Liberty: negative and

positive
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk

© Michael Lacewing
 Mill’s Harm (aka Liberty)
Principle
• ‘The only purpose for
which power can be
rightfully exercised
over any member of a
civilized, against his
will, is to prevent harm
to others. His own
good, either physical or
moral, is not a
sufficient warrant.’
What about self-regarding
actions?
 ‘Harm’
• ‘Harm’ means harm to our interests.
• The interests that count here are those that ought
to be considered to be rights, those interests ‘which
society ought to defend me in the possession of’.
• Which interests should be rights is decided by
utility, ‘but it must be utility in the largest sense,
grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a
progressive being.
• These permanent, progressive interests include
freedom, the pursuit of truth, and the development
of individual character.
‘Pursuing our own good in
our own way’
 Negative freedom
• There are many causes
for someone’s inability
to do something:
– Genetics
– Episodic
– Dispositional
– Decision-based
– Resource-based
– Legality
Hayek
• Someone is free if there is no
‘control of the environment
or circumstances of a person
by another such that in order
to avoid greater evil he is
forced to act not according
to a coherent plan of his own
but to serve the ends of
others.’
 Coercion
• Freedom is not being coerced.
• Coercion involves someone else
intentionally constraining my actions.
• Everyone who is not coerced is equally
free.
 Berlin
• We need freedom to
develop our faculties to
conceive and pursue our
own ends.
• Freedom is absence of
coercion, but the extent of
our freedom depends on
which opportunities are
available to us, especially
their importance.
 Positive freedom

• Liberty must enable activity in order to be

worthwhile; the final end is a better life.
 Individual positive freedom
• If someone is unable to take advantage of
opportunity, their freedom is worthless;
therefore, the value of freedom itself
requires that we help them.
• Taylor: people need developed faculties and
sufficient resources
• Berlin: but we can’t dictate what counts as
‘rational’, or this is paternalism
Rousseau: Collective
positive freedom
• Freedom is living
under rules you
have created
yourself. So we
need to decide
social rules
together. Breaking
those rules is then,
in fact, ‘unfree’.
 Being free
• Berlin: Rousseau understands freedom
only collectively - but this only works if
people identify with society as strongly
as Rousseau wants. We need freedom
from collective decisions too.
• But how much of ‘pursuing our own
good in our own way’ actually depends
on others?