This gets to a long discussion in the history of philosophy, from Aristotle to Rand. The basic elements are tri-fold: 1. There are certain things that we may be free to do, but will have natural or environmental consequences- such as if we go out in a storm without a jacket, we will get wet. We have the 'freedom' to ignore the rain, but the rain has no concern for our freedom. If we cut down all of the trees and burn them for fuel, then we will have to live with the cold after our last piece of wood is gone, or we must find another source of fuel. We have the freedom to cut down the forest- but there is a consequence that pays no attention to our will. 2. Certain things will have a personal consequence. Again, these are based on natural facts, irrespective of our will or freedom: If I do not choose to eat, having the freedom to do so, I will probably starve to death. If I am free to travel the world, I must be willing to accept that I may have to eat food I'm not familiar with that might make me ill. 3. Certain things have a negative social consequence: Although I may have 'freedom' to tell someone that I love them, or that they are an idiot, I will have to accept that the person I say those things to will react, and that they will probably have to capacity to motivate others to react with them. I must, therefore acknowledge that any sort of 'freedom' comes with attached consequences-- and that realization is at the heart of developing a sense of responsibility in linkage with my sense of freedom. I learned this early, as a Boy Scout. The lack of many people to get such training early, I think, is one of the reasons for people 'abusing' their rights-- they have not been taught the consequences, and particularly that such consequences are our own making, in the use of our freedoms.

The answer depends on which political philosophy and, as such, conceptions of freedom you prescribe to. Plato and Hobbes, for example, thought that extensive or absolutist rule over society was compatible with their definition of freedom because in their view it would prevent society from descending into violence or chaos, which they considered more detrimental to freedom than a powerful state. Others, such as the 6th-century BCE Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu and the 16th-century Spanish scholastics, expressed and developed ideas consistent with the view of the father of modern political philosophy, John Locke, that freedom implies that an individual not “be subject to the arbitrary Will of another, but freely follow his own.” The latter tradition has in the past several hundred years shaped the modern, liberal world. In it, freedom is a social concept that recognizes the dignity of individuals and is defined by the absence of coercive constraint. That contrasts with a mechanistic concept whereby anything that limits a person’s ability to do what she wants—be it a natural, physical barrier or another person who happens to be standing in her way—is considered an infringement on her freedom. Freedom thus implies that individuals have the right to lead their lives as they wish as long as they respect the equal rights of others.

Well Tanja, that's a very neat listing of some of the big fish. Thank you. But I rather thought Plato recommended an all-powerful state committed to truth? Hobbes recommended an all-powerful state that provided individual self-governance? That Locke's conception of freedom must allow me to choose to waste my time? And I really think Hobbes is the origin of "political liberalism" and Locke the originator of "moral liberalism"!

You think and write well. I'd be very happy if you'd read my chapter "The Rights of Men: Political Weapons or Universal Principles." It's available on my "contributions" page. If you could let me know what you think of it, so much the better.

Many thanks

Christopher NOCK

Whenever we see entities that seek to constrain freedoms, we need to ask "What is the fear that they have about this?" During Europe's age of religious wars, they actually believed that what we now see as small distinctions of faith could either save you or send you to Hell; to them, religious freedom was thus, an extreme threat. Freedom as thus socially constrained is beyond the individual-- it is a matter of survival of the mindset of the managers of the status quo. Unless and until another mindset comes to the fore, the very concepts of what is 'allowable freedom' is going to serve the existing system.

Perhaps that's true Thomas. But if you look at the origins of (political) liberalism they lie in a civil war, largely prompted by religious sectarianism. (The English civil war). Before that, the ruling power sought to crush opposing opinion. But now realized that this caused serious conflict. So accommodating the opposition now became important. Interestingly, even John Rawls saw this in his Political Liberalism. Which I always found quite shocking!

NOCK

I'm sorry but I've just seen Thomas' first answer! Similar comments to those offered Tania....

NOCK

I can only remember Jonathan Wolff's discussion of H.L.A. Hart's argument regarding how responsibility inevitably accompanies freedom.

When asking this question are unfreedom and freedom; responsibility and irresponsibility viewed only from philosophical point of view or political economy point of view? Real world is more complex than its abstracted reflection.

Well, that's an interesting question Anil. I like to think I can combine the two. I believe, for example, that my public behaviour should always display responsibility. I should (choose to) behave "correctly" which means treating others as my (political) equals--provided they deserve it. That's both theoretical and practical. In private, I'd much prefer to do what I damn well want--provided I don't harm anyone, or violate their rights. Again, I see both elements here as well.

NOCK

Dear Christopher,

It is certain that the question of freedom lies at the centre of any meaningful political, economic and social debate in today's world.

I think Isaiah Berlin's work on freedom provides a solid theoretical and conceptual framework for making sense of the intersection (or lack of) between freedom and responsibility. For Berlin, we are all innately split between two distinct selves, what he calls a 'higher self' and a 'lower self'. The 'higher self' is characterized by being rational, reflective and having a strong sense of morality and responsibility (all while exercising freedom). On the other hand, the 'lower self' is rather driven by irrational impulses and desires (also a free subject as such).

This then derives in Berlin's conceptualization of a 'negative' and a 'positive' freedom--where negative freedom implies a desire and a will to be free from all external intervention (e.g., making decisions that the individual may deem convenient yet not necessarily based on a rational decision making process). Positive freedom, in contrast, implies that freedom goes beyond individual freedom ( that is, interests of the individual=interests of the whole/society) and precisely because others' decisions may be influenced by their 'lower selves' then there is the need to 'intervene' or 'coerce' these others' into making rational decisions that benefit us all. This is where I think Berlin's duality of freedom can be helpful in making sense of the relation between freedom and responsibility.

Thanks for that. It's an interesting account of Berlin, and ups my respect for him! I find a similar story in Hobbes, believe it or not! Our public beliefs must accord with liberal principles, or be punished. Private beliefs could be anything providing they don't lead us to violate the rights of others.

NOCK

Yes, it’s not a bad way to think of freedom: two concepts, negative and positive, also called freedom-from and freedom-to. The two concepts have been around since the late eighteenth century. Kant, Schiller and Bentham recognised them. Berlin’s “Two concepts of liberty” (1958) became a benchmark discussion.

The literature is enormous, with endless subtleties but it’s not as complicated as it seems. Freedom-from (negative freedom) means being free from interference. Freedom-to (positive freedom) means community help to transcend limitations. A lion would be happy with freedom-from; a lamb would need some freedom-to in order to be as free as a lion. In human terms, freedom-from: people should be left alone, and freedom-to: people should be assisted to be free. This is not only an academic debate; it is an ever-present tension. What child has not wished its parent would stop interfering? What parents do not try to advance their children’s interests?

The two concepts are a major division between the free market right and the left. If people are to be helped to be free then the government has a role which is to say the left will appeal to the conservative (Burkean) right to act to help free people. The free market right will then complain that the government should defend the country and run the law courts and otherwise leave people free to make their own lives.

Locke, who was well in the negative camp, wrote the instruction manual for the US so the USA became very individualist.

Berlin’s treatment is (a) prolix, (b) unnecessarily complicated, (c) unclear re the positive (he mixes in the Burkeans), and (c) biased to negative freedom.

His personal freedom-from bias had him fall victim to the human tendency to dichotomise. You can see why he mixes the conservatives with the left but the conservatives have their own idea of freedom: order. They run the whole world and without order, they say, nobody can be free. Berlin entirely missed this kind of freedom. You wouldn’t expect him to recognise it even if it were pointed out (as, for example, Metternich did).

Berlin devotes about three pages to yet another kind of freedom—that of withdrawal. He says:

“This is the traditional self-emancipation of ascetics and quietists, of stoics or Buddhist sages, men of various religions or of none, who have fled the world, and escaped the yoke of society or public opinion, by some process of deliberate self-transformation that enables them to care no longer for any of its values, to remain, isolated and independent, on its edges, no longer vulnerable to its weapons.”

Traditionally this is the guru in the cave on the mountain but there are plenty of these “quietists” about: mostly older men no longer subject to the socialising influences of women, work and war who live mostly alone and who study or go fishing. But Berlin decides this is not real freedom.

In sum, four kinds of freedom: free market negative, left positive, conservative order, and withdrawal.

Well, to be honest, I rather wish my parents had interfered more, and did seem to promote my interests! They just didn't know how to do either positively!

I'm not sure where lists of different accounts get us, either generally or in terms of the question. Do you personally have a view you might share? Mine comes from Hobbes, properly understood. Alejandra seems drawn to Berlin, for sensible reasons. Any other offers?

NOCK

There are ten thousand essays claiming to understand Hobbes properly. The virtue of listing the types of freedom is to allow analysis of how to be free. But you are right, Christopher, to pull me up. I guess I was assuming my opinion would be implicit. I will be explicit.

In my opinion, for us to be free, no one’s opinion should prevail. Not Hobbes, not Locke, not Rousseau, not Burke, not Metternich, not Berlin, not you, not me—no one.

The guru in the cave on the mountain stares down at the rat race, wondering where everyone is going so fast. Yet he knows his kind of freedom can’t prevail for if it did, there would be no one to generate the economic surplus he affects to be independent of.

The ship of state steams on. Holding the wheel is the conservative. Concerned for order, he peers about looking for danger but he might not be looking to the front so he probably won’t recognise it. Ah, for the glory days back when there was respect for those who knew what they were doing! Hierarchical, rule-bound, resistant to change, he doesn’t waffle about freedom for he knows no one will be free if the ship sinks. His minions service the engines and man the pumps, continuing to do what has so far kept the ship afloat and on course.

On course to where? The negative freedom advocates tell of rich fishing grounds to the right. They try to wrench the wheel, promising fabulous wealth if only the rules and taxes and all the doomsayers would just get out of the way.

Desperately, the advocates of positive freedom point out the icebergs and shoals. They beg to steer left to rescue the castaways and to avoid catastrophe.

So—four freedoms, inclined, respectively, to the eternal, the past, the present, and the future. Of course no one’s opinion should prevail. Of course! How to ensure it? Simple: free discussion case-by-case, and policy decisions by agreement.

Okay, that's fine. My concern is to be as correct as possible on freedom, not right on Hobbes. There are, indeed, millions of pages of rubbish on Hobbes and on freedom. I value mine for being the most correct I know. I'm also open to hearing fair and reasonable criticism which helps me improve things. On a different question page, I asked you to read my chapter "The rights of men." You chose not to, which is fine. But, by not doing so, you forfeit any right to comment on my work, it's quality and value. So, please keep your comments to yourself.

Perhaps academic discussion is not for you? You don't understand its purpose. You don't engage in it well. You behave like poor quality PhD student who reads everything and understands nothing. If you had a moment's real understanding you'd know the value of wrongness on the path to rightness. You'd know the most correct versions we have of the things that matter. And I wouldn't have to waste my time on this!

Christopher NOCK

Checking my records suggests I may NOT have asked Mike Pepperday previously to read my chapter on rights. If I did not, I apologize unreservedly to him.

Still, I do think his general approach dismissive. It amounts to saying there's an awful lot of rubbish out there, and little reason to think yours is any better. In my view, it adds nothing to the debate at hand. It's an approach that I do consider generates forfeiture to comment on my work, and probably everybody elses--but that's for them to decide.

I stand by the comments in the second paragraph of my previous answer.

Christopher NOCK

Hmmm. Argumentum ad hominem is not legitimate. I am sorry, Christopher, to have offended you by not reading your article. No offence was intended. My observation was quite mundane. You say I was dismissive. No no. You are the one saying, “millions of pages of rubbish.”

This is a legitimate forum for you to promote your writing. I suppose this was the purpose of your starting the discussion. But given the mass of literature on Hobbes, promotion of an article would need more than just a link or reference. That is not being dismissive. It is just saying life is short and reasonable people would need grounds to read yet another interpretation of Hobbes.

It is also legitimate, indeed normal, for discussion to proceed without needing to do extra reading. I take it you think I over-simplified but you don’t back that up with any example or evidence it has led me into error.

Hobbes is touchstone; it is not possible to discuss Western political science without him. Same for Locke who improved on him. They were thinkers groping their way towards some method of ruling human beings decently—in freedom. People built on them, worked at things, set up political systems. Things move on. We have an academic industry around Hobbes (and others) which is self-perpetuating; scholars argue over what Hobbes meant, build careers, raise their families, raise some new Hobbes (etc) scholars. This does not seem to move on.

But this is a thread on freedom, not on Hobbes.

Three hundred years later Berlin delivers a lengthy opinion and gets it wrong. Wrong! All those words and it’s wrong. He blunders. There he is, nominally a liberal whose traditional fight has been with the hierarchy, with the aristocratic and church system which has held power for centuries or millennia and he doesn’t see it; he doesn’t distinguish it from the left.

I think this cold war / culture war warrior was personally so far toward the negative freedom end of the spectrum he confused the colours. Now that’s my ad hominem. But it’s not unreasonable as I give the basis for it; I say what it is he got wrong. Berlin was perceptive in identifying the quietist but he conflated the left with the conservative right. (Hayek did something similar.) It is important because it is one thing to say, “I am right and those who oppose me are wrong.” That is merely confidence or arrogance. It is quite another thing to assume, “My opponents are all the same.” That is a mistake. That’s the false dichotomy of me versus the rest.

The left egalitarian advocates of positive freedom will tend to be in cahoots with the noblesse oblige Burkean conservatives but the conservatives are not interested in positive freedom and overall have little in common with the left. Indeed, in democratic legislatures all over the world we find the conservatives in coalition with the negative freedom individualists. It is an uneasy coalition but it seems they need to get together in order to have the numbers to oppose the left. This is the shape of freedom in practice.

Actually, regarding the quietist, Berlin was a bit off. Possibly the reason he decided quietism isn’t real freedom is because he thought quietists have to be ascetic. They usually are ascetic because essential to quietism is an excess of resources and the only way most can achieve that is if they set their requirements extremely low. But you don’t necessarily have to be Diogenes. You could enjoy this autonomous freedom and be well off. Spinoza perhaps, or Boethius, maybe Garbo and Howard Hughes.

So I set out four ways people might consider themselves free. In a very few words, I raised Berlin’s two concepts to four and sharpened them. You declare I understand nothing. Can you support that? If my argument is faulty you should point out its faults, not abuse me personally. Ad hominem is invalid and it is particularly inappropriate on this forum. You say you stand by those remarks. Okay—back them up with some substance. Where do I err? Where do you disagree with my four kinds?

I concluded by linking those stances on freedom to stances on time. What do you see wrong with that? I dare say you have never before seen this connection. In that case rejoice for it is an opportunity to learn something. And if it makes sense to connect four perspectives on freedom with four perspectives on time, that would be a hint there might be corresponding perspectives across the gamut of values—which is potentially significant, no?

I'm certainly not looking to promote my work. I'm trying to get feedback on it so I can improve it. The fact that this Q&A fits so well with my interests is quite gratuitous. The quote worked well to ask the question. That's all.

I don't care who gets what wrong. I care only that I get things as correct as I can. Berlin was the flavour of the month for renewing interest in a topic that was facing away. So what if he was wrong?

NOCK

So what if Berlin is wrong? It is obvious: his “two concepts of freedom” paper is influential and if he is wrong, people are misled.

You want to know, Christopher, where you get it wrong? My answer is: you are wrong not to care whether Berlin is wrong. It matters.

I take it that despite all the harsh words, you actually cannot find any flaw in my analysis.

Berlin’s paper is recommended to students. You may not care but I do. I would like to stimulate the reader to entertain the notion that the great man didn’t think straight, that he succumbed to the elementary human tendency to dichotomise, resulting in a big blunder in conflating the Burkean conservative view of freedom with the left’s “positive” concept.

Once pointed out, Berlin’s blunder is pretty plain so perhaps the reader might wonder why no one else has picked up on it, might wonder if the concept of freedom is more straightforward than generally made out, and might wonder who benefits from making things complicated.

Boy, oh boy are you misguided! It doesn't matter because we know it's wrong, and it was an important step along the way. It's good to give students wrong stuff so they might work out why it's wrong. That makes them better thinkers, hopefully.

I neither find your analysis right nor wrong. I don't care either way. But I do care that it's pointless for the reasons I've already explained. You take up a lot of space to say very little indeed.

I see you published good work in the Journal of Navigation several years ago. Well done! I see nothing since, and certainly not in political philosophy. I don't know if you have tried? Or perhaps you think such publishing beneath you, given so much of it is wrong?

NOCK

To anyone else who is still paying attention: I attempted a couple of times to draw the discussion back to the substantive topic for I nursed a hope that we might get to look at responsibility—responsibility in relation to freedom—as per the original question. However the emphasis on my personal shortcomings and other ad hominem have persisted. Some other day perhaps.

I don't mean to be unkind. Although I understand that it looks like I do. Everyone of us has short comings. To be honest, I'm quite sure you have stuff to add to the issues here. But my feeling is that you are self taught in things like political philosophy. I would like to see you write something on the subject, or something similar, and post on RG to get feedback. You don't need to aim for publication. You would seek to make YOUR case as clear as possible, using the information you have digested over the years.

Think about it.

NOCK

Yet more ad hominem. My forbearance is at an end. This is an outrage. Your remarks are not only irrelevant but slanderous. Self-taught? I have a BA in psychology, an MA in political science and a PhD in political science. My qualifications are public record; my doctoral dissertation is online.

But I am not the topic. I pointed out that ad hominem is irrelevant yet you repeated it. I tried to turn it aside but you responded to my substantive posts and requests to attend to the topic with sweeping personal put-downs. I don’t know you. I never heard of you before you started this. Then you researched me on the web. What were you thinking? You didn’t get it remotely right and now you libel me.

You frightened off the other contributors and declined to contribute to the actual subject. I don’t know what bug has bitten you but all this is about as distant from scholarship as it is possible to get. It is inappropriate anywhere but absolutely inappropriate on Research Gate.

All I did was look at your RG file. That's what gave me my "feeling". I don't think feelings can be libelous, can they?

Questions run out of steam after a while. Anyone can revive it if they will.

I have nothing more to say to you.

Goodbye

NOCK