A Society Defined By Positive Rights

Although liberals agree about the value of liberty, their views on what it means to be ‘free’ vary significantly. It was Isaiah Berlin who first created the concepts of negative and positive freedom that helped to differentiate between the two liberals’ views of freedom. The concept of negative freedom was adopted by classical liberals, who believed that freedom was defined as being left alone and free from interference. Classical liberals believed this theory to mean that individuals should be free from external restrictions or constraints. Modern liberals, on the other hand, believed in positive freedom. This, modernist’s perceived to means that all individuals have the ability to be their own master, and thus reach full autonomy. Unlike classical liberals, who had little faith in humankind, Modernists conveyed humans in a much more positive light: people are rational beings that are capable, and therefore should be able, to flourish and

(Dalton, 2017). Positive rights are rights to healthcare and right to education. Negative rights are

What does it mean to form a more just society for the common good? I will be examining Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” as well as Gustavo Gutierrez’s essay, “The Option for the Poor Arises from Love of Christ.” Dr. King examines the facets of social injustice through a letter that he wrote while imprisoned for a nonviolent public protest. King’s letter is in response to a letter from eight fellow clergymen. In the letter from the clergymen they criticize King’s due process in seeking justice and his social injustice movement, so King responds with what I believe to be one of the greatest examples of a man who personifies what it means to form a more just society for the common good. He does not only speak on his behalf, but he speaks out all of humanity. Likewise, Gustavo Gutierrez examines specifically the poor in a similar manner, but believes that these “poor” people have found the ultimate meaning in life and we should all seek to have that same spiritual connection to God, for it would make our society a better place. The preferential option for the poor is seeking a deeper connection to God by bringing justice to light. Gutierrez and Dr. King both exemplify men who have truly set an example on how to form a more just society for the common good of humanity.

One reason human rights can’t be actualized for everyone is because power corrupts them. For example, in the book Night by Elie Wiesel the Jews are forced to leave their homes, “The Hungarian police made us climb into the cars, eighty persons in each one” (Wiesel 22). This quote shows how these police who are serving Hitler are being ordered to move these Jews and imprison them. The police would not normally do this to Jews but because Hitler has the power and authority to force them to do this. This shows how he can easily make them take away their human rights simply because of Power. Another instance where power corrupts human rights is in the speech, “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel, where the president it blamed by denying,

In classic liberals eyes, true freedom is that when the individual is left completely to their own desire, at best the state can be seen as ‘a necessary evil’, or as Jefferson summed up, “Government is best when governed least”. On the other hand there are the modern liberals, who in contrast, have advanced a developmental form of individualism that prioritises human flourishing over the quest for interest satisfaction. This idea says that people can be developed in order to become the best person they can be. In contrast to classic liberals, modern liberals follow positive freedom. This was an idea proposed by Green in the late nineteenth centaury; it recognizes that liberty may also be threatened by social disadvantage and inequality. This, in turn, implied a revised view of the state. By protecting individuals from the social evils that threaten to limit their lives, the state can expand freedom, and not merely diminish it. In the place of the old minimal state, modern liberals have devised a new ‘enabling state’, exercising an increasingly wide range of social and economic responsibilities. Therefore modern liberals differ from the classic liberal in terms of the individual, as the classics believe the state restricts and limits individual freedom, whereas modern liberals see the state as enabling and protective, and can therefore boost levels of individual freedom

Negative rights, unlike positive rights, do not place any obligation on others to provide you with something, or on you to provide others with something. The rationale for this restricted view is that when we expand basic human rights to include positive rights we begin to infringe on the rights of others. At least one proponent of this line of thought has argued against government-mandated healthcare on the basis that it is not a true, basic right, saying instead that healthcare is an ‘imperfect duty of charity’ or beneficence rather an imperative of

Freedom has been an ongoing dilemma throughout history and even in present day. Although not apparent, freedom comes in two forms, which are negative and positive freedom. Positive freedom, often called coercion, is about the opportunity or freedom to do something. In other words, it is when someone or something interferes in someone's life to make rational choices for them. This can be observed in the day to day life, as we have a constitution with laws and rules that we have to abide by. Giving people the freedom to do something encourages them to “develop and ultimately achieve self-realization”. Negative freedom is the freedom from things and are not interfered from any other authority. In other words, it is an aspect where only you could control what you decide to do. As opposed to positive freedom, negative freedom is an asocial view on freedom. Although there is no external restraint on an individual, there is internal restraint. An example of a negative freedom would be the freedom of speech and freedom or religion.These opposing outlooks on freedom are equally important as it constitutes the accord between the people and its

It was argued that these tensions originate from the conflicting values upon which human rights and democracy were distinctly founded, the ways in which they are applied and the kinds of politics that they make room for. The careful juggling between the preservation of democratic institutions and the protection of human rights will thus remain shaky, even in the best of times. These tensions have risen out of the rift between liberal democracy’s conceptualization of the universal Man and the national citizen, or rather, “the real beneficiary of rights” (Douzinas 2013, 56). Since rights form the basis upon which people are allocated into rulers, ruled, and excluded, it is hard to imagine a utopia in which human rights exist for those who do not belong to a demos (Douzinas 2013,

And to effectively complete the argument, within these contemporary examples is an understanding of the theories postulated by authors such as Mill, Berlin, and Sen. These examples help illustrate the failures of several other conceptions of liberty (Positive, Market, Republican, Sen’s Capabilities), which go too far or do not go far enough, leaving us with Negative Liberty as the prevailing form of Liberty that we should be championing in society. And the forms of liberty that are not effectively illustrated by these examples point to a larger problem with those forms and further necessitate Negative Liberty. What kind of progress we can make as a society without projecting Negative Liberty as an understanding for solutions of the past and as solutions for the future has implications that should be thoroughly

Rights have numerous advantages: they accurately express issues, they attempt to address injustices gradually through politico-legal means, and add precision in the identification of inequality in various context. The purpose of individual rights in the broader rights narratives is to shift social consciousness, develop accessibility for popular issues, empower and drive self-determination for marginalised persons and communities. Rights contain social value, and are means for marginalised people to respond to violations of their rights as included assertive individuals, assigned their portion of the power dynamic in the broader political system. This essay posits that the equality that individual rights purport to promote is largely illusory and fail to provide real means to redress injustices under Western liberal democracies. I will argue that rights assigned through construction of the liberal social order are a false representations of the needs of the marginalized, failing to promote substantive equality in society. I concede that rights have value as social phenomena that can energize and inspire movements for equality. This, however, is insufficient to dictate the function of individual rights, as more accurately the alienating effect, the non-objective assignment of, and asymmetry of rights discourse do little to further equality and more to engage justiciability in courts.

An ideal society is considered to be a utopian society, defined as a society where everything is as good as it possibly can be for everyone living in that society. However this type of society has never existed before and continues to be a dream that remains locked up in our minds. Three philosophers who seem to propose an ideal just society are John Rawls, Karl Marx and Milton Friedman. I will be explaining what my vision of an ideal society is and what are the basis and fundamental principles that Rawls, Marx and Friedman use in order to obtain a just society.

Rather than eradicate capitalism, socialism exists within it. Moreover, democratic socialism is characterised through the balance and compromise between free market capitalism and the Governmental state (Bernstein 1993: 142, Heywood 2012:128, Anderson 1985: 10). Marx considered socialism as a class movement, which is what subsequently played out in the political realm, once universal suffrage had been achieved. For previously powerless people it was the only peaceful way to be heard: “Electoral politics constitutes the mechanism through which anyone can as a citizen express claims to goods and services.” (Przeworski 1985:11).

First and foremost, I am a proponent of Negative Liberty. Not only does this mean that individuals should be free from external impediments to action by other people, but also that a government should primarily remove obstructions to our freedom, which is in contrast to Positive Liberty, for the purpose of preserving individual liberties. The lack of hindrance to human action will limit government activities and create a free, tolerant society. In addition, Negative Liberty supports the individual freedom of choice and movement. With this in mind, I cannot help but emphasize the significance of the degree to which individuals encounter interferences from others. Some may argue that a government should actively create conditions necessary for self-determination and freedom to act in the presence of internal capacities; however, I interpret that as a sense of entitlement that requires a redistribution of wealth and ultimately violates the human right of private property. For this reason, I find Positive Liberty to be an infringement of others’ liberty. Throughout mankind’s history, there have been many types of oppression that illustrate my support for Negative Liberty, such as the exploitative authoritarian regimes, economic hardships, and racial oppression.

By contrast, “the ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the [individual’s] wish … to be his own master” (178). Exponents of positive liberty focus on internal factors rather than external actors by painting the self as essentially divided, typically into a higher and lower self. The higher of these selves, distinguished perhaps by rationality or length of outlook, represents in some sense the true realization of an individual’s potential, nature, or entity. This being is marked by possessing full self-consciousness, bearing full responsibility for one’s choices, and not being a slave to one’s nature or “unbridled