Positive and Negative Freedom: Green’s Contribution to the Debate

Abstract

The debate on positive and negative freedom has been part of the political theory agenda for quite a long time now.2 It is one of these issues about which different political theorists hold very strong views and little can be done to change one’s commitment to either kind of freedom, or one’s belief that this debate is fruitless. Recently the concept of republican freedom3 has been gathering more popularity as an alternative to the positive/negative freedom debate. After defending Green’s philosophy of freedom from many of the attacks it has received, Peter Nicholson concludes that ‘the dichotomy between negative freedom and positive freedom cannot be applied to Green’s theory’. He says that this debate is ‘a Procrustean bed, and laying Green’s theory on it leaves it truncated and bleeding away its vitality’.4 The insights of Green’s concept of freedom are only diminished when this concept is taken out of its context and then forced to represent only one side of what is believed to be the full nature of freedom. As I believe Nicholson’s conclusion is largely justified, I need to have very good reasons to re-open the debate and make Green part of it.KeywordsPolitical PhilosophyMoral AgentPolitical TheoristMoral GoodFree AgentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.