Freedom From and Freedom to

Independence will have no meaning if people are not able to exercise their right to freedoms freely, without the encroachment by society or by the State

- Tanvir Aeijaz

MODERN nation states have often responded emotionally, more than politically, to the notion of freedom. We may discern at least three perspectives in such a response. For John Stuart Mill, writing in the much-acclaimed classic On Liberty, freedom meant the idea of the free and sovereign individual, and that freedom would be absolute, except in one case where such freedom did harm to another. In order to realise full freedom, Mill sought restrictions on the interference to individuals in the form of physical or legal sanctions or any kind of social pressures, even the 'moral coercion of public opinion', except in the case of prevention of harm, hurt, injury and evil to others. The political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in Four Essays on Liberty, categorises freedom as negative and positive. Negative freedom, for him, is the absence of intentionally constructed barriers to our actions. For instance, the banning of certain titles in a library violates the negative freedom of any student to achieve a specific goal. Positive freedom, so to say, exists when one is able to take control over a situation to equip oneself to make better choices. Educated people, in this sense, are freer than uneducated ones. And, for Karl Marx and later Marxists, freedom qua self-determination meant removal of obstacles for human agency and emancipation, a sort of association worthy of human nature. The conditions of wage-labour could be seen as one of the obstacles.

These perspectives on freedom, notwithstanding their nuanced differences, converge on the idea that free people are those who believe that they are effective and self-determining, and they have the necessary skills and sufficient information to make reasoned choices in their lives. A free society, therefore, inheres in free individuals, who are autonomous and self-directing, who will not tolerate tyranny and who will insist on sustaining the institutions that are necessary to their freedom.