Notes from Adam Swift’s Political Philosophy- a beginners’ guide for
students and politicians
Berlin’s two concepts of liberty:
Negative Liberty:
Freedom from i.e. being free from things (constraints, obstacles or interference)
Positive liberty:
Freedom to i.e. being free to do things
But this is red herring, a misleading conclusion of Berlin’s essay.
Actually, all freedoms are both freedoms ‘from’ and freedoms ‘to’.
Take, for example, the kind of freedom much beloved of advocates of negative liberty (the kind Berlin
likes): the individual’s religious freedom. Is this freedom ‘from’ – freedom from the state telling you
what religion you can practise? Or is it freedom ‘to’ – freedom to practise the religion of your choice?
Take the kind of freedom that might be endorsed by advocates of a more positive conception of
freedom (the kind that Berlin doesn’t like): freedom as rational self-direction. Is this freedom ‘to’ –
freedom to do the rational thing, or to act in accordance with your rational self? Or is it freedom ‘from’ –
freedom from emotion, or ignorance or desire, or whatever else might prevent you from acting
rationally?
Gerald MacCallum (1925–87) argued that Berlin was wrong to think that there are two concepts of
liberty, and very wrong if he thought that there was any difference between ‘freedom from’ and
‘freedom to’. According to MacCallum, all claims about freedom have the following form:
x is (is not) free from y to do (not do, become, not become) z
Freedom is a triadic relation. It necessarily involves reference to three things: x, the agent or subject of
freedom; y, the constraint or interference or obstacle; and z, the goal or end.
Effective Freedom V. Formal Freedom
Effective freedom: power or capacity to act in a certain way
Formal freedom: mere absence of interference.
Example: Britain allow its all citizens to go Bahamas for holiday (have formal freedom). But all citizens
don’t have money to go Bahamas, so they can’t go (don’t have effective freedom).
This is the debate about freedom with most relevance to contemporary politics. Very roughly, the right
argues that freedom is essentially about not being interfered with by others, so freedom is best
promoted by a state that does as little as possible and a laissez-faire free-market economy,
while the left claims that there is more to freedom than not being interfered with. People’s real or
effective (or, sometimes, ‘positive’) freedom can be promoted not just by leaving them alone, but by
putting them in a position to do things they would not otherwise be able to do.
The right wants to limit the role of the state – perhaps all the way down to the ‘nightwatchman’ role
advocated by Nozick (as discussed in Part 1). The left claims that a more active, interventionist,
redistributive and ‘enabling’ state can be justified on freedom grounds. According to the left, the right is
wedded to a simplistic ‘negative’ view of freedom, whereas the left sees freedom in a more ‘positive’
way.
This distinction can, of course, be expressed in terms of MacCallum’s triadic relation. Those endorsing
this variant of the ‘positive’ view think that poverty, or lack of resources, counts as a constraint on
freedom – as a y in his formula. Whereas those endorsing the ‘negative’ view think that only deliberate
interference by others (for example, by laws prohibiting particular actions) counts as such a constraint.
The suggestion by the left is that the right has an unreasonably restricted view of what counts as
interference. Giving people money increases their effective freedom. So too does giving them education
or healthcare. With education and in good health, they are free to take advantage of opportunities that
would otherwise not really be available to them. They might be formally available. But, for some people,
government action is needed to make the freedom to take advantage of them real or effective.
And when government will take action or redistribute resources in the name of justice or equality, but it
is dangerously misleading to claim that action can be justified by appeal to the value of freedom.
Remember too that the formal v. effective distinction does not always have something to do with
money and law. Think about somebody who is very ill, and cannot pursue her preferred career without
medical treatment. while nobody is preventing her from pursuing that career, so she is formally free to
do so, she will not have the effective freedom to pursue it unless she is given the medical treatment. It’s
different because the restriction on effective freedom – the y of MacCallum’s formula – is not lack of
money (and hence law, a deliberate creation precisely designed to stop people doing things), but poor
health
Freedom as autonomy v. freedom as doing
