Freedom Kingdom

 Freedom From…Freedom To

There are two kinds of freedom. Freedom from (negative freedom) and freedom to (positive freedom). The splitting of freedom into this binary framework can be traced at least back to Kant, was articulated by Erich Fromm in his 1941 work, Escape from Freedom, made famous by Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” and explored more modernly by Charles Taylor.

These philosophers and thinkers generally used these two different categories of freedom to discuss and debate the role of government in citizens’ lives. But today we’d like to take a stab at exploring the way in which thinking about the difference between freedom from and freedom to can help us understand more about our personal development and the journey from boy to man (girl to woman).

Understanding the Difference Between Negative and Positive Freedom

Negative Freedom/Freedom From

Negative freedom is freedom from external interference that prevents you from doing what you want, when you want to do it. These restrictions are placed on you by other people. The more negative freedom you have, the less obstacles that exist between you and doing whatever it is you desire.

Charles Taylor calls negative freedom an “opportunity concept” of freedom because it gives you access to a range of desirable opportunities, regardless of whether you decide to take advantage of those opportunities or not.

The concept of negative freedom can be summed up as: “I am a slave to no man.”

Positive Freedom/Freedom To

Positive freedom is the freedom to control and direct one’s own life. Positive freedom allows a man to consciously make his own choices, create his own purpose, and shape his own life; he acts instead of being acted upon.

Taylor calls positive freedom an “exercise concept” of freedom because it involves discriminating between all possible opportunities, and exercising the options that are most in line with your real will and what you truly want in life.

There are two kinds of freedom. Freedom from (negative freedom) and freedom to (positive freedom). The splitting of freedom into this binary framework can be traced at least back to Kant, was articulated by Erich Fromm in his 1941 work, Escape from Freedom, made famous by Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” and explored more modernly by Charles Taylor.

These philosophers and thinkers generally used these two different categories of freedom to discuss and debate the role of government in citizens’ lives. But today we’d like to take a stab at exploring the way in which thinking about the difference between freedom from and freedom to can help us understand more about our personal development and the journey from boy to man.

Understanding the Difference Between Negative and Positive Freedom

Negative Freedom/Freedom From

Negative freedom is freedom from external interference that prevents you from doing what you want, when you want to do it. These restrictions are placed on you by other people. The more negative freedom you have, the less obstacles that exist between you and doing whatever it is you desire.

Charles Taylor calls negative freedom an “opportunity concept” of freedom because it gives you access to a range of desirable opportunities, regardless of whether you decide to take advantage of those opportunities or not.

The concept of negative freedom can be summed up as: “I am a slave to no man.”

Positive Freedom/Freedom To

Positive freedom is the freedom to control and direct one’s own life. Positive freedom allows a man to consciously make his own choices, create his own purpose, and shape his own life; he acts instead of being acted upon.

Taylor calls positive freedom an “exercise concept” of freedom because it involves discriminating between all possible opportunities, and exercising the options that are most in line with your real will and what you truly want in life.

The concept of positive freedom can be summed up as: “I am my own master.”

If the difference between negative and positive freedom still seems fuzzy in your head, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers an excellent analogy to explain the nature of the two concepts.

Imagine a man driving a car. He comes to a crossroads. There is no traffic light, no police roadblock, and no other cars; the driver is free to turn whichever way he wants to, and he decides to turn left. This is negative freedom; the driver is free from restrictions which force him to go one way or the other. But what if the driver turned left because he needed to stop at a convenience store to get drink, and he stopped even though it would mean missing an important appointment? It was his addiction that was really steering the car. This shows a lack of positive freedom; the driver lacked the freedom to do what he really wanted—to get to the appointment on time.

As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

This story gives us two contrasting ways of thinking of liberty. On the one hand, one can think of liberty as the absence of obstacles external to the agent. You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to do. In the above story you appear, in this sense, to be free. On the other hand, one can think of liberty as the presence of control on the part of the agent. To be free, you must be self-determined, which is to say that you must be able to control your own destiny in your own interests. In the above story you appear, in this sense, to be unfree: you are not in control of your own destiny, as you are failing to control a passion that you yourself would rather be rid of and which is preventing you from realizing what you recognize to be your true interests. One might say that while on the first view liberty is simply about how many doors are open to the agent, on the second view it is more about going through the right doors for the right reasons.

Applying the Concepts of                Negative and                Positive Freedom        to a Man’s Life

Stage 1: Childhood. Low negative                                  freedom. Low positive freedom.

When you are a child, you are deficient 

in both negative and positive freedom.  

Your parents/ caregiver impose your  

schedule and the rules you must live by. 

Your possible choices are constrained, 

and your beliefs and goals often come 

from your parents/ adults around you. 

You also lack self-mastery; you have 

poor impulse-control and are afraid of 

a good many things.

Stage 2: Young Adulthood. High                          negative freedom.Low positive freedom.

Then one day you turn 18,graduate from 

high school, and perhaps leave home 

and go off to college. For the first time 

in your life, there’s nobody looking over 

your shoulder telling you what to do. 

The external authority in your life is 

gone, and, especially in an Age of 

Anomie where there really aren’t any 

cultural rules anymore, you can do 

pretty much anything you’d like (short 

of violating the law). Party every night, 

sleep in to noon every day, skip class on 

a whim, bring whoever you’d like back 

to your place…

You’re awash in negative freedom—you 

have tons of opportunities, numerous 

doors to open. This is a pretty intoxica-

ting feeling, and at first you revel in it, 

testing it out by pushing towards the 

old boundaries just to prove to yourself 

that they aren’t there. Strengthening 

your self-discipline and self-control is 

not a priority.

Note:Of course, freedom to do what you 

want doesn’t mean you’re free from the 

repercussions of those choices; you 

can still go broke and flunk out of 

school. You can choose your actions, 

but you can’t choose the consequences 

of those actions.

Stage 3: Emerging Adulthood. High 

negative freedom. Increasing positive 

freedom.

At a certain point, you begin to realize 

that while an infinite number of 

opportunities are open to you, not every 

opportunity is equal in importance. You 

go from thinking, “I can do whatever I 

want!” to “What do I really want out of 

life?” You begin to seek for greater 

meaning and to discover your life’s 

purpose. You find a higher level of 

desires for your life.

As your mindset changes, you start to 

discriminate between all the options 

open to you, deciding that some are 

more significant than others—those that 

lead to the fulfillment of your higher 

desires. As you examine the different 

option-doors before you, you notice that 

those that front your lower desires all 

swing open freely, and lead into a single 

room, while the doors that lead to your 

higher desires open to a staircase that 

takes you up a level to another hallway 

with a new set of doors.You also realize 

that some of the doors to your higher 

desires are locked.  These locks 

represent internal obstacles keeping 

you from attaining what you really want 

in life. For example:

• You want to get married, but your                           shyness prevents you from talking                          to women.
• You want to graduate college, but                           your lack of discipline keeps you                            from studying and making passing                       grades.
• You want to complete an Ironman                            race, but you’re fat and out of                               shape.
• You want to be financially                                      independent, but you can’t control                           your spending.
• You want to live the tenets of your                    new faith, but you keep backsliding                  into old habits.
• You want to keep a job, but you can’t                   stop drinking and showing up                    hungover.
• You want to become a Congressman,                   but you have a fear of public                           speaking.
• You want to become a man, but you               don’t know what that means.

You realize you have plenty of negative 

freedom–you’re free from external 

restrictions–but you don’t have much 

positive freedom, the ability to 

overcome fear, ignorance, and bad 

habits and traits in order to become the 

person you want to be.

Stage 4: Manhood. High negative 

freedom. High positive freedom.

While people are no longer imposing 

external restrictions on you, you decide 

that in order to become the man you 

want to be, you will have to come up 

with your own rules for yourself and set 

your own limits. You willingly work on 

developing your self-control, self-

discipline, and willpower. In so doing, 

you gain the ability to control your lower 

desires in order to fulfill your higher 

desires. For example, the driver in the 

story above quits smoking, so that his 

addiction no longer controls his 

decisions.

Philosophers like Kant would say that 

these self-imposed restrictions do not 

decrease your overall negative freedom, 

because you have created the laws 

yourself, of your own free will and 

choice, and no man can enslave 

himself. 

Your negative freedom can only be 

constrained by others, who coerce you 

to do things contrary to your will. By 

learning to control and harness your 

desires, you actually become more auto

-nomous. You’re not only free from 

external restrictions, but you are no 

longer a slave to your passions. You not 

only have the freedom of standing in a 

hallway of an infinite number of doors, 

you also have the freedom to step 

through any of them. Self-mastery is the 

master key that opens all doors.

The Pursuit of Positive Freedom        and the Path to Manhood

Unfortunately, a lot of guys get stuck in 

Stage 2. They grow up in a culture that 

emphasizes negative freedom as the 

end all, be all of life; happiness = being 

able to do whatever you’d like. So they 

never make the transition from thinking 

about freedom from, to thinking about 

freedom to. But that transition is a big 

part of going from boy to man.

Men who shift from thinking exclusively 

about negative freedom to thinking 

about positive freedom as well discover 

that the restrictions they place on them

-selves do not limit their negative 

freedom–while their self-discipline 

does close off some possibilities, it 

opens new ones only available to 

those who have the positive freedom 

to grasp them. Almost any man can 

get a job; only a man with positive 

freedom can get his dream job. Almost 

any man can become a husband and a 

father; only a man with positive 

freedom can become a good husband 

and a good father.

On the other hand, men who do not 

mature past a singular focus on 

freedom from, see all restrictions, 

whether imposed by others or imposed 

by self, as limits on their negative 

freedom. If they discover that some-

thing they want is behind a locked door

, instead of working on overcoming 

that inner obstacle, they shrug their 

shoulders and decide that they didn’t 

really want it anyway. For this reason, 

men who get stuck in Stage 2 make 

less progress in life and never reach 

the highest levels of “self-actualization,”

 superhuman-ness if you will.

Freedom from-dwellers also end up 

being restless and dissatisfied with 

their lives. Feeling in control of your life 

creates happiness and satisfaction, 

and feeling in control comes from gain-

ing positive freedom from self-mastery. 

A man with positive freedom makes a 

strong connection between his 

purpose, what he has to give up to 

obtain that purpose, and the fact that 

he does so willingly. He understands 

the law of sacrifice, and takes 

ownership of and responsibility for 

his choices.

Finally, the advantage of cultivating a 

rich wellspring of positive freedom is 

that while a man’s negative freedom can 

be taken away by others, his reserve of 

positive freedom is an untouchable 

power source that can sustain him no 

matter how his external conditions 

change or what dire circumstances 

befall him.

This is precisely what psychiatrist 

Viktor Emil Frankl observed when he 

lived among his fellow prisoners–men 

who had been stripped of every vestige 

of their negative freedom–at the Nazis’ 

Theresienstadt concentration camp. As 

Frankl recounts in his famous book,

 Man’s Search for Meaning:

In spite of all the                    enforced physical and mental primitiveness of          the life in a                      concentration camp, it            was possible for                spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who       were used to a rich intellectual life may have        suffered much pain(they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner              selves was less. They            were able to retreat from their terrible surrounding        -s to a life of inner riches    and spiritual freedom.               Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature…

The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

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   Are You Making an Escape From Freedom?

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