Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

Human Freedom from Pericles to Measurement • 9
and treasure to promote freedom see results that are worth the expenditures
in increased freedom (or at least the version of freedom being measured)
and improved outcomes.2
Measurement is also required for Q5, Q6, and Q7. Without an objective
measure of freedom, it is impossible to determine in any quantitative
way whether action X leads to increases or decreases in freedom;
whether it lends stability to freedom or causes instability. Given a) that
many nations have made great sacrifices to spread their versions of freedom
and b) the possibility that some version(s) of freedom creates better
lives for people than others, answering Q5, Q6, and Q7 becomes highly
significant, in conjunction with Q3.
2 Concepts of freedom
This literature review will, by necessity, discuss broad themes. Hundreds
of pages of densely-argued work have been written over the smallest
details in the debate and cannot be dealt with in a review of this scope.
The paper also will assume an informed readership that is already familiar
with basic concepts, so these will not be discussed at length in this essay.
Berlin
Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” provides an important
conceptual tool to examine notions of freedom, so we will begin
there and then move backward to look at earlier views of freedom, before
examining more current literature. Following Berlin, this paper will treat
the terms “freedom” and “liberty” as being interchangeable, though it
typically will speak of “freedom.” Some thinkers have tried to distinguish
between liberty and freedom, but such efforts appear forced and hinge
on idiosyncratic definitions of the two—distinctions without differences.
None have caught on.
Berlin’s two concepts were “negative” and “positive” freedom. The negative
concept of freedom concerns lack of humanly imposed barriers to
action. “By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others.
The wider the area of non-interference, the wider my freedom” (Berlin,
1958: 170). Positive freedom, on the other hand, involves freeing oneself
from whatever constraints one imposes on oneself. This enables the person
to find his or her true self. It implies some sort of higher and lower plane of
being with the higher plane freeing itself from constraints imposed by the
lower plane. For example, class consciousness would have been perceived
by many communists as part of a lower self, blocking the release and freedom
one experiences under the higher form of socialist liberty.
2 Granted, much international maneuvering is for geopolitical reasons, but, at least for some
nations, the question of whether the lives of people are improved is important.
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