1. Charles Taylor On Positive Liberty and Progressive Democracy
WS 13/14 Proseminar: The Progressive Tradition
Charles Taylor On Positive Liberty and Progressive Democracy

2. 30.10.2013 Attendance Course Blog Presentations/Journals
Positive and Negative Liberty
Charles Taylor
Journal Questions
Discussion

3. Positive/Negative Liberty
In 1958, liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin delivered a lecture titled Two Concepts of Liberty at Oxford University.
It later became an influential essay in political philosophy, developing two analytical categories of freedom: Positive and Negative.
“Positive liberty is involved in the answer to the question 'What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?’”
- “I am my own master”
“Liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question: 'What is the area within which the subject — a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons'.
- “I am no one’s slave”

4. Journal Questions: Positive Liberty/Progressive Freedom
What are the “caricature” versions of negative and positive conceptions of liberty defined by Taylor? Have you heard similar arguments about freedom? How does Taylor redefine these theories as “exercise” and “opportunity” concepts? Why is positive liberty based purely on an exercise concept?
According to Taylor, positive liberty aligns with a “post-Romantic” view that freedom has something to do with a person’s self-realization? What are the dangers of this view? Why is still preferable to a “negative” theory? What does Taylor consider the “path from negative to the positive”?
Why can’t a subject be her/his own authority on the question of self-freedom? What is the danger in this, and how is it often exploited by supporters of negative liberty? How can we be wrong about our own desires? Do we really experience some desires as not our own, and what does this have to do with freedom?
At the conclusion of the essay, Taylor writes that the second step of positive liberty is a view of freedom only realizable within a certain form of society. Do you agree? Are we only free if the conditions for freedom are right?