Berlin's conception of "positive liberty" is closely related to an Idealist conception of freedom as rational self-mastery, a conception that is not necessarily implied by the way I have used the term "positive liberty" above.
But the well being of whole communities depends on the willingness of some to lead a second-best life a life devoted to the study and practice of the art of politics, and to the expression of those qualities of thought and passion that exhibit our rational self-mastery.
Also, the way in which this deeply introspective subjectivity was practiced, that is, in self-mastery, entailed a highly rational and radically methodical attitude towards one's inner self and the outer, objective world.
Pursuing rational goals is a natural extension of mastery goals in PBL environments (Chinn et al., 2013), is core to solving authentic problems (Jonassen, 2011), and is indeed at the very core of what PBL researchers desire to foster among students (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980; Hmelo-Silver, 2004).
Even as elite physicians founded institutions that made professional medicine's authority visible and legitimate, many others worried about the violence that might attend medicine's drive to mastery and science's equation of rational disinterest with white, educated masculinity.
Many rejected Aristotle's claim that some human beings were by nature less than wholly rational and so were best off subject to the mastery of others, yet even so they did not challenge the existence of the institution of slavery itself, although they might entertain doubts about its legitimacy.
But only if we (1) are honest and rational about it's subjectivity (2) use it only in the pursuit of self-mastery, not mastery over others, (3) as we evolve so too must our projection of a Higher Intelligence.
He is the conscious mind, with its mastery of skill and craft, its faculty of ordering, selecting, making rational and persuasive; she is the subconscious mind, driven by disorder, fuelled by obscure desires, brimming with promises that perhaps she won't keep, with promises of revelation, fantasies of empowerment and knowledge.
The outcome of this complex interplay of ideas and interests was modern rational Western civilization with its enormous material and cultural capacity for relentless world-mastery.
This paper views teacher learning as the nourishment of life rather than the mastery of expertise, and curriculum innovation as the reclaiming of authentic language rather than rational manipulation of curriculum systems.
