ABSTRACT
According to James Tully, Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” should be seen as narrowing a hitherto pluralist and inclusive liberal political tradition to a straitened neoliberalism based on an obsession with negative liberty, and as consequently opposing social democracy and postcolonial self-determination.1 This is seriously mistaken. Berlin does not reduce all meaningful or valuable freedom to negative liberty; he is an ally rather than opponent of social democracy, and he has deep sympathies with the ideal of national self-determination.
