents can be sources o f
w hat interests us: unfreedom, as opposed to som ething sim ilar
to it but also rather different: incapacity. B ut even if diffidence
and the like could be said to force a person to sell his labour
power, that w ould be an irrelevant case h ere.12
13. It was part o f the argum ent for affirm ing the freedom to
escape o f proletarians, taken individually, that not every exit
from the proletariat is crowded w ith w ould-be escapees. W h y
should this be so? H ere are some o f the reasons.
1. It is possible to escape, but it is not easy, and often people
do not attem pt w hat is possible but hard.
2. T h ere is also the fact that long occupancy, for exam ple
from birth, o f a subordinate class position nurtures the
18 See Karl Marx’s Theory of History, p. 223, for exposition and references.
19 K arl M arx, Capital, iii. 926.
182 G. A. Cohen
illusion, w hich is as im portant for the stability o f the system as
the m yth o f easy escape, that one’s class position is natural
and inescapable.
3. Finally, there is the fact that not all w orkers w ould like to
be petty or trans-petty bourgeois. Eugene D ebs said ‘I do not
w ant to rise above the w orking class, I w ant to rise w ith
them ’,20 thereby evincing an attitude like the one lately
attributed to the people in the locked room. It is sometim es
true o f the worker that, in B rech t’s w ords,
C o n st r a in ts o n F r eed o m
David Miller
183
184 David Miller
most employees the effective opportunity to perform many actions
important to them, the average degree of freedom is small—indeed
possibly smaller than under systems that impose many more legal
restrictions on human action.
This disagreement has a number of possible sources, including
disputes over the core notion of liberty itself and disputes over how
different specific freedoms are to be aggregated to give an overall
total for the society, but I shall focus here on one specific question,
namely, what should count as a constraint on freedom. Part of what
libertarians and socialists disagree about is whether certain salient
features of a capitalist society, notably economic inequalities, reduce
freedom, or merely make some people less able to get what they
want. I shall argue that this disagreement cannot be conclusively
resolved, because it involves ascribing moral responsibility for bar
riers to action, and this in turn depends on which theory of moral
obligation one holds. Debates about social freedom cannot be kept
separate from wider debates about social obligation, an issue over
which libertarians and socialists are unlikely to agree.
3 We make a distinction here between ‘being able to’ do something and ‘having the
ability to’ do it. The latter notion is narrower and refers to the agent’s physical or psycho
logical capacity. The former also covers cases where an agent has the capacity to act but
is deterred by the costliness of an option. We should say of a badly paid worker, e.g., that
he is unable to take a holiday abroad, but not that he hasn’t the ability to do so.
4 Cf. S. I. Benn and W. L. Weinstein, ‘Being Free to Act, and Being a Free Man’, Mind
8o (1971): 194-211. The present discussion is greatly indebted to this paper.
186 David Miller
mote competing values such as welfare and equality, or to protect
the agent himself. It is a mistake to think that to describe a state
of affairs as involving unfreedom is to settle a political argument;
it is, however, to make a move in a political argument.5 There is no
such presumption in cases of inability that cannot also be described
as cases of unfreedom. Som eone’s inability to act in a certain way
is m orally or politically relevant only where the inability serves to
bring other values into play. T h e fact that a speleologist is unable
to escape from a cave moves us to act because we are independently
concerned for his welfare; but the fact that millions of people are
unable to fly to the m oon doesn’t move us at all.
In embodying this presumption, our language of freedom reflects
the view that ‘the nature of things does not madden us, only ill will
does’.6 From certain perspectives this view may appear irrational.
A full-blooded determinist will see no relevant difference between
obstacles brought about by human agency and obstacles arising from
natural causes. If we were examining a society of robots and wanted
to describe the options open to one particular robot, there would
be no point in distinguishing actions that it was unfree to perform
from actions that it was free but unable to perform. The behavior
of the other robots would not appear to be a circumstance that was
relevantly different from the rest of the environment. T h e language
of social freedom presupposes a view of human agents as (in another
sense) free and responsible for their actions.7We are thereby licensed
to complain about restrictions of freedom in a way that would be
inappropriate in the case of natural obstacles.
This view of the human agent need not be a matter of controversy
between libertarians and socialists. Some socialists have indeed wanted
to define freedom as the opportunity to satisfy all of one’s needs, a
definition that appears to obliterate the distinction between humanly
caused and naturally occurring obstacles. But this might arise from
5 This error may underlie Hayek’s attempt to show that rules of law do not dimin
ish freedom—so that freedom under capitalism is almost complete. See n. 2 above.
6 Rousseau, cited in I. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in Liberty, ed. Henry
Hardy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 170 [p. 35 this volume].
7 The freedom at issue here is freedom of the will. I have not wanted to be drawn
into the debate about the compatibility of determinism and free will. The relevant
line of division for our purposes lies not between determinists and indeterminists,
but between strong, or ‘incompatibilist,’ determinists, who maintain that the truth of
determinism makes ordinary notions of human choice and responsibility redundant,
and everyone else.
Constraints on Freedom 187
the belief that all obstacles to the satisfaction of needs are as a matter
of fact humanly caused, together with the belief that ordinary defini
tions of freedom invite too narrow an interpretation of the notion of
constraint. (I hope that arguments in this essay will allay the latter fear.)
It is hard to believe that anyone would, on political grounds alone, wish
to obliterate the distinction between unfreedom and inability altogether.
Since human capacities are limited and unequal, and resources are
finite, under any social system we can imagine there will be actions that
cannot be performed and ends that cannot be achieved. No change
in social arrangements would enable me to run i o o meters in ten sec
onds, and no reasonable change would enable me, and everyone else
who wanted to, to travel in space. In describing these cases, we need
to be able to say that people are free, but unable, to do certain things,
which distinguishes them from other cases where agents’ freedom
is restricted. The relevant issue is then to determine where that line
should be drawn—precisely when an obstacle should be considered a
constraint on freedom. This is the real issue over which libertarians
and socialists disagree. The metaphysical challenge posed by a strong
version of determinism can be kept to one side.
9 I shall refer to this as ‘moral responsibility’, but with the caveat that this concept
is to be interpreted broadly. As I note later, to be morally responsible for an outcome
is to be potentially blamable for it, but in many cases it is possible to preempt blame
by showing that the action in question was justified. In a narrower use, being morally
responsible may entail being blameworthy—this is not how I understand the concept
here. Note also that moral responsibility may be a matter of degree, and this is relevant
when we are judging the agent, but not when we are deciding whether the recipient’s
freedom has been restricted.
10 I assume as part of the story that when I call to the passerby I manifest no signs of
distress. If I were to, then, with a few other conditions added, the passerby would have
an obligation to come to my aid.
190 David Miller
understood be the appropriate criterion for distinguishing between
constraints on freedom and other hindrances to action? Notice that
to say someone is morally responsible for a state of affairs is not to
say that he is blamable for it, though it is to say that he is liable to
blame if he fails to provide a justification for his conduct. Thus in
case 3 Y might admit that he was responsible for m y imprisonment
but defend himself by stressing the importance of his private mission.
This feature of the concept of moral responsibility precisely mirrors a
feature of the concept of freedom that has already been noted. W hen
we describe a person as unfree to do something, we imply that an
obstacle exists that stands in need of justification, and we are in effect
calling upon the human race collectively to vindicate its behavior in
permitting the obstacle to exist. A t the same time we allow that such
justification may be forthcoming: we distinguish unfreedom from un
justified unfreedom.11 This supports m y proposal that the appropriate
condition for regarding an obstacle as a constraint on freedom is that
some other person or persons can be held morally responsible for its
existence. W hen that condition obtains, we have achieved our two
desiderata, namely, that the obstacle stands in need of justification
and that justification may nonetheless be possible.
If this criterion were to be rejected, how else might we explain the
distinction between constraints on freedom and other hindrances to
action? First, we might say that obstacles were constraints on freedom
only when they were deliberately imposed by other human agents.
Second, we might argue that the relevant dividing line lay between
obstacles that human beings had imposed (deliberately or not) and
those they had merely failed to remove. Third, we might propose that
a constraint on freedom was any obstacle for whose existence other
humans were causally responsible, in whole or in part. Each of these
proposals is unsatisfactory, as I shall try to show.
The first suggestion has some defenders—for instance it serves
as the starting point for Berlin’s classic account of negative liberty,
though Berlin does not hold the position consistently12—and it seems
11 This should make it clear that the definition of freedom I am offering is not a moralized
definition of the sort that G. A. Cohen has found objectionable (‘Capitalism, Freedom and
the Proletariat’, in The Idea of Freedom, ed. A. Ryan [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979],
pp. 12-13) [pp. 170-2 this volume] though it is not a morally neutral definition either.
12 Compare Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, p. 169 [p. 34 this volume] (‘Coercion
implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could
otherwise act’) with p. 170 [p. 35 this volume] (‘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’).
Constraints on Freedom 191
to capture the idea that ‘ill will’ is what maddens us. But reflecting
a little further along these lines, it is difficult to see why we should
always resent deliberate obstruction more than, say, obstruction that
is a by-product of action in pursuit of other ends. If a law is passed
that is aimed at preventing me from leaving the country, I should
regard it as an infringement of m y freedom. But equally if a law is
passed that requires me to repay the costs of my professional training
(which I cannot as it happens do without remaining in the country),
I shall to the same degree regard myself as unfree to leave. Indeed
I may rail more strongly against incompetent legislators who fail to
foresee the consequences of their actions than against misguided
legislators who act in the light of sincere (though in m y view mis
taken) convictions.
Th e second proposal relies on a distinction between acts and
omissions, between what people do and what they fail to do. It
therefore faces two critical difficulties connected with that distinc
tion. T h e first is simply one of drawing the dividing line in a clear
way. If I allow trees to grow on m y land that prevent you from driv
ing your car into your garage, have I blocked your drive or merely
failed to keep it clear? Either description of m y behavior—as an
act or as an omission—seems about as plausible as the other. The
distinction m ight perhaps be firm ed up in some ingenious way.13
But then the second problem is that b y itself it seems to have no
moral significance.14For although the distinction might be correlated
to some extent with features of behavior that are morally significant,
the bare contrast between an act and an omission is not. It may,
for instance, turn out that agents are m orally responsible for the
results of a larger proportion of those pieces of behavior we should
call acts than of those pieces of behavior we should call omissions;
but it does not of course follow from this that to describe a piece
of behavior as an act (or an omission) is to say anything m orally
relevant about it. Now since I have assumed that the distinction
between unfreedom and mere inability is m orally loaded, it seems
unlikely that it should rest on a distinction that is not.
16 I owe the phrase and the idea to Nancy Davis, ‘Utilitarianism and Responsibility’,
Ratio 22 (1980-81): 15-35.
194 David Miller
A powerful argument can be mounted for the first extreme view
that one is unfree to perform an action only when someone else has
rendered that action impossible. Hillel Steiner has defended this
position by pointing out that any other m ode of intervention merely
alters the desirability of the action in question, and he claims that
once any such intervention is allowed to count as a constraint on
freedom, all such interventions must be.17 By broadening the class of
constraints, we undermine the essential distinction between X being
free to do A and X wanting to do A.
We must concede to Steiner that any account of freedom that
extends constraint beyond impossibility makes some assumptions
about hum an desires. For if a constraint fails to make an action im
possible, it must reduce freedom by m aking that action less eligible
for the agent in question, and ‘eligibility’ depends on the desires and
aversions of the agent himself. If these desires and aversions were
to change radically enough, what was formerly a constraint might
no longer be so. Against this theoretical disadvantage we must set
the extreme narrowness of Steiner’s view. Com pare the following
cases: in the first, a m an is imprisoned in a ten-foot-square cage; in
the second, a square of the same size is marked out on the ground,
the man is placed inside, and told that moments after he steps out
of the square he will be shot (there is ample evidence that the threat
is not idle). O n Steiner’s view, the m an is free to leave the square in
the second case, but not the cage in the first. We m ay well doubt,
however, whether the two cases are different in a way that bears upon
our judgm ents of freedom. If we examine the relationship between
the m an and his jailers in both cases, we can say that in each case
the man is effectively confined in a ten-foot square by his captors.
It is true that in the second case the mechanism of confinement
depends on the captive’s aversion to being shot; yet this is not some
idiosyncratic taste of his, but rather a well-entrenched feature of any
normal person’s psychology. W hen applying the notion of freedom,
we are looking for m orally relevant similarities and dissimilarities
in relationships between persons, and it is perfectly appropriate if
in doing so we rely on psychological facts for which there is such
overwhelm ing evidence. We are after all using the concept to make
judgm ents about humans.
20 This supposition may be thought unlikely; we are more likely to cast the govern
ment in the role described, and to hold it responsible for the obstacle faced by the
poor. As a matter of fact, nineteenth-century shopkeepers in working-class districts
quite regularly provided credit for their customers during the winter months (though
mainly in response to reduced incomes due to seasonal work). But nothing hangs on the
point, and I make the assumption simply to preserve the continuity of the argument.
198 David Miller
within the bounds of moral responsibility, it can properly be seen as
a constraint on freedom.
For the second case, suppose that the shopkeeper becomes a local
monopolist. Let us say that some customers (the old and infirm, for
example) find traveling to his nearest competitor prohibitively costly.
If he takes advantage of this fact to raise his prices well above the
competitive level, we may again feel that he is interfering with his
customers’ freedom. T h e underlying reason is once more that he is
being held morally responsible for the increase. In this case he is seen
to act in violation of an obligation of fairness, an obligation not to take
advantage of his customers by virtue of their dependence on him.
This shows, I believe, that the notion of moral responsibility holds
the key to both dimensions of our original problem; or rather, it shows
that the dimensions are not really separate. By showing that some
agency (person or persons) is morally responsible for an obstacle to
X ’s action, we show both that the obstacle has origins of the right kind
and that its nature is such as to count as a constraint on freedom. The
sheer size of the obstacle turns out to have no intrinsic importance;
at most there will be a contingent connection between the size of an
obstacle and its constituting a constraint, turning on the fact that we
are more likely to have an obligation to remove (or not to impose)
large obstacles than small ones. (Perhaps obstacles that are so small
that they barely act as deterrents at all would not count as constraints,
even if deliberately imposed, but I shall not pursue this here.)
21 See the longer version of this essay, ‘Constraints on Freedom’, Ethics 94 (1983-84):
66-86, sect. V.
ten
T o w a r d a F e m in ist
T h eory of Freedom
Nancy J. Hirschmann
T h e M arch 15, 1992, issue of the New York Times ran an article
about a twenty-three-year-old unem ployed single m other in West
V irginia who becam e pregnant as a result of date rape.1 D ue to
federal policy, she had trouble locating an abortion clinic, but
finally found one four hours away in Charleston. T h ey told her
she was seventeen weeks pregnant and they perform ed abortions
only until sixteen weeks, and so they referred her to a clinic in
Cincinnati, O hio, that would perform an abortion up to nineteen
and a half weeks for a cost o f $850. W hen she went there a week and
a half later, however, she was told that she was actually twenty-one
weeks pregnant, and so the second clinic referred her to a clinic
in Dayton, Ohio, that would perform the abortion for $1,675. She
refinanced her car, sold her V C R , borrowed money, and went to
Dayton. That clinic said that she was a high-risk patient because of
an earlier Caesarean delivery, that she would have to go to Wichita,
Kansas, and that it would cost $2,500. A t this point, she decided that
she no longer could manage the cost and logistics. Being opposed
to adoption, she decided to have the baby and to try to love it in
the same way that she loves her other child.2 C an we say that this
woman has freely chosen her role as mother?
200
Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 201
A wom an in Philadelphia is beaten by her husband and goes
to a battered w om en’s shelter. This is the second time in a year
that this wom an has com e to the shelter. However, she refuses to
press charges with the police. A fter spending some time at the
shelter, during w hich time her husband has initiated contact with
her, she declares her intention to return to him. She says that he
has apologized and that she forgives him, that he is basically a
good person and has promised to change, that he loves her and is
a good father, that she loves him, and that it was partly her fault
anyway. Is she free if she returns to her husband?
In the m ovie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Joanne W oodward plays a
wom an who seems to submit com pletely to her husband. She
rarely ventures a political opinion; she defers to her husband, is
extrem ely self-deprecating, and has so effectively effaced herself
that, at the end of the movie, she risks freezing to death while
trapped in her car because she will not yell for help. (The impli
cation is that she does not want to disturb anyone and so simply
waits passively until her husband gets hom e to rescue her.) She
does not appear to hold these views out of fear or coercion; her
husband is somewhat overbearing but not violent, he does not
overtly seek to control her, and he clearly loves his wife and dem
onstrates his consideration and respect in various ways. Is Mrs.
Bridge free or not?
Charlene, a lesbian, is an attorney with an extrem ely conserva
tive Wall Street firm that has never had a woman partner. Charlene
wants very badly to becom e a partner. Accordingly, she is not open
about her sexuality. H er lover, Sally, believes this is a mistake, not
only tactically but from the perspective o f personal cost as well.
A lth ough C harlene declares that the relationship is m ore impor
tant to her than anything else, she has becom e so fearful about
colleagues finding out about the relationship that she and Sally
have virtually stopped going out of the house together, and the
stress is affecting not only C harlen e’s health but the relationship
as well. Sally is beginning to contem plate ‘outing’ Charlene. She
feels that this would liberate Charlene from her fears, anxiety, and
extra stress and save the relationship. Is she right?
These dilemmas are not particularly special or unusual. Because
of their familiarity, m any people probably have im m ediate—per-
haps even gut-level—reactions to these examples; for instance, most
readers of this essay would probably say, at least initially, that the
202 Nancy J. Hirschmann
pregnant wom an is unfree and that Sally is wrong. But I want to
suggest that there is really no simple answer to the question of
freedom in any of them. This is due partly to the am azing am bi
guity displayed in popular (Western) usage of the term ‘freedom ’.
But it is also due partly to the fact that the dom inant discourse
of freedom in philosophy and political theory, which founds as
well as reflects popular everyday conceptions, is inadequate to
encompass fully these complexities. A n d feminism, which m any
assume would m aintain that the wom en in all four stories are
unfree, highlights both this com plexity and this inadequacy.
A s theorists such as John G ray as well as S. I. Benn and W. L.
Weinstein suggest,3 determ ining the m eaning of freedom is in part
a matter of determ ining the context in which claims of unfreedom
are m ade, such that m y evaluation of freedom will depend on my
evaluations of other things. For instance, a strong valuation of
privacy m ight result in a context in which claims for husbands’
‘freedom ’ to discipline their wives makes sense, whereas valuation
of w om en’s bodily security m ight result in a different context in
w hich a counterclaim for governm ental interference in the fam ily
is justified to protect w om en’s ‘freedom ’ from b odily harm .4 Each
of these alternatives involves some considerable cost—injury to
wom en versus patriarchal and often racist state intervention in
personal relationships—but that is precisely the point; b y m aking
a political evaluation o f what is im portant, we determ ine the
parameters of a m eaningful freedom.
In this light, the task for feminist theorists is to stake out an
overtly political territory of values—such as choice, bodily integrity,
professional developm ent, and/or nurturing relationships—that
would allow theorists to point out the ways in w hich patriarchal
practices and custom s den y w om en access to the resources
they need to satisfy these values. In this, w om en’s experiences
provide a powerful basis for highlighting the frequent sexism of
liberty theory, precisely because these experiences often lie at the
3 John Gray, ‘On Negative and Positive Liberty’, Political Studies 28, no. 4 (1980):
507-526; S. I. Benn and W. L. Weinstein, ‘Being Free to Act and Being a Free Man’,
Mind 80 (1971): 194-211.
4 I am aware that these might be considered the same context; for instance, the
contemporary United States allows both sorts of claims to be made. By ‘context’, how
ever, I am invoking a deeper notion of ideology, values, and perspective. In this light,
at least two different contexts exist within contemporary U.S. family discourse.
Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 203
crossroads o f Enlightenm ent ideology of agency and choice with
m odern practices of sexism.
However, the notion that the context for w om en’s desires and
preferences is, for the most part, a patriarchal one does not m ean
that women are simply ‘unfree’. Rather, feminism is one theoretical
approach that permits a richer and m ore com plex view. Feminists
have been able to describe critically the ways in w hich desire,
preferences, agency, and choice are as socially constructed as are
the external conditions that enable or restrain them. This duality
of social construction permits—even requires—a more complicated
engagem ent of the question of freedom.
A Ma s c u l i n i s t T h e o r y of Fr e e d o m ?
5 See Richard Flathman, The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom (Chicago, IL: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1987), for an excellent survey of the range of definitions
of freedom.
6 Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Isaiah Berlin
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 118-172.
7 Charles Taylor, ‘W hat’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’, The Idea of Freedom:
Essays in Honor of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Alan Ryan (New York: Oxford University Press),
177 [p. 144 this volume].
204 Nancy J. Hirschmann
the ‘nonrestriction of options’ is the most popular form ulation
of negative liberty; the more opportunities and choices available
to me, the freer I am.8
Furtherm ore, these desires, w hich I must be able to pursue
unim peded if I am to be free, are seen as com ing from me and
from m e alone. Desires m ay be reactions to external stimuli (smell
ing newly baked cookies makes m e want one), but the important
fact is that I can identify a desire as mine regardless of why I have
it (whether I am a sugar addict or sim ply hungry is immaterial).
Negative liberty draws clear-cut lines between inner and outer, self
and other, subject and object: desires come from within, restraints,
from without; desires are form ed b y subjects, by selves, they are
thwarted b y objects, b y others.
Positive liberty challenges this dichotom y by focusing on what
m ight be called ‘internal barriers’: fears, addictions, and com pul
sions that are at odds with m y ‘true’ self can all inhibit m y freedom.
This involves qualitative evaluation about our desires, which can
be higher or lower, significant or trivial, genuine or false. Because
of this, it is not enough to experience an absence o f external re
straints, for the im m ediate desires I have m ay frustrate m y true
will. For instance, while I am trying to quit smoking, a fight with
m y departm ent chair makes m e crave a cigarette: positive liberty
says that if I were to sneak one in the bathroom , I would be not
just weak willed but unfree, because I am violating m y true desire,
on w hich I have reflected at some length. Thus positive liberty
sometimes is called an ‘exercise concept’;9 people must exercise
their full capacities if they are to be free.
Logically, then, as Taylor notes, positive liberty also involves
the strong p ossibility that this evaluation can be perform ed
b y others who m ay know m y true will as well as I do—indeed,
sometimes better than I do, particularly when I am in the grip
of these self-destructive short-term desires.10 Indeed, if negative
liberty exaggerates an opposition between self and other, it could
be argued that positive liberty merges them altogether because
8 Benn and Weinstein, ‘Being Free to Act’; Gray, ‘On Negative and Positive Lib
erty’; Isaiah Berlin, ‘From Hope and Fear Set Free’, Concepts and Categories, ed. Henry
Hardy (New York: Viking, 1979), 191-192.
9 Taylor, ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’, 177 [p. 143 this volume].
10 Ibid., 185-188 [pp. 152-6 this volume].
Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 205
you can know m y desires better than I know them myself. These
others can ‘interfere w ith’ or ‘guide’ m y actions to help me realize
m y true will and hence to realize m y freedom; as you snatch the
cigarette from m y lips, you are preserving m y true self from false
desires and enhancing m y liberty.11
B erlin’s typ ology has been challenged b y many, and some
would suggest that couching a discussion of liberty in its terms
is m isdirected.12 There are three reasons for retaining this fram e
work, however. T h e first is that, debates and challenges notwith
standing, the typology o f positive and negative liberty has in fact
dom inated theoretical discussions of freedom. M any theorists
acknow ledge the centrality o f the typology to lib erty theory.13
A lth ough individual theorists m ay disagree with Berlin’s typology,
11 Some critics will complain that I have collapsed two different conceptions
of positive liberty here. Berlin, for instance, insists that positive liberty absolutely
requires external determination of the will, and specifically determination by the
state, as in Rousseau’s infamous forcer d’etre libre. A central element for many positive
libertarians such as Rousseau, however, is that freedom consists in following your
true will, and that in turn involves a ‘freedom from’ internal desires and passions
that do not represent the true or higher self. Taylor emphasizes this same ‘divided
self’ in his account of positive liberty, focusing on internal barriers to realizing the
better or higher desire rather than on the external mechanism that directs you to it,
but does so in an individualist fashion; in his examples, the subject always seems to
know that he or she has a higher and lower desire and is struggling to achieve the
former. However, Taylor points out that even this individualist account of positive
liberty implicitly incorporates aspects of Berlin’s view by maintaining that a focus
on inner barriers inevitably leads to ‘second guessing’, and I follow him here; but
he stops short of acknowledging the ways in which this second guessing in turn can
lead inevitably to state intervention. On the other hand, Berlin’s focus on state de
termination leads to his forgetting about the importance of the divided self and the
internal barriers to realizing the preferred or ‘true’ will. See Berlin, ‘Two Concepts
of Liberty’, esp. i33-i34 [pp. 45-46 this volume]; Taylor, ‘What’s Wrong with Nega
tive Liberty,’ passim.
12 Gerald MacCallum, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, Philosophical Review 76
(1967): 312-334 [pp. 100-122 this volume]; Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making
of Western Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 3.
13 Stanley Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1988); Ian Carter, ‘The Measurement of Pure Negative Freedom’, Political
Studies 40 (i992): 38-50; Diana Coole, ‘Constructing and Deconstructing Liberty:
A Feminist and Poststructuralist Analysis’, Political Studies 4i (i993): 83-95; Flath-
man, The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom; Gray, ‘On Negative and Positive Liberty’;
Kristjan Kristjansson, ‘What’s Wrong with Positive Liberty?’ Social Theory and Practice
206 Nancy J. Hirschmann
they seem unable to escape it, and it has retained a powerful grip
on philosophical thinking about liberty.
Second, this grip is significantly due to the decidedly, if often
overlooked ,political character of the typology. Granted that Berlin’s
form ulation is overdrawn and simplistic and that he clearly had
cold war political motivations for his categories, wanting to ally
positive liberty with ‘bad-guy’ Com m unist dictatorships and nega
tive liberty with ‘good-guy’ W estern democracies. But because Ber
lin m anipulates philosophy to the end o f politics should not lead
us into the trap of separating the two and of m issing the impact
of the concepts as political and not ‘ju st’ philosophical. T h e two
concepts of liberty reflect two different—although perhaps equally
problem atic—conceptions of a person: one as innately separate,
individualistic, unconnected, rights oriented, even antagonistic;
the other as innately connected, com m unitarian, even selfless,
concerned with responsibility and care. D epending on w hich
view o f the subject one takes, a variety o f conclusions follow
about the relation between state and society, between society and
individual—in short, political values. In this, the typology suggests
that freedom is not just about ‘who we are’ but also about ‘what
kind of world we want to live in’.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both positive and nega
tive conceptions inform popular understandings of liberty; after all,
most of us can understand, in an everyday sense, how the cheat
ing smoker is both free and not free. This is because the typology
does in fact say som ething very im portant about freedom. Both
variants of freedom are centrally about m aking choices. C hoice
is a com plex process of negotiation and relationship between
what we com m only call ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ factors: between
will, desire, and preferences, on the one hand, and forces that
not only inhibit or enable the realization of such desires but also
contribute to or influence the formation o f these desires, on the
other. It is precisely in this notion o f internal and external bar
riers to lib erty that I think the positive-negative typology is the
most powerful and at the same time, most problem atic. Negative
lib erty em phasizes the role of external barriers, whereas posi-
14 Those who focus on Berlin’s differentiation between ‘freedom from’ and ‘free
dom to’ to illustrate its incoherence—every freedom from is a freedom to—miss the
deeper point of this external/internal divide. See, for instance, Patterson, Freedom;
MacCallum, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’.
15 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
208 Nancy J. Hirschmann
Fe m in is t Fr e e d o m and So c i a l C o n s t r u c t i o n
16 See, for instance, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990),
and Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1994); Jacques Derrida, Margins of
Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, i982); Michel
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1980),
and vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (New York: Vintage, 1990); Jean Frangois Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1979); Joan Scott, ‘Experience’, Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. J. Butler and
J. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), 22-40; Jacquelyn Zita, ‘The Male Lesbian’,
Lesbian Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 112-132.
17 In this, it is important to note that social constructivism does not require
that theorists reject individualism or negative freedom out of hand. Developed
in part as a response to absolutist political authority and emerging political
movements for parliamentarian and representative government, and motivated
in turn by largely economic considerations (see Richard Ashcraft, Revolution
ary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1986]; Isaac Kramnick, Revolutionary Politics and Bourgeois Radicalism [Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1990]; C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory
of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke [New York: Oxford University Press,
i964]), the emphasis on the individual as the unit of analysis and freedom
Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 209
T h e idea of social construction is particularly im portant to
feminist efforts to reject patriarchal arguments about m en’s and
w om en’s ‘natures’. Not only can it challenge the hegem ony of
(dominant notions of) freedom, suggesting that other values alleg
edly m ore im portant to feminists (e.g., connection, responsibility,
equality) have at least as great im portance in social life, it can also
offer im portant insights into who the ‘subject’ o f liberty really
is, namely, bourgeois white males at the dawn of capitalism and
liberal representative dem ocracy rather than ‘natural m an’. It also
can help expose the battle between positive lib erty’s emphasis
on inner barriers to m y ‘true’ will and negative liberty’s focus on
outer barriers that are foreign to m y radically autonom ous will,
as a false dichotomy, b y suggesting that inner and outer are not
opposed but in relationship.
T h e idea o f social construction, however, contains a som e
what paradoxical character that feminist use of it can brin g out.
Feminists point out that if hum ans are socially constructed, male
domination is and has been an important part of that construction.
This has resulted in laws, customs, and social rules that come from
m en and are im posed on wom en to restrict their opportunities,
choices, actions, and behaviours. Furtherm ore, and m ore prob
lem atic, these rules becom e constitutive not only of what women
are allowed to do but of what they are allowed to be as well: how
wom en are able to think and conceive of themselves, what they
can and should desire, what their preferences are. Because our
conceptual and m aterial world has been form ulated and devel
oped by these masculinist perspectives, such rules are not simply
external restrictions on wom en’s otherwise natural desires; rather,
they create an entire cultural context that makes wom en seem to
choose what they are in fact restricted to.
Some, like A drian a Cavarero, a feminist philosopher, believe
that this construction of reality takes root in our very language:
‘W om an is not the subject of her language. H er language is not
hers. She therefore speaks and represents herself in a language
20 See, for instance, Angela Brown, When Battered Women Kill (New York: Macmil
lan, 1987); R. Emerson and Russell P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change (New
York: Routledge, 1992); Mildred Pagelow, Woman-Battering (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage,
1981); Lenore Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome (New York: Springer, 1984).
21 Flathman, Philosophy and Politics of Freedom, 17.
212 Nancy J. Hirschmann
liberty. For instance, Flathman says that negative liberty requires
that barriers be the result of ‘intentional and purposive actions by
identifiable agents’, thus ruling out generalized conditions of non
specific nature or origin (such as patriarchy); rather, these are part of
our ‘form of life’.21 Ian Carter, who suggests that intentionality is not
relevant, maintains that identifiable agency is.22 This might allow
us to identify a batterer who claims he ‘didn’t mean to hurt her’ or
a sexual harasser who thought he was simply paying his secretary
a compliment as interfering with wom en’s freedom even if neither
of these m en intended to do so. But both would prevent us from
counting a m ore generalized ‘patriarchy’ that underlies abusive
m en’s failure to understand or take responsibility for their actions
as itself a barrier to women’s freedom. Catharine M acKinnon’s view
that the existence of pornography inhibits all wom en’s freedom by
determining their sexuality, for instance, would not be considered
a legitimate argument.23
O ther theorists, however, have sym pathy for expanding the
negative liberty m odel. Gray, for instance, argues that to count
as a barrier to liberty, restrictive conditions such as poverty do
not have to be caused intentionally or by identifiable agents as
lon g as they are avoidable (e.g., if ‘mass unem ploym ent resulted
from m isguided m onetary policies w hose application was in
no w ay inevitable’)24 or at least rem ediable b y hum an action.
H e argues that even Berlin is am bivalent about intentionality;
although it is key to his conception of coercion, coercion is only
one lim itation on freedom , and other lim itations m ay be only
‘caused’ unintentionally.25 T h e extension of this view to sexism
has considerable potential, because a key tenet of feminism is that
sexism is literally ‘man-made’ and can—indeed must—be changed
b y hum an action.
But, as G ray notes, there are grave difficulties in determ ining
whether social conditions are avoidable or remediable. This is a
serious stum bling block for an expanded m odel of negative liberty
26 Similar arguments are made about poverty, of course, but the central role of
the body and reproduction in discussions of gender dominance seem to give the
naturalist response even more of a historical hold.
214 Nancy J. Hirschmann
coping and survival strategies that wom en in such situations have
devised.27
Similarly, wom en who subscribe to traditional roles, who stay
with mates who have exhibited some violence, or who fail to report
rape to the police would have to be considered unfree by defini
tion because they are externally restrained whether they realize
it or not. To insist that wom en such as Mrs. Bridge and Charlene
are victim s of ‘false consciousness’, that their beliefs and values
are only external barriers to the realization of their ‘true’ will,
is to turn wom en into victims b y denying their participation in
structures of power and oppression that, while inhibiting some
choices and activities (such as open sexuality), make other choices
and activities possible (e.g., they both are financially well off).
Ironically, the attempt to develop an expanded m odel of nega
tive liberty by externalizing the barriers to w om en’s freedom thus
returns us to the problems of positive liberty b y second-guessing
‘true’ desires and motivations. A feminist theory of freedom must
thus retain certain elements of positive liberty from the start, par
ticularly b y recognizing that some barriers are best described as
‘internal’, that individuals can have divided wills and complicated
desires that m ay implicate them in supporting the very structures
that apparently restrict them. It is only by recognizing this that
feminists can achieve the recognition of w om en’s choices within
the context of attempts to reduce, if not elim inate, structural bar
riers to such choice. W hile rem oving external barriers is crucial,
it m ay not be enough, because what these barriers have already
constructed as internal identity m ay remain. Th at identity m ay
be ‘genuine’; it is not autom atically ‘false’ just because it exists
within—or even perhaps coheres with—the terms of patriarchy. But
its ‘genuineness’ does not foreclose questions of liberty.
Social constructivism not only reveals that what is often called
an ‘inner barrier’ is culturally m ediated and externally gener
ated but also highlights the interaction o f ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ and
reconceptualizes the m eaning and relationship o f those terms.
Inner and outer are not m utually exclusive but interdependent
in m eaning and in practice; accordingly, any focus on external
barriers will be weakened without attention to the internal. A
27 See Brown, When Battered Women Kill; Lenore Walker, Terrifying Love: Why Battered
Women Kill and How Society Responds (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom 215
feminist understanding of freedom acknowledges how external
factors influence and generate inner feelings and motives as well
as how those inner feelings act on and influence the external
world. Indeed, without seeing the ways in which the relationship
between the ‘inner’ self and the ‘outer’ environm ent must be re
defined and reconceptualized, an exclusive focus on external bar
riers reduces the complexities o f patriarchy and w om en’s choice
to the very same individualist, rationalist assumptions that are
blam ed for W estern liberalism ’s inability to respond adequately
to w om en’s needs.
T h e claim that the patriarchal context itself is a barrier to
w om en’s freedom must be viewed with self-critical am bivalence
because it im plicitly uses a concept of the subject that exists be
yond, or outside of, not only this particular (patriarchal) context
but any context whatsoever. T h e abstract ‘w om an’ whose ‘free
dom ’ is allegedly restricted by her context is who she is because of
that context. Feminists cannot operate from some abstract ideal
of what a w om an is ‘really’ like, what her desires and preferences
‘truly’ consist in, without then challenging the entire framework of
social construction, which is necessary to the critique of patriarchy
in the first place. Furtherm ore, it denies the reality that women,
b y livin g and acting w ithin and on existing contexts, have always
helped shape them. A s Vaclav Havel points out, people who adapt
to oppressive conditions ‘help create those conditions. T h ey are
objects in a system of control, but at the same tim e they are its
subjects as w ell’.28 If such people—for exam ple, wom en—are its
subjects, then they have the power to change it. If hum ans are
who they are through the social relations that m ake them, then
even as those relations lim it their options, they also create their
options. T h e view that women are alienated from language itself
ignores this duality of social construction or, at the least, fails to
recognize the positive constructive elements. Self-definition always
takes place in and through language; women have participated in
that language and responded to it throughout history with their
practices. Accordingly, although contexts such as patriarchy may
restrict wom en’s freedom, they also make such freedom possible.
T h u s fem inist freedom requires a double vision: w hile un
derstanding that everyone ‘always, already’ participates in the
28 Vaclav Havel, Living In Truth (London: Faber & Faber, 1987), 52.
216 Nancy J. Hirschmann
Foucaultian ‘field’ of social construction,29 feminists concerned
w ith freedom also want to acknow ledge that some groups of
people system atically and structurally have m ore power to do
the constructing than do others. Th at it m ay be m ore difficult for
wom en to define themselves within a masculinist epistem ology
and language—as it is for people of color in a white language,
lesbians and gays in a heterosexual language—is crucial to rec
ognize. T h is greater difficulty m eans that w om en and other
‘excluded others’ are less free within these contexts and within
the terms of m asculinist discourse itself. But ‘less free’ does not
m ean ‘unfree’, and ‘m ore difficult’ does not m ean ‘im possible’;
‘excluded others’ participate in social construction to varying
degrees. Furthermore, the m eaning that has been created b y these
contexts enables people to understand who they are as m uch as
who they are not; it conceptualizes powers as well as restrictions.
Because of this duality, it is not the case that all m en are free
and all wom en are unfree; indeed, perhaps under patriarchy, no
one is really free in the full senses m eant b y positive and nega
tive liberty. Similarly, some wom en are better placed to support
patriarchy—and accordingly freer—than are some m en b y virtue
of race, class, or other privileging factors; although patriarchy
is about gender dom ination, it cannot be com pletely separated
from other kinds of dom ination, such as race, class, and physical
ability. W hite wom en benefit from the race privilege that being
white accords, just as black m en benefit from the privileges of
gender. Both thus share responsibility within the system o f white
patriarchy.30 However, feminists also wish to recognize that patri
archy is defined b y the general dom inance of m en over women,
across race and class; it is premised on w om en’s powerlessness
T h e Ne e d f o r Ne w C o n t e x t s :
Re l a t i o n s h i p s a s P o l i t i c a l P r a c t i c e
31 I use the wording ‘participate in its processes’ because I wish to avoid the
impression that I think social construction is really as conscious and active as the
term ‘construction’ implies. I believe that many men actively engage in perpetuat
ing sexism, for instance, but its existence is much more complex than conscious
conspiracy; perhaps it is its pervasiveness at the subconscious level that accounts
for its tenacity.
218 Nancy J. Hirschmann
T h e logical solution would seem to be to find another context,
one in w hich language and epistem ology generate a set of coun
term eanings that provide a critical perspective on the dom inant
language. Poststructuralist theory, for instance, sets forth the no
tion that every discourse (such as patriarchy) has aporia within
which exist alternative discourses and counterdiscourses. So, for
instance, patriarchy contains both the discursive ideal that it is
m en’s right to discipline their wives and simultaneously that wom
en should be worshipped and placed on a pedestal; the dissonance
between these allows feminists to develop a ‘counterdiscourse’
identifying both of these ideals as false and objectifying.
T h e ‘aporia’ that is particularly relevant to a feminist theory
of freedom involves relationships am ong wom en.32 If wom en in
patriarchal contexts internalize its im age of their inferiority, then
conversely the realization that this inferiority is a constructed
image, that it is (at least at some level) false,33 and that w om en’s
activities have value needs the support of other w om en’s similar
and simultaneous realization or consciousness.
Relationships among women provide this different context for
the sharing of these realizations and hence the creation of a politi
cal ‘feminist standpoint’.34 Although patriarchy has dehumanized,
decentered, dismissed, and disrupted wom en’s relationships with
one another throughout history, it has nevertheless permitted those
relationships to exist, generally by default. In dismissing the private
sphere and wom en’s work as inessential and in directing their at
tention to the public sphere, men historically have been unable
to completely repress or stop wom en’s relations and communities
35 See Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970), and Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963), on consciousness-raising groups; see
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), chapter
6, on black ‘community othermothering’; and see Emily Martin, The Woman in the
Body (Boston: Beacon, 1987), on menstruation huts.
36 Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of SocialSym-
bolic Practice, trans. Patricia Cicogna and Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990).
220 Nancy J. Hirschmann
In Italian feminism, the focus o f such separatism was autoco-
scienza groups. Like consciousness-raising in the United States,
autocoscienza is a practice in w hich wom en gather together in
small groups to help themselves and each other to gain a deeper
understanding o f themselves in the patriarchal world order. A
‘separatism ’ of em otion and intellect, such groups provide, and
engage in the construction of, a new context of woman-to-woman
support, a ‘safe space’ for wom en to explore the dissonances be
tween their experiences and the dom inant discourse, to attempt
to describe those dissonances, and from there to rearticulate and
reform ulate their ‘original’ experiences and create new experi
ences and descriptions. Such groups thus move from a negative
exploration—how their experience is not what patriarchy says it is,
how it cannot even find adequate expression there—to a positive
one, a new vocabulary of m eaning that emerges from the new
fem inist con text’s reinterpretation o f w om en’s historical and
current experiences.
If freedom requires self-definition but this self-definition is not
possible within patriarchal language and contexts, then women
need to create new ones; such new contexts provide wom en with
a critical perspective from which to evaluate their choices more
fully and to facilitate the creation of new choices. E ngaging in
such com m unity allows wom en to see how they have created, and
can create, the world; hence it enables wom en to identify their
agency, their ability to act on and shape their contexts, to make
choices and act on them.
This idea particularly resonates with the examples with which
this essay opened. For instance, a battered w om en’s shelter pro
vides a tem porary ‘separatist’ com m unity where wom en share
their experiences o f abuse, validate one another, and gain a
clearer perspective on the abusive situations in w hich they live.
Studies show that even one visit to a battered w om en’s shelter
often provides wom en with the resources they need to leave their
partners or otherwise alter their situations.37 A b ortion , rape,
and sexual harassment also particularly lend themselves to the
im portance of com m unity in the individual’s attempt to attain
and protect control over her life and actions. For instance, in m y
38 David Bakan, The Duality of Human Existence: Isolation and Communion in Western
Man (Boston: Beacon, 1966); NancyJ. Hirschmann, Rethinking Obligation (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992), 139-140.
eleven
T he R e p u b l ic a n I d e a l of F r e e d o m
Philip Pettit
T h e C o n s t a n t C o n n e c t io n
Abridged from Philip Pettit, ‘Republican Political Theory’, in Andrew Vincent (ed.),
Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1997). Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
1 I am most grateful to Geoffrey Brennan and Michael Smith for helpful discus
sions of the material. I was enormously helped by comments received when the paper
was presented to a meeting in New Orleans organised by the Murphy Institute of
Political Economy, Tulane University, and the International Society for Economics
and Philosophy.
223
224 Philip Pettit
noninterference. T h e liberty of the ancients is no m atch for free
dom as noninterference—even if it is thought desirable, it must
be judged to be unattainable. T h e effect o f setting up the two as
the only relevant alternatives was to give victory, inevitably, to
the liberal ideal.
T h e republican w ay of thinking about freedom, effectively sup
pressed b y Constant, represents it as nondom ination, not as direct
dem ocratic standing. A n d the difference between freedom as non
interference and freedom as nondom ination is easily explained.
Assum e that one person dominates another to the extent that they
have the capacity to interfere arbitrarily—to interfere on an arbi
trary basis—in some or all of the other’s choices (Pettit 1996; 1997).
Freedom as noninterference makes the absence of interference
sufficient for freedom; in contrast, freedom as nondom ination
requires the absence of a capacity on the part of anyone else—any
individual or corporate agent—to interfere arbitrarily in another
person’s life or affairs. T h e difference between the two ways of
conceiving of liberty m ay seem slight, but a little reflection will
reveal hidden dim ensions to the contrast.
In t e r f e r e n c e and A r b i t r a r y In t e r f e r e n c e
T h e H a r d e r -t o -Lo s e -Fr e e d o m E f f e c t
T h e Ea s i e r -t o -Lo s e -Fr e e d o m E f f e c t
This effect comes of the fact that someone loses freedom, not just
to the extent that another person interferes on an arbitrary basis in
their choices, but to the extent that another agent has the capacity
to do this. With freedom as nondomination, a person loses freedom
to the extent that they live under the thum b of another, even if that
thumb is never used against them. Suppose that, under the existing
laws and mores, a wife m ay be abused on an arbitrary basis by her
husband, at least in certain areas and in a certain measure. Even if
her husband is a loving and caring individual, such a wife cannot
count as fully free under the construal of freedom as nondom ina
tion. A n d neither can the employee who lives under the thumb of
an employer, nor the member of a m inority who lives under the
thum b of a m ajority coalition, nor the debtor who lives under the
thum b of a creditor, nor anyone in such a subservient position.
W here the first effect of shifting the antonym shows up par
ticularly in the assessment of law and liberty, the second relates
to the association between law and slavery. A s it becam e a matter
230 Philip Pettit
of comm on assumption after Bentham that law represents a com
promise of liberty, albeit a compromise that m ay be for the good
overall, so it becam e impossible to maintain that to be unfree is
always, in some measure, to be enslaved (Patterson 1991); no one was
prepared to say that the law makes slaves of those who live under it.
But before Bentham, when freedom was opposed first and foremost
to domination, the association between unfreedom and slavery was
complete. To be unfree was to live at the m ercy of another; and that
was, to live under a condition of enslavement to them.
Thus, A lgernon Sydney (1990: 17) could write in the 1680s: ‘lib
erty solely consists in an independency upon the will of another,
and b y the nam e of slave we understand a man, who can neither
dispose of his person nor goods, but enjoys all at the will of his
m aster’. A n d in the following century, the authors o f Cato’s Letters
could give a characteristically forceful statement to the theme.
‘Liberty is, to live upon one’s own Terms; Slavery is, to live at
the mere M ercy o f another; and a Life of Slavery is, to those who
can bear it, a continual State of U ncertainty and W retchedness,
often an A pprehension o f V iolence, often the lingering D read of
a violent D eath’ (Trenchard and G ordon 1971, vol 2: 249-250).
Th e easier-to-lose-freedom effect of opposing liberty to dom ina
tion connects with the slavery theme, because one of the striking
things about a slave is that they remain a slave even if their master
is entirely benign and never interferes with them. A s A lgernon
Sydney (1990: 441) put it, ‘he is a slave who serves the best and
gentlest m an in the world, as well as he who serves the worst’.
O r as it was put b y Richard Price (1991: 77-78) in the eighteenth
century: ‘Individuals in private life, while held under the power
of masters, cannot be denom inated free, however equitably and
kindly they m ay be treated. This is strictly true of comm unities
as well as of individuals’. There is dom ination, and there is un
freedom , even if no actual interference occurs.
I m entioned that the first effect of opposing freedom to dom i
nation provided an argum ent for the defenders of the A m erican
cause: while those in Britain were not m ade unfree by the law,
given that the law could not be arbitrarily imposed there, those in
A m erica did not enjoy a similar status under the law. I should add
that the second effect enabled them to sheet this argument home.
T h ey were in a position to argue that, even though the British par
liam ent did not interfere m uch in A m erican affairs—even though
The Republican Ideal of Freedom 231
it levied only a small tax—still, because it could levy whatever tax
it wished, without any serious restraint on its will, it related to the
A m erican colonists as master to slave.
Joseph Priestley (1993: 140) offers a nice exam ple of this line
of argument.
T h r e e F u r t h e r Re m arks
T h e Si g n i f i c a n c e of th e Re p u b l i c a n I d e a l
Fr e e d o m as N o n i n t e r f e r e n c e , a n d Re d i s t r i b u t i o n
5 Liberalism can be identified as the movement that took freedom as the primary
ideal and that construed it as noninterference. In this case, then, short of taking
on a secondary ideal—something like the second principle of justice proposed by
Rawls (i 97i)—or of insisting on making freedom more and more effective—see Van
Parijs ( 1995)—it will tend to support a minimal state. Left-leaning liberals, of course,
generally want to follow the sorts of lines represented by Rawls and Van Parijs. For
more, see Pettit (i 997, Introduction).
The Republican Ideal of Freedom 235
far is it consistent, for example, with different levels of provision in
basic goods like food and shelter, modes of transport and m edia of
reliable information; in basic services like medical care, legal coun
sel, and accident insurance; in human capital of the kind associated
with training and education; in social capital of the sort that consists
in being able to call with confidence on others; in political capital
such as office and authority confer; and in the material capital that
is necessary for production? How far is it likely to require putting
inequalities in these matters right or at least alleviating their effects:
in particular, coercively putting them right, or coercively alleviating
their effects, under state initiatives? How far is it likely to require
what I shall describe, in a word, as redistribution?
Th e comm on wisdom on this question is that the m axim al equal
distribution of freedom as noninterference would leave a lot to be
desired in regard to redistribution: it would fall short, under most
conceptions, of achieving distributive justice (Rawls 1971). I think
that wisdom is well placed, and I wish to argue that, in this respect,
freedom as nondom ination represents a sharply contrasted ideal:
the m axim al equal distribution of such freedom requires a m uch
m ore substantial com m itm ent to redistribution.
Before com ing to that argument, however, it will be useful to see
w hy the connection between freedom as noninterference and dis
tributive justice is so loose. Two questions arise from the viewpoint
of freedom as noninterference, when any such issue of redistribution
is considered. First, how far will redistribution entail interference in
people’s lives b y the state? A n d second, how far will redistribution
lower the probability of interference by other agents?
T h e answer to the first question is that redistribution always
entails a degree o f interference b y the state. For even the most
basic form of redistribution involves taxing some to give to others,
and that in itself constitutes interference; it deprives those who
are taxed o f a choice in how to use their money. Besides tax, most
forms of redistribution also require inspectors and other officials
to oversee the operation. Thus the redistributive measures involve
the creation of new possibilities of interference in people’s lives.
T h e answer to the first question means that the onus of proof
always lies, from the perspective of freedom as noninterference,
with those who counsel redistribution. W hether redistribution in
any area is to be supported, then, depends on whether the answer
to the second question shows clearly that the m argin whereby
236 Philip Pettit
redistribution will reduce interference in a society is greater than
the m argin w hereby it introduces interference itself. T h e m argin
of projected im provem ent will have to be large enough to ensure
that even when we discount for the less-than-certain nature of the
projection, the argument squarely favours redistribution.
Nevertheless, it is not easy to find grounds to defend the re
quired answer to the second question. It is always possible for
the opponent to argue that, so long as we do not think of the
relatively advantaged as downright m alicious, we must expect
them not to be generally disposed to harm the disadvantaged,
and not to be generally in need of curtailm ent by the redistribu
tive state. Perhaps employers are in a position under the status
quo to interfere in various ways with their employees. But why
expect them to interfere rather than striving for good and produc
tive relationships? Perhaps husbands are able, given their greater
strength and greater cultural backing, to abuse their wives. But
w hy expect them to practise such abuse rather than rem aining
faithful to their affections and comm itments? Perhaps those who
lack m edical care and legal counsel are prey to the unscrupulous.
But w hy expect doctors and lawyers to be unw illing to provide
essential services pro bono, especially when they can make good
publicity of providing such services?
I sym pathize with the drift o f these rhetorical questions, believ
ing that it is a mistake to dem onize the relatively advantaged and
see them always as potential offenders (Pettit 1995). But the effect
of the questions in the context of endorsing an ideal of freedom
as noninterference is what concerns me now, not the propriety
of raising them. T h e effect is to lead those who take the ideal as
the only relevant yardstick of social perform ance not to require
m uch in the w ay of redistribution: not to require m uch in the way
of what we intuitively describe as distributive justice. It is quite
possible to believe that the regim e under which freedom as non
interference is equally distributed at m axim al levels is a regime
that allows great inequalities in other regards.
Fr e e d o m as No n d o m i n a t i o n , a n d R e d i s t r i b u t i o n
6 Libertarians often say that they are against big government. Republicans are
also against big government, but in a different sense. They object, not necessarily
to government’s having redistributive rights and responsibilities, but rather to the
government’s having power to act arbitrarily in the pursuit of redistributive ends;
the pursuit must always be governed by a fair rule of law.
The Republican Ideal of Freedom 239
as noninterference rem ained inevitably a probabilistic matter.
Perhaps we can interfere with employers to ensure that they do
not interfere in certain ways with their employees. Perhaps we
can interfere with husbands to ensure that they do not interfere
in certain ways with their wives. But before we think o f practis
ing interference, we have to convince ourselves that some shaky
arithm etic comes out right. We have to convince ourselves that
there is a suitably high probability o f a suitably large reduction
in the practice of interference b y employers and husbands. Th at
thought m ay well give pause to any projects of redistribution
that the ideal of freedom as noninterference is otherwise likely
to sponsor.
Like the matter of the presumption against redistribution, how
ever, the ideal o f freedom as antipower, freedom as nondom ina
tion, has quite a different im pact here. Suppose that an employer
has the capacity in some measure to interfere arbitrarily in the
affairs of an employee. Em ploym ent is so scarce and the prospect
of unem ploym ent so repellent, that the employer can alter agreed
conditions of work, make life m uch tougher for employees, or even
practise some illegal interference in their affairs, with relative
ease. A n d suppose now that we contem plate introducing a system
of unem ploym ent benefits, or a set of health and safety regula
tions, or an arrangem ent for arbitrating w orkplace disputes, that
would improve the lot of employees. D o we have to do a range of
probabilistic sums before we can be sure of the benefits of such
a redistributive regime?
A ssum ing that the regim e is consistent with a fair rule o f law,
and does not itself introduce an independent source of dom ina
tion—provided it does not have any dom inational side effects—it
should be clear that no such sums are necessary. Just the existence
of reasonable unem ploym ent benefits is bound to reduce the ex
tent to which an employee is w illing to tolerate arbitrary interfer
ence b y an employer, and b y the same token reduces the capacity
of the employer to interfere at will and with im punity in the lives
of employees. Th ere is no uncertainty plaguing the connection.
O r at least there is no uncertainty of the kind that makes the con
nection with freedom as noninterference so problematic.
Sim ilar points go through on a num ber of fronts. T h e fact
that people are poor or illiterate or ignorant or unable to get
legal counsel or uninsured against illness or incapable of getting
240 Philip Pettit
around—the fact that they lack basic capabilities in any of these
regards (Sen i985)—makes them subject to a certain sort of ex
ploitation and m anipulation. O ther things being equal, then,
any im provem ent in their lot is bound to reduce the capacity of
others to interfere m ore or less arbitrarily in their lives. A n d that
m eans that, other things being equal—dom inational side effects
being absent—any such im provem ent is bound to increase their
freedom as nondom ination.
T h e crucial difference in this second respect between the ideals
of freedom as noninterference and freedom as nondom ination
comes of the fact that the first ideal is com prom ised only by
actual interference, the second by the capacity for interference,
in particular the capacity for arbitrary interference. It m ay be
unclear whether a given measure will actually reduce the overall
level of interference practised b y the m ore advantaged, while it
is absolutely certain that the measure will reduce their capacity
for interference.
Suppose that the employer in our earlier example is actually benign,
or actually committed to a smooth and productive workplace, and
thus is unlikely ever to interfere in the affairs of employees. The intro
duction of employment benefits, or health and safety regulations, or
arbitration procedures, will not significantly reduce the probability of
interference in such a scenario; that probability is already negligible.
But still, the introduction of any such scheme will certainly reduce
the employer’s capacity for arbitrary interference. For whether the
employer interferes or not will no longer be dependent on their
good grace; it will be substantially determined by factors outside
the employer’s will.
Som e will retort at this point that there is no reason w hy we
should want to reduce the capacity of an employer to interfere with
employees, especially given the cost of doing so, when it is certain
that no interference will actually occur. But that is to shift the is
sue from the m atter o f what the ideal of freedom as nondom ina
tion would require—and, in particular, from the observation that
it would require, other things being equal, that the employer is
constrained—to the issue of whether it is an attractive ideal. M y
aim here is not to argue that it is an attractive ideal (on this issue
see Pettit 1997), only that it is a redistributively dem anding one.
We saw earlier that freedom as noninterference m ay be m axi
m ized, and m axim ized under the constraint of m ore or less equal
The Republican Ideal of Freedom 241
distribution, without any significant redistribution of resources
being required. W hat we have now seen is that, in this respect, as
in so m any others, freedom as nondom ination is quite different.
T h e republican ideal, just in itself, m ay be capable of encoding the
redistributive measures that m any of us would think it reasonable
to require of the m odern state. W hile rem aining an ideal of liberty,
it m ay give adequate expression to the m ore dem anding aspira
tions that the nonlibertarians amongst us find compelling.
Re f e r e n c e s
A T h ir d C o n c e p t o f L ib e r t y
Quentin Skinner
This essay was first presented as the inaugural Isaiah Berlin Memorial Lecture to
the British Academy on November 21, 2001, and published as Quentin Skinner, ‘A
Third Concept of Liberty’, London Review of Books. Reprinted by permission of the
author and of the London Review of Books: www.lrb.co.uk.
1 Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002).
243
244 Quentin Skinner
and incom m ensurable concepts of liberty, which he, too, labels
‘positive’ and ‘negative’. W hen he discusses negative liberty, he
gives an account closely resem bling the analysis that, according
to M acC allum and his numerous followers, must be given of any
claim about freedom if it is to be intelligible. To see, therefore,
where Berlin has something challenging to add to the argument,
we need to turn to his account of what he calls positive liberty.
Berlin’s attempt to m ark off this separate concept is adm it
tedly dogged b y several false starts. He begins b y suggesting that,
whereas negative lib erty is freedom from constraint, positive
liberty is freedom to follow a certain form of life. But this distinc
tion cannot be used to disclose two different concepts of liberty,
if only because all cases o f negative liberty are at once cases in
which I am free from constraint and in consequence free to act
should I choose. Berlin next suggests that the positive sense of
the word refers to the idea of being one’s own master as opposed
to being acted on b y external forces. But this, too, fails to isolate
a separate concept o f positive liberty. For the situation in which I
am free to act in virtue of not being hindered b y external forces
is, according to Berlin’s own analysis, the situation of someone in
possession of their liberty in the ordinary negative sense.
It soon emerges, however, that Berlin’s concern is not with the
idea of being your own master. Rather, he is interested in the very
different notion (although he sometimes runs them together) of
m astering your self. W hen he first employs this form ula, he uses
it to refer to the thought—equally fam iliar to students of Plato
and of Freud—that the obstacles to your capacity to act freely may
be internal rather than external, and that you will need to free
yourself from these psychological constraints if you are to behave
autonomously. But this, too, fails to capture a separate concept
of positive liberty. For while the notion of an internal obstacle
extends the range of things that can count as constraints, we are
still speaking about the need to get rid of an element of constraint
if we are to act freely, and are still speaking in consequence about
the idea of negative liberty.
T h e principal claim, however, that Berlin wishes to make about
self-mastery proves to be a different and m ore convincing one.
A ccording to those who have wished to give a positive content
to the idea of liberty, he suggests, the freedom of hum an agents
consists in their having m anaged most fully to becom e themselves.
A Third Concept of Liberty 245
Freedom is thus equated not with self-mastery but rather with
self-realisation, and above all with self-perfection, with the idea
(as Berlin expresses it) of m y self at its best. T h e positive concept
is thus that, as Berlin finally summarises, ‘whatever is the true
goal of m an . . . must be identical with his freedom ’.
If there is any one philosopher w hom Berlin had in m ind in
form ulating this definition, I think it must have been Bernard
Bosanquet. In The Philosophical Theory o f the State, first published
in 1899, Bosanquet speaks in so m any words about the ‘negative
idea’ of being ‘free from constraint’ and contrasts this juristic
concept, as he calls it, with what he describes as the ‘fuller’ or ‘posi
tive’ understanding o f the term. Furthermore, when Bosanquet
characterises the negative ideal as that of being preserved against
trespass, and contrasts it with the positive view of the ‘real’ or
‘ideal’ self whose activity is identical with freedom, Berlin echoes
his phraseology almost word for word.
Behind Bosanquet’s analysis, however, lies the overwhelm ing
influence of T. H. G reen. A s Bosanquet acknowledges in the
chapter I have been quoting, he makes ‘great use’ o f the analysis
of freedom offered b y G reen in his Principles o f Political Obligation,
originally published in 1886. G reen does not explicitly speak in
that w ork (although he does elsewhere) of ‘positive’ liberty, but
he provides a subtler and m ore careful analysis than Bosanquet
does o f what m ight be m eant b y givin g a positive content to
the ideal. ‘Real freed om ’, according to G reen, ‘consists in the
w hole m an having found his object’. To speak of the freedom
o f a m an is thus to speak o f ‘the state in w hich he shall have
realised his ideal o f h im self’. Freedom is, in short, the nam e of
an end-state; as G reen concludes, it is ‘in some sense the goal
o f m oral endeavour’.
It is hard nowadays to recapture how disquieting this analysis
seemed to m any A nglophone philosophers w riting in the after
m ath of the First W orld War. L. T. H obhouse, for exam ple, whose
critique of Hegel, Green, and Bosanquet appeared in 1918, went so
far as to assert that in the bom bing of London he had witnessed
‘the visible and tangible outcom e’ of this ‘false and wicked doc
trine’. To anyone of Berlin’s generation, however, these anxieties
about H egelian philosophy rem ained rem arkably acute, and these
are the feelings that Berlin is registering, I think, in his account
of positive liberty and the dangers to which it gives rise.
246 Quentin Skinner
I do not wish, however, to press the historical point. M y reason
for quoting G reen and Bosanquet is to lend further support to
what seems to me Berlin’s most im portant contention, and m y
reason for w ishing to add this support is that Berlin seems to
me to miss the force of his own argument. This becom es clear
w hen he responds to M a cC a llu m ’s insistence that all claims
about freedom conform to the same triadic structure, since they
are all claims about the need to be free from constraint to do or
becom e something. Berlin m erely returns the suggestion—which
I have already shown to be confused—that some pleas for liberty
reflect a simpler dyadic structure, since they are nothing more
than pleas to be liberated. W hat Berlin should have retorted, it
seems to me, is that the positive conception of liberty he rightly
isolates cannot be m ade to conform to the triadic structure on
w hich M acC allum and his followers insist. T h e crux of G reen’s
and Bosanquet’s argument is that the freedom of hum an agents
consists in their having succeeded in realising an ideal of them
selves. But this is not to speak of a condition in w hich someone
is free to do or becom e something, as required b y M acC allu m ’s
analysis. It is to speak o f a condition in w hich someone has suc
ceeded in becom ing something. Freedom is not being viewed as
absence of constraint on action; it is being viewed as a pattern of
action o f a certain kind.
Berlin’s argument can be carried yet another step if we recognise
that what underlies these theories of positive liberty is the belief that
human nature has an essence, and that we are free if and only if we
succeed in realising that essence in our lives. This enables us to see
that there will be as many different interpretations of positive liberty
as there are different views about the moral character of humankind.
Suppose you accept the Christian view that the essence of our nature
is religious, and thus that we attain our highest ends if and only if we
consecrate our lives to God. Then you will believe that, in the words of
Thomas Cranmer, the service of God ‘is perfect freedom’. O r suppose
you accept the Aristotelian argument that man is a political animal,
the argument restated as a theory of freedom by Hannah Arendt in
Between Past and Future (1961). Then you will believe that, as Arendt
maintains, ‘freedom . . . and politics coincide’ and that ‘this freedom
is primarily experienced in action’.
Faced with these equations between freedom and certain forms
of life, how can M acC allu m and his followers hope to rescue
A Third Concept of Liberty 247
their contention that all intelligible claims about liberty must
be claims about absence o f constraint? A s far as I can see, their
only recourse will be to suggest that the arguments I have cited
from G reen and Bosanquet are not intelligible as claims about
liberty; that they must either be m uddled or be talking about
som ething else. A s Berlin excellently points out, however, there
is no difficulty in seeing how the neo-Hegelians took their thesis,
without any incoherence, to be one about hum an freedom. T h e
claim they are advancing is that if, and only if, we actually follow
the most fulfilling w ay of life shall we overcome the constraints
and obstacles to our realisation of our full potential, and thereby
realise our ideal of ourselves. T h e living of such a life alone frees
us from such constraints and, b y m aking us fully ourselves, makes
us fully free.
A s the title of his essay indicates, Berlin’s m ain concern is to
contrast this positive ideal of freedom with what he describes,
following m uch precedent, as negative liberty. A s we have seen,
b y negative liberty Berlin means absence of constraint, and the
specific interpretation he believes must be given to the concept
of constraint is that it must consist in some act of interference,
b y some external agency, with the capacity of another agent to
pursue ‘possible choices and activities’. These obstacles or hin
drances need not be intentional, for Berlin allows that they m ay
be the result of—as opposed to being deliberately caused by—the
actions of others. But his fundam ental contention is that the
absence m arking the presence of liberty must always be absence
of interference.
W hile this is a fam iliar vision of hum an liberty, it is a m atter of
no small difficulty to state it w ith precision, and it is worth noting
that Berlin’s statement embodies a valuable qualification often
omitted in m ore recent accounts. Berlin adds that I am unfree
‘if I am prevented b y others from doing what I could otherwise
do’. I m ay be physically obstructed in such a w ay that an action
within m y powers becom es impossible to perform. O r I m ay be
subjected to such a degree of coercion that the action is rendered,
in Jerem y Bentham ’s phrase, ineligible. But in either case m y loss
of freedom stems from ‘the deliberate interference of other human
beings within the area in which I could otherwise act’.
Berlin’s w ay of articulating this distinction is strongly reminis
cent o f Thom as H obbes’s analysis of free action in his Leviathan
248 Quentin Skinner
of 1651. H obbes compares the predicam ent of two m en who are
unable to leave a room. O ne possesses the power to leave, but has
been ‘restrained with walls, or chains’ and thereby disempowered;
the other straightforwardly lacks the ability, because he is ‘fastened
to his bed by sickness’. A ccording to H obbes’s analysis, the first
m an is unfree to leave, but the second is neither free nor unfree;
he is sim ply unable. T h e reason, H obbes explains, is that the
idea of free action presupposes the idea of deliberating between
alternatives. But it makes no sense to deliberate as to whether to
perform an action we already know to be beyond our powers.
Contrast this understanding with the view, currently prevalent,
that we need to distinguish between the form al and the effective
possession of negative liberty. O ne of the examples Berlin gives in
distinguishing lack of freedom from inability is the case o f a man
who cannot read because he is blind. If we apply the distinction
between form al and effective freedom , we arrive at the view that
the blind m an is form ally free to read, because no one is interfer
ing with him in this pursuit. But he is not effectively free, since
he is not in a position to m ake use of his form al liberty.
Berlin’s H obbesian approach enables us to see that this kind
of analysis results at best in confusion and at worst in a kind
of m ockery of freedom. There are two contrasting points to be
brought out here. O ne is that, on Berlin’s account, the blind man
is neither form ally nor effectively free to read. A s Berlin insists,
I am free only if I am capable of exercising an ability, should I
choose, without interference. But the predicam ent of the blind
m an is that he is incapable of exercising the ability to read under
any circumstances. T h e contrasting point is that, on Berlin’s ac
count, the blind m an is neither form ally nor effectively unfree to
read. To be unfree is to have been rendered incapable of exercising
an ability I possess. But the blind m an has not in this way been
disempowered; he is sim ply not in possession of the relevant abil
ity. A lth ough Berlin’s analysis of negative liberty is exceptionally
acute and valuable, it nevertheless seems to me to suffer from a
serious lim itation of coverage. This weakness, moreover, is one
that it shares with almost every other recent statement of the
theory o f negative liberty I have com e across. This being so, the
nature of the weakness seems to m e well worth trying to identify
and remedy, and this is the task to w hich I shall devote the rest
of these remarks.
A Third Concept of Liberty 249
W hen Berlin first introduces his view of negative liberty, he
rightly observes that ‘this is what the classical English political
philosophers m eant’ by freedom, and he specifically refers us to
H obbes’s definition in Leviathan. W hat Berlin misses, however, is
the fiercely polemical character of H obbes’s analysis. W hen Hobbes
announces, in words that Berlin echoes closely, that our liberty con
sists of nothing more than absence of external impediments, he is
attempting at the same time to discredit and supersede a rival and
strongly contrasting understanding of negative liberty. This rival
theory had risen to prominence in English public debate in the early
decades of the seventeenth century, and it appeared to Hobbes to
be extremely dangerous as well as hopelessly confused.
I can best bring out the significance of H obbes’s critique if I try
to answer a question raised by Berlin in the introduction to his re
vised edition of ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. He asks when the idea
of freedom as nothing other than noninterference was first explicitly
formulated, and what prompted its rise to its present hegemonal
prominence. I would answer that it is very hard to find an explicit
statement of such a theory any earlier than H obbes’s in Leviathan,
and that what prompted him to articulate it was his sense of the
need to respond to the ‘democratical gentlemen’, as he called them,
who had deployed their very different theory to promote the cause
of Parliament against the Crown and to legitimise the execution of
K ing Charles I in 1649.
H obbes’s counter-revolutionary challenge eventually won the
day. To cite Berlin’s own litany, we find his basic line o f argument
taken up b y David Hum e, Jerem y Bentham, to some degree by
John Stuart M ill, and even m ore closely (Berlin m ight have added)
b y H enry Sidgwick. This great tradition of classical utilitarianism
proved impressively successful at occupying the entire conceptual
space, thereby m anaging to dismiss any rival interpretations as
either pernicious or confused. A s a result of this profound and
enduring ideological success, the alternative vision of negative
liberty that H obbes originally set out to discredit has virtually
sunk from sight. W hat I now want to do is to try to lift it back to
the surface.
A s I have indicated, the theory in question rose to prominence
in A n glop h on e political th eory in the course o f the disputes
between Crow n and Parliam ent in seventeenth-century Britain.
Critics of the royal prerogative began to argue that, to the extent
250 Quentin Skinner
that they were obliged to live in dependence on the power of the
king, and obliged in consequence to rely on his goodw ill for the
continuation of their rights and liberties, they were living in a
state of servitude. T h ey insisted, in other words, that freedom is
restricted not only by actual interference or the threat o f it, but
also b y the m ere knowledge that we are livin g in dependence on
the goodw ill of others. These writers are not m aking the obvious
point that the possibility of arbitrary interference renders our
lib erty less robust or secure. T h e y are arguing that our mere
awareness of livin g under an arbitrary power—a power capable
of interfering with our activities without having to consider our
interests—serves in itself to lim it our liberty. K now ing that we are
free to do or forbear only because someone else has chosen not
to stop us is what reduces us to servitude.
Th e immediate inspiration for this way of thinking appears to
have stemmed from a number of medieval common-law texts, above
all those of Bracton and Littleton. But the most striking feature of
these discussions (although later comm on lawyers did their best to
ignore the fact) is that they in turn owe their phraseology entirely
to the analysis of freedom and slavery to be found in the Digest of
Roman Law. There we are first informed that ‘the fundamental divi
sion within the law of persons is that all m en and women are either
free or are slaves’. N ext we are given a formal definition of slavery.
‘Slavery is an institution of the law of nations b y which someone
is, contrary to nature, subjected to the dominion of someone else’.
This in turn is held to yield a definition of individual liberty. If
everyone in a civil association is either free or a slave, then a free
citizen must be someone who is not under the dominion of anyone
else, but is capable of acting in their own right.
By the time these distinctions were definitively sum m arised in
Justinian’s C odex, they had been the com m on coin of Rom an
political theory for generations. T h e y had been popularised above
all by the sequence of great historians—Sallust, Livy, Tacitus—who
had traced the subversion of the republican constitution and its
collapse into the servitude of the principate. If you turn to any of
these authorities, you will find it argued once again that what it
m eans to possess your liberty is, as L ivy puts it, ‘to be in your own
power’, not obliged to live at the m ercy of anyone else.
It was this understanding of political liberty that a number of
spokesmen in the English Parliament began to deploy in criticism
A Third Concept of Liberty 251
of the Crow n in the early decades of the seventeenth century. They
were partly protesting against what they took to be straightforward
violations of their fundam ental rights. But they were also objecting
to what they saw as a deeper affront to liberty. T h ey were fearful
of the underlying principle that, in times of necessity, the Crown
possesses the discretionary power to override civil rights. T h e ob
jection they developed was that, if the Crown is the bearer of any
such prerogatives, this is as m uch as to say that our property and
personal liberties are held not ‘of right’ but m erely ‘of grace’, since
the Crow n can take them away without injustice at any time.
W hat troubled these critics was the view of rights im plied by
this understanding of the prerogative. To claim that our basic lib
erties are subject to being taken away with im punity is to declare
that they do not have the status of rights; it is to say that they are
m ere licenses or privileges. This was the insight that prompted
these critics to reach for their Bracton—and indeed their L ivy
and Tacitus. To accept that we hold our liberties at discretion,
they retort, is to accept that we are livin g in dependence on the
will of the king. But to admit that we are livin g in such a state of
dependence is to adm it that we are living not as free citizens but
as slaves. T h e mere knowledge that the Crow n possesses such
prerogatives is what reduces us to servitude.
The moment at which these arguments provoked a fatal crisis
came in 1642. W hen the House of Comm ons brought forward a
proposal early in February to take control of the militia, Charles I
made it clear that he would veto any such legislation by exercising
his so-called prerogative of the Negative Voice. Parliament then took
the revolutionary step of claiming that, at least in times of emergency,
it must possess the right to legislate even in the absence of the royal
assent. T h e reason why this must be so, a number of spokesmen now
proclaimed, is that the alternative is national servitude. The most
influential statement of the parliamentary case was furnished by
H enry Parker in his Observations of July 1642. If the Crown can block
any legislation with the Negative Voice, this will reduce the Parliament
to a state of dependence on the will of the king. But if we permit the
king ‘to be the sole, supreme competent Judge in this case, we resign
all into his hands, we give lives, liberties, Laws, Parliaments, all to be
held at mere discretion’ and thereby consign ourselves to slavery.
Parker was not the first to put forward this argument, but his
Observations offered the most confident statement of the case, and
252 Quentin Skinner
did m uch to m ake it central to the rhetoric of the ensuing C ivil
War. We encounter the same argument in Parliament’s call to arms
of A ugust 1642, and we encounter it yet again after the parliam en
tary victory, when it was used to justify not m erely the regicide
but the abolition of the monarchy. T h e charge against Charles I
at his trial was that he had ruled by his arbitrary will, and hence
tyrannically. T h e A ct of M arch 1649 abolishing the office of king
confirm ed that m onarchy is ‘dangerous to the liberty, safety, and
public interest of the people’, and added that in England the ef
fect of the prerogative has been ‘to oppress and im poverish and
enslave the subject’.
This neo-Rom an analysis of what it means to possess our free
dom carried with it a distinctive view o f the relations between the
liberty of citizens and the constitution of the state. T h e essence of
the argument is that freedom is restricted by dependence. To be
free as a citizen, therefore, requires that the actions of the state
should reflect the will of all its citizens, for otherwise the excluded
will remain dependent on those whose wills move the state to act.
T h e outcom e is the belief—crucial alike to the English Revolution
of the seventeenth century and to the A m erican and French Revo
lutions of a century later—that it is possible to enjoy our individual
liberty if and only if we live as citizens of self-governing republics.
To live as subjects of a m onarch is to live as slaves.
It w ould be w rong to im ply that Isaiah Berlin failed to recognise
the existence of this tradition of thought. It is true that he never
discusses it with the same historical specificity as he brings to
bear on the other two traditions he examines, and that he never
singles out any particular theorist or m ovem ent capable of being
associated with this alternative standpoint. Given, however, that
he was w riting at the height of the debate about decolonialisa-
tion, he could scarcely have been unaware that nations as well as
individuals often claim to be unfree when they are condem ned to
social or political dependence. H e devotes considerable attention
at the end of his essay to what he describes as the resulting ‘search
for status’, and he explicitly asks him self whether it m ight not ‘be
natural or desirable to call the dem and for recognition and status
a dem and for liberty in some third sense’.
H aving raised the question, however, Berlin confidently an
swers that no such third concept of liberty can be coherently
entertained. To speak of dependence as lack of liberty, he writes,
A Third Concept of Liberty 253
would be to confound freedom with other concepts in a m anner
at once m isleading and confused. Stating his grounds for this
conclusion, Berlin goes on to enunciate his most general claim
about the concept of liberty. He insists that it is true not m erely
of any coherent account of negative freedom , but of any concept
of freedom whatever, that it must embody, at least as a minimum,
the idea of absence of interference. If we are to speak of constraints
on our liberty, we must be able to point to some visible act of
hindrance, the aim or consequence of which was to im pede us in
the exercise of our powers.
It is precisely this assumption, however, that the writers I have
been considering reject. T h e distinctive claim they defend is that a
mere awareness of living in dependence on the goodw ill of others
serves in itself to restrict our options and thereby limits our liberty.
T h e effect is to dispose us to make and avoid certain choices, and
is thus to place clear constraints on our freedom of action, even
though our rulers m ay never interfere with our activities or even
show the least sign of threatening to interfere with them.
T h e exploration of this argument had been a leading preoc
cupation o f the classical historians I have singled out. Tacitus in
particular speaks with an unforgettable com bination of agony and
contempt about the psychological im pact of living under tyranny.
If you are subject to unaccountable power, you will find in the
first place that there are m any things you are not free to say or
do. A bove all, you will need to ensure that you avoid saying or
doing anything that m ight be construed b y your rulers as an act
of challenge, em ulation, or reproach. You will likewise find that
you lack the freedom to abstain from saying and doing certain
things. W hen required to advise your rulers or to com m ent on
their behaviour, you will find yourself constrained to endorse
whatever policies they already wish to pursue. Yet m ore serious is
the long-term psychological dam age inflicted by such forms of self
censorship. A s Tacitus bitterly emphasises, servitude inevitably
breeds servility. W hen a whole nation is inhibited from exercising
its highest talents and virtues, these qualities will begin to atrophy
and the people will gradually sink into an abject condition of
torpor and sluggishness.
It was this analysis that exercised perhaps the most formative
influence on the dem ocratical gentlem en who challenged the
governm ent of Charles I and instituted the first and only British
254 Quentin Skinner
republic. So far. They, too, were deeply preoccupied b y the dan
gerous im plications o f the fact that unaccountable rulers are
inevitably surrounded by servile flatterers, and have little hope
of hearing frank advice. A s in the case o f the classical historians,
however, their principal anxiety was that, under such rulers, no
one will perform any deeds requiring public spirit or courageous
and great-hearted qualities. A t first they lacked the vocabulary in
w hich to express this Tacitean insight, but they gradually popu
larised a series of neologism s that enabled them to refer directly
to the loss of spirit, courage, and great-heartedness that tyranny
brings in its train. T h e final effect, as they put it, is that everyone
becom es dispirited, discouraged, disheartened.
For all the power of this analysis, contem porary political theory
has largely neglected it. Berlin’s view that negative liberty must
be construed as absence of interference remains the orthodoxy,
and nowhere m ore so than in Great Britain and the United States.
But this is deeply ironic, especially in the A m erican case, for the
United States was born out of the rival theory that negative lib
erty consists of absence of dependence. W hen Congress adopted
Thom as Jefferson’s Declaration in J u ly 1776, what they decided to
call it, no one needs rem inding, was a Declaration o f Independence.
But do we ever pause long enough over that word? Independence
from what? From livin g in dependence on the arbitrary power
of the British Crown. A n d what m ade Congress believe that this
justified revolution? T h eir acceptance o f the classical contention
that, if you depend on the goodw ill of anyone else for the uphold
ing of your rights, it follows that—even if your rights are in fact
upheld—you will be livin g in servitude.
G iven our current predicam ent, it is unfortunate that this way
of thinking about freedom has becom e so w idely discredited. We
are again being urged to recognise that, in times of emergency,
civil liberties must bow to national security. We are being urged,
that is, to acknowledge that our liberties are held not as rights
but by grace of our rulers, and that it is for them to tell us what
counts as an emergency. These arguments are of course being
put to us in the nam e of freedom and democracy. But it is worth
recalling that, according to the A m erican Founding Fathers, and
to the dem ocratical gentlem en b y w hom they were so greatly
influenced, this is to speak the language o f tyranny.
S e l e c t e d B ib l io g r a p h y
s t u d ie s of th e c o n cept of Li b e r t y
255
256 Selected Bibliography
Hi s t o r i e s o f th e Id e a o f Li b e r t y
s o m e A p p l ic a t io n s o f t h e c o n c e p t
t o Is s u e s o f p o l i c y
Freedom o f Speech
Baker, C. E. Human Liberty and Freedom o f Speech (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
Brison, S. ‘The Autonomy Defense of Free Speech’. Ethics 108 (1997-1998):
3 339
i2- .
Cohen, J. ‘Freedom of Expression’. Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993):
73 225
i - .
Fiss, O. The Irony o f Free Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
99
i 8).
Scanlon, T. ‘A Theory of Freedom of Expression’, in T. Scanlon, The Difficulty of
Tolerance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Schauer, F. Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1982).
Buchanan, J. The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1975).
Feinberg, J. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. 4 vols. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984-1988).
Hart, H. L. A. Law, Liberty, and Morality (London: Oxford University Press,
93
i 6 ).
Mendus, S. Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (London: Macmillan, 1989).
Id e a s of Li b e r t y in So m e M a j o r p o l it ic a l Th e o r is t s
The most useful general source is Z. Pelczynski and J. N. Gray, eds., Conceptions
o f Liberty in Political Philosophy (London: Athlone Press, 1984).
Rousseau, J. J. The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. and ed. G. D. H. Cole, J.
H. Brumfitt, and J. C. Hall (London: Dent, 1973).
Chapman, J. W. Rousseau: Totalitarian or Liberal? (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1956).
Fetscher, I. ‘Rousseau’s Concepts of Freedom in the Light of His Philosophy
of History’, in C. J. Friedrich, ed., Nomos IV: Liberty (New York: Atherton
Press, 1962).
Gardiner, P. ‘Rousseau on Liberty’, in Z. Pelczynski andJ. N. Gray, eds., Concep
tions o f Liberty in Political Philosophy (London: Athlone Press, 1984).
Miller, J. Rousseau: Dreamer o f Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1984), chapter 7.
Neuhouser, F. ‘Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will’. Philosophical Review
993 3 3 395
102 (i ): 6 - .
Plamenatz, J. P. ‘Ce qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu’on le forcera d’etre libre’,
in M. Cranston and R. S. Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of
Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1972).
Wokler, R., ed. Rousseau and Liberty (Manchester, UK: Manchester University
i995 ).
Kant, I. Kant’s Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1971).
------ . Foundations o f the Metaphysics o f Morals, trans. L. W. Beck (New York: Mac
millan, 1986).
260 Selected Bibliography
Bielefeldt, H. ‘Autonomy and Republicanism: Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of
Freedom’. Political Theory 25 (1997): 524-558.
Flikschuh, K. Kant and Modern Political Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
Murphy, J. G. Kant: The Philosophy o f Right (London: Macmillan, 1970).
Taylor, C. ‘Kant’s Theory of Freedom’, in Z. Pelczynski and J. N. Gray, eds.,
Conceptions o f Liberty in Political Philosophy (London: Athlone Press, 1984).
Williams, H. Kant’s Political Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1983).
Constant, B. ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns’,
in B. Constant, Political Writings, ed. B. Fontana (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
Holmes, S. Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
A d d i t i o n a l Re a d i n g R e l e v a n t t o t h e
E s s a y s Re p r i n t e d i n T h i s v o l u m e
T H. Green
Isaiah Berlin
Berlin, I. Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002).
Cohen, M. ‘Berlin and the Liberal Tradition’. Philosophical Quarterly 10 (i960):
216-227.
Crowder, G. Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press,
2004), especially chapter 4.
Gray, J. Berlin (London: Fontana Press, 1995), chapter i.
-----. ‘On Negative and Positive Liberty’. Political Studies 28, no. 4 (1980): 507-526.
(Reprinted in Z. Pelczynski and J. N. Gray, eds., Conceptions o f Liberty in
Political Philosophy [London: Athlone Press, 1984], and inJ. Gray, Liberalisms
[London: Routledge, 1989].)
Selected Bibliography 263
Hunt, I. ‘Freedom and Its Conditions’. AustralasianJournal of Philosophy 69 (1991):
288-301.
MacPherson, C. B. ‘Berlin’s Division of Liberty’, in Democratic Theory: Essays in
Retrieval (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1973).
Swift, A. Political Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide for Students and Politicians (Cam
bridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001), Part II.
Hannah Arendt
F. A. Hayek
Charles Taylor
G. A. Cohen
D avid Miller
Nancy J. Hirschmann
Quentin Skinner
267
268 Index
Berlin, Isaiah (continued) Chinese, individual rights and, 41
247; on positive liberty, 12, 203, Choice, 40, 46, 81, 87, 202, 203, 247;
223, 243-44, 246, 247; response centrality of, 222; coercion and,
to, 13; on state determination, 89, 92; creation of, 220; free, 200,
205n11; writer classification by, 233; freedom and, 44, 63, 104;
109n7 inside/outside factors of, 206;
Berlin wall, fall of, 1 limiting, 94, 214, 225, 226, 253;
Between Past and Future (Arendt), 246 m en’s/women’s, 222; patriarchy
Blackstone, William: on laws/liberty, and, 215; range of, 82; recognition
228 of, 214; responsibility for, 44
Bodily integrity, 202 Christian tradition, 68n3; anti
Body, mind and, 71 political tendencies of, 75;
Bosanquet, Bernard, 52, 109n7; freedom and, 68, 73; natural laws
on constraint, 245; on freedom/ and, 41n15
hum an agents, 246 Churchill, Winston: on courage, 66
Bourgeois freedom, 142, 172 Citizenship, 2, 3, 68, 74
Bourgeois thinkers, 164 City o f God (Augustine), 75
Bracton, 250, 251 Civilization, 22-23, 39, 41; private
Bradley, 52, 109n7 property and, 96
Brecht, Bertolt: on class ascent, 182 Civil liberty, 7, 22, 40, 254; liberty
Bridge, Mrs., 211, 214, 221 and, 6; political liberty and, 80
Brutus, 63 Civil rights, 251; totalitarianism and,
Bukharin, 109n7 60-61, 77
Burckhardt, Jacob: power and, 90 Civil society, 55n35, 90, 234, 250
Burke, Edmund, 38, 50, 90, 109n7 Class, 182, 210, 216
Class ascent, 177-82
Capacities, human, 187, 227 Coercion, 33, 34, 35, 45, 48, 55, 81,
Capital, hum an/material/political/ 118, 201, 227; absence of, 13, 14,
social, 235 84, 85, 86, 88, 95; arbitrary, 99;
Capitalism, 184; freedom and, 17, avoiding, 58, 98-99; children and,
163, 165, 167, 170-73, 183, 199, 49; choice and, 89, 92; dependence
200; labour power and, 178; and, 97; employment and, 92-93;
liberals and, 166; libertarians and, exercising, 92, 93; forms of, 91,
166; Marxists and, 175; modified, 94-95, 143; liberty and, 15, 91, 95;
166, 168, 173; unmodified, 165 monopolists and, 92-93; negative
Carlyle, 53, 109n7 liberty and, 86; noninterference
Carter, Ian: on intentionality/agency, and, 40; power and, 90, 91, 93, 96;
212 prevention of, 80, 92, 96, 97; state,
Cato’s Letters, 230 99; threat of, 95, 98; true, 93-94;
Cavarero, Adriana: on women/ violence and, 94. See also Restraint
language, 209 Cohen, G. A., 14, 15, 16, 123n1,
Charles I, 62, 249, 252, 253; Negative 190n11
Voice and, 251 Common-law tests, 250
Index 269
Commons, J. R.: on liberty/power, Control, 97, 98, 120, 201; collective,
86 141, 142; extent/expansion of,
Communism, 50, 174; freedom and, 139-40; physical, 138; self-, 70,
122, 141, 142; Stalinist, 4 146; social, 38, 48
Community; freedom and, 60, 221; Cranmer, Thomas, 246
lesbian, 221 ; othermothering, Creative process, 53, 65
219n35; republican ideal and, 234 Crude negative theory, 151, 154, 165
Communizing rule, 173 Culture, 20, 36, 61, 175, 218n33;
Compliance, 129, 134; desire of, 133; mass society and, 77
non-compliance and, 130; threats
and, 128 Day, J. P., 124
Compliance-consequences, 129-30, Debs, Eugene, 182
131; norm and, 132 Declaration o f Independence (1776), 254
Compulsion, 21, 22, 31, 99; Decolonialisation, 252
education and, 51-52 Democracy; freedom and, 2, 32, 33,
Comte, August, 54, 109n7 42, 43, 254; self-governing, 223
Condorcet, on individual rights, 41 Dependence, 87; absence of, 254;
Confessions (Augustine), 69n4 coercion and, 97; economic,
Connolly, William, 192-93n15 211; freedom and, 252; negative
Consciousness, 59n1, 218 liberty and, 254; social/political,
Consciousness-raising groups, 219 252
Consent theories, 111, 111n10 Desires, 130, 132; addictions and,
Consequences, 114n14, 128, 131, 152; 157; authentic/inauthentic, 147;
alternative, 129, 130, 132. See also brute, 156, 157, 158, 159; degrees
Compliance-consequences; Non- for, 129, 131, 132; externally
compliance-consequences induced, 157; as fetters, 158, 160;
Constant, Benjamin, 9, 12n16, 36, first-order, 152; freedom and,
38; lecture by, 223-24; liberal 33; identity and, 156; import-
conclusions of, 6-7; negative attributing, 156, 157, 158, 159;
liberty and, 109n7 intervention and, 133; nature/
Constitution, liberty and, 252 extent of, 127-28; repudiating,
Constraints, 12-14, 16, 17n29, 102, 156, 157, 158, 159; second-order,
104, 105, 119, 187, 193-94, 196, 152; short-term, 204
253; absence of, 19, 203, 243, 244, Despotism, 3, 35n5, 38, 56
247; attributions of, 176; choice Determinism, 53, 186, 186n7, 187,
and, 222; freedom and, 184-85, 205n11
190, 192, 197, 198, 243, 245; legal, Dewey, John: on liberty/power, 86
169; obstacles and, 198, 200; Dictionary of Philosophy (Flew), 167
overcoming, 247; social/legal, 167, Digest of Roman Law, 250
169; on state, 238 Diogenes the Cynic, 4n2
Contexts, 202n4, 217-22 Discriminations, 92, 151, 154
Contract, freedom of, 11, 23-24, 25, Divided self, positive liberty and,
27, 28 205n11
270 Index
Domination, 93, 226, 237; freedom Feminists, 202, 203, 207, 218;
and, 230-31, 232; side effects of, challenges for, 217; freedom and,
239, 240 18-19, 208-16, 219, 221, 222;
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 37 negative liberty and, 210; sexism
Drunkenness, 28, 29, 30-31, 31-32 and, 212
Duns Scotus, 63 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 47, 54; on
Dyadic relation, freedom as, 105 education/compulsion, 51-52;
organic State of, 53; positive
Easier-to-lose-freedom effect, 229-31 liberty and, 109n7; on rights
Economic relations, 8, 15, 35, 37, against reason, 53
113, 117; coercion and, 91 Flathman, on negative liberty, 212
Education, 25, 26, 27, 31, 165n3, 235; Flew, Antony, 167, 168, 170
compulsion and, 51-52; labour Force, 91; freedom and, 142, 143,
and, 28 163-64, 165n2, 180
Empire of laws, republican vision Ford, Henry, 90
of, 229 Frederick the Great, 42n16
Employment, 126, 239; coercion and, Free beer, 103, 104
92-93 Freedom. See Liberty
English Revolution, 252 “Freedom and Politics” (Arendt), 4
Environment, inner/outer, 215 Freedom from, 39, 62, 85, 103, 117;
Epictetus, 59n1, 71, 109n7 freedom to and, 13, 43, 81, 104-5,
Equality, 23, 114n14, 165n3, 209; 106, 107, 108, 207n14
aporia and, 218n32; coercion and, Freedom to, 103, 117; freedom from
48; economic, 166; freedom and, and, 13, 43, 81, 104-5, 106, 107,
45n18; relationships and, 221; 108, 207n14
republican ideal and, 234; social, Free man, qualities of, 74
166; welfare and, 186 Free simpliciter, 116, 117, 119
Erasmus, 40, 109n7 Free society, 103, 104
Ethics, 57, 218n33 Free will, 75, 103, 103n3, 232;
Evil, 50n24, 63, 90, 94, 99; absence determinism and, 186n7; freedom
of, 87; social, 29, 30 and, 68, 72
Exercise-concept, 143, 146, 147, 204 French Revolution, 6, 252
Exploitation, 181, 240 Freud, Sigmund, 244
Expression, freedom of, 19, 38
External obstacles, 143, 244; absence Gandhi, M ahatma, 105
of, 86, 150, 151, 154-55, 160, 161 Gender, 210; bias, 208; dominance,
213n26, 216
False appreciation, 159-60 General good, 49
False consciousness, 142, 143, 214 General will, 73
Fascists, freedom and, 122 Gilligan, Carol: on negative liberty,
Fear, 157, 252; freedom from, 62 207
Feeling free, 125; being, 124-25; legally, Goals, freedom and, 245
105; non-normative use of, 179n16 God, acts of, 99; freedom and, 75
Index 271
Gorgias (Plato), 119 Identity, 214; desires and, 156; true,
Gray, John, 182n20, 183n2, 202, 212 120; vocabulary of, 210
Greeks, individual rights and, 41; Impossibility, 16, 195
politics/freedom and, 68 Imprisonment, 139, 189, 190
Green, T. H., 10, 53, 245; on Inability, unfreedom and, 191, 192
freedom, 12, 45n18, 246; positive Independence, 26, 36, 81, 142; self
liberty and, 109n7 abnegation and, 47
Individualism, 47, 54, 59n1; negative
Happiness, freedom and, 36 liberty and, 143, 207, 208
Harder-to-lose-freedom effect, 227-29 Inequality, 38, 184
Harrington, Jam es, 228 Inferiority, as constructed image, 218
Havel, Vaclav, 215 Infinite improbabilities, 77, 78
Hayek, F. A., 2n1, 183n2; on liberal Inner freedom, 58-60, 59n1, 84-85,
political order, 14; negative liberty 88, 112
and, 14; rule of law and, 15, 186n5 Intentionality, agency and, 212
Hegel, G. W. F., 34, 48, 52, 245 Interference, 10, 12, 13, 34, 99,
Hegelians, 44, 46, 53 102, 107, 108, 110, 113, 121, 169,
Helvetius, 34n2 181, 198, 199, 205, 223; absence
Herder, 109n7 of, 9, 39, 253, 254; arbitrary, 95,
Herodotus, 74 224-27, 225n2, 232-33, 239, 240;
Heterosexism, 211, 221 external, 207; freedom from, 141;
Hirschm ann, Nancy J., 18-19 genuineness as, 116; governmental,
Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 9, 38, 61-62, 27, 29, 30, 168, 202; intentional/
142, 144, 145, 146; criticism of, quasi-intentional, 224; legitimacy
228; critique by, 249; on free of, 116; libertarians and, 172;
action, 247, 248; freedom and, 143; liberty and, 171, 226, 247; market,
on free man, 35n5; on law/liberty, 166; nonarbitrary, 225; probability
228; negative liberty and, 15, of, 235, 240; redistribution and,
109n7; on unfree, 248 237; reducing, 25, 40, 96, 236, 239,
Hobbesian concept, 149, 150, 154, 240; taxation and, 168; unfreedom
161, 162 and, 168, 230; women and, 212
Hobhouse, L. T., 245 Interpretation, 120-21, 227
Homophobia, 211, 221 Intervention, 169, 178; action
House of Commons, proposal by, 251 and, 134, 135; desires and, 133;
Humanity, 208 individual behavior and, 126-27;
Hume, David, 249 obligations and, 133; prevention
Hunger, freedom from, 105-6 and, 134, 135-36; recipients of,
Husami, Ziyad: on forced sale of 127-28, 129, 130, 131, 132; state,
labour power, 164n1 202; threatening, 127, 128, 131, 133
I-think, 71, 72
I-can, 71 I-will, 71, 72
Idealists, 13, 50n24; liberty and, 3-4, I-will-and-cannot, 71
5, 5n4, 8, 9, 14 I-will-and-I-can, 69
272 Index
Jam es, William, 46 Liberals; capitalism and, 166;
Jefferson, Thomas, 38, 109n7, 254 freedom and, 166-67; interference
Jews, individual rights and, 41, 41n15 and, 169; laissez-faire policies and,
Joseph II, 42n16 11; libertarians and, 165-66, 168;
Justice, 37, 45; coercion and, 48; private property and, 168; socialist
distributive, 235, 236; freedom challenge to, 173
and, 2, 36, 39 Libertarianism, 167, 170; freedom/
Justinian’s Codex, 250 equality and, 165n3; freedom of
action and, 165
Kant, Immanuel, 47, 50, 56n35; Libertarians, 36, 110, 111nn11, 12;
individualism and, 54; negative big government and, 238n6;
liberty and, 55n35; positive liberty borderline and, 114n14; capitalism
and, 109n7; rational judge of, 55 and, 166; freedom and, 122,
Knowledge, 57, 84 166-67, 170; interference and, 169,
172; intervention and, 169; liberals
Labour power; capitalism and, 178; and, 165-66, 168; negative, 134;
forced sale of, 24, 28, 163, 164, positive, 124, 127, 133; private
164n1, 175-81, 177n14 property and, 168; socialists and,
Lafayette, Marquis de, 72 173, 183-84, 186-87, 198-99
Laissez-faire policies, 11 Liberty: absence of, 100, 101, 109n8,
Land owners, freedom of, 168 153; absolute loss/gain in, 140;
Language, 186, 222; patriarchy and, antonyms for, 226-27; assessing,
217, 219, 220; women and, 209, 16, 18, 115; attaining, 19, 100, 101;
210, 215, 216 benefit of, 11, 21, 79, 101, 160,
Lassalle, on state’s role, 39 176; Christian definition of, 62;
Latimer, 1 collective, 82-84; compromising,
Law, 218n33; assessment of, 229; 127, 161, 193, 227, 228, 230, 237;
civil society and, 55n35; freedom concept of, 2, 36, 41, 69, 74-75,
and, 49, 51, 228, 229; rational, 51, 82, 101, 108, 113, 115, 121, 125,
57; restraint and, 51; slavery and, 184, 185, 192, 206, 207, 210, 223,
229 224, 228-29, 243, 244, 252-53;
Leibniz, on Christian tradition, 68n3 defending, 2, 3, 8, 20, 40, 142-43;
Leviathan (Hobbes), 228, 247, 248, degrees of, 17, 42-43n17, 161,
249 184, 198; demand for, 181, 252;
Liberal family, 13; liberty and, 3, 6, economic, 34, 38, 166, 184; equal,
8, 9, 10, 14, 18 37, 238; growth of, 22, 43n17,
Liberalism, 146, 162, 224; challenge 120, 124, 138, 169, 174, 205; ideal
to, 18-19, 168; classical, 167; of, 45, 79, 241; idioms of, 102-3;
economic, 167; freedom and, individual, 17, 19, 37, 38, 39, 41,
234n5; orthodox, 56n35; political, 42, 80, 83-86, 94, 98, 123, 133,
167; rationalist metaphysics and, 134, 140, 142-43, 167, 250, 251,
51; republican, 7; women’s needs 252; internal/external barriers to,
and, 215 206-7; lack of, 35, 248, 253; loss
Index 273
of, 21, 29, 35, 37, 42, 82, 134, 138, Marxists, 110nn8, 9, 180; bourgeois
139, 142, 149, 165, 169, 172, 173, thinkers and, 164; capitalism and,
184, 197, 221, 226-29, 247, 250, 175; labour power and, 164, 175,
251; maximal equal distribution 177; means of production and, 174;
of, 234, 235, 236, 237; meaning negative liberty and, 110
of, 1-2, 19, 33-34, 80-84, 88, 114, Masculinist theory, 203-7, 216
171, 172, 186, 202; metaphysical, Mass society, 77-78, 79
2n1, 84-85; natural, 36, 208; Means of production, 174, 174n1, 175
nature of, 100, 101; non-political, Metaphysics, 2n1, 51, 78, 84-85, 154
59-60, 79; question of, 201-2; Milan W omen’s Bookstore
real, 20, 23, 26, 31, 53, 106, 115, Collective, 219
172, 245; rights definition of, Mill, John Stuart, 36, 38, 42, 52, 104,
171; significance of, 107, 151, 161; 249; criticism of, 40; on liberty, 18,
social, 11, 38; subject of, 84-85, 39, 40, 142-43; negative liberty
209; thinking about, 1, 2, 7, 12, 13, and, 19, 109n7
162, 194, 197, 203, 205, 206, 243, Milton, John: power and, 90
247, 254; philosophical analysis of, Mind, body and, 71
2 , 206 Miracles, 76, 78, 79
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Mill), 40 Monopolists, 28, 92-93, 198, 199
“Liberty of a Subject, The” Montesquieu, 61, 63, 69, 231-32; on
(Hobbes), 228 political freedom, 50, 70; positive
Liberty of the Ancients Compared with liberty and, 109n7; on virtue, 64
That o f the Moderns, The (Constant), Morality, 5, 11, 24, 25, 37, 54, 171,
6, 224 184, 191, 197
Liberum arbitrium, 63, 72, 75 Motivations, 152, 155, 160, 162;
Licensing, 28, 30, 251 discrimination among, 151, 154;
Littleton, Colorado, 250 freedom and, 146, 148, 149
Livy, 250, 251 Movement, freedom of, 174
Locke, John, 36, 38; on confinement, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (movie), 201
119; on liberty, 49, 110n9, 228; Muslims, natural laws and, 41n15
negative liberty and, 109n7, 110
Nagel, Thomas, 167; on interference,
MacCallum, Gerald C., 13n18, 243; 168, 169; on libertarianism, 165;
on freedom, 13, 244, 246 on taxation, 168
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 5, 7, 64, 102 Napoleon, 53
MacKinnon, Catharine: on Natural laws, 39, 41n15, 99
pornography/freedom, 212 Nature, 44, 56n35
Maginot Line mentality, 146, 147, “Negative and Positive Freedom”
148-49, 162 (MacCallum), 13, 243
Manson, Charles, 160, 161 Negative liberty, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15, 17,
Marx, Karl, 48, 141, 148, 164n1; 19, 33, 46, 127, 145, 190, 203, 245,
forced sale of labour and, 181; 249; abstract/individualist agency
positive liberty and, 109n7 of, 222 ; adherents of,
274 Index
negative liberty (continued) Observations (Parker), 251
109nn7, 8, 110n8, 111; caricatural Obstacles, 10, 15, 94, 105, 107, 108,
version of, 142; concept of, 34-43, 110, 112, 113, 125, 142, 169, 189,
108, 143, 210-11; criticism of, 16; 191, 192-94, 196; absence of, 16,
defending, 123; described, 42n17, 86, 109n8, 145, 146, 148, 211;
123; expansion of, 15, 212, 213, attachments as, 153; constraints
214; external barriers and, 207, and, 198, 200; defining, 111;
209; liberal political order and, economic, 14, 199; freedom from,
14; limitations on, 14; political 85, 144; human, 185, 186, 187;
senses of, 34; positive liberty and, internal, 155, 161-62, 203; legal,
12, 17, 42, 44, 100, 101-2, 106, 107, 150; motivational, 160; natural, 14,
108, 118, 141, 222, 243; self/other 99, 186, 227; origins of, 185-86,
and, 204; theory of, 204, 248-49; 185n3; overcoming, 137, 157,
typology of, 205; understanding 247. See also Barriers; External
of, 248-49; Western democracies obstacles
and, 206 Obstacles simpliciter, 149
Negative Voice, 251 Occam, 40; negative liberty and,
Neo-Hegelians, 247 109n7; subjective rights and,
New Testament, freedom and, 76 41n14
New York Times, 200 Offers, 130; threats and, 126-27, 128,
Nonarbitrariness, 225, 226 131, 133
Non-compliance, 128, 130, 133, 134 Omissions, 191, 196
Non-compliance-consequences, 129, “On Freedom” (Epictetus), 59n1
130, 131, 132 On Liberty (Mill), 18, 104, 142
Nondomination; freedom as, 9, On Representative Government (Mill),
224, 225, 227, 227n3, 228n4, 142
229, 231, 232-33, 234, 236-41; Opinion, freedom of, 38, 54
noninterference and, 233; Oppenheim, Felix, 102n2, 195, 196
redistribution and, 238 Opportunities, 170-71, 198
Noninterference, 35, 39, 199, Opportunity-concept, 144-45, 151,
209n15, 229; coercion and, 40; 162, 203
freedom as, 223-24, 225, 227, Oppression, 91, 214, 215
227n3, 234-40; nondomination Other, 48; self and, 221
and, 233; redistribution and, 238
Non-owners, freedom of, 72-73, 171, 172 Paine, Thomas, 38, 72, 109n7, 226
Nozick, Robert: on opportunities, Paley, 233
170-71 Parker, Henry: on Negative Voice,
251
Objective Reason, 53 Parmenides, 68
Obligations, 69, 126, 189, 189n9; Patriarchy, 19, 216n30, 219; choice
interpersonal, 199; intervention and, 215; entrenchm ent of, 212
and, 133; moral, 184, 197; real, 13; freedom and, 217; language
159; recipient, 132; social, 17, 184 and, 217; positive/negative liberty
Index 275
and, 216; women’s freedom and, defending, 134; elements of, 214;
213, 215, 217 enhancement of, 29; extreme
Paul, 70; free will and, 75; politics/ variant of, 144; goals of, 213;
freedom and, 68 internal barriers and, 207, 209,
Penalization, 128, 196, 225 211, 214; negative liberty and,
Performing arts, 64, 65 12, 17, 42, 44, 100, 101-2, 106,
Person, 111, 113; freedom of, 121; 107, 108, 118, 141, 222, 243-44;
identification of, 112 ; natural/ political senses of, 34; problems of,
artificial, 109 214; typology of, 205
Personal protected sphere, 96, 98 Poststructuralist theory, 218
Pettit, Philip, 9 Poverty, 14, 17, 35, 87
Petty bourgeoisie, 176, 178, 182 Power; coercion and, 90, 91, 93;
Philosophes, 55 collective, 90; freedom and, 10, 11,
Philosophical freedom, 70 76, 85, 86; moral evaluation of, 11;
Physical objects, possession of, 15, political, 7; public, 83; restrictions
138, 139 and, 216
Physical space, 137-38 Preferences, 131, 132, 203
Plato, 62, 68, 69, 109n7, 119, 244 Prevention, 109n8, 125, 152; absence
Platonists, 44, 54 of, 124; diversity in, 137; freedom
Polis, 65, 66 and, 140; intervention and, 134,
Political institutions, 73; acting men 135-36; paradigm of, 139; relative
and, 65 amounts of, 137
Political liberty, 5, 6, 20, 35, 48, 50, Price, Richard, 230, 232
72, 82, 83, 88, 232; civil liberty Priestly, Joseph: on taxes/colonists,
and, 80; concept of, 62, 100, 231
141; defining, 61, 70; lack of, 34; Principles o f Political Obligation
totalitarianism and, 77 (Green), 245
Political theory, 61, 254 Privacy, 41, 61, 62, 202, 218; freedom
Politics, 8, 54, 57, 72, 113, 206; art and, 38, 60
and, 65; distrust of, 62; freedom Private property; interference with,
from, 61, 62; liberty and, 3, 58-62, 169, 170, 171, 172; libertarians/
63-64, 66, 67-68, 75; rationalist liberals and, 168; liberty and,
theory of, 54; sexual, 219; 9, 38, 97, 170, 171, 172, 173;
totalitarianism and, 60-61; women modification of, 173, 174; non
and, 5n4 ownership and, 167; recognition
Politics (Aristotle), 59n1 of, 96, 171; restrictions on, 167,
Pornography, freedom and, 212 168; right of, 23, 251; rules of,
Positive liberty, 6, 10, 11, 12, 23, 33, 97-98
203-4, 223-24, 246; adherents of, Privileged class, freedom and, 22
109nn7-8, 110n9, 111, 111n10, 113, Production: capitalist relations of,
114, 118; Communist dictatorships 175, 175n12; means of, 174, 174n1,
and, 206; conceptions of, 175; social, 148; social relations
205n11; criticism of, 141, 245; of, 175
276 Index
Proletarians, 176n13; class ascent Republicanism, 6, 9, 234
and, 177-78, 178-80, 182; forced Res gestae, 74
sale of labour power and, 176, 177, Resources, 176; redistribution of,
177n14; resources of, 176 169, 241
Property. See Private property Responsibility, 26, 44, 190, 206,
Public health, 25, 26, 31, 45 209; blame and, 216n30; causal,
Public space, 79 192; freedom and, 105, 200;
Punishment, 34n2, 93, 196, 226, 228n4 government and, 198-99n20;
Pushkin, 37 individual, 54; limited, 193; moral,
17, 31, 189, 189n9, 191, 193, 197,
Quantitative theory, 151 198, 199; sharing, 216; strong
doctrine of, 193
Race, 210, 216, 216n30 Res republica, 75
Rape, 200, 214, 220 Restraint, 110n9, 118-19, 120, 210,
Rational, 52, 55 227; absence of, 86, 221; external,
Rational will, 45 214; freedom from, 21; laws and,
Realism, 78, 88 30, 51; negative liberty and, 118,
Reality, 208, 213 118n17; positive liberty and, 118;
Reason, 55; abandoning concept of, right to, 50. See also Coercion
53; freedom and, 56n35; rights Restrictions, 56n35, 94, 102, 108,
against, 53; rules of, 56n35; 110, 116, 166, 171, 174, 183, 185,
tyrannies of, 72 187, 195, 196, 197, 215, 253;
Recipients: desires of, 127, 131, 132; freedom from, 117; legal, 16, 104,
intervention and, 127-28, 129, 184; minimal, 170; negative liberty
130, 131, 132; obligations of, 132 and, 151; powers and, 216; serious,
Redistribution, 14, 235-41; 149-50
argument for, 237; freedom Richard III, 63
as, 234-36; interference and, Ridley, 1
237; nondom ination and, 238; Rights, 53, 171; individual, 41, 41n15;
noninterference and, 238; rule of liberties and, 98, 251; natural, 39;
law and, 237, 238, 238n6 political, 36; subjective, 41n14;
Relationships, 202; equality and, 221; upholding, 254. See also Civil rights
historical configurations of, 208; Right to rule, 69
as political practice, 217-22; social, Romans, individual rights and, 41
208; underm ining, 153 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 105
Religion, 32; ban on, 150, 151; Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 47, 55, 141,
freedom of, 38, 61, 106 148; forcer d ’etre libre and, 205n11;
Republic (Plato), 119 on ill will, 35; on moral liberty, 5;
Republican family, 4, 13, 238; liberty positive liberty and, 109n7; social
and, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 14, 223, contract/liberty and, 4; on society/
224, 226, 233 freedom, 50; on women, 5n4
Republican ideal, 142, 228, 236; Royal prerogative, 249
significance of, 233-34 Rule of experts, 55
Index 277
Rule of law, 9, 15, 229, 239; Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-
redistributive, 237, 238, 238n6 Symbolic Practice (Milan), 219
Sexual harassment, 212, 220
Sacrifice, equality of, 50 Sexuality, 201, 210
Sallust, 250 Shakespeare, William, 63
Sanctions, threat of, 195 Shared ownership, freedom and, 174
Savagery, freedom of, 22 Sidgwick, Henry, 249
Schmitt, Carl: sovereignty and, 72n5 Skinner, Quentin, 5, 5n4, 6, 9
Security, 21-22, 26, 27, 61-62, 66-67, Slavery, 5, 23, 49, 52, 66, 74, 231,
88, 96; economic, 101; liberty and, 232, 251-52; economic, 34, 35;
36, 232; military, 101; national, law and, 229; liberty and, 2, 22,
254 250; nature and, 44; spiritual, 44;
Self, 111n11, 112, 222; empirical, 44, unfreedom and, 230
45, 46; ideal, 44; liberty and, 58, Smith, Adam, 38
59, 59n1, 245; other and, 221; real, Social arrangements, 117, 187
44, 45, 46, 47, 49 Social benefits, 100, 101
Self-abnegation, independence and, Social chaos, natural freedom and,
47 36
Self-control, 70, 146 Social conditions, 37, 211
Self-definition, 215, 220, 221 Social construction, 217n31, 222;
Self-determination, 12, 18, 33; duality of, 203, 217; feminist
collective, 10; political, 19 freedom and, 208-16; idea of, 209;
Self-direction, 33, 43, 146; collective, individualism/negative liberty
144; freedom as, 12; rational, 10, and, 208; women and, 217, 218n33
47, 49, 55, 56 Social contract, 4, 39
Self-fulfillment, 45, 56n35 Social controls, 38, 48
Self-government, 2, 41, 148; Social freedom, 6, 102n2, 198;
collective, 143; freedom and, 19, concept of, 100; language of, 186
42 Social good, 22, 24, 29, 30
Self-locking door, 188-89, 193 Socialism, 35n3, 150; freedom and,
Self-mastery, 44, 46, 48, 244 172, 173; positive liberty and, 17
Self-perfection, 54, 245 Socialists, 199-200; freedom and,
Self-realization, 46, 47, 142, 148, 162, 122; libertarians and, 183-84,
245; collective/individual, 145; 186-87, 198-99
freedom and, 143, 221; notion of, Social laws, M arxist conception of,
144; thwarting, 147; value of, 146 35n3
Self-reliance, 26, 31 Social order, freedom and, 85
Self-respect, 27, 30 Social problems, 26, 51
Self-rule, 114n14, 144 Social relations, 82, 156, 211, 215;
Self-understanding, 146, 162 coercion and, 91
Separatism, 19; emotional/ Social status, freedom and, 7
intellectual, 219, 220 Social theory, 14n20, 35
Sexism, 203, 212, 217n31 Society, 51; freedom and, 50, 79
278 Index
Socrates, 57, 68, 74-75 “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin),
Soil, liberation of, 32 4, 10, 124, 141, 243, 249
Sovereignty, 72n5, 73 Tyranny, 72, 253, 254
Spartacus, 1
Speech, freedom of, 106 Unfreedom, 70, 84, 108, 116, 123,
Spinoza, 48, 61; on coercion/children, 124, 125, 134, 135, 139; collective,
49; positive liberty and, 109n7 180, 181, 182n20; distributing, 170;
St. Ambrose, 109n7 entrenching, 146; inability and,
Steiner, Hillel, 194; on aims/ 191, 192; interference and, 168,
purposes/liberty, 16; on negative 230; liberty and, 81; limits of, 193;
liberty, 14, 15; on threats, 15 notion of, 194, 195, 196; slavery
Stephen, Jam es, 40 and, 230; unjustified, 190; women
Sydney, Algernon: on liberty, 230 and, 210, 216, 217
Utilitarianism, 41, 55
Tacitus, 250, 251, 253
Tawney, R. H., 182n20 Violence, 89, 91, 94, 214
Taxation, 99, 165n3, 226, 231; Virtue, 6, 57, 66, 79
interference and, 166, 168 Virtuosity, 64, 66, 79
Taylor, Charles, 205n11; on negative Voting, forced, 163-64
liberty, 16, 17; on positive liberty,
17, 204 Wealth, distribution of, 87, 198
Teaching, freedom of, 61 Weinstein, W. L.: on freedom, 202
Temple of Sarastro, 47-57 Welfare, 165, 166, 168, 193; equality and,
Thoreau, Henry David, 1 186; fraternal, 131; public, 55, 226
Thought, 41n13; negative liberty of, 19 Well-being, 27, 128, 129
Threats, 15, 130, 195; compliance Will: arbitrary, 81; constraints/
and, 128, 129; offers and, 126-27, restrictions on, 104; freedom of,
128, 131, 133; personal liberty and, 70, 85, 186n7; power inherent in,
133 69; real, 147, 148; self-control and,
Throffers, 129, 130, 132 70; true, 214
Thucydides, 74 Will-power, 69, 70, 71, 72
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 36, 109n7, Will-to-oppression, 71
142 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 218n32
Totalitarianism, 141, 145, 146, 147; Women: excluded others and, 216;
civil rights and, 60-61, 77; liberty labour of, 24-25; language and,
and, 86; mass society and, 77-78; 209, 210, 215, 216; liberty and, 2;
politics and, 60-61, 77; positive patriarchal constructions of, 210;
liberty and, 148 politics and, 5n4
Triadic relation: freedom as, 102, Woodward, Joanne, 201
103, 105, 106, 107, 114, 115, 121; Writers, classification of, 109, 109n7, 110
possession as, 138
Trotsky, Leon, 93 Young, Iris: on responsibility/blame,
216n30
A b o u t th e E d it o r an d
C o n t r ib u t o r s
Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and from
1957 to 1967, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory. His publications
include Karl Marx (1939), Concepts and Categories (1978), The Crooked Timber of Humanity
(1990), and Liberty (2002).
279
280 About the Editor and Contributors
of Wisconsin. He published Political Philosophy (1987), and some of his articles in
legal and political philosophy were collected in Legislative Intent and Other Essays
on Law, Politics, and Morality (1993).
David Miller is a professor of Political Theory and a Fellow of Nuffield Col
lege, Oxford. His books include On Nationality (1995), Principles of Social Justice
(1999), and Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2003).
Philip Pettit was born in Ireland and held professorships at the University of
Bradford and the Australian National University before taking up his present
post as professor of Politics and Philosophy at Princeton University. Among
his more recent books are The Common Mind (1993), Republicanism (1997), and A
Theory o f Freedom (2001).
Quentin Skinner was formerly professor of Political Science at Cambridge
University and now holds the Regius Chair in Modern History. His many
books include Meaning and Context, edited with J. Tully (1988), The Foundations
o f Modern Political Thought (1978), Liberty before Liberalism (1998), and Visions of
Politics (2002).
Hillel Steiner is professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Govern
ment, International Politics, and Philosophy at Manchester University. He has
published many papers on the issues of liberty, rights, and distributive justice
as well as An Essay on Rights (1994).
Charles Taylor was formerly Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory
at Oxford and professor of Philosophy and Political Science at McGill University;
he is now professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. His books include
Hegel (1975), Sources o f the Self (1989), and Modern Social Imaginaries (2004).