The Normative Concept of Coercion

Abstract

Since its rigorous formulation by Isaiah Berlin two decades ago, the distinction between 'negative' and 'positive' liberty has so captured philosophical attention that a related, and perhaps equally important distinction has tended to be ignored. This is the contrast between what may be called the neutral and normative concepts of liberty and its correlative, coercion. Unlike Berlin's distinction, which seems to define the difference between liberal theorists of the classical stripe and Continental collectivists like Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, disagreement over the normative status of liberty can be found among those philosophers firmly entrenched in the tradition of liberal individualism. Contrast Hobbes: 'A free man is he that ... is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do' and Montesquieu: 'Liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.' The crucial difference is the 'ought': do judgments about liberty and coercion refer not just to people's wants and intentions, but to what they ought to want and intend? Berlin suggests that Montesquieu's affirmative answer here reflects a forgetfulness of 'his liberal moments', yet elements of this normative view can be attributed not only to Continental liberals like Kant, but to Locke and Mill as well.' Despite the pedigree, it is now widely held that such a normative view is not just mistaken but positively pernicious, and that its disappearance from political debate is something to be applauded. In this paper I shall argue otherwise. I begin by showing how the 'normative view' well describes our ordinary moral discourse,