ABSTRACT
For my contribution to this volume, I would like to take up the question of liberty as presented in Isaiah Berlin’s germinal “Two Concepts of Liberty”1 essay not only in terms of the content of its claims but also with reference to its form or style of reasoning, in part to demonstrate the interrelated nature of these two aspects of argumentation. I will argue that Berlin’s work represents a moment in the ascendancy of a certain kind of “ideal theory,” especially in contemporary liberal thought, one that sees key concepts in political philosophy as defined in relation to an “ideal rational subject,” without reference to the historical context of meaning in which the question arises or the orientation of that subject-in-action. This serves to facilitate the notion that political theory is a subset of moral philosophy that, in turn, serves to constrain the kinds of arguments and questions that can be considered proper to political philosophy.2 In the final section of the paper I will refer to an alternative mode of reasoning about questions of freedom, using Heidegger and his contemporary interpreters as my primary point of reference. Recognizing that I can really only refer to this alternative language here rather than spell it out in any detail, it is my hope to at least provide a serviceable sketch and show how it may shed light on our current thinking about freedom. Before this, however, some preliminary comments are required to situate this admittedly idiosyncratic combination of thinkers within the broader contemporary discussion.
