Some Thoughts on Negative Liberty

A central debate in the liberal tradition is over whether negative or positive liberty should be prioritized. In this tradition, negative liberty is often conceived as “the absence of coercion by other agents,” while positive liberty is a “conception of liberty, according to which one was free when one acted according to one’s true will,” (Courtland et al. 2022). In his influential 1958 lecture, Isaiah Berlin defended the notion of negative liberty and argued that it was the best notion of liberty for political bodies to actively defend. Berlin believed that positive liberty was a perfectly legitimate ideal, but that it should be seen as one value among others in society rather than something that the whole of society should be oriented towards (Berlin 2002). Responding to Berlin, Charles Taylor argued in “What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty” that the negative notion of liberty does not work on several grounds. This paper will defend two of Taylor’s insights using some commonly held notions of agency; these two insights are: a pure negative or Hobbesian notion of liberty is incoherent as it presupposes value judgments and that the negative notion fails to take into account internal struggles which inhibit the freedom of the individual at least as much as external forces can.

The heart of Taylor’s critique of Berlin is Taylor’s insistence that negative liberty cannot function without presupposing value judgements. Taylor shows this most clearly in his engagement with what he calls the “Hobbesian” notion of freedom: “even” if “freedom” is “the absence of external obstacles, it is not the absence of such obstacles simpliciter . . . we make discriminations between obstacles as representing more or less serious infringements of freedom . . . we do this, because we deploy the concept against a back- ground understanding that certain goals and activities are more significant than others,” (Taylor 2017). This, however, leads to an internal tension within the concept of negative liberty as the concept seeks to be defined independent of value judgments, and yet it cannot be coherent without such judgments. This necessarily opposes Taylor and Berlin as Taylor believes that the true notion of liberty cannot exist without notions what is valuable as “even” the “negative notion of freedom requires a background conception of what is significant,” (Taylor 2017). Conversely, Berlin believes that negative liberty is the notion of liberty that is required for value-pluralism: “pluralism, with the measure of  ‘negative’ liberty that it entails,” (Berlin 2002). Furthermore, Taylor believes that the negative notion focuses too much on external constraints and leaves out the importance of internal restraints in its definition: As Taylor points out “freedom can’t just be the absence of external obstacles, for there may also be internal ones . . . nor may the internal obstacles be just confined to those that the subject identifies . . . he may be profoundly mistaken about his purposes and about what he wants to repudiate,” (Taylor 2017). If internal factors can restrict freedom at least as much as external ones, then negative liberty is simply an incomplete definition of liberty as it fails to acknowledge all the factors people must free from in order to possess liberty.

Taylor’s critique that negative liberty cannot function without background notions of value judgments can be bolstered by exposing the directed nature of agency. The Hobbesian notion of freedom says that freedom is the “the absence of external physical or legal obstacles,” on the will (Taylor 2017). This, however, presupposes an agent which could be constrained by such obstacles.  Central to being an agent is being the kind of thing which can be directed towards certain ends and so is for certain things. The fact that agency requires a directedness towards certain ends is what grounds Taylor’s notion of “a background conception of what is significant,” as the directedness of agency is that which allows the agent to recognize what is significant (Taylor 2017). This leads to a problem for negative liberty as it needs to tacitly assume some form of positive liberty, as positive liberty is the freedom for things which is included in the directedness of agency, before it can be defined. What is crucial here is that the assumption of positive liberty is prior to the definition of negative liberty as this entails that negative liberty depends on positive liberty and so cannot be a more fundamental value then positive liberty. Since negative liberty cannot be defined without assuming positive liberty, it seems plausible that negative liberty cannot be the fundamental notion of liberty in society. 

Relatedly, Taylor’s point that internal constraints are at least as powerful at inhibiting freedom as external constraints is supported by the intimate relationship between the thinking aspect of agency and the directed aspect of agency. As discussed earlier, there is an aspect of agency which is directed towards certain ends and this faculty presupposes an aspect of agency which can understand and deliberate as before the agent can be directed towards certain ends as in order to understand something as good, one must first simply understand the thing in question. Given this, the thinking aspect of agency is more fundamental than the choosing or directed aspect of agency in the process of action. This framework provides a metaphysical structure for Taylor’s claim that internal constraints can inhibit freedom at least as much as external restraints as is clear by exploring the examples Taylor gives of internal constraints on freedom. Taylor mentions that a man who vents “his spite or acting on his fear,” would not be a free man (Taylor 2017). This is because men who act out of spite or fear are blinded by such factors and so fail to understand that which they choose with their will. Taylor expands this to other emotions and says that other emotions can inhibit one’s freedom, but the way in which they do so is best understood through this framework because this framework explains how emotions inhibit freedom: by blinding one’s rational faculty. 

The debate over whether negative or positive liberty should be primary has been a critical issue in the liberal tradition. Isaiah Berlin is a major figure who thought that negative liberty, where liberty is freedom from obstacles inhibiting one’s agency, should be primary. Conversely, Charles Taylor is a figure who thought that positive liberty, where liberty is defined as the freedom for self-actualization or self-mastery and that this form of freedom should be primary in political organizations. This essay has defended two of Taylor’s criticisms of negative liberty. Firstly, negative liberty is incoherent as it presupposes value judgments and so implicitly assumes positive liberty and this was bolstered by explicating common notions of the directedness of agency. Secondly, that negative liberty fails to take into account internal struggles which inhibit the freedom of the individual at least as much as external forces. This was defended by explaining how the notion that the rational aspect of agency is prior to the choosing aspect of agency provides a structure for this criticism. This essay has, fundamentally, pointed out some tensions between negative liberty and common notions of agency.

Works Cited

Berlin, I. (2002). Two concepts of Liberty. Liberty, 166–217. https://doi.org/10.1093/019924989x.003.0004 

Courtland, S. D., Gaus, G., & Schmidtz, D. (2022, February 22). Liberalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ 

Taylor, C. (2017). What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty. The Liberty Reader, 141–162. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315091822-8