Introduction to Political Theory

Lecture 7: Freedom (I)

Dr. Franz Mang
Department of Politics and Public Administration
Picture: Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup
(1807-63). 12 Years as a Slave (film 2013) The University of Hong Kong
Today’s lecture
 Two concepts of liberty
 Negative liberty, positive liberty, and autonomy
 Isaiah Berlin’s criticisms of positive liberty
 Freedom and liberalism
 Personal sovereignty
 Two different versions of liberalism
 Liberty and moral progress

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What was the freest moment
in your life?
Do you remember? Why freest?

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Let me translate…. 5
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What was the freest moment
in your life?
Do you remember? Why freest?

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Two concepts of liberty
Isaiah Berlin distinguishes between
two concepts of liberty Chichele Professor of Social and
Political Theory, Oxford, 1957–67
• A “Cold War liberal”
• Committed to “value
- Berlin, Isaiah (2002). Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford:
pluralism”
Oxford University Press. • Major works:
 The Hedgehog and the Fox
(1953)
 “Two Concepts of Liberty”
 Negative liberty – non-interference – free from (Inaugural lecture, 1958)
constraints;  The Crooked Timber of
Humanity (1990)
e.g. free from coercion and punishment

 Positive liberty – self-mastery – free to do or to

be;
e.g. I’m the author of my own life; we’re the
legislators of our own laws
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 Negative liberty Positive liberty

Non-interference Self-mastery

Independence from social control – Source of control –

“What is the area within which the “What, or who, is the source of
subject . . . is or should be left to do control or interference that can
or be what he is able to do or be, determine someone to do, or be,
without interference by other this rather than that?”
persons?”

Usually ask: Usually ask:

What doors are open to me? Do I go through the right doors for
(available options) the right reasons?
(correct or valuable options)

Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Constant, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Herder,

J.S. Mill, Tocqueville, Jefferson, Rousseau, Hegel, Fichte, Marx, T.H.
Burke, Paine Green, Bradley, Bosanquet
 Last lecture….
Rousseau Mill

Active participation? Yes – not just voting Yes – not just voting

Mode of democracy Direct participation Representative democracy –

(legislation); active and widespread
Elected aristocracy participation
(administration)
Importance of Freedom – self-legislation (PTO) Educative effects; protecting
democracy interests.

Common good? Yes Yes

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Last lecture….
• Rousseau:
“How to find a form of association… while
uniting himself with the others, obeys no one
but himself, and remains as free as before.”
(The Social Contract and Discourses, Book I, ch. 6)

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 Negative liberty Positive liberty

Personal 1. Non-interference / 2. Self-mastery

or social non-domination

Civil 3. Civil liberties 4. Collective self-government

(e.g. The International (Rousseau)
Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR))

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Concepts: Freedom and
liberty
•“Many authors prefer to talk of positive
and negative freedom. This is only a
difference of style, and the terms
‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ are normally
used interchangeably by political and
social philosophers.”
(Ian Carter, “Positive and Negative Liberty,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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The value of negative liberty?
(free from constraints)

Makes you comfortable?

Enables you to do anything you want?

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The value of negative liberty?
(free from constraints)

- “I’m free, but I’m poor and starving.”

- “I’m free, but my life is completely empty.”

 Is negative liberty valuable in these cases?

 Why?

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Connecting negative liberty
and positive liberty
 Negative liberty alone may not be valuable if we
can’t realise anything.
 Negative liberty makes self-mastery (positive
liberty) possible.
 We want freedom from constraints (negative
liberty) and sufficient resources and abilities to
realise ends that we ourselves consider valuable.
This is about self-mastery and self-realisation.

A personal question: You want to be free, but what

do you want when you’re free? 16
Connecting negative liberty and
positive liberty: the idea of personal
autonomy
Gerald Dworkin on personal autonomy:
 Autonomy = authenticity + procedural independence
 “The full formula for [personal] autonomy, then, is
authenticity plus procedural independence. A person is
autonomous if he identifies with his desires, goals, and
values, and such identification is not itself influenced in
ways which make the process of identification in some
way alien to the individual.”
(“The Concept of Autonomy,” Gerald Dworkin, “The Concept of Autonomy,” in John Christman
ed., The Inner Citadel (Oxford University Press, 1989), Ch.3, p. 61.)
Examples: (a) K-pop; (b) North Koreans
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 Gerald Dworkin (1937 -)
=/= Ronald Dworkin (1931-
2013)
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Connecting negative liberty and
positive liberty: the idea of personal
autonomy
Gerald Dworkin on personal autonomy:
 Autonomy = authenticity + procedural independence
 Hence, autonomy concerns both self-mastery and non-
interference.

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Connecting negative liberty and
positive liberty: the idea of personal
autonomy
 Gerald Dworkin:
“A person is autonomous if he identifies with his desires,
goals, and values, and such identification is not itself
influenced in ways which make the process of
identification in some way alien to the individual.”

 Implications? Think about the value of autonomy,

and its relations to education and nationalism.
 Should students be taught to love their country
or culture?

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Education and the value of
autonomy
The philosopher John Searle on university education (47:21-50:14)

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Connecting negative liberty and
positive liberty: the idea of personal
autonomy
Think about the value of autonomy,
education and nationalism.
Should students be taught to love
their country or culture?
 Do you agree with John Searle?

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Berlin’s criticisms of positive
liberty
 Negative liberty – non-interference
– free from constraints
 Positive liberty – self-mastery Chichele Professor of Social
and Political Theory,
Oxford, 1957–67
– free to do or to be; e.g. I’m the author of my • A “Cold War liberal”
• Committed to “value
own life; we’re the legislators of our own laws pluralism”

 Berlin: “…the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ notions

of freedom historically developed in divergent
directions . . . until . . . they came into direct
conflict with each other” (Berlin: 178-9)

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Berlin’s criticisms of positive
liberty
“liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or
justice or culture, or human happiness or a
Chichele Professor of Social
quiet conscience” (172) and Political Theory,
Oxford, 1957–67
• A “Cold War liberal”
• Committed to “value
pluralism”
“The fundamental sense of freedom is
freedom from chains, from imprisonment,
from enslavement by others [i.e. negative
liberty]. The rest is extension of this sense,
or else metaphor. To strive to be free is to
seek to remove obstacles….” (48)
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Berlin’s criticisms of positive
liberty
“…a rule does not oppress me or enslave
me if I impose it on myself consciously, or
accept it freely, having understood it,
whether it was invented by me or by others, Chichele Professor of Social
and Political Theory,
provided that it is rational, that is to say, Oxford, 1957–67
• A “Cold War liberal”
conforms to the necessities of things… To • Committed to “value
pluralism”
want necessary laws to be other than they
are is to be prey to an irrational desire…. This
is the positive doctrine of liberation by
reason. Socialised forms of it, widely
disparate and opposed to each other as
they are, are at the heart of many of the
nationalist, Communist, authoritarian, and
totalitarian creeds of our day.” (190-1) 25
• Rousseau:
“…whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be
compelled to do so by the whole body. This means
nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;
for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen
to his country, secures him against all personal
dependence.”
(The Social Contract and Discourses, Book I, Ch.7)

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Berlin’s criticisms are sensible

• Worries about positive liberty in politics: It is

possible for any political authority to abuse power
in the name of liberty/ self-realisation/ etc.
(Consider the concept “liberation [ 解放 ],” which was
(is?) frequently used by communist parties.)

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Berlin’s criticisms are sensible
• Pol Pot (1925-1998) – the General Secretary of the Communist
Party of Kampuchea from 1963-1981
• Frequently claimed his party must liberate Cambodia
• It is estimated that 1 to 3 million people (out of a population
of 8 million) perished as a result of the policies of his four-year
premiership.

Cambodian people died under

Pol Pot’s rule.
Pol Pot
Recommend this film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
k71OoT7wlY0

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The betrayal of liberation
 From the promise of liberty to the
call for self-realisation, and to the
celebration of some specific form of
ideology, and to the (transitional)
necessity of “benevolent elitism,”
which is, however, usually not so
benevolent or transitional.

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Freedom and liberalism

Liberals accord freedom (usually, negative liberty)

primacy as a political value.
Liberals generally maintain that any government
should respect the freedom of each citizen, and
they hold some doctrine of limited government.

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J.S. Mill (1806-1873) Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)
Freedom and liberalism: the idea of
personal sovereignty

Joel Feinberg:
• “[S]overeignty is an all or nothing concept; one is
entitled to absolute control of whatever is within
one's domain however trivial it may be.”
(ibid, p. 55)
• “If there is such a thing as "personal sovereignty,"
then presumably it belongs to all competent
adults and to no newborn infants.”
(Joel Feinberg, Harm to Self (Oxford University
Press, 1986), p. 48) – personal sovereignty similar to national
sovereignty in international law 32
Freedom and liberalism: the idea of
personal sovereignty

• “We do not need to believe that individuals

choose well [about what they need in their lives]
but we must nonetheless treat their will as
authoritative because it is their will.” (Jessica
Begon (2016). “Paternalism.” Analysis 76 (3): 355-
373.)
• Do you agree freedom is personal sovereignty?

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Freedom and liberalism: the idea of
personal sovereignty
Hence, two different versions of liberalism :

a. Minimal government: since freedom is personal

sovereignty
(casinos are allowed to set up, prostitution is legal,
entertainment drugs may be used ….)

b. Liberal, but not minimal, government

(freedom is less valuable, or not valuable at all, when it is
exercised for achieving goals that are harmful or
immoral, and therefore, the government may restrict
gambling, prostitution, the use of drugs, etc.)
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Thought experiment:
Some tycoons want the Hong
Kong Government to allow
them to set up huge casinos
in Hong Kong (so Hong Kong
will be like Macau).
 Should the Hong Kong
Government let them to
go ahead?

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Freedom and moral progress
• Haven’t humans made some
(objective) moral progress?
Slavery was not abolished in
America until 1865. Isn’t the
abolition of slavery a case of moral
progress?
In addition, most of us think it is
morally right to suppress
homosexuals.
(Compare with Britain and other
countries just a hundred years ago)
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12 Years as a Slave
Solomon Northup:
• Slavery was not abolished in America until 1865.
• In 1841, Solomon Northup was a free African-American man working as a violinist,
living with his wife and two children in New York. Two white men offered him
short-term employment as a musician if he would travel with them to
Washington, D.C.
• That was a trap. Once the men and Northup arrived Washington, Northup was
drugged and delivered to a slave prison.
• Northup was given the identity of “Platt” and sold to plantation owner. In the
process, Northup attempted to explain that he was actually a free man, but to no
avail.
• Northup was held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana. He
remained in slavery until he met a Canadian who helped get word to New York,
where state law provided aid to free New York citizens kidnapped into slavery.
• After 12 years as a slave, Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
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12 Years as a Slave
• The movie is based on the true story of Solomon Northup.
• Movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02Ie8wKKRg

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Freedom and moral progress
Haven’t humans made some moral
progress?
Shouldn’t we think freedom is
objectively valuable and therefore
any unreasonable suppression of
freedom is morally wrong?
If humans have made some moral
progress (e.g. by abolishing slavery),
then moral subjectivism and moral
relativism are probably mistaken.

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Take a break

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