ABSTRACT
Some people think that there is an idea of freedom that is purely negative. A person is free if he is not being impeded by other human beings from doing what he wants. They call this freedom from and distinguish it from freedom to do something which is supposed to be positive. This is the initial formulation of Sir Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty”. 1 However, a moment’s reflection will show that this expression of the distinction between negative and positive freedom is worthless. If I am free from interference from other human beings in doing what I want, there is something I want to do, and hence something positive, that other human beings are obstructing me from doing. The concept of freedom on this view is essentially triadic. 2 There is an X that is free from Y to do Z. Standardly, X is a human being, Y is an action or actions of other human beings and Z is some possible action of X. Even if what I want is to be free from imprisonment and there are no very specific actions I have immediately in mind that I want to do, still what I want is to be free to live a normal life or to do a myriad of things that I could specify if asked why I wanted to be free from prison. To say that I want to be free from something for absolutely no reason makes no sense.
