Positive and Negative Freedom

Contemporary debates on individual freedom within the scope of political philosophy broadly represented by and grounded on two varying conceptualizations of the notion proposed as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ concepts of freedom. Thus, negative freedom camp is grounded on the idea that individual freedom is mitigated on any action which is obstructed by an external agent and the positive freedom camp is grounded on the idea that individual freedom is mitigated if an action is not taken by an aware and a free agent. Hence, information and communication technologies are ontologically considered to eliminate any kinds of obstruction and to assign the unique individual as the source of control. Consequently, these technologies are construed by both of the camps to bolster freedom of the individuals. The fundamental reason behind this accentuation is contemplated to be grounded on the consideration of all the actions through these technologies to be based on the ‘consent’ given by the ultimately free and aware individuals. However, as underlined ‘The Network has emerged as a dominant form describing the nature of control today’ (Galloway and Thacker, 2007). Thus, this underlining leads to questioning the freedom associated with digital communication due to the hidden control mechanisms and the codes that enable them (Galloway, 2004). Consequently, this underlined type of control has become so integrated into our pleasures and desires that we accept it without consideration. Although we are at least vaguely aware of the ways in which our increasingly inescapable, digital existence makes it possible to monitor, mine and profile our behavior and desires everywhere and all the time, that very immediacy itself – ‘the stimulating distractions and sensual pleasures of the new digital age’ – sidetracks us from this fact (Harcourt, 2015). As Deleuze underlines the new convention of control society distinctively introduces subjection as no longer belonging to a specific dispositif to perform, but instead constitutes an outside (Lambert, 2018) ‘which is farther away than any external world and even any form of exteriority’, and which, henceforth, also becomes ‘infinitely closer and deeper than any form of interiority as well’ (Deleuze, 1988). Hence, it is contemplated that neither negative nor positive freedom camps precisely enclose and conceptualize the underlined aspect of these technologies. Therefore, this paper aims to raise some concerns on the freely given ‘consent’ of the individuals as being the primary criteria of individual freedom within the scope of these technologies due to the mentioned kind of control integrated into the pleasures and desires of the individuals that is acknowledged to problematize the conceptualization of mitigation of individual freedom introduced by the two mentioned camps.