The positive' sense of the word liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be
his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of
whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to
be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own,
not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a
doer–deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by
other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is,
of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I
mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human
being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to conscious of myself as a thinking, willing,
active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my
own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the
degree that I am made to realize that it is not.
The freedom which consists in being one’s own master, and the freedom which consists in not
being prevented from choosing as I do by other men, may, on the face of it, seem concepts at no
great logical distance from each other–no more than negative and positive ways of saying much
the same thing. Yet the positive' and negative’ notions of freedom historically developed in
divergent directions not always by logically reputable steps, until, in the end, they came into
direct conflict with each other.
One way of making this clear is in terms of the independent momentum which the, initially
perhaps quite harmless, metaphor of self-mastery acquired. I am my own master'; l am slave to
no man’; but may I not (as Platonists or Hegelians tend to say) be a slave to nature? Or to my
own unbridled' passions? Are these not so many species of the identical genus slave’–some
political or legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience of liberating
themselves from spiritual slavery, Or slavery to nature, and do they not in the course of it
become aware, on the one hand, of a self which dominates; and, on the other, of something in
them which is brought to heel? This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with
my higher nature', with the self which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the long run, with my real’, or ideal', or autonomous self, or with my self at its best'; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my lower’ nature, the pursuit of
immediate pleasures, my empirical' or heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and
passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its real' nature. Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an even larger gap: the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social whole’ of which the individual. is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church; a state,
the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as
being the true' self which, by imposing its collective, or organic’, single will upon its
recalcitrant members', achieves its own, and therefore their, higher’ freedom. The perils of
using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a
higher' level of freedom have often been pointed out. But what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than; they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they would not resist me if they were rational and as wise as I and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity--their latent rational will, or their. true’ purpose-- and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel
and do and say, is their real' self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account. Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress; torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their real’ selves, in the
secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, performance of duty,
wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom–the free choice of his
`true’, albeit often submerged and inarticulate, self.