Implications of Negative and Positive Freedom Essay
Concept of freedom can be defined as the notion to which everyone accords on. This can be a theme, or an agent is free from sealed restrictions, or forbidding conditions. There are two types of freedom positive freedom and negative freedom. Negative freedom can be described as freedom from compulsion some may define it as absence from outer restraints on individual, as in people can act the mode they want for example freedom of speech a person acts the way he/she want (Kukuthas 1993, p 98). While positive freedom can be described as freedom that centers on chances to accomplish ones latent it can also be defined as capability to grow personal augmentation and become independent. it is self understanding and completion, it declares the right of person to be his own master. In most cases poor people have more of negative freedom than positive freedom. It is solid that people should not consider in unrestricted freedom because it might abuse other peoples autonomy. Negative freedom aspires at elimination of blockages and positive freedom, at understanding of apotheoses (Arthur and John 1996).
When people want to make best use of positive freedom they should do things like taking poor children to school, paying tax every time. Positive freedom can be served better by free immigrating to rich countries than vast government programmes. Freedom has become the most powerful word in the world today. Discussions about positive and negative freedom usually take place within the background of political and social philosophy (Gray 1991, p115). Freedom can be understood in two different ways of which` have a common origin but points at diverse directions. For the advocate in individual freedom it is autocracy which is measured as an enemy but for the supporter of national freedom, it the law for foreigners.
In the essay of the Isaiah Berlin which was published in 1958 the reason for using the two types of liberty appeared to be lack of something that is the blockages, roadblocks, constraints or intrusion from others. While the second state seemed to be existence of something, that is power, self mastery, self fortitude and self understanding. The difference between the negative and positive freedom is that we use negative liberty in seeking to answer the questions like, what is the area within which the theme? A group of persons ought to be left to do with no meddling by other persons. While positive liberty tries to answer the question what, or who is the source of control or intrusion that can conclude someone to do, or be, this fairly than that?(John 2003 p112-113)
In comparing the implications of the relationship between positive and negative freedom in relation between individual and the state is that. The implications of believing in negative freedom, is that negative freedom shows chiefly the extent which individuals or groups experience from disturbance from external bodies. While in positive freedom there is more concentration to inner factors distressing the extent to which individuals act separately.
When one believes in negative freedom, first implication is that the prime checks on negative freedom are that its laws are substantial constraint; it means that the laws that govern this freedom are always limitation to the extension that the government has to use power. Secondly there is no intervention from the government or limitations to allow privacy and choice. Thirdly it restricts freedom if one gets involved that is if one has done something wrong and he/she needs to be jailed, negative freedom can never defend you. Fourth the state intervention to prevent damage to others and lastly it is powerful on individuals and peril to personal freedom(Westbrooks 2008, p133). Therefore in overall negative freedom is therefore preserved mainly through checks on government power, such as statute constitutions and bill of rights. And examples of negative freedoms include civil liberties such as freedom of scruples, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom of religious worship. It is also evident in freedom from (excessive) taxation (Westbrooks 2008 p135).
When one believes in positive freedom the implications include the society in term of its nature results to poverty, homelessness and employment of its citizens, secondly new laws are formed and there is more of patrolling so as to ensure laws are being followed by everybody in the society, thirdly there is some state involvement to protect citizen from destruction either from the fellow citizens or from the aliens this also means that individuals freedom are stopped from being impended. Fourth minimal limits should be located upon them to allow self subordination and finally people are ensured that they have resources, to thrive and direct them to realize their latent instead of being left alone. The individual is capable to develop attainments and talents and widen his /her understanding to increase completion. In this view the main limits on freedom includes the communal evils such as poverty and social difficulty that are seen as they damage a person ability to thrive and attain his /her latent. Aspects of positive freedom can be found from the freedom from lack of knowledge that is the right to education, right to have good and affordable healthcare, the right to social minimum, among others (Miller 1991,p89).
Many laws that are normally thought to restrict negative freedom do not physically prevent people from doing what they want to do and what is prohibited, but deter them from doing so by threatening them to punishment
Positive freedom is thought of as essential attained through a collectivity. For example according to the Rousseau’s theory of freedom, individual’s freedom is achieved through contribution where by ones community exercises communal control over its own affairs (Plant 1991). This means that one might say that a self-governing society is a free society; this is because it is a self resolute society and that a member of the society is free to the degree that he or she takes part in the democratic practice. However there are also eccentric applications of the concept of positive freedom take an example like, the government should aim aggressively at creating the situations essential for individuals to be self adequate or attain self understanding.
The negative concept of freedom, on the other side, is most usually unspecified in open-minded defences of the constitutional autonomies archetypal of liberal-democratic societies, such as freedom of association, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and in fights against paternal or moral state involvement. It is also frequently raised in defenses of the right to private property, although some have contended the assert that private property essentially improves unconstructive liberty (Sontoro 2003, p191).
Some people argue that positive freedom conveys with it the risk of totalitarianism. For example, the case of lasting and subjugated minority. Because the members of this minority participate in democratic course characterised by alternative rule, they might be said to be. While in the negative freedom try to dispute that there is an essential relation amid ones freedom and ones wants. Since one is free to the degree that is outwardly unprevented from doing things that he or she does not desire to do.
Because the concept of negative freedom focuses on the outer globe in which individuals interact, it appears to offer a better assurance against the dangers of paternalism and totalitarianism apparent by Berlin. To encourage negative freedom is to endorse the survival of a sphere of deed within which the person is supreme ruler, and within which he/she can pursue his/her own planned subject only to the restraint that he/she gets admiration the spheres of others.(Miller 1991 p88) protectors of the negative concept of freedom, equated the growth of an individual to that of a plant: individuals, like plants, must be allowed to grow, in the sense of developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic. Personal development is something that cannot be forced from lacking, but ought to come from inside the individual.
There is the concept of overall freedom that appears to play an important role in the everyday dialogue and modern society. It is of current that philosophers have stopped up concentrating on completely the connotation of a meticulous freedom and have began asking whether we can also create intelligence of expressive arrogates to the consequence that one individual or society is freer than another or of liberal prescriptive arrogates to the cause that freedom ought to be maximized, or that people are supposed to take pleasure in equal freedom or that they each have a right to a certain minimum level of freedom(Gray 1991, 116). The literal meaningfulness of such claims depends on the opportunity of estimating levels of overall freedom, sometimes moderately, sometimes completely.
All in all the concept of the implications of positive and negative freedom in relation to the individual and the state is the responsibility of a particular country and government to ensure that its citizens have followed the rules and the laws that govern them.