Individual liberty, negative liberty and internal liberty
Georg Simmel’s works are a rich source of concepts for anyone willing to reflect upon the modern evolution of the meaning of liberty. By contrasting 18th century quantitative individualism with 19th century qualitative individualism, his works make it possible to identify two types of individual liberty within the general concept of “liberty of moderns”. Simmel’s analysis of the social stranglehold of money highlights the threat that looms over his times : confining humans to a strictly negative liberty. He also identifies the temptation to turn to one’s inner liberty to find a deliverance from material life, originally a stoic concept but purged from its ethical dimension. Last, if he pays attention to the emerging crave for deliverance from material life conspicuous in some pathological forms of passion for money, art, perfunctory togetherness and the search for technical solutions to political issues, he leaves little room to the political and collective dimension of liberty. He thinks liberty within the framework of one’s idiosyncracy rather than within the unfolding of one’s autonomy. This attitude reveals the deep-rooted trend that he analyses and embodies.