The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. (J.S. Mill) "It is the responsibility of the state ... to maintain the conditions without which a free exercise of the human faculties is impossible". (T.H. Green) The aim of this document is to explain and critically assess these different accounts of freedom. The idea of distinguishing between a negative and a positive sense of the term liberty was first examined by Isaiah Berlin in 1958 during a lecture entitled "Two concepts of Liberty". He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints, barriers or obstacles on agents' possible actions and positive liberty as the possibility of acting in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. Positive liberty is associated with the idea of self-mastery, control, self-determination, and self-realization. On one side, theorists in the classical liberal tradition, like Constant, Humboldt, Spencer and Mill, typically argue that it is not desirable for the state to promote the freedom of citizens on their behalf and defend a negative concept of liberty.
[...] So some philosophers have rejected the dichotomy between individual” and “society” taken for granted by Mill, defending the idea of Plato and Aristotle that the individual is a “social being”. For Devlin, even morality and immorality cannot be a private matter since every society is held together by a shared public morality. So infringements to this shared morality are the concern of society. It would be threat to the social order and the moral code which holds it together. Though they may be ‘private' acts in one sense, they are also violations of this public morality”[30]. [...]
[...] So Mill's and Green's accounts of liberty now serve as basis for many doctrines on liberty. Bibliography Readings - J.S. Mill, On Liberty, edited by Elizabeth Rapaport, Hackett Publishing Company - T.H. Green, “Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract” - R.J. Norman, Free and Equal, Chapters 2-3 - I. Berlin, concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty - C. Taylor “What's wrong with negative liberty Internet Links - The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Positive and Negative Liberty” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ - The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy : “J.S. [...]
[...] However, Green's paternalism can be criticized for preventing people from developing their abilities to think and to act by themselves: since essence of men is that they are autonomous beings –authors of values, of ends in themselves –then nothing is worse than to treat them as if they were not autonomous, but natural objects [ . ] whose choice can be manipulated by their rulers”[33]. “Individuals [ . ] must be allowed to grow, in the sense of developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic. [...]
[...] True freedom is the freedom of the society as a whole: “freedom is not true freedom unless it is shared by everyone”[19]. We cannot consider an action an advance towards the true freedom of man if it is founded on a refusal of the same opportunity to other men”[20]. So Green criticizes Mill's vision that “freedom something essentially enjoyed by individuals and society a source of restriction on this freedom”[21]. For Green, liberty is a social phenomenon, so he was more communitarian whereas Mill was more individualist. [...]
[...] Green publishes a Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract in which he criticizes Mill's negative conception of liberty and defends a “positive conception of liberty”[13] : positive sense of the word ‘liberty' derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master”[14]. For Green, liberty is not only the absence of constraint on the individual's actions but also the presence of a positive power of capacity. “When we speak of freedom [as the greatest of blessings] we do not mean merely freedom from restriction or compulsion. [...]
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