Sometimes we speak of freedom as if agents can be more and less free, and at other times we talk as if there is a categorical distinction between
being free and being unfree. A third important clarification of the distinc- tion between positive and negative liberty, still not sufficiently appreciated, is that it is not neutral between these two ordinary language usages.
While the notion of a categorical partition between freedom and unfreedom fits naturally with the concept of positive freedom, it is much harder to accommodate within a framework of negative liberty. This is because negative freedom is an inherently scalar property, admitting of degrees. Agents are more or less (negatively) free depending on the con- figuration, number, and surmountability of the obstacles they face. It is hard to imagine human activity occurring without any obstacles at all, or conscious life in which literally no opportunities for action are left open. So as long as we are talking about the (negative) freedom of human agents, we are unlikely ever to be wholly without some measure of negative liberty or negatively free simpliciter.
Of course, once we have, like Rawls, enumerated a list of basic liberties and opportunities that states are responsible for guaranteeing to their citizens, we can speak of categorical violations of individuals’ rights not to be interfered with in the specified ways. Thus, on a Rawlsian view, a state that prevents citizens from publishing material critical of the government violates their right to express their political opinions unhindered. Clearly, such violations are not a matter of degree. One’s right to speak unimpeded is not more or less violated: either it is violated or it is not. But here it is the presence of rules defining entitlements or rights to specific forms of noninterference, not the concept of negative liberty by itself, that allows us to talk this way. And anyway, such violations, indefensible though they may be, do not necessarily render anyone abso- lutely ‘‘unfree’’ in a negative sense. Certainly, my options may be drastically reduced if the state carts me off to prison for my political opinions. But even shackled to the walls of my cell I may not be prevented (say) from rattling my chains or swearing at my captors. Insofar as these options remain available, I still enjoy a measure of negative freedom, albeit trivial, pointless, and far less than anyone would normally desire.
For these reasons, I think it is misleading to speak, as many philosophers (including Berlin) have done, of violations of negative liberty per se. Negative liberty may be reduced, curtailed, and sometimes expanded, but strictly speaking it cannot itself be violated or infringed (insofar as the word ‘‘infringement’’ implies a categorical breach rather than a diminution).
Those who speak of violations or of categorical ‘‘infringements’’ of negative liberty, then, are either confused or using a shorthand for claims about enumerated rights and entitlements. We can be negatively free only to greater or lesser degrees. We are never simply negatively free rather than unfree.
Contrast this now with positive concepts of liberty. We have seen that theorists of positive liberty can and do disagree over what exactly must be present for an agent to be genuinely autonomous or self-determining. But, on any of these positive accounts, freedom becomes a condition under which pertinent criteria are satisfied. If agents are to be judged positively free, these qualifications (whatever they are) must be met. Analyses of freedom along these lines mesh far better with the notion of a categorical partition between agents who are free and those who are unfree. For if the criteria for autonomy are satisfied in the case of some agent, then we will say that she is in a condition of (positive) liberty; if they are not, we will want to say that she is not in that condition and so categorically unfree. Thus slaves, subject to the will of their masters, lack a necessary condition for autonomy. For that reason it makes sense for us to describe them as unfree in a categorical sense.
Something similar seems true of agents subject to manipulation or coercion. The mugger who coerces me into handing over my wallet subjects me to her will through threats of force. One reason why we resent such coercion and often view it as degrading or an assault on our freedom is that, in suffering such subjection, we are revealed to be under alien control. Unlike slavery, such coercion renders us temporarily rather than perma- nently unfree. But as long as we are suffering such coercion, we are, like slaves, unable to view ourselves as fully self-determining beings. For the moment, we find ourselves in a condition of unfreedom, and it is in the light of a tacit positive account of liberty that we recognize this. Mere reductions of negative liberty need not effect categorical changes in status of this kind. This suggests that we cannot fully explain the resentment to which coercion and similar phenomena give rise from the point of view of negative liberty alone; we must also understand its impact in terms of some suitably interpreted account of positive liberty.
This is an important and often overlooked point. Coercion and other forms of personal manipulation temporarily alter my status as a free, self-determining agent by subjecting me to an alien will, and place obstacles