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Berlins two concepts of liberty summary
Berlins two concepts of liberty summary
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Laws have the capacity to infringe civil liberties however they also provide a forum for its creation and development. For Berlin, his conception of liberty is based upon the idea of positive and negative freedoms. Liberty according to Berlin is viewed as freedom from interference; therefore laws which respect our freedoms are preferable as they allow for different paths of self-actualization. Pettit however considers liberty in terms of freedom from domination and considers the role laws and democracy can play in assuring individual freedoms. In addition to considering the respective approaches of Berlin and Pettit, their theories will also be considered in relation to terrorism. By considering their respective arguments in the context of …show more content…
This means that laws which respect individual freedoms and those which interfere with our liberties are are subject to arguably rigorous examination. Pettit considers Bentham who views laws as generally representing an infringement upon civil liberties. Pettit disagrees and argues that law need not abrogate the civil liberties of a person, rather it can enhance or secure individual freedom . Whilst the rule of law may restrict the choices of an individual, it is not in direct opposition to liberty. This is so because law does not constitute domination rather it can enable individuals to secure their respective rights as citizens . In addition law is able to uniformly protect citizens against uncontrolled interference and may prevent “invigilatory and intimidatory control” . Therefore it is possible to adopt a Lockean view of law as expanding individual liberties as law itself is not arbitrary or …show more content…
Berlin considers security and liberty not in terms of an inverse scale but of absolute values and therefore it must be either freedom or security . As the antonym of freedom is interference, security and protecting society from terrorism can constitute an infringement of individual liberties. The question therefore becomes how much liberty can be sacrificed before an individual’s ability to self-actualize becomes infringed. As they are considered in terms of two distinct entities rather than a complex relationship, this does not provide a satisfactory response in terms of how laws can and should respond to these
Cole, D., & Dempsey, J. X. (2006). Terrorism and the constitution: sacrificing civil liberties in the name of national security. New York: New Press.
Lowi, Theodore, Benjamin Ginsburg. American Government: Freedom and Power. W.W. Norton & Company, New York: 1998.
Strauss, Leo, and Joseph Cropsey. History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Foner, Eric. "Chapter 9." Give Me Liberty!: An American History. Brief Third ed. Vol. One. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. N. pag. Print.
Ken Kollman, The American Political System, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012), 25, 322-323, 330, 449.
Neumann, F. (1957). The Democratic and Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal theory. Ed. Marcuse, H. Glencoe: Free Press.
Therefore, legislation as deliberate law-making and the voice of the state of the sovereign body calls the common good of the life of man to the forefront of this question, both when democracy rules but primarily when totalitarian despots reign. The politicization of bare life as such legitimates the power of the sovereign state. But as repetitive instances of state-sponsored genocide have shown multiple times throughout the 20th century, state power can and does abuse the life of the citizen, whose life is paradoxically the force of the nation-state itself. It is through this e...
Kash, Douglas A. “An International Legislative Approach to 21st-Century Terrorism.” The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium. Ed. Harvey W. Kushner. London: Sage Publications, 1998.
30.) Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History. 4th ed. (W.W. Norton, 2012), 599.
Jones, W. T. Masters of Political Thought. Ed. Edward, McChesner, and Sait. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947.
In the last fifty years the German Democratic Republic has been a nonstop changing country. In Germany, the terms “East” and “West” do not just represent geographically regions. It runs much deeper than that, and there is still a large gap in the way of life, and political and social conditions of the whole country. While most German’s were sleeping on the night of August 13, 1961, the East German government began closing its borders. In the early morning of that Sunday, most of the first work was done: the border to West Berlin was closed. The East German troops had begun to tear up streets and to install barbed wire entanglement and fences through Berlin. Between 1961 and today, the Berlin Wall saw many changes, and so did the people that it entrapped.
Vallentyne, Peter, and Bas van der Vossen. “Libertarianism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 5 Sept. 2002,
One of the first issues to be resolved is the relationship between 'freedom' and 'liberty'. There has been several theses proposing a distinction between these two concepts. Theorists such as Belaief and Pitkin claim that liberty is a political term, while freedom is metaphysical. This distinction, however, is a false one. The only difference between these two terms is linguistic convenience. To illustrate, in the example above, liberty could be described as 'political freedom'. This shows the error in the apparent distinction. The two terms are synonymous, and will be used interchangeably in the remainder of this essay.
"The Spoils of Berlin." New African Feb. 2010: 18-33. New African. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. .
Modern day society is engrossed in a battle for protection of individual rights and freedoms from infringement by any person, be it the government or fellow citizens. Liberalism offers a solution to this by advocating for the protection of personal freedom. As a concept and ideology in political science, liberalism is a doctrine that defines the motivation and efforts made towards the protection of the aforementioned individual freedom. In the current society, the greatest feature of liberalism is the protection of individual liberty from intrusion or violation by a government. The activities of the government have, therefore, become the core point of focus. In liberalism, advocacy for personal freedom may translate to three ideal situations, based on the role that a government plays in a person’s life. These are no role, a limited role or a relatively large role. The three make up liberalism’s rule of thumb. (Van de Haar 1). Political theorists have