Negative and Positive Liberty

One thing on which all of us agree is that we all have challenges. They could range from getting the kids ready for school every morning and balancing our checkbook to negotiating a contract dispute between labor and management and figuring out how much to tip the person who served us at a restaurant. The challenges are big and small, consequential and insignificant, and self-generated and externally-imposed. How well we face them helps determine the quality of our lives both from an immediate perspective and from a far more long term determination. Regardless of the kind or source of the challenge, another point on which we can agree is that they never really go away.

As it applies to our challenges, philosopher Isaiah Berlin identifies two kinds of concepts with which we all contend: "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." Negative liberty is a freedom from external obstacles or constraints in that people are not held back from taking some sort of action.
An example of an external constraint might be peer pressure. Positive liberty is freedom from internal constraints that otherwise might hold people back. An example of an internal constraint might be feelings of guilt. According to Berlin, having a level of positive and negative liberty calls for persons to have control of their own mind, including not being confined by irrational fears or false information.   

To communicate effectively requires a strong sense of Berlin's two concepts. This includes knowing one's own mind and having strong convictions based on facts and experience and a deep sense of sensitivity in terms of the attitudes and level of knowledge possessed by outside elements. We cannot communicate as well as we might like unless we are, in a sense, liberated from forces that potentially impede any advancements we wish to make. To acquire such liberty is not easy. Doing so represents another challenge, one that is vital to our success and ability to connect with others. .