Liberty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Liberty - Essay Example Other academicians have related life to existence in state of nature under a social contract. Liberty is connoted into two major different kinds. Classical liberalists and individualists have conceptualized liberty as consisting of individual freedom outside coercision and compulsion, this is the kind of liberty known as Negative liberty.Whereas, social liberalists conceptualize liberty with emphasis to the social structure and agency, this is the second kind of liberty known as Positive liberty .In summary we basically have two kinds of liberty which are: positive liberty and negative liberty. Positive liberty explains that a person can find freedom in his ability to exercise agency, by having adequate power and resources to enable him to do his will without being misled by societal views such as sexism, structuralism and racism. Thomas Hobbes explains that``a free man is he that†¦.is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do `` Hobbes (235).John Stuart Mill was the first to recognize that there is a difference between liberty as a freedom of action or to act and liberty as an absence of coercion. According to Berlin (221), the difference between the two perspectives as opposite concepts of liberty; positive liberty and negative liberty where the latter manifested a negative condition of individual protection from tyranny as well as arbitrary exercise to authority. Whereas the former meant the ability to have means or opportunity other than to lack restraint of doing things or acting. The term negative liberty has different noteworthy aspects.Firstly; it defines zones or realms of freedom in the aspect of science (science of law) Hobbes (197).The distinguishing idea between the two kinds of liberty is traced back to Kant who examined it in the year 1940s; he explained that the two kinds of liberty are not merely different but rivals. Positive liberty requires not