Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and G. W. F. Hegel, modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. [10]
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.
"Positive liberty", Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do. Berlin contended that modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access.
One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , [ 2 ] he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the ...
[26] [27] [75] [76] While most of these anarchist thinkers advocated for the abolition of the state, other key libertarian thinkers and writers such as Henry David Thoreau, [77] [78] [79] Ralph Waldo Emerson [80] and Spooner in No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority [81] argued that government should be kept to a minimum and that it is ...
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive right to receive something, but a negative right of non-interference. Sterba has rephrased the traditional "positive right" to provisions, and put it in the form of a sort of "negative right" not to be prevented from taking the resources on their own. All rights may not only ...