Martin van Hees: "Negative and Positive Freedom: A Re-assessment"

Martin van Hees, University of Amsterdam: "Negative and positive freedom: A re-assessment"

Abstract
This paper argues for the meaningfulness of the distinction between negative and positive freedom. A conception of positive freedom is thereby understood as any account that takes the ability and opportunity to x to be necessary for being free to x. With negative freedom, in contrast, an inability to x need not entail the unfreedom to x. It is argued that the distinction drawn thus is closer to the way in which it is currently used in public discourse than Berlin’s original understanding of it. In particular, it better brings out the different political implications of emphasizing negative or positive freedom. However, in this interpretation of the distinction some so-called trivalent accounts of freedom can be mixed: they describe forms of freedom that are both negative and positive. To bring out the political implications of such mixed conceptions, the negative–positive distinction is also applied to the measurement of a person’s overall freedom. Whether a mixed trivalent account of freedom will emphasize the absence of particular constraints (negative freedom) or the importance of having abilities (positive freedom) then depends on the negative or positive nature of one’s preferred measurement of freedom.