ABSTRACT
My objective is to contextualize Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University. By “contextualize” I mean to interpret the lecture in the context of the political problems and various solutions to them in which Berlin wrote and to which he responded. Fortunately, Berlin left us considerable guidance in this interpretive task. He explicitly contextualized his own lecture, setting out the major political problems he addresses and the major rival interpretations of these problems against which he advances his own opinions. In addition, he responded to the first critics of “Two Concepts of Liberty.” The lecture was published shortly after it was delivered on 31 October 1958.1 He then revised it over the following eleven years in response to the many criticisms of it, including the “devastating criticisms” of H. L. A. Hart and Stuart Hampshire in 1967. It was published in revised form along with three other essays in 1969.2 This volume includes an important Introduction in which he responds to major criticisms and modifies some of his views, yet with the realization that the critics will remain unconvinced. “My doctrines are attacked so ferociously in this year’s B.Phil. examination in Politics,” he wrote just before publication, “that I anticipate storms, not from embattled students only, but from every possible quarter, when my unpopular doctrines are published.” Finally, in 2002, Henry Hardy edited and corrected the 1969 version of “Two Concepts of Liberty” and published it along with the 1969 Introduction, four other essays, other writings related to liberty, a guide to Berlin’s critics by Ian Harris, and a concordance to the 1969 publication.3
