8
If, although I enjoy the right to walk through open doors, I prefer not to do so, but to
sit still and vegetate, I am not thereby rendered less free. Freedom is the opportunity
to act, not action itself; the possibility of action, not necessarily the dynamic
realization of it...
16
For Berlin, ultimately, negative liberty entails the carving out and preservation of a
"’negative’ area in which man is not obliged to account for his activities to any man so far
as this is compatible with the existence of organized society."
17
In sum, it is a defense of
the right not to participate in public affairs.
Dewey’s democratic ideal of individual self-realization through participation in
public life provides a stark contrast to Berlin’s defense of the right to "sit still and
vegetate." Dewey’s positive conception of liberty holds that "only... the man who is
realizing his individuality is free in the positive sense of the word."
18
In the defense of
positive liberty one hears echoes of Rousseau’s incongruous notion of forcing people to
be free. Simply leaving individuals alone is not enough; for Dewey, this would constitute
a dereliction of the democratic ideal. A toned-down version of Rousseau, Dewey’s stance
is that a democratic society must create conditions and encourage habits of action and
mind that militate in favor of active self-realization through communal life. In keeping
with his understanding of democracy as not merely a set of institutions and practices, but
a moral ideal – a "way of life" – whose values permeate the social environment of a
democratic culture, the idea of cordoning off a private region insulated from these deep
influences is foreign to Dewey's way of thinking.
In reading Berlin's famous essay, one is struck by the fact that more space is
devoted to critiquing positive liberty and offering a warning about the decidedly unfree
impulses lurking behind its claims than to defending its negative cousin. Conceptions
like Dewey's, which attempt to give content to individual freedom, Berlin would assert,
Convention