Chapter 3 - Moral and Personal Positive Freedom

Summary

An increasing appreciation of the moral dynamic of freedom has led to the development of a range of positive conceptions of liberty. For T. H.Green positive freedom concerns the acquisition of moral agency, and this acquisition is made possible through successful internalisation of moral ideals. Interestingly, however, moral ideals have been seen both as constitutive of – as in the case of Green – and as threatening to positive freedom. Christman defines positive freedom as a form of autonomy, key aspects of which are one’s capacity to be “moved by values, desires, and motives that are reflections of an authentic, reflective self and not entirely alien to the agent or externally imposed by manipulative forces outside his control.” In other words, for Green positive freedom depends on the internalization of existing moral ideals, even though this has to be critically done, while for Christman it depends on our effective capacity to question such ideals. In this paper, I argue that positive freedom cannot both aspire towards values but also effectively resist them. We need to choose whether to align positive freedom with the first or the second. I argue that positive freedom should be understood as the acquisition of moral agency or attainment of excellence in a recognized field and that both of these entail some form of value affirmation.