Talk:Isaiah Berlin

Jewish fellows at Oxford
The comment about Berlin's being only the third Jew elected Fellow of an Oxford College needs some qualification (I emended it from the original identification of him as the second Jew to be elected a fellow). Berlin was the third openly Jewish individual to hold a Fellowship at Oxford (and the first openly Jewish individual to be elected a Fellow of All Souls). One of those before him was Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), a professor of philosophy originally from Australia, who was a fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford from 1882-93 (the college is said to have been unaware that he was Jewish when they appointed him). James Joseph Sylvester (1814-97) was technically not elected to a Fellowship; he was appointed the Savilian Professor of Geometry, and by virtue of this became a Professorial fellow of New College, Oxford. Berlin was preceeded at All Souls by Leopold Stennet Amery, whose mother was born Jewish, but had converted to Protestantism; Amery was not raised a Jew, and hid his Jewish ancestry (although an opponent of anti-Semitism and Nazism and strong supporter of Zionism himself, his son, John Amery, bizarrely and sadly became a Nazi sympathizer, and was executed for treason after World War II).
 * All this talk about Jewish fellows at Oxford is caused by post-War guilt. English and
 * German attitudes towards Jews have been similar or identical for centuries. The British Aliens Act of 1905 was intended to keep Jews out. Similar legislation applied to America.


 * That must be why the British took so many Jews before WW II then when other countries where barring them entry; Kindertransport. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.50.163 (talk) 07:46, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Positive and Negative Liberty
It would be nice to see an improved summation of his very important work on "Two Concepts of Liberty". The paragraph in this article is turgid and not very informative. DonPMitchell (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The para in its current form, as of today, is actually quite misleading. It makes it sound as if Berlin is more a fan of positive liberty than of negative liberty - the opposite is more the case, although Berlin would doubtless have thought this also oversimplifies his position. It would be true to say that he promoted the distinction between positive liberty and negative liberty (though he repeatedly claimed not to have invented this distinction). I won't make this change at this stage, as I haven't read the references given, but I've read a lot of Berlin's work and, over the years, much secondary commentary on it. There's really no doubt about this point. As for his associating positive liberty with French thinkers and negative liberty with British thinkers (or something along those lines) this massively oversimplifies. Indeed, he attributes the first clear recognition and explication of what is now called negative liberty to the French liberal thinker Benjamin Constant. He does, indeed, give examples of other French thinkers (especially Rousseau) whom he associates with positive liberty, but the current statement in the article sounds far more crude than anything Berlin ever wrote or thought. Metamagician3000 (talk) 10:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explicitly argues the opposite as well, highlighting Berlin's statements in their definition and review of negative liberty in their article on Liberalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/#NegLib 2001:638:504:D804:D808:62E0:2794:C797 (talk) 08:55, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

His treatment of two concepts of liberty begins on page 166 of Liberty (2002 edition). On 169, he offers this definition:

"The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the 'negative' sense, is involved in the answer to the question 'What is the area within which the subject - a person or group of persons - is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?' The second, which I shall call the 'positive' sense, is involved in the answer to the question 'What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?' The two questions are clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap."

One is not better than the other, they're value neutral terms. It's not the kind of conflict in which one is better, they are just two concepts with much overlap.

Basically, Negative Liberty allows you to *negate* the interfere by others with your own actions. Positive Liberty is the room you have to positively carry out choice and action. "Without being subject to external forces of any kind" Page 179.

The simplest version is that which he offered in February 1997 at age 87. "I was only talking about political freedom, no other kind. And all I said then, which has been much misunderstood - is that there are two senses of the word 'free'. One is: Am I being tied to a tree? Then I am not free because I can't move. If I am in Jail and can't get out, then freedom means not being in jail - not being tied to a tree." (That's an infringement of negative freedom, as someone has put you in jail or tied you to a tree) The other sense (positive freedom) is, in Berlin's word: "there being a lot of doors through which I could march, and none of them are locked. The more doors are locked, the less free I am". -17FEB1997

Think of positive as meaning "Freedom to" and negative as "Freedom from" Wild-Man-Jack (talk) 13:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

It may be necessary to use an independent illustration:

If you can't get out of a situation that a human being has physically put you in, your negative liberty is infringed. If you're unable to become an elite banking director, because you were born into unfortunate circumstances leaving you an illiterate and uneducated adult in bad health - you do not have the degree of positive freedom enjoyed by say, the child of wealthy merchants in a stable, supportive and well educated family.

These examples are extreme but hopefully the illustration is useful. Wild-Man-Jack (talk) 03:59, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

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Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova has written a collection of poems dedicated to Berlin…. Worth to mention? 2A01:E34:EC55:FE20:3DC9:C85A:4E65:2B5E (talk) 12:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)