Negative and positive freedom

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Negative freedom generally means freedom from external and internal constraints as “ freedom from ”. A distinction is made between this and positive freedom , which is understood as "freedom to ". Negative and positive freedom can refer to both free will and free action.

History of philosophy

With regard to freedom of action, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz differentiates between liberté de droit as freedom from coercion, which distinguishes the free from the slave, and liberté de fait as a positive freedom, which distinguishes the sick from the healthy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau initially defined freedom negatively as the lack of instinctive human integration in nature.

Immanuel Kant explicitly differentiates between negative and positive freedom (understood as free will). For Kant, freedom is first and foremost transcendental freedom as spontaneity , by which he denotes the ability of humans to “start a state of their own accord” or to be able to make a beginning. The transcendental freedom is an idea and to this extent conceptually negative, i.e. H. we can neither become aware of this freedom nor infer it from experience. The practical concept of freedom is based on transcendental freedom, which Kant initially defines negatively as “independence of arbitrariness through the drives of sensuality”. Negative freedom is the condition for positive freedom as the power of reason to give itself its laws. A person's ability to determine himself independently of his inclinations and drives enables him to moral self-determination (autonomy). Kant's concept of political freedom is based on this determination of autonomy: Legal freedom is “the authority not to obey any external laws other than which I have been able to give my consent”.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling criticizes the theories of freedom that want to determine human freedom through independence from nature, and, as it were, reverses the direction of the question by asking about man's freedom from a God who is assigned the predicate of omnipotence: “The Defenders of freedom usually only think of showing man's independence from nature, which is easy. But they let rest his inner independence from God, his freedom also in relation to God, because this is the hardest part. ”According to Schelling, specifically human freedom is defined by a twofold negative freedom:

“Because man stands in the middle between [...] nature and [...] God, he is free from both . He is free from God because he has an independent root in nature, free from nature because the divine is awakened in him [...] "

- Schelling : Stuttgart private lectures

For Schelling positive freedom is religiosity, which he understands etymologically in terms of bondage and opposes morality: "Religiosity" is the "highest decision for the right, without any choice". For Schelling, freedom is primarily free will.

In his lecture on Schelling's Philosophical Investigations into the Nature of Human Freedom, Martin Heidegger names five concepts of freedom. There he defines negative freedom as “freedom, freedom from ” and positive freedom “as attachment to, libertas determinationis, freedom to ”.

According to Isaiah Berlin , negative freedom, in contrast to positive freedom, is a state of freedom in which no constraints emanating from other people make behavior difficult or prevent. According to Isaiah Berlin, the counterpart denotes a state of freedom in which the possibility of passive freedom can actually be used, or, according to a more extensive view, a state in which the possibility is actually used.

Examples

An example of negative freedom is when someone is allowed to express his or her opinion freely without the person concerned being e.g. B. is prevented by censorship .

Positive freedom would mean, for example, that the means of communication and access to the media are available to exercise freedom of expression, or, according to a broader view, that the respective opinion is actually expressed.

literature

  • Charles Taylor : Negative Freedom? On the criticism of modern individualism. Translated by H. Kocyba. with an afterword by Axel Honneth . Frankfurt am Main 1988.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Die Philosophische Schriften , ed. v. CJ Gerhardt. Reprint of the Berlin 1890 edition, Hildesheim 1978, vol. 7, p. 109.
  2. ↑ See article: Freedom , Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 2, 1090.
  3. ↑ Cf. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Treatise on the origin and foundations of inequality among people , in: ders .: Schriften , ed. v. Hennig Ritter, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt M. 1988, Vol. 1, pp. 203f.
  4. ↑ See article: Freedom , Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 2, 1091.
  5. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of pure reason , Der Antinomie Third Widerstreit, B 472ff., See also Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals , BA 107ff.
  6. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of pure reason , B 562ff.
  7. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason , A 59.
  8. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Basis for the Metaphysics of Morals , BA 107ff.
  9. ↑ Immanuel Kant: For Eternal Peace , BA 21.
  10. ↑ a b Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: Stuttgart Private Lectures , in: ders .: Complete Works , ed. v. Karl Friedrich August Schelling, Stuttgart 1856–1861, Department I, Vol. VII, p. 458.
  11. ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: Philosophical studies on the essence of human freedom , in: SW I, VII, p. 392.
  12. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Schelling's treatise on the essence of human freedom (1809) ed. v. Hildegard Feick, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2nd reviewed edition, Tübingen 1995, p. 106.
  13. ^ Isaiah Berlin: Freedom. Four attempts. ISBN 3-596-16860-0