2
" I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men's, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer - deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realising them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all. to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by reference to my own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realise that it is not. "
― Isaiah Berlin , Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958
4
" There is little need to stress the fact that monism, and faith in a single criterion, has always proved a deep source of satisfaction both to the intellect and to the emotions. [...] Pluralism, with the measure of 'negative' liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal [...]. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognise the fact that human goals are many, not all of them conmensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another. To assume that all values can be graded on one scale, so that it is a mere matter of nspection to determine the highest, seems to me to falsify our knowledge that men are free agents, to represent moral decision as an operation which a slide-rule could, in principle, perform. [...] 'To realise the relative validity of one's convictions', said an admirable writer of our time, 'and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.' To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity. "
― Isaiah Berlin , Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958
Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958