ARE THERE INTERNAL LIMITATIONS ON LIBERTY? BERLIN’S VS. GREEN’S AND TAYLOR’S UNDERSTANDING

Сажетак

The subject of this paper is the question of liberty, which occupies a central place within philosophical and socio-political debates. The problem of liberty has been a subject of consideration since ancient times; however, we still cannot speak of the existence of a single definition of liberty that everyone would agree upon. Different definitions of liberty are the result of different understandings of what can be considered the subject of liberty, as well as what can constitute a limitation of liberty. This paper deals with the definition of liberty in relation to how we define its limitation. The starting premise of this paper is Isaiah Berlin’s definition of negative liberty as the absence of external obstacles, or coercion. We will then analyse the critiques of this conception of liberty, which amount to the claim that, in addition to external, we can also speak of internal obstacles to liberty. These include Thomas Hill Green’s normative theory of liberty, as well as Charles Taylor’s conception of liberty as autonomy. What these critiques have in common is their abandonment of the idea that liberty consists in the right to do as we please, or the view that there is a necessary connection between an individual’s liberty and their motives and ends. The aim of the paper is to show the advantage of the negative conception of liberty over the positive one, namely the definition of liberty as the absence of external, and not internal, obstacles to liberty.

Референце

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