Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty History Essay

Negative and Positive Liberty
Student’s Name
Institution
Negative and Positive Liberty
Oftentimes, the terms liberty and freedom are used interchangeably to refer to the same thing, that is, the ability of one to pursue their wishes without hindrance. As per various renowned philosophers, this might be a misappropriation of the term liberty because it goes beyond just mere freedom. Nonetheless, there seems to be a common analogy from the various philosophers to imply that liberty is the existence of reasonable constraints on one’s right to free will. According to Schmidtz and Brennan (2011), there can be different forms of liberty depending on the circumstance at hand. However, they emphasize on negative and positive liberty as the main forms of liberty, backing up their arguments with examples and theories of other well-known philosophers.
Negative liberty, which simply refers to liberty in its negative sense, is believed to be pioneered by historical philosophers, the likes of Hobbes and Berlin (Schmidtz & Brennan, 2011). In a more technical term, this kind of liberty implies that there should be no constraints whatsoever on one’s freedom be it from another person deliberately or wrongfully. With the advent of modern civilization, this concept of negative liberty seems unrealistic. To put forward the concept of negative liberty in a more elaborate manner, Schmidtz and Brennan (2011) use a series of hypothetical examples. The various examples point towards the same notion of not obstructing other people's freedom, be it intentionally or unknowingly. A perfect example of restrictions on negative freedom in line with the current situation of COVID 19 is whereby some states or countries are forcing their citizens to wear face masks. To some extent, the infringement on negative freedoms becomes necessary for the sake of humanity. Similarly, ...