Negative liberty means being free from interference in one’s choices.
Evidence
It is notorious that there are several competing conceptions of political liberty. One long standard account was laid down most influentially by Isaiah Berlin in his famous lecture on “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 1969). According to the first, ‘negative’ conception of liberty, people are free simply to the extent that their choices are not interfered with. There are many variations on this conception, depending on how exactly one wants to define ‘interference’, but they all have in common the basic intuition that to be free is, more or less, to be left alone to do whatever one chooses. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 7
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the influential Berlinian negative conception of liberty — freedom as non-interference.
- XREF: This negative/positive liberty distinction recurs throughout political theory; Berlin’s Two Concepts is the canonical source. — connects to: Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself.; Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2130; Capitalism structurally requires negative liberty and rejects positive liberty — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 299 (+13 more)
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 7
Related
- Freedom is conceived either as absence of interference or as self-mastery (similarity 0.88)
- Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery (similarity 0.86)
- True liberty is resilient security against interference, not merely its absence (similarity 0.83)
- Enlightenment liberal democracy defines freedom negatively as freedom from interference. (similarity 0.83)
- Freedom requires others actually be blocked from arbitrary interference, not merely unexercised (similarity 0.82)
- Positive liberty means acting on one’s second-order desires through self-mastery. (similarity 0.82)
- Freedom must be conceived negatively as freedom from the economy (similarity 0.81)
- Republicans hold liberty as non-domination while liberals define it as mere non-interference. (similarity 0.81)
- Republican freedom as non-domination fuses absence from negative and mastery from positive liberty. (similarity 0.80)
- Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy (similarity 0.80)
- Liberty can be lost through domination even when no one actively interferes. (similarity 0.80)
- Freedom as non-domination prizes secure undominated choice over mere quantity of choice. (similarity 0.79)
- Freedom as non-domination inherently requires certainty, unlike maximal non-interference. (similarity 0.79)
- Non-domination requires security against interference across possible worlds, not mere actual non-interference. (similarity 0.79)
- The negative liberty idea was forged by opponents, not supporters, of the American Revolution (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery
#qualifies(0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1207 - Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself.
#corroborates(0.80) - Freedom requires others actually be blocked from arbitrary interference, not merely unexercised
#expands(0.80) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1220 - Capitalism structurally requires negative liberty and rejects positive liberty
#corroborates(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 299 - Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy
#complicates(0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2130 - Freedom requires awareness of options, not just their existence
#expands(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 422