Freedom
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Freedom

Negative and Positive Conceptions

Yıldız Silier

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Freedom

Negative and Positive Conceptions

Yıldız Silier

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About This Book

Isaiah Berlin made a now classic distinction between negative and positive conceptions of freedom. This book, first published in 2005, introduces a fresh way of looking at these conceptions and presents a new defence of the positive conception of freedom. Revealing how the internal debate between various versions of negative freedom give rise to hybrid conceptions of freedom which in turn are superseded by various versions of the positive conception of freedom, Silier concludes that Marx's concrete historical account of positive freedom resolves many of the key debates in this area and provides a fruitful framework to evaluate the freedoms and unfreedoms that are specific to capitalism.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351786942

PART I

THE NEGATIVE CONCEPTION OF FREEDOM

Chapter 1

Hayek’s Notion of Freedom

The negative conception of freedom gets its name from defining freedom in a merely negative way, as the absence of something. According to this view, freedom has no positive content; there are only various subjective uses of freedom. One is negatively free in so far as he can do what he wants without being constrained or interfered with by others. The negative view takes individual freedom as something we naturally own, and tries to specify the cases in which external agents restrict this natural freedom.
When freedom is taken as the norm then it is unfreedom that has to be explained and analysed. If there is an impairment of individual freedom then some specific agent (another person or the state) should be causally responsible for this deprivation.
The central question for this conception of freedom is where to draw the limits of the freedom of each person so that everyone can have a legally protected domain (private sphere) in which his actions will be unimpeded, and thereby free.1 Once this protected ‘private sphere’ is well defined then it would be easy to charge the intruders of this sphere as responsible for depriving a person of his freedom. The private sphere is contrasted with the public sphere, based on the assumption that a distinction can be made between actions that only concern oneself and those that also concern others.2
The cornerstone of the negative view is the assumption of an inevitable antagonism between the individual and the society. The individual is not taken as someone who is essentially a social being, but rather as an atomistic, vulnerable being who needs to be protected from an abstract entity called ‘the society’.
It is necessary for the state to have ‘the monopoly of coercive power’ (through the threat of legal sanctions) in order to prevent individuals constraining each other’s freedom. But then how can it be assured that the state would not abuse its coercive power and interfere with the private sphere that it is supposed to protect? Drawing limits to the power of the state to protect individual freedoms is the main concern of the liberal defenders of the negative view. We should note that Hobbes is almost unique as a non-liberal proponent of the negative view. Locke, Smith and Bentham are other historical proponents of this view. Hayek is a contemporary advocate of the negative view and is well known as a founder of neo-liberalism, besides being a stubborn critic of socialism and other projects of social reform.
Hayek defines individual freedom as ‘the state in which a man is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another’, as the circumstance in which one ‘can expect to shape his course of action in accordance with his present intentions’, and as marked by the ‘rule of law’.3 Hayek’s account involves three different formulations of negative freedom as the absence of deliberate coercion by others, as the possibility of acting according to one’s present intentions and as the existence of a private sphere protected by the legal framework.
The first feature emphasizes that the only source of unfreedom is personal coercion. It contrasts with the positive view, which argues that there can also be internal and impersonal social constraints on freedom. The second feature (transforming intentions into action) implies that freedom is available to everybody. In contrast to the positive view, one does not need to make informed choices or achieve ‘rational self-determination’ in order to become free. The third feature denotes the institutional legal framework, with respect to which coercion is defined as ‘arbitrary’ and as ‘unjustified interference’.4 When coercion is identified with the violation of laws then it follows that that no one can restrict another’s freedom in a society where everyone is law-abiding. In contrast, the positive view claims that even when everyone respects laws there can be other factors such as the lack of material resources that diminish people’s freedom.

1. Freedom and Coercion

Hayek starts his exposition of freedom by clarifying what coercion means. Coercion can take two forms: whereas constraints force people to do certain things, restraints prevent people from performing certain actions. The only source of coercion is other agents; natural and social factors cannot create obstacles to personal freedom.
This establishes a distinction between incapability and unfreedom, which is central for the negative view. One’s natural incapability to fly like a bird does not render him unfree because it does not deprive him of liberty. So, freedom does not mean having the ability to do whatever one wants.5 Hayek’s other example is about a rock climber who has fallen into an abyss and is unable to get out of it. Although he has a limited course of action, he is not unfree because he is not ‘held captive’ by another person.6 A person becomes unfree (or his freedom is coerced) only if a specific person can be held responsible for this deprivation of liberty. Consequently, social factors such as poverty and lack of education can limit people’s choices but cannot make them unfree.
Hayek argues that one’s freedom is coerced only when another agent has deliberately attempted to change his course of action. He gives various examples to demonstrate that one cannot coerce another’s freedom unintentionally. Even when a person knows that his behaviour will ‘harm another person and will lead him to change his intentions … a person who has borrowed from the library the book I want, or even a person who drives me away by the unpleasant noises he produces cannot properly be said to coerce me. Coercion implies both the threat of inflicting harm and the intention thereby to bring about a certain conduct’.7
Violence and coercion are the basic ways in which one can harm others intentionally. Although the threat of violence is the most important form of coercion, coercion and violence should not be confused.8 Whereas violence makes one’s body ‘the physical tool’ of another, coercion makes his mind the tool of another person. Violence operates by violating one’s mastery over his body, by transforming him from a subject into an object, and thereby leaving him with no real choice. For example, a person whose ‘finger has been pressed against the trigger of a gun’ has not even acted because he is not the subject of this action; it is something that is done to him rather than something that he does.9 On the other hand, a person who has been blackmailed is subject to a threat of violence. This is an example of coercion without violence since he may still choose to disregard the threat. For Hayek, ‘coercion, violence, fraud and deception’ are the ways in which freedom can be constrained.10
Coercion cannot eliminate choice because the coerced person’s action is not totally determined by an external agent; it involves the manipulation of one’s alternatives to make him act in a certain way. The coerced person submits to a threat in order to avoid or minimize pain. But in the final analysis, it is the agent who decides whether the intervention constitutes a case of coercion or not. In Hayek’s words, ‘Although coerced, it is still I who decide which is the least evil under the circumstances’.11 This raises the issue whether unsuccessful threats can constrain freedom, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
For Hayek, one’s decision on how to interpret the coercive threat depends on two factors: his ‘strength of will’ and his subjective evaluation of what he would lose by submitting to the will of another, which involves a cost-benefit analysis. In Hayek’s words, ‘the same conditions which to some constitute coercion will be to others merely ordinary difficulties which have to be overcome, depending on the strength of the will of people involved’. An act is coercive only when the agent thinks he is thereby deprived of something that is ‘crucial to his existence or the preservation of what he most values’.12
When the criterion of coercion is taken as being deprived of something one considers to be important, it follows that if somebody restrains another from doing an action that he never wished to do anyway, then he is not coerced.13 It is worth noting that this subjective criterion of coercion is not widely accepted among the defenders of negative freedom in so far as they try to distinguish the meaning of freedom from the subjective value of this freedom for a specific person.14 Elsewhere, Hayek seems to leave aside this subjectivist account by claiming ‘since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom’.15
The above discussion reveals that Hayek has two subjective criteria of freedom: not intending to constrain another’s action, and not feeling a significant loss because of the interference. The latter condition can also be expressed as not being in a ‘worse off’ position when compared with the initial condition before the interference. The former is linked with the point of view of the coercer, whereas the latter describes freedom from the viewpoint of the coerced person. Hayek also puts forward an objective criterion of freedom (the legitimacy of the intervention with respect to laws) that we will consider in the next section.
If coercion cannot abolish choice, then in which respect does it harm a person? Coercion deprives a person of the possibility of acting according to his present intentions, by forcing him to modify his intentions. Although his course of action is still of his own choice, the coerced person cannot use his capacities and knowledge for his own aims. Only a free person can ‘effectively use’ his capacities and knowledge in the pursuit of his aims. This effective self-direction requires ‘that he be able to foresee some of the conditions of his environment and adhere to a plan of action’.16 In short, coercion harms the individual by impairing his total sovereignty in his private sphere. Coercion on personal freedom also has negative affects on the general welfare. Hayek expresses this as follows:
Coercion thus is bad because it prevents a person from using his mental powers to the full and consequently from making the greatest contribution that he is capable of to the community. Though the coerced will still do the best he can do for himself at any given moment, the only comprehensive design that his actions fit into is that of another mind.17
Kley challenges Hayek’s point by noting that less coercion is not always more beneficial to the society. For example, tax on environmental pollution is coercive but it is beneficial as compared to a ‘less coercive regime of rules’.18
Hayek wants to argue that all coercion is bad, even when its consequences are ultimately beneficial to the coerced person, or when it improves the social welfare. This is based on his portrayal of any society as a ‘spontaneous formation and on his epistemological scepticism, which we will briefly consider now. For him, rules that we cannot articulate govern social life. ‘Constitutive traditions of social life’ which are in constant evolution, can neither be grasped nor be criticised; they should be accepted as given.19 This ‘necessary or inevitable ignorance … p...

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