Liberty
Liberty
Liberty
Liberty
● The concept of liberty captures a relationship between three terms: it refers to the
freedom of an individual X, from an obstacle A, to do B. In other words, Ms. X is not
restrained by A from doing B, or in the absence of restraint A, Ms. X is free to do B.
● Gerald MacCallum who offered us this understanding of the meaning of freedom,
argued that it was specious to want to divide analysts of liberty into advocates of
negative liberty or of positive liberty, since all theorists of liberty used these three
terms.
● The classic defense of negative liberty remains Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of
Liberty’, first published in 1958. Berlin defined ‘being free’ as “not being interfered
with by others. The wider the area of non-interference, the wider my freedom”.
● One more advocate of Negative Liberty is Hillel Steiner, according to whom, only
physical barriers intentionally placed on someone’s action can allow that person to
claim that she is not free.
● Another classical defense of negative liberty was John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay, On
Liberty.
● Mill divided human actions in self regarding and other regarding, and gave the state
absolute right to interfere in the case of other regarding actions because they could
break the "harm principle".
● However, Mill also argued that the principle of liberty brooked no interference with
the sphere of one’s self- regarding action. Discussing three specific areas - of thought
and its oral and written expression, of taste and pursuits, and of combination or
association with other individuals - Mill claimed that except to prevent ‘direct
material harm’ to others, society had no other justification for interfering with the
liberty of the individual in these areas.
● One of the first liberals to embrace the positive notion of liberty was T.H.Green
(1836-82), who defined freedom as the ability of people ‘to make the most and best of
themselves’.
● For Marxists, the individual is not separated from other individuals in society by
boundaries of autonomous spaces for the free exercise of choice. They are rather
bound together in mutual dependence. It is only in a society, which is free from the
selfish promotion of private interests that a state of freedom can exist. Freedom, thus,
cannot be achieved in a capitalist society.
● These views have been articulated in Friedrich Engel’s Anti-Duhring and Karl
Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
● Engels discusses the notion of freedom as a state of transition from necessity to
freedom. The state of necessity is defined by a situation in which the individual is
subjected to another’s will.
● In his work Manuscripts, Karl Marx avers that the capitalist society is dehumanizing.
It not only alienates the individual from his true self, it separates him from the
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Liberty
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Liberty
Practice Questions
1. Isaiah Berlin argued that :
(A) The State can and should do more to reduce economic inequalities.
(B) The criminal justice system is an unacceptable infringement of freedom.
(C) Irrational people do not deserve freedom.
(D) 'Positive' conceptions of liberty represented a serious threat to freedom.
4. Given below are two statements one labeled as Assertion A and the other labeled as
Reason R.
Assertion A : Liberty aims at the development of individuals.
Reason R : Freedom of thought and discussion is not the main theme of Liberty.
In light of the above statements, choose the correct answer from the options given
below
(A) Both A and R are correct and R is the correct explanation of A
(B) Both A and R are correct but R is not the correct explanation of A
(C) A is true, but R is false
(D) A is false, but R is true