KEYWORD
Everyone defends freedom: the freedom to speak, to move, to act, to eat, to practice the religion they want. But what does freedom — a concept that has been redefined and revisited innumerable times by scholars — really mean? Isaiah Berlin, in his seminal essay published in 1958 titled "Two Concepts of Liberty', speaks broadly of two senses of freedom. The first is what he calls "negative liberty". This revolves around the existence of a private sphere where an individual can do as he or she pleases, free from interference of any kind, whether from other individuals, communities, the State, or by oppressive social forces. The individual is free of any external barriers or constraints. The second is what he calls "positive liberty", which refers to the act of taking control over one's life and realising its fundamental purposes. Negative and positive liberty are not just seen as two kinds of liberty; they are often seen as rival and incompatible interpretations of the idea of liberty and can have major social and political implications.
Let us suppose that a woman, Devi, works in Chennai and wants to visit her family which lives in a village in Bihar. Under a negative conception of liberty, Devi could travel from Chennai to her village in Bihar without anyone stopping her for any reason. If someone — Devi's relatives or neighbours or the Government — prevented her from travelling, that would amount to a violation of her negative liberty.
But what if Devi is poor and cannot afford an airplane ticket or a train ticket? Would that be a violation of negative liberty? No. But her capacity to travel is hindered by her poverty, and so, from the standpoint of positive liberty, which is the ability to take control of one's own life and realise its fundamental purposes, Devi is not free.
Borrowing slightly from an example provided by Berlin, if poverty was a disease preventing a man from doing certain things, much like how being lame would prevent him from running, then Devi's inability to achieve a certain goal, in this case travel, would not naturally be described as a lack of freedom. It is only when conditions are created such that some have the money to eat and travel and afford justice, while others do not, that one might perceive Devi and others like her of lacking certain freedoms, of being unfree. Conditions can include classism, racism, casteism, sexism, etc. In other words, Berlin says, the use of "the term depends on a particular social and economic theory about the causes of poverty or weakness".
While the political left has supported positive liberty for some time, the political right and libertarians support the idea of negative liberty. The notions of negative and positive liberty broadly determine how governments function. For instance, some governments may cut spending on government programmes, while others may increase provision of government services so that the poor and marginalised can have better access to food and resources at the cost of taxation.
If a Government does the latter, i.e., taxes people and uses that money to provide subsidised food for others, it means that it is cutting down on the economic freedoms of some classes in order for others to access certain goods and services and to have a certain amount of economic freedom. And this is where some people have a problem with positive liberty in its practical sense. Berlin also explains in his essay how positive liberty has been abused by tyrannies, especially by the Soviet Union. The regime portrayed its brutal governance as the empowerment of the people.
On the other hand, in a society with negative freedom, everyone is freer because no one's freedom is compromised. But negative freedom, early English philosophers believed, could lead to social chaos. Imagine having the freedom to do whatever you want, in any which way you pleased. Why would that lead to chaos? Because there could be no limit to what human beings may want. And if they are allowed to achieve anything they want, the strong suppress the weak. For instance, some would argue that banks are allowed to wreck the economy in the name of freedom from regulation. This is why the area for men's action is restricted by law.
Libertarians in England and France argued that there should be a "certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual will find herself in an area too narrow for even minimum development of her natural faculties". It follows then that there must be some line between public activity and private life. But where do we draw that line? And is there even a line? As Berlin notes: "No man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. 'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'." So, he argued, some people's freedom must sometimes be curtailed to "secure the freedom of others". Negative liberty must be restricted for the sake of other values, such as equality and justice.
This is not to say that negative liberty is not important. As Rajeev Bhargava wrote in this newspaper: "In conditions where powerful churches, caste organisations or the State is hell bent on controlling every aspect of a person's life — who to marry, what kind of a family to lead, what opinions to hold and what to eat — negative freedom is a precious good....". However, he wrote, "Indifference to public life means that nasty political worms could gnaw at it, adversely affecting even private life. A stronger concern for the public good is a necessary concern of private liberty."
Berlin's ideas have been critiqued by other scholars who say he never made clear the distinction between positive and negative liberty. Also, he lived and wrote during a period of history which saw the ideas of positive freedom exploited to justify horrific atrocities, such as the Holocaust. This, they argue, is no justification for associating positive liberty with totalitarian regimes. They argue that far from being forced to adopt their ideas, proponents of positive liberty simply aspire to help others attain self-mastery. While several philosophers after Berlin have attempted to expand on, and critique, his ideas, his essay remains the go-to paper for understanding the concepts of positive and negative liberty and for understanding how governments across the world use them to expand on or restrict our freedoms.
