Berlin’s genealogy tainted positive liberty by associating it with dubious sources

Evidence

Berlin did more than make negative liberty look attractive, positive liberty ominous. He also managed to insinuate that, while most modern, down-to-earth thinkers have taken liberty in the negative sense, the positive construal of liberty was associated with earlier, more suspect sources. He finds the negative conception in ‘the classical English political philosophers’, like Hobbes, Bentham, and Mill, in luminaries of French enlightenment like Montesquieu, Constant, and de Tocqueville, and in American heroes like Jefferson and Paine: in short, in the pantheon of modern liberalism. He associates the positive conception, on the other hand, with continental romantics like Herder, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx; with religious and quasireligious groupings of Buddhists, Christians, and Stoics; and with radical, even totalitarian, political thinkers like Jacobins and communists. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 103

Categorization

• XREF: Berlin’s civilizational mapping of liberty genealogies parallels the reader’s interest in how intellectual traditions get credentialed or stigmatized. — connects to: Nazi antisemitism was novel for demanding genealogical proof, not for its slogans — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 835

Broader Connections

• Nazi antisemitism was novel for demanding genealogical proof, not for its slogans #exemplifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 835