Avital Simhony

ABSTRACT It is fruitless to interpret Constant's modern liberty from the binary perspective of either the negative/positive freedom opposition or the liberal/republican freedom opposition. Both oppositional perspectives reduce the relationally complex nature of modern liberty to one or another component of the relation. Such reduction inevitably results in an incomplete and, therefore, inadequate interpretation of Constant's modern liberty. Consequently, either of these binary frames of interpretation obscures rather than illuminates the full nature of Constant's modern liberty. Boxed into their irreconcilably opposed alternatives, both binary perspectives fail to appreciate that Constant's conception of modern liberty is a complex achievement irreducible without loss to either liberal negative liberty as non-interference or republican freedom as non-domination. Nor does combining liberal negative freedom and positive freedom (in the sense of ancient liberty), as Holmes well establishes, adequately tells the whole story of Constant's modern liberty. As a complex achievement, Constant's conception of modern liberty, I shall argue, blends negative freedom as associated with neo-Roman republican freedom as non-subjection to arbitrary power, negative freedom as non-interference, associated with the liberal tradition, positive freedom in the sense of inner self-development, and positive freedom as collective self-government or civic republican freedom.

Abstract This essay dethrones the negative-positive distinction, commonly put forward as the adequate account of Green’s conception of freedom, replacing it with an inner/outer account. On this account, rightly understood, Green’s freedom of self-realization is a complex conception that consists in the entwining together of distinctive human capacities (inner/internal) and just social institutions (outer/external). To unlock that complexity MacCallum’s single triadic concept of freedom is an effective analytical tool. Its analytical force withstands Baldwin’s criticism. Deploying Green’s conception of positive freedom, Baldwin argues that MacCallum’s single concept fails to accommodate it since his single concept is really a negative concept of freedom. Baldwin’s argument fails because, first, contrary to his claim, his revision of MacCallum’s single triadic concept is not a legitimate development of it. Second, though MacCallum’s single concept rejects the conceptual separation of ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’, it does not eliminate, but rather makes sense of, the substantive distinction/s between various interpretations of negative freedom/s and positive freedom/s. MacCallum’s single triadic concept discloses that we should not regard the internality/externality distinction as another version of the positive/negative distinction and that Green’s complex freedom does not replace negative with positive freedom; nor does it extinguish the distinction between the two. Rather, at the same time that its complexity incorporates both negative and positive dimensions, complex freedom is critical of both negative and positive conceptions of freedom.

Is the Idealist conception of positive freedom doomed as politically dangerous? Decidedly yes, Berlin famously argues. The danger lies with manipulating positive freedom into a political tool of tyranny, coercing individuals to be free. The vehicle of manipulation is a conception of a divided self that underpins positive freedom. For, Berlin argues, conceptions of freedom derive directly from views of what constitutes a self. He cites the British Idealists as evidence for his criticism. The case for Green’s immunity to Berlin’s criticism is now well established. Bosanquet, in particular, however, is a sitting duck to Berlin’s fire. Berlin’s fire, however, misses its target. Not only is Bosanquet immune to Berlin’s criticism, but Berlin’s criticism obscures the extent to which Bosanquet shares Berlin’s worry about the danger of concentrated political power. Moreover, Bosanquet institutionalizes positive freedom into a bulwark against political tyranny in a fashion that Berlin’s wholesale criticism of positive freedom forecloses. Bosanquet’s true self is equipped to resist being coerced to be free. Indeed, Berlin’s divided self ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of self which being, instead, complex/dynamic/integrated, is at once spontaneous/energetic and habitual/automatic. Moreover, whereas he recognizes with Bosanquet that positive freedom is not merely an internal condition of the true self, but takes shape in society, Berlin’s holistic interpretation of the organic metaphor of society means that he sees only the “dark” side of that connection. Consequently, he misses the affirmative link, the “bright” side, that Bosanquet, employing a relational interpretation of the organic metaphor, forges between positive freedom and social institutions. Ultimately, engaging Berlin and Bosanquet unveils the complexity of political theory

A quotation from Hegel serves as a motif of Tyler’s book: ‘The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees positive merit in everything.’ It is a chief merit of Tyler’s book that, though he pursues an internal critique of Green’s philosophy, its aim is not simply to find faults, but, importantly, to uncover the ‘positive merit’ in Green’s philosophy. For, as Tyler correctly holds, ‘there is much to be gained from a return to the serious study of Green’s writings.’ And there is much to be gained from Tyler’s serious study of Green’s writings.

A central charge against T. H. Green’s conception of positive freedom is that it confuses freedom and social justice. Rather than illuminating and elucidating the meaning of liberty, Green, so the criticism goes, under the disguise of a definition, recommends social ideals and principles such as social justice. The validity of such arguments is not the focus of my concern. I argue, instead, that contemporary efforts to defend social legislation, the welfare state, and socialism from the claims of negative freedom overlook the important interplay between context, conceptual mutability, and conceptual relationality in the construction of normative political arguments. Green’s conceptualization of positive freedom unveils just such interplay. To reclaim the vital conceptual-normative role of positive freedom in the tradition of liberalism and its contemporary discourse is the task of this paper.

The essay aims to reveal the priority of the ‘social’ over the ‘political’ in Bosanquet's thought by making more prominent what Bosanquet calls ‘social’. It is the domain of human connectedness and cooperation that occupies the space between the ‘political’, state action, and the personal, narrowly conceived individual. The centrality of the ‘social’ emerges against the backdrop of two rival interpretations of Bosanquet's relationship with British Idealism over state action. The one claims that Green's split into ‘right’ and ‘left’. The other interpretation restores unity, denying that the right-left divide introduces fundamental differences into the Idealist camp. Though not a laissez-faire individualist, Bosanquet's restrictive stance on state action with regard to the poor reveals, I argue, ‘social individualism’. Best expressed in his prioritizing of ‘social cooperative action’ over state action, at the heart of social individualism lies a conceptual-normative nexus between self-maintaining, self-managing, self-governing individuals and social cooperation.