SOURCE: “Two Concepts of Liberty Thirty Years Later: A Sartre-Inspired Critique,” in Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall, 1990, pp. 297-322.

In the following essay, McBride challenges Berlin's concept of negative liberty by comparing it to Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of freedom.

“Two Concepts of Liberty” was first delivered by Isaiah Berlin as an inaugural lecture, upon his installation in the Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, on October 31, 1958. Oxford's influence in the world of philosophy, at least in the English-speaking world, was at that time still at a height from which it has since greatly declined. But Berlin himself was never regarded as a quintessential proponent, if indeed there ever really was such a thing, of Oxford analytic philosophy. He was always somewhat apart: an enormously engaging lecturer to audiences of scholars and undergraduates alike, endowed with a vast repertoire of cultural allusions from diverse...