POLI 231 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Negative Liberty, Political Philosophy, Totalitarianism
17 May 2018
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Lecture 17 – 13 March 2018
Isaiah Berlin: Two Concepts of Liberty
• Modern political thinker
• Looks at the history of ideas
• Born in 1909
• Russian, British, Jewish
• Lived through the tumultuous events of the 20th century: World Wars 1 and 2, communism,
totalitarianism, and past the collapse of authoritarian empires
Ideological context for his essay: the Cold War
• Berlin’s political philosophy is linked with his historical political condition
• Berlin criticizes other philosophers for being removed from the historical condition in which
they are writing → sometimes philosophies gain political momentum and can have effects on
the time (violence)
Question of coercion and obedience: for Berlin, this is a similar question as that of Hobbes
• Why obey?
• Must I obey?
• Who can coerce me?
• For what reason can they coerce me?
• Who can use political power over me to make me obey?
• On what basis should they use it?
• On what basis should I obey? (We saw this with Socrates)
Berlin thinks we need to define liberty: can we define it?
• This is a problem in philosophy → it is a centrally contested concept; there is no universally
accepted definition
• Concepts like liberty have emotional baggage
- People will generally say that their agenda promotes liberty, because it is seen as
desirable. It is rare that someone says that they oppose liberty. This leads to confusion
about what liberty really is
We need to ask, what does it mean for society to be free?
• We asked this question with Mill
• Important to remember that Berlin’s concept definitions (negative liberty) are specific to him
and not easily translatable to other works
Negative liberty: How far can others interfere with what I want to do? To the extent that they
cannot interfere with my actions, I enjoy negative liberty
• This is a “freedom from” intervention → I enjoy to the extent that I am not interfered with
• Non-interference by the state and others
How does this concept of negative liberty compare to Hobbes?
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Document Summary
Berlin thinks we need to define liberty: can we define it: this is a problem in philosophy it is a centrally contested concept; there is no universally accepted definition, concepts like liberty have emotional baggage. People will generally say that their agenda promotes liberty, because it is seen as desirable. It is rare that someone says that they oppose liberty. This leads to confusion about what liberty really is. We need to ask, what does it mean for society to be free: we asked this question with mill. Important to remember that berlin"s concept definitions (negative liberty) are specific to him and not easily translatable to other works. To the extent that they cannot interfere with my actions, i enjoy negative liberty: this is a freedom from intervention i enjoy to the extent that i am not interfered with, non-interference by the state and others. In the state of nature, you can pursue whatever you want, irrespective of others.
