Positive Liberty

Abstract

Berlin distinguished his preferred “negative” liberty from “positive liberty.” The distinction is instructive, though not in the sense that Berlin used it. If “negative liberty” means not being interfered with in doing what one wants, “positive liberty” should mean being able to do what one wants, or being made able to do so. Negative liberty is “freedom from” constraint. Positive liberty should be “freedom to” realize one’s goals. In saying that the extent of my negative freedom depends on ‘how many possibilities are open to me” Berlin obscured the difference, by attaching the benefits of positive liberty to his negative ideal. But Berlin feared constraint more than he valued opportunity. He worried that in restraining human passions the state might maintain a new orthodoxy, and through the “specious disguise” of liberation impose its own “brutal tyranny.”¹