Freedom

There is little disagreement surrounding the claim that freedom is the central value of the liberal political order. However, there is little agreement regarding the proper understanding of this value and, more precisely, the kinds of constraints on individual freedom that the state would be justified in imposing (Berlin, 56).

On this issue, proponents of freedom can be roughly divided into two basic camps: those who articulate the value of freedom negatively as “freedom from” interference, and those who understand it in a more positive fashion as “freedom to” live under certain conditions, participate in particular activities, or develop in a specified way. Simply put, advocates of negative freedom limit their focus to constraints that originate in the wills of other individuals or in state intervention. Freedom, in this sense, focuses on external human control over the decisions and actions of individuals, and it calls for respect for fundamental civil liberties (Constant, 90).

Accordingly, the function of the state is to maintain and enforce laws that protect this domain for individuals. In contrast, advocates of positive freedom point out that individuals also are constrained in other ways (e.g., by lack of opportunity or lack of resources). Some of the constraints may be material in origin, yet others political. Proponents of positive freedom appeal to certain desirable states of affairs for which negative freedom will not be a sufficient means (Mill, 41).

Benjamin Constant drew the relevant distinction as one between the civil liberties exalted by modern theorists and the participation in public life that the ancients regarded as the essential component of being free. John Stuart Mill makes the classic argument for a modern notion of freedom in his book On Liberty. Mill defends freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom to pursue “our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.” As opposed to Mill's conception of freedom, that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau more closely approaches that of the ancients, at least as Constant characterizes it (Taylor, 20).

In The Social Contract, Rousseau famously identifies the most important kind of freedom as a constitutive element of democratic government. For Rousseau, freedom is not solely acting as we want without hindrance from other human agents. As Rousseau understands it, a person is free only to the extent that ...