Phocaean and I discuss Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
* We define negative and positive liberty and how John Stuart Mill does not satisfyingly reconcile them.
* We discuss Berlin’s own attempt to resolve this tension and his failure to do so.
* We look at how Berlin seems to point toward a so-called messy pluralism but in fact has a universalist position undergirding his view.
* We consider why it is that Berlin admires Constant so much on one hand, and yet fails to properly digest his teaching on the other.
* We blame Berlin for coping with his failure through a poetic flight from reason. We also speak a little more extemporaneously about related questions and issues.
