Editing Isaiah Berlin (section)

==="Two Concepts of Liberty"===
{{main|Two Concepts of Liberty}}
Berlin is known for his inaugural lecture, "[[Two Concepts of Liberty]]", delivered in 1958 as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Warburton |first=Nigel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2wxhpF_O6z0C&pg=PA127 |title=Freedom: An Introduction with Readings |date=2001 |publisher=Psychology Press |others=[[The Open University]] |isbn=978-0-415-21246-5 |language=en |chapter=Two Concepts of Liberty |quote=Isaiah Berlin’s essay 'Two Concepts of Liberty'* is one of the most important pieces of post-war political philosophy. It was originally given as a lecture in Oxford in 1958 and has been much discussed since then. In this extract from the lecture Berlin identifies the two different concepts of freedom – negative and positive – which provide the framework for his wide-ranging discussion. |author-link=Nigel Warburton |chapter-url=https://openlearnlive-s3bucket.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/22/1b/221beec2ccb7db1991ab275509134c013921e6b6?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22a211_reading1.pdf%22&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIA4GIOSMQ5JGMSLFXY%2F20231231%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20231231T081900Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Signature=9ddb1a9d0edc9cad07d831ad2b83ff577d3420ddb9ba7f62ad5f5ebd8d468c73}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Two Concepts of Liberty |url=https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/tcl/#:~:text=Isaiah%20Berlin's%20inaugural%20lecture%20as,the%20Romantic%20Age%20(PIRA). |access-date=2023-12-31 |website=berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk}}</ref> The lecture, later published as an essay, reintroduced the study of political philosophy to the methods of [[analytic philosophy]]. Berlin defined "negative liberty" as absence of coercion or interference in private actions by an external political body, which Berlin derived from the Hobbesian definition of liberty. "Positive liberty", Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do. Berlin contended that modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. This rationalist conflation was open to political abuses, which encroached on negative liberty, when such interpretations of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, paternalism, social engineering, historicism, and collective rational control over human destiny.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kocis |first=Robert |title=Isaiah Berlin: A Kantian and Post-Idealist Thinker |date=17 November 2023 |publisher=University of Wales Press |isbn=9781786838957 |series=Political Philosophy Now |pages=71–95 |language=en}}</ref>