Liberty

• Liberty has been viewed differently by various thinkers throughout history, with each view reflecting the historical phase and philosophical outlook of the thinker.
• The sentence “I am free to take my political theory exam” highlights the absence of constraints and raises questions about whether liberty includes actions like cheating, which may be driven by fear or necessity.
• Hobbes views liberty as the absence of impediments to action, with fear and necessity being the primary motivators of human action. He does not distinguish between acts of liberty and acts driven by coercion.
• Hobbes’ notion undermines the concept of choice and fails to incorporate a moral framework, as seen in the example of a beggar who acts out of necessity, not liberty.
• Locke views liberty as a natural right, defined within a moral framework guided by the Laws of Nature and equality. His understanding allows choice but restricts it to actions that do not harm others.
• Liberty for Locke is inalienable and universal, rooted in human nature, and protected by civil society. The state has no right to restrict liberty but only to regulate it.
• Locke’s framework does not fully address social inequalities that hinder liberty, as exemplified by the beggar who may not truly have the freedom to choose.
• Rousseau focuses on liberation from inequality and hierarchy, viewing liberty as a collective venture aimed at the common good. He believes that individuals achieve liberty through obedience to law that reflects the general willof society.
• Rousseau’s idea of choice is not absolute; it is about choosing the right option, which is often pre-decided by societal needs, such as choosing pollution-free options like cycling instead of driving.
• Utilitarians, like Bentham, see liberty in terms of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, with no distinction between different types of pleasures. This leads to a conflict of liberty when one person’s pleasure harms others.
• Bentham’s utilitarian view of liberty lacks moral responsibility and violates the harm principle, which is central to Locke’s understanding of liberty.
• The utilitarian maxim of the greatest happiness for the greatest number is challenged by cases where one individual’s freedom causes harm to others, such as the case of a drug addict.

• The BA class wants a free period, which seems to be a collective decision. However, some students may want the lecture to proceed. The decision of the teacher might be to cancel the class based on the majority’s preference, justifying it as a democratic decision. But this can suppress the individual decisions of the students who want to attend.
• J. S. Mill‘s understanding of liberty revolves around protecting individual liberty from societal and state interference. His views are based on utility, grounded in the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.
• Mill extends the concept of happiness beyond Bentham’s utilitarianism, viewing it as including freedom and individuality. For Mill, individuality is essential for self-cultivation and societal progress.
• Mill qualified utilitarianism with two considerations:
  1. In applying the principle of utility, both quality and quantity of pleasure should be considered.
  2. Utilitarianism need not break radically with traditional morality, and everyday moral rules can serve as utilitarian guidelines.
• Conflicts arise when comparing pleasures, such as whether watching a classical dance recital is more pleasurable than eating bhelpuri. Conflicts can also arise over moral statements like “Honesty is the best policy,” where both pleasure and pain can be associated.
• Liberty serves as a principle to mediate such conflicts. It is valuable as an end in itself and an essential component of individuality. Mill does not claim that wrong acts should be valued just because they are freely chosen, but emphasizes that freely chosen actions contribute to an individual’s worth.
• Mill discusses liberty under three aspects:
  1. Liberty of thought and discussion (freedom of expression)
  2. Principle of individuality
  3. Limits of authority over an individual’s action.
• Freedom of expression includes the right to express and hear opinions, benefiting humankind at large.
• Mill presents four reasons for the importance of freedom of expression:
  1. Suppression of the right opinion deprives humanity of its benefit. Even if the prevailing notion is right, suppressing the wrong opinion prevents reinforcing what is true.
  2. In social and political belief, truth emerges from the conflict of opposing views, facilitated by freedom of expression.
  3. Even false opinions should not be suppressed as they may contain elements of truth that would otherwise be lost.
  4. True prevailing views need opposition to reinforce their truth and prevent them from becoming stagnant and unchallenged.
• For Mill, the clash of views facilitates intellectual progress, while a society without freedom of expression becomes weakened by dogma and prejudices.
• Individuality allows people to choose their way of life rather than follow societal norms. There is no pre-determined right or wrong way to live; it depends on the person’s character.
• Mill defends the principle of individuality against both governmental interference and social tyranny.
• Mill distinguishes between self-regarding and other-regarding actions. Self-regarding actions are those over which the individual has sovereignty.
• Actions are considered other-regarding if they cause harm to others. The boundaries between self-regarding and other-regarding actions can be blurry, such as in the case of addiction.
• Some interpretations of Mill state that an action is not other-regarding simply because it offends others; it is only other-regarding if it injures others, thus exempting intervention on moral grounds regarding personal behavior.

• Liberty is often associated with liberalism, but it is a multifaceted concept found in the writings of thinkers who are not considered liberals, such as Rousseau and Karl Marx.
• Marx’s understanding of liberty is shaped by instances of what is not liberty, particularly in the context of alienation.
• An example is the situation where an individual desires to be a writer but is forced to work as a factory workerdue to lack of material conditions. This situation reflects how an individual’s labor can alienate them from their true sense of self.
• Marx argues that human nature is defined by the ability to express creativity. Circumstances that prevent the expression of the self, such as alienating labor, are those that deny liberty.
• Marx explains alienation as a four-stage process:
  1. Alienation from the product of labor.
  2. Alienation from productive activity.
  3. Alienation from one’s own human nature.
  4. Alienation from other human beings.
• Marx asserts that, due to alienation, workers no longer feel themselves to be freely active except in their animal functions (eating, drinking, procreating), and their human functions are diminished, making them feel like animals.
• For Marx, liberation means leading a life of self-realization, which is the full actualization and externalization of an individual’s powers and abilities.
• Marx critiques capitalism for hindering self-realization. Capitalism not only limits opportunities for self-realization but also creates the material conditions for a future society in which full self-realization becomes possible.
• Capitalism hinders self-realization in two ways:
  1. Desires are formed through a process the individual does not understand, leading to desires that appear as alien powers, not freely chosen.
  2. The realization of desires is often frustrated by a lack of coordination and common planning, with the outcomes of individual actions appearing as an independent and hostile power.
• The non-identification with one’s desires and the confrontation of the self by those desires is what Marx terms alienation.

• The BA class desires a free period but understands it may impact their ability to cover the course material before exams, affecting their marks and future career prospects.
• No one forces the students to skip the lecture, but the temptation to have free time prevents them from attending the class.
• The students are technically free in this case since no one stops them from bunking the class.
• However, if freedom means being self-determined and controlling temptations to pursue real interests, then the students are not free.
• This distinction is explained through Isaiah Berlin’s concept of negative liberty and positive liberty, introduced in his work Two Concepts of Liberty (1969).
• Negative liberty refers to freedom from interference, focusing on the absence of external obstacles restricting freedom.
• The term ‘negative’ indicates injunctions that prohibit acts restricting freedom.
• Negative liberty answers the question, “Over what area am I master?” (Berlin, 1969).
• Berlin asserts that if someone is prevented by others from doing something they could otherwise do, they are unfree, and if the area of freedom is contracted by others beyond a minimum, they are coerced or enslaved.
• Berlin clarifies that incapacity to achieve a goal is not an infringement of freedom; only restrictions imposed by others affect freedom.
• Negative liberty is based on two axioms:
  • (a) Individuals know their own interest best, assuming individuals are rational agents capable of making informed choices.
  • (b) The state has a limited role to play, with the individual agency foregrounded, meaning the state cannot decide ends and purposes for the individual.
• For Berlin, negative liberty is the opportunity to act, not the action itself. It is an opportunity concept of freedomfocusing on the availability rather than the exercise of opportunity.
• The problem with negative liberty is its indifference to the quality of action; it doesn’t distinguish between being free to pursue an occupation of choice and being free to starve.
• Poverty is not always seen as an infringement of freedom in the negative liberty concept.
• Frederick Hayek and Robert Nozick illustrate negative liberty in their writings.
• Hayek defines liberty as a negative concept, describing the absence of coercion by other people, emphasizing that freedom is only positive through what we make of it.
• Hayek links liberty, justice, and welfare, explaining that freedom under the law means obeying general abstract ruleswithout being subject to another’s will, and therefore being free.
• Nozick argues that the primary threat to liberty is the imposition of unconsented obligations, and liberty should be safeguarded by minimizing such obligations.
• According to Nozick, respect for individual liberty requires that obligations beyond the minimal framework of rights be based on consent.

• Positive liberty involves the idea that each self has a higher self and a lower self, with the higher self (the rational self) attaining mastery over the lower self for true liberation.
• According to Berlin (1969), the positive sense of liberty arises from the individual’s desire to be their own master, to be the instrument of their own will, and to be conscious of themselves as a thinking, willing, active being who bears responsibility for their choices and can explain them by reference to their own ideas and purposes.
• Positive liberty is not just about non-interference but involves self-mastery, where the higher self controls the lower self.
• Positive liberty is the freedom to do, also known as the exercise concept of freedom, which involves not just having opportunities but exercising and availing them.
• Unlike negative liberty, which is about having opportunities, positive liberty is open to directing the individual through law or an elite.
• As long as law directs the individual toward rational ends, it is seen as liberating rather than oppressing the individual’s personality.
• Rousseau supports positive liberty by stating that true liberty lies in obedience to moral law, which he views as the function of the will of the enlightened people.
• Herbert Marcuse, from a neo-Marxist perspective, supports positive liberty, arguing that the working class is incapable of understanding its true needs and must be directed toward liberation by the revolutionary elite.
• Positive liberty also includes the idea of collective control over common life, such as maintaining a pollution-free environment for the common good, which may justify a degree of coercion for the larger benefit.
• Many liberals, including Berlin, warn that the positive concept of liberty can lead to authoritarianism.
• A permanent and oppressed minority might be said to be free in a democracy, where they participate in the democratic process and are members of a society exercising self-control.
• However, despite this, if they are oppressed, they are unfree.

• Mill is often viewed as a defender of the negative concept of freedom, comparing individual development to the growth of a plant.
• Like plants, individuals must be allowed to grow by developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic.
• Personal growth cannot be imposed externally; it must come from within the individual.
• Critics argue that Mill’s ideal resembles a positive concept of liberty more than a negative one.
• Positive liberty is about the growth of the individual, where the free individual determines and changes her own desires and interests autonomously.
• This concept of liberty focuses on self-realization, not just the absence of obstacles.
• Although Mill emphasizes non-intervention in individual life, which classifies him as a theorist of negative liberty, his defense of individuality to promote the deliberate cultivation of certain desirable attitudes suggests that Mill can also be understood as a theorist of positive liberty.

• Mill does not limit himself to the negative concept of liberty, and Berlin discusses positive liberty as self-mastery, complementing negative liberty as non-interference.
• Charles Taylor argues that negative liberty is a necessary prerequisite but not a sufficient condition for freedom.
• Taylor discusses two types of liberty: the opportunity concept of freedom (negative liberty) and the exercise concept of freedom (positive liberty).
• For Taylor, freedom is inclusive of self-realization, which is unique to each individual and must be worked out independently.
• Taylor believes that a pure opportunity concept of freedom is inadequate to achieve freedom that includes self-realization.
• As Taylor states, “We can’t say that someone is free, on a self-realization view, if he is totally unrealized.”
• For example, if you have the potential to sing well, and nobody denies you opportunities, your negative libertyhas not been violated.
• However, you are not liberated until you exercise the freedom to realize your potential as a singer.
• The exercise of freedom is qualified by certain conditions on motivation to ensure that it leads to self-realization.
• One is not free if motivated by fear, inauthentic standards, or false consciousness.
• If you exercise your singing potential because you are coerced, or to gain social standing, or to be popular, your freedom is motivated and not authentic.
• Taylor argues that the subject cannot be the final authority on whether their desires are authentic, as others may know us better than we know ourselves.
• The quest for self-realization must be cautious to avoid being motivated by fear or false consciousness.
• The question arises: who decides the authenticity of the quest for self-realization?
• One possible solution is the Rousseauan way, where the ‘right path’ helps in realizing one’s higher self.
• However, this can lead to authoritarian or totalitarian implications, as the subject may need to relinquish the freedom to make an independent judgment on the ‘right’ path to freedom.
• Taylor acknowledges that positive liberty, understood within the Rousseauan framework, can be prone to totalitarian manipulation.
• However, Taylor argues that the quest for self-realization need not be subject to totalitarian manipulation because each person has their own unique form of self-realization.
• Since self-realization is individual and personal, no doctrine or technique can exist to manipulate it with totalitarian intent.