Eric Nelson Liberty- One or Two Concepts

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10.1177/0090591704268179ARTICLEPOLITICALTHEORY/February2005Nelson/LIBERTY:ONECONCEPTTOOMANY?

LIBERTY: ONE OR TWO CONCEPTS

LIBERTY

One Concept Too Many?

ERIC NELSON

Harvard University

Isaiah Berlins distinction between negative and positive concepts of liberty has recently

beendefendedon newand interestinggrounds.Proponentsof thisdichotomyused toequateposi-

tive liberty withself-masterytherule of ourrationalnature overourpassionsand impulses.

However, Berlinscritics have made the case that this account does not employ a separatecon-

cept of liberty: although the constraints it envisions are internal, rather than external, forces,

thefreedomin question remains negative (freedom is still seen as theabsence of such impedi-

ments). Respondingto thisdevelopment, Berlinsdefenders have increasingly tended to identify

positive liberty with self-realization. The argumentis that such an account of freedomis genu-

inely nonnegative, in that it does not refer to the absence of constraints on action. This essay

argues that the claims made on behalf of freedom as self-realization cannot withstand scru-

tiny, andthat they failto isolatea coherentview of liberty thatis distinguishablefromthe absence

of constraint.

Keywords: liberty; positive; negative; Berlin

I

When Isaiah Berlin unveiled his classic distinction between negative

andpositive libertyin 1958, hewasmaking both a historical andan analyti-

cal claim. He was not only arguing that nonnegative locutions about liberty

58

AUTHORS NOTE: I am deeply grateful to Elisabeth Camp, James Hankins, Melissa Lane,

Leonidas Montes, Amartya Sen, Richard Tuck, and two anonymous readers for their comments

on this essay, and to Mark Kishlansky for suggesting the title. I also owe a special debt of grati-

tude to Quentin Skinner, who first prompted me to think about these issues, and without whose

encouragement this essay simply would not have been written.

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 33 No. 1, February 2005 58-78

DOI: 10.1177/0090591704268179

2005 Sage Publications


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could be intelligible but also that such locutions had a significant, if sinister,

history. While Hobbes andMill, Tocqueville andConstant carried thebanner

for negative libertyfreedom as the absence of interference or impedi-

mentthe positive concept found expression in the writings of such tow-

ering eminences as Plato, Zeno, Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx.1 Since

Berlin issuedhiscelebrated formulation, however, hisclaim forthe historical

importance of positive liberty has been gravely compromised, as scholars

have whittled away at the set of thinkers whose political theories the concept

was meant to explain. Gerald C. MacCallum took a significant stride in this

directionwhen hepointedout that Berlinhadimposed anarbitrary restriction

on the notion of constraint in insisting that negative freedom consisted

solely in the absence of the deliberate interference of other human beings.2

Persons can be said to be constrained by internal forces or factors as well,MacCallum argued, and the absence of such intrinsic constraints would still

count as freedom in itsnegativesense.3 Once thecategoryof constrainthad

been stretched in this manner, it became a relatively simple matter to redis-

trictthe province of negative liberty so that it could embrace manyof the the-

orists Berlin had placed in the positive camp. Stoics in the tradition of

Zeno, for example, preached that man lives according to his nature (and is

thus truly free) only when his passions are restrained, a straightforward

instance of freedom as the absence of internal constraint. Likewise, Plato

spoke of freedom from false beliefs,4 and Kants moral agent legislates for

himself the law of reason once he has liberated himself from the slavery of

passions and sense impressions. All of these putatively positive theorists

turn outoncloserinspectionto disagree withHobbes andConstant,notabout

the meaning of liberty but about what counts as a constraint.MacCallum offered these observations in the service of a broader critique

of Berlins enterprise. Rejecting Berlins distinction between positive and

negativefreedom,MacCallummaintainedthatall intelligible locutions about

liberty could be subsumed under a single triadic template: freedom is always

ofsomething (anagent or agents),fromsomething, to do, not do, become, or

not become something.5 But even contemporary theorists who dispute

MacCallums larger claim about a singleconcept of freedom often accepthis

narrowerargumentabout internal constraint. QuentinSkinner provides a dis-

tinguished example in this respect. He observes thatBerlinscharacterization

of positive liberty as self-mastery seems to have relied in large measure on

the familiar thoughtequally familiar to students of Plato and of Freud

that the obstacles to your capacity to act freely may be internal rather than

external, and that you will need to free yourself from these psychological

constraints if you are to act autonomously.6 But, Skinner continues, this

claim fails to capture a separate concept of positive liberty, since, although

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we now include psychic, internal forces in the universe of possible con-

straints, we are still speaking about the need to get rid of an element of con-

straint if we are to act freely.7 Indeed, Berlin himself seems to have intuited

that this particular notion of self-mastery was a nonstarter as a separate con-

cept of positive liberty. In his 1958 lecture, he declared, Freedom is self-

mastery, the elimination of obstacles to my will, whatever these obstacles

may bethe resistance of nature, of my ungoverned passions, of irrational

institutions, of the opposing wills or behaviour of others.8 Whether the

constraints are internal or external, we are still firmly within the realm of

negative liberty.

Skinner is thus committed to MacCallums emptying of the historical

population of positive theorists. Plato and Freud must go, as must the Stoics,

andpresumably theKantians.ButSkinner,whose interest is primarily in elu-cidating two different understandings of negative liberty,9 nonetheless

accepts that a positiveconcept exists andis intelligible. When Berlinwritesin

his introduction to the 1969 Four Essays on Liberty that for the most part,

freedom was identified by metaphysically inclined writers, with the realiza-

tion of the real self,10 Skinner feels that he has at last articulateda concept of

freedom that is truly incommensurable with negative liberty. Freedom,

Skinner explains, is thus equated not with self-mastery but rather with self-

realisation, and above all with self-perfection, with the idea (as Berlin

expresses it) of my self at its best. In making this claim, Skinner suggests

that Berlin had in mind chiefly the British neo-Hegelians T. H. Green and

Bernard Bosanquet. Certainly, in the descent from Plato and Kant to Green

and Bosanquet the concept of positive freedom experienced quite a falling

off. But the claim remains that this positive notion is intelligible, and that itwas articulated in a particular historical moment. We turn now to an analysis

of exactly what this claim involves.

II

Positive liberty, on this account, is an end state, the status of a fully self-

realized human being. It is not the absence of internal or externalconstraints,

but the actual achievement of a particular condition of life. Relying in large

measure on an important essay by Tom Baldwin, Skinner takes Green and

Bosanquet to be theclassic exponents of thisview.11 Green does indeedmake

several statements, which would seem to tend in this direction. In Liberal

Legislation and Freedom of Contract (1881), Green rejects the notion that

by liberty we mean the freedom to do as we like irrespectively of what it is

60 POLITICAL THEORY / February 2005


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that we like, and insists that, in measuring the growth of freedom, what we

are measuring is the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to

make the most and best of themselves.12 In his lecture On the Different

Senses of Freedom as Applied to the Will and to the Moral Progress of

Man, he adds that real freedom consists in determination of the will by

reason,13 andin arrivingat harmonywiththe true law of ones being.14 Still

more strikingly, Green writes that freedom for a man is the statein which he

shall have realised his ideal of himself.15 Skinner, like Baldwin before him,

is deeply struck by the use of the future perfect tense here.16 Freedom, Green

seems to be saying, is not in any sense theopportunity to attain such a condi-

tion but rather the actual attainmentof it.

But there is good reason to doubt that Green saw himself offering a posi-

tiveaccount of libertyin this sense.17

He begins his lecture OntheDifferentSenses of Freedom by setting up a familiar distinction. He imagines the

case of a man who pursues an unworthy object. In one sense, the man is a

free agent in the act, because through his identificationof himself witha cer-

tain desired object . . . he makes the motive which determines the act, and is

accordingly conscious of himself as its author.18 But in another sense he is

not free, because the objects to which his actions are directed are objects in

which, according to the law of his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be

found.19 Such a man is externally free and internally a slave. Green offers

the caveat, however, that it must of course be admitted that every usage of

the term [freedom] to express anything but a social and political relation of

one man to another involves a metaphor.20 Specifically, reflecting on their

consciousness, on their inner life(i.e. their lifeas viewedfrom within), men

apply to it the terms with which they are familiar as expressing their relationtoeach other . . . a man can set overagainsthimselfhiswholenature oranyof

its elements, and apply to the relation thus established in thought a term bor-

rowed from relations of outward life. Much like Berlin, Green then offers

Plato, the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel as examples of thinkers who used

freedom in this metaphorical sense. But Green insists that there is a real

community of meaning between freedom as expressing the condition of a

citizenof a civilisedstate,and freedomas expressing thecondition of a man

who is inwardly master of himself. 21 Freedom, for Green, is self-realiza-

tion only insofar as it means freedom from wants and impulses which inter-

fere with the fulfillment of ones possibilities.22 The consciousness of these

impulses, Green explains, is a consciousness of impeded energy, a con-

sciousness of oneself as for ever thwarted and held back, and, as a result,

the forecast of deliverance from these conditions is . . . a forecast of free-

dom. Once such encumbrances are disposed of, man will indeed find his



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object (what else could he find?), but freedom in this sense still shares a

community of meaning with freedom as the absence of physical

interference.

One could say much the same thing, it seems to me, about Bosanquet in

his Philosophical Theory of the State. Bosanquet, who edited the 1907 edi-

tion of Greens lectures, submits that liberty is being able to be yourself,23

and, at the same time, that liberty is the beingourselves, and the fullest con-

dition of liberty is that in which we areourselves most completely.24 At first

glance, it might appear that these twoclaims endorse twoextremelydifferent

positions on what constitutes liberty. On thefirst view, freedom seems to be

the opportunity for me to be myself, while on the second view it seems to be

the stateofmy being myself. But for Bosanquet, asfor Green, there isno con-

ceptual distancebetween these twoclaims: once I have a genuine opportunityto be myself (i.e., all internal impediments have been disposed of) I will

become myself. Indeed, there is nothing else that I could possibly become.

The manner in which Bosanquet develops this argument is much influ-

enced by Green, as he himself concedes. He begins by acknowledging the

common belief that liberty is to be free from constraint.25 He then asks,

What is constraint? and proceeds to offer some version of the traditional

answer: It is constraint when mymind is interfered with in itscontrol of my

body either by actual or by threatening physical violence under the direction

of another mind. But Bosanquet then advances a second, and preferred

notion of constraint, which, he argues (as does Green), involves making

use of a metaphorthe metaphor of internal chains.26 There is, he insists,

a higher and larger liberty that is only to be had when we realize that

what we are freed from is, in this case, not the constraint of those whom wecommonly regard as others, but the constraint of what we commonly regard

as part of ourself. The higher sense of liberty, like the lower, Bosanquet

adds in language that should have caught MacCallums attention, involves

freedom from some things as well as freedom to others.27 Once we are free

from our internal impediments, we are free to be ourselves. But for

Bosanquet, as for Green, the opportunity to be ourselves, if genuine, is never

passed up: only an impediment of some kind could cause us to choose some-

thing else, but freedom is precisely theabsence of such impediments. In sum,

if Plato and the Stoics are to count as negative theorists, then surely

Bosanquet looks qualified to join them.28

It appears, then, that the historical supply of positive theorists is all but

exhausted once we assume that constraints can be intrinsic to the agent. Yet

the claim remains that, as an analytical matter, there is an intelligible posi-

tive concept of liberty that is incommensurable with its negative counter-

partwhetheror not it hasa significant presence in thehistorical record. The



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remainderof thisessay willmake thecase,however, that evenas ananalytical

matter the distinction does not withstand scrutiny.

III

Among contemporary philosophers who have risen to the defense of

positive liberty, Charles Taylor has been especially outspoken and insis-

tent. It is undeniable, he has written of Berlins dichotomy, that there are

two such families of conceptions of political freedom abroad in our civiliza-

tion. I shouldnote at this point that Taylors essay Whats Wrong withNeg-

ative Liberty carves out a significantly wider space for positive liberty than

does Skinners. Taylor, indeed, does not concede that freedom as self-ruleand independence rely on the negative rubric.29 I introduce him here

because he provides a helpful vocabulary for thinking through the proposed

distinction between negative and positive freedom. Doctrines of positive

freedom, Taylor suggests, are concerned with a view of freedom which

involves essentially theexercisingofcontrol over ones life. On thisview, one

is free only to the extent that one has effectively determined oneself and the

shapeof ones life. Theconcept of freedom here is an exercise-concept.30 By

contrast, thenegative theoryis anopportunity-concept, wherebeing free is a

matter of what we can do, of what is open to us to do, whether or not we do

anything to exercisetheseoptions. Taylor suggests that positiveliberty is not

in any sense an absence, but is rather theaffirmative achievementof self-real-

ization. It is therefore, on his view, incompatible with negative liberty, a

genuine second concept of freedom.Taylors vocabulary is valuableif only forremindingus ofwhy contempo-

rary theorists have wanted to isolate a separate concept of positive liberty.

They notice that, on some theories of freedom, free people seem to have

choices,while, onothers,allfreepeopleseem to bedoing or being onepartic-

ular thing (that thing may or may not be identical across the entire set of free

individuals, but foreach free individual there is oneparticular thing he or she

will be). These differing descriptive claims about what free people will do

have seemedto require explanation in the form of differentconcepts of lib-

erty. To be sure, sometimes inexact language makes it difficult to see the

problem in these terms. We have encountered, for example, the formulation

freedom is self-realization, which seems to indicate that self-realization is

neither the condition free people will necessarily arrive at nor the achieve-

ment that makes freedom possible, but is actually freedom itself. Yet it does

not take much to see through this phrase. Self-realization is, presumably,

quitea lotof things; we stillwantto knowwhat is freeabout it.31 To answer



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that question, we have to begin by replacing the formula freedom is self-

realization with one of two conditional statements: If people are free, they

will realize themselves, or If people realize themselves, they will be free.

These two conditionals represent, in my view, the two things people could

reasonably mean when they usethe phrasefreedomis self-realization. That

is, they might mean that freedom brings self-realization, or that self-realiza-

tionbrings freedom. These twoconditionals do notconstitutea logical trans-

position of the original identity statement. The point, rather, is that this iden-

tity statement is on its face unacceptable: it cannot reasonably be argued that

freedom and self-realization are identical. Self-realization is not only free-

dom. The most that can be argued is that freedom is one of the qualities of a

self-realized individual, alongwith, say, completeness, fulfillment, per-

fection, harmony, peace, and so forth. We want to know what it is aboutself-realization that connects it, for some theorists, to the value of freedom.

Thequestion,in short, is whether there is a nonnegativewayof explainingthe

use of the word free in these two conditional statements.

I believe there is not. Once more, what is truly at issue in the quarrel

between Taylors opportunity theorists andexercise theorists is not a dis-

agreement about liberty but one about constraint. To see this more clearly in

thecase of thefirstconditional statement (If peoplearefree,theywillrealize

themselves), letus separate theories of freedom intotwo parts. Thefirst part

will be a normative claim about what should count as a constraint (the

absence of such constraints will be called freedom). The second part will

be a descriptive claim about what the situation of unconstrained people will

look like (what they will do or not do, be or not be). The essential point is that

the normativeclaim willdetermine the shape of the descriptive claim.32 Con-sider as an example theclassic formulationof libertyfound in HobbessLevi-

athan. For Hobbes, LIBERTY or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the

absence of Opposition; (by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of

motion;) andmaybe applyed no lesse to Irrationall, and Inanimatecreatures,

than to Rationall.33 On this view, only physical impediments count as con-

straints; a person is free so long as he is not tied up, chained, or otherwise

physically obstructed. Such is Hobbess normative claim about constraint.

But this claim commits him to a particular account of what being free will

look like. If freedom is to be posited of all agents (or objects) who are not

physicallyrestrained, then as a descriptive matter the situation of free people

will be extremely indeterminate. They may choose to do or not do, be or not

be any number of different things. The state of free people in a Hobbesian

universe looks like an opportunity state because only physical impedi-

ments count as constraints on freedom.



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Suppose, however, that a particular theoristGreen or Bosanquet, for

instanceassumes that each person has a higher self that, left to its own

devices, will choose to livein a particularway(andthatwayonly)or doa par-

ticular thing (and that thing only)and that only through doing that thing or

living that way will the person realize his true nature. Such a thinker would

list as constraints any and all things that might dissuade or distract the agent

from following his higher self and choosing his natural object. In other

words, if doingor beingxis mans true nature(i.e., the thing hisunobstructed

higher self would alwayschoose), then anything that might make himdo or

be not x becomes a constraint. It is not difficult to see how broadening the

setof constraints in thismanner willhavea very pronounced effect on a given

thinkers descriptive view of the situation of free people. If anything that

might prompt anagent to choosenotx is understood as a constraint, thenofcourse any agent of whom freedom can be posited will do or be xand only

x. Hence the rise of shifty locutions such as freedom is x, or freedom is

doingx. Suchstatementsmostoften workout toall freepeoplewill door be

x and rest ultimately on the negative notion of freedom as the absence of

constraint. For many of those theorists whom philosophers and historians

have wantedto call positive, thestateof free peoplelooks like anexercise

state only because of their extremely broad normative claims about what

things are to count as constraints. Free people, for positive theorists like

Green and Bosanquet, do indeed have choices; its just that they will never

choose anything other than their object.

At this point the following objection might be raised: the argument that

these putatively positive claims about freedom are actually claims about

the absence of constraint involves the use of a rhetorical slight of hand. Allpositive accounts of freedom, it might be argued, can be rewritten in such a

way as to turn them into negative claims, but to do so is to misrepresent

them. Inother words, it is surely thecase that theabsence of allthings which

could prevent x is equivalent to x, but putting the matter in these terms

might obscure the emphasis a givenauthor is trying to convey. Positive theo-

rists, we are told, are fundamentally concerned not with obstacles but rather

with xitself; negative theorists, on the other hand, are neutral with respect to

outcomes and focus only on the removal of obstacles. As a result, we should

agree that two different understandings of the core element in the idea of

freedom are present. Several replies to this line of reasoning immediately

suggest themselves. First, even if we were to grant all of this, it wouldstillbe

quite significant from an analytical point of view if all positive claims

about libertycould be successfullyaccounted forin negative terms.That is, it

would be very odd indeed to say that we require a separate conceptof posi-

tive liberty, but at the same time to acknowledge that there are no claims



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about liberty that such a concept is needed to explain (i.e., which cannot be

explained using the more conventional negative understanding). Indeed,

formany of itsproponents, theattractionof positiveliberty liesprecisely in

the fact that it is supposed to make sense of various arguments about lib-

erty, which are said to be incoherentin negative terms.34

But this is already to concede far too much ground to the objection,

because in point of fact there is no rewriting going on here. Green and

Bosanquet themselves turn to the language of constraint whenever they are

required to explain what self-realization has to do with freedom. All kinds of

language, it seems,canbe used to explain whyself-realizationis good, but,

in order to explain how it is connected to thevalue of freedom, recourse must

be had to the standard negative idiom. Again, no one seems to havebeen able

to provide any account of why a self-realized individual should be calledfree (as opposed to happy, fulfilled, complete, etc.) that does not

involve the absence of constraints. Thus, as we have seen, both Green and

Bosanquet are anxious to stress the community of meaning between their

two senses of freedom, and to define the higher freedom theyhave in mind

as liberation from the constraint of what we commonly regard as part of

ourself. Likewise, Kant, whose account of freedom is often styledas a para-

digmaticpositiveview, makes clear that he locates freedom in adherenceto

the law of reason because such conformity reflects independence of deter-

minate causesof theworld of sense.35 Once such constraints havebeen over-

come, my authentic self, which is pure intelligence, operates according to

therational necessityof themoral law.36 It isfor this reason thatKantscholars

constantly find themselves drawn to privative language when they are dis-

cussing his account of freedom. For one critic, Kants creature of inclinationis fettered, while his free agent is one who breaks loose from what is

merely given by nature, including the brute facts of my inclination.37 For

another, Kant grounds the principle of right solely in the legislative reason,

purified of all anthropological features and excluding all elements of nature,

of a metaphysics of freedom.38 All of this language aims to make concrete

theabsence of internal and external constraint, and to dramatize the idea that

rational necessity is arrived at by process of elimination. As Kant himself

puts it, reason is a somethingthat is left over [das da brig bleibt] ifI have

excluded everything from thedetermining grounds of my will that belongs to

the world of sense.39 Kants account, in short, needs no more rewriting than

Greens or Bosanquets to make clear that it involves the absence of con-

straint.40

Yet at the center of the objection we have been considering there lurks a

more fundamental error. Different theories of freedom are not characterized

by differinglevelsofconcern withthe actualconduct of free people; they dif-



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fer, rather, in the specificity withwhich they areable to describe that conduct.

Let us return for a moment to the case of Hobbes, so often identified as the

quintessential negative theorist. Hobbes is famous for rejecting the con-

ventional notion of a purely rational will; there is, for him, no act of delibera-

tion that is not based on passions (themselves the results of sense impres-

sions). The will is simply the last Appetite, or Aversion in a wholly

determined process of deliberation (Beasts, Hobbes informs us, also

Deliberate).41 Itwould, therefore, makeno sense for him to speak of the pas-

sions or sense impressions as constraints, since, on his account, there is no

pristine will for them to constrain. Freedom for Hobbes is, thus, simply the

absence of physical constraint on natural motion (i.e.,motiondictated bynat-

ural necessity, which includes all human action).42 A river without a dam is

free in precisely the same sense as a man without chains. But because onlyphysical impediments count as constraints in his theory, Hobbes cannot

describe the behavior of free people with any degree of specificity: a man,

on his account, is freefromchains to walk three miles, go to France, throwhis

belongingsinto the sea,writea book. . . ad infinitum. Thislack of specificity

is in no sense intrinsic to an account of freedom as the absence of constraint;

it follows from a theoryof thehuman person to which such anaccount is then

applied.

A second, and related objection to the model I have proposed might go as

follows: it is disingenuous to claim that there is any real choice (opportu-

nity) involved in a theory of freedom that lists everything that might pre-

ventx as a constraint. Insucha theory, a rational agent has only one conceiv-

able option,andno other choice is possible. Therefore, freedom here really is

an exercise conceptit is doing x. For an investigation of this line of rea-soning, it should be useful to consider an example from a different area of

political philosophy: Michael Sandels analysis of the choice situation in the

Rawlsian original position. Sandel poses the question of just how free the

choice of principles would actually be behind Rawlss veil of ignorance.

On one hand, he writes, once the parties find themselves in a fair situation,

anything goes; the scope for their choice is unlimited.43 On the other hand,

however, it becomes clear that theoriginal position hasbeen designed explic-

itly to ensure the selection of Rawlss two principles of justice. On Rawlss

account, it seems, a fair choice situation is by definition one in which it is

inconceivable that the parties would choose any other principles.

On this interpretation,whatit means to saythat theprincipleschosen will be just what-

ever they turn outto beis simplythat, given their situation, theparties areguaranteed tochoose the rightprinciples. While it may be true that, strictly speaking, they can choose

any principletheywish, theirsituation is designedin such a waythattheyare guaranteed

towish tochoose certain principles.. . . Thenotionthatthe full descriptionof the origi-



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nal position determines a single choice which the parties cannot but acknowledge

seems to introduce a cognitive element to justification after all and to call into question

the priority of procedure which the contract view . . . seemed to require.44

Here Sandel invokes a previously introduced distinction between

voluntarist and cognitive formsof justification: on the former,principles

of justice are said to derive their authority from the fact that they are selected

by the parties in an act of unencumbered choice, while, on the latter, they are

said to be preexisting authoritative principles that aresimply discovered or

acknowledged by the parties once the requisite circumstances have been

put in place. Rawls appears at various points in A Theory of Justice to resort

to both styles of justification, but, as Sandel points out, he cannot haveit both

ways. Either the principles of justice derive their authority from the fact that

they are chosen in the original position or the original position derives itsauthority from the fact that it generates the correct principles of justice

andSandelmakes a strongcase for thinking that Rawls is actually committed

to the second claim. But the key point for our purposes is that, while Sandel

insists that choice cannot coherently be said to authorize the principles of

justice in the Rawlsian framework (because the choice conditions were

established with the principles already in mind), he does not deny that

Rawlss parties make a choice (strictly speaking, they can choose any prin-

ciple they wish). The fact that it is inconceivable for any principles other

than Rawlss to be chosen in the original position does not mean that his par-

ties make no choice; it simply means that their choice does not ground the

principles of justice.

This insight, in turn, applies powerfully to the objection we are consider-

ing. The argument for distinguishing between positive and negative liberty,after all, rests on the claimthat a situation can only be called an opportunity

state in which it is not inconceivable for people to chooseany number of dif-

ferentends. Ifan account of freedom doesnot place freepeople in sucha con-

dition, we are told, then it must partake of a different, nonnegative concept

of liberty. Sandel avoids this muddle because he intuits, although does not

make explicit, the impact of differentworldviews on descriptiveclaimsabout

what free people will actually do. A voluntarist form of justification presup-

poses the sort of world in which liberty looks like an opportunity state: one

inwhichends exist byvirtueof thefact that theyarechosenbyhuman beings.

A cognitive form of justification, on the other hand, presupposes the sort of

world in which liberty looks like an exerciseconcept: one in whichhuman

beings exist in order to recognize and achieve some predetermined end. But

there is no more reason to put the word choice in quotation marks in this

context than in the case of the hypothetical higher self we have been dis-

cussing. For Rawls, as for Kant, heteronomy and freedom are incompatible.



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Only the self unencumbered by context, materiality, contingency, and sensa-

tion can make a free choice. Kant casts off these impediments by theorizing

an abstracted mind that legislates for itself the law of reason; Rawls does so

by situating his hypothetical parties behind the veil of ignorance in the origi-

nal position. In both cases, once the impediments have been removed, the

agents in question will choose a given principle because it is suggested by

their unencumbered reason. But it is no less a choice for the fact that every

human being in the appropriate circumstances would make it.

Consider the following example. Let us suppose that human beings had a

gene that made vanilla ice cream taste better to them than all other flavors.

Assuming this were the case, if I were to offer a person his choice of all the

flavors behind the ice cream counter (and if he had tasted them all before),

caeteris paribus he would choose vanilla. But suppose we were to introducesome complicating conditions: suppose vanilla were the most expensive fla-

vor, andtheperson in question were either poor or cheap;suppose thisperson

lived in a culture where redwas an auspiciouscolor, and, accordingly, straw-

berry was the trendy flavor; suppose this person had objections to the work-

ing conditions of vanilla bean pickers and had therefore decided to boycott

vanilla products. Given all of these circumstances, the person in question

may never in his life have tasted vanilla ice cream and would probably never

choose it if given the chance. If, however, wewere toplacehim ina hypothet-

ical situation in which allof these complicating factors ceasedto intrude, and

we gave him a taste of every imaginable flavor and asked which he would

prefer, he would certainly pick vanilla. Why? Because it tastes best to human

beings; that is simply a fact of their nature. Is there really no meaningful dis-

tinction between that situation and one in which we were to take our icecream eater to a shop stocked only with vanilla? In such a situation, there

would genuinely be no choice (that is, if we were to exclude the choice of

having no icecream). But the first situation bears a much closer resemblance

to the condition of free men in the putativelypositive theories of liberty we

have been discussingand in theRawlsianoriginal position. When giventhe

opportunity, free men will choose their object because the affinity of

unencumbered human nature for the object in question is stipulated in

advance.

IV

The objection might be raised at this point that the model just described

only accounts for positive claims of the form if men are free, they will do

or be x and not positive claims of the form if men do or are x, they will be



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free. Thesecondcategory, it might be argued, still retains an exercisecon-

cept of liberty: the notion that to be free one must actually do or be some

unique, particular thing. In other words, it might seem that freedom in this

case is not acquired through the stripping away of internal or external con-

straints but acquired through some kind of activity. But this too is imprecise.

Consider the classic Christian statement of liberty offered by Thomas

Cranmer in the Book of Common Prayer: His service is perfect freedom.45

Following our earlier practice, we should replace this statement with two

possible claims: When people arefree, they willserveHim, or When peo-

ple serve Him, they will be free. We have already seen that the first claim

employs thenegative, opportunityconcept of liberty. It simply suggests, as

a descriptive matter, that when people are free from all internal and external

constraints, they will choose His service.Yet the second claim too can be accounted for if we once again adjust our

understanding of constraint. This formulation supposes that there are certain

constraints that can only be removed if the agent in question embraces a par-

ticular activity or way of life (in this case His service). Only if a man

embraces thedevotional life of a Christianwillhe overcometheslaveryof his

passions,or his ignorance, or evil inclinationthat is, theexperience of ser-

vingHim has theeffect of liberation.46 This is not at all anunfamiliar kindof

reasoning about negative liberty. On Hegels view, for example, we can be

liberated from our passions and sense impressions only once we have been

made to realize that we ourselves will the universalalevel of conscious-

ness we can acquire only through the practice of citizenship in a Hegelian

state.47 Likewise, for Rousseau, people are governed by their higher, ra-

tional selves (and are, hence, free from internal constraint) only when theyareguidedby a General Will formulated through thepublic life of a self-gov-

erning commonwealth.48 For both of these theorists, constraints are stripped

away through the actual experience of citizenship rightly practiced. We

might also recall that, in a Freudian context, we are said to be freed from our

pathologiesthrough therapy (although, fortunately, we havenotyetas a soci-

ety generated the barbarism:freedom is therapy!). Once again, this is not a

different claim about liberty; it is a different claim about constraint.

A good testofthisconstruction ofthe issue is whether it can makesenseof

the theoryof freedom offered by HannahArendt inBetween Past and Future.

This text is usually cited as the positive theory of liberty par excellence, a

theory that equates freedom with participation in politics.49 As it happens,

however, Arendt assiduously avoids making the claim that freedom is par-

ticipation inpolitics, and instead ends up with a claim verymuchof the form

we are currently considering. In this respect, the first thing to note is that the

idea of freedom Arendtmeans to attack by stressing the relationship between



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freedom andpolitics is notnegative liberty but ratherinner freedom. Her

objection is that freedom has been banished by philosophy from the public

square to the forum internum, where it is understood to be a property of the

will. But the difference between her favored notion of freedom and this

internal one is emphatically not that one implies the absence of constraint

while the other somehow does not. Indeed, Arendt, like Green and

Bosanquet,stresses thecommunityof meaning between thevarious differ-

ent sensesof freedom shecanvasses, making it extremely difficult to seehow

she could envision them as embodying separate concepts of liberty.

Arendt begins with the historical claim that inner freedom was an idea

generatedby theStoicsat a timewhenactual, political freedom wasno longer

to be had in the world. But this, as she is anxious to point out, is already to

make a claim about analytical priority: Man would know nothing of innerfreedom if he had not first experienced a condition of being free as a worldly,

tangible reality. We firstbecameawareof freedom or its opposite in ourinter-

course with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.50 And what was

this first, nonderivative freedom? It was the free mans status, which

allowed him to move, to get away from home, to go out into the world. It

was, in short, the absence of constraint on movement. In the late Roman

Empire, this notion was perverted and turned inward, so that it came to

describe,not thestatusof menvis--vis each other butratherthe internal sov-

ereignty of thewill. In thisway, menwhowere externallyenslavedcouldstill

be said to find a degree of freedom. But Arendt believes that this palliative

came at a terrible price: it yielded a situation in which freedom has no

worldly reality.51

This is where politics comes into the argument. Although Arendt con-cedes that even in repressive societies freedom may still dwell in mens

hearts as desire or will or hope or yearning, when it is confined to the

recesses of the heart it is not a demonstrable fact.52 Only politics, on

Arendts account, provides the space in which freedom can become con-

crete, in which it can emerge as a fact about human beings. Why? Because

on Arendts account, freedom is fundamentally the status of being uncon-

strained by theautomatic processes of nature and history; it is theabilityto

begin again, unencumbered by contingent circumstances.53 And this claim

intersects with a view about human nature: man is not for ArendtHomo sapi-

ens or Homo laborans, but Homo initiansa creature who can begin.54 The

world of politics gives us the chance to live according to our nature, to make

beginnings; it is only when we are in fact living this way that we are freed

from the constraints of our situation. This is what allows Arendt to make the

famous claim on which so much of the confusion surrounding positive lib-

ertyultimately rests: Menare freeas distinguished fromtheirpossessing



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the gift for freedomas long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be

free and to act are the same.55 Even in repressive societies man has the gift

for freedom, he is a creature who can make a new start. But only in actually

making such a startdoes he break free of the constraints of his context; until

that moment, he is determined by them. It is not that the act is freedom in

some new conceptual sense butratherthat theactmakes us free. Manrealizes

his true nature when he begins anew, and this beginning anew makes him

free. Freedom here is still the absence of constraint; to theextent that it looks

like anything else, that is a result of Arendts conviction that the constraints

are banished by the act itself.

Our analysis of freedom as self-realization ends with Arendt. There is,

however, one final account of liberty that must be addressed before we can

declare the broader case closed: it is not usually billed as a positive theory,but it might still be thought to reject the framework of the absence of con-

straint. This is the so-called republican theoryof liberty, or freedom as non-

domination. As sketched by Philip Pettit, this view accepts that there are

positiveandnegativeconcepts of liberty, but then suggests a thirdway. The

writers of Roman antiquity, and their disciples in the Renaissance and early-

modern period, viewed liberty not as the absence of interferencebut as the

absence of mastery, as non-domination.56 Thedifference, Pettit suggests,

is that the republican account of freedom as non-domination will regard

many people who are not actually interferedwith by others as nonetheless

unfree. The comicslave in Plautus who has the run of his masters house still

lives in a state of dependence on thewillof his master, and is therefore unfree

(although not interfered with). Conversely, such an account of liberty might

regard someone as free who is interfered with,but is not dominatedby a mas-ter. A citizenof a self-governing republic, for example, might not be thought

unfree if he is coerced into following laws enacted by the popular will. On

Pettits account, this view of freedom is not exactly positive because it

requires the absence of something (i.e., domination), but it is not exactly

negative either, in that it needs something more than the absence of inter-

ference.57 This third concept, Pettit informs us, fits on neither side of the

now established negative-positive dichotomy.

Thebest response to thislineof argument is that provided bySkinner, who

has written extensively on the historical development of freedom as non-

domination. The problem with Pettits presentation of the case, as Skinner

points out, is that it replicates Berlins initial error: it wrongly assumes that

theuniverseof possible constraints in theories of negative liberty is limited

to physical interference by other human beings. But, as we have seen, any

number of forces can count as constraints (internal psychic forces, sense



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impressions, ignorance), and a theory of freedom that specifies the absence

of these obstacles is no less negative, conceptually speaking, than its

Hobbesian counterpart. In consequence, Skinner argues that liberty as non-

dominationis a species of negative liberty, in which thepsychological impact

of dependence itself counts as a constraint on action. As Skinner puts it, for

neo-Roman theoristsa mere awareness of living in dependence on thegood-

willof an arbitraryruler does serve in itself to restrict ouroptions andthereby

limit our liberty. Theeffect is to dispose us to make andavoidcertainchoices,

and is thus to place clear constraints on our freedom of action.58 Freedom as

non-domination is wholly negative,59Skinner concludes, because it never

foran instant defines itself as anything other than theabsence of constraint. If

Pettit had not been wedded to Berlins original commitment (i.e., that any

theoryof freedom, which specifies theabsence of nonhuman constraints is insome sense positive), he would not have ended up providing his tripartite

scheme.60

V

Where does all of this leave us? There is an argument to be made that, in

subsuming all of the abundant variety of claims about liberty under a single

concept, we run two major risks. First, we run the risk of trivializing the

concept itself. If so many completelydifferent views about who is free canbe

accommodatedusing therubricof negative liberty, then theconcept begins

to seem superficial or even meaningless. The second risk is precisely the

reverse: that bydragging allof thesevarious claimsabout libertyinto theneg-ativecamp, wewill end upprojecting on to thema uniformity that theypalpa-

bly lack. We will, in short, begin to lose sight of how radically different they

truly are from each otherhow they rest on incompatible views of human

nature, psychology, and theology. As David Miller puts it succinctly, the dif-

ferent traditions of speaking about liberty appear to embody very different

basic assumptions about human beings and what gives meaning to their

lives.61 Why is it analyticallyhelpful, in that case, to reduce them to a single

paradigm?Each of thesearguments is compelling, and, indeed, thisessayhas

not insisted that there is only one conceptof liberty. It has only argued that,

if there are two or more concepts, they cannot be distinguished from one

another on the basis of positivity and negativity. All claims about free-

dom seem to be claims about the absence of some constraint; within this

broad set, however, there are substantially different claims about the ends of

human life, the character of human beings, and the elements that can con-



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strain us. The quarrels between these various accounts are serious and

deserve more attention than they have been able to receive under the shadow

of Berlins dichotomy.

NOTES

1. IsaiahBerlin, Two Conceptsof Liberty,in FourEssays on Liberty (Oxford,UK: Oxford

University Press, 1969), 118-72.

2. Gerald C. MacCallum Jr., Negative and Positive Freedom, in Liberty, ed. David Miller

(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991).

3. For purposes of this analysis, I have treated the terms liberty and freedom as if they

were synonyms. Althoughthese termsare not in factinterchangeable, the literaturewith whichI

am engaged has tended to view them that way, andI will notattempt to disentanglethem on thisoccasion.

4. See, for example, Plato, Laws X (885b).

5. Ibid., 102.

6. Quentin Skinner, A ThirdConceptof Liberty, (TheIsaiah Berlin Lecture),Proceedings

of the British Academy 117 (2001): 237-68.

7. Skinnernever minimizesthe differences between views of libertythat specify theabsence

of metaphysical constraints and those that specify the absence of physical interference. He is

simply pointingout thatthey cannot be distinguishedfrom each otheron groundsof positivity

and negativity.

8. Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 49.

9.In additionto theliberalnotion offreedomas theabsenceof interference, Skinner hasin

mind the neo-Roman idea of freedom as the absence of dependence (which is discussed later).

This second idea is sometimes cast as an instance of positive liberty, largely because Berlin

seemedto endorse that view inhisclassic essay(although hethenseemed tomove away from this

position). For a recent attempt to grapple with this argument of Berlins, see Raymond Geuss,

Freiheit im Liberalismus und bei Marx, in Ethische und Politische Freiheit, ed. Julian Nida-

Rmelin and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), esp. 118-20.

10.IsaiahBerlin,FourEssays onLiberty(Oxford,UK: OxfordUniversityPress,1969),xiv.

11. See Tom Baldwin, MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom, Ratio 26 (1984):

125-42.

12.T. H. Green,LiberalLegislation andFreedom of Contract, inLiberty,ed. David Miller

(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991).

13. T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, ed. Bernard Bosanquet

(London: Longmans, Green, 1907), 26.

14. Ibid., 16.

15. Ibid., 17.

16. Cf. Baldwin, MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom, 135; Skinner, A Third

Concept of Liberty, 240-41.

17. Indeed, I take it to be of the highest significance that, althoughGreen alludes casually to

freedomin thepositive sensein his1881 public lecture to theLeicesterLiberal Association,he

pointedly neglects to speak in such terms in his contemporaneous, more technical lectures at

Oxford. Thephrase neveroccursin Onthe DifferentSenses ofFreedomas Applied tothe Will



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andto theMoralProgressof Man (deliveredat Oxfordin1879as part ofa setof lectureson The

Theory of Duty) or in the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (delivered as The

Principles of Political Obligation and the Social Virtues at Balliol in 1879-80). See Green,

Liberal Legislation, 23.

18. Ibid., 2.

19.Thisaccountof higher freedom points toan area ofconcernin theanalysis provided by

MariaDimova-Cookson.Dimova-Cooksonassignsto Greena convictionthat juristicand true

freedom are trade-offs within the individual. In the pursuit of the true freedom, she writes,

theexerciseof juristic freedom is temporarily suspended. I cannot see howGreen would agree

to this statement. Juristic freedom is the condition in which a person is not interfered with (by

other people) in the pursuit of things that seem good to him. In this condition, the individual is

partiallyfree: he is notaffectedby externalconstraints.Higher freedombuildscumulativelyon

lowerfreedom:oncefree in the true sense,the individualis liberatedfrominternal constraints as

well, and begins to seek that which is good for him. But the fact that the individual changes his

object does not mean that his juristic freedomhas been compromised in the least. That would

be thecase,of course, ifhe were coerced from outside tochange hisobject,butthatis notthesce-nario that Dimova-Cookson is considering. See Dimova-Cookson, A New Scheme of Positive

and Negative Freedom: Reconstructing T. H. Green on Freedom, Political Theory 31 (2003):

515.

20. Ibid., 3.

21. Ibid., 16.

22. Ibid., 18.

23. Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State (New York: Macmillan,

1899), 128.

24. Ibid., 146.

25. Ibid., 134.

26. Ibid., 137.

27. Baldwin also notices Bosanquets MacCallum-esque language. See Baldwin,

MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom, 126-27.

28.One wayout of theimpassewould be to reject MacCallumsargument thatinternal forces

can countas genuine constraints. Onecould, likeGreen andBosanquet, argue thatto calligno-rancea constraint is simply tospeakmetaphorically. Theonlyproblem here,as bothGreenand

Bosanquet point out, is that if the constraint is metaphorical so too might be the liberty

involved.I make no attempt to settlethis question. I only mean to insistthat, if Plato andthe Sto-

ics are to count as negative theorists, then so must the neo-Hegelians.

29. Skinner, A Third Concept of Liberty, 2.

30. Ibid., 143.

31. Raymond Geuss is similarly wary of the excessive inflation of the conceptof freedom

to the point where it loses its profile and becomes indistinguishable from the vague general

notionof a completelysatisfactory humanlife. See RaymondGeuss andMartinHollis,Free-

dom as an Ideal, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 69 (1995): 102. See also Christopher

Megone, One Concept of Liberty, Political Studies 35 (1987): esp. 616, 622.

32.It isworth pointingoutherethatall theoriesof freedomarenormative;none areneutral.

Thatis, basedon their respective accountsof thehumanperson,they alladmit certain elementsas

potential constraints and exclude others. It is, therefore, extremely important to distinguish

normativity frompositivity.Hobbes,for example,argues thatpassions should notcount asconstraints on action; he does so because he rejects the conventional notion of a free will (the

will, for him, is simply the final outcome of a wholly determined process of deliberation). This



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argument is certainly normative, but it is not in the least bit positive. Freedom, for Hobbes,

remains the absence of impediments to motion.

33. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press, 1991), 145.

34.See, forexample,Skinner, A ThirdConcept ofLiberty,243.It is enough forme, justas

it is forBerlin,to displaythe coherenceof theneo-Hegelianview. Thatin itself is sufficient todis-

pose of the prevailing belief that there is only one concept of liberty. The argument, in short, is

that such a view cannot be accounted for under the negative rubric, and that, as a result, if it is

coherent we must search for a different concept of liberty to explain it.

35. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals [Grundlegung zur

Metaphysik der Sitten], ed. and trans. Allen W. Wood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2002), 69.

36. There is considerable debate among Kant scholars as to whether (as Kant seems to sug-

gestinthe Groundwork) onlyactionstakenin accordancewith rationalmaximscan countas free.

Onsuchan account,all immoralacts aredetermined, and,therefore,not imputableto theiragents

ina moralsense. Inhis worksfromthe 1790s,Kantseems tomoveawayfromthisposition,argu-ing that heteronomous impulses influence but do not determine behavior. For evaluative pur-

poses, therefore, they do not count as constraints on the freedom of the agent. On this issue, see

Henry E. Allison, Kants Theory of Freedom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1990), 94-99. Allison attempts to harmonize Kants various statements on this subject.

37. Charles Taylor, Kants Theory of Freedom, in Conceptionsof Liberty in Political Phi-

losophy, ed. Zbigniew Pelczynski and John Gray (London: Athlone Press, 1984), 107.

38. Wolfgang Kersting, Politics, Freedom, and Order: Kants Political Philosophy, in The

Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1992), 344.

39. Kant, Groundwork, 78.

40. At this point it should be useful to remove a possible confusion. In several of his works,

but in the Groundworkin particular, Kant contrasts a negative definition (Erklrung) of free-

domwitha positive concept(einpositiverBegriff).It is importantto recognizethatKantis not

using this language in Berlins sense (or in Skinners). Kant begins the third section of the

Groundworkby defining freedom as a quality of thewillby which it canbe effective independ-ently of alien causes determining it (Groundwork, 61). Kant views this definition (which,

importantly, he never rejects) as negative because it is arrivedat theoretically; that is, specula-

tive reason requires the possibility of some sort of causation that is not itself determined, but it

can tellus nothingabout howthat causationmight operate.An understandingof thesource ofthe

freeact (theauthenticselfoperatingunder rational,ratherthan physical,necessity)comesto us

through pure practicalreason,and ispositive inthe sense that itshows usthe mechanicsof free

action. Kant iscertainlynotarguingherethatthere isa wayof thinkingaboutlibertythat does not

involve the absence of constraint. He is arguing, in MacCallums terms, that liberty has both a

freedom from and a freedom to component. One could apply precisely the same model to

Hobbes, for whom a river is free from a dam to flow downstream. Hobbess definition would be

whollynegativein Kants sense if,forsomereason,he knew that itwas possibleto conceiveof an

unimpeded river but did not know what would happen to one. On Kants argument about

negativity, see Dennis P. Quinn,An Examinationof Kants Treatment of Transcendental Free-

dom (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), esp. 13-23; see also Allison, Kants

Theory of Freedom, 243-45.41. Hobbes, Leviathan, 44.



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42.Ibid.,146. Liberty andNecessity areconsistent;as inthe water, that hath notonly liberty,

but a necessity of descending by the Channel; so likewise in the Actions which men voluntarily

doe: which, because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty; and yet, because every

act of mans will, and every desire, and inclination proceedeth from some cause, and that from

another cause, in a continuall chaine, (whose first link is the handof God the first of all causes,)

they proceed from necessity.

43. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1998), 127.

44. Ibid., 127-28.

45. Martin Hollis cites this view of Cranmers as an instance of positive liberty on the

grounds that it identifies freedom with what it is proper for me to want, rather than what I

want. See Geuss and Hollis, Freedom as an Ideal, 102.

46. It goes without saying that these two constructions of Cranmers statement cannot be

simultaneouslytrue. If freedomis a necessarycondition ofHisservice, thenHis service can-

notbe a necessaryconditionof freedom.However,it is certainly possiblefor a theoryof freedom

to incorporate twodifferent sorts ofconstraints:externalconstraintsthat canbe removedwithoutany activity on the part of the agent, and internal constraints that require some sort of activity

(say, His service) in order to be removed.

47. See, for example, G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, ed. and trans. T. M. Knox

(Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1942), 155 (257).

48. See, for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social I.8 in Oevures Compltes,

vol. 3, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). See also Patrick

Gardiner, Rousseau on Liberty, in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed.

Zbigniew Pelczynski and John Gray (London: Athlone Press, 1984), 83-99.

49. See, for example, Ronald Beiner, Action, Natality and Citizenship: Hannah Arendts

Concept of Freedom, in Conceptionsof Liberty in Political Philosophy, esp.352, 355. See also

Skinner, A Third Concept of Liberty, 242.

50. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought

(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1993), 148.

51. Ibid., 149.

52. Ibid.53. Ibid., 168.

54. Ibid., 167.

55. Ibid., 153.

56. Philip Pettit,Republicanism:A Theory of Freedom and Government(Oxford,UK: Clar-

endon, 1997), 22.

57. Ibid., 51.

58. Skinner, A Third Concept of Liberty, 256-57. Skinner closes his essay by suggesting

that he is more comfortable with the following schema: there are two concepts of liberty (one

negative, one positive), and two theories of negative liberty (one about interference, one about

domination). See also Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 1998), 85-99.

59. Ibid.,255.

60. Note that Pettit himself describes domination as a constraint: The constraint from

which exemption is given is not interference of any sort, just arbitrary interference; Pettit,

Republicanism, 26.61. Introduction, in Liberty, ed. David Miller (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,

1991).



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Eric Nelson is a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows, HarvardUniversity, and a fellow

of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has publishedarticles on Thomas MoresUtopia and

Miltons politicalprose. His first book, TheGreekTraditionin RepublicanThought, was

released by Cambridge University Press in February 2004.


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Eric Nelson Liberty- One or Two Concepts