Competencias cardinales

This leads us to a second important clarification of the distinction. If these two senses of freedom are ‘‘concepts,’’ they are concepts of a very

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Berlin (1969), pp. 136 9.

open-ended kind, in each case susceptible of a very wide range of possible political interpretations. Any connotations of definiteness evoked by the word ‘‘concept’’ would here be quite misleading. It is better to think of these two senses of freedom as picking out two broad ways of thinking about freedom, each of which may be developed in quite different ways for a variety of political purposes despite an underlying family resemblance. For example, when we think of political freedom in terms of negative liberty, we immediately face a number of interpretative questions. These surface because the sorts of obstacles that might limit agents’ possible actions are many and varied: some obstacles make actions strictly impossible, while others make them merely more difficult; some obstacles are the result of intentional action by other agents, while others are not; some obstacles may be more readily removed by public action, while others may be more recalcitrant; some obstacles may be completely external to the agent, while others may be partly or fully internal to the agent. (Does agoraphobia the fear of open spaces reduce an agent’s negative liberty? Not clear.) They may or may not interfere in activities to which agents do, or should, attach importance; some obstacles result from the activities of private citizens, while some are imposed by the state; and it may or may not be possible to remove some obstacles without imposing new and perhaps greater constraints on others.

People may disagree about which of these various kinds of impediments to freedom of action are of more urgent political significance and about whether they necessarily limit political liberty at all.6They may also dis- agree about what general goals ought to guide us in seeking an appropriate division of liberty so understood. Thus some might argue that the goal ought to be the overall ‘‘maximization’’ of negative liberty. Others might argue that the state ought to be responsible only for guaranteeing to all individuals certain basic personal liberties, regardless of whether this would maximize overall negative freedom, whatever that might mean.

On all of these points, then, there is plenty of room for argument within a general framework of negative liberty. So, by the time we have settled like Rawls on an enumerated list of basic liberties that states are responsible for securing, we will presumably have gone far down the

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road of facing and resolving some of these issues. Rawls’s list of basic liberties and opportunities fits very well with the notion of negative liberty, for it is natural to think of these liberties in terms of the state’s responsibility to prevent specific forms of interference in individuals’ possible choices and activities. The list effectively defines a range of protected activities voicing opinions, participating in religious practices, forming associations of the like-minded, and participating in democratic politics that are in specified ways not to be interfered with either by the state itself or by other citizens. Whether or not citizens actually make use of these opportunities, the state is to insure that they remain available. But again, Rawls’s account is but one view of which negative liberties are of most urgent political significance. Others, also concerned about an appropriate division of negative liberty, may disagree with Rawls’s judgments about which freedoms are most fundamental.

To illustrate, we noted in earlier chapters that libertarians think that the freedom to own property is more fundamental than those liberties Rawls recognized. In their view, the state has overriding responsibilities to refrain from interfering with, and to prevent others from interfering with, the activities of holding, inheriting, enjoying, buying, selling, and investing personal property. But quite apart from Rawls’s alternative view, there are good reasons to question this libertarian claim even while maintaining a focus on negative liberty. It is important to remember, for example, that the enforcement of property rights has implications for the negative liberty, not only of property-owners, but also of nonowners. Thus in the United Kingdom the rights of landowners are qualified by legal duties to maintain an extensive network of public rights of way (footpaths, bridleways), along which citizens are free to walk. Farmers who erect fences and other enclosures on their land are expected to maintain stiles and gates to allow members of the public to travel along these rights of way unhindered. These paths total over 117,000 miles in length (almost half the distance to the moon), and so they afford citizens a great deal of freedom to move about the countryside on foot.

In the United States, by contrast, there is no such extensive system of public rights of way, and typically landowners have few legal duties to permit members of the public to cross their land. In the absence of systematic provision of public rights of way, the fences and barriers that private owners erect to deter trespassers significantly limit citizens’

freedom of movement. Hiking is thus usually possible and worthwhile only on publicly owned reservations like state forests and national parks. While in the United Kingdom one can almost always devise a cross-country route between any two towns without having to walk along regular roads, this option is rarely available in the United States. If one tries it, one is apt to be sued, threatened at gunpoint, snared on barbed wire, or simply defeated by walls, gates, security fences, and the other barriers property-owners put up to keep the rest of us out.

Clearly, then, the enforcement of private-property rights can restrict as well as expand agents’ negative liberty. So we cannot simply presume that a concern for negative liberty naturally favors the cause of private property, as libertarians often contend. Of course, this hardly estab- lishes that the libertarian conclusion about the primacy of property-based freedoms is wrong. But it does mean that we cannot decide these ques- tions about the relative importance of the different negative freedoms individuals might enjoy just by appealing to the concept of negative liberty itself. Which particular scheme of negative liberties makes the best political sense must be determined by independent considerations (e.g. whether they promote justice, equality, personal well-being, order, efficiency, security, and so on). The concept of negative liberty is thus not politically self-interpreting: the exact political ramifications of a con- cern for negative freedom will differ depending on the other considerations we think bear upon its application to public life.