1101GIR Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: John Stuart Mill, Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty

• School: Griffith University
• Department: Political Sci & Policy Studies
• Course: 1101GIR
• Professor: Gideon Baker

Document Summary

In political thought, there is a tradition of assuming that freedom is pre-political: the debate surrounding freedom is therefore about deciding the legitimate limits to freedom, to do this we need to agree on definition of freedom. Positive freedom: pf is the freedom to do things, as opposed to the freedom from things. Internal restraints: freedom can"t just be the absence of external restraints, for what hinders us from realising our goals is often internal, eg. ignorance, fear, short-termism. John stuart mill (1859) restricts freedom on racial grounds: it does not apply to. Backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its non- age . Freedom and the state: freedom is often defined as the absence of govt or state interference in our lives, can we be coerced and restrained by non-govt actors (individuals, groups, private organisations), of course!