ABSTRACT Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ regards both Hobbes and Constant as supporting the negative version. Both took a favourable view of the freedom to live as one pleases. But this shared preference arose from radically different overall philosophies. Hobbes’s support for freedom as ‘the silence of the laws’ reflected his view of happiness as preference-satisfaction. Constant’s support for freedom as a sphere of absolute rights was supplemented by support for active citizenship and connected with belief in ‘perfectibility’ that (...) was itself linked to religion. These theories involve altogether different understandings of the image of an ‘area’ preserved from interference. Berlin takes over from Constant an appeal to human nature without the idea of progress that had supported it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Both Constant and Spencer are moralists who want to encourage individual human perfection. But for Constant, politics has moral value even in a laissez-faire state, whereas for Spencer political participation has no moral value in itself. For Constant, from a moral perspective the historical change from an ancient to a modern conception of liberty is not absolute, and he wishes to retain, in a subordinate role, certain aspects of ancient liberty in modern societies. For Spencer, the historical evolution from (...) militant to industrial society involves the complete separation of politics from any positive moral good. In an industrial society, altruism has no connection with politics, and attempt to bring altruism into politics are not only doomed to failure but iare unjust and therefore immoral. Spencer is a leading figure in the separation of classical liberal thought from perfectionist morality that flourishes in the twentieth century. The separation between classical and modern liberalism that takes place in the fin de siècle is not just a matter of economics – as is shown by the fact that both Spencer and Constant are ardent apostles of laissez-faire – it is above all a question of different attitudes to morality. (shrink)

For the first time, the full story of the conflict between two of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers—and how their profound disagreements continue to offer important lessons for political theory and philosophy Two of the most iconic thinkers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin fundamentally disagreed on central issues in politics, history and philosophy. In spite of their overlapping lives and experiences as Jewish émigré intellectuals, Berlin disliked Arendt intensely, saying that she represented “everything that I (...) detest most,” while Arendt met Berlin’s hostility with indifference and suspicion. Written in a lively style, and filled with drama, tragedy and passion, Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin tells, for the first time, the full story of the fraught relationship between these towering figures, and shows how their profoundly different views continue to offer important lessons for political thought today. Drawing on a wealth of new archival material, Kei Hiruta traces the Arendt–Berlin conflict, from their first meeting in wartime New York through their widening intellectual chasm during the 1950s, the controversy over Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, their final missed opportunity to engage with each other at a 1967 conference and Berlin’s continuing animosity toward Arendt after her death. Hiruta blends political philosophy and intellectual history to examine key issues that simultaneously connected and divided Arendt and Berlin, including the nature of totalitarianism, evil and the Holocaust, human agency and moral responsibility, Zionism, American democracy, British imperialism and the Hungarian Revolution. But, most of all, Arendt and Berlin disagreed over a question that goes to the heart of the human condition: what does it mean to be free? (shrink)

This essay contests the notion that there was a necessary and fundamental opposition between republicanism and liberalism during the post-Revolutionary period in France. Constant's writings of the Restoration years show his abiding interest in both the construction of viable political institutions and the promotion of a vibrant political life. Worried about what he saw as growing authoritarian trends within the liberal camp, Constant wrote about the need to keep political liberty alive in commercial republics. His refutations of Auguste Comte and (...) the Saint-Simonians, and his writings on religion, should be seen as offering pointed lessons to fellow liberals about the crucial importance of both politics and the moral values promoted by religious freedom. (shrink)