T.H.

Greens
.H.Greens concept of Positive Liberty
Submitte to: Dr. Anita Samal
Submitted

Faculty: Political Science Department

Submitted by

Shubhranshu Rai
SEMESTER I
SECTION B
BATCH XV

ROLL NO. 163

B.A. LL.B (Hons.)

Hidayatullah National Law University

Uparwara Post, Abhanpur,

New Raipur 493661 (C.G.)

DECLARATION

I Shubhranshu Rai, hereby declare that this project work is an original piece of research
and is not a result of plagiarism, the sources of data has been adopted from other sources as well
and proper mention about such sources has been made in the form of footnotes and in
bibliography.
I have completed this project work under the guidance of Dr. Anita Samal, faculty of
Political Science, Hidayatullah National Law University. Raipur (C.G).

Shubhranshu Rai
B.A.LL.B. (Hon.)
Semester I, Section B,
Batch XV
Roll no.163

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I feel highly elated to get to work on the topic T.H.Greens concept of Positive Liberty. The
practical realization of this project has obligated the assistance of many persons. I express my
deepest regard and gratitude for Dr. Anita Samal , faculty of Political Science. Her consistent
supervision, constant inspiration and invaluable guidance have been an immense help in
understanding and carrying out the nuances of this project report.
I would also like extend my hand of gratitude towards the friends and family, without whose
support and encouragement this project would not have been a reality.
I take this opportunity to thank the university, and the Honorable Vice Chancellor for providing
extensive database resources in the library and through Internet.
For any sort of errors that might have crept in, it is deeply regretted. I shall be grateful if further
comments and suggestions are put forth regarding improvisation of the provisions.
Shubhranshu Rai

B.A.LL.B. (Hon.)
Semester I, Section B,
Batch XV
Roll no.163

CONTENTS
Declaration
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction ...1
Objectives of the study....................................2
Methodology of the study....2

Scope of the study .........2

Organisation of the study ... 3
Chapter -1 Positive liberty .. 4
Chapter -2 Negative liberty..7
Chapter -3 life sketch.11
Chapter -4 T.H.Greens Concept of Positive Liberty.13
Chapter -5 The paradox of Positive liberty.15

Conclusion. ...............17

References..........18

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INTRODUCTION
Liberty is the value of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions). Different
conceptions of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways
these conceptions relate to life under a social contract, existence in an imagined state of nature,
and related to the active exercise of freedom and rights as essential to liberty. Understanding
liberty involves how we imagine the individual's roles and responsibilities in society in relation
to concepts of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics.
Classical liberal conceptions of liberty typically consist of the freedom of individuals from
outside compulsion or coercion, also known as negative liberty. This conception of liberty,
which coincides with the libertarian point-of-view, suggests that people should, must, and ought
to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions, while in
contrast,Social liberal conceptions of (positive liberty) liberty place an emphasis upon
social structure and agency and is therefore directed toward ensuring egalitarianism. In feudal
societies, a "liberty" was an area of allodial land where the rights of the ruler or monarch were
waived.1

www.scribd.com

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OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The basic objective behind analyzing T.H.Greens Concept of Positive Liberty is to

understand the political changes that this world has undergone ever since state started
occupying an important value in the lives of humans.; and how significantly the notions
regarding Liberty have

To study the nature of positive liberty

To analyze T.H Greens concept of positive liberty

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

This project work has been carried out following the descriptive analytical approach. It is largely
based on theoretical study of Positive liberty. At the same time, efforts have been made to study
T.H.Greens Concept of Positive Liberty by faculty of Political Science were primarily helpful
for the completion of this project.

SCOPE OF WORK
This project has been carried out in an area of positive liberty. My whole study is limited to
positive liberty and T.H.Greens Concept of Positive Liberty. The basic Idea behind this project
is to study about the concept of positive liberty essential factor of T.H.Greens Concept of
Positive Liberty.

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ORGANISATION OF THE STUDY

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
1. In Introduction of this Project I have define my context and important aspects of study. The
first objective is devoted to the analysis of one of such insufficiently investigated aspects the
basic concept and understanding of positive liberty

2. First objective of the study deals with positive liberty its overview and various thinker
3. Second objective of the study mainly deals with the negative nature of liberty and its examples
4. Third objective of the study try to understand T.H.Greens Concept of Positive Liberty
5. Final objective understand what positive liberty is and why it is important

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Chapter -1
Positive Liberty

Positive liberty is the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential as
opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint. A concept of positive
liberty may also include freedom from internal constraints.
The concepts of structure and agency are central to the concept of positive liberty because in
order to be free, a person should be free from inhibitions of the social structure in carrying out
their free will. Structurally speaking classism, sexism, and racism can inhibit a person's freedom
and positive liberty is primarily concerned with the possession of sociological agency. Positive
liberty is enhanced by the ability of citizens to participate in their government and have their
voice, interests and concerns recognized as valid and acted upon.

Although Isaiah Berlin's essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958) is typically acknowledged as
the first to explicitly draw the distinction between positive and negative liberty, Frankfurt
School psychoanalyst and Marxist humanistic philosopherErich
Fromm drew
a
similar
distinction between negative and positive freedom in The Fear of Freedom (1941), predating
Berlin's essay by more than a decade.
Overview

The word liberty can refer to many things, but Isaiah Berlin recognized two main types of
liberty. Berlin described a statement such as "I am slave to no man" as one of Negative Liberty,
that is, freedom from another individual's direct interference. He contrasted this with a Positive
Freedom statement such as "I am my own master", which lays claim to a freedom to choose one's
own pursuits in life.

Charles Taylor's clarification may be even more useful. Taylor explains that Negative Freedom
is an "opportunity-concept": one possesses Negative Freedom if one is not enslaved by external
forces, and has equal access to a society's resources (regardless of how one decides to spend their
time). Positive Freedom, says Taylor, is an "exercise-concept": possessing it might mean that one
is not internally constrained; one must be able to act according to their highest self according to
reason. Suppose a rich and powerful actor is also a drug addict.
This actor may possess a great deal of Negative Liberty, but very little Positive Liberty according
to Taylor. Recall that, by Taylor's definitions, Positive Freedom entails being in a mature state of
decision making, free of internal or external restraints (e.g. weakness, fear, ignorance, etc.).

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Examples

In a description of positive liberty from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

Put in the simplest terms, one might say that a democratic society is a free society because it is a
self-determined society, and that a member of that society is free to the extent that he or she
participates in its democratic process. But there are also individualist applications of the concept
of positive freedom. For example, it is sometimes said that a government should aim actively to
create the conditions necessary for individuals to be self-sufficient or to achieve self-realization.

In "Recovering the Social Contract", Ron Replogle made a metaphor that is helpful in
understanding positive liberty. "Surely, it is no assault on my dignity as a person if you take my
car keys, against my will, when I have had too much to drink. There is nothing paradoxical about
making an agreement beforehand providing for paternalistic supervision in circumstances when
our competence is open to doubt." In this sense, positive liberty is the adherence to a set of rules
agreed upon by all parties involved. Should the rules be altered, all parties involved must agree
upon the changes. Therefore, positive liberty is a contractarian philosophy.
However, Isaiah Berlin opposed any suggestion that paternalism and positive liberty could be
equivalent. He stated that positive liberty could only apply when the withdrawal of liberty from
an individual was in pursuit of a choice that individual himself/herself made, not a general
principle of society or any other person's opinion. In the case where a person removes a driver's
car keys against their will because they have had too much to drink, this constitutes positive
freedom only if the driver has made, of their own free will, an earlier decision not to drive drunk.
Thus, by removing the keys, the other person facilitates this decision and ensures that it will be
upheld in the face of paradoxical behaviour (i.e., drinking) by the driver.
For the remover to remove the keys in the absence of such an expressed intent by the driver,
because the remover feels that the driver ought not to drive drunk, is paternalism, and not
positive freedom by Berlin's definition.[5]
Erich Fromm sees the distinction between the two types of freedom emerging alongside
humanity's evolution away from the instinctual activity that characterizes lower animal forms.
This aspect of freedom, he argues, "is here used not in its positive sense of 'freedom to' but in its
negative sense of 'freedom from', namely freedom from instinctual determination of his
actions." For Fromm, freedom from animal instinct implicitly implies that survival now hinges

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on the necessity of charting one's own course. He relates this distinction to the biblical story of
man's expulsion from Eden:
Acting against God's orders means freeing himself from coercion, emerging from the
unconscious existence of prehuman life to the level of man. Acting against the command of
authority, committing a sin, is in its positive human aspect the first act of freedom. [...] he
is free from the bondage of paradise, but he is not free to govern himself, to realize his
individuality.

Positive freedom, Fromm maintains, comes through the actualization of individuality in balance
with the separation from the whole: a "solidarity with all men", united not by instinctual or
predetermined ties, but on the basis of a freedom founded on reason.
Various thinkers

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of freedom, according to which individual freedom is achieved

through participation in the process whereby one's community exercises collective control over
its own affairs in accordance with the 'General Will'. Some interpret the Social Contract to
suggest that Rousseau believed that liberty was the power of individual citizens to act in the
government to bring about changes; this is essentially the power for selfgovernance and democracy. Rousseau himself said, "the mere impulse to appetite is slavery,
while obedience to law we prescribe ourselves is liberty." For Rousseau, the passage from the
state of nature to the civil state substitutes justice for instinct gives his actions the morality they
had formerly lacked.

However, this is only one interpretation of Rousseau's work. This view is not really describing
the General Will in terms of its more modern interpretations. Rather, it is describing more the
'Will of All' (in Rousseau's terminology). The Will of All contrasts to the General Will in that the
prior comprises the composite desires and appetites of those who make up society and the latter
the reasoned, objective opinions and beliefs of those who see themselves as part of a nation and
of a group of men. A law cannot be said to be of the General Will unless it is general in its
origins and applications.
Particular wills cannot be homogeneous in the way which the General Will requires. However,
this does not mean that Rousseau's liberty is incompatible with positive liberty. Rather, we have
to remove the implication that positive liberty requires collective control over affairs which is
derived from the conscious and expressed decisions of men. The task which Rousseau gives 'the
Lawgiver' in the Social Contract is that of deciphering the General Will from the mass of
particular wills. If the Lawgiver, whatever form this may take, is able to do so, then the
individuals who comprise a society have truly participated (via their real, reasoned and tempered
will) in the collective control of their own affairs. As the extract above says, government by the
Will of All is slavery. Rousseau's usual solution to how the Lawgiver may be able to do this is

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cultural homogeneity on the one hand and physically small states on the other. These two themes
recur within Rousseau's works often with the view to homogenising inharmonious particular
wills.
According to G. F. W. Hegel, "Freedom is the fundamental character of the will that which is
free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word." 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty

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Chapter -2

Negative Liberty

Negative liberty is freedom from interference by other people. Negative liberty is primarily
concerned with freedom from external restraint and contrasts with positive liberty (the
possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential). According to Thomas
Hobbes, "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not
hindered to do what he hath the will to do" (Leviathan, Part 2, Ch. XXI; thus alluding to liberty
in its negative sense).
An idea that anticipates the distinction between negative and positive liberty was G. F. W.
Hegel's "sphere of right" (furthered in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right), which
constitutes what now is called negative freedom and his subsequent distinction between
"abstract" and "positive liberty." In the Anglophone tradition the distinction between negative
and positive liberty was introduced by Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of
Liberty." According to Berlin, the distinction is deeply embedded in the political tradition. In
Berlin's words, "liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question: 'What is the
area within which 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 by other persons'." Restrictions on negative
liberty are imposed by a person, not by natural causes or incapacity. Helvetius expresses the
point clearly: "The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a goal, nor
terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment ... it is not lack of freedom, not to fly like an
eagle or swim like a whale."
Frankfurt School psychoanalyst and humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm drew a similar
distinction between negative and positive freedom in his 1941 work, The Fear of Freedom, that
predates Berlin's essay by more than a decade. Fromm sees the distinction between the two types
of freedom emerging alongside humanity's evolution away from the instinctual activity that
characterizes lower animal forms. This aspect of freedom, he argues, "is here used not in its
positive sense of 'freedom to' but in its negative sense of 'freedom from', namely freedom from
instinctual determination of his actions." For Fromm, then, negative freedom marks the
beginning of humanity as a species conscious of its own existence free from base instinct.
The distinction between positive and negative liberty is considered specious
by socialist and Marxist political philosophers, who argue that positive and negative liberty are
indistinguishable in practice, or that one cannot exist without the other. Although he is not a
socialist nor a Marxist, Berlin argues.

"It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public
authority. Where it is to be drawn is a matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely
interdependent, and no man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of

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others in any way. 'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'; the liberty of some must
depend on the restraint of others."

Overview

"The negative concept of freedom ... is most commonly assumed in liberal defense of the
constitutional liberties typical of liberal-democratic societies, such as freedom of movement,
freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and in arguments against paternalist or moralist state
intervention. It is also often invoked in defense of the right to private property, although some
have contested the claim that private property necessarily enhances negative liberty."

Negative liberty and authority: Hobbs and Locke

One might ask, "How is men's desire for liberty to be reconciled with the assumed need for
authority?" Its answer by various thinkers provides a fault line for understanding their view on
liberty but also a cluster of intersecting concepts such as authority, equality, and justice.

Hobbes and Locke give two influential and representative solutions to this question. As a starting
point, both agree that a line must be drawn and a space sharply delineated where each individual
can act unhindered according to their tastes, desires, and inclinations. This zone defines the
sacrosanct space of personal liberty. But, they believe no society is possible without some
authority, where the intended purpose of authority is to prevent collisions among the different
ends and, thereby, to demarcate the boundaries where each person's zone of liberty begins and
ends. Where Hobbes and Locke differ is the extent of the zone. Hobbes, who took a rather
negative view of human nature, argued that a strong authority was needed to curb men's
intrinsically wild, savage, and corrupt impulses. Only a powerful authority can keep at bay the
permanent and always looming threat of anarchy. Locke believed, on the other hand, that men on
the whole are more good than wicked and, accordingly, the area for individual liberty can be left
rather at large.

Locke is a slightly more ambiguous case than Hobbes because although his conception of liberty
was largely negative (in terms of non-interference), he differed in that he courted the republican
tradition of liberty by rejecting the notion that an individual could be free if he was under the
arbitrary power of another:

P a g e | 10

"This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's
preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together:
for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave
himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away
his life, when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot
take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited
his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has
him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no
injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is
in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires."
Negative liberty in various thinker

John Jay, in The Federalist paper No. 2, stated that: "Nothing is more certain than the
indispensable necessity of Government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however
it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with
requisite powers." Jay's meaning would be better expressed by substituting "negative liberty" in
place of "natural rights", for the argument here is that the power or authority of a legitimate
government derives in part from our accepting restrictions on negative liberty.

Libertarian thinker Tibor Machan defends negative liberty as "required for moral choice and,
thus, for human flourishing," claiming that it "is secured when the rights of individual members
of a human community to life, to voluntary action (or to liberty of conduct), and to property are
universally respected, observed, and defended."
Concrete example

This section outlines specific examples of governmental types which follow the concept of
negative liberty.
Monarchy

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan outlines a commonwealth based upon a monarchy to whom citizens
have ceded their rights. The basic reasoning for Hobbes' assertion that this system was most ideal
relates more to Hobbes' value of order and simplicity in government. The monarchy provides for
its subjects, and its subjects go about their day-to-day lives without interaction with the
government:
The commonwealth is instituted when all agree in the following manner: I authorise and give up
my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou
give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner.
The sovereign has twelve principal rights:

P a g e | 11

because a successive covenant cannot override a prior one, the subjects cannot (lawfully) change
the form of government.

because the covenant forming the commonwealth is the subjects giving to the sovereign the right
to act for them, the sovereign cannot possibly breach the covenant; and therefore the subjects can
never argue to be freed from the covenant because of the actions of the sovereign.

the selection of sovereign is (in theory) by majority vote; the minority have agreed to abide by
this.
every subject is author of the acts of the sovereign: hence the sovereign cannot injure any of his
subjects, and cannot be accused of injustice.
following this, the sovereign cannot justly be put to death by the subjects.

because the purpose of the commonwealth is peace, and the sovereign has the right to do
whatever he thinks necessary for the preserving of peace and security and prevention of discord,
therefore the sovereign may judge what opinions and doctrines are averse; who shall be allowed
to speak to multitudes; and who shall examine the doctrines of all books before they are
published.
to prescribe the rules of civil law and property.
to be judge in all cases.

to make war and peace as he sees fit; and to command the army.
to choose counsellors, ministers, magistrates and officers.

to reward with riches and honour; or to punish with corporal or pecuniary punishment or
ignominy.
to establish laws of honour and a scale of worth.

Hobbes explicitly rejects the idea of Separation of Powers, in particular the form that would later
become the separation of powers under the United States Constitution. Part 6 is a perhaps underemphasis feature of Hobbes's argument: his is explicitly in favour of censorship of the press and
restrictions on the rights of free speech, should they be considered desirable by the sovereign in
order to promote order.

Upon closer inspection of Hobbes' Leviathan, it becomes clear that Hobbes believed individual
people in society must give up liberty to a sovereign. Whether that sovereign is an absolute
monarch or other form was left open to debate, however Hobbes himself viewed the absolute
monarch as the best of all options. Hobbes himself said,
For as amongst masterless men, there is perpetual war, of every man against his neighbour no
inheritance, to transmit to the son, nor to expect from the father; no propriety of goods, or lands;

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no security; but a full and absolute liberty in every particular man: so in states, and
commonwealths not dependent on one another, every commonwealth, not every man, has an
absolute liberty, to do what it shall judge, that is to say, what that man, or assembly that represent
it, shall judge most conducing to their benefit.
From this quote it is clear that Hobbes contended that people in a state of nature ceded
their individual rights to create sovereignty, retained by the state, in return for their protection
and a more functional society. In essence, a social contract between the sovereign and citizens
evolves out of pragmatic self-interest. Hobbes named the state Leviathan, thus pointing to the
artifice involved in the social contract. In this vein, Hobbes' concept of negative liberty was built
upon the notion that the state would not act upon its subjects because its subjects had willingly
relinquished their liberties.3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty

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Chapter -3

Life Sketch

Thomas Hill Green (7 April 1836 15 March 1882) political philosopher and radical,
temperance reformer, and the leading member of the British Idealist movement. His
principal writings are: Essay on Christian Dogma (CD), The Conversion of Paul (CP),
Different Senses of Freedom as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man (DSF),
Faith (F), Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract (LF), Incarnation (I),
Immortality (IM), Justification by Faith (JF), Lectures on the Principles of Political
Obligation (LPPO), Metaphysic of Ethics, Moral Psychology, Sociology or the Science of
Sittlichkeit (ME), Prolegomena to Ethics (PE), Witness of God (WG), and Word is Nigh
Thee (WNT).4
Green's teaching was, directly and indirectly, the most potent philosophical influence in England
during the last quarter of the 19th century, while his enthusiasm for a common citizenship, and
his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made in the years
succeeding his death to bring the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down
the rigour of class distinctions. His ideas spread to the University of St. Andrews through the
influence of Prof. David George Ritchie, a former student of his, who eventually helped found
the Aristotelian Society. John Dewey wrote a number of early essays on Green's thought,
including Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal.
Green was directly cited by many social liberal politicians, such as Herbert Samuel and H. H.
Asquith, as an influence on their thought. It is no coincidence that these politicians were
educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Roy Hattersley called for Green's work to be applied to the
problems of 21st century Britain. 5

His discussion was followed by other liberal thinkers such as David Ritchie, John Hobson and
Leonard Hobhouse, all of who contributed to the movement of liberal thought away from a strict
laissez faire approach to incorporating a role for the state in social welfare. His contribution
lies in the attempt to reconcile a capitalist market society with liberalism in a democratic state.

Sharing with Marxism the ideal of a classless, just society, Green never parted from his
conviction that it could be realized within the market system. Indeed, he shared the conviction
with liberals as for example F. Hayek that a free society could only be achieved with a market
economy. His spirit influenced thinkers and can be seen in the social legislation passed by
Liberal governments, which laid the foundations to the welfare state.6
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/green/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_Green
6
http://www.liberal-international.org/editorial.asp?ia_id=683
4
5

P a g e | 14

Positive Liberty
Positive liberty is the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential as
opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint.7 A concept of positive
liberty may also include freedom from internal constraints.
The concepts of structure and agency are central to the concept of positive liberty because in
order to be free, a person should be free from inhibitions of the social structure in carrying out
their free will. Structurally speaking classism, sexism, and racism can inhibit a person's freedom
and positive liberty is primarily concerned with the possession of sociological agency. Positive
liberty is enhanced by the ability of citizens to participate in their government and have their
voice, interests and concerns recognized as valid and acted upon.

Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. 1969

P a g e | 15

Chapter -4

T.H Greens Concept Of Positive Liberty

T.H. Green was an important advocate of positive liberty. In his 1881 essay, Green said: "We
shall probably all agree that freedom, rightly understood, is the greatest of blessings; that its
attainment is the true end of all our effort as citizens. But when we thus speak of freedom, we
should consider carefully what we mean by it. We do not mean merely freedom from restraint or
compulsion. We do riot mean merely freedom to do as we like irrespectively of what it is we
like. We do not mean a freedom that can be enjoyed by one man or one set of men as the cost of
a loss of freedom to others. When we speak of freedom...we mean a positive power or capacity
of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something that we do or
enjoy in common with others...the ideal of true freedom is the maximum of power for all
members of human society alike to make the best of themselves..." 8
Green starts his analysis by distinguishing between positive and negative liberty. As he phrases
it, negative liberty is my freedom to do as I like; positive liberty is my freedom to do as I like in
pursuit of my doing what I like. In other words, liberty has a higher purpose. We don't pursue
unlimited liberty, we don't pursue liberty for its own sake; rather, we pursue liberty because and
to the extent that it serves a higher goal, namely, to be able to make the most of ourselves.
To show us that we seek liberty not for itself Green uses the example of someone who walks the
wilderness in perfect solitary freedom, hunting the game he likes, growing the crops he likes,
pursuing the avocations that he likes, taking what pleasures he likes. That person has perfect
individual liberty, at least as far as social constraint is concerned, but we would not consider him
particularly free. As Green says, this person "is not the slave of man, but he is the slave of
nature." Being in society, with all of its associated constraints, nevertheless gives this person
immensely more freedom that he had in the state of nature.
Green then moves to the question of whether one person's increased liberty can rightly be
purchased at the expense of another person's decreased liberty. No, he says, pointing to our
rejection of slave societies, even though the slave-owners might have increased liberty. Note
that he is not making a utilitarian argument against slavery; he is not arguing that slavery makes
the overall sum of liberty go down, because the slave has to give up so much more than the
master gains. Rather, he is arguing simply that it is wrong to take away one person's liberty to
increase another's liberty.
8

Green, 'Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract', 1881, pp. 199-200

P a g e | 16

Green says that property rights are subordinated to this goal of positive liberty, just like other
forms of liberty. He uses this to object to certain claims about property rights most
importantly, that labor cannot be treated as just any other commodity. This is crucial, because
we often speak of a labor market in the same terms as we speak of the commodities market. In
the latter, we are buying and selling things; in the former, we are buying and selling people's
ability to pursue those ends of self-development. Green doesn't deny that labor can be bought
and sold; rather, he is arguing that in some circumstances the vagaries of the market might wind
up interfering with people's ability to pursue their self-development.
Finally, Green takes up the objection that the laws necessary to implement these programs and
protections represent a violation of people's liberty. His basic point is that such laws are not
constraints on what we want anyway. Far from taking away my liberty, such laws give me the
liberty to think about other things. 9

http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/1610/Readings/1610.B+DReader.Green.html

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Chapter -5

The Paradox of Positive Liberty

Many liberals, including Berlin, have suggested that the positive concept of liberty carries with it
a danger of authoritarianism. Consider the fate of a permanent and oppressed minority. Because
the members of this minority participate in a democratic process characterized by majority rule,
they might be said to be free on the grounds that they are members of a society exercising selfcontrol over its own affairs. But they are oppressed, and so are surely unfree. Moreover, it is not
necessary to see a society as democratic in order to see it as self-controlled; one might instead
adopt an organic conception of society, according to which the collectivity is to be thought of as
a living organism, and one might believe that this organism will only act rationally, will only be
in control of itself, when its various parts are brought into line with some rational plan devised
by its wise governors (who, to extend the metaphor, might be thought of as the organism's brain).
In this case, even the majority might be oppressed in the name of liberty.

Such justifications of oppression in the name of liberty are no mere products of the liberal
imagination, for there are notorious historical examples of their endorsement by authoritarian
political leaders. Berlin, himself a liberal and writing during the cold war, was clearly moved by
the way in which the apparently noble ideal of freedom as self-mastery or self-realization had
been twisted and distorted by the totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century most notably
those of the Soviet Union so as to claim that they, rather than the liberal West, were the true
champions of freedom. The slippery slope towards this paradoxical conclusion begins, according
to Berlin, with the idea of a divided self. To illustrate: the smoker in our story provides a clear
example of a divided self, for she is both a self that desires to get to an appointment and a self
that desires to get to the tobacconists, and these two desires are in conflict. We can now enrich
this story in a plausible way by adding that one of these selves the keeper of appointments
is superior to the other: the self that is a keeper of appointments is thus a higher self, and the
self that is a smoker is a lower self. The higher self is the rational, reflecting self, the self that is
capable of moral action and of taking responsibility for what she does. This is the true self, for
rational reflection and moral responsibility are the features of humans that mark them off from
other animals. The lower self, on the other hand, is the self of the passions, of unreflecting
desires and irrational impulses. One is free, then, when one's higher, rational self is in control
and one is not a slave to one's passions or to one's merely empirical self. The next step down the
slippery slope consists in pointing out that some individuals are more rational than others, and
can therefore know best what is in their and others' rational interests. This allows them to say
that by forcing people less rational than themselves to do the rational thing and thus to realize
their true selves, they are in fact liberating them from their merely empirical desires.

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Occasionally, Berlin says, the defender of positive freedom will take an additional step that
consists in conceiving of the self as wider than the individual and as represented by an organic
social whole a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and
the yet unborn. The true interests of the individual are to be identified with the interests of this
whole, and individuals can and should be coerced into fulfilling these interests, for they would
not resist coercion if they were as rational and wise as their coercers. Once I take this view,
Berlin says, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress,
torture in the name, and on behalf, of their real selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is
the true goal of man ... must be identical with his freedom (Berlin 1969, pp. 13233).

Those in the negative camp try to cut off this line of reasoning at the first step, by denying that
there is any necessary relation between one's freedom and one's desires. Since one is free to the
extent that one is externally unprevented from doing things, they say, one can be free to do what
one does not desire to do. If being free meant being unprevented from realizing one's desires,
then one could, again paradoxically, reduce one's unfreedom by coming to desire fewer of the
things one is unfree to do. One could become free simply by contenting oneself with one's
situation. A perfectly contented slave is perfectly free to realize all of her desires. Nevertheless,
we tend to think of slavery as the opposite of freedom. More generally, freedom is not to be
confused with happiness, for in logical terms there is nothing to stop a free person from being
unhappy or an unfree person from being happy. The happy person might feel free, but whether
they are free is another matter (Day, 1970). Negative theorists of freedom therefore tend to say
not that having freedom means being unprevented from doing as one desires, but that it means
being unprevented from doing whatever one might desire to do.
Some theorists of positive freedom bite the bullet and say that the contented slave is indeed free
that in order to be free the individual must learn, not so much to dominate certain merely
empirical desires, but to rid herself of them. She must, in other words, remove as many of her
desires as possible. As Berlin puts it, if I have a wounded leg there are two methods of freeing
myself from pain. One is to heal the wound. But if the cure is too difficult or uncertain, there is
another method. I can get rid of the wound by cutting off my leg (1969, pp. 13536). This is the
strategy of liberation adopted by ascetics, stoics and Buddhist sages. It involves a retreat into an
inner citadel a soul or a purely noumenal self in which the individual is immune to any
outside forces. But this state, even if it can be achieved, is not one that liberals would want to call
one of freedom, for it again risks masking important forms of oppression. It is, after all, often in
coming to terms with excessive external limitations in society that individuals retreat into
themselves, pretending to themselves that they do not really desire the worldly goods or
pleasures they have been denied. Moreover, the removal of desires may also be an effect of
outside forces, such as brainwashing, which we should hardly want to call a realization of
freedom.
Because the concept of negative freedom concentrates on the external sphere in which
individuals interact, it seems to provide a better guarantee against the dangers of paternalism and
authoritarianism perceived by Berlin. To promote negative freedom is to promote the existence

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of a sphere of action within which the individual is sovereign, and within which she can pursue
her own projects subject only to the constraint that she respect the spheres of others. Humboldt
and Mill, both defenders of the negative concept of freedom, compared the development of an
individual to that of a plant: individuals, like plants, must be allowed to grow, in the sense of
developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic. Personal growth
is something that cannot be imposed from without, but must come from within the individual.10

10

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/

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Conclusion
We may sum u p and conclude T. H Greens idea of Positive Liberty by keeping mind the
following things. According to T.H Green, Liberty has a high purpose. We dont pursue
unlimited liberty, we dont pursue liberty for its own sake ; rather , we pursue liberty
because and to the extent that it serves a higher goal, namely, to be able to make the most of
ourselves.
According to T.H Green, Being in society, with all of its associated constraints, nevertheless
gives this person immensely more freedom that he had in the state of nature.

Green says that property rights are subordinated to this goal of positive liberty, just like other
forms of liberty. He uses this to object to certain claims about property rights most
importantly, that labor cannot be treated as just any other commodity.
Green had always emphasized on Self Development. His ideas, his notions, his views revolved
around self development.

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References
Bibliography
1. Jump up^ Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. 1969.
2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Taylor, C. What's Wrong with Negative Liberty, 1985. Law and
Morality. 3rd ed. Ed. David Dyzenhaus, Sophia Reibetanz Moreau and Arthur Ripstein.
Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. 359368. Print.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Positive and Negative Liberty entry by Ian Carter in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. Jump up^ Replogle, Ron. Recovering the Social Contract. Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc. (1989). p. 164.
5. ^ Jump up to:a b "Open Learning - OpenLearn - Open University". Openlearn.open.ac.uk.
Retrieved 2014-04-28.
6. Jump up^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.,
1966), p. 26.
7. Jump up^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, pp. 278.
8. Jump up^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, p. 29.
9. Jump up^ Rousseau as quoted by Replogle, Ron. Recovering the Social Contract.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (1989), p. 105.
10. Jump up^ Michael Rosen, Jonathan Wolff, Catriona McKinnon (eds.), Political Thought,
Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 63.
11. Jump up^ Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Science of Logic (1812), tr. A.V. Miller
(Humanity Books, 1989), p. 146.
Webliography
1. www.google.com
2. www.youtube.com
3. http://www.d.umn.edu

4. http://plato.stanford.edu/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org

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