Negative vs Positive liberty

From BBC's "The Trap: What happened to our dreams of Freedom? Part 3 - We will Force you to be free"

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• isaiah
• berlin
• negative
• liberty
• positive
• revolution
• corruption
• coercion
• capitalism
• communism
• socialism

[jojoncho74]

I think Berlin has a point and uses arguments...good or bad, but appeals to intelect...The BBC, though, appeals to our basic fears and yearnings: Anyone noticed the music and imagery as from 5:46 , as if people with negative freedoms in the west lived all in a state of complete bliss...compare with music and imagery chosen for the description of positive freedom 3:58

I think it is terrible to do something like that with the text of someone who believed in knowledge and arguments!

[tomsega]

@jebustheone- I constantly hear so many individuals enraptured with an idea of 'liberalism' speaking without any regard for the insitutions, corporations and global transformations unique to modernity. The classical liberals were writing in the 1700s, give or take. Modern consevatives quote them completely out of context. Modernity and globalisation are often missing from the vocabulary, casually passed-over. Human agents may have lived in bubbles 300 years ago. We certainly don't now.

[nateplourde]

@jojoncho74 you misunderstand Curtis' sarcasm - the point of this film (The Trap) is that negative liberty leaves people self-centered and ultimately empty, therefore necessitating that which is beyond himself (positive liberty) politically and socially.

[mangore623]

@tomsega Huh?

[avastyer]

@jojoncho74 The music and imagery used at 5:46 is evidently ironical. This is a small section of a much larger programme. The programme's maker, Adam Curtis, has great respect for Berlin. The point is that negative liberty was taken, by people such as Muggeridge, to be an ideal point, and to have a teleology. Berlin's idea was that liberty has no end but that of the person promoting it, and the realisation, to some extent, of their liberty.

[mozpiano2]

@ThePintsizeslasher I think with the "Power should be restrained" quote he meant something like the idea of Separation of Powers in Government and checks and balances.

[sheffieldsteelersfan]

@jojoncho74 Perhaps the BBC need a lesson on Nozickian negative economic freedom. They will certainly be more cautious in their editing then.

[sheffieldsteelersfan]

One of Berlin's most brilliant uses of imagery was 'The Don and the Peasant', whereby negative and positive freedom can coexist, or rather, positive freedom facilitates negative freedom for the peasant, upon his increased capacities.

[Donatellangelo]

They don't oppose each other for me, that dualism prevents all freedom, positive and negative.