This episode of Adam Curtis’ BBC documentary series focuses on the concepts of positive and negative liberty, as introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin.
Curtis briefly explains how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one’s potential.
Following the path of negative liberty to its logical conclusions, as governments have done in the West for the past 50 years, resulted in a society without meaning populated only by selfish automatons. There was at least some value in positive liberty in that it allowed people to strive to better themselves.
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