Two concepts of liberty
«Dos conceptos de libertad» es una defensa del pluralismo y de la libertad individual. La obra del filósofo Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) es una de las más firmes defensas del pluralismo occidental. Su famoso ensayo 'Dos conceptos de libertad' ofrece una introducción accesible a su pensamiento. El incisivo análisis de Berlin sobre el concepto de libertad sigue determinando nuestro pensamiento sociopolítico actual.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
11mentions
10people
2009–2025years
36% recommend64% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Ah, I think I see what side you stand on, if you can't see all the far-right stuff going down where Nazis are parading US politics for almost 4 years.
Ah, the promised rise of fascism in the US government! It's been almost 4 years now, when will it materialise? There are, however, fascists in the streets burning, looting and rioting, and they've been implicated in the deaths of many people. Do wake me when the government fascism begins though ;-)
> I disagree, positive liberty ensures that as much as your liberty remains preserved without infringing on the liberties of other people. Your freedom ends where other people's freedom begin.
That's not positive liberty, that's negative liberty[1].
> >Pre-crime as a category is tyrannical. Those who cannot remember - or understand - the past are condemned to repeat it.
> Is it pre-crime if you've been calling for the death of a minority group?
No. Pre-crime is the judgement of a crime that has not occurred.
> That is a crime in my eyes, regardless of how actionable it was, as it hurts those minorities regardless due to the sentiment expressed.
Words do not cause objective harm, that's why there's a distinction easily made between words and other actions like using your fists. Feeling hurt by words is something we would all wish to avoid but incredibly dangerous as the basis for criminal statute.
> Private individuals can surpres speech by their own speech, that isn't censorship but it is violent in many cases.
Speech is not violence, violence involves the application of physical force. If speech causes someone to anticipate imminent physical force then I would criminalise that. Luckily, that was done a thousand years ago in English common law under "assault" so I don't need to bother.
>Forgive me, but this is utter nonsense. Why would satarists need to check facts? Is it because ssatarists in Germany are liable to be put in danger and legal hazard?[1]
> If they are lying about things, yes. A satirist can't just start insulting people or spew lies without repercussions from the people injured as a result, physically or otherwise.
Luckily (again) there are laws in place for malicious lying that defames, in civil law. It is only a crime in countries that are not au fait with freedom, like Germany.
> I don't think that freedom of religion requires an american freedom of speech but feel free to prove me wrong.
If the government can interfere in your speech then you may only practise your religion - and I'm including private practice - as much as they allow. That's not freedom, that's an allowance, like daddy might give a child at the weekend.
> While germany has problems with anti-semitism, people are working against it, the government is working against it.
Hard to believe you could write that if you'd read the article. I wouldn't point the finger at anyone else if you can put out an apologetic like that, and yet you do…
> THe US in recent years has started to have problems with anti-semitism, however, since your government is not doing anything in that regard, one has to rely on civil organization to attempt to even track it's rise.
I'm not an American, and you'll find that anti-semitism in the US is rising for reasons that will be uncomfortable to you politically[2], though it should hardly be a surprise that socialist movements are anti-semitic, we had at least a whole century of it to learn from.
> The US has many problems at the moment and a lot of them stem from the fact that the US is unwilling to stamp out those people…
Did you write that and then this with a straight face?
> But feel free to wallow in your imagined freedoms until the steel boots come.
I was worried about satire in Germany but I see it is safe in your hands.
> In the early 20th century, germany had much experience in this regard, you can't use speech to surpress nazis, they will use guns and violence to silence you if the government does not stop it.
Actually, Germany institued speech laws against Nazis, from[3]:
> In Weimar Germany, the Nazis and their ideas were censored – regularly, in fact. Leading Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for hate speech before they rose to power – and Streicher was imprisoned twice. The Nazi publication Der Stürmer was regularly confiscated and its editors were taken to court on at least 36 occasions. Anti-Semitic speech was explicitly prohibited by law, leading to more than 200 prosecutions in the 15 years before Hitler came to power. ‘As subsequent history so painfully testifies’, writes civil-liberties campaigner Alan Borovoy in When Freedoms Collide, ‘this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it’.
By contrast, Nazism did not arise in the US despite there being widespread racism, and the use of free speech actually helped the civil rights movement bring equality to all. In the words of Frederick Douglass from his speech, "A Plea For Freedom of Speech in Boston"[4]:
> Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhQhdA-zss A primer in the two concepts of liberty.
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/anti-semitism-derail-black-lives-ma...
[3] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/28/you-cant-defeat-rac...
[4] https://lawliberty.org/frederick-douglass-plea-for-freedom-o...
Edit: typo
- You don’t find the concept of “positive and negative liberty” to be specific and useful? Personally, I think it’s incredibly insightful yet fundamentally very simple, which is the mark of a good thinker IMO.
- I would also recommend Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/wiso_vwl/johannes/A...
- The positive/negative rights thing is basically the libertarians adopting a simplified and less-nuanced reading of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty"
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pd...
It's better to go to the originals on things like this then to read what they've become in the political folk mythology on the internets.
- Isaiah Berlin wrote about the two concepts of liberty[0] in 1958 and the constitution of the US is based on negative liberty, so it goes back a bit further than the 90s.
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