Freedom in some religions and Isaiah Berlin’s view and its outcome in human rights discourse

In this article, the authors try to examine the concept of freedom through the descriptive-analytical method from the perspective of the three religions of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism on the one hand and the political philosophy of Isaiah Berlin on the other; then analyze the outcome of his views on freedom of human rights discourse. In all divine religions, human freedom has been given great importance. The basis of all these religions is based on the principle that man is a free being and has the ability to choose. Isaiah Berlin distinguishes between the interference of others that leads to the deprivation of political freedom and the inability to have a desire and achieve a goal and the inability to achieve the goal does not mean the lack of freedom. Accordingly, in his analysis of freedom, he distinguishes between the two concepts of positive freedom and negative freedom. The debate over negative and positive freedom, like the legacy of Isaiah Berlin, has divided human rights thinkers into two groups. In classical human rights, the defenders of negative freedom have considered civil and political rights and freedoms as the main pillars of contemporary human rights, while for the defenders of positive freedom, welfare rights have been more prominent. Of course, government intervention in the development and sometimes the imposition of cultural rights for the defenders of positive freedom is the maximum intervention. It is worth noting that for the defenders of positive freedom, it is possible for the government to intervene, even in its criminal form, to pursue and provide common and collective benefits. And this could lead to authoritarianism in what Berlin calls positive freedom.