Negative Liberty

Abstract

The history of liberalism until this century has been the European history of privileges wrested from power and the gradual compilation of lists of violations that states must never visit on their citizens. Law feasted on the corpse of philosophy, and reformers fought for practical guarantees in the absence moral agreement. Moral pluralism yielded these minimum protections in Europe, while moral unanimity produced the same result in the United States.¹ This gradually created a new and narrower conception of liberty, as the area in which a person is “left to do or be what he wants to do or be, without interference.” Sir Isaiah Berlin called this “negative freedom” — simply to be left alone.² “Negative liberty” is greatest when people have the most protection against coercion by the state or anyone else in society, the most “rights” against the interference of others.³