Absence and Freedom

I thought this might be a good time to discuss some of the roles absence plays in philosophy. Surprisingly enough, absence plays a profound role in philosophical discourse. In Existentialism, for example, the presence or absence of another person plays a significant role in how we operate as human beings. In argumentation, negative arguments rely on the opposing position having an absence of proof to support itself. Arguments against the existence of God use this strategy of absence extensively. In social and political philosophy absence is critical to defining freedom. Given the siege on civil liberties in the last few years, this seems to be a valuable topic to explore.

There are, generally speaking, three types of freedom that are discussed in social and political philosophy: absolute freedom, positive freedom, and negative freedom. Absolute freedom is exactly what it sounds like, the complete absence of constraint or, conversely, the complete ability to act. However, as a term, it has very little social or political currency. A social or political structure, no matter how democratic, dictatorial, or totalitarian, effectively begins from the notion that the behavior of the individual members of the group are constrained in some fashion, usually by laws.

Positive freedom is defined as the potential to act or pursue goals within constraints. This is particularly relevant to societies. Every society has laws, legal systems, or methods of constraint. These are not absolute constraints. While an individual or corporation is forbidden from acting in particular ways in the pursuit of making money in business, neither is forbidden from pursuing profit or creating a successful business. They can pursue goals, can act, to achieve their ends within the confines of the constraints established by society or government.
Negative freedom is another matter. It is defined as the absence of constraint. You can walk, sleep, eat, etc., as and when you wish assuming there is nothing external to forbid these things (medical conditions, financial burdens, and so on). While seemingly similar, positive and negative freedom are characterized by one fundamental difference; the locus of control.

In positive freedom, the locus of control is external: laws, customs, mores, and taboos. In negative freedom, the locus of control is internal; your own wants and desires.

Now, to participate in a society, we are all more or less forced to accept that a large part of what we experience is positive freedom; the ability to act within constraints. However, in recent years, the right swinging government has been looking to diminish what negative freedoms we do have as well as increasing the constraints of our positive freedom. Freedoms such as privacy, in particular, have suffered from the rallying cry of security. While we indeed must accept constraints, we need not accept a government's stance that all freedom is for sale on the auction block of security. Positive freedom is only as good as the reciprocal restraints on government.