The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Two concepts and two misunderstandings

Freedom as freedom from coercive constraint or interference is one thing, called "negative freedom."

Freedom as political self-rule is another, called "positive freedom."

Berlin does not seem to see that the first is a property of either individuals - liberty as ordinarily understood - or of nations, the object of wars of national liberation against colonial or other foreign domination.

But the second, understood as political self-rule, is never a property of individuals, absolute monarchs and dictators apart, but only of peoples, and realized only imperfectly through the institutions of democracy.

Also, Berlin opposes to the monism of liberals who insist there is only one political good (liberty) - nowadays we know them as libertarians or classical liberals - the view that there are many legitimate and not necessarily wholly reconcilable or even compatible political goods perhaps including, for example, equality and justice.

He does not even consider the more radical pluralism inherent in the recognition that the good of each person is unique to himself and there is no truly common good in which conflicts among those of individuals disappear, nor any just manner of adjudicating those conflicts.

Acute and astute though he is, Berlin from first to last sees the issues of politics as moral issues.

For him as for nearly the whole of the Western tradition, politics is a branch of morals and political philosophy - aka political theory - is a branch of moral philosophy.

He can no more think outside that box than can the Ayatollahs of Iran think of politics in purely secular terms.

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