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Isaiah Berlin - Interview

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Eliasz Niezgoda

The document discusses two concepts of liberty outlined by Isaiah Berlin - negative and positive liberty. [1] Negative liberty refers to non-interference and the liberal view of maximizing individual freedom and limiting government control. [2] Positive liberty is the desire to be self-governed and for sovereignty to reside within a particular group rather than with others, even if it involves greater government control. [3] Berlin argues that these two views of liberty are ultimately irreconcilable.

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Isaiah Berlin - Interview

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Eliasz Niezgoda
65 views1 page
The document discusses two concepts of liberty outlined by Isaiah Berlin - negative and positive liberty. [1] Negative liberty refers to non-interference and the liberal view of maximizing individual freedom and limiting government control. [2] Positive liberty is the desire to be self-governed and for sovereignty to reside within a particular group rather than with others, even if it involves greater government control. [3] Berlin argues that these two views of liberty are ultimately irreconcilable.

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The document discusses two concepts of liberty outlined by Isaiah Berlin - negative and positive liberty. [1] Negative liberty refers to non-interference and the liberal view of maximizing individual freedom and limiting government control. [2] Positive liberty is the desire to be self-governed and for sovereignty to reside within a particular group rather than with others, even if it involves greater government control. [3] Berlin argues that these two views of liberty are ultimately irreconcilable.

Copyright:

© All Rights Reserved
Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as pdf or txt
65 views1 page

Isaiah Berlin - Interview

Uploaded by

Eliasz Niezgoda
The document discusses two concepts of liberty outlined by Isaiah Berlin - negative and positive liberty. [1] Negative liberty refers to non-interference and the liberal view of maximizing individual freedom and limiting government control. [2] Positive liberty is the desire to be self-governed and for sovereignty to reside within a particular group rather than with others, even if it involves greater government control. [3] Berlin argues that these two views of liberty are ultimately irreconcilable.

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[…] What liberals demand, therefore, is the limitation of sovereignty as such; what believers in ‘positive’

liberty demand is the placing of it [sovereignty] in their own and not in others’ hands. These views are

ultimately not reconcilable. But it is a profound lack of social and moral understanding not to recognise the

absolute claims for [sc. of] each of these types of liberty as being among ‘the deepest interests of mankind’.

Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty

_____

As in the case of words which everyone is in favour of, ‘freedom’ has a very great many senses – some of

the world’s worst tyrannies have been undertaken in the name of freedom. Nevertheless, I should say that the

word probably has two central senses, at any rate in the West. One is the familiar liberal sense in which

freedom means that every man has a life to live and should be given the fullest opportunity of doing so, and

that there are only two adequate reasons for controlling men. The first is that there are other goods besides

freedom, such as, for example, security or peace or culture, or other things which human beings need, which

must be given them, apart from the question of whether they want them or not. Secondly, if one man obtains

too much, he will deprive other people of their freedom – freedom for the pike means death to the carp – and

this is a perfectly adequate reason for curtailing freedom. Still, curtailing freedom isn’t the same as freedom.

The second sense of the word is not so much a matter of allowing people to do what they want as the idea

that I want to be governed by myself and not pushed around by other people; and this idea leads one to the

supposition that to be free means to be self-governing. To be self-governing means that the source of authority

must lie in me – or in us, if we’re talking about a community. And if the source of freedom lies in me, then

it’s comparatively unimportant how much control there is, provided the control is exercised by myself, or my

representatives, or my nation, my people, my tribe, my Church, and so forth. Provided that I am governed by

people who are sympathetic to me, or understand my interests, I don’t mind how much of my life is pried

into, or whether there is a private province which is divided from the public province; and in some modern

States – for example the Soviet Union and other States with totalitarian governments – this second view

seems to be taken.

Between these two views, I see no possibility of reconciliation.

Isaiah Berlin, 1962 interview

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