Utopianism Flashcards
“Where ends are agreed…” (Berlin)
“…the only questions left are those of means”
What has happened in the East and West according to Berlin?
“there has, perhaps, been no time in modern history when so large a number of human beings, in both the East and the West, have had their notions, and indeed their lives, so deeply altered, and in some cases violently upset, by fanatically held social and political doctrines”
What happens when ideas are negelected according to Berlin?
“when ideas are neglected by those who ought to attend to them that is to say, those who have been trained to think critically about ideas – they sometimes acquire an unchecked momentum and an irresistible power over multitudes of men that may grow too violent to be a affected by rational criticism”
What did the German poet Heine warn the French not to do?
“Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilisation”
Why did Berlin think ideas could not be ignored?
“philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilisation”
What does historical materialism do according to Berlin?
“It is only a very vulgar historical materialism that denies the power of ideas, and says that ideals are mere material interests in disguise.”
How does Berlin describe the relationship between social forces and political ideas?
“It may be that, without the pressure of social forces, political ideas are stillborn: what is certain is that these forces, unless they clothe themselves in ideas, remain blind and undirected.”
What does coercion mean for Berlin?
“To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom”
What is Berlin’s negative concept of liberty?
“I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.”
What is coercion imply to Berlin?
“Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings.”
What constitutes oppression according to Berlin?
“The criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes.”
What sort of freedom does Berlin mean by the absence of interference?
Negative freedom
Negative freedom summary by Berlin?
“By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom.”
Why did English thinkers believe in a need for law according to Berlin?
“it would entail a state in which all men could boundlessly interfere with all other men; and this kind of ‘natural’ freedom would lead to social chaos in which men’s minimum needs would not be satisfied; or else the liberties of the weak would be suppressed by the strong”
If the sphere of non-interference cannot be too great, what can it also not be?
“But equally it is assumed, especially by such libertarians as Locke and Mill in England, and Constant and Tocqueville in France, that there ought to exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual will find himself in an area too narrow for even that minimum development of his natural faculties which alone makes it possible to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends which men hold good or right or sacred. “
Where must a frontier be drawn according to Berlin?
“It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority. “
What would the invasion of the small sphere of private life represent?
“To invade that preserve, however small, would be despotism.”
Why must we preserve an area of personal freedom according to Berlin?
“We must preserve a minimum area of personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature’. We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating.”
Did Mill think compulsion was justified according to Berlin?
“Mill had no doubt that it was. Since justice demands that all individuals be entitled to a minimum of freedom, all other individuals were of necessity to be restrained, if need be by force, from depriving anyone of it.”
What was the function of law according to Mill?
To prevent people from interefering in the private sphere of negative liberty.
Why did Mill value a private sphere of liberty according to Berlin?
“What made the protection of individual liberty so sacred to Mill? In his famous essay he declares that, unless the individual is left to live as he wishes in ‘the part [of his conduct] which merely concerns himself’, civilisation cannot advance; the truth will not, for lack of a free market in ideas, come to light; there will be no scope for spontaneity, originality, genius, for mental energy, for moral courage. Society will be crushed by the weight of ‘collective mediocrity’. Whatever is rich and diversified will be crushed by the weight of custom, by men’s constant tendency to conformity, which breeds only ‘withered’ capacities, ‘pinched and hidebound’, ‘cramped and dwarfed’ human beings.”
What does the defence of liberty consist in according to Berlin?
“The defence of liberty consists in the ‘negative’ goal of warding off interference. “
What does coercion ‘sin’ against according to Berlin?
“To threaten a man with persecution unless he submits to a life in which he exercises no choices of his goals; to block before him every door but one, no matter how noble the prospect upon which it opens, or how benevolent the motives of those who arrange this, is to sin against the truth that he is a man, a being with a life of his own to live.”
How old is the negative conception of liberty according to Berlin?
“The sense of privacy itself, of the area of personal relationships as something sacred in its own right, derives from a conception of freedom which, for all its religious roots, is scarcely older, in its developed state, than the Renaissance or the Reformation. Yet its decline would mark the death of a civilisation, of an entire moral outlook.”
