At the heart of every well-developed political theory in the Western tradition is the concept of liberty or freedom. In this authoritative and comprehensive collection of essays, leading contemporary philosophers explore these conceptions from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day. They examine and interpret the views of Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, J.S. Mill, Marx, T.H. Green, Hayek, Oakeshott, Arendt, Rawls, Habermas, and Sir Isaiah Berlin. Animating the discussion throughout is Berlin's distinction between "negative" and "positive" liberty.
This systematic historical appraisal is conducted by a number of eminent thinkers in the field of political philosophy. Altogether, these essays constitute an account of a key topic which students across a wide range of disciplines – including the political and social sciences, alongside philosophy itself – will find of importance.
Zbigniew Pelczynski is a Fellow and Tutor at Pembroke College, and Lecturer in Politics at Oxford University. He was Visiting Professor at Yale University in 1976, and at Harvard University in 1983-4. Dr. Pelczynski has edited two volumes of Hegel’s political writing, and is joint editor of a history of Poland.
John Gray is Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of Mill on Liberty: a defence (1983).
Introduction – John Gray
1 – Liberty in Ancient Greece, Richard Mulgan
2 – Hobbes, D. D. Raphael
3 – Spinoza on the Freedom of Man and the Freedom of the Citizen, George Parkinson
4 – Locke on Liberty, James Tully
5 – Rousseau on Liberty, Patrick Gardiner
6 – Kant’s Theory of Freedom, Charles Taylor
7 – Fichte, Roger Hausheer
8 – Freedom in Hegel, Zbigniew Pelczynski
9 – J. S. Mill on Freedom, G. W. Smith
10 – The Marxian Conception of Freedom, Andrzej Walicki
11 – T. H. Green, John Roberts
12 – Hayek on Liberty, Norman Barry
13 – Oakeshott: Freedom in a Modern European State, John Liddington
14 – On Negative and Positive Liberty, John Gray
15 – Action, Natality and Citizenship: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Freedom, Ronald Beiner
16 – Rawls on Liberty, Jeffrey Paul
17 – Habermas, Jay Bernstein
Bibliography
Index
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