Freedom
The Idea of Liberty – Summer 2011
Dr Martin O’Neill martin.oneill[@]york.ac.uk Lecture 2: Positive and Negative Liberty
1. William E. Connolly: Liberty as an ‘Essentially-Contested Concept’ • See Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (1983), and the relevant excerpt in CKS (i.e. Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ian Carter, Matthew Kramer and Hillel Steiner (Blackwell, 2007).) • The idea of an “essentially contested concept” – a concept that cannot be specified in detail in advance of normative debates. • The meanings of terms like liberty, equality and democracy cannot be given a neutral specification in advance of settling disagreements about the use and significance of these concepts, and an account of how they fit within a broader political view. (This would undermine a putative neat conceptual/normative distinction.) • “Debates about the criteria properly governing the concept of freedom are in part debates about the extent to which the proposed criteria fulfil the normative point of the concept and in part about exactly what the point is. To refuse to bring these considerations into one’s deliberations about ‘freedom’ is either to deny oneself access to the very considerations that can inform judgement about the concept or to delude oneself by tacitly invoking the very considerations formally eschewed.” (CKS, 200) • “… ‘Freedom’ is contested partly because of the way it bridges a positivist dichotomy between “descriptive” and “normative” concepts.” (CKS, 200) • Connolly’s thesis explains why liberty is (i) so slippery and controversial [lack of univocality] (ii) so universally popular [polemical role]
• MacCallum’s conceptual analysis (as we’ll see below can be used to show the ways in which liberty is contested. The political contestation of the idea of liberty can be seen as involving different conceptions of what can count as an agent, (MacCallum’s x) a barrier or obstacle to agency (MacCallum’s y), and a (worthwhile) goal or aim of
Dr Martin O’Neill martin.oneill[@]york.ac.uk Lecture 2: Positive and Negative Liberty
1. William E. Connolly: Liberty as an ‘Essentially-Contested Concept’ • See Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (1983), and the relevant excerpt in CKS (i.e. Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ian Carter, Matthew Kramer and Hillel Steiner (Blackwell, 2007).) • The idea of an “essentially contested concept” – a concept that cannot be specified in detail in advance of normative debates. • The meanings of terms like liberty, equality and democracy cannot be given a neutral specification in advance of settling disagreements about the use and significance of these concepts, and an account of how they fit within a broader political view. (This would undermine a putative neat conceptual/normative distinction.) • “Debates about the criteria properly governing the concept of freedom are in part debates about the extent to which the proposed criteria fulfil the normative point of the concept and in part about exactly what the point is. To refuse to bring these considerations into one’s deliberations about ‘freedom’ is either to deny oneself access to the very considerations that can inform judgement about the concept or to delude oneself by tacitly invoking the very considerations formally eschewed.” (CKS, 200) • “… ‘Freedom’ is contested partly because of the way it bridges a positivist dichotomy between “descriptive” and “normative” concepts.” (CKS, 200) • Connolly’s thesis explains why liberty is (i) so slippery and controversial [lack of univocality] (ii) so universally popular [polemical role]
• MacCallum’s conceptual analysis (as we’ll see below can be used to show the ways in which liberty is contested. The political contestation of the idea of liberty can be seen as involving different conceptions of what can count as an agent, (MacCallum’s x) a barrier or obstacle to agency (MacCallum’s y), and a (worthwhile) goal or aim of