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Berlin initially defined negative liberty as "freedom from", that is, the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by other people. He defined positive liberty both as "freedom to", that is, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to dependence on others. [5]
Other advocates of the view that there is a distinction between negative and positive rights, argue that the presence of a police force or army is not due to any positive right to these services that citizens claim, but rather because they are natural monopolies or public goods. These are features of any human society that arise naturally, even ...
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.
An idea that anticipates the distinction between negative and positive liberty was G. F. W. Hegel's "sphere of abstract right" (furthered in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right), which constitutes what now is called negative freedom and his subsequent distinction between "abstract" and "positive liberty." [4] [5]
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.
By founding this sense of freedom for all, Locke was laying the groundwork for the equality that occurs today. Despite the apparent misuse of his philosophy in early American democracy. The Civil Rights movement and the suffrage movement both called out the state of American democracy during their challenges to the government's view on equality.
Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights. Libertarians advocate for the negative liberty aspect of civil liberties, emphasizing minimal government intervention in both personal and economic affairs.
The World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 opposed the distinction between civil and political rights (negative rights) and economic, social and cultural rights (positive rights) that resulted in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action proclaiming that "all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated". [30]