Positive liberty - wikipedia Positive liberty Part of a series on Liberalism Schools History of liberalism Contributions to liberal theory Ideas Civil and political rights Cultural liberalism Democracy Liberal democracy Economic liberalism Egalitarianism Free market Free trade Freedom of the press Freedom of religion Freedom of speech Gender equality Harm principle Internationalism Laissez - faire Liberty Market economy Natural and legal rights Negative / positive liberty Open society Permissive society Private property Rule of law Secularism Separation of church and state Social contract Welfare state Variants Anarcho - capitalism Civic nationalism Classical liberalism Conservative liberalism Democratic liberalism Geolibertarianism Green liberalism Liberal feminism Equity feminism Liberal internationalism Liberal socialism Libertarianism Muscular liberalism Neoliberalism Ordoliberalism Radical centrism Radicalism Religious liberalism Christian Islamic Jewish Secular liberalism Social liberalism Technoliberalism People Rifa'a al - Tahtawi Juan Bautista Alberdi Chu Anping Matthew Arnold Raymond Aron Frédéric Bastiat Simone de Beauvoir Jeremy Bentham Isaiah Berlin Eduard Bernstein William Beveridge Norberto Bobbio Ludwig Joseph Brentano John Bright Edmund Burke Thomas Carlyle Anders Chydenius Richard Cobden Marquis de Condorcet Benjamin Constant Benedetto Croce Jean le Rond d'Alembert Ralf Dahrendorf John Dewey Charles Dickens Denis Diderot Zhang Dongsun Ronald Dworkin Ahmed Lutfi el - Sayed Ralph Waldo Emerson Karl - Hermann Flach Milton Friedman John Kenneth Galbraith William Lloyd Garrison José Ortega y Gasset David Lloyd George William Gladstone Friedrich Hayek Auberon Herbert Thomas Hobbes Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse John A. Hobson Qin Hui Wilhelm von Humboldt Piero Gobetti Francisco Luís Gomes John Gray Thomas Hill Green Thomas Jefferson Zef Jubani Immanuel Kant Namık Kemal John Maynard Keynes Will Kymlicka John Locke Salvador de Madariaga James Madison Harriet Martineau Minoo Masani James Mill John Stuart Mill John Milton Ludwig von Mises Donald Barkly Molteno Leo Chiozza Money Charles de Montesquieu José María Luis Mora Dadabhai Naoroji Friedrich Naumann Robert Nozick Bertil Ohlin Thomas Paine Alan Paton Karl Raimund Popper Richard Price Joseph Priestley Guillermo Prieto François Quesnay Ignacio Ramírez Ayn Rand Walther Rathenau John Rawls Joseph Raz David Ricardo Wilhelm Röpke Richard Rorty Carlo Rosselli Murray Rothbard Jean - Jacques Rousseau Jean - Baptiste Say Amartya Sen Li Shenzhi Hu Shih Algernon Sidney Emmanuel Sieyès İbrahim Şinasi Adam Smith Hernando de Soto Herbert Spencer Baruch Spinoza Anne Louise Germaine de Staël William Graham Sumner R.H. Tawney Johan Rudolf Thorbecke Henry David Thoreau Alexis de Tocqueville Antoine Destutt de Tracy Anne Robert Jacques Turgot Voltaire Lester Frank Ward Max Weber Mary Wollstonecraft Tao Xingzhi Gu Zhun Organizations Liberal parties Africa Liberal Network ( ALN ) Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe ( ALDE ) Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party ( ALDEP ) Arab Liberal Federation ( ALF ) Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats ( CALD ) European Democratic Party ( EDP ) European Liberal Youth ( LYMEC ) European Party for Individual Liberty ( EPIL ) International Alliance of Libertarian Parties ( IALP ) International Federation of Liberal Youth ( IFLRY ) Liberal International Liberal Network for Latin America ( RELIAL ) Liberal South East European Network ( LIBSEEN ) Regional variants Europe Latin America Albania Armenia Australia Austria Belgium Bolivia Brazil Bulgaria Canada China Chile Colombia Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech lands Denmark Ecuador Egypt Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Iran Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Mexico Moldova Montenegro Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Senegal Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain South Africa South Korea Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Zimbabwe Related topics Democratic capitalism Democratic education Liberal bias in academia Liberal conservatism Liberal socialism National liberalism Regressive left Liberalism portal Politics portal Positive liberty is the possession of the capacity to act upon one 's free will, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint on one 's actions. A concept of positive liberty may also include freedom from internal constraints. The concepts of structure and agency are central to the concept of positive liberty because in order to be free, a person should be free from inhibitions of the social structure in carrying out their free will. Structurally, classism, sexism, ageism and racism can inhibit a person 's freedom. As positive liberty is primarily concerned with the possession of sociological agency, it is enhanced by the ability of citizens to participate in government and have their voices, interests, and concerns recognized and acted upon. Although Isaiah Berlin 's essay `` Two Concepts of Liberty '' ( 1958 ) is typically acknowledged as the first to explicitly draw the distinction between positive and negative liberty, Frankfurt School psychoanalyst and Marxist humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm drew a similar distinction between negative and positive freedom in The Fear of Freedom ( 1941 ), predating Berlin 's essay by more than a decade. Contents 1 Overview 2 Examples 3 Various thinkers 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading Overview The word liberty can refer to many things, but Isaiah Berlin recognized two main types of liberty. Berlin described a statement such as `` I am slave to no man '' as one of Negative Liberty, that is, freedom from another individual 's direct interference. He contrasted this with a Positive Freedom statement such as `` I am my own master '', which lays claim to a freedom to choose one 's own pursuits in life. Charles Taylor sees Negative Freedom as an `` opportunity - concept '' : one possesses Negative Freedom if one is not enslaved by external forces, and has equal access to a society 's resources ( regardless of how one decides to spend their time ). Positive Freedom, says Taylor, is an `` exercise - concept '' : possessing it might mean that one is not internally constrained ; one must be able to act according to their highest self -- according to reason. Suppose a rich and powerful actor is also a drug addict. This actor may possess a great deal of Negative Liberty, but very little Positive Liberty according to Taylor. By Taylor 's definitions, Positive Freedom entails being in a mature state of decision making, free of internal or external restraints ( e.g. weakness, fear, ignorance, etc. ). Examples In a description of positive liberty from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Put in the simplest terms, one might say that a democratic society is a free society because it is a self - determined society, and that a member of that society is free to the extent that he or she participates in its democratic process. But there are also individualist applications of the concept of positive freedom. For example, it is sometimes said that a government should aim actively to create the conditions necessary for individuals to be self - sufficient or to achieve self - realization. In `` Recovering the Social Contract '', Ron Replogle made a metaphor that is helpful in understanding positive liberty. `` Surely, it is no assault on my dignity as a person if you take my car keys, against my will, when I have had too much to drink. There is nothing paradoxical about making an agreement beforehand providing for paternalistic supervision in circumstances when our competence is open to doubt. '' In this sense, positive liberty is the adherence to a set of rules agreed upon by all parties involved. Should the rules be altered, all parties involved must agree upon the changes. Therefore, positive liberty is a contractarian philosophy. However, Isaiah Berlin opposed any suggestion that paternalism and positive liberty could be equivalent. He stated that positive liberty could only apply when the withdrawal of liberty from an individual was in pursuit of a choice that individual himself / herself made, not a general principle of society or any other person 's opinion. In the case where a person removes a driver 's car keys against their will because they have had too much to drink, this constitutes positive freedom only if the driver has made, of their own free will, an earlier decision not to drive drunk. Thus, by removing the keys, the other person facilitates this decision and ensures that it will be upheld in the face of paradoxical behaviour ( i.e., drinking ) by the driver. For the remover to remove the keys in the absence of such an expressed intent by the driver, because the remover feels that the driver ought not to drive drunk, is paternalism, and not positive freedom by Berlin 's definition. Erich Fromm sees the distinction between the two types of freedom emerging alongside humanity 's evolution away from the instinctual activity that characterizes lower animal forms. This aspect of freedom, he argues, `` is here used not in its positive sense of ' freedom to ' but in its negative sense of ' freedom from ', namely freedom from instinctual determination of his actions. '' For Fromm, freedom from animal instinct implicitly implies that survival now hinges on the necessity of charting one 's own course. He relates this distinction to the biblical story of man 's expulsion from Eden : Acting against God 's orders means freeing himself from coercion, emerging from the unconscious existence of prehuman life to the level of man. Acting against the command of authority, committing a sin, is in its positive human aspect the first act of freedom. (... ) he is free from the bondage of paradise, but he is not free to govern himself, to realize his individuality. Positive freedom, Fromm maintains, comes through the actualization of individuality in balance with the separation from the whole : a `` solidarity with all men '', united not by instinctual or predetermined ties, but on the basis of a freedom founded on reason. Various thinkers Jean - Jacques Rousseau 's theory of freedom, according to which individual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby one 's community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accordance with the ' General Will '. Some interpret the Social Contract to suggest that Rousseau believed that liberty was the power of individual citizens to act in the government to bring about changes ; this is essentially the power for self - governance and democracy. Rousseau himself said, `` the mere impulse to appetite is slavery, while obedience to law we prescribe ourselves is liberty. '' For Rousseau, the passage from the state of nature to the civil state substitutes justice for instinct gives his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. However, this is only one interpretation of Rousseau 's work. This view is not really describing the General Will in terms of its more modern interpretations. Rather, it is describing more the ' Will of All ' ( in Rousseau 's terminology ). The Will of All contrasts to the General Will in that the prior comprises the composite desires and appetites of those who make up society and the latter the reasoned, objective opinions and beliefs of those who see themselves as part of a nation and of a group of men. A law can not be said to be of the General Will unless it is general in its origins and applications. Particular wills can not be homogeneous in the way which the General Will requires. However, this does not mean that Rousseau 's liberty is incompatible with positive liberty. Rather, we have to remove the implication that positive liberty requires collective control over affairs which is derived from the conscious and expressed decisions of men. The task which Rousseau gives ' the Lawgiver ' in the Social Contract is that of deciphering the General Will from the mass of particular wills. If the Lawgiver, whatever form this may take, is able to do so, then the individuals who comprise a society have truly participated ( via their real, reasoned and tempered will ) in the collective control of their own affairs. As the extract above says, government by the Will of All is slavery. Rousseau 's usual solution to how the Lawgiver may be able to do this is cultural homogeneity on the one hand and physically small states on the other. These two themes recur within Rousseau 's works often with the view to homogenising inharmonious particular wills. According to G.F.W. Hegel, `` Freedom is the fundamental character of the will (... ) That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word. '' He also claimed that `` duty is not a restriction on freedom, but only on freedom in the abstract '' and that `` duty is the attainment of our essence, the winning of positive freedom. See also Mutual liberty Negative and positive rights Real freedom Rule according to higher law The Trap ( TV documentary series ) References Jump up ^ Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. 1969. ^ Jump up to : Taylor, C. What 's Wrong with Negative Liberty, 1985. Law and Morality. 3rd ed. Ed. David Dyzenhaus, Sophia Reibetanz Moreau and Arthur Ripstein. Toronto : U of Toronto P, 2008. 359 -- 368. Print. ^ Jump up to : Carter, Ian. `` Positive and Negative Liberty ''. In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jump up ^ Replogle, Ron. Recovering the Social Contract. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ( 1989 ). p. 164. ^ Jump up to : `` Open Learning -- OpenLearn ''. Openlearn.open.ac.uk. Retrieved 2014 - 04 - 28. Jump up ^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom ( London : Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1966 ), p. 26. Jump up ^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, pp. 27 -- 28. Jump up ^ Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, p. 29. Jump up ^ Rousseau as quoted by Replogle, Ron. Recovering the Social Contract. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ( 1989 ), p. 105. Jump up ^ Michael Rosen, Jonathan Wolff, Catriona McKinnon ( eds. ), Political Thought, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 63. Jump up ^ Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Science of Logic ( 1812 ), tr. A.V. Miller ( Humanity Books, 1989 ), p. 146. Jump up ^ George Klosko, History of Political Theory : An Introduction : Volume II : Modern ( 2nd ed. ), Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 465 : `` we should note that Hegel 's realization of the distance between his own and the traditional liberal conception of freedom, which he calls `` abstract freedom, '' is clear in his embrace of positive freedom ( in PR § 149A ) ``. Further reading Machan, Tibor ( 2008 ). `` Positive Liberty ''. In Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA : SAGE ; Cato Institute. pp. 383 -- 85. doi : 10.4135 / 9781412965811. n236. ISBN 978 - 1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. Nicholas Dent, Rousseau, Routledge, 2005. Liberty Concepts Positive liberty Negative liberty Cognitive liberty Social liberty Rights Free will Moral responsibility Goddess of Liberty By type Academic Civil Economic Intellectual Morphological Political By right Assembly Association Choice Education Information Movement Press Religion Public speech Thought Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Positive_liberty&oldid=830795284 '' Categories : Political concepts Social concepts Free will Rights Human rights concepts Hidden categories : All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from August 2008 Articles with unsourced statements from August 2010 Talk Variants Contents About Wikipedia Беларуская Català Español עברית Polski Português Русский Tagalog Українська 中文 4 more Edit links This page was last edited on 17 March 2018, at 00 : 09. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: who has given the concept of positive liberty
Answer: Marxist humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm