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Why Positive and Negative Liberty Will Make You Question Everything
How Did Charles Taylor Develop A Universal Approach Against His Mentor
When it comes to the conception of positive and negative liberty, the philosophical world is divided mainly based on the two approaches of Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor.
Definition of the Approaches
According to Isaiah Berlin, negative freedom is liberty influenced by some external forces and a type of interference by others.
As he states, philosophers like Mill or Constant have advocated for an extreme degree of non-interference, but this seems unlikely to have ever been fulfilled by any civilized society.
The notion of positive freedom continues with self-mastery and choosing the source of control in the community. The individual is liberated from the outside factors and has understood his true self.
On the other hand, Charles Taylor wants to define negative freedom in terms of individual independence from external aspects. Additionally, positive liberty wants to identify freedom with collective self-government.
One would justifiably support that their interpretations might have common ground, but in reality, we have two opposing accounts…
