PHIL 320A Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty
Document Summary
Positive liberty is the possibility of acting or the fact of acting in such a way as to take control of one"s life and realize one"s fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Chapter 7: selection from a theory of justice by john rawls p. 100. Justice is the first virtue of social institutions. Justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. In a just society, the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled, and not up to political bargaining. Justice is tolerable only when it is made to avoid a greater injustice.