Three Views of Freedom
At the AEA meetings, I heard Kenneth Elzinga contrast two views of freedom. One view, the usual political one, is of freedom from external coercion. The Christian view is of freedom from sin, which I interpret as freedom from internal coercion. Both of these, I think, are reasonable meanings for freedom, merely reflecting different obstacles to our wills. Someone who wishes to give up being a mobster might be prevented by fear of being punished by another mobster, or he might be prevented by his own greed. The greed is his own, but he might equally say to himself in both situations that *he* wants to give up his sinful life but cannot. The question with internal coercion is what “he” means. Which desire is the true man, the greed (which is the stronger) or the expressed will? In such a situation he might be thankful for being coerced externally into entering the government’s Witness Protection Program, giving up crime under the threat of imprisonment.
The idea of multiple selves might be helpful too. Suppose Rasmusen-2007 wishes to use heroin, but Rasmusen-2008 does not want to be an addict. Rasmusen-2007 comes first, so he gets to make the decision for both of them. In this way he himself is free, but he is coercing Rasmusen-2008. I am not sure whether to call this internal coercion or external.
Internal and external coercion are both different from a third meaning, an unhelpful one, expressed by the third of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”, which are
1. Freedom of speech and expression including the right to dissent
2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear
The first two of the Four Freedoms are freedom from external coercion. The fourth might be the same, or might be freedom from internal coercion, because there are two ways to avoid fear. The third, however, is not related to coercion, but to one’ situation in life, and is really Power, not Freedom. Even if there is nobody else in the world, I might not be free from want. Unless, changing the intended meaning, we relate this too to internal coercion, and say that the trick to avoiding freedom from want is to avoid wanting things one can’t have.
How do all of these relate to another famous concept of liberty, Isaiah Berlin’s Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty. Wikipedia says, “Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as from external coercion.” Negative liberty matches my first meaning. Positive liberty is less clear, and seems to conflate freedom from internal coercion and freedom from want. But I have not read Berlin himself.