Online research in philosophy

The distinction between negative and positive liberty is familiar to political philosophers. The negative variety is freedom as noninterference. The positive variety is freedom as self-mastery. However, recently there has been an attempt on the part of a growing number of philosophers, historians, and legal scholars to recapture a third concept of political liberty uncovered from within the rich tradition of civic republicanism. Republican political liberty is freedom as nondomination. I argue that features that distinguish it from noninterference and self-mastery highlight the theoretical and practical advantages of liberty as nondomination. It is, among these candidates, best-suited to serve as the guiding principle for the State's basic institutions and rules. The principle says that the State should secure nondomination among its citizens.

In this article, I wish to show the importance of the consequentialist method for the realisation of the ideal of non-domination. If, as stated by Philip Pettit, consequentialist ethics helps to better conceive republican political institutions, we then have to see how the fundamental principles of republican liberty can meet the norms traditionally associated with consequentialism. After a brief presentation of consequentialism and republican liberty (as Pettit defines it), I criticize the idea that liberty as non-domination could be included in a bundle of goods that we seek to maximize. Next, I argue that we should reject the maximization of liberty as non-domination when this concept is considered as an absolute. Finally, I explore the idea of liberty as a condition for other goods, where liberty is still taken in the republican sense. These three theses are all rejected by demonstrating that the maximization of republican liberty is not really the maximization of liberty itself, but the maximization of protections granted to the individuals with the aim of defending their liberty.

Mill holds that in some of these cases the restriction of liberty that is proposed is permissible according to the liberty principle. In other cases, the proposed restriction violates the liberty principle as Mill understands it. (Mill first formulates the "liberty principle" on p. 9.).

Resnik’s argument relies upon an undefended and unjustified overvaluation of liberty. First, he overlooks some important arguments in favour of restrictions to liberty, and his consideration of the two he does review is unfair; second his account grossly overestimates the autonomy of our food choices; and lastly his mechanism for balancing liberty against other concerns involves an illicit double counting of the weight of individual liberty.

Republican liberty, as recently defended by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, characterises liberty in terms of the absence of domination, instead of, or in addition to, the absence of interference, as favoured by Berlin-style negative liberty. This article considers several claims made on behalf of republican liberty, particularly in Pettit's and Skinner's recent writings, and finds them wanting. No relevant moral or political concern expressed by republicans, it will be contended here, fails to be accommodated by negative liberty.

Isaiah Berlin's distinction between "negative" and "positive" concepts of liberty has recently been defended on new and interesting grounds. Proponents of this dichotomy used to equate positive liberty with "self-mastery "-the rule of our rational nature over ourpassions and impulses. However, Berlin's critics have made the case that this account does not employ a separate "concept" of liberty: although the constraints it envisions are internal, rather than external, forces, the freedom in question remains "negative" (freedom is still seen as the absence of such impediments). Responding to this development, Berlin's defenders have increasingly tended to identify positive liberty with "self-realization." The argument is that such an account of freedom is genuinely "nonnegative," in that it does not refer to the absence of constraints on action. This essay argues that the claims made on behalf of "freedom as self-realization" cannot withstand scrutiny, and that they fail to isolate a coherent view of liberty that is distinguishable from the absence of constraint.

Liberty is viewed as the reigning paradigm of our age, but it is a paradigm in crisis. It is conventionally divided into two types, positive and negative. The argument here is that both types can be seen to presuppose some capacity, which may extend to power. Liberty, however, is normally accorded a higher moral value than power. But if liberty is taken itself to reflect a commitment to power, then the disvalue ostensibly placed upon the latter is unreliable. Furthermore, if liberty in effect reflects a (veiled) celebration of power, then it may not be in order to accord it the precedence which is customary. We may well be entitled to look beyond liberty to other values, such as tolerance and friendship, which are not necessarily expressions of liberty, but which may prove quite as worthy.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Liberty is perhaps the most praised of all social ideals. Rare is the modern political movement which has not inscribed "liberty," ...

('Freedom' and 'liberty' mean the same.) In 20th century political philosophy some have favoured a 'negative' concept of liberty (freedom from constraint) and criticised 'positive' notions of liberty ('freedom to') as incipiently authoritarian. According to Rawls every liberty is both negative and positive. That there is a certain liberty means that a certain person (or persons, or all persons) is (are) not under certain constraints, so that they can do a certain sort of thing (see p.