Announcement

Collapse

Civics 101 Guidelines

Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!

Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less

Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty, and Government

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #31
    Two more possible arguments for negative liberty:

    Negative liberty is the more fundamental morality. I have heard a quote (particularly from Catholics, though I don't know the quote's source) that charity is more (goes beyond) justice, but is not less than justice. Thus you cannot be charitable without first being just (e.g., refraining from murder, violence, slavery, theft). In other words respecting rightful negative liberty is a prerequisite. It must be established first, and we may not violate it when proceeding on to higher morality like charity.

    The second is similar:
    Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty. Gifting means to someone is pointless if it is going to be immediately stolen from them, or if they are enslaved or murdered.

    Now Starlight is trying to make the opposite argument, that negative liberty is pointless if you don't have any means. But we are really talking about the enforcement of positive liberty so what Starlight would need to argue is that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means. Which is not true. A Robinson Crusoe has negative liberty, and from a state of poverty can produce and accumulate means, thus increasing his positive liberty, without others providing it. In (negative-)free countries, there is a great deal of upward mobility, including among people starting with nothing. And a country having more negative liberty correlates with less poverty and greater upward mobility among the poor.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by Joel View Post
      Negative liberty is the more fundamental morality.


      Thus you cannot be charitable without first being just (e.g., refraining from murder, violence, slavery, theft).
      I guess you could say there is a sort of moral continuum that people tend to sit on from "actively harming others" through to "positively helping others". People tend to graduate from being anti-social to being neutral and then to being charitable. Though in reality, a lot of people regularly mix in their lives both charitable generosity and some anti-social behaviors too.

      It must be established first, and we may not violate it when proceeding on to higher morality like charity.
      You've asserted that, but not even provided an argument for it, other than "I think some Catholic guy might have said something vaguely like it". It seems fairly obviously untrue, as people are complex beings who mix a lot of different behaviors in their lives, and are regularly nice to some people and nasty to others at different times.

      Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty. Gifting means to someone is pointless if it is going to be immediately stolen from them, or if they are enslaved or murdered.
      Um, I don't think anyone lives in a world where the crime rate is 100% and where all things are immediately stolen. In the real world, gifting things to someone is worthwhile, and the chances of it being stolen from them are minuscule but non-zero.

      But we are really talking about the enforcement of positive liberty so what Starlight would need to argue is that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means.
      Some people having a lack of "means" equates to observing that resources are unevenly distributed in society to the point where some people have so few resources that their choices are being severely curtailed, because some resources are necessary for survival, and additional resources are needed to make meaningful life choices and enjoy the freedoms of life. The worst of this sort of situation would be an extreme feudalistic type society where one person had monopolized for himself the resources, and everyone else was at a starvation-level lacking even basic resources for survival. To prevent that worst type of society that minimizes freedom, any social system will inherently need to ensure that adequate resource distribution occurs and that there are limitations to how much selfish individuals can monopolize resources.

      A Robinson Crusoe has negative liberty, and from a state of poverty can produce and accumulate means, thus increasing his positive liberty, without others providing it.
      Robinson Crusoe had a wide variety of resources available to him: Land to live on, food to catch, wood to build shelter. A person who had control over so many resources would be a multi-millionaire by modern standards. If your point is "wouldn't it be great if we were all multi-millionaires and could use our resources however we liked", then yes it would, but that's not realistic. A modern very poor person living in a city does not posses any of those resources - they don't have land, they can't go hunting or fishing to catch food, and they can't simply cut down trees and build a shelter - likely they have zero assets and are in debt. They can't behave like Robinson Crusoe and use the abundant natural resources around them for their own purposes.

      And a country having more negative liberty correlates with less poverty and greater upward mobility among the poor.
      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        I guess you could say there is a sort of moral continuum that people tend to sit on from "actively harming others" through to "positively helping others". People tend to graduate from being anti-social to being neutral and then to being charitable. Though in reality, a lot of people regularly mix in their lives both charitable generosity and some anti-social behaviors too.

        You've asserted that, but not even provided an argument for it, other than "I think some Catholic guy might have said something vaguely like it". It seems fairly obviously untrue, as people are complex beings who mix a lot of different behaviors in their lives, and are regularly nice to some people and nasty to others at different times.
        No I mean that for any given action, it cannot be charitable unless it is just. E.g. an action cannot be regarded as charitable (i.e. loving) if it involves murdering. Respecting negative liberty is a moral prerequisite (for any given action), thus has moral priority.

        Originally posted by Joel
        Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty. Gifting means to someone is pointless if it is going to be immediately stolen from them, or if they are enslaved or murdered.
        Um, I don't think anyone lives in a world where the crime rate is 100% and where all things are immediately stolen. In the real world, gifting things to someone is worthwhile, and the chances of it being stolen from them are minuscule but non-zero.
        In other words, it is worthwhile because they have a good deal of negative liberty. My statement still stands: Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty.

        Originally posted by Joel
        what Starlight would need to argue is that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means. Which is not true.
        Some people having a lack of "means" equates to observing that resources are unevenly distributed in society to the point where some people have so few resources that their choices are being severely curtailed, because some resources are necessary for survival, and additional resources are needed to make meaningful life choices and enjoy the freedoms of life. The worst of this sort of situation would be an extreme feudalistic type society where one person had monopolized for himself the resources, and everyone else was at a starvation-level lacking even basic resources for survival. To prevent that worst type of society that minimizes freedom, any social system will inherently need to ensure that adequate resource distribution occurs and that there are limitations to how much selfish individuals can monopolize resources.
        None of this shows "that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means." There are so many fallacies in what you've written here, but it's not worth addressing all of them because they aren't on point. A single counterexample is sufficient to disprove the thesis. A single person who worked their way up from nothing. Or a single example of someone helped by voluntary giving. or by voluntary exchange and cooperation with others.

        And feudalism doesn't help you because it lacked both negative and positive liberty. Feudalism was imposed and maintained by curtailing negative liberty. Feudalism was ended by the Enlightenment embracing of negative liberty (they called it "liberalism" at the time).

        Originally posted by Joel
        A Robinson Crusoe has negative liberty, and from a state of poverty can produce and accumulate means, thus increasing his positive liberty, without others providing it.
        Robinson Crusoe had a wide variety of resources available to him: Land to live on, food to catch, wood to build shelter. A person who had control over so many resources would be a multi-millionaire by modern standards.
        Ignoring your exaggeration, you say that he had more than zero resources. But of course the point is that nobody was forced to provide him with them. It's still not the case that "negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means."

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by Joel View Post
          My statement still stands: Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty.
          Well I don't think you've defended that idea very well, and I think you're getting it exactly backward. I think that positive liberty is a practical prerequisite for negative liberty. Having freedom to not have others interfere with your choices (negative liberty) is only worthwhile if you have meaningful choices that are worth making (positive liberty). A serious problem in the world is poverty, where people lack resources to make meaningful choices in their lives, so all the negative liberty in the world (absolutely nobody interfering with them) is worthless to them if they don't have food to eat. For this reason, most people see there as been a need for a state to oversee the resource distribution to some extent to ensure people have enough resources to survive and make meaningful choices in their lives.

          E.g. an action cannot be regarded as charitable (i.e. loving) if it involves murdering.
          A lot of people would say that defending a group of children from a serial killer about to attack them, by murdering the person, might well be charitable/loving. Likewise a lot of people think soldiers in wars can fight and kill because they love their country and family. I'm personally inclined to agree with you and say an action that comprises parts that harm others and parts than help others cannot be classified unambiguously as "good", but rather exists in a moral gray area. We might describe such an action as "not a particularly good option, but less bad than the available alternatives" for example.

          Respecting negative liberty is a moral prerequisite (for any given action), thus has moral priority.
          No. You're using ridiculously black and white thinking here.

          None of this shows "that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means." ...A single counterexample is sufficient to disprove the thesis. A single person who worked their way up from nothing.
          Observing that many people who lack resources likewise lack meaningful choices, is not disproved by a single counterexample at all. It shows the bankruptcy of the libertarian system that it fails so abysmally when dealing with poor people.

          And feudalism doesn't help you because it lacked both negative and positive liberty.
          Precisely. A feudalistic society is not a good outcome, even by libertarian measures, yet it seems pretty straightforward that the political system proposed by libertarians would collapse into feudalism because it fails to provide any force capable of regulating the consolidation of power among selfish individuals who are willing to use force to achieve their goals. In Afghanistan and parts of Africa, warlords control substantial territory in a feudalistic-style system... why? Because the central governments in those countries are not powerful enough to prevent them doing so, so there is no check on powerful and rich individuals increasing their power and wealth by employing military forces to help them control territory.
          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
            Originally posted by Joel
            Negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty.
            Well I don't think you've defended that idea very well, and I think you're getting it exactly backward. I think that positive liberty is a practical prerequisite for negative liberty.
            In the sense that no human action is possible without its means, then sure. But that doesn't negate the fact that if you are forcibly prevented by others from doing the action, then it's still not possible. At most you could argue that they are both necessary for human action.

            But when we are talking, more specifically, about state force, enforcing both (regarding any particular) cannot be necessary because it is impossible, because they conflict. So we have to choose one or the other. Enforcing negative liberty is a practical prerequisite for positive liberty. But enforcing positive liberty is not. It is possible to have/acquire positive liberty without positive-liberty force, but it's not possible to act when you are forcibly prevented, without effective counter-force.

            Originally posted by Joel
            No I mean that for any given action, it cannot be charitable unless it is just. E.g. an action cannot be regarded as charitable (i.e. loving) if it involves murdering.
            A lot of people would say that defending a group of children from a serial killer about to attack them, by murdering the person, might well be charitable/loving.
            Murder is unjust killing. In the case where killing the attacker is (unfortunately) necessary to save the children, then the killing is just. This is in fact an example of defending/enforcing rightful negative liberty.

            So again in this case we have the moral priority of negative liberty.

            No. You're using ridiculously black and white thinking here.
            That's not an argument.

            Observing that many people who lack resources likewise lack meaningful choices, is not disproved by a single counterexample at all.
            Correct, but that's not what I was disproving. Rather, your observing many cases of something does not show that something to be necessary. A single counter-example shows that it isn't necessary.
            And examples of people lacking resources does nothing to show "that negative liberty is pointless if others aren't forced to provide you with means."

            It shows the bankruptcy of the libertarian system that it fails so abysmally when dealing with poor people.
            No, observation of cases in the existing system could only show the bankruptcy of the existing non-libertarian system.

            Precisely. A feudalistic society is not a good outcome, even by libertarian measures, yet it seems pretty straightforward that the political system proposed by libertarians would collapse into feudalism because it fails to provide any force capable of regulating the consolidation of power among selfish individuals who are willing to use force to achieve their goals.
            I disagree. But it's off topic for the thread. Regarding negative/positive liberty, the conditions of feudalism are caused by lack of negative liberty and were ended by embracing negative liberty.

            Comment


            • #36
              Wow, I thought "positive liberty" was absolutely incoherent before this thread. Now I think it times ten million.

              Rights. They don't work that way.

              Great job Joel.
              The State. Ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

              sigpic

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Jaecp View Post
                @OP

                Is there a positive liberty that cannot be rephrased as a negative liberty or vice versa, I wonder?
                Seems to me that they are equivalent

                Positive liberty to do action X = not prevented from doing X by other people, and vice versa!
                Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by demi-conservative View Post
                  Seems to me that they are equivalent

                  Positive liberty to do action X = not prevented from doing X by other people, and vice versa!
                  [/quote]
                  I think you are not understanding the distinction being made. In your example, both sides of the equation are negative liberty.

                  Positive liberty is having the physical means to do something.
                  Negative liberty is not being forcibly prevented from doing it by others.

                  To 'enforce' positive liberty means to force someone else to produce and provide you with means.
                  To enforce negative liberty means to stop someone from physically interfering with you.

                  As people have pointed out in this thread, you can have negative liberty without means (e.g. if no one would use force to stop you from building a table, but you don't currently have the tools or lumber).
                  And you can have positive liberty without negative liberty (you have the tools and lumber but someone is forcibly preventing you from building a table).


                  Hmm, what's another word for using force and threats to make someone else produce and provide you with means?

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Nailed it Joel.
                    The State. Ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

                    sigpic

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Joel View Post
                      To 'enforce' positive liberty means to force someone else to produce and provide you with means.
                      To enforce negative liberty means to stop someone from physically interfering with you.
                      Eh? Positive liberty isn't necessarily about forcing others to produce - that seems a very twisted definition for you to provide - it could simply mean that people aren't prohibited from accessing the resources that exist in the world.

                      How does the libertarian obsession with 'property rights' interact with these two types of freedoms? 'Property rights' by definition are about stopping people (presumably through force) using resources that are not deemed by societal constructs to be 'owned' by them despite their physical ability to use and access those resources. Force would be being used to enforce complex social constructs regarding 'ownership' of 'property' and complex legal definitions about what is 'property' and who 'owns' it and why and the ways in which such ownership can be transferred, shared, delegated, challenged, questioned etc. It is of course possible to defend the concept of property ownership on utilitarian grounds - it could be argued that the type of society where property rights exist tends to have more positive and/or negative liberty than the types of society in which it does not. But the 'enforcement' of socially constructed 'property rights' appears self-contradictory with a philosophy that insists on the all-importance of the idea of negative liberty. It would seem you can either have negative liberty, or enforcement of property rights, but not both.
                      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Joel View Post
                        I think you are not understanding the distinction being made. In your example, both sides of the equation are negative liberty.
                        LHS is positive liberty. RHS is negative liberty; point is that they are same.

                        Positive liberty is having the physical means to do something.


                        What do 'physical means' have to do with anything??

                        So I looked again at post #1 to post I replied to (#5). Nothing about physical means
                        Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by demi-conservative View Post
                          LHS is positive liberty. RHS is negative liberty; point is that they are same.





                          What do 'physical means' have to do with anything??

                          So I looked again at post #1 to post I replied to (#5). Nothing about physical means
                          Yes, the definition in those first posts aren't very clear. It goes back to the history of where the terms came from and what the debate was. Classical liberals were arguing for negative liberty (i.e., others not using force to interfere). The only reason people criticized negative liberty was that it results in a government that is too limited in their opinion. They wanted the government to do more than enforce freedom from coercion from others; they wanted the state to provide people with means. Thus the distinction that "positive liberty" is the possession of capacity/means to act, while "negative liberty" is freedom from external restraint imposed by others.

                          This follows also from the definition in the OP, but it is less clear. It (from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) says,

                          "Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense.

                          "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes."

                          Negative liberty alone is not sufficient for the possibility of acting. Means are also required. Thus positive liberty requires means. Greater positive liberty means greater means.

                          Now it can appear to get confused if we note that violating negative liberty also appears to violate positive liberty (e.g. theft violates negative liberty and also deprives you of your means. Forcibly preventing you from acting removes your possibility of acting.). I think that's what you are trying to get at in your equation. But this doesn't mean the two concepts are equivalent. Rather it only means that negative liberty is a prerequisite to positive liberty. And that is the basis of one of the arguments I gave for enforcement of negative liberty.

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            Eh? Positive liberty isn't necessarily about forcing others to produce
                            You are right. I should have said "or" instead of "and". It can be about forcing others to produce, if you say everyone has a right to something, then it would follow that it is okay to force (some) people to produce it.

                            How does the libertarian obsession with 'property rights' interact with these two types of freedoms? 'Property rights' by definition are about stopping people (presumably through force) using resources that are not deemed by societal constructs to be 'owned' by them despite their physical ability to use and access those resources. Force would be being used to enforce complex social constructs regarding 'ownership' of 'property' and complex legal definitions about what is 'property' and who 'owns' it and why and the ways in which such ownership can be transferred, shared, delegated, challenged, questioned etc.
                            Yeah, that's an example of enforcing negative liberty. (I have some quibbles. I base it on natural law and not "societal constructs".)

                            It is of course possible to defend the concept of property ownership on utilitarian grounds
                            Yep. (In my position that is because the natural law is also expedient.)

                            But the 'enforcement' of socially constructed 'property rights' appears self-contradictory with a philosophy that insists on the all-importance of the idea of negative liberty. It would seem you can either have negative liberty, or enforcement of property rights, but not both.
                            In my position it is not socially constructed. Government is formed to protect already-existing rights. It cannot create them.
                            Enforcement of property rights is an example of enforcing negative liberty. It is preventing people from depriving someone of the use of what is rightfully his/hers. Thus it is preventing people from depriving others of their rightful negative liberty.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Joel View Post

                              "Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense.

                              "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes."

                              Negative liberty alone is not sufficient for the possibility of acting. Means are also required. Thus positive liberty requires means. Greater positive liberty means greater means.
                              Seems like pointless splitting hairs since common obstacle/barrier/constraints to doing anything is lack of means!!
                              Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by demi-conservative View Post
                                Seems like pointless splitting hairs since common obstacle/barrier/constraints to doing anything is lack of means!!
                                It's not pointless hair-splitting because the implications in practice are huge: the difference between a limited government that prevents people from injuring one another, or an unlimited state that claims to "take care of us" from cradle to grave (the claim of the latter really means some people being forced to provide potentially unlimited goods/services to other people.).

                                Personally I would say "positive liberty" is not liberty. Liberty is freedom, thus freedom from something. Thus it is inherently a negative concept. "Positive liberty" seems to be a contradiction. And what proponents of "positive liberty" really want is to force people to provide goods/services to other people, which is really the opposite of liberty. It is more akin to slavery than to liberty.

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by little_monkey, Yesterday, 04:19 PM
                                16 responses
                                126 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post One Bad Pig  
                                Started by whag, 03-26-2024, 04:38 PM
                                53 responses
                                326 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Mountain Man  
                                Started by rogue06, 03-26-2024, 11:45 AM
                                25 responses
                                111 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post rogue06
                                by rogue06
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 09:21 AM
                                33 responses
                                196 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Roy
                                by Roy
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 08:34 AM
                                84 responses
                                360 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post JimL
                                by JimL
                                 
                                Working...
                                X