Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 69

REFLECTIONS ON ANCIENT AND MODERN FREEDOM

especially is the case with Aristotle, who considers negative freedom a necessary condition for virtue. The "objectively" good act
if not done freely but in ignorance or under compulsion is not an
act of virtue at all:
. . . the virtues themselves are not done justly or temperately if
they themselves are of a certain sort, but only if the agent also is
in a certain state of mind when he does them: first he must act
with knowledge; secondly he must deliberately choose the act,
and choose it for its own sake; and thirdly the act must spring
from a fixed and permanent disposition of character.10 (Nic. Ethics
1105a-b)

But of course negative freedom is not a sufficient condition of virtue, since one can deliberately choose the evil or base as well as
the good and noble. The good life will consist in the "active exercise of the soul's faculties in conformity to rational principle" (ibid.
1098a) and will therefore be related to the rational government
of the passions. The Aristotelian approach recognizes the place of
negative freedom; but unlike that liberal tradition that places it at
the top of the hierarchy of values, Aristotle subordinates negative
freedom to a conception of the good life. The virtuous man acts
without compulsion but also in accord with right reason. Thus the
value of negative freedom is its relationship to moral excellence.
A consequence of the distinction is the radical difference in how
the Greeks and modern liberals think about the broader political
order. In the classical liberal view represented, for example, by
Locke, government is based on a contract simply for "the mutual
preservation of their lives, liberties and estates which, I call by the
general name, property."11 For Aristotle this would seem a limited
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