ABSTRACT
The true national character could be seen less in a review of mechanical restraints than in the delineation of a singular kind of determination, a dynamic collective ideal, actively expanding, though history, Sir Isaiah Berlin’s “negative” realm. Berlin’s approach through “positive” and “negative” forms of freedom also provides a helpful distinction. Elsewhere, similar definitions of political as against merely personal freedom revealed a radical potential and approached closer to modern senses of the word, in attacks on the limits of participatory freedoms under the Revolution settlement and appeals, as in Catherine Macaulay’s history, for a “true reformation”. The relationship between art and freedom in Hume was generally mediated by economic development, but the broad outlines of his progressive view proved attractive for writers seeking to ascribe a more central role in society to the arts. Through the 1760’s Hume’s ideas were succeeded by schemes of a more adventurous character.
