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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Clarifying Freedom

J.H.M.M. Loenen

• State University of Leyden, Holland

“The Concept of Freedom in Berlin and Others: An Attempt at Clarification.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 10 (Winter 1976): 279–285.

We need to clarify the ambiguous and nettlesome concept of freedom in social and political philosophy.

In particular, we need to criticize the traditional distinction between positive and negative freedom found in the works of Isaiah Berlin, Maurice Cranston, H.J. McCloskey, Erich Fromm, and John Rawls.

Loenen argues that there are indeed two concepts of freedom but that the traditional terminology of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ freedom is infelicitous and even misleading. Moreover, the traditional terminology is unhelpful in treating substantive issues such as the value, justification, and the proper scope of freedom. A more helpful distinction would be freedom as “not being interfered with from without” from freedom as “not being determined from without.”

Particularly misleading is Isaiah Berlin's use of the traditional terminology. Berlin's view that ‘positive’ freedom means “being one's own master” (and, through ambiguity, this becomes “being master of oneself”) plagues the concept of positive freedom with a perplexing and perhaps indefensible distinction between two ‘selves’.

Another flaw in the traditional terminology is that ‘negative’ freedom as ‘the absence of restraints’ conjures up for some the image of a free person inactive or passive. This ambiguity thereby leads some to overlook the important ‘positive aspect’ of ‘negative’ freedom: its connection with activity and choice, that is, with freedom to do things.

Following Hayek and others, Loenen defines the central question for substantive social and political philosophy as not whether the individual is interfered with in some ‘absolute’ sense, but whether he is to live in a free society, one that assures him of some “inviolable ‘area’” of choice and action. If the author is correct, traditional definitions of ‘negative’ freedom will be of little use in this debate.

Loenen further argues that freedom as noninterference has intrinsic value, but he judges that this value is fully revealed only by the specifications of freedom (e.g., freedom of the press). A succinct, accurate, and felicitous terminology for distinctions among kinds of freedom remains to be devised.