Freedom is conceived either as absence of interference or as self-mastery

Evidence

Contemporary discussions of social and political organization are dominated by a distinction which Isaiah Berlin (1958) made famous. This is the distinction between what he, following a late-eighteenthcentury tradition (Lind 1776), describes as negative and positive liberty. … Negative liberty, as Berlin conceives of it, involves the absence of interference, where interference is a more or less intentional intervention of the sort exemplified, not just by the physical coercion of kidnap or imprisonment, but also by the coercion of the credible threat (‘Your money or your life’; ‘Your money or the bailiff). I am negatively free ‘to the degree to which no human being interferes with my activity’ (Berlin 1958: 7): to the extent that I enjoy unimpeded and uncoerced choice. … Positive liberty, according to Berlin, requires more than the absence of interference, more than just being let alone by others. It requires the agent to take an active part in gaining control or mastery of themselves: the self with which they identify must take charge of the lesser or more partial selves that lurk within every individual. I am positively free to the extent that I achieve ‘self-mastery, with its suggestion of a man divided against himself (Berlin 1958: 19). — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 99

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core Berlin lexicon of negative versus positive liberty that the whole republican contrast depends on.
• XREF: connects to: Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1207; Freedom acts through self-influence over one’s own inner life, not just absence of constraints — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 100; Positive freedom means self-mastery, negative freedom means absence of restraint (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery #complicates (0.95) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1207
• Positive freedom means self-mastery, negative freedom means absence of restraint #corroborates (0.95)
• Freedom acts through self-influence over one’s own inner life, not just absence of constraints #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 100
• Freedom as non-interference can exist in isolation while non-domination requires society #expands (0.80) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 337
• Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146
• Freedom as non-domination, unlike non-interference, cannot be fully enjoyed by one person alone #complicates (0.75) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1239
• Freedom arises when necessity manifests its inner identity, not by its removal #complicates (0.75)