Open AccessUnderstanding Rousseau’s Forced Freedom Through Two Concepts of Liberty
Author(s) -
Rostyslav Soroka
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
political science undergraduate review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2562-1289
pISSN - 2562-1270
DOI - 10.29173/psur37
Subject(s) - parallels , coercion (linguistics) , law , negative liberty , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , free will , freedom of contract , social contract , law and economics , sociology , epistemology , political science , philosophy , economics , politics , mathematics , linguistics , operations management , statistics
How can someone be “forced to be free”? Why is the arrest of a drunk driver not actually against their will? This paper answers these questions by drawing parallels between Rousseau’s “Social Contract” and Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”. The coherence of “forced freedom” depends on a specific understanding of “freedom”—namely Isaiah Berlin’s notion of “Positive freedom”. Positive freedom suggests that free actions are those which act in affirmation of a will rather than those acting in the absence of obstacles. Therefore, Positive freedom is concerned with the source of a will. Rousseau’s forced freedom is meant to be applied in cases of incongruence between an individual’s various whims, wills, and deep interests. Forced freedom does not act against a will but acts as a rationalization of an existing will to illuminate what it truly desires. In the case of the drunk driver, their implicit participation in society means that they must understand through some capacity why established drunk driving laws exist. An individual’s belief in Positive freedom is therefore necessary in order for them to internalize the coercion of the state and to allow themselves to be “forced to be free”.