Unity and Disunity in the Positive Tradition

Abstract

Positive freedom can be hard to pin down. Whereas negative freedom may be characterised as an absence of coercion or physical prevention, and republican freedom as an absence of interpersonal domination, positive freedom resists such pithy treatment. Moreover, this isn't due to a lack of possible elucidations, but to an overabundance of them. The term is widely taken to refer to a variety of seemingly distinct goods, including but not limited to actually exercisable options or capabilities (Crocker 1980;Gould 1988), collective self-determination