Positive freedom means self-mastery, negative freedom means absence of restraint

Evidence

By contrast, Guénon’s frame of reference was the ancient and long-standing “traditional civilizations,” those systems of acculturation that cultivate ethics and moral technologies of the self precisely for the attainment of this “positive” freedom. The quality and type of ethical formation may be different in the case of Soviet Communism from its “Eastern” counterpart, but the idea of cultivating the self as freedom is one and the same, however much Communist thinking remained constrained by concepts of materialism. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 298 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Empirical freedom is a negative concept defined by absence of constraint within a situation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1158; Marcuse argued individual happiness requires the universal attainment of positive freedom — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 238; Positive liberty means acting on one’s second-order desires through self-mastery. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 8 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Positive liberty means cultivating the self through ethical formation #expands (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 298
• Freedom arises when necessity manifests its inner identity, not by its removal #complicates (0.74)
• Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature #complicates (0.72)