Q.What is the difference between the negative and positive conception of liberty?

Freedom has two dimensions: an absence-of-constraint dimension and a self-development dimension, which political theory calls negative and positive liberty.

Negative liberty seeks to define and protect a minimum area in which the individual is inviolable — an area in which he or she can 'do, be or become' whatever they wish, free of interference from any external authority, however well-meaning. It responds to the question 'over what area am I master?', and how large that protected area should be — whether it covers, for instance, a person's choice of clothing — remains a genuine matter of debate.

Positive liberty, in contrast, responds to the question 'who governs me?', to which its ideal answer is 'I govern myself'. This tradition, traced back to thinkers like Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Gandhi and Aurobindo, is concerned with the actual conditions of the relationship between the individual and society, and with improving those conditions so that a person has fewer real obstacles to their own development — much as a flower blossoms only when the soil, sun, water and care are all right. This means freedom from poverty and unemployment, adequate resources, a voice in decisions that affect one's own life, and access to education.

The key difference is that negative liberty is concerned only with the inviolable area of non-interference itself, while positive liberty is concerned with the wider social conditions that make genuine self-development possible, and holds that a person can be free only in society, never outside it. In practice the two usually go together and reinforce each other, though it is worth being cautious, since authoritarian rulers have sometimes invoked positive-liberty-style arguments — claiming to know what people's 'true' freedom requires — to justify restricting them.