Commissioned Book Review: Maria Dimova-Cookson, Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty
| Author | Ruzha Smilova |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221075920 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(2) NP3 –NP4
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1075920PSW0010.1177/14789299221075920Book ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2022
Commissioned Book Review
Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty by
Maria Dimova-Cookson. London: Routledge, 2019,
270 pp., £120 (hardback); £36.99 (paperback), ISBN
9780415665513.
In a refreshing new take on positive and nega-
tive liberty, the book reopens the debate on the
two concepts, long thought settled in favour of
one or the other. Based on a detailed study of
the accounts of the two concepts of liberty by
pioneers in the field – those of Benjamin
Constant, T. H. Green and Isaiah Berlin – it
offers a subtle, multilayered analysis of the
complex interrelationship between positive
and negative liberty. The analysis skilfully
weaves together the most important aspects of
the two concepts, recovered through critical
engagement with the work of these key figures.
The author has grander ambition, however,
going beyond the historical and conceptual
analysis. It is to advance a non-reductionist
theory of the two concepts of liberty, where
both the positive and the negative senses of the
term account for essential elements of liberty
that a single concept cannot convey. Thus,
Maria Dimova-Cookson’s original contribu-
tion to the on-going debates on liberty is in
building a normative theory of liberty. This
theory provides the background for the rich
historical and conceptual analysis offered in
the book. Such an approach – from normative
theory to analysis of concepts – allows the
author to avoid the pitfalls of a purely concep-
tual analysis. As noted by Raz, Joseph. The
morality of freedom. Clarendon Press, 1986.,
‘a concept is a product of a theory, consisting
of moral principles for the guidance and evalu-
ation of political actions and institutions. One
can derive a concept from a theory but not the
other way around. . .’
The particular normative theory Dimova-
Cookson develops is of liberty as a form of
‘moral development’ of the person. This theory
radically breaks with the default understand-
ings of liberty both in its negative conceptuali-
sation as ‘freedom from external constraints’
and in its positive understanding as ‘self-mas-
tery’. Instead, the author presents liberty in its
complex relation to values such as personal
well-being and moral development: ‘Negative
freedom is experienced in the process of
advancing one’s personal well-being, while
positive freedom is experienced through the
acquisition of moral agency’ (p. 219).
Presenting liberty in relation to these values
aims to explain why liberty is important and
what particular roles both concepts of liberty
play in spelling out the normative considera-
tions behind this important political ideal.
T. H. Green’s theory of ‘true’ freedom as
distinct from mere ‘juristic’ freedom discussed
in Chapter 2 provides the backbone of this new
normative theory. On it, ‘one is truly free in the
acquisition of moral agency and in reaching the
full development of one’s capacities’ (p. 69),
while one is merely ‘juristicly free’, when one
is ‘secured from compulsion’ (p. 69) and
‘exempt from external control’ (p. 79). The
author builds on Green’s hierarchy of forms of
liberty to develop a sui generis teleology of lib-
erty. It is not only that the positive conception
of liberty, with its core idea of moral develop-
ment – acquisition of moral agency in service
of the common good and/or in attaining excel-
lence in a recognised field, has priority over
negative liberty with its exclusive focus on
promoting individual well-being. But the two
types of liberty also have an aim going beyond
them – human perfection, which on this
account consists in fully developing one’s
capacities for selfless service to the common
good. The ordinary agent with her negative lib-
erty to pursue her well-being unhindered marks
one extreme on the long road, whose other
extreme is a fully developed moral agent, who
has perfectly adjusted her personal interests to
the common good and has thus closed the gap
between them (p. 213). Yet, while clearly the
latter comes closer to the ultimate telos of
human perfection, Dimova-Cookson stresses
not only that the two types of agency are dis-
tinct but also, and more importantly, that the
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