Pill Pod 199 - Positive & Negative Freedom (exclusive)
Added 2025-02-01 01:55:02 +0000 UTCWe tried some analytic philosophy, reading a really oft-cited paper by Isaiah Berlin about the difference between positive and negative liberty.
Comments
I'd be real interested in some stuff on analytical Marxism
Alyn
2025-02-25 22:08:46 +0000 UTCI think the idea would be that it's based on some authority claiming to have an idea of what someone's best interests are and "enabling" them by forcing those conditions on them. So like you're "forcing" someone not to be homeless if you provide housing as a universal positive right. Or you're "enabling" their freedom to live in/as a healthy body by having mandatory exercise programs. I've never quite considered positive freedom in that exact light, but I can see the line of reasoning, I think.
Alyn
2025-02-25 22:02:04 +0000 UTC200 episode idea: A retrospective on all your favorite episodes. This would tempt new patrons to go into your back catalogue.
Khemith
2025-02-06 11:09:44 +0000 UTCA couple of notes. 1st I think this essay is a product of its time. I really can't find a use for the positive/negative freedom distinction. It seems enterily artificial and pretty much oriented toward individual vs collective freedom, without all the nuance and contradictions related to this comparison. 2nd, on a total personal note I find Diego extremely annoying; but at least you guys pushback a lot more now and that's great. I was getting tired if hearing 10 mins of diego rambling about and name/concept dropping stuff irrelevant to the discussion.
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2025-02-06 05:07:15 +0000 UTCI think I have a decent understanding of positive liberty now on the idea of the government/someone being given something e.g. subsidized housing. I don't really know of I understand how forcing people in china to be weight lifters is considered positive liberty. Maybe someone in the comments can explain
Gavin Jaeger-Freeborn
2025-02-05 19:56:27 +0000 UTCThat is my impression as well. I have heard of it being an attempt of skipping what Lennon called socialism.
Gavin Jaeger-Freeborn
2025-02-05 19:49:15 +0000 UTCI love you guys, but please don’t do an episode on anarchism generally cause I feel like nobody here is actually familiar with it enough to talk meaningfully about it. For example, anarcho communism is advocated by Kropotkin, not Bakunin. Libertarianism in politics originated with anarchism (libertarian socialism) and was a adopted later by right wingers. There are many subtypes of anarchism as well, and a lot of the “classic” ones like ancom and syndicalism are outdated, like Marxism Leninism, or what Pills has repeatedly referred to as orthodox Marxism. If you did have to read any anarcho papers tho, it would be cool if y’all tackled a post anarchist or anarcho nihilist theory (Blessed is the Flame) tho, much more congruent with this channels content imo. The post stuff tends to make use of a lot of Deleuzian theory btw.
anacidcommie
2025-02-05 17:27:07 +0000 UTCIsn’t access to the things needed for survival (food,housing,clothing, education, health care, and leisure time) a prerequisite for even entertaining the concept of freedom?
Neil C
2025-02-05 03:56:31 +0000 UTCI've been mulling about this topic over the past few days and came to an example where the distinction of positive and negative freedoms made sense to me. I highly doubt I'm the first one to make this observation, but I haven't heard it before: abolition of slavery, when done simply by removing the laws that allow people to own other people grant or restore a negative freedom to the freed slaves, but divorced from any reparative program to compensate all the damage done by their oppressors, they're still deprived of their positive freedoms. You can't say they live in equality just because all enjoy the same negative freedom from slavery when the history of this institution deprived positive freedoms to some while bestowing it upon others in a way that the playing field is now far from level.
Sabataí
2025-02-04 16:56:28 +0000 UTCFrom a non-western perspective, individual freedom seems like a weird topic to me. It feels entirely synthetic. That is why liberty negative or positive makes zero sense to me, without the necessary cause and effect in the material world.(I do only non-alcoholic shots) As for a question, could you attempt a genealogy of the performative freedom(predominantly US)? Did it begin somewhere in continental philosophy or just plain movies? PS: Anytime a philosopher attempts categorising I think of JreG. Isiah, more like pre-JreG
TheUltimateBird
2025-02-04 12:27:54 +0000 UTCMaybe you should do a special post for people to post questions, otherwise some might not find out in time that they can send one, they would have to listen to this and get to the end of it before friday…
Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal
2025-02-04 09:20:01 +0000 UTCAlso echoed in language if not used as late Kierkegaard suggested. It in the Syntax perhaps.
Mrityunjay Awasthy
2025-02-03 20:45:45 +0000 UTCI've really enjoyed the last couple of episode in what feels like an unofficial series on Freedom. Regarding the Berlin text some questions for the potiental Q&A episode... Berlin’s idea of negative liberty—freedom from interference—sounds nice, but in practice, doesn't clash with other freedoms over and over like a feedback loop? It feels like one giant knot that we keep pulling on but can’t untangle. You’ve got people like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan arguing that social media bans, cancel culture, and corporate censorship are attacks on free speech. But then, on the flip side, the speech they’re defending can sometimes interfere with other people’s ability to live freely—whether that’s through harassment, misinformation, or discrimination. (kinda what Eric touched on). Or property rights; negative liberty woudl be a homeowner wants to do whatever they want with their property (build as tall as they want, rent it out as an Airbnb, etc) Positive liberty is the community wants zoning laws that preserve liveability, affordability, and public space. The "Knot" is then, does protecting one person’s property rights reduce the overall freedom of a community to function well? Surely Berlin thought about these things? Maybe you worked through it and I missed it but I've listened to this episode 3 times now and I can't seem to circle that square....? Question because I haven't heard an episode on animals before (maybe I've missed it?) Berlin’s framework of freedom is all about humans, but what happens when it's apply it to animals? Peter Singer argues they deserve moral consideration because they can suffer, Korsgaard says they have intrinsic value, and Nussbaum thinks they should have the freedom to flourish. So, if we accept that animals have moral standing, do we owe them negative liberty, freedom from factory farming and exploitation? Or do we also owe them positive liberty, actively creating a world where they can thrive? And if so, does that mean human freedoms sometimes take a backseat to animal interests?
Alex Wildwood
2025-02-03 10:18:38 +0000 UTCMy impression has always been that anarcho-communism is simply the utopia reached after state communism, or what Marx invisioned in his younger years as being the final destination or form of communism (I believe he wrote this directly into the manifesto) when the state is no longer needed and therefore doesn't exist as something external or extra, as something that exists as say a standing reserve of authority, i.e. when it has simply been dissolved into the everyday functioning of a non exploitive community, by either cybernetic means or the assumption that in most cases workers are already running everything or capable of running everything and therefore managerial class and beauracratic states are superfluous and parasitic.
ageOfBumFires
2025-02-02 17:00:16 +0000 UTCWhy does Berlin get credit for this? Erich Fromm discussed "Freedom from" and "Freedom to" extensively in his 1941 book Escape from Freedom.
tom123b
2025-02-02 15:04:00 +0000 UTCGreat episode as always. A bit unrelated, but i would love to hear your take on the notion of Artwashing, in a future pillpod episode. I recently stumbled upon that notion, and in Denmark in Copenhagen there is a lot of artwashing in relation to gentrification. It could be a really interesting topic to hear you guys discuss this notion in an Canadian or US context.
Andrius Lagunavicius
2025-02-02 14:50:06 +0000 UTCQuestion for the (tentative) Q&A segment: what do you recommend as critical/philosophical/subversive literature for ‘young adults’ (‘YA’ as it’s called in the business)? I’m a Grade 7-8 teacher and have read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy to my class every other year for ten years. Still looking for literature that doesn’t suck for the non-Pullman years!
Marcus Elia
2025-02-01 22:37:12 +0000 UTC"Dawn of Everything" anarchism is less about the +/- of freedom and more about avoiding it being delivered by a "state" (which I suppose is one central negative freedom, but one that allows many positive alternatives), isn't it?
Alex B
2025-02-01 20:42:52 +0000 UTCIs there something like a dialectic (maybe?) freedom than could contain both negative and positive?
Jack
2025-02-01 18:18:54 +0000 UTCAnalytic “philosophy” 🤮
Das Boy
2025-02-01 15:11:50 +0000 UTCIf we're doing questions, I'd like to ask you guys' opinions on G.A. Cohen and Analytic Marxism. I feel that it connects to this episode venturing into the anglosphere of political philosophy. Do you think that removing dialectics from historical materialism makes it clearer and more useful or does it completely kill the whole thing and make it mechanicist and technodeterminist?
Sabataí
2025-02-01 11:15:10 +0000 UTCWasn’t episode 100 a Q&A? Okay yeah I looked it was, huh and Diego shit on positive freedom what a coincidence. My question is, how are you?
Ashley H
2025-02-01 06:23:38 +0000 UTCOh I dig Berlin!
Dony Top5
2025-02-01 01:59:22 +0000 UTC
