Liberty as Independence (with Quentin Skinner)

Liberty as Independence (with Quentin Skinner)

Sometime in the eighteenth century, a great transformation took place in the language of liberty. Since the days of the Roman Republic, to be free had meant to be independent of the arbitrary will of another. You enjoyed freedom if nobody could impose their will on you without your prior consent. You were free if you were your own master, and you were unfree to the extent that you answered to anyone else.


This was the concept of liberty which dominated political discourse in England until the outbreak of the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. How it gave way in the wake of the Declaration of Independence to the idea of freedom as absence of restraint — to the concept of negative liberty — is the question that Quentin Skinner, the doyen of intellectual historians in the English-speaking world, attempts to answer. In doing so, he also questions whether the road that was taken was the right one for a democratic society to take. In order to be free, is it enough that we encounter no obstruction on our way, or is something more, and more fundamental, required?

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Episoder(37)

Decomposing Historians (with Elise Garritzen)

Decomposing Historians (with Elise Garritzen)

Should you judge a book by its cover? Victorian historians and their readers did; and through examining the decisions that went into binding, titling, annotating and prefacing historical works, we can...

29 Mai 1h 5min

Plato’s Political Ideas: From Limited Rule to Tyranny (with Melissa Lane)

Plato’s Political Ideas: From Limited Rule to Tyranny (with Melissa Lane)

Who will rule the rulers? Who will chaperone the chaperones? Who will guard the guardians? These questions are rarely associated with Plato. Usually seen as the arch-defender of the rule of the enligh...

30 Mar 1h 15min

Sketching Characters: from Ancient Moralists to the Mansplainer (with Katie Ebner-Landy)

Sketching Characters: from Ancient Moralists to the Mansplainer (with Katie Ebner-Landy)

Theophrastus was an ancient Greek philosopher. He wrote widely on topics including metaphysics, plant-life, dizziness, odours, and juice. Most notably, though, he was the author of a colourful text de...

10 Feb 1h 1min

The Curious Case of Martin Crusius (with Richard Calis)

The Curious Case of Martin Crusius (with Richard Calis)

Martin Crusius (1526-1607) spent most of his life in the Lutheran town of Tübingen. While there, he became Europe's foremost expert on Ottoman Greece. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he held with...

8 Des 202540min

Mary Wollstonecraft: The Honest Educator (with Sylvana Tomaselli)

Mary Wollstonecraft: The Honest Educator (with Sylvana Tomaselli)

By her death in 1797 at the age of 38, Mary Wollstonecraft had produced a body of work unmatched for its honesty and critical acumen. In a society where marriage often amounted to legal prostitution, ...

22 Okt 202557min

African-American Ideas about Race (with Mia Bay)

African-American Ideas about Race (with Mia Bay)

After the founding of the American Republic, African-American Intellectuals never accepted passively the narratives of racial difference maintained by the defenders of slavery and segregation. At a ti...

17 Sep 20251h

Abolitionist Ideas: Battling the Slave Trade in Britain

Abolitionist Ideas: Battling the Slave Trade in Britain

If you visited Britain around 1700, you’d find hardly a single advocate of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. You’d hear the institution of slavery described as a moral evil, but no one w...

9 Jun 20251h 10min

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