Berlin and Bosanquet: True self and positive freedom

Abstract

Is the Idealist conception of positive freedom doomed as politically dangerous? Decidedly yes, Berlin famously argues. The danger lies with manipulating positive freedom into a political tool of tyranny, coercing individuals to be free. The vehicle of manipulation is a conception of a divided self that underpins positive freedom. For, Berlin argues, conceptions of freedom derive directly from views of what constitutes a self. He cites the British Idealists as evidence for his criticism. The case for Green’s immunity to Berlin’s criticism is now well established. Bosanquet, in particular, however, is a sitting duck to Berlin’s fire. Berlin’s fire, however, misses its target. Not only is Bosanquet immune to Berlin’s criticism, but Berlin’s criticism obscures the extent to which Bosanquet shares Berlin’s worry about the danger of concentrated political power. Moreover, Bosanquet institutionalizes positive freedom into a bulwark against political tyranny in a fashion that Berlin’s wholesale criticism of positive freedom forecloses. Bosanquet’s true self is equipped to resist being coerced to be free. Indeed, Berlin’s divided self ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of self which being, instead, complex/dynamic/integrated, is at once spontaneous/energetic and habitual/automatic. Moreover, whereas he recognizes with Bosanquet that positive freedom is not merely an internal condition of the true self, but takes shape in society, Berlin’s holistic interpretation of the organic metaphor of society means that he sees only the “dark” side of that connection. Consequently, he misses the affirmative link, the “bright” side, that Bosanquet, employing a relational interpretation of the organic metaphor, forges between positive freedom and social institutions. Ultimately, engaging Berlin and Bosanquet unveils the complexity of political theory.

Keywords

Berlin Bosanquet true self complex self positive freedom organic metaphor of society

Introduction

Is the Idealist conception of positive freedom doomed as politically dangerous? Decidedly yes, Berlin famously argues. The danger, he holds, lies with the possibility of manipulating positive freedom, understood as rational self-mastery, into a political tool of tyranny, coercing individuals to be free. The vehicle of manipulation, on Berlin’s account, is a conception of a divided self that lies at the core of positive freedom. For “conceptions of freedom,” he argues, “directly derive from views of what constitutes a self, a person, a man. Enough manipulation with the definition of man and freedom can be made to mean whatever the manipulator wishes.”¹ Among others, Berlin lists Hegel and the British Idealists—Bradley, Bosanquet, and Green—as evidence for his condemnation of positive freedom as politically dangerous.

Berlin’s criticism has not remained unanswered. A great deal of the answers, however, shift the ground to non-Idealist philosophers.² My concern is not to shift the ground, nor to reconstruct a conception of self that is immune to Berlin’s criticism. Rather, I wish to focus on the very British Idealist conception of the self which Berlin criticizes, and in particular as defended by Bernard Bosanquet.

But why does Bosanquet merit our attention as an adequate response to Berlin? To begin with, the case for Green’s immunity to Berlin’s criticism is now well established.³ Bradley’s little concern with political philosophy inevitably diminishes the interest in his argument. By contrast, Bosanquet forges an essential connection between his conception of the self and the state. To be specific, what seems to be a concept of divided self occupies center stage in Bosanquet’s political thought and the language of divided self is more visible in his argument than in any other British Idealist. Thus, it is not uncommon to find Bosanquet speaking of “the contrast of the actual indolent or selfish will, and… the real or rational will” and of “a self… which we recognise as what ought to be, as against the indolence, ignorance, or rebellion of our casual private selves.”⁴ Moreover, he does speak of “forcing men to be free.”⁵ This renders Bosanquet a sitting duck to Berlin’s fire.

Berlin’s fire misses the mark, though. The way he does, I argue, helps to shed new light on some important aspects in the thought of both thinkers, thereby contributing to scholarship of Bosanquet and British Idealism as well as of Berlin’s assessment of positive freedom. First, I draw a distinction, absent in the literature on Berlin, between the “partial” and “complete” versions of Berlin’s criticism of positive freedom, that is the link that Berlins forges between the personal and the political aspects of positive freedom. By using the organic metaphor of society, the “complete” version comes close to what Bosanquet does. However, I argue that Bosanquet shifts the organic metaphor away from the tyrannical threat, with which Berlin associates it, to an institutional vehicle for protecting freedom. Second, and relatedly, I draw attention to the essential link that Bosanquet forges between two elements in his political thought that are not usually studied together: the British Idealist’s theory of the self and the type of social institutions he recommends. The entwining of the two reveals how exactly institutions are capable of fostering freedom as self-development, thereby bringing out the important institutional dimension of positive freedom in the thought of British Idealists. Indeed, Bosanquet institutionalizes positive freedom into a bulwark against political tyranny in a fashion that Berlin’s wholesale criticism of positive freedom forecloses. Third, the essay introduces Bosanquet’s conception of the routine/inert/customary self, as I call it, which has received rather little attention in discussions of Bosanquet’s theory of the self. Berlin sees the dialectic between the empirical and rational selves as liberty suppressing. Bosanquet, I urge, is innovative in showing how the relationship between the customary and the rational selves actually opens new possibilities for personal development. Fourth, the way that Berlin’s criticism of Bosanquet misses its target reveals the complexity of political theory. For one thing, not only is Bosanquet immune to Berlin’s criticism, he, in fact, shares Berlin’s worry about accumulations of political power. Further, Bosanquet’s immunity to Berlin’s criticism unveils a flaw in the latter’s argument, namely his assumption that there is a simple one-to-one relationship between the Idealist conception of true self, positive freedom, and political tyranny.

I advance two arguments in support of these claims. First, not withstanding his unfortunate use of language, Bosanquet’s conception of true self is so tooled as to disable the very sort of political manipulation and forcing individuals to be free that worry Berlin. Understood as self-realization, as Berlin does, positive freedom is unenforceable. Indeed, I argue that Berlin’s divided self ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of self which being, instead, complex/dynamic/integrated, is at once spontaneous/energetic and habitual/automatic. Moreover, Bosanquet merits attention as a response to Berlin because, notwithstanding his defense of true self-based positive freedom, Bosanquet shares Berlin’s central concern about political tyranny and collectivism. Berlin’s criticism obscures the extent of this shared worry. Second, Berlin’s holistic interpretation of the organic metaphor of society means that he sees only its perilous implication in threatening ordinary individual liberties. Whereas Berlin recognizes that positive freedom is not merely an internal condition of the true self, but takes shapes in social institutions, he sees only the “dark” side of this connection. Consequently, he misses the affirmative link, the “bright” side, that Bosanquet, drawing directly on Hegel, forges between positive freedom and the world of social institutions. Finally, though not a focus of my essay, a claim about the complexity of political arguments both underpins, and is disclosed by, my two arguments. Contrary to Berlin, there is no relation of entailment between Idealist positive freedom and political tyranny. Similarly, the organic conception of society is not, as such, essentially bound up with advocacy of political collectivism. Both connections, as forged by Berlin, are better understood in the ideological context of cold war liberalism than in terms of logical or conceptual links.

I proceed as follows. First, I introduce Berlin’s criticism which I call the “magical transformation argument.” I argue that the common treatment of Berlin employs a partial, shortened, version of his magical transformation argument by excluding the organic metaphor of society. Attending to Berlin’s complete argument is, however, essential since it obscures, even distorts, the social/institutional dimension of positive freedom. Without the latter, an adequate appreciation of Bosanquet’s conception of positive freedom cannot be gotten. Second, I discuss the immunity of the true self to Berlin’s criticism. Put briefly, Bosanquet’s conception of the true self makes it impossible for anyone to be coerced to be free. While coercion, I shall suggest, is compatible with the habitual/automatic self, it threatens the spontaneous, energetic, and creative powers of the true self. Third, I discuss the affirmative institutional dimension of Bosanquet’s conception of positive freedom which is obscured by Berlin’s perilous use of the organic metaphor of society. Here, I highlight the connection that Bosanquet forges between positive freedom as self-government and small participatory communities.

Berlin’s magical transformation argument: Two versions

The magical transformation argument reveals how the innocent conception of rational self-mastery is transformed into “a specious disguise for brutal tyranny” by Isaiah Berlin.⁶ It is, I suggest, important to discern partial and complete versions of that argument. While the partial version alone is frequently employed in the literature, the complete version is essential to an adequate appreciation of Berlin’s misinterpretation of the Idealist conception of positive freedom.

The common partial version of the magical transformation argument

The common political version proceeds as follows.

The “self” in “rational self-mastery” is divided into two selves one of which is superior to, and contrast with, the other: the

dominant self is … variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher nature’, … with my ‘real’, or ‘ideal’, or ‘autonomous’ self, or with my self ‘at its best’; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my ‘lower’ nature, … my ‘empirical’ or ‘heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’ nature.⁷

One is free when the rational, real self controls, disciplines, and subdues the lower self.

Some individuals are more rational and know what’s the right path, goal, for the rational self.

Therefore, Berlin concludes, they are in a position to coerce other in the name of those others’ rational self.

As Berlin puts it,

For - so Hegel, Bradley, Bosanquet have often assured us - by obeying the rational man we obey ourselves: not indeed as we are, sunk in our ignorance and our passions … but as we could be if we were rational; as we could be even now, if only we would listen to the rational element which is, ex hypothesi, within every human being who deserves the name.⁸

The rational individuals force the non-rational individuals to follow the rational path in order for the non-rational individuals realize their own true self, thereby liberating them from the empirical self. Berlin models these coercive inter-relations between individuals in society on the suppressive intra-relations between the two selves:

in the same way that, internally, the higher self must suppress the lower self if I am to be free, the higher elements in society – the better educated, the more rational, those who ‘possess the highest insight of their time and people’– may exercise compulsion to rationalise the irrational section of society.

This two-tier suppressive relations—the intra-relations of two selves and the inter-relations of the rational and irrational parts of society—lie at the heart of the partial version of the magical transformation argument. Adding to it the connection between positive freedom and the organic metaphor of society results in the complete version.

The complete version of the magical transformation argument

Berlin links the organic metaphor of society with the self-realization version of positive freedom. It appears the first time Berlin introduces the transformation argument:

The “self” in “rational self-mastery” is divided into two selves one of which is superior to, and contrasted with, the other.

The dominant self in the divided self is identified with reason, the higher nature which then is contrasted with irrational impulses, the lower nature. The latter needs to be “to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’ nature.”⁹

The following step introduced the organic metaphor of society which is absent from the common partial version:

Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an even larger gap; the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a Church, a State, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or ‘organic’, single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’, achieves its own, and therefore their, ‘higher’ freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a ‘higher’ level of freedom have often been pointed out.¹⁰

Again, as Berlin puts it, the organic metaphor of society reflects the link between individual self-mastery and a larger self-directing social whole. For Berlin, the organic metaphor of society justifies coercing people to be free because he interprets that metaphor holistically as is evident from his description of society as a “whole” and of the individual as its “element or aspect.” Though he introduces this argument here, he does not develop it (I shall develop this argument below in the section on Berlin’s holistic interpretation of positive freedom). Berlin, instead, analyzes the “magical transformation” that results in coercing individuals in the name of their liberation as the following steps in the common partial version do:

Some individuals are more rational and know what’s the right path, goal, for the rational self.

Therefore, they are in a position to coerce others in the name of those others’ rational self. That is, the rational individuals force the non-rational individuals to follow the rational path in order that they realize their true self, thereby liberating them from the empirical self.

Why is the organic metaphor of society largely absent in the literature on Berlin’s criticism of positive freedom? One reason lies with the fact that, as the common partial sequence reveals, Berlin’s criticism is effective without the organic metaphor of society step. This is evident in Carter’s analysis of what he calls Berlin’s “slippery slope” argument. Carter includes the step of the organic metaphor of society not as a necessary step in Berlin’s slippery slope argument, but as “an additional step” that can be taken “occasionally” by proponents of positive freedom.¹¹ Moreover, associated with the Idealist tradition, positive freedom is identified, as David Miller holds, with the inner life of the self and with internal obstacles to rational self-mastery. This, I suggest, is likely to lead to neglecting the external dimension of positive freedom. But not always. Miller does take the external dimension into account, stressing the diverse forms of externality that express the shared insistence within the Idealist tradition of the internality of positive freedom.¹²

These reasons notwithstanding, the organic metaphor of society is especially relevant to the present essay and this for two reasons. First, Berlin himself gives pride of place to the organic metaphor of society in his response to his critics. Joining this response to his original discussion, the inclusion of the organic metaphor of society expands significantly Berlin’s criticism of Idealist positive freedom. Thus, for one thing, Berlin holds that the identification of the rational self with the social whole “dissolve[s] my sense of personal identity in a common enterprise, as an element in a larger self-directed whole.”¹³ Further,

Freedom is identified … most often, it seems to me, with the ‘positive’ activity of these institutional (‘organic’) forms of life, growth, etc., rather than with mere (‘negative’) removal of obstacles even from the paths of such ‘organisms’, let alone from those of individuals—such an absence of obstacles being regarded as, at best, means to, or conditions of, freedom; not as freedom itself.¹⁴

The implication of both claims is the denigration of “the empirical spatio-temporal existence of the finite individual” and with it the weakening, and even, threatening of ordinary negative liberties. Thus, while “being coerced to be free” is central to both the partial and the complete versions of the magical transformation argument, the inclusion of the organic metaphor of society in the complete version injects further criticism of the British Idealist conception of positive freedom.

Second, the organic metaphor of society is especially relevant here because British Idealists deploy the organic metaphor of society radically differently from Berlin. In their hands, the organic metaphor of society is a vehicle to establishing an essential nexus between the internal and external dimensions of positive freedom. Like Berlin, they hold that positive freedom is not merely a matter of the inner condition of the true self, but takes shape in social institutions. However, whereas Berlin sees only the “dark” side of this sociability-positive freedom nexus, Bosanquet reveals its “bright” side. The difference, it will become clear below, lies with competing interpretations of the organic metaphor of society: holistic-perilous interpretation (Berlin) and relational-affirmative one (Bosanquet).

In what follows, I argue, first, that Bosanquet’s conception of the true self disarms the “being coerced to be free” charge. I argue, second, that Berlin sees only the perilous use of the organic metaphor of society because he identifies it exclusively with a holistic interpretation whereas Bosanquet employs a relational interpretation.

First argument: The true self and being coerced to be free

My argument in this section is in two parts. First, Bosanquet’s real/true self is conceptually equipped to resist being coerced to be free. Such resistance reveals that Bosanquet shares Berlin’s anxiety about the danger of accumulations of political power. Second, Berlin’s description of a self divided into two unbridgeable selves does not properly account for Bosanquet’s conception of the self.

True self: Beyond the reach of coercion

Bosanquet’s conception of the true self is immune to Berlin’s magical transformation argument, and not contingently so. To be positively free, on Bosanquet’s account, action must be initiated and motivated by the rational self itself; it cannot be done for it, or on its behalf. Internal motivation, growth, and creative energy secure the true self against being coerced to be free.

Positively free action, self-realization, must be internally motivated action. Therefore, Bosanquet frequently insists,

the State is unable to determine that the action shall be done from the ground or motive which alone would give it immediate value or durable certainty as an element in the best life. On the contrary, in so far as the doing of the action is due to the distinctive mode of operation which belongs to the State, due, that is to say, to the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, its value as an element in the best life is ipso facto destroyed.. .¹⁵

Moreover, the development of the true self must be a do-it-yourself achievement. “The keynote is throughout that a true self is something to be made and won… not something given to be enjoyed.”¹⁶ Growth, spontaneity, and energy properly capture the true self. The stress on growth recalls both Mill and Hobhouse. Bosanquet shares Mill’s claim that since self-development is a matter of inner growth, it rules out imposing a uniform pattern of conduct on individuals. With Hobhouse, Bosanquet agrees that the internal sphere of growth should be kept separate from the external sphere of coercion. Coercive interference by the state is an “intrusion, upon a growing unity of consciousness, of a medium hostile to its growth.”¹⁷

Bosanquet’s insistence on growth has its metaphysical roots in what he calls “The Miracle of Will.”¹⁸ The miracle of the will lies with its all-powerful creative power. As “an active unity,” the self-conscious soul or self re-creates the external nature that sets it up. “Here we have the root of Will, and are close upon the secret of its power, or the power of character, to transfigure and so to conquer circumstance.”¹⁹ To be sure, the miracle of the will properly describes the infinite self, not the finite self. The continuity of the two is, however, essential to Bosanquet’s argument. This is evident from the way he regards (human) self as the creator of its own character which it does by stamping its energy on external circumstances. Bosanquet singles out the cooperative movement as an example of the creative energy of the human self.²⁰ “Material conditions are necessary to existence; but they are themselves dependent to an enormous extent on the energy of the mind which they surround.”²¹

Thus, conceptualized in terms of internal growth, self-motivation, and creative power, Bosanquet’s true self is clearly inconsistent with Berlin’s magical transformation argument. More than that, though. Bosanquet’s conception of true self can be properly seen as a direct challenge to Berlin’s magical transformation argument. Far from coercive action being an action on behalf of the true self’s own realization, it is very likely to destroy such realization. Force is an incompatible means to achieving the end of self-realization.

Force or automatic custom or authoritative tradition or ‘suggestion’ are not hostile to one individuality because they come from ‘others,’ but because their nature is contradictory to the nature of the highest self-assertion of mind, because they are, so to speak, in a medium incompatible with its medium … It is not, therefore, the intrusion upon isolation, as such, that interferes with individuality; it is the intrusion, upon a growing unity of consciousness, of a medium hostile to its growth.²²

Therefore, far from liberating individuals by suppressing the lower self and coercing the true self to do the rational thing, political coercion threatens the very possibility of the realization of the true self.

For … every act done by the public power has one aspect of encroachment, however slight, on the sphere of character and intelligence, if only by using funds raised by taxation, or by introducing an automatic arrangement into life. It can, therefore, only be justified if it liberates resources of character and intelligence greater beyond all question than the encroachment which it involves … every encroachment of automatism must be justified by opening new possibilities to self-conscious development, if it is not to mean degeneration and senility.²³

The way Bosanquet’s conception of true self challenges Berlin’s magical transformation argument is telling. It tells that, appearances notwithstanding, Bosanquet shares Berlin’s worry about concentrations of political power. Berlin expresses his anxiety in terms of Kant’s denunciation of paternalism:

since self-determination is precisely what it [paternalism] obstructs; even if it is indispensable for curing certain evil, it is, for opponents of tyranny, at best a necessary evil; as are all great accumulations of power as such. Those who maintain that such concentrations are sometimes required to remedy injustices or to increase the insufficient liberties of individuals or groups tend to ignore or play down the reverse of the coin: that much power (and authority) is also, as a rule, a standing threat to fundamental liberties.²⁴

Bosanquet expresses the same worry by highlighting approvingly “some instructive points” in Herbert Spencer’s criticism of political collectivism:

no other writer has exhibited with equal vividness the fatal possibilities of a collective governmental stupidity. That in practice these possibilities are continually tending to become facts, just as in theory they are represented by recurrent fallacies, is a proof of the extreme arduousness of the demands made by the task of self-government upon the people which undertakes it.²⁵

Whereas Berlin warns against the threat posed by paternalistic power to individual negative liberties, Bosanquet, we shall see below, focuses his attention on small self-governing participatory communities as an effective means against “collective governmental stupidity.”

The essential point I wish to stress here is that Bosanquet and Berlin share an ideological antipathy towards the sort of political collectivism which is bound up with state socialism as well as a deep anxiety about the potential arbitrariness of centralized political power. This shared anxiety is obscured by the assumption that underpins Berlin’s wholesale criticism of Idealist positive freedom, namely that there is a simple relationship of entailment between true self-based positive freedom and political collectivism/tyranny. Moreover, though grounded in a conception of true self, Berlin’s description of a self divided into two unbridgeable selves ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of the self. This is the second part of the present section to which I now turn.

Complex, not divided self

The incompatibility of coercion and self-realization is puzzling in light of Bosanquet’s insistence that there is no necessary opposition between law and liberty and indeed that law is a friend, not a foe, of liberty. Attending to the complexity of Bosanquet’s conception of the self helps resolve the puzzle. I stress “complex” self and not, as Berlin would have it, divided self. For one thing, Bosanquet’s self is not divided into the rational self and the passionate self. With Green, he clearly rejects that Kantian picture of the self. With Aristotle, Bosanquet embraces “the compound nature of man,” namely “his combined reason and desire.”²⁶ For another, though Bosanquet clearly uses the language of the higher, real, true self, on the one hand, and the “usual self,” “average self,” “normal self,”²⁷ on the other hand, he rejects the idea of abrupt division between them in favor of relationship of dynamic complexity. Much as he conceptualizes society in terms of complexity of institutions in an ongoing process of adjustment, he similarly conceptualizes the self as dynamic complexity.

Bosanquet’s conception of complex self is, accordingly, best described in the following two pairs. First, the more complete and less complete self or “the fuller and the narrower self.”²⁸ Second, the conscious, spontaneous, self-asserting self and the routine/inert/customary self. While both pairs reject the picture of an unbridgeable divided self, the second pair is of particular relevance to the present discussion. For one thing, while the first pair is familiar in the literature on Bosanquet, the second one, is not, and particularly unfamiliar is the conception of the habitual/routine self. Moreover, whereas the narrower self of the first pair is associated with the insufficiency and deficiency of the finite self as viewed from the vantage of the infinite, the habitual self of the second pair, though it is not the fuller true self, is nevertheless quite indispensable to it.

Recall:

While “Force or automatic custom or authoritative tradition or ‘suggestion’ are” hostile to the true self as “a growing unity of consciousness,”³⁰ they are compatible with the “average,” “usual” self, or “normal” self. The “average” self and the “true” self are both essential aspects of Bosanquet’s complex self. No unbridgeable gap opens up between them on Bosanquet’s account, but continuity entwines them. Essential here is Bosanquet’s distinction between the sphere of automatism (average self) and consciousness (true self) in human life and human action.

Automatic actions are such as we perform in walking, eating, dressing, playing the piano or riding the bicycle. They have been formed by consciousness, and are of a character subservient to its purposes, and obedient to its signals … They are relegated to automatism because they are uniform, necessary, and external — ‘external’ in the sense … that the way in which they are required makes it enough if they are done, whatever their motives, or with no motives at all.³¹

It is precisely because automatic actions “demand no effort of attention” that they are not harmful but essential to the true self for “in this way attention is economised and enabled to devote itself to problems which demand its intenser efforts.”³² In this way, that is, Bosanquet pictures a division of labor between the “average” and the true self. So long as automatic actions are relegated to the average self, then automatism is an indispensable condition of progress. It represents the ground won and settled by our civilization, and leaves us free to think and will such matters as have their value in and through being thought and willed rightly. If we try to relegate these to automatism, then moral and intellectual death has set in.³³ In this way, the habitual and automatic actions “subserve the end of an economy of attention.”³⁴ Because the bulk of human actions are habitual, “we can carry on while giving the bulk of our attention to something more worthy of mature consciousness. Growth and progress of the mind depend on this relation.”³⁵

On Bosanquet’s account of the self, then, positive freedom is not a matter of the rational/true self subduing the empirical self, or liberating the former from the latter. Rather, positive freedom is a matter of continuous effort of growth and development by the true/energetic self which, in turn, presupposes a proper division of labor between energy, spontaneous growth and internal motivation, on the one hand, and habitual, automatic action, on the other hand. Thus,

all the daily conduct of a law-abiding citizen … moves in certain routines, determined by habits and sanctioned by law; and it is this characteristic alone which enables the enormously complex life of modern community to be carried on in such a way that, so far from absorbing, it progressively liberates the attention of its members from the maintenance of its necessary conditions.³⁶

It is in this context, of the division of labour between energy and spontaneity, on the one hand and routine and automatism, on the other, that Bosanquet employs “forcing men to be free.” For him, “forcing men to be free” is bound up with the habitual self and the “complex life of modern community.” Bosanquet links his use of “forcing individuals to be free” with the habitual, routine, automatic self, not with the energetic, spontaneous true self. The habitual conduct of that self is essential for enabling “the enormously complex life of modern community to be carried on.” To explain: “forcing men to be free” is carried out by the state acting through force-as-automatism, that is by maintaining a system of rights which, in turn, presupposes an habitual adherence by members of the state. As such, the state aims “to clear the road for true volition”³⁷ by acting on the automatic/habitual self. This is what “forcing men to be free” means for Bosanquet. Importantly, it is not without danger, though not of the sort Berlin has in mind. Quite the contrary. For, as Bosanquet insists,

in so far as by misdirection of the automatic process it encroaches on the region of living Will—the region where the good realises itself directly by its own force as a motive—it is ‘sawing off the branch on which it sits,’ and superseding the aim by the instrument.³⁸

While “being forced to be free” is central to both the partial and the complete versions of the magical transformation argument, the inclusion of the organic metaphor of society in the complete version injects further criticism to which I now turn.

Second argument: Positive freedom and social institutions

Berlin’s holistic interpretation of positive freedom

Berlin’s complete magical transformation argument recognizes that the Idealist conception of positive freedom is not to be exclusively equated with the inner life of the self and with internal obstacles to rational self-mastery. This is amply evident from the connection he makes between true self, the organic metaphor of society and positive freedom. The problem, however, is that Berlin sees only the threats posed by the organic metaphor of society to ordinary negative liberties. For him, the organic metaphor of society is, as such, dangerous because it has been used “to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a ‘higher’ level of freedom…”³⁹ I argue in this section that by seeing only the perilous use of the organic metaphor of society, Berlin focuses exclusively on the “dark side” of the relations between social institutions and positive freedom. His argument, thus, clouds the “bright side,” the affirmative connection between positive freedom and social institutions that lies at the heart of the Idealist argument of positive freedom.

Berlin sees only the perilous use of the organic metaphor of society because he interprets it holistically. Recall:

Presently the two selves [the real/true self and the lower/empirical self] may be represented as divided by an even larger gap; the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a Church, a State, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or ‘organic,’ single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members,’ achieves its own, and therefore their, ‘higher’ freedom.⁴⁰

The holistic conception of the organic metaphor of society gives ontological and axiological priority to society understood as a social whole over its individual members. Thus, the social whole, not the individual, is identified as being “the ‘true’ self.” Accordingly, the social whole possesses its own “collective, or ‘organic’, single will” and is, thus, a “self-directed whole.”⁴¹ By contrast, “the empirical spatio-temporal existence of the finite individual” is denigrated in that “the individual is an element or aspect” of the social whole, in which his “sense of personal identity” is dissolved.⁴² It follows, therefore, that “by imposing its collective, or ‘organic’, single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’,” the social whole “achieves its own, and therefore their, ‘higher’ freedom.” Hence: “The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a “higher” level of freedom…”⁴³ Moreover, the organic metaphor of society shifts the locus of freedom away from individuals:

Bosanquet’s relational interpretation of positive freedom

Holism, however, is not the only possible interpretation of the organic metaphor of society. In contrast to Berlin, British Idealists employ the organic metaphor of society relationally, not holistically.⁴⁵ Briefly put, as a “whole,” society resides in the complexity of institutions which it comprises; institutions, in turn, dwell in the reciprocal interdependence of their members. The relational perspective enables Idealists to forge an affirmative connection between positive freedom and social institutions, the “bright” side of the sociability-freedom nexus that Berlin fails to recognize.

The Hegelian-connection of Bosanquet’s political argument is particularly helpful here. This is because Bosanquet draws directly and explicitly on Hegel and a great deal of work on Hegel’s theory of freedom establishes the innovative connection that Hegel forges between freedom and sociability in general and the relational-institutional dimension of freedom in particular. Pippin argues that the real uniqueness of Hegel’s conception of freedom falls on the objective side. Contrary to Berlin, however, the objective side of freedom does not involve the dissolution of personal identity in “a self-directed social whole”; nor does “the ‘positive’ activity of these institutional (‘organic’) forms of life” involves something beyond and above the activities of interdependent individuals. Holistic sociability of the sort Berlin has in mind ill-describes Hegel’s and Bosanquet’s sociability-freedom nexus. Rather, as Pippin explains, realizing freedom requires both reciprocal relations and a certain set of institutions.⁴⁶ They are closely connected for while intersubjective recognition is essential to being free, it is embodied in the institutions of ethical life. This is the innovative element in Hegel’s theory of freedom, namely that freedom is relational and requires a particular set of institutions.

The relational-institutional dimension of positive freedom

The institutional dimension of freedom is unveiled in Bosanquet’s claim that “the free will is the will that wills itself.”⁴⁷ This philosophical expression echoes Hegel’s claim that “the free will wills itself as the free will.”⁴⁸ This “dark saying,” Rawls claims about Hegel’s obscure statement, is Hegel’s “central thesis” expressing “… the role of sittlichkeit as the location of the ethical: the whole ensemble of rational social institutions that make freedom possible.”⁴⁹ Among other things, it means “that the free will wills a system of political and social institutions within which the free will can be free. Here institutions are understood as forms of life as lived by human beings.”⁵⁰ This is how Berlin should have understood his own claim that “Freedom is identified… most often, it seems to me, with the ‘positive’ activity of these institutional (‘organic’) forms of life…” That “dark saying” means further “that the free will wills the ends of this system of political and social institutions, and it wills these ends as its own.”⁵¹

Bosanquet could not agree more. By willing the ends of shared institutions of ethical life the will is free in the sense that “Liberty… is the being ourselves, and the fullest condition of liberty is that in which we are ourselves most completely.”⁵² We complete ourselves in shared institutions that satisfy and express our most fundamental ends. We are so as participants in shared ways of life, institutions, that enable us to exercise and develop our capacities through reciprocal relations with others. Thus, membership in diverse institutions is essential to developing diverse human capacities. Reconceptualizing the “state” as a “society of societies,” wheels within wheels, Bosanquet regards the “state” not as an external order constraining human passions, as Burke did, but rather, in Hegelian fashion, as emanating from will and purpose which are based on the moral possibilities of human nature. The central idea here is that the possibility of developing human capacities of realizing the best in oneself, of meaningful human life, lies in the integration of the modern individual into the complex network of institutions which makes up the modern state. The entire social fabric of the state in term of intermediatory groups, the “societies,” the social institutions and practices function as a rich repertoire of shared values, collective achievements.

One aspect, then, of the “bright” side of the sociability-freedom connection is that social institutions function as the constitutive vehicle that gives reality to positive freedom as self-development. The social institutions of ethical life, however, embody reciprocal relations of intersubjective recognition. This is another important aspect of the “bright” side of the sociability-freedom connection. It is best expressed in the link Bosanquet forges between positive freedom as self-government and small participatory communities.

The practical ideal of society: Social cooperation-based individual self-government

Pippin argues that the primary importance of reciprocal relations lies in the fact that intersubjective recognition is essential to being free (and not merely in its being a psychological good, nor in its contribution to the formation of a self or a social identity.) Bosanquet is explicitly indebted to the Hegelian relational-institutional understanding of freedom. Speaking of Hegel’s objective view of freedom, Bosanquet states: “The ‘free mind’ does not explain itself and cannot stand alone. Its impulses cannot be ordered, or, in other words, its purposes cannot be made determinate, except in an actual system of selves.”⁵³ In a similar vein, Bosanquet insists that,

intelligent Mind is essentially reciprocal (and so probably all the Mind of the higher Animals in its degree) and lives in the medium of recognition … in the social being a new variation of Mind arises from the very fact of reciprocity. As the one relies upon the other, so the other relies upon the one; and both together … become elements in a universal consciousness or social Mind within which individual centres recognise themselves and each other.⁵⁴

Bosanquet’s idea of small participatory communities is perhaps the clearest example of freedom as reciprocal relations of recognition. I wish here to highlight the constitutive role of cooperative participatory communities in giving institutional effect to his practical ideal of the positively free individual: individual self-maintenance and self-government. That ideal lies at the core of Berlin’s idea of the true self. The conceptual-normative connection that Bosanquet fashions between the self-governing true self and participatory communities lies, I believe, at the heart of his social philosophy. Too often the significance of that connection is lost between, on the one hand, the attempts to rescue Bosanquet’s idea of self-government from its problematic association with Rousseauesque ideas of real and general will and, on the other hand, the association of the idea of self-maintenance with the more vulgar forms of self-reliance which Bosanquet’s affiliation with the Charity Organisation Society has provoked. The nexus between direct cooperative institutions and individual self-government and self-maintenance escapes the grip of both. Divorced from both Rousseauesque troubles and the alleged narrow individualism of the COS therapeutics, the practical ideal of cooperation-based individual self-government can receive its due recognition.

The individual self-government—participatory communities nexus has special significance in the context of Berlin’s criticism of positive freedom. Berlin associates positive freedom with “being forced to be free” and the danger of concentrated political power. While Bosanquet shares Berlin’s concern with that danger, unlike Berlin, he views positive freedom as self-government as a potential barrier to concentration of political power. That barrier is constituted by small participatory communities in which individuals exercise self-government through mutual associative action. Bosanquet describes this sphere of action, as “all that is ‘social’,” namely “all that springs from the co-operation and the sympathies of human beings.”⁵⁵ This domain of human connectedness that occupies the space between the “political,” state action, and the personal, narrowly conceived individual and gives “the profounder meaning of the term ‘social’ goes unrecognized,” Bosanquet complains, in the debate between collectivists and individualists:

The error lies, on both sides, in an insufficient appreciation of what is involved in man’s social being. Between visible activities backed by the force of the State, and the narrowest self-assertion, equally visible, of the separate, or would-be separate, human person, the whole social development — the development, that is, of man’s universal nature, of which these are merely extreme limiting cases — fails to obtain due recognition.⁵⁶

This conceptualization of “the social” places Bosanquet, with Burke, Hegel, Tocqueville and neo-Tocquevillians such as Putnam, in the tradition of civil society as an essential element of a free society. His twining of associative action with self-government, places Bosanquet in the tradition that links positive freedom with a democratic society. While Berlin’s political argument could accommodate civil society, it does not seem to play the constitutive role in sustaining a free society as it does in Bosanquet’s argument. The conceptual-normative link between positive freedom as self-government and a voluntary society is not part of Berlin’s argument. The conceptual-normative link between positive freedom as self-government and a democratic society is explicitly rejected by Berlin. In Bosanquet’s political argument, that link comes alive, not on the national level, but on the local level as well as workers’ cooperatives, and other participatory communities that flourish in civil society.

To illustrate. Drawing on actual examples of communal participation in managing local affairs, Bosanquet puts forward “a practical and practicable ideal” of

a society organised in convenient districts, in which men and women, pursuing their different callings, will live together with care for one another, and with in all essentials the same education, the same enjoyments, the same capacities. These men and women will work together in councils and on committees.…⁵⁷

The idea of “a society organised in convenient districts” stresses the idea that self-government, “the sufficiency of the people,”⁵⁸ cannot be given. It can only be acquired by learning to exercise it in a participatory community such as neighborhood because it constitutes a “sphere of direct relations”⁵⁹: “You have to take part in decisions and feel the results of what you do. In this way you learn what you can learn in no other way…”⁶⁰ Hence, Bosanquet’s emphasis on local self-government.⁶¹

To illustrate further. As well as neighborhoods, worker cooperatives loom large and consistently in Bosanquet’s social thought. Notwithstanding Bosanquet’s criticism of JS Mill for embracing individualism, strong continuity between them is noticeable on workers’ cooperatives and the priority of the “social” over the “political.”

The only thing that I dread in the system known as Socialism [,Bosanquet claims,] is the cutting off individual initiative outside certain duties specified by rule … On the other hand, of practical Socialism, i.e., of the workman’s ownership of the means of production, we cannot have too much.⁶²

Not only workers’ cooperatives afford plenty of opportunity for exercising individual initiative, more fundamentally, cooperatives are the vehicle of individual self-maintenance and self-government. Indeed, Bosanquet cites “the Co-operative movement in Great Britain” from “the Rochdale Pioneers onwards”⁶³ as an example of the creative power of self-maintaining character in transforming circumstances.

Like Mill, Bosanquet appeals to Leclaire’s establishment of his workers’ cooperative in order to draw out the benefits of mutuality. Cooperation teaches workers that their own well-being is dependent on, and reciprocal with, the well-being of fellow workers, and habituates them to the fact of their mutual dependence. For a cooperative is a participatory community “in which the welfare of all depends on the heartiness and on the wisdom with which every man works for the common purpose, that is to say, does his duty.”⁶⁴ The experience of mutual dependence, in turn, provides ethical training. The lack of drunkenness among the workers is singled out for praise by Bosanquet.⁶⁵ More generally, as Mill points out, the conduct of the workers improves not only at work but also away from it, “showing increased respect both for others and for themselves.”⁶⁶ Moreover, since workers are integrated into the political aspect of the cooperative, they learn democracy by participating in its governing institutions. In a nutshell, participatory cooperation “lay[s] the foundation of the good, self-supporting, well-arranged life,”⁶⁷ thereby it is able “to meet the powers and needs of human character.”⁶⁸

Conclusion

I advanced two arguments in this essay. First, Bosanquet’s true self is equipped to resist being coerced to be free. Indeed, Berlin’s divided self ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of self which being, instead, complex/dynamic/integrated, is at once spontaneous/energetic and habitual/automatic. Second, whereas he recognizes with Bosanquet that positive freedom is not merely an internal condition of the true self, but takes shape in society, Berlin’s holistic interpretation of the organic metaphor of society means that he sees only the “dark” side of that connection. Consequently, he misses the affirmative link, the “bright” side, that Bosanquet, employing a relational interpretation of the organic metaphor, forges between positive freedom and social institutions. Ultimately, engaging Berlin and Bosanquet unveils the complexity of political theory.