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IB
Modern Era
Isaiah Berlin
1909–1997 · Negative liberty
Two concepts of liberty, and only one does not devour the person.
Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty distinguished negative liberty, being free from interference, from positive liberty, being one's own master, and warned that the second is easily turned into a warrant for someone else to coerce you in the name of your real self. His value pluralism held that freedom is one genuine good among others and never the whole of life.
Why it matters for freedom
He warned that the promise of a better self is how coercion gets a good conscience.
Who they stood against
the paternalists who claimed to free people by overruling them