Wednesday 4 November 2009

Positive and Negative Freedom



Isaiah Berlin, in his 1958 essay "Two Concepts of Liberty", identified negative freedoms (from interference by others) and positive freedoms (to achieve). Interactive Democracy gives us all the positive freedom to express our democratic wishes, issue by issue, and gives us the democratic power to maintain our freedoms from interference by the state.
"To manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you - the social reformer - see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore degrade them." Isaiah Berlin, 1959.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is great, its exactly what ive been thinking about independently for the past year, however how would you plan to implement this form of democracy, why dont you try to get the idea out to the people, guardian newspaper etc