definition of liberty essay

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Political Philosophy — Definition Of Liberty Is Freedom

Definition of Liberty is Freedom

Categories: Civil Rights Political Philosophy

About this sample

Words: 565 |

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Words: 565 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

Expert in: Social Issues Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 847 words

2 pages / 1114 words

2 pages / 944 words

1 pages / 547 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Political Philosophy

In conclusion, the similarities between Locke and Hobbes in their beliefs about the social contract theory, human nature, property rights, and limited government underscore the foundational principles of modern political [...]

Communism and fascism are two political ideologies that have shaped the course of history in the 20th century. While they may appear to be polar opposites, they share several similarities in their methods of governance and [...]

The concept of "the end of history" has sparked intense debate and contemplation among scholars, philosophers, and thinkers in recent decades. Coined by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, this notion suggests that humanity [...]

Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms. It is often associated with a lack of transparency, restrictions on civil liberties, and the absence of democratic [...]

The quest to delineate the freedom definition within the ambit of modern political philosophy presents a rich tapestry of debate and discourse. This exploration is not just academic; it fundamentally shapes the ethos of [...]

At the start of the 17th century, an unprecedented amount of Puritan migrants begin moving to the New England colonial region because, in England, the reigning King Charles pushes Anglican religious practices onto Puritans. [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) was a British philosopher, historian of ideas, political theorist, educator and essayist. For much of his life he was renowned for his conversational brilliance, his defence of liberalism, his attacks on political extremism and intellectual fanaticism, and his accessible, coruscating writings on the history of ideas. His essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958) contributed to a revival of interest in political theory in the English-speaking world, and remains one of the most influential and widely discussed texts in that field: admirers and critics agree that Berlin's distinction between positive and negative liberty remains, for better or worse, a basic starting-point for theoretical discussions of the meaning and value of political freedom. Late in his life, the greater availability of Berlin's numerous essays began to provoke increasing scholarly interest in his work, and particularly in the idea of value pluralism; that Berlin's articulation of value pluralism contains many ambiguities and even obscurities has only encouraged further work on the subject by other philosophers.

1.1 Intellectual Development

2.1 conception of philosophy.

2.2 Basic Propositions: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Logic
2.3 Distinction Between Natural and Human Science

2.4 Free Will and Determinism

3. the history of ideas, 4.1 berlin's definition of value pluralism.

4.2 Value Pluralism before Berlin
4.3 The Emergence of Value Pluralism in Berlin's Thought

4.4 Value Pluralism after Berlin: Some Controversies

5.1 political judgement and leadership, 5.2 political ethics: ends, means, violence, 5.3 the concept of liberty, 5.4 liberty and pluralism.

5.5 Nationalism

6. Conclusion

Bibliography, other internet resources, related entries.

Isaiah Berlin was born in 1909 in Riga, capital of Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire), the son of Mendel Berlin, a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife Marie, née Volshonok. In 1915 the family moved to Andreapol, in Russia, and in 1917 to Petrograd, where they remained through both the Russian Revolutions of 1917, which Isaiah would remember witnessing. Despite early persecution by the Bolsheviks, the family was permitted to return to Riga in 1920; from there they emigrated, in 1921, to Britain. They lived in and around London; Isaiah attended St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied Greats (classical studies: ancient history and philosophy) and PPE (politics, philosophy and economics). In 1932 he was appointed a lecturer at New College; the same year he became the first Jew to be elected to a Prize Fellowship at All Souls, considered one of the highest accolades in British academic life.

Throughout the 1930s Berlin was deeply involved in the development of philosophy at Oxford; his friends and colleagues included J. L. Austin, A. J. Ayer and Stuart Hampshire, who met to discuss philosophy in his rooms. However, he also evinced an early interest in a more historical approach to philosophy, and in social and political theory, as reflected in his intellectual biography of Karl Marx (1939), still in print nearly 70 years later.

During the Second World War Berlin served in the British Information Services in New York City (1940–2) and at the British Embassy in Washington, DC (1942–5), where he was responsible for drafting weekly reports on the American political scene. In 1945–6 Berlin visited the Soviet Union; his meetings there with surviving but persecuted members of the Russian intelligentsia, particularly the poets Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, reinforced his staunch opposition to Communism, and formed his future intellectual agenda. After the War Berlin returned to Oxford. Although he continued to teach and write on philosophy throughout the later 1940s and into the early 1950s, his interests had shifted to the history of ideas, particularly Russian intellectual history, the history of Marxist and socialist theories, and the Enlightenment and its critics. He also began to publish widely read articles on contemporary political and cultural trends, political ideology, and the internal workings of the Soviet Union. In 1950, election to a Research Fellowship at All Souls allowed him to devote himself to his historical, political and literary interests, which lay well outside the mainstream of philosophy as it was then practiced at Oxford. He was, however, one of the first of the founding generation of ‘Oxford philosophers’ to make regular visits to American universities, and played an important part in spreading ‘Oxford philosophy’ to the USA.

In 1957, a year after he had married Aline Halban (née de Gunzbourg), Berlin was elected Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford; his inaugural lecture, delivered in 1958, was ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. He resigned his chair in 1967, the year after becoming founding President of Wolfson College, Oxford, which he largely created, retiring in 1975. In his later years he hoped to write a major work on the history of European romanticism, but this hope was disappointed. From 1966 to 1971 he was also a visiting Professor of Humanities at the City University of New York, and he served as President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. Berlin was knighted in 1957, and was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1971. Collections of his writings, edited by Henry Hardy and others, began appearing in 1978; there are, to date, 12 such volumes, as well as an anthology, The Proper Study of Mankind , and the first of a projected three volumes of letters. Berlin received the Agnelli, Erasmus and Lippincott Prizes for his work on the history of ideas, and the Jerusalem Prize for his life-long defence of civil liberties, as well as numerous honorary degrees. He died in 1997.

Berlin was early influenced by British Idealism, as expounded by Green, Bosanquet and Bradley, which was then on the wane. While an undergraduate he was converted to the Realism of G. E. Moore and John Cook Wilson. By the time he began teaching philosophy he had joined a new generation of rebellious empiricists, some of whom (most notably A. J. Ayer) embraced the logical positivist doctrines of the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein's earlier writings. Although Berlin was always sceptical towards logical positivism, its suspicion of metaphysical claims and its preoccupation with the nature and authority of knowledge strongly influenced his early philosophical enquiries. These, combined with his historical bent, led him back to the study of earlier British empiricists, particularly Berkeley and Hume, on both of whom he lectured in the 1930s and late '40s, and about both of whom he contemplated writing books (never written).

Berlin was also influenced by Kant and his successors. His first philosophical mentor was an obscure Russian-Jewish, Menshevik émigré named Solomon Rachmilevich, who had studied philosophy at several German universities, and who introduced Berlin to the great ideological quarrels of Russian history, as well as to the history of German philosophy since Kant. Later, at Oxford, R.G. Collingwood fostered Berlin's interest in the history of ideas, introducing him in particular to such founders of historicism as Vico and Herder. Collingwood also reinforced Berlin's belief—heavily influenced by Kant—in the importance of the basic concepts and categories by which human beings organise and analyse their experience, to human life.

While working on his biography of Marx in the mid-1930s, Berlin came across the works of two Russian thinkers who would be important influences on his political and historical outlook. One of these was Alexander Herzen, who became a hero, and to whom Berlin would sometimes attribute many of his own beliefs about history, politics and ethics. The other was the Russian Marxist publicist and historian of philosophy G. V. Plekhanov. Despite his opposition to Marxism, Berlin admired and praised Plekhanov as a man and historian of ideas. It was initially through Plekhanov's writings that Berlin became interested in the naturalistic, empiricist and materialist thinkers of the Enlightenment, as well as their Idealist and historicist critics. Plekhanov was also an early source for Berlin's absorption in the political debates of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian liberals and radicals of various stripes, which informed his concern with both the philosophy of history and the ethics of political action.

During the Second World War, separated from his Oxford philosophical brethren, and exposed to political action, Berlin began to drift away from his early philosophical concerns. His doubts were encouraged by a meeting with the Harvard logician H. M. Sheffer, who asserted that progress was only possible in such sub-fields of philosophy as logic and psychology. His meeting with Sheffer led Berlin to realise that he lacked the passion and the belief in his own ability to continue pursuing pure philosophy. He concluded that as a philosopher proper he would make no original contributions, and would end his life knowing no more than he did when he began. He therefore determined to switch to the history of ideas, in which (he believed) originality was less essential, and which would allow him to learn more than he already knew. Berlin's approach to the history of ideas would, however, remain deeply informed by his philosophical persona, as well as by his political beliefs.

Berlin had always been a liberal; but from the early 1950s the defence of liberalism came to assume a central place in his intellectual concerns. This defence was, characteristically, closely related to his moral beliefs and to his preoccupation with the nature and role of values in human life; in his thinking about these issues Berlin would develop his idea of value pluralism, which assumed prominence in his work in the 1960s and '70s. In the early 1960s Berlin's focus moved from his more political concerns of the 1950s to a concern with the nature of the human sciences; throughout the 1950s and '60s he was working on the history of ideas, and from the mid-1960s nearly all of his writings took the form of essays on this subject, particularly on the romantic and reactionary critics of the Enlightenment.

By the early 1950s Berlin's major ideas and beliefs had emerged out of the confluence of his philosophical preoccupations, historical studies, and political and moral commitments and anxieties; and his major ideas were either already fully formed, or developing. Such essays of the late '50s as ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ served as the occasion for a synthesis and solidification of his thoughts. Thereafter, he would continue to refine and re-articulate his ideas, but his course was set, and he appears to have been largely unaffected by later intellectual developments.

2. Philosophy of Knowledge and the Human Sciences

Berlin's conception of philosophy was shaped by his early exposure to, and rejection of, both Idealism and logical positivism. With the former he associated a too exalted view of philosophy as the ‘queen of the sciences’, capable of establishing fundamental, necessary, absolute and abstract truths. With the latter he associated the reductionist and deflationary view of philosophy as, at best, a handmaiden to the natural sciences, and at worst a sign of intellectual immaturity bred of confusion and credulity.

Berlin's approach combined a sceptical empiricism with neo-Kantianism to offer a defence of philosophy. [ 1 ] Like Giambattista Vico and Wilhelm Dilthey, as well as neo-Kantians such as Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband, Berlin insisted on the fundamental difference between the natural and human sciences. He classed philosophy among the human sciences; but even there its status was unique. If earlier thinkers had regarded philosophy as a scientia scientiarum, Berlin regarded it as a scientia nescientiarum, the form of enquiry concerning what cannot be the object of empirical knowledge.

In the case of non-philosophical questions, even if the answer is unknown, the means for discovering the answer is known, or accepted, by most people. Thus questions of empirical fact can be answered by observation. Other questions can be answered deductively, by referring to established rules; this is the case, for example, with mathematics, grammar and formal logic. For example, even if we do not know the solution to a particularly difficult mathematical problem, we do know the rules and techniques that would have to be employed to find the answer.

According to Berlin, philosophy concerns itself with questions such that not only are the answers not known, but neither are the means for arriving at an answer, or the standards of judgement by which to evaluate whether a suggested answer is plausible or implausible. Thus the questions ‘How long does it take to drive from x to y ?’ or ‘What is the cube root of 729?’ are not philosophical; while ‘What is time?’ or ‘What is a number?’ are. ‘What is the purpose of human life?’ or ‘Are all men brothers?’ are philosophical questions, while ‘Do most of such-and-such a group of men think of one another as brothers?’ or ‘What did Luther believe was the purpose of life?’ are not.

Berlin related this view to Kant's distinction between matters of fact and those structures or categories in terms of which facts are made sense of. Philosophy, being concerned with questions that arise from people's attempts to make sense of their experiences, involves consideration of the concepts and categories through which experience is perceived, organised and explained.

While Kant saw these organising categories as fixed and universal, Berlin believed that at least some of them are varying, transient or malleable. Not all categories are wholly prior to, or independent of, experience. Rather, the ideas through which we make sense of the world are closely tied up with our experiences: they shape those experiences, and are shaped by them, and as experience varies from one time and place to another, so do basic concepts. [ 2 ] Recognition of these basic categories of human experience differs both from the acquisition of empirical information and from deductive reasoning, for the categories are logically prior to both.

Philosophy involves the study of these ‘thought-spectacles’ through which we view the world; and since at least some of these categories change over time, at least some philosophy is necessarily historical. Because these categories are so important to every aspect of our experience, philosophy—even if it is always tentative and often seems abstract and esoteric—is an important activity, which responds to the vital, ineradicable human need to describe and explain the world of experience.

Berlin insisted on the social usefulness of philosophy, however indirect and unobtrusive. [ 3 ] By bringing to light often subconscious presuppositions and models, and scrutinising their validity, philosophy identifies errors and confusions that lead to misunderstanding, distort experience, and thus do real harm. Because philosophy calls commonly accepted assumptions into question, it is inherently subversive, opposed to all orthodoxy, and often troubling; but this is inseparable from what makes philosophy valuable, and indeed indispensable, as well as liberating. Philosophy's goal, Berlin concluded, was ‘to assist men to understand themselves and thus operate in the open, and not wildly, in the dark’ (1978b, 11).

2.2 Basic Propositions: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Logic [ 4 ]

Perhaps the most important work Berlin did in ‘pure’ philosophy, in the light of his most significant later ideas, concerned ‘logical translation’. In his essay of that title (reprinted in 1978b), Berlin criticised the assumption that all statements, to be genuine and meaningful, or to claim correctness, must be capable of being translated into a single, ‘good’ type of proposition, and asserted that the ideal of a single proper type of proposition was illusory and misleading. He identified two different and opposed approaches based on this erroneous assumption. One was the ‘deflationary’ approach, which sought to assimilate all propositions to one true type. Thus phenomenalism sought to reduce all statements to statements about immediately perceived sense-data. The other was the ‘inflationary’ approach, which posited entities corresponding to all statements, thus ‘creating’ or asserting the existence of things that (Berlin believed) didn't exist at all. Both of these errors rested on the demand for the ‘forcible assimilation’ of all propositions to a single type. Berlin suggested that this demand was based, not on a true perception of reality, but rather on the psychological need for certainty, as well as what he termed the ‘Ionian Fallacy’, the assumption that everything is made out of, or can be reduced to or understood in terms of, one and the same substance or type. [ 5 ]

Berlin insisted that there is no single criterion of meaningfulness, no absolutely incorrigible type of knowledge. He insisted that the quest for certainty was self-defeating: to restrict oneself to saying only that which could be said without any doubt or fear of being mistaken was to sentence oneself to silence. To say anything about the world requires bringing in something other than immediate experience:

Most of the certainties on which our lives are founded […] the vast majority of the types of reasoning on which our beliefs rest, or by which we should seek to justify them […] are not reducible to formal deductive or inductive schemata, or a combination of them […] The web is too complex, the elements too many and not, to say the least, easily isolated and tested one by one […] we accept the total texture, compounded as it is out of literally countless strands […] without the possibility, even in principle, of any test for it in its totality. For the total texture is what we begin and end with. There is no Archimedean point outside it whence we can survey the whole and pronounce upon it […] the sense of the general texture of experience […] is itself not open to inductive or deductive reasoning: for both these methods rest upon it (1978b, 114–15).

At the heart of Berlin's philosophy was an awareness of the awesome variety and complexity of reality, which we can only begin to comprehend: the many strands that make up human experience are “too many, too minute, too fleeting, too blurred at the edges. They criss-cross and penetrate each other at many levels simultaneously, and the attempt to prise them apart […] and pin them down, and classify them, and fit them into their specific compartments turns out to be impossible” (1978b, 119).

These two closely related propositions—that absolute certainty is an impossible ideal (Berlin once wrote that, if his work displayed any single tendency, it was a “distrust of all claims to the possession of incorrigible knowledge […] in any sphere of human behaviour”; 1978a, viii), and that not everything can or should be reduced or related to a single ideal, model, theory or standard—might be considered the centrepieces of Berlin's philosophy. They are central to his view of language and knowledge; they are equally important to his ethics and his philosophy of the human sciences. Also central to these different facets of his thought was Berlin's individualism or nominalism, his emphasis on the importance, and indeed priority, of particular things as objects of knowledge and of individual people as moral subjects.

2.3 The Distinction between Natural and Human Science

Berlin's individualism, the influence on him of neo-Kantianism, and what one scholar (Allen 1998) has called his anti-procrusteanism—his opposition to attempts dogmatically and inappropriately to impose standards or models on aspects of human experience which they don't fit—shaped his view of the nature of the human sciences, and their relationship to the natural sciences. [ 6 ]

Berlin criticised the positivist belief that the natural sciences are the paradigmatic form of knowledge, which the human sciences should measure themselves by and seek to emulate. He argued that the human sciences differed fundamentally from the natural sciences both in the nature of the subject of their study (as Vico and Dilthey had maintained), and in the sort of knowledge that they sought (as Rickert insisted). As a result, different methods, standards and goals were appropriate to each.

Most obviously, the human sciences study the world that human beings create for themselves and inhabit, while the natural sciences study the physical world of nature. Why should this make a difference in how they are studied? One answer is that the two worlds are fundamentally different in themselves. But this would seem to make claims that are inherently controversial and difficult to resolve. Berlin preferred the argument that the human and natural worlds must be studied differently because of the relationship between the observer or thinker and the object of study. We study nature from without, culture from within. In the human sciences, the scholar's own ways of thinking, the fabric of the scholar's life, every facet of his or her experience, is part of the object of study. The natural sciences, on the other hand, aim to understand nature objectively and dispassionately. The natural scientist must take as little for granted as possible, preferring hard evidence to ‘common sense’ when they diverge. But in the human sciences one cannot act in this manner: to study human life, it is necessary to begin from our understanding of other human beings, of what it is to have motives and feelings. Such understanding is based on our own experience, which in turn necessarily involves certain ‘common sense’ assumptions, which we use to fit our experience into patterns which make it explicable and comprehensible. These patterns may be more or less accurate; and we can judge their accuracy by seeing how well they fit experience as we know it. But we cannot divest ourselves entirely of the assumptions that underlie them.

Berlin asserted that the human sciences also differed from the natural sciences in that the former were concerned with understanding the particulars of human life in and of themselves, while the natural sciences sought to establish general laws which could explain whole classes of phenomena. The natural sciences are concerned with types, the human sciences with individuals. Natural scientists concentrate on similarities and look for regularities; at least some human scientists—historians, in particular—are interested in differences. To be a good historian requires a ‘concentrated interest in particular events or persons or situations as such, and not as instances of a generalisation’ (1978b, 138). The human sciences should not aim to emulate the natural sciences by seeking laws to explain or predict human actions, but should concern themselves with understanding the uniqueness of every particular human phenomenon. In the case of a natural science we think it more rational to put our trust in general laws than in specific phenomena; in the case of the human sciences, the opposite is true. If someone claims to have witnessed a phenomenon that contradicts well-established laws of science, we seek an explanation that will reconcile that perception with science; if none is possible, we may conclude that the witness is deceived. In the case of history we do not usually do this: we look at particular phenomena and seek to explain them in themselves. [ 7 ] There are, Berlin claimed, “more ways than one to defy reality”. It is unscientific to “defy, for no good logical or empirical reason, established hypotheses and laws”. But it is unhistorical, on the other hand, to “ignore or twist […] particular events, persons, predicaments, in the name of laws, theories, principles derived from other fields, logical, ethical, metaphysical, scientific, which the nature of the medium renders inapplicable” (1978b, 141–2).

Berlin emphasised the importance to a sense of history of the idea of its ‘one-directional’ flow. This sense of historical reality makes it seem not merely inaccurate, but implausible, and indeed ridiculous, to suggest, for example, that Hamlet was written in the court of Genghis Khan. The historical sense involves, not knowledge of what happened—this is acquired by empirical means—but a sense of what is plausible and implausible, coherent and incoherent, in accounting for human action (1978b, 140). There is no a priori shortcut to such knowledge. Historical thinking is much more like the operation of common sense, involving the weaving together of various logically independent concepts and propositions, and bringing them to bear on a particular situation as best we can, than the application of laws or formulae. The ability to do this is an empirical knack—judgement, or a sense or reality (1978b, 116).

Understanding of history is based on knowledge of humanity, which is derived from direct experience, consisting not merely of introspection, but of interaction with others. This is the basis for Verstehen , or imaginative understanding: the “recognition of a given piece of behaviour as being part and parcel of a pattern of activity which we can follow […] and […] describe in terms of the general laws which cannot possibly all be rendered explicit (still less organised into a system), but without which the texture of normal human life—social or personal—is not conceivable” (1978b, 128). The challenge of history is the need for the individual to go beyond his or her own experience, which is the basis of his or her ability to conceive of human behaviour. We must reconstruct the past not only in terms of our own concepts and categories, but in terms of how past events must have looked to those who participated in them. The practice of history thus requires gaining knowledge of what consciousness was like for other persons, in situations other than our own, through an “imaginative projection of ourselves into the past” in order to “capture concepts and categories that differ from those of the investigator by means of concepts and categories that cannot but be his own. […] Without a capacity for sympathy and imagination beyond any required by a physicist, there is no vision of either past or present, neither of others nor of ourselves” (1978b, 135–6). Historical reconstruction and explanation involves ‘entering into’ the motives, principles, thoughts and feelings of others; it is based on a capacity for knowing like that of knowing someone's character or face (1978b, 132–3).

The sort of historical understanding Berlin sought to depict was ‘related to moral and aesthetic analysis’. It conceives of human beings not merely as organisms in space, but as “active beings, pursuing ends, shaping their own and others' lives, feeling, reflecting, imagining, creating, in constant interaction and intercommunication with other human beings; in short, engaged in all the forms of experience that we understand because we share in them, and do not view them purely as external observers”. For Berlin, the philosophy of history was tied not only to epistemology, but to ethics. The best-known and most controversial facet of his writings on the relationship of history to the natural sciences was his discussion of the problem of free will and determinism, which in his hands took on a distinctly moral cast. [ 8 ] In Historical Inevitability Berlin attacked determinism (the view that human beings do not possess free will, that their actions and indeed thoughts are pre-determined by forces beyond their control) and historical inevitability (the view that all that occurs in the course of history does so because it must, that history pursues a particular course which cannot be altered, and which can be discovered, understood and described through laws of historical development). In particular he attacked the belief that history is controlled by impersonal forces beyond human control.

Berlin did not assert that determinism was untrue, but rather that to accept it required a radical transformation of the language and concepts we use to think about human life—especially a rejection of the idea of individual moral responsibility. To praise or blame individuals, to hold them responsible, is to assume that they have some control over their actions, and could have chosen differently. If individuals are wholly determined by unalterable forces, it makes no more sense to praise or blame them for their actions than it would to blame someone for being ill, or praise someone for obeying the laws of gravity. Indeed, Berlin suggested that acceptance of determinism—that is, the complete abandonment of the concept of human free will—would lead to the collapse of all meaningful rational activity as we know it.

Berlin also insisted that belief in historical inevitability was inspired by psychological needs, and not required by known facts; and that it had dangerous moral and political consequences, justifying suffering and undermining respect for the ‘losers’ of history. A belief in determinism served as an ‘alibi’ for evading responsibility and blame, and for committing enormities in the name of necessity or reason. It provided an excuse both for acting badly and for not acting at all. [ 9 ]

Berlin's insistence on the importance of the idea of free will, and the incompatibility of consistent and thoroughgoing determinism with our basic sense of ourselves and our experience as human beings, was closely tied to his political and moral philosophies of liberalism and pluralism, with their emphasis on the importance, necessity and dignity of individual choice. This insistence involved him in a number of fierce debates with other philosophers and historians in the 1950s and early 1960s, and helped to provoke a spate of writing in the English-speaking world on the philosophy of history, which might otherwise have languished.

Also controversial was Berlin's claim that the writing and contemplation of history necessarily involves moral evaluation. He did not, as some of his critics charged (e.g., Carr 1961), mean this as a call for sententious moralising on the part of historians. Berlin's argument was that, first, our normal way of regarding human beings as choice-making agents involves moral evaluation; to eliminate moral evaluation from our thinking completely would be to alter radically the way that we view the world. Nor would such an alteration truly move beyond moral evaluation; for such strenuous attempts at objectivity are themselves motivated by a moral commitment to the ideal of objectivity. Furthermore, given the place of moral evaluation in ordinary human thought and speech, an account couched in morally neutral terms will not be understood as morally neutral, nor will it accurately reflect the experience or self-perception of the historical actors in question. This last argument was particularly important to Berlin, who believed that historical writing should reflect and convey past actors' understanding of their situation, so as to provide explanations of why, thinking as they did, they acted as they did. He therefore insisted that the historian must attend to the moral claims and perceptions underlying historical events.

Berlin's emphasis on the subversive, liberating, anti-orthodox nature of philosophy led him to be particularly interested in moments of radical change in the history of ideas, and in original and marginal thinkers, while his emphasis on the practical consequences of ideas led him to focus on those transformations and challenges which, in his view, had wrought particularly decisive changes in people's moral and political consciousness, and thus in their behaviour. Finally, his awareness of the conflicts of his own day led him to concentrate mainly on modern intellectual history, and to trace the emergence of certain ideas that he regarded as particularly important, for good or ill, in the contemporary world. [ 10 ] The narrative of the history of ideas that Berlin developed and refined over the course of his works began with the Enlightenment, and focused on the initial rebellion against what Berlin regarded as that epoch's dominant assumptions. [ 11 ]

Many of Berlin's writings on the history of ideas were connected to his philosophical work, and to one another, in their pursuit of certain overarching themes. These included the relationship between the sciences and humanities and the philosophy of history; the origins of nationalism and socialism; the revolt against what Berlin called ‘monism’ in general, and rationalism in particular, in the early nineteenth century and thereafter; and the vicissitudes of ideas of liberty.

In Berlin's account, the thinkers of the Enlightenment believed human beings to be naturally either benevolent or malleable. This created a tension within Enlightenment thought between the view that nature dictates human ends, and the view that nature provides more or less neutral material, to be moulded rationally and benevolently (ultimately the same thing) by conscious human efforts—education, legislation, rewards and punishment, the whole apparatus of society. [ 12 ] Berlin also attributed to the Enlightenment the beliefs that all human problems, both of knowledge and ethics, can be resolved through the discovery and application of the proper method (generally reason, the conception of which was based on the methods of the natural sciences, particularly physics); and that genuine human goods and interests were ultimately compatible, so that conflict, like wickedness, was the result of ignorance, or of deception and oppression practiced by corrupt authorities (particularly the Church). [ 13 ]

Berlin saw the school (or schools) of thought that began to emerge shortly before the French Revolution, and became ascendant during and after it, particularly those in Germany, as profoundly antagonistic towards the Enlightenment. He was most interested in German romanticism, but also looked at other members of the larger movement he referred to as the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’. [ 14 ] Berlin's account sometimes focused on a attack on the Enlightenment's benevolent and optimistic liberalism by nationalists and reactionaries; sometimes on the rejection of moral and cultural universalism by champions of pluralism; and sometimes on the critique of naturalism and scientism by thinkers who advocated a historicist view of society as essentially dynamic, shaped not by the laws of nature, but by the contingencies of history.

Berlin has been viewed both as an adherent of the Enlightenment, who showed a fascination, whether peculiar or admirable, with its critics; and as a deep and profound critic and even opponent of the Enlightenment, and an admirer of its enemies. There is some truth in both of these pictures, neither of which does justice to the complexity of Berlin's views. Berlin admired many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, and explicitly regarded himself as ‘on their side’; he believed that much of what they had accomplished had been for the good; and, as an empiricist, he recognised them as part of the same philosophical tradition to which he belonged. But he also believed that they were wrong, and sometimes dangerously so, about some of the most important questions of society, morality and politics, and regarded their psychological and historical vision as shallow and naïve. He also traced to the Enlightenment a technocratic, managerial view of human beings and political problems to which he was profoundly opposed, and which, in the late 1940s and early '50s, he regarded as one of the gravest dangers facing the world.

Berlin regarded the Enlightenment's enemies as in many ways dangerous and deluded, sometimes more so than the Enlightenment itself. He attacked or dismissed their metaphysical beliefs, and particularly the philosophies of history of Hegel and his successors. He was also wary of the aesthetic approach to politics that many romantics had practiced and fostered. And, while appreciative of some elements in the romantic conception of liberty, he saw romanticism's influence on the development of the idea of liberty as largely perverting. At the same time, he thought the Enlightenment's opponents had pointed to many important truths that the Enlightenment had neglected or denied, both negative (the power of unreason, and particularly the darker passions, in human affairs) and positive (the inherent value of variety and of personal virtues such as integrity and sincerity, and the centrality to human nature and dignity of the capacity for choice). Romanticism rebelled in particular against the constricting order imposed by reason, and championed the human will. Berlin was sympathetic to this stance, but also believed that the romantics had gone too far both in their protests and in their celebrations. He remained committed to the goal of understanding the world so as to be able to “act rationally in it and on it” (1990, 2).

4. Ethical Thought and Value Pluralism

The republication of Berlin's essays revealed as a central dimension of his thought his advocacy of the doctrine of value pluralism. Since the early 1990s value pluralism has come to be seen by many as Berlin's ‘master idea’, and has become the most discussed, most praised and most controversial of his ideas. Value pluralism was at the centre of Berlin's ethical thought; but there is more to that thought than value pluralism alone. Berlin defined ethical thought as “the systematic examination of the relations of human beings to one another, the conceptions, interests and ideals from which human ways of treating one another spring, and the systems of value on which such ends of life are based […] beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and women should be and do” (1990, 2–3). Just as Berlin's conception of philosophy was based on a belief about the importance of concepts and categories in people's lives, his conception of ethics was founded on his belief in the importance of normative or ethical concepts and categories—especially values. [ 15 ]

Berlin did not set out a systematic theory about the nature of values, and so his view must be gleaned from his writings on the history of ideas. His remarks on the status and origins of values are somewhat ambiguous, though not necessarily irreconcilable with one another. He seems, first, to endorse the romantic view—which he traces to Kant (although he also sometimes attributes it to Hume) that values are not discovered ‘out there’, as ‘ingredients’ in the universe, not deduced or derived from nature. Rather, they are human creations, and derive their authority from this fact. From this followed a theory of ethics according to which human beings are the most morally valuable things, so that the worth of ideals and actions should be judged in relation to the meanings and impact they have for and on individual human beings. This view underlay Berlin's passionate conviction of the error of looking to theories rather than human realities, of the evil of sacrificing living human beings to abstractions; it also related to Berlin's theory of liberty, and his belief in its special importance.

Yet while Berlin sometimes suggests that values are human creations, at other times he seems to advance what amounts almost to a theory of natural law, albeit in minimalist, empirical dress. In such cases he suggests that there are certain unvarying features of human beings, as they have been constituted throughout recorded history, that make certain values important, or even necessary, to them. This view of the origin of values also comes into play in Berlin's defence of the value of liberty, when he suggests that the freedom to think, to enquire and imagine without constraint or fear is valuable because human beings need to be able to have such mental freedom; to deny it to them is a denial of their nature, which imposes an intolerable burden, producing unappeasable frustration.

In an attempt to reconcile these two strands, one might say that, for Berlin, the values that humans create are rooted in the nature of the beings who pursue them. But this is simply to move the question back a step, for the question then immediately arises: Is this human nature itself something natural and fixed, or something created and altered over time through conscious or unconscious human action? Berlin's answer (see, e.g., 2004c) comes in two parts. He rejects the idea of a fixed, fully specified human nature, regarding natural essences with suspicion. Yet he does believe (however under-theorised, unsystematic and undogmatic this belief may be) in boundaries to, and requirements made by, human nature as we know it, highly plastic as it may be. This common human nature may not be fully specifiable in terms of a list of unvarying characteristics; but, while many characteristics may vary from individual to individual or culture to culture, there is a limit on the variation—just as the human face may vary greatly from person to person in many of its properties, while remaining recognisably human. Furthermore, it is also possible to distinguish between a human and a non-human face, even if the difference between them cannot be reduced to a formula. Indeed, at the core of Berlin's thought was his insistence on the importance of humanity or the distinctively human both as a category and as a moral reality which do not need to be reduced to an unvarying essence in order to have descriptive and normative force.

There is a related ambiguity about whether values are objective or subjective. One might conclude from Berlin's view of values as human inventions that he would regard them as subjective. Yet he insisted, on the contrary, that values are objective, even going so far as to label his position ‘objective pluralism’. It is unclear what exactly he meant by this, or how this belief relates to his view of values as human creations. There are at least two accounts of the objectivity of values that can be plausibly attributed to Berlin: first, that values are ‘objective’ in that they are simply facts about the people who hold them—so that, for instance, liberty is an ‘objective’ value because I value it, and would feel frustrated and miserable without a minimal amount of it; second, that the belief in or pursuit of certain values is the result of objective realities of human nature—so that, for instance, liberty is an ‘objective’ value because certain facts about human nature make liberty good and desirable for human beings. These views are not incompatible with one another, but they are distinct; and the latter provides a firmer basis for the minimal moral universalism that Berlin espoused.

Finally, Berlin insisted that each value is binding on human beings by virtue of its own claims, in its own terms, and not in terms of some other value or goal. This view was one of the central tenets of Berlin's pluralism.

Berlin's development and definition of pluralism both began negatively, with the identification of the opposing position, which he referred to usually as monism, and sometimes as ‘the Ionian fallacy’ or ‘the Platonic ideal’. His definition of monism may be summarised as follows:

All genuine questions must have a true answer, and one only; all other responses are errors.
There must be a dependable path to discovering the true answers, which is in principle knowable, even if currently unknown.
The true answers, when found, will be compatible with one another, forming a single whole; for one truth cannot be incompatible with another. This, in turn, is based on the metaphysical assumption that the universe is harmonious and coherent.

We have seen that Berlin explicitly denied that the first two of these assumptions characterised human knowledge as it now is, or ever has been. In his ethical pluralism he pushed these denials further, and added a forceful denial of the third assumption. According to Berlin's pluralism, genuine values are many, and may—and often do—come into conflict with one another. When two or more values clash, it does not mean that one or another has been misunderstood; nor can it be said, a priori , that any one value is always more important than another. Liberty can conflict with equality or with public order; mercy with justice; love with impartiality and fairness; social and moral commitment with the disinterested pursuit of truth or beauty (the latter two values, contra Keats, may themselves be incompatible); knowledge with happiness; spontaneity and free-spiritedness with dependability and responsibility. Conflicts of values are ‘an intrinsic, irremovable part of human life’; the idea of total human fulfilment is a chimera. ‘These collisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what we are’; a world in which such conflicts are resolved is not the world we know or understand (2002, 213). Berlin further asserted that values may be not only incompatible, but incommensurable. There has been considerable controversy over what Berlin meant by this, and whether his understanding of incommensurability was either correct or coherent. In speaking of the incommensurability of values, Berlin seems to have meant that there is no common measure, no ‘common currency’ for comparison, in judging between any two values in the abstract. Thus, one basic implication of pluralism for ethics is the view that a quantitative approach to ethical questions (such as that envisaged by Utilitarianism) is impossible. In addition to denying the existence of a common currency for comparison, or a governing principle (such as the utility principle, or for that matter the categorical imperative), value incommensurability holds that there is no general procedure for resolving value conflicts—there is not, for example, a lexical priority rule (that is, no value always has priority over another).

Berlin based these assertions on empirical grounds—on ‘the world that we encounter in ordinary experience’, in which “we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others” (2002, 213). Yet he also held that the doctrine of pluralism reflected necessary rather than contingent truths about the nature of human moral life and the values that are its ingredients. The idea of a perfect whole, the ultimate solution, is not only unattainable in practice, but also conceptually incoherent. To avert or overcome conflicts between values once and for all would require the transformation, which amounted to the abandonment, of those values themselves.

Berlin's pluralism was not free-standing, but modified and guided by other beliefs and commitments. One of these, discussed below, was liberalism. Another was humanism—the view that human beings are of primary importance, and that avoiding harm to human beings is the first moral priority. Berlin therefore held that, in navigating between conflicting values, the first obligation is to avoid extremes of suffering. He insisted that moral collisions, even if unavoidable, can be softened, claims balanced, compromises reached. The goal should be the maintenance of a precarious equilibrium that avoids, as far as possible, desperate situations and intolerable choices. Philosophy itself cannot tell us how to do this, though it can help by bringing to light the problem of moral conflict and all of its implications, and by weeding out false solutions. But in dealing with conflicts of values, the concrete situation is everything (1990, 17–18).

One of the main features of Berlin's account of pluralism is the emphasis placed on the act of choosing between values. Pluralism holds that, in many cases, there is no single right answer. Berlin used this as an argument for the importance of liberty—or, perhaps more precisely, an argument against the restriction of liberty in order to impose the ‘right’ solution by force. Berlin also made a larger argument about making choices. Pluralism involves conflicts, and thus choices, not only between particular values in individual cases, but between ways of life. While Berlin seems to suggest that individuals have certain inherent traits—an individual nature, or character, which cannot be wholly altered or obscured—he also insisted that they make decisions about who they will be and what they will do. Choice is thus both an expression of an individual personality, and part of what makes that personality; it is essential to the human self.

4.2 Value Pluralism Before Berlin

Berlin provided his own (somewhat peculiar) genealogy of pluralism. He traced the rebellion against monism first to Machiavelli, and depicted Vico and Herder as decisive figures. Yet he acknowledged that Machiavelli wasn't really a pluralist, but a dualist; and other scholars have questioned his identification of Vico and Herder as pluralists, when both avowed belief in a higher, divine or mystical, unity behind variety. Other scholars have credited other figures in the history of philosophy, such as Aristotle, with pluralism (Nussbaum 1986, Evans 1996). James Fitzjames Stephen advanced something that looks very much like Berlin's pluralism (Stephen 1873), though he allied it to a conservative critique of Mill's liberalism. In Germany, Dilthey came close to pluralism, and Max Weber towards the end of his life presented a dramatic, forceful picture of the tragic conflict between incommensurable values, belief systems and ways of life (Weber 1918, esp. 117, 126, 147–8, 151–3; cf. Weber 1904, esp. 17–18). Ethical pluralism first emerged under that name, however, in America, inspired by William James's pluralistic view of the universe. John Dewey and Hastings Rashdall both approximated pluralism in certain writings (Dewey 1908, Rashdall 1907); but pluralism was apparently first proposed, under that name, and as a specifically ethical doctrine, in language strikingly similar to Berlin's, by Sterling Lamprecht, a naturalist philosopher and scholar of Hobbes and Locke in several articles (e.g., 1920, 1921), as well as, somewhat later, by A. P. Brogan (1931). The dramatic similarities between not only Berlin and Lamprecht's ideas, but also their language, makes it difficult to believe that Lamprecht was not an influence on Berlin. However, there is no evidence that Berlin knew Lamprecht's work; and Berlin's tendency was more often to credit his own ideas to others than to claim the work of others as his own. A version of pluralism was also advocated by Berlin's contemporary Michael Oakeshott (although Oakeshott seems to have attributed conflicts of values to a mistakenly reflective approach to ethical issues, and suggested that they could be overcome through relying on a more habitual, less self-conscious, ethical approach).

4.3 The Emergence of Value Pluralism in Berlin's Work

Some of the elements of value pluralism are detectable in Berlin's early essay ‘Some Procrustations’, published while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. This essay, drawing on Aristotle, and focusing on literary and cultural criticism rather than philosophy proper, made the case for epistemological and methodological, rather than ethical, pluralism. Berlin criticised the belief in, and search for, a single method, or theory, which could serve as a master-key for understanding all experience. He insisted that, on the contrary, different standards, values and methods of enquiry are appropriate for different activities, disciplines and facets of life. In this can be seen the seeds of his later work on the differences between the sciences and the humanities, of his attacks on systematic explanatory schemes, and of his value pluralism; but all these ideas had yet to be developed or applied. Berlin was further nudged towards pluralism by discovering a suggestion by Malebranche that happiness and goodness are incompatible; this struck him at the time as an ‘odd interesting view’, but it stuck, and he became convinced of its central and pregnant truth (2004, 72). Berlin set out his basic account of what he would later label monism in his biography of Marx (1939), but did not explicitly criticise it or set out a pluralistic alternative to it (although his lecture ‘Utilitarianism’, dating from the late 1930s, does set out an argument that anticipates his later claim that values are incommensurable). The basic crux of pluralism, and Berlin's connection of it to liberalism, is apparent in rough, telegraphic form in Berlin's notes for his lecture ‘Democracy, Communism and the Individual’ (1949), and pluralism is also advanced in an aside, not under that name, in Historical Inevitability (1954). Berlin referred to pluralism and monism as basic, conflicting attitudes to life in 1955 (Berlin et al., 1955). But his use of the term and his explication of the concept did not fully come together, it appears, until Two Concepts of Liberty (1958; even then, his articulation of pluralism is absent from the first draft of the essay).

Thereafter variations on Berlin's account of pluralism appear throughout his writings on romanticism. Late in his life, taking stock of his career, and trying to communicate what he felt to be his most important philosophical insights, Berlin increasingly devoted himself to the explicit articulation and refinement of pluralism as an ethical theory. He had referred to the discovery of the basic incompatibility and incommensurability of values as his one genuine discovery in a private letter of 1969; he devoted the lecture he gave in accepting the Agnelli Prize in 1988, ‘The Pursuit of the Ideal’, to explaining what pluralism meant, and this remains the most eloquent and concentrated summary of pluralism. Berlin also discussed pluralism in many interviews and printed exchanges with other scholars from the 1970s onward, in an attempt to work out the conflicts, controversies and confusions to which his ideas gave rise; but many of these resisted Berlin's attempts at resolution, and continue to figure in, and sometimes dominate, discussions of his work.

Since the 1990s, pluralism has become the most widely and hotly debated of the ideas Berlin advanced. This is due in part to Berlin's work, and in part to that of later philosophers who, either as followers or allies of Berlin or independently, have also articulated and advanced value pluralism or similar positions. [ 16 ] Although pluralism achieved its current prominence in interpretations of Berlin's work later in his life, it was identified earlier as a key component in his thought by a few prescient readers. Two of these readers advanced what remains one of the most common criticisms of Berlin's pluralism: that it is indistinguishable from relativism (Strauss 1961; Momigliano 1976; see MacCallum 1967a and Kocis 1989 for other early critiques). [ 17 ]

One problem that has bedevilled the debate is a persistent failure to define the terms at issue with adequate clarity. Pluralism, of course, has been the subject of repeated definition by Berlin and others (the repetition not always serving a clarifying purpose). However, the term ‘relativism’ often remains under-analysed in these discussions. Whether pluralism can be distinguished from relativism depends largely on how relativism is defined, as well as on how certain obscure or controversial components of pluralism are treated. It should also be noted that the question of whether values are plural is logically distinct from the question of whether they are objective, despite the frequent elision of the two topics in the literature on this subject.

One way of defining relativism is as a form of subjectivism or moral irrationalism. This is how Berlin defined it in his attempts to refute the charge of relativism against his pluralism. For Berlin, the model of a relativist statement is ‘I like my coffee white, you like yours black; that is simply the way it is; there is nothing to choose between us; I don't understand how you can prefer black coffee, and you cannot understand how I can prefer white; we cannot agree.’ Applied to ethics, this same relativist attitude might say: ‘I like human sacrifice, and you do not; our tastes, and traditions, simply differ.’ Pluralism, on the other hand, as Berlin defines it, holds that communication and understanding of moral views is possible among all people (unless they are so alienated from normal human sentiments and beliefs as to be considered really deranged). Relativism, in Berlin's definition, would make moral communication impossible; while pluralism aims to facilitate moral communication.

Another (related) way of differentiating pluralism and relativism, employed by Berlin and others, holds that pluralism accepts a basic ‘core’ of human values, and that these and other values adopted alongside them in a particular context fall within a ‘common human horizon’. This ‘horizon’ sets limits on what is morally permissible and desirable, while the ‘core’ of shared or universal values allows us to reach agreement on at least some moral issues. This view rests on a belief in a basic, minimum, universal human nature beneath the widely diverse forms that human life and belief have taken across time and place. It may also involve a belief in the existence of a specifically moral faculty or sense inherent to human beings. Berlin seems to have believed in such a faculty, and identified it with empathy, but did not develop this view in his writings.

Yet another way of defining relativism is to view it as holding that things have value only relative to particular situations; nothing is intrinsically good—that is, valuable in and for itself as an end in itself. A slightly different way of putting this would be to maintain that there are no such things as values that are always valid; values are valid in some cases, but not others. For instance, liberty may be a value at one place and time, but has no status as a value at another. Here, again, Berlin's pluralism is opposed to relativism, since it is premissed on a belief that, for human beings, at least some values are intrinsically rather than instrumentally good, and that at least some values are universally valid, even if others aren't—and even if this universal validity isn't recognised. He admitted that liberty, for instance, had historically been upheld as an ideal only by a small minority of human beings; yet he still held it to be a genuine value for all human beings, everywhere, because of the way that human beings are constituted, and, so far as we know, will continue to be constituted. Similarly, Steven Lukes has suggested that relativism seeks to avoid or dismiss moral conflict, to explain it away by holding that different values hold for different people, and denying that the competing values may be, and often are, binding on all people. Pluralism, on the other hand, sees conflicts of values as occurring both within, and across, cultures, and (at least in Lukes's formulation) maintains that custom or relatively valid belief-systems or ways of life cannot be appealed to as ways of overcoming value-conflict (Lukes 1989). This is not a position that Berlin explicitly advances; but his later writings suggest a sympathy for it.

Yet the charge that pluralism is equivalent to relativism is not so easily refuted, given certain ambiguities in Berlin's account. These centre on the nature and origins of values, the related question of the role of cultural norms, and the meaning of ‘incommensurability’.

As stated above, Berlin held both that values are human creations, and that they are ‘objective’; and the foundation for this latter claim is ambiguous in Berlin's work. The claim that values are objective in being founded on, or expressions of, and limited by certain realities of human nature would seem to provide a defence against relativism, in holding that there is an underlying, common human nature which makes at least some values non-relative. However, the argument that values are objective simply because they are pursued by human beings seems to allow for relativism, since it makes the validity of values dependent on nothing but human preferences, and allows any values actually pursued by human beings (and, therefore, any practices adopted in pursuing those values) to claim validity. [ 18 ]

One of the knottiest dimensions of Berlin's pluralism is the idea of incommensurability, which has been open to diverging interpretations. One can make a three-way distinction, between weak incommensurability, moderate incommensurability and radical incommensurability. Berlin goes beyond weak incommensurability, which holds that values cannot be ranked quantitatively, but can be arranged in a qualitative hierarchy that applies consistently in all cases. It is not, however, clear whether he presents a moderate or a radical vision of incommensurability. The former holds that there is no single, ultimate scale or principle with which to measure values—no ‘moral slide-rule’ or universal unit of normative measurement. This view is certainly consistent with all that Berlin wrote from 1931 onwards. Such a view does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is impossible to make judgements between values on a case-by-case basis, or that values, just because they can't be compared or ranked in terms of one master-value or formula, can't be compared or deliberated between at all.

Berlin does sometimes offer more starkly dramatic accounts of incommensurability, which make it hard to rule out this more radical interpretation of the concept, according to which incommensurability is more or less synonymous with incomparability. The latter states that values cannot be compared at all, since there is no ‘common currency’ in terms of which to compare them: each value, being sui generis, cannot be judged in relation to any other value, because there is nothing to judge them both in relation to. As a result, choices among values cannot be based on (objectively valid) evaluative comparisons, but only on personal preference, or on an act of radical choice. If this view is adopted, it is difficult to see how pluralism's practical consequences would differ from those of relativism, although some scholars—most notably John Gray—have attempted to work out a version of pluralism that will both accommodate this more radical interpretation of incommensurability, and yet be differentiated from relativism.

A related question concerns the role of reason in moral deliberation. If values are incommensurable, must all choices between conflicting values be ultimately subjective or irrational? If so, how does pluralism differ from radical relativism and subjectivism? If not, how, exactly, does moral reasoning work? How can we rationally make choices between values when there is no system or unit of measurement that can be used in making such deliberations? One possible answer to the last question is to offer an account of practical, situational reasoning that is not quantitative or rule-based. This is what Berlin suggests; but, once again, he does not offer a systematic explanation of the nature of non-systematic reason. (On incommensurability see Chang 1997 and Crowder 2002.)

In the area of political philosophy, the most widespread controversy over pluralism concerns its relationship to liberalism. This debate overlaps with that regarding pluralism's relationship to relativism, to the extent that liberalism is regarded as resting on a belief in certain universal values and fundamental human rights, a belief which relativism undermines. However, there are some who maintain that, while pluralism is distinct from, and preferable to, relativism, it is nevertheless too radical and subversive to be reconciled to liberalism (or, conversely, that liberalism is too inherently and deludedly universalistic or absolutist to be compatible with pluralism). The main proponent of this view, who is more responsible than any other thinker for the emergence and wide discussion of this issue, is John Gray (see, especially, Gray 1995). Gray asserts that pluralism is true, that pluralism undermines liberalism, and that therefore liberalism, at least as it has traditionally been conceived, should be abandoned. [ 19 ]

Gray's case has spawned a vast literature, concerning both Berlin's treatment of the relationship between pluralism and liberalism in particular, and this issue in general. Some theorists have agreed with Gray (Kekes, 1993, 1997); others have sought to show that pluralism and liberalism are reconcilable, although this reconciliation may require modifications to both liberalism and pluralism—modifications that are, however, justifiable, and indeed inherently desirable. The most extensive discussions to date are those by George Crowder and William Galston (Crowder 2002, 2004, Galston 2002, 2004). [ 20 ]

Berlin himself was devoted both to pluralism and to liberalism, which he saw not as related by logical entailment, but as interconnected and harmonious. The version of pluralism he advanced was distinctly liberal in its assumptions, aims and conclusions, just as his liberalism was distinctly pluralist. As Michael Walzer has remarked, Berlin's pluralism is characterised by “receptivity, generosity, and scepticism”, which are, “if not liberal values, then qualities of mind that make it […] likely that liberal values will be accepted” (Galston 2002, 60–1; Walzer 1995, 31).

5. Political Thought

Apart from his better-known writings on liberty and pluralism, Berlin's political thought centred on two topics, both of which were, for most of his career, to varying degrees marginal in the study of political theory. These were the nature of political judgement and the ethics of political action. Berlin addressed the former subject both directly and through his writings on individual statesmen who embodied models of different sorts of successful political judgement (for these, see the portraits collected in Berlin 1998, and Hanley 2004).

Berlin disputed the idea that political judgement was a body of knowledge, a science, which could be reduced to rules. Political action should be based on a ‘sense of reality’ founded on experience, empathetic understanding of others, sensitivity to the environment, and personal judgement about what is true or untrue, significant or trivial, alterable or unalterable, effective or useless etc. Such judgement necessarily involves personal instinct and flair, ‘strokes of unanalysable genius’. In the realm of political action, laws are few and skill is all (1996, 43).

Like the study of history, political judgement involves reaching an understanding of the unique set of characteristics that constitute a particular individual, atmosphere, state of affairs or event (1996, 45). This requires a capacity for integrating “a vast amalgam of constantly changing, multicoloured, evanescent, perpetually overlapping data”, a “direct, almost sensuous contact with the relevant data”, and “an acute sense of what fits with what, what springs from what, what leads to what […] what the result is likely to be in a concrete situation of the interplay of human beings and impersonal forces” (1996, 46). Such a sense is qualitative rather than quantitative, specific rather than general.

The faculty that allows for such judgement is, Berlin insists, not metaphysical, but ‘ordinary, empirical, and quasi-aesthetic’. This sense is distinct from any sort of ethical sense; it could be possessed or lacked by both virtuous and villainous politicians. Recognition of the importance of this sense of political reality should not discourage the spirit of scientific enquiry or serve as an excuse for obscurantism. But it should discourage the attempt to transform political action into the application of scientific principles, and government into technocratic administration. [ 21 ]

Berlin intended his writings on political judgement as a warning to political theorists not to overreach themselves. Political thought can do much good in helping us to think through politics. But political action is a practical matter, which should not, and cannot, be founded on, or dictated by, theory.

Berlin's writings on political judgement, activity and leadership are of a piece with his larger epistemological project: to bring to light the tension between the application of abstract or a priori theory and the recognition of direct perception; and to warn against the dangers of the former and assert the importance of the latter (he acknowledged that it was impossible to think without the use of analogies and metaphors, that thought necessarily involves generalisation and comparison; but he warned that it was important to be cautious, self-conscious and critical in the use of general models and analogies: see 1978b, 158). These writings also reassert the message of the youthful essay ‘Some Procrustations’: that the same rules should not be automatically applied to every facet of human life. Rationality consists of the application, not of a single technique or set of rules, but of those methods that have proven to work best in each particular field or situation. This view of political judgement also relates to Berlin's attempt to vindicate the importance of individual agency and personality, by insisting that political judgement is a personal quality, and effective political activity a matter of personal consideration, decision and action rather than impersonal administration or the deployment of institutional machinery.

While Berlin emphasised the place of questions about the proper ends of political action in the subject-matter of political theory, he also recognised the importance of discussions of the proper means to employ, and the relationship between these and the ends at which they aim. Berlin did not treat this question—the question of political ethics—directly in his work; nor did he offer simple or confident answers to the perennial questions of the morality of political action. Nevertheless, he did advance some theses about this branch of morality; and these were among his most heartfelt, and indeed passionate, pronouncements.

Berlin's primary mouthpiece for these messages was Alexander Herzen, the nineteenth-century Russian radical publicist. [ 22 ] The words of Herzen that Berlin repeated most insistently were those condemning the sacrifice of human beings on the altar of abstractions, the subordination of the realities of individual happiness or unhappiness in the present to glorious dreams of the future (Berlin also quoted similar sentiments from Benjamin Constant: see Berlin 1990, 16 and 2002, 3, as well as 1978a, 82–113 and 186–209 passim). The first principle of Berlin's political ethics was an opposition to such subordination, which Berlin viewed as the essence of fanaticism, and a recipe for inhumanity that was as futile as it was horrible.

Berlin, like Herzen, believed that ‘the end of life is life itself’, and that each life and each age should be regarded as its own end and not as a means to some future goal. To this Berlin added a caution (evocative as much of Max Weber as of Herzen) about the unpredictability of the future. Berlin's belief in the power of human agency was qualified by an awareness of how the consequences of any course of action are unknowable, and likely to be quite different from what was intended. This led Berlin, on the one hand, to stress the need for caution and moderation; and, on the other, to insist that uncertainty is inescapable, so that all action, however carefully undertaken, involves the risk of error and disastrous, or at least unexpected and troubling, consequences. The result was an ethic of political humility, similar to Weber's ethic of responsibility, but lacking its tone of grim, stoic grandeur.

Berlin often noted the dangers of Utopianism, and stressed the need for a measure of political pragmatism. He may therefore appear to have been staunchly in the tradition of political realism. Yet this was not quite the case: Berlin sought to warn against the dangers of idealism, and chasten it, so as to save it from itself and better defend it against cynicism. Berlin's pluralism points the way to a politics of compromise; yet Berlin also warned against the dangers of certain types of compromise, particularly those involving the employment of dubious means to achieve desired ends. Indeed, the problem of the relationship between ends and means runs through Berlin's writings. Berlin, characteristically, warned both against an insistence on total political purity—for, when values conflict and consequences are often unexpected, purity is an impossible ideal—and against a disregard for the ethical niceties of political means. Berlin regarded such an attitude as not only morally ugly, but foolish: for good ends have a tendency to be corrupted and undermined by being pursued through unscrupulous means. Furthermore, since the consequences of actions are so uncertain, it is often the case that political actors don't achieve their goals, or achieve them imperfectly; it is best not to make too many sacrifices along the way to accomplishing one's political goals, since that accomplishment is uncertain. To the realist argument that ‘You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs’, Berlin responded: “The one thing we can be sure of is the reality of the sacrifice, the dying and the dead. But the ideal for which they die remains unrealised. The eggs are broken, and the habit of breaking them grows, but the omelette remains invisible” (1990, 16).

Berlin was thoroughly anti-absolutist; but he did insist that there were certain actions that were, except in the most drastic of situations, unacceptable. Foremost among these were the manipulation and humiliation of individuals by others, to the extent that those who are ‘got at’ or ‘tampered with’ by others are deprived of their humanity (see 2002, 339–43). Berlin warned particularly against the use of violence. He acknowledged that the use of force was sometimes necessary and justified; but he also reminded his readers that violence has particularly volatile and unpredictable consequences, and tends to spiral out of control, leading to terrible destruction and suffering, and undermining the noble goals it seeks to achieve. He also stressed the dangers of paternalistic, or otherwise humiliating and disempowering, attempts to institute reform or achieve improvement, which had a tendency to inspire a backlash of hatred and resistance.

Berlin's political ethics are best summarised in his own words:

Let us have the courage of our admitted ignorance, of our doubts and uncertainties. At least we can try to discover what others […] require, by […] making it possible for ourselves to know men as they truly are, by listening to them carefully and sympathetically, and understanding them and their lives and their needs, one by one individually. Let us try to provide them with what they ask for, and leave them as free as possible (1978a, 258).

For Berlin the acceptance of uncertainty was a call not only to cultivate humility, but to foster liberty.

Berlin's best-known contribution to political theory has been his essay on the distinction between positive and negative liberty. This distinction is explained, and the vast literature on it summarised, elsewhere in this encyclopaedia; the following therefore focuses only on Berlin's original argument, which has often been misunderstood, in part because of ambiguities in Berlin's account.

In Two Concepts of Liberty Berlin sought to explain the difference between two (not, he acknowledged, the only two) different ways of thinking about political liberty which had run through modern thought, and which, he believed, were central to the ideological struggles of his day. Berlin called these two conceptions of liberty negative and positive. [ 23 ] Berlin's treatment of these concepts was less than fully even-handed from the start: while he defined negative liberty fairly clearly and simply, he gave positive liberty two different basic definitions, from which still more distinct conceptions would branch out. Negative liberty Berlin initially defined as freedom from , that is, the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by other people. Positive liberty he defined both as freedom to , that is, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to dependence on others.

Berlin's account was further complicated by combining conceptual analysis with history. He associated negative liberty with the classical liberal tradition as it had emerged and developed in Britain and France from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Berlin later regretted that he had not made more of the evils that negative liberty had been used to justify, such as exploitation under laissez-faire capitalism; in Two Concepts itself, however, negative liberty is portrayed favourably, and briefly. It is on positive liberty that Berlin focuses, since it is, he claims, both a more ambiguous concept, and one which has been subject to greater and more sinister transformation, and ultimately perversion.

Berlin traces positive liberty back to theories that focus on the autonomy, or capacity for self-rule, of the agent. [ 24 ] Of these, Berlin found Rousseau's theory of liberty particularly dangerous. For, in Berlin's account, Rousseau had equated freedom with self-rule, and self-rule with obedience to the ‘general will’. By this, Berlin alleged, Rousseau meant, essentially, the common or public interest—that is, what was best for all citizens qua citizens. The general will was quite independent of, and would often be at odds with, the selfish wills of individuals, who, Rousseau charged, were often deluded as to their own interests.

This view went against Berlin's political and moral outlook in two ways. First, it posited the existence of a single ‘true’ public interest, a single set of arrangements that was best for all citizens, and was thus opposed to the main thrust of pluralism. Second, it rested on a bogus transformation of the concept of the self. In his doctrine of the general will Rousseau moved from the conventional and, Berlin insisted, correct view of the self as individual to the self as citizen—which for Rousseau meant the individual as member of a larger community. Rousseau transformed the concept of the self's will from what the empirical individual actually desires to what the individual as citizen ought to desire, that is, what is in the individual's real best interest, whether he or she realises it or not.

This transformation became more sinister still in the hands of Kant's German disciples. Fichte began as a radically individualist liberal. But he came to reject his earlier political outlook, and ultimately became an ardent, even hysterical, nationalist—an intellectual forefather of Fascism and even Nazism. Once again, this involved a move from the individual to a collective—in Fichte's case, the nation, or Volk . In this view, the individual achieves freedom only through renunciation of his or her desires and beliefs as an individual and submersion in a larger group. Freedom becomes a matter of overcoming the poor, flawed, false, empirical self—what one appears to be and want—in order to realise one's ‘true’, ‘real’, ‘noumenal’ self. This ‘true’ self may be identified with one's best or true interests, either as an individual or as a member of a larger group or institution; or with a cause, an idea or the dictates of rationality (as in the case, Berlin argued, of Hegel's definition of liberty, which equated it with recognition of, and obedience to, the laws of history as revealed by reason). Berlin traced this sinister transformation of the idea of freedom to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century, both Communist and Fascist-Nazi, which claimed to liberate people by subjecting—and often sacrificing—them to larger groups or principles. As we have seen, to do this was for Berlin the greatest of political evils; and to do so in the name of freedom, a political principle that Berlin, as a genuine liberal, especially cherished, struck him as a particularly monstrous deception. Against this, Berlin championed, as ‘truer and more humane’, negative liberty and an empirical view of the self.

In addition to the debates concerning the conceptual validity and historical accuracy of Berlin's account (extensively documented in Harris 2002), there is considerable misunderstanding of Berlin's own attitudes to the concepts he discussed, and of the goals of his lecture. Berlin has often been interpreted, not unreasonably, as a staunch enemy of the concept of positive liberty. But this was never wholly the case. Berlin regarded both concepts of liberty as centring on valid claims about what is necessary and good for human beings; both negative and positive liberty were for him genuine values, which might in some cases clash, but in other cases could be combined and might even be mutually interdependent. Indeed, Berlin's own earlier articulations of his political values included a notable component of positive liberty alongside negative liberty (see e.g., 2002, 336–44). What Berlin attacked was the many ways in which positive liberty had been used to justify the denial, betrayal or abandonment of both negative liberty and the truest forms of positive liberty itself. Berlin's main targets were not positive liberty as such, but the metaphysical or psychological assumptions which, combined with the concept of positive liberty, had led to its perversion: monism, and a metaphysical or collective conception of the self. Two Concepts of Liberty , and Berlin's liberalism, are therefore not based on championing negative liberty against positive liberty, but on advocating individualism, empiricism and pluralism against collectivism, holism, rationalistic metaphysics and monism.

In Berlin's account, the main connection between pluralism and liberalism centres on the centrality of choice to both. Berlin's argument is as follows. The conflicts between values and ways of life that are the matter of pluralism require people to make choices. These choices are of the utmost importance, because they involve the most basic and essential questions of human life—what one is to be and do. Those who have to make such choices are therefore likely to care about them, and to want some say in making them. Furthermore, the ability to make one's own choices between conflicting values is the crux of one's identity and dignity as a moral agent. (This step of the argument, it should be noticed, is not entailed by pluralism itself; but it is an assumption central to Berlin's moral individualism, which Berlin imports into his pluralism.)

Why might one deny individuals the opportunity to make choices for themselves? One answer (though not the only possible one) is that individuals may make the wrong choices, so that it is necessary to coerce or manipulate them to choose correctly. But pluralism holds that in cases where there are conflicts between genuine values, there may be no single right choice—more than one choice (though not necessarily all possible choices) may equally serve genuine human values and interests, even if it also involves the sacrifice or violation of other values or interests that are no more or less true and important. Similarly, there is no single ideal life, no single model of how to think or behave or be, to which people should attempt, or be brought, to conform as far as possible.

Pluralism, then, for Berlin, represents an argument that both undermines one of the main rationales for violating freedom of choice, and vindicates the importance and value of being able to make choices freely. [ 25 ] Some interpreters have argued that Berlin's vindication of the freedom to choose, while it rests in part on his pluralism, also requires the addition of moral principles, ideals and assumptions external to pluralism (though this need not, contra John Gray, mean that pluralism is incompatible with, or necessary undermines, liberalism); while others (such as George Crowder) have argued that Berlin's liberalism can be deduced from his pluralism alone.

At the same time, while pluralism is an important ingredient in Berlin's argument for the importance of liberty, it also modifies and moderates his liberalism, and prevents Berlin from being (as many proponents of negative liberty in the twentieth century and after have been) an unqualified classical liberal or libertarian. Negative and positive liberty are both genuine values which must be balanced against each other; and liberty of any sort is one value among many, with which it may conflict, and against which it needs to be balanced. Therefore Berlin was more sensitive than many classical liberal or libertarian thinkers to the possibility that genuine liberty may in fact conflict with genuine equality, or justice, or public order, or security, or efficiency, or happiness, and therefore must be balanced with, and sometimes sacrificed in favour of, other values. Berlin's liberalism includes both a conservative or pragmatic appreciation of the importance of maintaining a balance between different values, and a social-democratic appreciation of the need to restrict liberty in some cases so as to promote equality and justice and protect the weak against victimisation by the strong (see 2002, 214–15). Nevertheless Berlin remains a liberal in maintaining that preserving a certain minimum of individual liberty is a primary political priority. He justifies this view by an appeal to an empiricist version of a natural law argument, writing of the existence of ‘natural rights’ based on the way that human beings are constituted, mentally or physically; to attempt to alter or limit human life in certain ways is to block the desires, goals, aspirations inherent in being human as we know it (1996, 73–4). To deprive human beings of certain basic rights is to dehumanise them. While liberty should not be the only good pursued by society, and while it should not always trump other values, ethical pluralism lends it a special importance: for people must be free in order to allow for the recognition and pursuit of all genuine human values. Society should therefore make it a priority to provide the liberty necessary for Millian ‘experiments in living’ and for the perpetuation of social and personal variety (see Berlin 2002, 218–51).

5.5. Nationalism

Berlin used the term ‘nationalism’ somewhat confusingly, to refer to two quite distinct, and morally very different, phenomena. The first of these was the sense of belonging, of collective identity, of which Herder had written. The second was the ‘inflamed’ form of this sentiment, which, feeding off of resentment, frustration and humiliation, became ‘pathological’. Berlin was sympathetic to the former, critical of the latter; but he recognised the relationship of the two, and was thus aware of the power and allure of nationalism.

Berlin insisted that the struggles for national liberation that marked his own day—primarily in the late 1940s, '50s and '60s—were not struggles for either negative or positive liberty as such, but rather expressed a craving for collective recognition, for status, for the sense of living among and being governed—however harshly—by members of one's own group. Berlin credited to Herder the insight that belonging, and the sense of self-expression that membership bestows, are basic human needs; but it seems unlikely that he would have had to learn this lesson from Herder—it is more probable that it was his own appreciation of these needs that attracted him to that author in the first place. He was sharply aware of the pain of humiliation and dependency, the hatefulness and hurtfulness of paternalistic rule. His individualism and emphasis on liberty were qualified by his understanding of the human need for a sense of belonging to a community—an awareness sharpened, if not generated, by his own experience of exile, as well as by the influence of his mother's passionate Zionism. [ 26 ]

Berlin's life and work continue to be the subject of considerable scholarly attention. This attention has yet to yield a settled consensus about the merits, or indeed the meaning, of Berlin's work—and not only because Berlin evokes strong personal reactions, attracting admiration and affection, if not outright veneration, as a liberal saint (see e.g., Annan 1980, 1990, 1999; Hausheer 1979 and 2004), and inspiring hostility from critics on both the right and left, who have detected in Berlin's stance complacency, hypocrisy, a want of courage, and an excess of tolerance (see e.g., Scruton 1989, Hitchens 1998). This is to be expected, given Berlin's fierce opposition to Communism, combined with his refusal to ally himself to extreme anti-Communism, as well as his ambivalence or hesitancy on many divisive political issues of his own day.

However, even as the ideological battles of the Cold War begin to recede into the past, Berlin remains the object of varying interpretations and evaluations. This may appear odd in a thinker who wrote clearly, and without any attempt at secrecy or obscurity. But it is unsurprising, given the complexity of Berlin's vision, his aversion to systematic exposition or theorising, the multifaceted nature of his work, and the uniqueness of his position in the intellectual life of his times. These qualities make it difficult not only to evaluate Berlin, but even to situate him in the history of ideas; for he appears at once typical and atypical of the period in which he lived, and also both ahead of his time and extremely old-fashioned.

In his youth Berlin's intellectual development followed that of English-language philosophy, and he was at one point deeply involved in the advance of analytic philosophy; yet he drifted away from this, and his later writings and concerns are a world apart from most Anglo-American philosophy of its time. On the other hand, for all his range of historical and cultural reference and concern with moral and aesthetic questions, and despite the influence of Kant and Kant's successors on his thought, Berlin seems out of place in the world of Continental philosophy. Yet it would be a mistake to accept Berlin's own judgement that he had departed from the realm of philosophy altogether. For both the views he had formed while working as a professional philosopher, and his tendency to connect political, historical and cultural issues to deeper moral and epistemological questions, set his work apart from that of other historians and ‘public intellectuals’ of his day (to whom he otherwise bore a certain resemblance).

Berlin was, for much of his life, an intellectually lonely figure, pursuing the history of ideas in an academic setting that was unreceptive to it, and advocating a moderate liberalism in a time dominated by ideological extremism. And yet this plea for moderation and advocacy of liberalism was shared and taken up by many others at the time. [ 27 ] Intellectually, Berlin was often prescient, yet also strangely reactionary. His interest in political philosophy and dedication to the defence of liberalism anticipated the work of John Rawls (who had studied with Berlin at Oxford while a young academic); yet the resurgence of political theory initiated by Rawls's work coincided with a period of eclipse in Berlin's reputation. Berlin's concern with the problem of culture anticipated the centrality in political theory of questions of identity and membership that began in the 1990s; his sympathy for the sentiments and needs underlying nationalism, which set him apart from many liberal theorists of his own time, presaged the revival of ‘liberal nationalism’ in the works of younger thinkers such as Michael Walzer, David Miller, Yael Tamir and Michael Ignatieff. His attack on monism, on the quest for certainty and the project of systematic knowledge, has led him to be embraced by some proponents of anti-foundationalism such as Richard Rorty. Yet Berlin's work remains difficult to assimilate to intellectual movements or projects such as postmodernism or multiculturalism, the excesses and obscurities of which provoked quizzical scepticism in him towards the end of his life.

Nor is Berlin easy to identify seamlessly with those intellectual positions that he explicitly propounded—liberalism and pluralism. Berlin's place in the history of political thought is therefore, at present, paradoxical and unsettled. He appears as an important, and indeed emblematic, exponent of liberalism—along with Rawls, the most important liberal theorist of his century—whose ideas may nevertheless in the end undermine, or at least be difficult to reconcile, with liberalism. This question has come to preoccupy many readers of Berlin's work, and predominate in discussions of his legacy, to the extent of threatening to overshadow other aspects of his thought.

The debate over pluralism and liberalism raises genuinely important conceptual issues; yet it becomes somewhat misleading, both in itself and particularly as a guide to Berlin's thought, if pluralism and liberalism are both taken to be comprehensive doctrines, or if they are reified into independently existing, systematic entities. ‘Pluralism’ and ‘liberalism’ as general terms are abstractions which can be helpfully used to group, analyse and compare the positions of different thinkers, or to characterise different facets of the thought of a single thinker. Neither, however, is likely to capture the whole of an individual position; and neither in itself, even if linked to the other, encompasses or sums up Berlin's own outlook.

Berlin himself insisted that political and ethical theories arise from a thinker's basic conception of human nature, which in turn is founded on an entire philosophical outlook, a conception of the nature of the universe, reality, knowledge etc. This is certainly true of Berlin's own political and ethical thought, if not of that of every thinker. The vision underlying Berlin's political and ethical theory, while it may have been coherent (this is itself arguable), was not systematic, and it cannot be accurately characterised simply as pluralistic or liberal, if these terms are to have any specific meaning or any use in analysing positions other than Berlin's own. ‘Pluralism’ can be used, more narrowly, to describe Berlin's theory of values. It can also be employed more broadly, to capture something of his vision of reality, the universe and human nature—that is, the view that all of these things are complexes made up of separate and conflicting parts: that the self is protean and open-ended, that the universe is not a harmonious cosmos, that reality presents many separate aspects, which can and should be viewed from different perspectives. But pluralism, as explicitly defined by Berlin and others, does not cover Berlin's empiricism, or his historicism, or his awareness of the fallibility of human knowledge, or his belief in the primary importance of individuals as opposed to generalisations and abstractions, or his emphasis on the importance of free choice (which, while he sought to found it on pluralism, in fact appears to be independent of it). Nor does pluralism, with its emphasis on the place of tragic conflict and loss in human life, capture the affirmative zest for life and delighted enthusiasm for human beings that was central to Berlin's character as a man and thinker. Berlin's thought, like his writing, is made up both of swathes of sharp colour and of minutely variegated and subtle shades of light and darkness; it thus resists summary and simple conclusions, and repays persistent and open-ended study.

A. Works by Berlin

1937, ‘Induction and Hypothesis’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , supplementary vol. 16: 63–102.
1939, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment , London: Thornton Butterworth; Toronto: Nelson. 4th ed., 1978, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
1949, ‘Democracy, Communism and the Individual’, in The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library , Henry Hardy (ed.) [ available online in PDF ].
1953, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Simon and Schuster. Expanded version of ‘Lev Tolstoy's Historical Scepticism’, Oxford Slavonic Papers , 2, 1951: 17–54. Reprinted in Berlin 1978a.
1954, Historical Inevitability , London: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Berlin 2002b.
1955, (with Stuart Hampshire, Iris Murdoch and Anthony Quinton), ‘Philosophy and Beliefs’, Twentieth Century , 157: 495–521.
1956, (ed.), The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers , Boston: Houghton Mifflin; New York: New American Library.
1958, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Berlin 2002.
1972, ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’ (revised version of a paper first delivered in 1953), in Studies on Machiavelli , M. Gilmore (ed.), Florence: Sansoni. Reprinted in Berlin 1979.
1978a, Russian Thinkers , Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly (eds), London: Hogarth Press; New York: Viking.
1978b, Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York, 1979: Viking.
1979, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York, 1980: Viking.
1990, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: John Murray; New York, 1991: Knopf.
1996, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; New York, 1997: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
1997, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays , Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (eds), London: Chatto and Windus; New York, 1998: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
1998, Personal Impressions , 2nd edn, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Pimlico; Princeton, 2001: Princeton University Press.
1999a, The First and the Last , New York: New York Review Books; London: Granta.
1999b, The Roots of Romanticism (1965), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2000a, The Power of Ideas , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2000b, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (1960–65), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Pimlico; Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2002a, Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (1952), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2002b, Liberty , Henry Hardy (ed.), Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
2004a, Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946 , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus. Published in the USA as Letters 1928–1946 , New York: Cambridge University Press.
2004b, The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism , Henry Hardy (ed.), Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
2004c, ‘A Letter on Human Nature’ (1986), letter to Beata Polanowska-Sygulska, New York Review of Books , 23 September, 26.
2005, Letters to Andrzej Walicki in Andrzej Walicki, Russia, Poland and Marxism: Isaiah Berlin to Andrzej Walicki 1962–1996 [ Dialogue and Universalism 15 No 9–10/2005], 53–173.
2006a, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought , Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2006b (with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) Unfinished Dialogue , Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

B. Books About Berlin

Aarsbergen-Ligtvoet, Connie, 2006, Isaiah Berlin: A Value Pluralist and Humanist View of Human Nature and the Meaning of Life , Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
Coles, Norman, 2004, Human Nature and Human Values: Interpreting Isaiah Berlin , Bexhill on Sea: Egerton House.
Crowder, George, 2004, Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism , Cambridge: Polity.
Crowder, George, and Henry Hardy, (eds.), 2007, The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin , Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Galipeau, Claude J., 1994, Isaiah Berlin's Liberalism , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gray, John, 1995, Isaiah Berlin , London: HarperCollins; Princeton, 1996: Princeton University Press; retitled Berlin for the paperback edition, London, 1995: Fontana.
Ignatieff, Michael, 1998, Isaiah Berlin: A Life , London: Chatto and Windus; New York: Metropolitan.
Jinkins, Michael, 2004, Christianity, Tolerance and Pluralism: A Theological Engagement with Isaiah Berlin's Social Theory , London and New York: Routledge.
Kocis, Robert, 1989, A Critical Appraisal of Sir Isaiah Berlin's Political Philosophy , Lewiston, NY, etc.: Edwin Mellen Press.
Lilla, Mark, Ronald Dworkin and Robert B. Silvers, 2001, (eds), The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin , New York: New York Review Books; London: Granta.
Mali, Joseph, and Robert Wokler, 2003, (eds), Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment [ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 93 No 3], Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Margalit, Edna and Avishai, 1991, (eds), Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration , London: Hogarth Press; Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ryan, Alan, 1979, (ed.), The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

C. Other Works Cited

Allen, Jonathan, 1998, review of Berlin 1996, South African Journal of Philosophy , 17/2: 173–7.
Annan, Noel, 1980, introduction to Berlin 1998.
-----, 1990, Our Age: Portrait of a Generation , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Random House.
-----, 1999, ‘The Don as Magus: Isaiah Berlin’, in his The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses , London: HarperCollins.
Baghramian, Maria, and Attracta Ingram, 2000, (eds), Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity , London and New York: Routledge.
Blokland, Hans, 1999, ‘Berlin on Pluralism and Liberalism: A Defence’, European Legacy , 4/4: 1–23.
Brogan, A. P., 1931, ‘Objective Pluralism in the Theory of Value’, International Journal of Ethics , 41/3: 287–95.
Carr, E. H., 1961, What is History? , London: Macmillan.
Chang, Ruth, 1997, (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason , Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.
Crowder, George, 2002, Liberalism and Value Pluralism , London and New York: Continuum.
Dewey, John, 1908, ‘The Virtues’, chapter 19 of John Dewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics , New York: Holt.
Dzur, Albert W., 1998, ‘Value Pluralism versus Political Liberalism?’, Social Theory and Practice , 24/3: 375–92.
Evans, J. D. G., 1996, ‘Cultural Realism: The Ancient Philosophical Background’, in Philosophy and Pluralism , D. Archard (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Friedman, Jeffrey, 1997, ‘Pluralism or Relativism?’, Critical Review , 11/4: 469–80.
Galston, William, 2002, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice , Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press.
Galston, William, 2004, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gray, John, 1993, Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought , New York and London: Routledge.
-----, 1998, ‘Where Liberals and Pluralists Part Company’, International Journal of Moral and Political Studies , 6/1: 17–36.
-----, 2002, Two Faces of Liberalism , Cambridge: Polity.
Gutmann, Amy, 1999, ‘Liberty and Pluralism in Pursuit of the Non-Ideal’, in Mack 1999.
Hanley, Ryan P., 2004, ‘Political Science and Political Understanding: Isaiah Berlin on the Nature of Political Inquiry’, American Political Science Review , 98/2: 327–39
Harris, Ian, ‘Berlin and his Critics’, in Berlin 2002.
Hausheer, Roger, 1979, introduction to Berlin 1979.
-----, 2004, ‘Enlightening the Enlightenment’, in Mali and Wokler 2003.
Hitchens, Christopher, 1998, ‘Moderation or Death’, London Review of Books , 23 November 1998, 3–11.
Katznelson, Ira, 1994, ‘A Properly Defended Liberalism: On John Gray and the Filling of Political Life’, Social Research , 61: 611–30.
Kekes, John, 1993, The Morality of Pluralism , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-----, 1997, Against Liberalism , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Lamprecht, Sterling, 1920, ‘The Need for a Pluralistic Emphasis in Ethics’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods , 17: 561–72.
-----, 1921, ‘Some Political Implications of Ethical Pluralism’, Journal of Philosophy , 18: 225–44.
Larmore, Charles, 1994, ‘Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement’, Social Philosophy and Policy , 11/1, 61–79 .
Lukes, Steven, 1989, ‘Making Sense of Moral Conflict’, in Liberalism and the Moral Life , N. Rosenblum (ed.), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
-----, 1994, ‘The Singular and the Plural: On the Distinctive Liberalism of Isaiah Berlin’, Social Research , 61: 687–718.
-----, 1995, ‘Pluralism is not Enough’, The Times Literary Supplement , 10 February, 4–5.
-----, 1998, ‘Berlin's Dilemma’, The Times Literary Supplement , 27 March, 8–10.
-----, 2001, ‘An Unfashionable Fox’, in Lilla et al. 2001.
Mack, Arien, 1999, (ed.), Liberty and Pluralism (Social Research 66/4).
Mehta, Pratap B., 1997, review of Gray 1995, American Political Science Review , 91/3: 722–4.
Nussbaum, Martha, 1986, The Fragility of Goodness , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacCallum, Gerald C., 1967a, ‘Berlin on the Compatibility of Values, Ideals, and “Ends” ’, Ethics , 77: 139–45.
-----, 1967b, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, Philosophical Review , 76: 312–34.
Momigliano, Arnaldo, 1976, ‘On the Pioneer Trail’, New York Review of Books , 11 November, 33–8.
Rashdall, Hastings, 1907, ‘The Commensurability of All Values’, chapter 2 of his The Theory of Good and Evil , vol. 2, London: Oxford University Press.
Riley, Jonathan, ‘Interpreting Berlin's Liberalism’, American Political Science Review , 95: 283–95.
-----, 2002, ‘Defending Cultural Pluralism within Liberal Limits’, Political Theory , 30/1: 68–97.
Scruton, Roger, 1989, ‘Freedom's Cautious Defender: Roger Scruton assesses the work of Sir Isaiah Berlin, 80 on Tuesday [6 June]’, The Times , [Saturday] 3 June, 10.
Stephen, James Fitzjames , 1873, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity , Smith, Elder.
Strauss, Leo, 1961, ‘Relativism’, in Relativism and the Study of Man , H. Schoeck and J. Wiggins (eds), Princeton: Van Nostrand.
Walzer, Michael, 1995, ‘Are there Limits to Liberalism?’, New York Review of Books , 19 October, 28–31.
Weber, Max, 1904, ‘The Meaning of “Ethical Neutrality” in Sociology and Economics’, in Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences , E. Shils and H. Finch (trans. and eds), New York/Glencoe, Illinois, 1949: Free Press.
-----, 1918, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ and ‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology , H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), London, 1946: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Weinstock, Daniel, 1997, ‘The Graying of Berlin’, Critical Review , 11/4: 481–501.
The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library edited by Henry Hardy (Wolfson College, Oxford).
Catalogue of Berlin's papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
British Library Sound Archive holdings (search for ‘Isaiah Berlin’).
New York Review of Books : articles by Isaiah Berlin.
Photos/portraits of Berlin in the National Portrait Gallery (London).

Online articles on Berlin

BBC News Online, Obituary of Isaiah Berlin .
Beran, Michael Knox, ‘ Was Liberalism's Philosopher-in-Chief a Conservative? ’.
Billington, James, Katharine Graham, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, Robert Silvers, Charles Taylor and Leon Wieseltier, contributions to ‘ An American Remembrance ’ of Isaiah Berlin.
Chappel, James, Dignity is Everything: Isaiah Berlin and His Jewish Identity , Haverford College Senior Thesis, 25 April 2005 (in PDF).
Cherniss, Joshua, ‘ "A Cautious, Sober Love Affair with Humanity": Humanism in the Thought of Isaiah Berlin ’ (in Word).
Cherniss, Joshua, ‘ Philosopher, Historian, Liberal: How Isaiah Berlin Made a Difference ’ (in Word).
Cohen, G. A., ‘ Freedom and Money ’ (in PDF).
Crowder, George, ‘ Galston's Liberal Pluralism ’ (in PDF); abstract also available (in Word).
Crowder, George, ‘ Hedgehog and Fox ’ (in PDF).
Crowder, George, ‘ Pluralism, Relativism and Liberalism in Isaiah Berlin ’ (in PDF).
Crowder, George, ‘ Value Pluralism and the Virtues of Liberalism ’ (long page: search for ‘Crowder’).
Delannoi, Gil, Preface to French translation of Berlin 1996 (in PDF).
Dénes, Iván Zoltán, ‘ Three Concepts of Liberty ’ (in PDF).
Dubnov, Arie, ‘ Liberal or Zionist? Ambiguity or Ambivalence? Reply to Jonathan Hogg ’.
Dunachie, Findlay, ‘ Isaiah Berlin Lectures on Liberty and Romanticism ’.
Grant, Robert, Amy Guttman, Axel Honneth, George Kateb, Ira Katznelson and others, articles in Arien Mack (ed.), Liberty and Pluralism .
Hardy, Henry, various articles.
Hogg, Jonathan, ‘ The Ambiguity of Intellectual Engagement: Towards a Reassessment of Isaiah Berlin's Legacy ’; comments by Charles Blattberg.
Inbari, Assaf, ‘ The Spectacles of Isaiah Berlin ’; reply by Alex Sztuden (the 4th letter at the linked URL) (in PDF).
Johnson, Michael, ‘ Meeting Isaiah Berlin ’.
Kukathas, Chandran, review of Gray 1995 .
Larmore, Charles, review of Berlin 1996 .
Lassman, Peter, ‘ Pluralism and Liberalism in the Thought of Isaiah Berlin ’ (in PDF).
Rothbard, Murray N., ‘ The Ethics of Liberty ’.
Stoppard, Tom, ‘ The Presiding Spirit of Isaiah Berlin ’ (in PDF).
Szacki, Jerzy, review of Berlin 2006b .
Thompson, Mark, ‘ Versions of Pluralism: William Empson, Isaiah Berlin, and the Cold War ’ (in PDF).
Thorsen, Dag Einar, ‘ On Berlin's Liberal Pluralism: An Examination of the Political Theories of Sir Isaiah Berlin, Concentrated around the Problem of Combining Value Pluralism and Liberalism ’ (in PDF).
Thorsen, Dag Einar, ‘ Value Pluralism and Normative Reasoning ’ (in PDF).
Wentzell, Richard J., ‘ Value Pluralism: Some Implications for Multiculturalism ’ (in PDF).
Zakaras, Alex, ‘ Isaiah Berlin's Cosmopolitan Ethics ’ (in PDF: wait for automatic download).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank George Crowder, who read a draft of this entry and whose comments were most helpful.

Geographical
More from M-W
To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

Definition of liberty

alternative
druthers [ dialect ]

freedom , liberty , license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion.

freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated.

liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion.

license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom.

Examples of liberty in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'liberty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French liberté , from Latin libertat-, libertas , from liber free — more at liberal

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing liberty

civil liberty
liberty cap
liberty pole
take the liberty of

Dictionary Entries Near liberty

libertinism

Cite this Entry

“Liberty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberty. Accessed 30 Jun. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of liberty, legal definition, legal definition of liberty, geographical definition, geographical name, definition of liberty, more from merriam-webster on liberty.

Nglish: Translation of liberty for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of liberty for Arabic Speakers

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Plural and possessive names: a guide, your vs. you're: how to use them correctly, every letter is silent, sometimes: a-z list of examples, more commonly mispronounced words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), popular in wordplay, it's a scorcher words for the summer heat, flower etymologies for your spring garden, 12 star wars words, 'swash', 'praya', and 12 more beachy words, 8 words for lesser-known musical instruments, games & quizzes.

Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

The notion of liberty as an irrefutable right of every citizen is central to the history and culture of the United States. The phenomenon of freedom as a political statement and a crucial human value was established since the creation of the U.S., yet the subject matter was expanded on to the extent required to introduce the notion into the American value system by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Having been introduced into American society as WWII erupted, the concept of liberty as viewed through the political lens of Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed setting clear standards and determining the concept of freedom as a multifaceted yet clearly delineated notion. By promoting the principles of the Four Freedoms, Roosevelt managed to change the perception of justice on multiple social and cultural levels, altering attitudes toward immigrants and contributing to the profound change in social interactions.

It is also noteworthy that the concept of liberty started to be developed for the U.S. and its citizens during one of the most challenging periods in American history, namely, during the Great Depression. At the identified critical yet formative point of the American identity’s development, the concept of democracy as a set of irrefutable rights granted to every citizen no matter what their ethnicity, gender, or age was, was formed, allowing one to link these concerns to the American evolution and the plight for political autonomy (Foner 781). The case of Nicola Sacco can be seen as the starting point of the introduction of Roosevelt’s definition of freedom as liberty for all American citizens. As Foner explains, “The Sacco-Vanzetti case laid bare some of the fault lines beneath the surface of American society during the 1920ies” (Foner 780).

It is truly remarkable how the idea of liberty as the foundational principle of building relationships within a democratic society started to emerge despite the presence of rather hostile attitudes toward immigrants and prejudices associated with them. As the phenomenon of immigration became increasingly widespread in American society, Lucas W. Parrish outlined the dangers of the phenomenon in his speech on immigration in 1921, mentioning the “foreign and unsympathetic element” (Foner 792). However, in approximately 25 years, the values of the U.S. population were shifted completely to the idea of empathy and support for all members of the American community, disregarding their ethnicity, beliefs, and gender (Foner 793). Specifically, the Four Freedoms that Roosevelt promoted as the foundational values and the definition of freedom as “free thought and intellectual integrity” could be defined as a huge breakthrough in building relationships within the American community (Foner 815). Therefore, Roosevelt’s definition of freedom contributed to shaping American society as a multifaceted and intricate one, which was why Roosevelt used his message so often.

The introduction of not only economic but also political and social aspects into the idea of liberty as the cornerstone of American society was one of the main features of Roosevelt’s philosophy. Thus, it would be reasonable to claim that the notion of social justice was introduced into the concept of freedom at the time (“Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936)”). As Foner explains, the era in question is “a new age where no political freedom but social and institutional freedom is the most insistent cry” (839). Thus, the shift toward the social perspective associated with the notion of liberty as it was represented by Roosevelt could be regarded as the foundational change that would determine the course of development for American society in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

“Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936).” The American Yawp Reader , n.d., Web.

Social Networks and Recruitment
Application of Irrefutable Laws of Leadership in the Military
"Give Me Liberty an American History" by Eric Foner
Thomas Jefferson: The Author of America
Martin Van Buren: Money and Indian Relocation
Ronald Reagan as a President and a Person
"Barack Obama: Miles Traveled, Miles to Go" by Erin Kaplan
The Heroic Deeds of George Washington
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, June 8). Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom. https://ivypanda.com/essays/franklin-d-roosevelts-definition-of-freedom/

"Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom." IvyPanda , 8 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/franklin-d-roosevelts-definition-of-freedom/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom'. 8 June.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom." June 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/franklin-d-roosevelts-definition-of-freedom/.

1. IvyPanda . "Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom." June 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/franklin-d-roosevelts-definition-of-freedom/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom." June 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/franklin-d-roosevelts-definition-of-freedom/.

Liberty and Equality Today

When the delegates to the Constitution Convention were preparing to sign the new Constitution, Benjamin Franklin gave a speech to say why his fellow delegates should sign the Constitution. Franklin admitted that it was not a perfect document, and that he had his doubts about some parts of it. Nevertheless, he believed that it was a great framework of government that would protect the liberties of the people and was the best that could be obtained considering that they were fallible men. He and the other Framers affixed their signatures to the great document of freedom because of the promise it had to create a lasting republic on free principles.

It was a unique moment in world history that a scattered and diverse people in America could stop at a critical period to deliberate over a whole new government and the founding of a nation on a core set of principles. The promise of America in the vision of the Founders was that of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The natural rights republic new concept was grounded upon principles that did not change with the passing of time or the changes in culture. This novus ordo seclorum —“new order for the ages”—was not created for a particular race, privileged aristocratic social class, or member of an established religion, but for all equally.

With all of the promise of these enduring principles, America was a nation in which African-Americans suffered the horrors of slavery, women could not vote, and Native Americans were roundly denied almost any rights.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued, until it be obtained” (James Madison, Federalist No. 51 , 1788).

However, these groups were not living under a just government that protected their rights or fulfilled the purposes for which it was created. But, were the principles of natural justice themselves flawed, or were they applied by fallible men?

For nearly two hundred years, African-Americans, women, Native Americans, and other groups have fought to win equal rights by arguing that America should live up to these ideals. They wanted the same right to participate equally in the American political system as citizens and enjoy the “American Dream.” They could have rejected that society and its principles for discriminating against them for so long. They could have worked outside the system for radical change or worked to destroy the system as has been done in other countries throughout modern history. However, they consistently appealed to the same principles that animated the Founders in creating the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and used their right of free speech and freedom of assembly to argue for nothing less than full participation in American society and enjoyment of their equal rights as citizens and humans endowed with inalienable rights.

Even after the many successes the movements for liberty and equality achieved, the debate continued. Today, debates over gay marriage, affirmative action, and economic justice, and the role of the government in resolving these disputes, are still highly contentious. The debates often revolve around different views of what rights are embedded in the natural law as opposed to what might be just commonly held ideas by the majority. At other times, justice can be interpreted as individual conscience applied to society. Is this how the Founders understood natural law or justice? Of course, in any issue, there are contending sides who believe that they are arguing according to a principle. This is why free and open discourse employing reason must guide deliberation in a self-governing society and why reason must trump mere ideology.

Another change in recent American thinking about issues of diversity, equality, and liberty is a redefinition of idea of equality. The Founding vision equality of opportunity, where all have the same chance to employ their talents and merits, in American politics, economy, and society has been supplanted by an advocacy of an equality of outcomes.

Some believe that equal opportunity is often not enough because there are still those who are more successful than others and thus unequal. All people must be made equal by a government which regulates society and reverses centuries of discrimination by granting special favors to certain groups such as women, African-Americans, and Native Americans. Is this a proper understanding of equality? Does this create a more just society? Are certain groups entitled to special protections and favors by the government? Our republic and its free enterprise economy was founded upon the idea of equality under the law in which all had the same opportunity to pursue their happiness.

America has always been and continues to be a diverse country. One question that will confront all Americans is how to ensure that every citizen, regardless of skin color, sex, or religion, will enjoy the liberty and equality that the country was founded upon. Another question is whether Americans will continue to agree upon the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded and the meaning of those principles or whether we will be fragmented into groups with a narrow perspective and only look out for our own interests. The perennial challenge of liberty and equality are how to unite the goals of freedom and the common good.

What was so exceptional about the American Founding was that the nation offered an experiment for mankind in liberty and equality.

The Founders did not merely attack monarchy and aristocracy but looked to build a lasting republic on the principles best suited to human nature. They were not merely locked in their time and place in the eighteenth century but were far-seeing statesmen and lawgivers who framed an enduring Constitution for a lasting republic. Rather than evolving or changing with the times, the Constitution had immutable principles that would allow Americans to govern themselves down through the ages. It did not matter for the Founders what the diverse character of the citizenry was, but rather than they embraced the universal principles upon which America was founded.

Your Article Library

Liberty: definition, features, types and essential safeguards of liberty.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Liberty: Definition, Features, Types and Essential Safeguards of Liberty!

Of all the rights which are considered fundamental for the development of the personality of the individual, the right to liberty or freedom happens to be most respected and valued. In fact without liberty, i.e. without the freedom to enjoy one’s rights, there can be no real right available to the people. Liberty, as such, is the most cherished and loved right of the people.

I. Liberty: Meaning :

The word “Liberty” stands derived from the Latin word ‘Liber” which means ‘free’. In this sense liberty means freedom from restraints and the freedom to act as one likes. However, in a civil society such a meaning of Liberty is taken to be negative and harmful.

It is only in a jungle that freedom from restraints is available to animals. In a civil society no person can be really permitted to act without restraints. Hence, Liberty is taken to mean the absence of not all restraints but only those restraints which are held to be irrational.

Liberty is usually defined in two ways: Negative Liberty & Positive Liberty :

(A) Negative Liberty:

In its negative sense, Liberty is taken to mean an absence of restraints. It means the freedom to act is any way. In this form liberty becomes a license. Such a meaning of liberty can never be accepted in a civil society. In contemporary times, Negative conception of liberty stands rejected.

(B) Positive Liberty:

In its positive sense, Liberty is taken to mean freedom under rational and logical i.e. restraints which are rational and have stood the test of time. It means liberty under the rational and necessary restraints imposed by law. These restraints are considered essential for ensuring the enjoyment of liberty by all the people. In a civil society only positive liberty can be available to the people.

Positive Liberty means two important things:

1. Liberty is not the absence of restraints; it is the substitution of irrational restraints by rational ones. Liberty means absence of only irrational and arbitrary restraints and not all restraints.

2. Liberty means equal and adequate opportunities for all to enjoy their rights.

II. Liberty: Definition :

(1) “Liberty is the freedom of individual to express, without external hindrances, his personality.” -G.D.H Cole

(2) “Freedom is not the absence of all restraints but rather the substitution of rational ones for the irrational.” -Mckechnie

(3) “Liberty is the existences of those conditions of social life without which no one can in general be at his best self.” “Liberty is the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have the opportunities to be their best-selves.” -Laski

Liberty is the most essential condition for the enjoyment of rights. It is not the absence of restraints. It is the positive condition for the enjoyment of rights. It admits the presence of such rational restraints as satisfy the test of historical experience and reason.

III. Features/Nature of Liberty :

(i) Liberty does not mean the absence of all restraints

(ii) Liberty admits the presence of rational restraints and the absence of irrational restraints.

(iii) Liberty postulates the existence of such conditions as can enable the people to enjoy their rights and develop their personalities.

(iv) Liberty is not a license to do anything and everything. It means the freedom to do only those things which are considered worth-doing or worth-enjoying.

(v) Liberty is possible only in a civil society and not in a state of nature or a ‘state of jungle’. State of anarchy can never be a state, of Liberty.

(vi) Liberty is for all. Liberty means the presence of adequate opportunities for all as can enable them to use their rights.

(vii) In society law is an essential condition of liberty. Law maintains conditions which are essential for the enjoyment of Liberty by all the people of the state.

(viii) Liberty the most fundamental of all the rights. It is the condition and the most essential right of the people. Liberty enjoys priority next only to the right to life.

In contemporary times, the positive view of liberty stands fully and universally recognized as the real, accepted, and really productive view of Liberty.

IV. Types of Liberty :

(1) Natural Liberty:

Traditionally the concept of natural liberty has been very popular. Natural liberty is taken to mean the enjoyment of unrestrained natural freedom. It is justified on the ground that since man is born free, he is to enjoy freedom as he wills. All restraints negate his freedom.

The social contractual lists (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) championed the cause of natural liberty. Rousseau became famous for his words: “Man is born free, but is in chains everywhere.” It is popularly believed that man has inherited the right to liberty from nature. Natural reason is the basis of liberty.

However, the concept of natural liberty is now considered to be an imaginary one. There can be no real freedom in a state of nature or a ‘jungle society’. Unrestrained freedom can create anarchy. It is only in an orderly society characterised by essential restraints based on laws and rules that real liberty can be possible. Natural liberty can lead to a living based on the evil principle of ‘might is right’ or the ‘rule of muscle power.’

(2) Civil Liberty:

The liberty which each individual enjoys as a member of the society is called civil liberty. It is equally available to all the individuals. All enjoy equal freedom and rights in society. Civil liberty is not unrestrained liberty. It is enjoyed only under some restrictions (Laws and Rules) imposed by the state and society. Civil Liberty is the very opposite of Natural liberty. Whereas Natural Liberty denounces the presence of restraints of any kind, Civil Liberty accepts the presence of some rational restraints imposed by the State and Society.

Further, Civil Liberty has two features:

(i) State guarantees Civil Liberty:

Civil liberty means liberty under law. Law creates the conditions necessary for the enjoyment of liberty. However, it refrains from creating obstacles in the way of enjoyment of liberty by the people. It protects liberty from such obstacles and actions of other men and organisations as can limit the equal liberty of all. The Laws of State imposes such reasonable restraints as are deemed necessary for the enjoyment of liberty by the people.

(ii) Civil liberty also stands for the protection of Rights and Freedom from undue interferences:

Civil liberty involves the concept of limiting the possibilities for violation of the rights of the people by the government. This is ensured by granting and guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the people. It also stands for providing constitutional and judicial protection to rights and liberty of the people.

(3) Political Liberty:

Good and adequate opportunities for using political rights by the people are defined as political liberty. When the people have the freedom of participation in the political process, it is held that they enjoy political liberty.

Political of liberty involves the freedom to exercise the right to vote, right to contest elections, right to hold public office, right to criticise and oppose the policies of the government, right to form political parties, interest groups and pressure groups, and the right to change the government through constitutional means.

Laski observes “Political liberty means the power to be active in the affairs of the state.” Such a liberty is possible only in a democracy. The real exercise of political rights by the people is a sure sign of the presence of political liberty and democracy.

(4) Individual Liberty/ Personal Liberty:

Individual liberty means the freedom to pursue one’s desires and interests as a person, but which do not clash with the interests or desires of others. The freedom of speech and expression, freedom of residence, freedom of movement, freedom of conscience, freedom of tastes and pursuits, freedom to choose any profession or trade or occupation, the freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour, the right to personal property, the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion, and freedom to accept or not to accept any ideology, all fall under the category of individual freedom. However, all these freedoms are to be exercised in a way as does not hinder the equal freedom of others as well as does not violate public order, health and morality.

(5) Economic Liberty:

Laski defines economic liberty as freedom from the wants of tomorrow and availability of adequate opportunities for earning the livelihood. It stands for freedom from poverty, unemployment and the ability to enjoy at least three basic minimum needs — food, clothing and shelter. Laski writes, “Economic Liberty means security and opportunity to find reasonable significance in the earning of one’s daily bread”.

Economic Liberty can be enjoyed only when there is freedom from hunger, starvation, destitution and unemployment. Positively, it means the availability of the right to work and adequate opportunities for earning ones livelihood. Without fair economic liberty, political liberty becomes meaningless. When the people are not free from the fear of hunger, starvation and destitution they can never think of enjoying their rights and freedoms.

The grant of economic liberty to the people demands the grant of right to work, right to reasonable wages, adequate opportunities for livelihood, right to rest and leisure, and right to economic security in the old age.

(6) National Liberty:

National liberty is another name for independence of the nation.

It means complete freedom of the people of each state:

(i) To have a constitution of their own,

(ii) To freely organise their own government,

(iii) To freely adopt their policies and programmes,

(iv) To pursue independence in relations with all countries of the world, and

(v) Freedom from external control.

(7) Religious Liberty:

It means the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion. It means the freedom of faith and worship and non-intervention of State in religious affairs of the people. It also means equal status of all religions to freely carry out their activities in society. Secularism demands such a religious freedom.

(8) Moral Liberty:

It means the freedom to act according to one’s conscience. It stands for the liberty to work for securing moral self-perfection. Freedom to pursue moral values is moral freedom.

Thus, when one demands the right to liberty one really demands liberty in all these forms.

V. Some Essential Safeguards of Liberty :

1. Love for Liberty:

Only when people are strongly in love with their liberty, that liberty can be really safeguarded. Liberty needs continuous attempts on the part of the people to defend their liberty.

2. Eternal Vigilance:

The commitment of the people to defend their liberty and their full alertness against any encroachment of their liberty is the second most important safeguard of liberty. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

3. Grant of Equal Rights to All:

For safeguarding Liberty, it is essential that there should be no class of privileged persons in society. Liberty can exist only when equal rights are granted and guaranteed to all the people without any discrimination.

Grant of special privileges and rights to any class is always against the spirit of liberty. However, grant of some special privileges to the deprived sections of society (Protective Discrimination) is deemed just and essential.

4. Democratic System:

Establishment of a democratic system is an essential safeguard of liberty. Both liberty and democracy are supplementary to each other. We cannot conceive of a democracy without the presence of civil, economic, political and individual liberty. Likewise, in the absence of the right to freedom there can be no real democracy.

5. The Rights of one should not be dependent upon the will of others:

Laski suggests that the state must ensure that rights and freedoms of some people should not be dependent upon the will and happiness of others. The rulers and ruled should both be under the rule of law.

6. Fair Governmental Action:

For safeguarding Liberty, it is essential that the government should exercise unbiased and impartial control over every section of society. It must acts as a responsible transparent and accountable government.

7. Protection of Fundamental Rights:

One of the key methods of safeguarding liberty is to incorporate a charter of fundamental rights and freedoms in the constitution of the State. Along with it, judicial protection should be given to rights.

8. Independence of Judiciary:

Judiciary should be assigned the responsibility to protect all rights and freedoms of the people. For discharging such an important function, the judiciary must be made independent and fully empowered.

9. Separation of Powers:

Separation of powers should be secured between the legislature and executive. Judiciary should be totally separate from these. Any concentration or combination of these powers can be dangerous for Liberty

10. Decentralisation of Powers:

For safeguarding liberty against possible dictatorship/ authoritarianism, it is essential that decentralisation of powers should be affected. The power of the government, particularly its executive branch should be distributed among a number of organisations and these should be located at all the three levels of government-local, provincial/ regional and national.

11. Rule of Law:

All the people should be under the same laws and bound by same types of obligations. No one should be above law.

13. Economic Equality:

Equitable and fairer distribution of income, wealth and resources, and adequate opportunities for lively-hood are essential safeguards of Liberty. Without economic equality, there can be no real enjoyment of liberty.

14. Well Organised Interest Groups and Non-government Organisations:

One very essential safeguard for Liberty is the presence of well-organised interest groups and non-governmental organisations or voluntary social service organisations i.e. Civil Society. Such organisations can act unitedly for fight all violations of liberty.

All these conditions are necessary for securing Liberty of every person.

Rights: Meaning, Features and Types of Rights
12 Essential Features of Russian Bill of Rights

No comments yet.

Leave a reply click here to cancel reply..

You must be logged in to post a comment.

‘Freedom’ Means Something Different to Liberals and Conservatives. Here’s How the Definition Split—And Why That Still Matters

W e tend to think of freedom as an emancipatory ideal—and with good reason. Throughout history, the desire to be free inspired countless marginalized groups to challenge the rule of political and economic elites. Liberty was the watchword of the Atlantic revolutionaries who, at the end of the 18th century, toppled autocratic kings, arrogant elites and ( in Haiti ) slaveholders, thus putting an end to the Old Regime. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Black civil rights activists and feminists fought for the expansion of democracy in the name of freedom, while populists and progressives struggled to put an end to the economic domination of workers.

While these groups had different objectives and ambitions, sometimes putting them at odds with one another, they all agreed that their main goal—freedom—required enhancing the people’s voice in government. When the late Rep. John Lewis called on Americans to “let freedom ring” , he was drawing on this tradition.

But there is another side to the story of freedom as well. Over the past 250 years, the cry for liberty has also been used by conservatives to defend elite interests. In their view, true freedom is not about collective control over government; it consists in the private enjoyment of one’s life and goods. From this perspective, preserving freedom has little to do with making government accountable to the people. Democratically elected majorities, conservatives point out, pose just as much, or even more of a threat to personal security and individual right—especially the right to property—as rapacious kings or greedy elites. This means that freedom can best be preserved by institutions that curb the power of those majorities, or simply by shrinking the sphere of government as much as possible.

This particular way of thinking about freedom was pioneered in the late 18th century by the defenders of the Old Regime. From the 1770s onward, as revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic rebelled in the name of liberty, a flood of pamphlets, treatises and newspaper articles appeared with titles such as Some Observations On Liberty , Civil Liberty Asserted or On the Liberty of the Citizen . Their authors vehemently denied that the Atlantic Revolutions would bring greater freedom. As, for instance, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson—a staunch opponent of the American Revolution—explained, liberty consisted in the “security of our rights.” And from that perspective, the American colonists already were free, even though they lacked control over the way in which they were governed. As British subjects, they enjoyed “more security than was ever before enjoyed by any people.” This meant that the colonists’ liberty was best preserved by maintaining the status quo; their attempts to govern themselves could only end in anarchy and mob rule.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

In the course of the 19th century this view became widespread among European elites, who continued to vehemently oppose the advent of democracy. Benjamin Constant, one of Europe’s most celebrated political thinkers, rejected the example of the French revolutionaries, arguing that they had confused liberty with “participation in collective power.” Instead, freedom-lovers should look to the British constitution, where hierarchies were firmly entrenched. Here, Constant claimed, freedom, understood as “peaceful enjoyment and private independence,” was perfectly secure—even though less than five percent of British adults could vote. The Hungarian politician Józseph Eötvös, among many others, agreed. Writing in the wake of the brutally suppressed revolutions that rose against several European monarchies in 1848, he complained that the insurgents, battling for manhood suffrage, had confused liberty with “the principle of the people’s supremacy.” But such confusion could only lead to democratic despotism. True liberty—defined by Eötvös as respect for “well-earned rights”—could best be achieved by limiting state power as much as possible, not by democratization.

In the U.S., conservatives were likewise eager to claim that they, and they alone, were the true defenders of freedom. In the 1790s, some of the more extreme Federalists tried to counter the democratic gains of the preceding decade in the name of liberty. In the view of the staunch Federalist Noah Webster, for instance, it was a mistake to think that “to obtain liberty, and establish a free government, nothing was necessary but to get rid of kings, nobles, and priests.” To preserve true freedom—which Webster defined as the peaceful enjoyment of one’s life and property—popular power instead needed to be curbed, preferably by reserving the Senate for the wealthy. Yet such views were slower to gain traction in the United States than in Europe. To Webster’s dismay, overall, his contemporaries believed that freedom could best be preserved by extending democracy rather than by restricting popular control over government.

But by the end of the 19th century, conservative attempts to reclaim the concept of freedom did catch on. The abolition of slavery, rapid industrialization and mass migration from Europe expanded the agricultural and industrial working classes exponentially, as well as giving them greater political agency. This fueled increasing anxiety about popular government among American elites, who now began to claim that “mass democracy” posed a major threat to liberty, notably the right to property. Francis Parkman, scion of a powerful Boston family, was just one of a growing number of statesmen who raised doubts about the wisdom of universal suffrage, as “the masses of the nation … want equality more than they want liberty.”

William Graham Sumner, an influential Yale professor, likewise spoke for many when he warned of the advent of a new, democratic kind of despotism—a danger that could best be avoided by restricting the sphere of government as much as possible. “ Laissez faire ,” or, in blunt English, “mind your own business,” Sumner concluded, was “the doctrine of liberty.”

Being alert to this history can help us to understand why, today, people can use the same word—“freedom”—to mean two very different things. When conservative politicians like Rand Paul and advocacy groups FreedomWorks or the Federalist Society talk about their love of liberty, they usually mean something very different from civil rights activists like John Lewis—and from the revolutionaries, abolitionists and feminists in whose footsteps Lewis walked. Instead, they are channeling 19th century conservatives like Francis Parkman and William Graham Sumner, who believed that freedom is about protecting property rights—if need be, by obstructing democracy. Hundreds of years later, those two competing views of freedom remain largely unreconcilable.

Annelien de Dijn is the author of Freedom: An Unruly History , available now from Harvard University Press.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
Melinda French Gates Is Going It Alone
What to Do if You Can’t Afford Your Medications
How to Buy Groceries Without Breaking the Bank
Sienna Miller Is the Reason to Watch Horizon
Why So Many Bitcoin Mining Companies Are Pivoting to AI
The 15 Best Movies to Watch on a Plane
Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Games & Quizzes
History & Society
Science & Tech
Biographies
Animals & Nature
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
On This Day
One Good Fact
New Articles
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
World History
Health & Medicine
Browse Biographies
Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
Environment
Fossils & Geologic Time
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Sports & Recreation
Visual Arts
Demystified
Image Galleries
Infographics
Top Questions
Britannica Kids
Saving Earth
Space Next 50
Student Center

Still from the film Deliverance, 1919. The story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. View shows Keller in the cockpit/front seat of an airplane.

Learn about this topic in these articles:

Assorted references.

The essay On Liberty appeared in 1859 with a touching dedication to her and the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform in the same year. In his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) he systematized opinions already put forward in many casual articles and essays. It has been remarked how…

…also expressed in his essays On Liberty (1859) and Considerations on Representative Government (1861). In the former he stated the case for the freedom of the individual against “the tyranny of the majority,” presented strong arguments in favour of complete freedom of thought and discussion, and argued that no state…

voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election

In his work On Liberty (1859) John Stuart Mill argued on utilitarian grounds that individual liberty cannot be legitimately infringed—whether by government, society, or individuals—except in cases where the individual’s action would cause harm to others. In a celebrated formulation of this principle, Mill wrote that

treatment of

…advocacy in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859), which argues on utilitarian grounds that the state may regulate individual behaviour only in cases where the interests of others would be perceptibly harmed.

…developed in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859). Mill’s arguments are invoked today not only in opposition to government censorship but in opposition as well to those suppressive efforts by private organizations or interest groups that are sometimes more effective than government can be in a liberal democracy. Particularly susceptible…

Director’s Note: What Does Liberty Mean in America Today?

“Give me liberty or give me death.” The entwined ideals of liberty and freedom have been central to the American identity since before the Revolution. But, these concepts never have been completely or equitably implemented in American life. Indigenous people, women, and enslaved Africans and their descendants never enjoyed the full liberty that our founders conceived. This was suggested and discussed at the third Civic Conversation at the Newport Historical Society, focused on the idea of American liberty.

The first topic discussed was around the difference between freedom and liberty, with the former being based on an individual lack of constraints, and the latter being a larger status, one based in embeddedness in a body politic and including the full benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. As once participant said, “when slavery was abolished, it gave us freedom, but we did not really have liberty.”

The group of 26 people, who came together virtually, continued to examine the conflict between individual rights and the responsibilities of participating in society. Notions of freedom to do what you want, we established, regularly bump up against the freedom from harm that we are all supposed to enjoy. This led to a discussion of how the idea of liberty has become perhaps, in 2020 America, a notion only about individual rights. “It’s a free country” means “I can do what I want,” as opposed to any sense of shared responsibility and actual liberty. This conflict can be seen to, at a minimum, influence many of the societal issues and national debates we are facing. The right to own and carry guns versus the right to be free from gun violence, the right to congregate versus concerns about public health, and our attitudes about drinking and driving were cited as examples.

We looked at how America has wrestled with an individual’s rights to, particularly, engage in economic activity when it conflicts with the rights of others. I will add, as an aside, that this is also true about religious practice, though it did not come up here. We regularly, many thought, privilege our own needs above all, and this does not foster respect for others, for systems, or for the environment in which we live. This intense and unbounded individualism makes us all feel special, and deserving, and this can have very negative effects, said one speaker. It was suggested that this sense of entitlement and disrespect for others is a particular feature of the current time, but others expressed the belief that this is a long-standing feature of American life.

More than one participant suggested that when a society is founded on hypocrisies and on a system of domination and conquest, it is really hard to unwind it. Inequities between those who have the full rights and expectations of liberty and those who do not become core. In America, these inequities have led to entrenched prejudice, and loss of freedoms, for Black and Native people. Significant current civic unrest triggered by police violence against Black Americans has made it clear how much abridged liberty for one group degrades freedom for everyone.

One participant suggested that we tend to see the conflict between individual and collective rights as a zero-sum game, and we allow this vision to shape policy in America in ways that don’t make sense. “If we make a high-speed railway between Boston and Washington, it does not actually abridge your right to drive your car, but people behave as it if will.” This plays out in environmental and health care policy as well, we noted. The unregulated commerce that pollutes the planet is cast as an individual freedom, when it both abridges the rights of those who wish not to be poisoned, and also potentially prevents all of us from thriving. Similarly, some attitudes about our health care system suggest limiting the economic rights of some is more dangerous to our liberty than allowing others the “freedom” to die without care, when in fact this dichotomy is not fixed or defining.

In addition to these examples, we spent some considerable time looking at the many things that reduce liberty for all or some of us. Inequities in educational systems, societal tolerance of sexism and violence against women, and restrictions in our ability to have access to sources of real news were all cited as issues. The extreme capitalism that some in American want to practice came up more than once. Some of these are new issues, and some are ancient, but, it should be noted, all are changeable.

As a penultimate note, there is always one idea that arises at these meetings that sticks to me and won’t let go. Here, it had to do with the path forward towards change, and what role history, and knowing our history, plays in both the development of our problems, and in potential solutions. This was discussed off and on throughout the 90 minutes. When the history taught in school erases part of the population or incorporates falsehoods, it facilitates the perpetuation of negative patterns for everyone. It also deprives segments of our population of their own history, and the stories of transcendence and triumph that might inspire some to leadership. And, since our history itself is filled with ignominy, faithlessness, hypocrisy and wrong acts, it is an incomplete blueprint for the future, at best. As one participant said, referencing Mordecai Kaplan, “history gets a vote, but it cannot be allowed to have a veto.” History is filled with examples, we concluded, of how we might get better, might create a more perfect union. But we need the full and comprehensive history, and looking backwards for inspiration will not be enough to help us move forward.

A final thought is that Zoom has revealed itself to be in many ways a perfect format for this kind of conversation. We can all see each other’s faces, we can have quiet sidebars in the chat room, and we can indicate our support of a speaker without interrupting them. While I look forward to getting together in person some time soon, I am also very enthusiastic about continuing this series online.

Please, if you were inspired by this, or angered by it, get on the invitation list for these conversations by emailing [email protected] .

Charting History Traveling Exhibit

What is the name and location of your institution? *
What dates are you interest in hosting for? [Note: the exhibit will be lent out for two month periods] *
Which sections of the exhibit are you interested in using? Indigenous People (1 Panel) Conflict (4 Panels) Commerce (4 Panels) Conscience (4 Panels) All Panels
Name * First Last
Additional comments:
Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Primary tabs

The term “liberty” appears in the due process clauses of both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. As used in the Constitution, liberty means freedom from arbitrary and unreasonable restraint upon an individual. Freedom from restraint refers to more than just physical restraint, but also the freedom to act according to one's own will. On numerous occasions the Supreme Court has sought to explain what liberty means and what it encompasses. For example:

The Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska stated “[liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
In Bolling v. Sharpe , the Supreme Court stated “[liberty] is not confined to mere freedom from bodily restraint. Liberty under law extends to the full range of conduct which the individual is free to pursue, and it cannot be restricted except for a proper governmental objective.”
In Ingraham v. Wright , the Supreme Court stated liberty includes “freedom from bodily restraint and punishment” and “a right to be free from and to obtain judicial relief, for unjustified intrusions on personal security.”

[Last updated in June of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

civil rights
wex definitions

Preserving American Freedom

The evolution of american liberties in fifty documents.

Organizations
For Educators

The United States of America has a reputation as a beacon of freedom and diversity from the colonial period of its history. From the beginning, however, Americans' freedoms were tied to a mixture of religious and ethnic affiliations that privileged some inhabitants of North America over others. Although European ideas of liberty set the tone for what was possible, those liberties looked somewhat different in colonial North America, where indigenous and African peoples and cultures also had some influence. The result was greater freedom for some and unprecedented slavery and dispossession for others, making colonial America a society of greater diversity—for better and for worse—than Europe.

America's indigenous traditions of immigration and freedom created the context that made European colonization possible. Since time immemorial, the original inhabitants of the Americas were accustomed to dealing with strangers. They forged alliances and exchange networks, accepted political refugees, and permitted people in need of land and protection to settle in territories that they controlled but could share. No North American society was cut off from the world or completely autonomous. Thus, there was no question about establishing ties with the newcomers arriving from Europe. Initially arriving in small numbers, bearing valuable items to trade, and offering added protection from enemies, these Europeans could, it seemed, strengthen indigenous communities. They were granted rights to use certain stretches of land, much in the way that other Native American peoples in need would have been, especially in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. However, Europeans, and all they brought with them—disease, beliefs regarding private property, ever more immigrants, and, occasionally, ruthless violence—undermined indigenous liberty. When Native Americans contested this, wars erupted—wars they could not win. Those who were able to avoid living as slaves or virtual servants of the Europeans (as some did) were driven from their homes.

Occasionally, a colonial ruler who wanted to preserve peace, like William Penn, would strive to respect the rights of indigenous Americans . However, given that both indigenous and European ideas of liberty rested on access to land and its resources , it was difficult for both Europeans and Native Americans to be free in the same territory at the same time without some sort of neutral arbiter. On the eve of the American Revolution , it seemed as if the British government might be able to play that role. After all, British Americans also looked to the monarchy to guarantee their liberties. American independence ended that option. Thereafter, America's original inhabitants had no one to mediate between them and the people who gained so much from exploiting them. Nor did the Africans brought as slaves to work what had once been their land.

For Africans, as with Native Americans, liberty was inseparable from one's family ties. Kinship (whether actual or fictive) gave an individual the rights and protection necessary to be able to live in freedom. To be captured by enemies and separated from one's kin put a person in tremendous danger. Although some captives could be adopted into other societies and treated more or less as equals, most were reduced to a condition of slavery and had little influence over their destiny. Even before they arrived in North America, Africans brought to the New World as slaves had already been separated from their home communities within Africa. Without kin, they had to forge new relationships with complete strangers—and everyone, including most fellow Africans they encountered, was a stranger—if they were to improve their lot at all. Escape was very difficult, and no community of fugitive slaves lasted for long. Unlike Native Americans, who could find a degree of freedom by moving away from the frontier, Africans had to struggle for what liberty they could from within the British society whose prosperity often depended on their forced labor .

Europeans, particularly those with wealth enough to own land or slaves, possessed the greatest freedoms in early America. The French, Spanish, and Dutch established colonies on land that would eventually become part of the United States. Each brought a distinct approach to liberty. For the French and Spanish, who came from societies where peasants still did most of the work of farming, liberty lay in the avoidance of agricultural labor. Aristocrats, who owned the land and profited from the peasants' toil, stood at the top with the most freedom. Merchants and artisans, who lived and worked in cities free of feudal obligations, came next. In North America, the French fur traders who preferred to spend their lives bartering among Native Americans rather than farming in French Canada echoed this view of freedom. Missionaries attempting to convert those same peoples could be seen as another variant of this tradition of liberty, one unknown to the Protestant British. In every colony, Europeans lived in a range of circumstances, from poor indentured servants to wealthy merchants and plantation owners.

Religion was inseparable from the experience of liberty in the European empires. The French and Spanish empires were officially Roman Catholic and did all within their power to convert or expel those who would not conform. The Dutch, on the other hand, had a different approach, befitting their condition as a small, newly independent, but economically dynamic nation. Though only Reformed Protestants enjoyed the full benefits of Dutch citizenship, they displayed an unusual openness to talented foreign immigrants, like Iberian Jews, while they relegated native-born Roman Catholics to second-class status. It was through their ties to Amsterdam, Dutch Brazil, and the Dutch Caribbean that Jews first staked a claim to live and work in North America .

The English colonies played the definitive role in early America's experience of liberty. As immigrants from Scotland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and elsewhere became incorporated into the Anglo-American world, they staked a claim to liberty through British culture and institutions. The heritage on which the British Empire rested was complicated, however, encompassing a great deal of political conflict (two revolutions in the seventeenth century alone) and religious diversity. The British colonies in North America were home to the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Roman Catholics of Maryland, as well as to Anglicans, members of the Church of England. Living in America offered an excellent chance to claim the rights and liberties of Englishmen, even when it seemed like those liberties were imperiled back in Europe. Indeed, the desire to preserve those liberties from the threat of a new British government prompted colonists to fight for independence in 1776.

Liberty in eighteenth-century Britain was associated with the national representational body of Parliament and the Protestant religion, which had been declared the official faith of England in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, a long cycle of constitutional crises, civil wars, and revolution drove home what by the eighteenth century was a commonplace ethos for many Englishmen: liberty depended on Protestantism, property ownership, and a monarchy mixed with representative government. Conversely, Catholicism and absolute monarchy, as existed in Spain and France, brought tyranny and a loss of liberty.

Liberty thus began in America with a peculiar mix of religious, ethnic, political, economic, and legal associations, all of them based on denying civil, religious, and economic liberty to others. Among the free, European-descended, Protestant colonists who enjoyed the most liberty, only men with property—who were deemed eligible to vote and hold public office—gained the full benefits. The liberties of women, children, and men without property depended on their connections to propertied men, whether as relatives, patrons, or employers. As most British colonists understood history, English liberties had been secured only after a long, hard fight, and these liberties were under constant threat—from Roman Catholics, the French, or the greed and corruption that, they thought, inevitably arose when those in government grew too powerful. Liberty, they believed, was limited. The idea that everyone could enjoy similar liberties did not cross their mind; they worried instead about the possibility that everyone in America could be a slave or servant to someone else.

In many ways, the story of American liberty is about how people of different religious and ethnic origins gradually acquired rights that had been associated only with Protestant English men of property. Despite their original association with a particular national, ethnic, and religious group, English liberties proved fairly flexible in America. Americans lived in a society with more chances to attain the ideal of liberty associated with owning property—particularly a farm of one's own—than was possible in England, where property ownership was increasingly restricted to a small elite. Colonies like Pennsylvania granted far more religious freedom than existed in England. The colonial charters granted by the British monarchy protected these liberties, and, in fact, Pennsylvania celebrated the anniversary of these constitutional freedoms guaranteed by the English crown when it the commissioned the liberty bell .

The early American belief in the limited nature of liberty helps us to understand why it was so difficult for those who had it to extend it to others. Americans lived in a world full of slavery—the ultimate opposite of freedom—an institution that had not been present in England for hundreds of years. And yet, the colonial history of America, tied very early to the promotion of slavery, convinced many colonists that the ability to hold non-European people (mostly African, but also Native American) as slaves was a fundamental English liberty. Some even returned to England with their slaves, and expected English laws to protect their property in people as they did in the colonies. Free colonists were surrounded by people—servants and slaves—who either lacked liberty or, as in the case of Native Americans, were rapidly losing it. This paradox helps explain the reluctance of colonial Americans to allow others, like more recent German immigrant s, to share the same liberties they enjoyed. In many ways, their prosperity depended on those peoples' lack of liberty and property. All could try for freedom in colonial America, but not all had equal access to it.

America's history of liberty is inseparable from its history of immigration and colonization dating back to the first Native American treaties. Unfortunately, the liberty Europeans claimed in America was accompanied by slavery and reduced liberties for many others. The possibility of liberty for some was always accompanied by a struggle for freedom for many others.

Evan Haefeli is Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, where he researches and teaches on Native American history, colonial American history, and the history of religious tolerance.

Essay on Liberty: Top 4 Essays | World | Political Science

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Here is an essay on ‘Liberty’ for class 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Liberty’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Liberty

Essay Contents:

Essay on the Safeguards of Liberty in a Modern State

Essay # 1. Definition of Liberty:

Definition of liberty and two aspects of liberty – The term liberty is a derivation from the Latin word “liber”, which means freedom. Negatively speaking, liberty means absence of all restraints, while positively speaking, it means freedom to do whatever one wants. Thus in the second sense liberty is of the nature of licence, pure and simple. This type of liberty is not possible in a modern state, where everyone has to adjust himself to the fair play of freedom of all.

It is in this context that Herbert Spencer wrote:

“Every man is free to do that which he wills provided he does not infringe the equal freedom of any other man.” Thus liberty has two sides. In the first place, an individual in order to express his personality in thought, word and action wants freedom, i.e., absence of restraint on his freedom in thought, word and action. In the second place liberty carries, with itself a kind of restraint on his own freedom for the sake of adjustment of similar freedom of others in the state. Thus there are provisions for punishment in the criminal code for those who exceed the limits put on their freedom.

Essay # 2. Various Kinds of Liberty :

Liberty can be divided into five kinds – natural liberty, civil liberty, political liberty, economic liberty and national liberty.

1. Natural Liberty:

In modern states there cannot be any natural liberty. This type of liberty might have existed in the pre-state stage of human civilisation.

According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, the people enjoyed natural liberty in the state of nature and men lost such liberty with the creation of the state.

Natural liberty is an unlimited and unrestricted freedom. This concept of liberty is imaginary and cannot exist in a civilised society. This type of liberty is actually license. Only the strong can enjoy the right in a jungle life. The weak will be exploited. Might can be right in a jungle, not in a civil community. So we reject the natural liberty as a bogus one.

2. Civil Liberty:

Civil liberty implies freedom enjoyed by the people in a civil society. This type of liberty emanates from the civil rights which include right to life, liberty and property. These are the basic civil amenities, without which a man, whether he is a citizen or an alien, cannot lead a civil life.

It is also the bounden duty of the state to provide these opportunities to the individuals in the state. About civil liberty, R. G. Gettell rightly said- “Civil liberty consists of the rights and privileges which the state creates and protects for its subjects.”

3. Political Liberty:

Political liberty stands for the political rights to have a share in the government. Such political liberty is possible only in a democracy. The democratic functions of the state will be impossible if the state does not provide its citizens with political liberty.

Stephen Butler Leacock defined political liberty as “the right of the people to choose their government which should be responsible to the general body of the people.” According to Harold J. Laski- “Political liberty is the power to be active in affairs of the state. Political liberty is identical with the constitutional liberty which means democratic rule.”

In order to make political liberty real, the citizens will have four political rights, which are discussed below:

(i) Right to vote:

The citizens will have the right to vote on attaining majority to elect the legislature. In India the voting age is from 18 years. Almost all the democratic countries have granted this right to the citizens, since it is the most basic element in a democracy.

(ii) Right to be elected:

Not only the right to vote but also the right to stand as a candidate is another important political right in a democracy.

(iii) Right to periodical election:

The legislatures and all representative bodies must not be permanent. These institutions should be elected after some fixed time. In India the Lok Sabha which is the lower house of the parliament is elected after every five years.

(iv) Right to criticise the government:

The citizens are to be given the right to elect a strong opposition to criticise the party in power. The other method of criticism is freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble peacefully for demonstration against the government.

4. Economic Liberty:

Civil and political liberty will be meaningless without economic liberty. The state should see that there is no imbalance in the economic life of the people because of concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

It does not mean attainment of economic equality but removal of side economic disparity. It implies the right to work and right to a decent living. It also includes other benefits like sickness insurance, old age pension, unemployment insurance, etc.

5. National Liberty:

It is linked with the theory of one nationality, one state. It implies that every nation must have a right of self-determination. It may mean freedom from the foreign rule or creation of a full-fledged sovereign state by each nation.

By exercising this liberty India became independent from the control of the British imperial power. By dint of similar right Bangladesh became an independent sovereign country by severing herself from Pakistan.

Essay # 3. Relation between Liberty and Authority:

Liberty is the spontaneous expression of man’s free choice to live the life in accordance with one’s own will. Law apparently puts some restraints on man’s individuality and fulfillment. Behind the law there is the sovereign authority of state. If law is violated, the violator is punished. There are two opposite views on the relation between liberty and law.

Theory of the Individualists:

According to the individualists, law or authority is detrimental to the individual personality of man. John Stuart Mill and William Godwin are the chief exponents of the individualist theory. Mill had no hesitation that laws of the state are clear infringement of the liberty of the individuals. So Mill was opposed to all powers of the authority except those necessary for the free exercise of other individual’s liberty. So long as the liberty of an individual does not hamper the liberty of other individuals there should be no authority to curtail the liberty of the former.

William Godwin went a step further and maintained that “law is an institution of most pernicious tendency” and that every law is a “direct encroachment on individual liberty” . The extreme view is held by the anarchists who suggested that the state with all its legal system must be abolished.

Theory of the Idealists:

A contrary view is held by the idealists who want that the state should be all-powerful and the individuals must seek salvation through the state. The individuals should be concerned with their duties to the state and must surrender all their liberties. It is the concern of the state to see to the well-being of the individuals.

The state being an embodiment of morality stands on a higher footing than the individuals. The individuals will get the due benefits within the state, not outside it. All individuals must subordinate themselves to the ethical and social consciousness of the state.

Conclusion:

The two views mentioned above are exaggeration of facts. Individual liberty cannot be a wild buffalo. The state is not to rope the freedom of individuals either. We must seek a via media. Both liberty and law must coexist. Law does not infringe the individual liberty. The idealist view that liberty lies in obedience to law is also not correct.

The state exists for the all-round development of the society. If law is abolished there will be anarchy. In anarchy the liberty of the individual will not thrive. Law endures a social order and creates conditions for liberty. Liberty is the end of law. If law fails to protect individual liberty that law or authority is not good.

Essay # 4. Safeguards of Liberty in a Modern State:

Liberty is the finest fruit of human civilisation. So it is to be preserved. There are various instruments by which the individual liberty can be safeguarded.

These are discussed below:

1. Democracy:

Democracy as a form of government is most conducive to the growth of liberty. This is considered the best form of government, because its main concern is to upkeep the freedom of the people. Without the opportunity of freedom there cannot be any liberty. It is, therefore, seen that the liberty of an individual is best safeguarded in a democratic country like England and the USA.

2. Guarantee of Fundamental Rights in the Constitution:

Without rights there cannot be liberty. Some of the rights are considered basic and called the fundamental rights. In constitutions of some democratic countries these fundamental rights are incorporated and guaranteed. It means that no authority can take away these rights.

Thus the constitutions of the USA, France and India have enumerated these rights and guaranteed their protection. If these rights are inroaded by any authority, the individual can approach the courts of law. These fundamental rights are, therefore, some protective umbrellas over the individual liberty.

3. Separation of Power:

If the legislative, executive and judicial powers are combined in one person or one organisation there is scope for poaching on the individual liberty. So Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Sir William Blackstone pleaded for separation of powers, i.e., three kinds of power should be vested to three separate bodies. While there should be as much separation of power as possible it is not always practicable to have rigid separation of powers.

4. Independence of the Judiciary:

Judiciary is one of the three organs of the government. We have already noticed the good of separation of three organs of government. But the utmost importance is attached to the independence of the judiciary; it means that the executive or the legislature must not control or curb the power of the judges. If the judges are independent, much of the abuses of the individual liberty may be avoided. The independent as against committed judges help the protection of individual liberty.

5. Elaborate System of Local Self-Government:

It is common knowledge that concentration of power in one hand or in one administration may infringe the individual liberty. If the power is split up from the top to the bottom it will create an healthy climate for individual liberty. So there should be a central government, a provincial government and a village or town administration.

This type of division of administrative power will not encourage the pyramid of powers in one place.

According to Harold J. Laski:

“The more widespread distribution of power in the state, the more decentralized its character, the more likely men are to be zealous for freedom. Maximum satisfaction is at least partly a function of maximum consultation.”

6. Absence of Privilege:

Liberty flourishes best under an atmosphere of socio-economic parity. No class should be exempt from paying taxes and there should be no privilege like the privy purse which the princes of the native states of India were entitled to enjoy. If there is privilege of any form in the society, liberty will be at stake.

7. Eternal Vigilance:

Liberty will be on low key if the people sleep over their rights and are not conscious of these rights. So, Lord James Bryce rightly said- “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Only an enlightened and conscious people can zealously guard their rights. They should raise the protest at the slightest encroachment on their liberty. According to Harold J. Laski- “Liberty is never real unless the government is called to account when it invades the rights of the people.”

8. Rule of Law:

The concept of rule of law emanates from the British administrative law. It means that in the eye of law all persons are equal, whether rich or poor, high or low. According to Albert Venn Dicey- “No person is above law, and every person, whatever his rank or position, is subject to the ordinary, law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of ordinary tribunals.” So every official from the Prime Minister to the Police Constable are subject to the same set of law including punishment.

The second aspect of die rule of law is that no person can be arrested or detained without a law for such arrest or detention. Against all kinds of arbitrary arrests, the civil remedy is the writ of habeas corpus which ensures that if a person is detained without sufficient ground he should be set free by the civil court.

Essay on UNO: Top 7 Essays | World | Organisations | Political Science
Top Six Kinds on Liberty – Explained!
Essay on Federation: Top 3 Essays | States | Political Science
Essay on Liberty: Importance and Meaning

Upload and Share Your Article:

Description *
Your Name *
Your Email ID *
Upload Your File Drop files here or Select files Max. file size: 3 MB, Max. files: 5.

Essay , Essay on Liberty , Liberty , Political Science , World

Upload Your Knowledge on Political science:

Privacy overview.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

IMAGES

On Liberty Summary
Personal Liberty Essay
A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the
The Definition of the Term Liberty Essay Example
Good Liberty Essay Example
Civil Liberties

VIDEO

Individuality
#vbu
John Stuart Mill Free Speech vs Censorship
What is Liberty?
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill Summary & Analysis in Urdu/Hindi
The Making of Liberty

COMMENTS

An Introduction to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty
Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty is one of the most celebrated defences of free speech ever written. In this elongated essay, Mill aims to defend what he refers to as "one very simple principle," what modern commentators would later call the harm principle (Mill 2015, p. 12).
Definition Of Liberty Is Freedom: [Essay Example], 565 words
Liberty is a concept that has been debated and discussed for centuries, with various interpretations and perspectives. At its core, liberty is often equated with freedom, but what does this truly mean? In this essay, we will explore the definition of liberty as freedom, considering different dimensions and implications of this concept.
Positive and Negative Liberty
Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes.
Liberty
Liberty is a state of civil or political freedom. In a more particular sense, a liberty is the term for a franchise, a privilege, or branch of the crown's prerogative granted to a subject, as, for example, that of executing legal process. These liberties are exempt from the jurisdiction of the sheriff and have separate commissions of the peace. In the United States a franchise is a privilege ...
Liberty: Definition, Nature and Theories
His Four Essays on Liberty (1969) contains the following essays, Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century, Historical Inevitability, Two Concepts of Liberty and J. S. Mill and the Ends of Life. We are here concerned chiefly with the third essay—Two Concepts of Liberty. Berlin was born in Latvia and received partial education in St. Petersberg.
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin. First published Tue Oct 26, 2004; substantive revision Sat Feb 12, 2022. Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was a naturalised British philosopher, historian of ideas, political theorist, educator, public intellectual and moralist, and essayist. He was renowned for his conversational brilliance, his defence of liberalism and pluralism, his ...
Isaiah Berlin
His essay 'Two Concepts of Liberty' (1958) contributed to a revival of interest in political theory in the English-speaking world, and remains one of the most influential and widely discussed texts in that field: admirers and critics agree that Berlin's distinction between positive and negative liberty remains, for better or worse, a basic ...
The Contested History of American Freedom
The rights of Englishmen became the rights of man. The struggle for independence gave birth to a definition of American nationhood and national mission that persists to this day—an idea closely linked to freedom, for the new nation defined itself as a unique embodiment of liberty in a world overrun with oppression.
Liberty Definition & Meaning
liberty: [noun] the quality or state of being free:. the power to do as one pleases. freedom from physical restraint. freedom from arbitrary or despotic (see despot 1) control. the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges. the power of choice.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Definition of Freedom Essay
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Definition of Freedom Essay. The notion of liberty as an irrefutable right of every citizen is central to the history and culture of the United States. The phenomenon of freedom as a political statement and a crucial human value was established since the creation of the U.S., yet the subject matter was expanded on to ...
Two Concepts of Liberty
It also appears in the collection of Berlin's papers entitled Four Essays on Liberty (1969) and was reissued in a collection entitled Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty (2002). The essay, with its analytical approach to the definition of political concepts, re-introduced the study of political philosophy to the methods of analytic ...
Essay on Liberty: Importance and Meaning
Importance of Liberty: From the very beginning both man and the state have been making efforts for the security of their freedom. Freedom is a very precious condition without which neither the state nor the individuals can make any progress. We remember very well how cruelly the absolute monarchs ignored the claims of liberty in England in ...
Liberty and Equality Today
The promise of America in the vision of the Founders was that of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The natural rights republic new concept was grounded upon principles that did not change with the passing of time or the changes in culture. This novus ordo seclorum —"new order for the ages"—was not ...
Liberty: Definition, Features, Types and Essential Safeguards of Liberty
Liberty is usually defined in two ways: Negative Liberty & Positive Liberty: (A) Negative Liberty: In its negative sense, Liberty is taken to mean an absence of restraints. It means the freedom to act is any way. In this form liberty becomes a license. Such a meaning of liberty can never be accepted in a civil society.
The Idea of 'Freedom' Has Two Different Meanings. Here's Why
Here, Constant claimed, freedom, understood as "peaceful enjoyment and private independence," was perfectly secure—even though less than five percent of British adults could vote. The ...
On Liberty
Other articles where On Liberty is discussed: John Stuart Mill: The later years of John Stuart Mill: The essay On Liberty appeared in 1859 with a touching dedication to her and the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform in the same year. In his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) he systematized opinions already put forward in many casual articles and essays.
Director's Note: What Does Liberty Mean in America Today?
"Give me liberty or give me death." The entwined ideals of liberty and freedom have been central to the American identity since before the Revolution. But, these concepts never have been completely or equitably implemented in American life. Indigenous people, women, and enslaved Africans and their descendants never enjoyed the full liberty that our founders …
liberty
The term "liberty" appears in the due process clauses of both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. As used in the Constitution, liberty means freedom from arbitrary and unreasonable restraint upon an individual. Freedom from restraint refers to more than just physical restraint, but also the freedom to act according to ...
Liberty, Diversity, and Slavery: The Beginnings of American Freedom
The early American belief in the limited nature of liberty helps us to understand why it was so difficult for those who had it to extend it to others. Americans lived in a world full of slavery—the ultimate opposite of freedom—an institution that had not been present in England for hundreds of years. And yet, the colonial history of America ...
Essay On Liberty Is Freedom
Liberty is experienced in several ways, some being vaguer than others. However, liberty is a universal term that is experienced within many different groups with many different. Free Essay: Liberty is simply freedom. "The shortest definition I know is, liberty is freedom. It is, however, as important to know what it does not mean as...
Liberty Definition Essay
Liberty Definition Essay. As people head down to all the shops in New York, an Italian family gazes upon the statue of liberty. The children hold their mother's hand, and the father kneels on one knee holding his hat in one hand saying, "Thank you.". Another man stands in the middle of the road, dressed as Lady Liberty working for pocket ...
Essay on Liberty: Top 4 Essays
Essay # 1. Definition of Liberty: Definition of liberty and two aspects of liberty - The term liberty is a derivation from the Latin word "liber", which means freedom. Negatively speaking, liberty means absence of all restraints, while positively speaking, it means freedom to do whatever one wants. Thus in the second sense liberty is of ...
Liberty Deprivations and Due Process
Footnotes Jump to essay-1 E.g., Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578, 588 (1897) (The 'liberty' mentioned in [the Fourteenth] amendment means, not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties; to be free to use them in ...