Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”

Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts” is undoubtedly among the most influential of essays in the history of postwar political philosophy in the analytic tradition (a version of the text is available here) Even critics of the essay –Quentin Skinner, for example—laud praise upon Berlin’s clear articulation of a distinction between two opposed understandings of liberty or freedom.

In this post, I’ll summarize Berlin’s essay. Three points of note. First, although Berlin’s paper was originally delivered in 1958, I’ll be citing the following version of the text that appears in Liberty (ed. Henry Hardy), OUP: Oxford, 2002: 166-217. Second, I will only sketch the main lines of Berlin’s essay, not some of the important, though not central details. Finally, though Berlin’s essay is needs to be located within its cold-war context –Berlin was born in Riga, then in Russian, and was a fervent anti-communist—none of his arguments depend on that particular belief.

Berlin’s essay contrasts two “central” (though perhaps not the only) senses of liberty or freedom (he uses the terms interchangeably): a negative and a positive sense. He begins with the negative idea.

Negative Freedom

Defining Negative Liberty

Negative liberty is opposed to interference or coercion. Berlin characterizes it as follows: Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty…only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings” (169). Or, as he puts it latter: negative liberty “means liberty

Four features are of note here:

• Mere Incapacity Is Not Lack of Freedom: You are only free to do what you could otherwise do, but for interference (so, although you cannot fly, you are neither free nor unfree to do so).
• Only Human Violations Count, not unfavorable natural circumstances.
• The Definition is Incomplete: it depends on an analysis of interference or coercion.
• One can measure the ‘width’ of freedom by measuring the area of ‘non-interference’.

Economic Freedom

Berlin first applies this analysis to the idea of ‘economic freedom’. He suggests that a worker who is too poor to buy bread can only be regarded as unfree if his inability is “due to the fact that other human beings  have made arrangements” that prevent him from doing so.

The Classical English Tradition

Then, he argues that this conception of freedom can be traced back to “the classical English philosophers”—originally to Hobbes, then to Locke, Mill and Bentham. All agreed: (1) freedom could not be unlimited: it could be curtailed for various ends—at least for the sake of freedom itself, perhaps for the interests of order, equality or justice; and (2) there ought to be a certain level of liberty –a minimum of liberty–which on no account be violated.

Regarding (1), Berlin argues that, when do curtail freedom for the sake of (e.g.) liberty, we must nevertheless acknowledge that a loss of liberty occurs. Regarding (2), Berlin notes that, although meeting people’s basic needs comes before freedom, the meaning of freedom is the same everywhere.

Berlin on Mill

The difficult issues about negative freedom concern, Berlin then notes, concern “how wide [the area of freedom] could or should be” (170) or what “a minimum of personal freedom” amounts to. He examines J.S. Mill’s work as illustrative of the liberal view.

According to Mill, justice demands that all individuals be entitled to a minimum of freedom, and thus that other individuals must be restrained from depriving people of it. Mill confuses two liberal justifications for freedom—(a) Freedom as an intrinsic good and (b) freedom as necessary condition for developing certain perfectionist, individualist values (a certain kind of character). These two might be inconsistent

Three Further Points

• Negative freedom, in Berlin’s sense, is a ‘comparatively modern’ political idea, not present until (at the latest) the 1600s (176).
• Negative freedom is “not incompatible with…the absence of self-government” (176): a benevolent despot who does not interfere with his subjects does not impinge on negative liberty.

Thus, negative freedom does not imply democracy: ‘the answer to the question “Who governs me?’ is logically distinct from the question ‘How far does the government interfere with me?” (177).

• It is difficult to estimate the extent of negative freedom in any given case (see fn 1, 177).
• Positive Freedom

Defining Positive Freedom

Positive freedom derives from ‘the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master’. It concerns my desire to be self-directed, self-governing or self-realizing. Berlin has in mind here what often goes under the heading autonomy, and he links the idea to many historical figures: Hegel, Fichte, Kant, and Rousseau, for example.

Berlin’s Argument

Although positive and negative liberty might seem quite similar, Berlin will ultimately argue that certain understandings of positive freedom have lead, at times, to “a specious disguise for brutal tyranny” (178) because of some of the peculiarity of the way in which the notion of positive freedom has “historically developed” (179).

In this section, and several of the next, he begins to survey some of those directions (III-V). I won’t go into the details of each, but only sketch the basic critique Berlin offers.

The Dangers of Positive Freedom

Two Selves

When talking about being ‘one’s own master’, one can think of both external (a coercer) and internal obstacles (an insatiable desire or passion). Thus we arrive at a distinction of a ‘real’ or authentic and a less real or inauthentic self. This view takes two forms.

A first view identifies one’s ‘real’ self with reason.  A second view widens the gap between the two selves, by identifying (as Berlin thinks Hegel and Fichte do) the ‘real’ self with society at large.

In both cases, it is thus open to justify a kind of paternalism or coercion: “Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or society, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name…of their ‘real’ selves (180).

Berlin then identifies several directions in which such ‘two selves’ views have developed.

Self-Abnegation

Suppose I am autonomous. I have a set of desires I want to fulfill, but which cannot be realized. Then, my only option is to get rid of my desires (rather than wanting to be rich, I stop desiring money). But this way of making people ‘realize’ then ends – by expunging them—is in many cases hardly satisfactory.

Self-Realization

Berlin then critics the metaphysical rationalist view, which equates freedom with the use of critical reason. The fundamental premise he disputes is that one I understand the necessity of X, I cannot rationally will otherwise. Thus, if X is a historical necessity, it is irrational for me to (and I am not truly free if I) resist it.

Social Freedom

To be free is to accept certain rational principles. It is assumed that all rational agents would endorse the same principles, and to be free is incompatible with being irrational. If I know what these principles are, I may then impose them on others.

 

Berlin then sums up the premises he takes to be problematic (200):

• All men have one true purpose—rational self direction
• The ends of all rational beings must fit a certain pattern which some may detect better than others
• All conflict is due to irrationality
• When men have been made rational, they will obey their own natures.

Thus, from seemingly liberal premises, we arrive, perversely, at illiberal conclusions.

The Search for Status

Before reconsidering his own view, Berlin points on one other “historically important approach” to the topic which confounds freedom with “her sisters, equality and fraternity” and thus “leads to similarly illiberal conclusions”. The idea here—again, Hegelian—is that human beings are social creatures in a deep sense, and require “proper recognition” (200-1) to be free.

Berlin makes two comments about the need for recognition:

First, although it might be important (204) and “in certain respects, very close to the desire to be an independent agent” (205), it should not be confused with liberty per se.

Second, especially when applied to groups, the drive for recognition can be a source of illiberal oppression

The Liberal View Reconsidered

In the final sections of the essay, Berlin reconsiders the liberal view of negative liberty. He makes several remarks:

• While any view of freedom must include ‘a minimum’ of negative liberty, liberals like Mill and Constant typically wanted to maximize the freedom (to the extent compatible with the demands of social life) (207).
• For such liberals, the important question was not who wields authority over me – whether I rule myself (e.g., through democracy), but how much authority should be placed in any set of hands (209).
• Liberalism involves a belief in the absolute inviolability of some minimum of individual liberty (210)
• Thus, a society is not free unless (a) no power, but only rights, can be regarded as absolute and (b) there are frontiers within which individuals are inviolably not to be interfered with.

Value Pluralism

Berlin concludes (VIII) by making some general remarks about value and political philosophy.

First, he argues that there is a plurality of values –freedom, equality justice, and the like –and it is not possible for all these values to all be fully instantiated together. The thought that they can is dangerous, a prejudice, and in any case, not warranted by empirical observation or history (212-3). Conflict among values is inevitable. As he puts it,

 “If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict – and of tragedy – can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition” (214).

Second, although freedom is valuable in itself, it is not the sole, or the most important value. There are sometimes grounds for curtailing it. It must be weighed against other goods (214-215).

Third, negative liberty is nevertheless the ‘truer’ and ‘more humane’ meaning of freedom, when compared to positive liberty. It allows people to choose between ultimate values.

Finally, Berlin suggests that a kind of temporal relativism about values: although principles may hold absolutely in certain context, they may not be eternal. To want anything more is perhaps a metaphysical need, but is also a sign of immaturity.

Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”

“A number of strands in contemporary polices,” Taylor begins, “turn on the need, sometimes the demand, for recognition”. In “The Politics of Recognition” (available in full here and here), Taylor explores these strands, and tries to make sense of their historical emergence and relation to liberalism, in part through an incisive look at their emergence in the Canadian context.

Taylor’s essay is a tour de force: intricate, historical and sensitive to many (if not all) of a family of difficult issues; even those inclined to disagree have much to learn from the text’s honest treatment of the issues. In this post, I try to outline the main lines of argument of Taylor’s text.

 

Charles Taylor

A Historical Step Back

Recognition, Taylor thinks, looms large in contemporary politics. From nationalist movements to demands behalf of minority or subaltern groups in feminism and multiculturalism, the invocation of recognition is a mainstay of politics discourse. And partly for good reason. Our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, and failures of recognition can cause real harms: misrecognition is not just lack of due respect, but “a vital human need” (26).

In order to examine recognition and its importance, Taylor begins by taking a “step back” to look at “how this discourse of recognition came to seem familiar…to us” (26). Taylor thinks we can distinguish “two changes” that have made preoccupation with these ideas “inevitable”.

First, a “collapse of social hierarchies”, which used to be the basis for “honor” (26-7). Honor, in this sense at least, was “intrinsically linked to inequalities”: Taylor is thinking of the sort of honors one lavishes upon a duke, or that one bestows along with “some public award, for example, the Order of Canada” (27). Instead of honor, we now “have the modern notion of dignity”, which is “universalist and egalitarian”: the underlying premise is that everyone shares it. This latter idea, dignity, is obviously “the only one compatible with a democratic society” (27). Taylor doesn’t say much about how exactly honor collapsed.

Second, “the importance of recognition has been modified and intensified by the new understanding of individual ideality” that emerges in the late 18^th century. It is not that identity is new, but that “individualized identity” is new, along with “the ideal of authenticity”, of being true to oneself. Taylor says considerably more about how exactly this ideal emerged.

His story begins with the thought that “human beings are endowed with a moral sense, an intuitive feeling” for right and wrong (28). Earlier, what we needed to be ‘in touch with’ was good. With modernity, however, the source of moral sense moves interior. Authenticity develops by “displacing” the “moral accent” in this idea”: being in touch with our feelings or true selves takes on independent (moral) significance.

Key in this process were Rousseau, Herder (and latter, Hegel). Rousseau, “articulate[ed] something that was in a sense already occurring in the culture” by presenting morality as “following a voice of nature within us” (29).

Herder then adds the idea that “each person has her own ‘measure’; that is, that “there is a certain way of being human that is my way”, and it is of moral important to be in touch with that way. This idea of “originality, for Herder, operates “at two levels”: at the level of the individual person and at the level of ‘culture-bearing’ people [Volk]. We will return to this distinction later.

The need for recognition, however, is not new. Human life is “fundamentally dialogical” (32) in character. Recognition has always been a central need. It is not just a need during a period of “genesis” – say, in childhood—but our need for recognition “continues indefinitely” (33): though this need may be resisted by some of us, it shows up, for example, in love as a defining commitment that structures one’s identity.

But the development of an ideal of the ‘inward generation’ (34) of identity together with “the decline of hierarchical society” (31) gave recognition a new importance. In the earlier age, a failure of recognition never really arose: “general recognition was built into the socially derived identity by virtue of [being]…based on categories that everyone took for granted” (34). So recognition, in a way, couldn’t fail. But “original identity” –the kind a person or a Volk generate—doesn’t enjoy this recognition so easily.

In short, “what has come about with the modern age is not the need for recognition but the conditions in which the attempt to be recognized can fail” (35).

That brings us to Hegel, who distinguished “two planes” of recognition (36). On the intimate plane, our identities are initially formed by “contact with significant others”. On the social plane “the understanding that identities are formed in open dialogue…has made the politics of equal recognition more central and stressful” (36). Taylor will focus on this later form of political recognition.

Two Forms of Recognition

Recognition, he notes, “has come to mean two rather different things” (37).

First, connected with the move from honor to dignity, one form of politics has come to emphasize “the equal dignity of all citizens” in an effort to avoid the existence of first and second class citizens. Here, the emphasis is on equality, similarity and equal (the same) treatment (37-8).

Second, connected with the development of identity has come a “politics of difference” which emphasizes that everyone is owed “recognition of the unique identity” of each individual or group (38). This politics has a universal, egalitarian basis –equal recognition for all—but “it asks we give acknowledgment and status to something that is not universal shared” (39).

Let’s just call these models the politics of dignity and the politics of difference respectively. To proponents of the politics of dignity, the latter model can seem like a negation of their principles.

Some arguments are thus made to justify the politics of difference on the basis of dignity. These arguments should be familiar – for example, the claim that affirmative action policies for African Americans are justified “as a temporary measure that will eventually level the playing field and allow the old ‘blind’ rules to come back into force in a way that doesn’t disadvantage anyone”—and Taylor thinks the work “up to a point” (40).

Where they don’t work is when measures are put in place to “maintain and cherish distinctness” (say, of some cultural minority) “not just now but forever” (40). We’ll return to case of this kind later. But, for now, given that the two models diverge, Taylor directs us to consider “the underlying intuitions of value” that animate each.

The politics of dignity is motivated by “the idea that all humans are equally worthy of respect” because based on a “capacity that all humans share” (41). Canonically, “our status as rational agents” has been singled out, though there are problems with this justification.

The politics of difference, while it has “a universal potential as its basis, namely, the potential for forming and defining one’s own identity” departs significantly from the former, for it demands (at least recently) “that one accord equal respect to actually evolved cultures” (42). That is, it demands that whatever a cultural produces, it ought to be accorded equal value.

The dialectic between the two thus runs as follows: the politics of dignity requires, it is thought, that we treat people in a difference-blind manner. For the politics of difference, we ought to recognize and foster particularity. The former reproaches the latter for violating the principle of nondiscrimination. The latter reproaches the former, not only by claiming that it “negates identity” but – and this is crucial –by  claiming that “the supposedly neutral set of difference-blind principles…is in fact a reflection of one hegemonic culture” (43). In short, it charges the politics of dignity with “imposing a false homogeneity” (44).

Having laid out the dialectic, Taylor then moves to assess the merits of the various charges.

 

The Politics of Dignity and Liberalism

The “standard-bearers” of politics of dignity are Kant’s and Rousseau’s accounts. Taylor examines these accounts in order to determine “to what extent they are guilty of…imposing a false homogeneity” (44).

Rousseau

Rousseau “begins to think out the importance of equal respect” (45). Rousseau was concerned about individual’s “other-dependence” because he thought it made people “slaves to ‘opinion’” (45). He was particularly concerned about honor, which was “ a positional good” linked to one’s social rank (Ibid). But he does not do away the notion of opinion and its important entirely.

Rather, he thinks “esteem” – when placed in circumstances of reciprocity, plays an important role in his thought. The remedy to the system of honor is “entering into a quite different system, characterized by equality, reciprocity and unity of purpose” (49). Under this system, “all virtuous citizens are equally honored” (Ibid).

Taylor thinks Rousseau’s solution here is “crucially flawed”, for links esteem to a “unity of purpose” (in the general will) that is “incompatible with any differentiation” (50). Because all citizens have to be at one in the general will, when opinions and conceptions of the good diverge, the model breaks down.

Liberalism

Thus, if Rousseau’s model doesn’t work, we might ask whether the Kantian model fares better. These models “simply look to an equality of rights accorded to citizens” (51). Yet this model, too, has been criticized for failing to “give due acknowledgment to distinctness (52).

Taylor then distinguishes two forms of liberalism: a “restrictive view”, which can indeed only give limited acknowledgment to distinctness, and an “alternative view”, which Taylor will later defend. He discusses both issues “in the contest of the Canadian case” (52), so it is best to outline the case first.

 

The Canadian Case—Two Models of Liberalism

Taylor’s discussion centers on the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights, which sought to work out how a political system of equal rights and judicial review. In particular, the Charter (1) “defines a set of individual rights” and (2) “guarantees [citizens] equal treatment” of citizens and protects them against discrimination.

The issue arose, in discussions of the Charter, about how to balance these aims with the claims of distinctness put forward by Quebeckers and aboriginal peoples. Of particular interest was whether the laws Quebec passed regarding were compatible with the aims of the charter. These laws (1) regulated  who can send their children to English-language schools (not francophones), and (2) required that businesses of over fifty be run in French. Their aim was to ensure the “collective survival” of French Quebeckers, which was enshrined in the “distinct society clause” in the proposed “Meech amendment” to the Charter.

The amendment and the corresponding laws were accused of (1) enshrining collective goals that require violations of individuals rights (the right to decide which school to send your child to, and (2) the provisions were thought of as inherently discriminatory because they favored French-speakers over others.

Put philosophically (in Dworkin’s language), the Meech amendment was charged with (contra to what liberalism requires), taking an interest in the “substantive” ends of life, as opposed to the merely “procedural” mechanisms for dealing with one another (which traditional liberal rights are thought to represent). Given the diversity of substantive norms in modern society, anything more than the procedural norms might be thought to favor one group over another and thus be unfair. This objection is based on the view that “human dignity largely consists in autonomy”—the ability of each to determine her own conception of the good—and the Quebec model violates this norm by placing collective goals in the citizen in trying to “create members of the community” who will be future French speakers.  The Quebec model just violates the “restrictive view” of liberalism mentioned earlier.

Taylor accuses this model of liberalism – which (a) insists on uniform rights across the board, and (b) is suspicious of collective goals –of being guilty of being unable to accommodate difference because it cannot accommodate “what the members of distinct societies really aspire to, which is survival” (61).

But, he thinks, there is an alternative form of liberalism which fares better. As a matter of fact, Quebeckers tended to put forward a different conception of liberalism. On this view, a liberal society may be “organized around a definition of the good life” but what defines a liberal society is “the way in which it treats minorities”—that is, those who do not share this view. A liberal society accords, not a bare liberty right to its members, but a certain set of fundamental rights: e.g. to life, liberty, free speech, and so on. A liberal society must give these rights equally to all, but it can nevertheless provide some with “privileges and immunities” provided to certain groups that are less fundamental.

In short, on this alternative model:

Liberalism does “call for the invariant defense of certain rights…but […] distinguish[es] these fundamental rights from the broad range of immunities and presumptions of uniform treatment that have sprung up in modern cultures of judicial review. [This form of liberalism is] willing to weigh the importance of certain forms of uniform treatment against the importance of cultural survival, and [to] opt sometimes in favor of the latter.” (61).

Taylor “endorse[s] this kind of model”  (Ibid), and thinks it can be “cleared of the charge of homogenizing difference” (61).

The Charge Reconsidered

But, Taylor thinks “there is another way of formulating the charge that is harder to rebut” (61). The charge here is that, despite liberalism’s claim to offering “a neutral ground on which people of all cultures can meet and coexist” (62), liberalism in fact “is not a possible meeting ground for all cultures” (62). Rather, it is “the political expression of one range of cultures” –certain Western ones, and perhaps many others—but it is “incompatible with other ranges”—certain Muslin societies and cultures, perhaps.

The charge, Taylor thinks is disturbing; but Taylor thinks this charge ought not to be an indictment of liberalism.

Indeed, it is true that “liberalism can’t and shouldn’t claim complete cultural neutrality” (62). It is not compatible with all cultures. But, if this is true, what sort of reply should liberals make to non-liberal citizens living in liberal polities? These people often demand that liberals “recognize the equal value of different cultures” (64), not just the equal value of different people in those cultures.

But this, Taylor thinks, is false. We do (perhaps) owe all cultures a “presumption” of equal worth –that is, we should work from the starting hypothesis that all actually existing cultures produce ideas and works of value—“the validity of the claim has to be demonstrated concretely in the actual study of the culture” (66-7). This kind of presumption is a way to combat making unjustified judgments about other cultures and avoiding arrogance (72-3).

But, for all that, we are not obligated to make the stronger judgment that all actual cultures—and all the ideas in each—are of equal worth. Making that claim is false, and demands for recognition based upon it need not be acknowledged.