While investigating the subtle difference between liberty and freedom I was also confronted with the idea of negative rights vs. positive rights.
It struck me as I’ve often seen the invitation to “think positive” which regularly feels to be an awkward negation of “negative”.
It’s why I’m always considering ideas around positive psychology with a grain of salt. I learned that it is important to be clear about the underlying ideas of the school of positive psychology.
It’s true for many things. Ideas never come alone, they are always accompanied by an underlying philosophy. One we might not be aware of. That is when the philosophy has become a part of our culture and the way the members of the culture interpret the world.
Coming back to rights.
Free speech, private property are negative rights. These rights prevent others, including the state, from transgressing on you personally or on your property.
These rights come along with responsibility. As an example, if you use free speech to spread false information the law will not protect you. Others can petition the court on the consequences of your use of speech. It means, that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.
This is different for positive rights, as these are granted by the government and can have an impact on your individual rights. Taxes are collected for exactly that purpose. The state collects taxes to be able to fund public systems. That is, for example, public infrastructure or education. In this case, it is the state which receives a responsibility with the rights. The one to provide a public service.
States having different preferences, the consequences can be seen in their histories. It lead for example to very different revolutions in France and America.
With permissions things are slightly different.
With permissions, the implicit message isn’t one of responsibilities but it’s close friend expectations.
A negative permission, e.g. the permission to not to think will come along with an implicit possibility to let go of the effort to think. An underlying belief or expectation is that it frees from the necessity to be perfect.
Looking at a positive permission, e.g. the permission to think, it can come along with the implicit expectation that you’ll always think.
What this helps to realize is that problems always occur, when the implicit message is overseen. Nothing is strictly positive or negative. There are always two aspects. One may call them positive and negative, right and responsibility or permission and expectation. They come in pairs.
