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Positive liberty is the possession of the power and resources to act in the context of the structural limitations of the broader society which impacts a person's ability to act, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint on one's actions.
Isaiah Berlin notes that historically positive liberty has proven particularly susceptible to rhetorical abuse; especially from the 18th century onwards, it has either been paternalistically re-drawn from the third-person, or conflated with the concept of negative liberty and thus disguised underlying value-conflicts.
John Stuart Mill. Philosophers from the earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) wrote: . a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed.
MacCallum is well known for his critique to the distinction, made famous by Isaiah Berlin, between negative and positive liberty, proposing instead that the concept of freedom can only be understood as a 'triadic relation', in which "x is (is not) free from y to do (not do, become, not become) z". [2]
Negative liberty is the absence of external constraints on the individual, while positive liberty is the ability to act on one's desires and goals. Ordered liberty acknowledges the importance of negative liberty but recognizes that this liberty can only be exercised within the constraints of a well-ordered society.
The Liberty of the Ancients was a participatory republican liberty, [99] which gave the citizens the right to influence politics directly through debates and votes in the public assembly. [98] In order to support this degree of participation, citizenship was a burdensome moral obligation requiring a considerable investment of time and energy.
A. Hart argued that if there are any rights at all, there must be the right to liberty, for all the others would depend upon this. T. H. Green argued that "if there are such things as rights at all, then, there must be a right to life and liberty, or, to put it more properly to free life." [14] John Locke emphasized "life, liberty and property ...
Berlin argued that what he called 'positive' and 'negative' liberty were mutually opposing concepts. Positive conceptions assumed that liberty could only be achieved when collective power (in the form of church or state) acted to 'liberate' mankind from its worst aspects. These, Berlin felt, tended towards totalitarianism.