"Two Concepts of Liberty"

CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer (4.26.06) noted that British historian and essayist Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 talk entitled "Two Concepts of Liberty" became “one of the most influential essays in political philosophy written in English in the 20th century.”

Meyer’s statement grabbed my attention. It drew me to Joshua Cherniss’ recent defense of Berlin’s thinking, which centered on the concepts of “negative” and “positive liberty” as developed in the famous 1958 Berlin essay (Oxonian Review of Books, Spring 2006):

Berlin’s championing of ‘negative’ liberty—liberty as freedom from interference—and critique of ‘positive’ freedom, which was central to many defences of welfare legislation, led many to perceive him as a proponent of classical liberalism or libertarianism. This, combined with his attacks on ‘scientism’—the application of the model of science to human problems—has made him seem to some indistinguishable from such conservative or classical-liberal thinkers as Hayek . . .

Despite the appearance of libertarianism, Berlin enthusiastically admired the New Deal, and less enthusiastically supported the British Welfare State. Given this, it is not surprising that he is distrusted or resented on the Right[, which] disregards two obvious facts: that opposition to Communism played at least as large a part in Berlin’s political thought as support for the Welfare State, and that Berlin was deeply worried by trends towards collectivism in Western society.

These opposed perceptions—of Berlin as mild-mannered libertarian, and as apologist for state intervention—reflect a more general tendency to misunderstand his position on liberty. Berlin described ‘negative’ freedom as closer to the ‘basic’ or ‘essential’ meaning of freedom: ‘the ability to choose as you wish to choose’ without being coerced or bullied. ‘Positive’ liberty, on the other hand, was prone to perversion. This was, first, because one variant of positive liberty identified liberty with fulfillment, and so with the attainment of goals other than, and possibly conflicting with, liberty. Another variant of positive liberty defined freedom as self-mastery.

This meant that the nature of freedom depended on conceptions of the self. If the self were identified, not with the actual wishes of individuals, but with what individuals ‘really’ desired—that is, what they should desire—or with entities other than individuals (such as races, classes, or nations), the idea of self-mastery became an alibi for coercion.

This has led many to see Berlin as a simple advocate of ‘negative’ liberty and opponent of ‘positive’ liberty. But his position was more complex. He acknowledged the dangers of negative liberty, whereby certain exercises of this liberty could lead to drastic deprivations and inequalities, making the enjoyment of liberty impossible. And he held that positive liberty was a genuine and valuable version of liberty, so long as it was identified with the autonomy of individuals rather than the achievement of goals that individuals ‘should’ desire.

Berlin also recognised what dogmatic adherents of laissez-faire ignore—that certain interventionist economic policies could be (and often were) justified on morally individualist, rather than collectivist, grounds. He was able to differentiate between moral individualism and economic individualism. He acknowledged the importance of values such as equality and social justice that could conflict with and, in some cases, should take precedent over, liberty.

Yet he was no uncritical proponent of the welfare state. He was deeply worried by a repressive conception of society and social service, which viewed political and moral problems in technical and therapeutic terms, aimed at promoting ‘social health’ through regulation and conditioning. This concern reflected his opposition to paternalism and elitism, which was at the centre of his thought.