Compare and contrast classical and modern social liberalism.

Liberalism is the 'essentially contested concept' or ideal which dominates western political discourse, both explicitly and inexplicitly (Gallie). Political theorists often make the distinction between 'classical' and 'modern social' liberalism because these two positions have different philosophical bases and have different policy implications. The most important of these differences is that the two branches of liberalism adopt different definitions of the 'freedom'. Classical liberals define as what Berlin would call negative liberty, that is, as 'freedom from.' Modern social liberals, by contrast, define freedom in positive terms, or as 'freedom to.' This has real implications for government policy, as negative freedom seems to support a lack of state interference in areas such as taxation, regulation and social matters, whereas the positive freedom may justify higher state intervention in order to enable those from poor backgrounds to have freedom to do the same things as the wealthy. On the other hand, there are a number of overlaps between modern and social liberalism. The most obvious is that they are both parts of 'liberal' political philosophy, in contrast to socialism or conservatism. This means that they see freedom as a fundamental goal, and they tend to value traits such as individualism, rationality and freedom of expression. Furthermore, the theorist J S Mill is often sighted as somebody who bridges the liberal cleavage, incorporating elements of both philosophies into his seminal work, On Liberty. At times, he seems to adopt positive liberty, believing that intellectual self-improvement should be the goal of all men. At others, such as in defence of the famous harm principle, he seems to defend freedom from the interference of others. To conclude this brief overview, classical and modern liberalism are different both conceptually and practicably in highly important ways. However, this distinction is subject to nuance, and it as they are part of the same broad-church body of thought there are core values which overlap between the two.