ABSTRACT
More than fifty years have passed since Isaiah Berlin gave his inaugural lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Among the reasons for the longevity of this text are the variety of themes that have had an impact on the development of late-twentieth-century liberal thought: not just the nature of liberty, but also pluralism, toleration, and the critique of philosophical rationalism. Some believe that the latter themes represent the more significant aspect of Berlin’s legacy.1 What about the positive-negative freedom distinction, however? How significant is it considered to be nowadays? On the one hand, the vocabulary of positive and negative freedom is commonplace in most textbooks on political theory. The distinction is not necessarily defended but it is often assumed and used by many political theorists. On the other hand, few thinkers after Berlin have actively embraced it. John Rawls has refused to identify his understanding of liberty as either positive or negative.2 Joseph Raz’s understanding of liberty as autonomy straddles this divide.3 A school of analytical thinkers represented by Steiner, Carter, and Kramer engage with a quantitative analysis of liberty along the lines of negative freedom, seeing little utility in positive freedom.4 Amartya Sen, who links freedom with development, employs a rich notion of freedom, closer to a positive concept, yet purposefully inclusive of characteristics of negative freedom.5 The republican freedom theorists like Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit recognise the distinction but move beyond it. It would be fair to say that the mainstream political theory after Berlin has been more critical than approving of the distinction.6
