Republican & Liberal Concept

of Freedom.
The Differences between these two Concepts of Freedom.

1/8/2011
By: Anupam Gurung
Copy Righted Material
Liberal and Republican concept of freedom

As soon as one examines it, Liberalism as a concept fractures into

variety of types and competing visions and so does its concept of freedom.
Liberals have typically maintained that humans are naturally “in a state of
perfect freedom to order their actions as they think fit without asking leave,
or depending on the will of any other man” (J. Locke). J.S. Mill too argued
that “the burden of proof is supposed to be with those who are against
liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition…. The a priori
assumption is in favor of freedom”(1963). Recent liberal thinkers such as
Joel Feinberg (1984: 9), Stanley Benn (1988: 87) and John Rawls (2001: 44,
112) agree to the above conviction. However in the Republican concept of
freedom does not embody or state that “man is free in the state of nature”
notion of the early Liberals, Republicans rather put freedom as “freedom
understood as non-domination or independence from arbitrary power”
(Quentin Skinner). Thus there is the absence of pre-present freedom in the
state of nature for the Republicans.

The Fundamental Liberal Principle holds that restrictions on freedom must

be justified. One of the best a qualified liberal, Hobbes also argues that
drastic limitations on freedom can be justified. Paradigmatic liberals such as
Locke not only advocate the Fundamental Liberal Principle, but also
maintain that justified limitations on freedom are fairly modest. Only a
limited government can be justified; indeed, the basic task of government is
to protect the equal liberty of citizens. Thus John Rawls's first principle of
justice: “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system
of equal basic liberty compatible with a similar system for all” (Rawls, 1999b:
220). The republican conception of political liberty aims to capture this

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Concept of freedom
insight as directly as possible. It defines freedom as a sort of structural
independence—as the condition of not being subject to the arbitrary power
of a master. Pettit, who has done more than anyone else to develop this
republican conception of freedom philosophically, puts it thus: a person or
group enjoys freedom to the extent that no other person or group has ―the
capacity to interfere in their affairs on an arbitrary basis (1999, 165; cf. Pettit
1996). On a plausible rendering of the term domination as, roughly
speaking, arbitrary power (Wattenberg 1990; Pettit 1996, 1997; Lovett 2001,
2010), we might equivalently say that freedom in the republican sense is the
enjoyment of non-domination.

Republican Freedom Vs Negative Freedom:

The republican view of freedom is, at least in the broad sense, a negative
conception of political liberty. The republican notion of freedom is not
equivalent to the received view of negative liberty as non-interference. In
contrast to the non-interference view, it easily accounts for our intuitions in
the following scenario described now.

In Slave and Master relation, the slave lacks freedom because he is

vulnerable to the arbitrary power of his master; whether his master happens
to exercise that power is neither here nor there. Likewise, what matters
with respect to political freedom on the republican view is not how much
the imperial power chooses to govern its colony, but the fact that the
former may choose to govern the latter as much and however it likes.
Moreover, the republican conception captures in a more intuitively
satisfying way what would improve either situation with respect to political
liberty. In the negative conception of liberty, people are free simply to the
extent that their choices are not interfered with. This idea of negative liberty
Berlin associates especially with the classic English political philosophers
Hobbes, Bentham, and J. S. Mill, and it is today probably the dominant
conception of liberty, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American

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philosophers. In Mill's well-known words, ―the only freedom which
deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs‖ (1859, 17).

But for Issah Berlin and those Liberals who follow him, then, the heart of
liberty is the absence of coercion by others; consequently, the liberal state's
commitment to protecting liberty is, essentially, the job of ensuring that
citizens do not coerce each other without compelling justification. So
understood, negative liberty is an opportunity-concept. Being free is merely
a matter of what we can do, what options are open to us, regardless of
whether or not we exercise such options (Taylor, 1979). Thus for the
Liberals, because the concept of negative freedom concentrates on the
external sphere in which individuals interact, it seems to provide a better
guarantee against the dangers of paternalism and authoritarianism
perceived by Berlin. Humboldt and Mill, both defenders of the negative
concept of freedom, compared the development of an individual to that of a
plant: individuals, like plants, must be allowed to grow, in the sense of
developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own
Inner logic.

Another difference between the republican/Liberal idea of freedom is that

the former fails to pick out an distinct conception at all. The suggestion here,
first noted perhaps by Paley (1785), is that talking about non-domination is
really just another (more obscure) way of talking about security of non-
interference (Goodin 2003; Carter 2008; Kramer 2008). Pettit (1997, 73–4;
2008) observes that one might secure a low expected level of non-
interference in more than one way, and the republican idea of freedom is by
no means indifferent as to the method adopted.

A high degree of controversy does exists between the Republican and

Liberal concept of freedom but the center of discussion remains the same
i.e. freedom.

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Concept of freedom