Liberty Flashcards
Positive freedom as self-mastery
The more we are able to overcome weakness of will and irrational impulses and desires, the freer we are.
Freedom can be constrained by internal psychological factors.
True freedom is acting on desires we rationally endorse.
The ‘higher self’ controls the ‘lower self’.
Negative freedom
Freedom is the absence of constraint.
Critiques of negative liberty
What matters is not so much having opportunities (opportunity concept) but in exercising them (exercise concept). Effective freedom matters more than formal freedom.
Not all freedoms are equally valuable. In order to judge the relative value of freedoms in different societies, we need to understand their significance to agents in those societies (Charles Taylor).
Republican Freedom
To be free, we need to know that the conditions guaranteeing non-interference are in place. To be free is to be a free citizen in a free political community.
A free political community is self-governing.
A free political community requires citizens to take an active role in governing.
Free citizens must be able to challenge authority
The Retreat to the Inner Citadel
If having our desires thwarted renders us unfree, then can we become more free by ridding ourselves of desires altogether?
The slide into tyranny
Isaiah Berlin argued that the idealist conception of freedom inevitably ends up as an argument for totalitarianism.
Under the idealist conception, people are free when they act on authentic desires and rational beliefs.
Berlin worries that the Enlightenment belief in a single true solution to social problems, coupled with a rationalist drive to self-perfection, leads from individualism to authoritarianism.
Berlin urges us to accept pluralism and a negative conception of freedom instead.
Being forced to be free
True freedom lies in acting according to reason.
If we were truly rational then we would always act according to the moral law.
Therefore, true freedom lies in acting according to the demands of morality.
Morality requires that we act in the interests of the community.
When we are forced to act morally, we are thereby made freer.
Freedom and property
Libertarianism in particular sees self-ownership as the basis of freedom, and property ownership arising out of self-ownership
