Liberty: Incorporating "Four Essays on Liberty"

' London and New York, 1939: Harper.

Mind 71 (1962), 241-3.

Philosophy 40 (1965), 93-112.

Political Studies 14 ( 1966), 293-305.

H. J. McCloskey, 'A Critique of the Ideals of Liberty',[142] doubted that much of what Berlin had discussed, whether negative or positive, was liberty properly so called. Better known is the essay by Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr., 'Negative and Positive Freedom'/ which, however, does not transparently understand positive freedom; MacCallum also wrote 'Berlin on the Compatibility of Values, Ideals and "Ends"'/ On these, see respectively Tom Baldwin, 'MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom',[143] and G. A. Cohen, 'A Note on Values and Sacrifices'.5 'Berlin's Division of Liberty' was questioned in C. B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval/ Bernard Crick advanced another view again in Freedom as Politics/ G. W. Smith argued against Berlin that the genuinely contented slave has social freedom in 'Slavery, Contentment, and Social Freedom'.[144] Hans Blokland examined 'Isaiah Berlin on Positive and Negative Freedom'.[145] Of especial importance is Charles Taylor's 'What's Wrong with Negative Liberty', in Alan Ryan (ed.), The Idea of Freedom/° which suggested quite a different account of positive freedom. Christopher Megone sharply criticised both Berlin and Taylor in 'One Concept of Liberty'/¹ Ronald Dworkin's attempt to develop 'Two Concepts of Liberty' in a characteristic way is in Avishai and Edna Margalit (eds.), Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration.¹² The suggestion that negative and positive freedom had supported each other in at least one country was developed powerfully by Judith Shklar, 'Positive Liberty, Negative

' Mind 74 (1965), 483-508.

Philosophical Review 76 (1967), 3 12-34; later anthologised.

Ethics, 77 (1966-7), 139-45 .

Ratio 26 (I 984), 125-42.

Ethics 79 (1968-9), i 59-62.

• Oxford, 1973: Clarendon Press, chapter 5^ See also his The Rise and Fall of Economic Justice (Oxford, 1985: Oxford University Press), 92-100.

7 Sheffield, 1966: University of Sheffield; repr. in Crick's Political Theory and Practice (London, [1972]: Allen Lane).

' Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1977), 236-48.

In his Freedom and Culture in Western Society (London and New York, 1997: Routledge), chapter 2.

Oxford, 1979: Clarendon Press, 175-93; repr. in Taylor's Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge and New York, 1985: Cambridge University Press), vol. 2, 211-29, amongst other places.

'' Political Studies 35 (1987), 6ii -22.

¹² London, i 99 i: Hogarth Press; Chicago, i 99 1: University of Chicago Press, 100-9.

Liberty in the United States'.' 'Two Concepts' is often mentioned briefly in extended philosophical discussions of political freedom, for instance, Carl J. Friedrich, 'Rights, Liberties, Freedoms: A Reappraisal'/ and Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights/

Criticism of the intellectual history implied in 'Two Concepts' has included David Nicholls, 'Positive Liberty, 1881^1914'/ a decidedly sceptical treatment of its illustrative examples in Anthony Arblaster, 'Vision and Revision: A Note on the Text of Isaiah Berlin's Four Essays on Liberty'? a criticism of its account of Green in Avital Simhony, 'On Forcing Individuals to be Free: T. H. Green's Liberal Theory of Positive Freedom';⁶ and of its view of Spinoza in David West, 'Spinoza on Positive Freedom'/ to which Berlin responded with 'A Reply to David West'/ The reader may judge how adequately the history of political thought can be understood via the negative/positive distinction by consulting Z. A. Pelczynski and John Gray (eds.), Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy/ The phase of thought in which 'Two Concepts' was written is itself considered in Noel O'Sullivan, 'Visions of Freedom: The Response to Totalitarianism', in Jack Hayward, Brian Barry and Archie Brown (eds.), The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century, a volume of general relevance to Berlin's life.¹⁰

The possibility that Berlin's pluralism involved relativism did not escape the vigilance of Leo Strauss. His essay 'Relativism' appeared in Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (eds.), Relativism and the Study of Man.ⁿ Other important reflections on the theme are Arnaldo Momigliano, 'On the Pioneer Trail'/ Hilary Putnam, 'Pragmatism and Relativism: Universal Values and Traditional Ways of Life';² and Steven Lukes, 'Berlin's Dilemma'.³ Berlin addressed the question in 'Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth- Century European Thought' (1980) and 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' (1988), both reprinted in his The Crooked Timber of Humanity .*

The energy of its prose, the width of its reference and the sharpness of its distinction between negative and positive freedom have made 'Two Concepts of Liberty' pedagogically irresistible, whether for works of reference - as Chandran Kukuthas, 'Liberty', in Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy⁵ - for textbooks - such as Tim Gray, Freedom,^b Raymond Plant, Modern Political Thought/ and Peter Lassman and Steve Buckler, Political Thinkers of the Twentieth Century - and for brief discussions on the way to other destinations - as in Philip Pettit, Republicanism,⁴ The lecture has been reprinted frequently as a whole or in part. Examples include Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (eds.), Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology;¹⁰ David Miller (ed.), LibertyMichael Sandel (ed.), Liberalism and its Criticsf¹ and Anthony Quinton (ed.), Political Philosophy}¹ Berlin himself obligingly provided a digest of 'Two Concepts', 'Liberty' (1995), reprinted here. Ian Harris, 'Isaiah Berlin: Two Concepts of Liberty'/ attempted to clarify what Berlin had said.

Berlin's reading of the distinction between negative and positive

| New York Review of Books, 1 I November 1976, 33-8.

In his Words and Life (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1995: Harvard University Press), 182-97 at 192-3.

Times Literary Supplement, 27 March 1998, 8-10.

London, 1990: John Murray; New York, 1991: Knopf.

Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1993: Blackwell, 534-47, at 534-8.

Basingstoke, 1990: Macmillan; Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1991: Humanities Press International, chapter I.

Oxford, 1991: Blackwell, 235-8, 247-8

London, i 999: Routledge, chapter 5.

' Oxford, 1997: Clarendon Press, 17-18, 21-2, 27.

™ Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1997: Blackwell.

¹¹ Oxford, 1991: Oxford University Press (with other relevant items).