[LATE ADDITION: after I published this piece, I learned from David Owen and Duncan Bell that much of it was anticipated in a paper by James Tully, “"Two Concepts of Liberty" in Context;” chapter 2 of Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ 50 Years Later
P.S. I'd forgotten, but of course a relevant passage in regard to my point 3 occurs in TCL itself, when Berlin invokes, in his critique of the development of "positive liberty" into a rationale for tutelary authoritarianism, of "defenders of authority, from Victorian schoolmasters and colonial administrators to the latest nationalist or Communist dictator" ("Two Concepts of Liberty," Liberty 198)
Thanks for this Eric. I’m currently facing two tight deadlines (and the usual admin load), so my response (for now at least) will be far less full, careful, and documented than I’d like (and blunter). While your observations (or “impressions”) on Berlin’s “digressions” are deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking, I think it’s going too far—to the point of distortion of Berlin’s beliefs and intentions—to say that he accepts or endorses key premises of a civilizing mission for liberalism. Among other reasons, this strikes me as contrary to Berlin’s thought as I tend to read it because:
1) While I think that Berlin often DOES endorse or assume a picture of cultures or civilizations as “wholes” which is …. Dubious and even dangerous (as Steven Lukes has noted), he also seems to pretty clearly endorse the Vico/Herder view that civilizations can’t be ranked or seen in progressive terms where more “advanced” are always better; he also seems to me pretty sympathetic to Herder’s opposition to civilizing missions. The tenor of IB’s writings on nationalism (and Zionism) is to be highly critical of “civilizing missions” and of failures to appreciate the importance of the desires both for political self-rule/self-determination, and for recognition of the validity of different cultures. And one of the implications of value-pluralism—Berlin’s “master idea”—as well as the philosophy of history that Berlin consistently articulates, is that we shouldn’t adopt simple rankings of societies or belief in linear progress: improvements in terms of some values will generally come at costs to other values.
2) A major purpose of TCL is to argue AGAINST the claim that “freedom for an Oxford don is different from freedom for an Egyptian peasant.” Berlin insists that freedom is the same for both—for all—and that some degree of freedom is necessary for everyone to live what we might identify as a decent life, which involves both a capacity to make choices for oneself, and the avoidance of terrible suffering. But IB makes two significant concessions: first, as you note, he stresses that this (clearly) is not a view that has always been held—he is impressed by scholarship suggesting the modernity of the idea of “negative” liberty (not only his reading of Constant, but Michel Villey’s claims about the origins of the idea of subjective rights). Second, he acknowledges that there may be greater practical urgency to secure other goods in certain circumstances; and that liberty must be balanced/traded off against other goods. One might object to these concessions, or their implications. And Berlin is very slippery in his underling theory of values –he asserts that liberty etc. are “objective” values, but is ambiguous or inconsistent between the view that values are “objective” in the sense that they arise from/are rendered valuable by certain intrinsic needs of human nature, and that they are “objective” in the sense that it is a fact that they really are valued by people (and, more broadly, form parts of cultural wholes/lifeworlds/etc.) (IIRC Henry Hardy and I have discussed this a bit in our entry on IB for the SEP).
3) The critique of “positive liberty” in TCL is an argument against tutelary despotism of various sorts. At the same time, you’re quite right that Berlin soft-pedals the sheer cruelty, venality, and depravity of colonial violence; and his tendency to connect imperial projects to the notion of altruistic paternalism has the effect of making it seem more noble in intention, if no less disastrous in effect. This comes out in Berlin’s statement in a conversation in 1964, in which he summarizes the reasoning behind paternalistic despotism as he understands it:
“’Human beings are children. We must first herd them together, create certain institutions, make them obey orders, and we hope later they will see how well we’ve done for them, and they will become rational …’ This is exactly what the British Empire felt towards coloured people in Africa, it’s exactly what schoolmasters feel towards children, and it always leads to bad consequences in the end. It’s quite honourable.”
We might see this too as a (perhaps overly, and dangerously) concessive rhetorical strategy in trying to reach his British (and American) audience: granted you THINK you’re acting for good reasons, you’re still going terribly wrong. (FWIW, I read the claim about people preferring to be ruled by despots of their own to rule by “by some cautious, just, gentle, well-meaning administrator from outside” as not asserting that all British [or other] colonial rule was cautious, just, and gentle; but rather that EVEN IN THOSE CASES WHERE IT WAS, the colonized objected to it more than to rule by members of their own communities. Here I think it’s useful to bear in mind that Berlin knew many British colonial administrators – including those who opposed his own dearly-held goal of Jewish self-rule in what was then Mandate Palestine—and recognized some of them as idealistic and altruistic, others as bigoted and brutal. Some of these (by then ex-) administrators, as Berlin’s colleagues at All Souls, would likely have been in the audience when TCL was delivered. Confrontation was not IB’s style. So one can see why he would soft-pedal on this. But that strikes me as different than presenting a brief for a civilizing mission.
4) I don’t quite understand your point about IB’s subtle misreading of Constant (too subtle for my coarse mind perhaps). IB is not saying that Constant valued ONLY modern liberty (just as IB doesn’t value ONLY negative liberty). IB IS claiming that Constant (and Mill) demand a greater DEGREE of modern/negative liberty (as he says, a “maximum degree”—though it’s not clear what this means; and on one reading it seems clearly false—Mill and Constant don’t advocate for completely unfettered freedom-from-interference) than had been claimed/desired in the ancient world—and by most people at most times. And I think your misreading (if I am right that that’s what it is) of IB here may reflect a larger misunderstanding of his point, alluded to above: that claims for a MAXIMUM (or, a much wider degree) of “negative liberty” is fairly rare, historically, and may not be accepted by many. This strikes me as a) empirically true and b) an important point in understanding the fierce opposition, both in Western and non-Western cultures, among various classes, nations, and religions, to claims for (e.g.) sexual freedoms (or other forms of Millian “experiments in living”) that “we” liberals (or, at least, many of us, including you and I) hold passionately dear.
Apologies if any of this is unclear or poorly framed; and I’m sorry that I don’t have time to go back to find and cite/quote the textual evidence that I’m basing much of this on – but taking another look at Berlin’s writings on nationalism and Zionism, on Vico and Herder, on “Political ideas in the Twentieth Century” and some of the late-life writings on pluralism, might be helpful) -- Josh Cherniss
I don't mean to have triggered you when you have so many other things to do. II will chew over many of your claims and suggestions for further reading. (Some people have said James Tully has anticipated my line.) I agree that a certain kind of conflict aversion may well play a role in some of the claims he makes.
So two quick points:
1. You misread me. I really didn't claim he was willing to adopt a civilizing mission: "I don’t know of evidence that Berlin was ever tempted to adopt a civilizing mission for liberalism." But I DO claim, "he accepts some of its key premises." Maybe that was unhelpfully formulated. So, I agree with you he is not proposing a new imperialism or missionary civilization. But that's not the problem I am identifying.
2. I agree he is a value pluralist and against paternalism. I also agree with you that his Herderian sensibilities are very informative. But in your response you ignore that he is also working with a civilization vs uncivilized (barbarous/savages contrast (as I document) and with a life-cycle of civilizations. Both of these claims do conceptual work for him, and lead him into trouble we really would want to avoid.
Thanks for the response Eric. I hope I’m not being excessively or gratuitously querulous if I take mild exception to your reference to my being “triggered” – as if what I intended as, and sought make, a thoughtful engagement with your provocative points were some kind of emotional eruption. I do find your points provocative,--or thought-provoking—just as you, clearly, find what Berlin wrote to be. But, since I do respect your work (and you!), and would like to take your claims seriously and offer a somewhat fuller (though still incomplete) response to what you did write, I'll try again, at further length:
On your (primary) point about IB’s buying into the idea—or trope—of the civilizations/cultures/nations having life-spans, it’s a valid point, and interesting to read alongside his discussion of Herzen, in whose writing that idea also figures. This is notable in part because 1) Herzen furiously reacts against Michelet’s deployment of the civilized vs. barbarian contrast, 2) Herzen both deploys, and responds to, a contrary valuation of the same idea or trope of civilizational lifespans: according to which “younger’ civilizations or peoples are superior because more “natural,” vibrant, etc. (as you surely know, both sides of the idea of “civilizational age” have had significant influence in the history of Western –and non-Western—thought since the 18th century or so; I have a grad student who’s currently doing fascinating work on how these ideas and terms are developed in Latin-American thought). Berlin, too, is responding to critiques of Western civilization—or liberalism—as suffering the decrepitude of “old age,” or the “decadence” of (unnatural or denatured) (super-) civilization, as these occur both in Russian thought, and in Western European thought (Spengler, Toynbee, proponents of the “New Civilization” of the USSR). So he’s not necessarily working with the assumptions about the superiority of older or more “civilized” cultures that I think you’re attributing to him (or, if you’re not attributing these assumptions to him, but rather suggesting that by using this language, he’s somehow giving these assumptions a home in his thought –well, OK, but then there’s the question of how much his conception or defense of liberalism actually relies on or reproduces these assumptions; I’ve been trying to suggest that given his pluralism and rejection of a unidirectional view of historical development, it doesn’t seem that his way of presenting liberalism—in contrast to say Mill’s—does this). 3) Another feature of Herzen that Berlin highlights and appropriates is the idea that civilizations, and other human endeavors, are valuable in themselves at each moment, not for what they become. The individual/civilization that perishes at a younger age should not be seen as a failure because it has not reached greater maturity, but appreciated for what it has accomplished in itself for its time.
I’m also not persuaded that what IB says assumes, relies upon, or commits him to the dichotomy between civilized peoples and barbarians, as you suggest. Berlin does refer to certain practices as reflecting “barbarian upbringing,” and this being a justification for their suppression. So, that may reflect or feed into the assumptions behind civilizing missions. But Berlin here seems to be referring rather to certain “barbarous” (my word not his) practices such as “public execution.” He deploys that infamous quote from Schumpeter (interesting that you seize on this quote as Leo Strauss did, and subject Berlin’s text to a similarly “close” reading; traces of Straussian training?) Again, I don’t think there is either an association of the civilized/barbarian dichotomy here with (Western or non-Western) cultures, or a suggestion that civilization may or should be imposed on the barbarian (it may also be worth noting that the Schumpeter quote was a late addition to the text; I don’t think that we can dismiss Berlin’s endorsement of it, but nor should we put too much weight on it, I think.) Elsewhere, Berlin tends to be pretty consistent in using “barbarism” to refer to actions that are cruel, brutal, bloodthirsty, or not supported by reason or respect for individual freedom and dignity; he often associates these things with very modern, in some sense “advanced” ideologies, such as Communism (which he is also at pains to deny is merely an expression of Russia’s primitive culture). In his writings Berlin tends to use “civilized” as a description for individuals (including Herzen as it happens); I’d need to check, but I think he tends to shy from using it to characterize civilizations or cultures. In this case he does seem to use it to descript a certain group, and cultural tradition or practice – modern, Western, liberal – but as you note, he presents this as a generally minority view, not as a feature of (Western, European, Christian, or whatever) “civilization.”
I remain unconvinced that the trope of civilizational age or life-cycles is “do[ing] conceptual work” for Berlin in ways that the argument of TCL relies on. Again, the main thrust of the essay seems to be to call into question what Berlin sees as the main rationale for the civilizing mission project (another example of his ventriloquizing the tutelary rationalist positive liberty idea he is critiquing: “If you fail to discipline yourself, I must do so for you; and you cannot complain of lack of freedom, for the fact that Kant’s rational judge has sent you to prison is evidence that you have not listened to your own inner reason, that, like a child, a savage, an idiot, you are either not ripe for self-direction, or permanently incapable of it.” This is the only place where he refers to/invokes the idea of “savages,” as opposed to civilized people, in TCL). So, while you raise fascinating and potentially fruitful points that I’ll have to think about more, and re-read Berlin in light of, I’m not quite persuaded that you’ve demonstrated either that Berlin’s accepts key premises of the civilizing mission (insofar as echoing the trope of cultural lifespans is not tantamount to seeing “older” or “more advanced” or “civilized” cultures or practices as superior to “younger” or “less advanced” ones, or seeing the attainments of the older cultures as a telos toward which the younger ones are striving), or that they do important conceptual work for his overall argument.
I do think that you – or your correspondents—do you a disservice in suggesting that Tully has anticipated you. It’s a while since I read Tully’s piece and I’m overdue to re-read it (as I’ll do when I can get around to writing on Berlin and imperialism), but I think he focuses on the idea that Berlin’s critique of positive liberty, “in context” is meant as a rearguard defense of Western imperialism via undermining the “positive liberty” case for democratic/national self-determination; the (fascinating, perceptive, if I think pressed-too-far) observation about the trope of civilizational life-span is, IIRC, not central to his case, as it is to yours.
My 'trigger' comment was not meant to demean your response. It was just noticeable that it was long despite your lack of time!
I feel very grateful to all readers and respondents to my blog (and other scholarship), and I welcome it greatly. And yes, I feel like there is a lot of mutual admiration; so from my end apologies for my word-choice and thereby insinuate that your response was not serious. More on substance soon.
P.S. I'd forgotten, but of course a relevant passage in regard to my point 3 occurs in TCL itself, when Berlin invokes, in his critique of the development of "positive liberty" into a rationale for tutelary authoritarianism, of "defenders of authority, from Victorian schoolmasters and colonial administrators to the latest nationalist or Communist dictator" ("Two Concepts of Liberty," Liberty 198)
Yes, we agree on this part. We don't agree on the implications of his account of negative liberty.
Thanks for this Eric. I’m currently facing two tight deadlines (and the usual admin load), so my response (for now at least) will be far less full, careful, and documented than I’d like (and blunter). While your observations (or “impressions”) on Berlin’s “digressions” are deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking, I think it’s going too far—to the point of distortion of Berlin’s beliefs and intentions—to say that he accepts or endorses key premises of a civilizing mission for liberalism. Among other reasons, this strikes me as contrary to Berlin’s thought as I tend to read it because:
1) While I think that Berlin often DOES endorse or assume a picture of cultures or civilizations as “wholes” which is …. Dubious and even dangerous (as Steven Lukes has noted), he also seems to pretty clearly endorse the Vico/Herder view that civilizations can’t be ranked or seen in progressive terms where more “advanced” are always better; he also seems to me pretty sympathetic to Herder’s opposition to civilizing missions. The tenor of IB’s writings on nationalism (and Zionism) is to be highly critical of “civilizing missions” and of failures to appreciate the importance of the desires both for political self-rule/self-determination, and for recognition of the validity of different cultures. And one of the implications of value-pluralism—Berlin’s “master idea”—as well as the philosophy of history that Berlin consistently articulates, is that we shouldn’t adopt simple rankings of societies or belief in linear progress: improvements in terms of some values will generally come at costs to other values.
2) A major purpose of TCL is to argue AGAINST the claim that “freedom for an Oxford don is different from freedom for an Egyptian peasant.” Berlin insists that freedom is the same for both—for all—and that some degree of freedom is necessary for everyone to live what we might identify as a decent life, which involves both a capacity to make choices for oneself, and the avoidance of terrible suffering. But IB makes two significant concessions: first, as you note, he stresses that this (clearly) is not a view that has always been held—he is impressed by scholarship suggesting the modernity of the idea of “negative” liberty (not only his reading of Constant, but Michel Villey’s claims about the origins of the idea of subjective rights). Second, he acknowledges that there may be greater practical urgency to secure other goods in certain circumstances; and that liberty must be balanced/traded off against other goods. One might object to these concessions, or their implications. And Berlin is very slippery in his underling theory of values –he asserts that liberty etc. are “objective” values, but is ambiguous or inconsistent between the view that values are “objective” in the sense that they arise from/are rendered valuable by certain intrinsic needs of human nature, and that they are “objective” in the sense that it is a fact that they really are valued by people (and, more broadly, form parts of cultural wholes/lifeworlds/etc.) (IIRC Henry Hardy and I have discussed this a bit in our entry on IB for the SEP).
3) The critique of “positive liberty” in TCL is an argument against tutelary despotism of various sorts. At the same time, you’re quite right that Berlin soft-pedals the sheer cruelty, venality, and depravity of colonial violence; and his tendency to connect imperial projects to the notion of altruistic paternalism has the effect of making it seem more noble in intention, if no less disastrous in effect. This comes out in Berlin’s statement in a conversation in 1964, in which he summarizes the reasoning behind paternalistic despotism as he understands it:
“’Human beings are children. We must first herd them together, create certain institutions, make them obey orders, and we hope later they will see how well we’ve done for them, and they will become rational …’ This is exactly what the British Empire felt towards coloured people in Africa, it’s exactly what schoolmasters feel towards children, and it always leads to bad consequences in the end. It’s quite honourable.”
We might see this too as a (perhaps overly, and dangerously) concessive rhetorical strategy in trying to reach his British (and American) audience: granted you THINK you’re acting for good reasons, you’re still going terribly wrong. (FWIW, I read the claim about people preferring to be ruled by despots of their own to rule by “by some cautious, just, gentle, well-meaning administrator from outside” as not asserting that all British [or other] colonial rule was cautious, just, and gentle; but rather that EVEN IN THOSE CASES WHERE IT WAS, the colonized objected to it more than to rule by members of their own communities. Here I think it’s useful to bear in mind that Berlin knew many British colonial administrators – including those who opposed his own dearly-held goal of Jewish self-rule in what was then Mandate Palestine—and recognized some of them as idealistic and altruistic, others as bigoted and brutal. Some of these (by then ex-) administrators, as Berlin’s colleagues at All Souls, would likely have been in the audience when TCL was delivered. Confrontation was not IB’s style. So one can see why he would soft-pedal on this. But that strikes me as different than presenting a brief for a civilizing mission.
4) I don’t quite understand your point about IB’s subtle misreading of Constant (too subtle for my coarse mind perhaps). IB is not saying that Constant valued ONLY modern liberty (just as IB doesn’t value ONLY negative liberty). IB IS claiming that Constant (and Mill) demand a greater DEGREE of modern/negative liberty (as he says, a “maximum degree”—though it’s not clear what this means; and on one reading it seems clearly false—Mill and Constant don’t advocate for completely unfettered freedom-from-interference) than had been claimed/desired in the ancient world—and by most people at most times. And I think your misreading (if I am right that that’s what it is) of IB here may reflect a larger misunderstanding of his point, alluded to above: that claims for a MAXIMUM (or, a much wider degree) of “negative liberty” is fairly rare, historically, and may not be accepted by many. This strikes me as a) empirically true and b) an important point in understanding the fierce opposition, both in Western and non-Western cultures, among various classes, nations, and religions, to claims for (e.g.) sexual freedoms (or other forms of Millian “experiments in living”) that “we” liberals (or, at least, many of us, including you and I) hold passionately dear.
Apologies if any of this is unclear or poorly framed; and I’m sorry that I don’t have time to go back to find and cite/quote the textual evidence that I’m basing much of this on – but taking another look at Berlin’s writings on nationalism and Zionism, on Vico and Herder, on “Political ideas in the Twentieth Century” and some of the late-life writings on pluralism, might be helpful) -- Josh Cherniss
Hi Josh,
I don't mean to have triggered you when you have so many other things to do. II will chew over many of your claims and suggestions for further reading. (Some people have said James Tully has anticipated my line.) I agree that a certain kind of conflict aversion may well play a role in some of the claims he makes.
So two quick points:
1. You misread me. I really didn't claim he was willing to adopt a civilizing mission: "I don’t know of evidence that Berlin was ever tempted to adopt a civilizing mission for liberalism." But I DO claim, "he accepts some of its key premises." Maybe that was unhelpfully formulated. So, I agree with you he is not proposing a new imperialism or missionary civilization. But that's not the problem I am identifying.
2. I agree he is a value pluralist and against paternalism. I also agree with you that his Herderian sensibilities are very informative. But in your response you ignore that he is also working with a civilization vs uncivilized (barbarous/savages contrast (as I document) and with a life-cycle of civilizations. Both of these claims do conceptual work for him, and lead him into trouble we really would want to avoid.
Thanks for the response Eric. I hope I’m not being excessively or gratuitously querulous if I take mild exception to your reference to my being “triggered” – as if what I intended as, and sought make, a thoughtful engagement with your provocative points were some kind of emotional eruption. I do find your points provocative,--or thought-provoking—just as you, clearly, find what Berlin wrote to be. But, since I do respect your work (and you!), and would like to take your claims seriously and offer a somewhat fuller (though still incomplete) response to what you did write, I'll try again, at further length:
On your (primary) point about IB’s buying into the idea—or trope—of the civilizations/cultures/nations having life-spans, it’s a valid point, and interesting to read alongside his discussion of Herzen, in whose writing that idea also figures. This is notable in part because 1) Herzen furiously reacts against Michelet’s deployment of the civilized vs. barbarian contrast, 2) Herzen both deploys, and responds to, a contrary valuation of the same idea or trope of civilizational lifespans: according to which “younger’ civilizations or peoples are superior because more “natural,” vibrant, etc. (as you surely know, both sides of the idea of “civilizational age” have had significant influence in the history of Western –and non-Western—thought since the 18th century or so; I have a grad student who’s currently doing fascinating work on how these ideas and terms are developed in Latin-American thought). Berlin, too, is responding to critiques of Western civilization—or liberalism—as suffering the decrepitude of “old age,” or the “decadence” of (unnatural or denatured) (super-) civilization, as these occur both in Russian thought, and in Western European thought (Spengler, Toynbee, proponents of the “New Civilization” of the USSR). So he’s not necessarily working with the assumptions about the superiority of older or more “civilized” cultures that I think you’re attributing to him (or, if you’re not attributing these assumptions to him, but rather suggesting that by using this language, he’s somehow giving these assumptions a home in his thought –well, OK, but then there’s the question of how much his conception or defense of liberalism actually relies on or reproduces these assumptions; I’ve been trying to suggest that given his pluralism and rejection of a unidirectional view of historical development, it doesn’t seem that his way of presenting liberalism—in contrast to say Mill’s—does this). 3) Another feature of Herzen that Berlin highlights and appropriates is the idea that civilizations, and other human endeavors, are valuable in themselves at each moment, not for what they become. The individual/civilization that perishes at a younger age should not be seen as a failure because it has not reached greater maturity, but appreciated for what it has accomplished in itself for its time.
I’m also not persuaded that what IB says assumes, relies upon, or commits him to the dichotomy between civilized peoples and barbarians, as you suggest. Berlin does refer to certain practices as reflecting “barbarian upbringing,” and this being a justification for their suppression. So, that may reflect or feed into the assumptions behind civilizing missions. But Berlin here seems to be referring rather to certain “barbarous” (my word not his) practices such as “public execution.” He deploys that infamous quote from Schumpeter (interesting that you seize on this quote as Leo Strauss did, and subject Berlin’s text to a similarly “close” reading; traces of Straussian training?) Again, I don’t think there is either an association of the civilized/barbarian dichotomy here with (Western or non-Western) cultures, or a suggestion that civilization may or should be imposed on the barbarian (it may also be worth noting that the Schumpeter quote was a late addition to the text; I don’t think that we can dismiss Berlin’s endorsement of it, but nor should we put too much weight on it, I think.) Elsewhere, Berlin tends to be pretty consistent in using “barbarism” to refer to actions that are cruel, brutal, bloodthirsty, or not supported by reason or respect for individual freedom and dignity; he often associates these things with very modern, in some sense “advanced” ideologies, such as Communism (which he is also at pains to deny is merely an expression of Russia’s primitive culture). In his writings Berlin tends to use “civilized” as a description for individuals (including Herzen as it happens); I’d need to check, but I think he tends to shy from using it to characterize civilizations or cultures. In this case he does seem to use it to descript a certain group, and cultural tradition or practice – modern, Western, liberal – but as you note, he presents this as a generally minority view, not as a feature of (Western, European, Christian, or whatever) “civilization.”
I remain unconvinced that the trope of civilizational age or life-cycles is “do[ing] conceptual work” for Berlin in ways that the argument of TCL relies on. Again, the main thrust of the essay seems to be to call into question what Berlin sees as the main rationale for the civilizing mission project (another example of his ventriloquizing the tutelary rationalist positive liberty idea he is critiquing: “If you fail to discipline yourself, I must do so for you; and you cannot complain of lack of freedom, for the fact that Kant’s rational judge has sent you to prison is evidence that you have not listened to your own inner reason, that, like a child, a savage, an idiot, you are either not ripe for self-direction, or permanently incapable of it.” This is the only place where he refers to/invokes the idea of “savages,” as opposed to civilized people, in TCL). So, while you raise fascinating and potentially fruitful points that I’ll have to think about more, and re-read Berlin in light of, I’m not quite persuaded that you’ve demonstrated either that Berlin’s accepts key premises of the civilizing mission (insofar as echoing the trope of cultural lifespans is not tantamount to seeing “older” or “more advanced” or “civilized” cultures or practices as superior to “younger” or “less advanced” ones, or seeing the attainments of the older cultures as a telos toward which the younger ones are striving), or that they do important conceptual work for his overall argument.
I do think that you – or your correspondents—do you a disservice in suggesting that Tully has anticipated you. It’s a while since I read Tully’s piece and I’m overdue to re-read it (as I’ll do when I can get around to writing on Berlin and imperialism), but I think he focuses on the idea that Berlin’s critique of positive liberty, “in context” is meant as a rearguard defense of Western imperialism via undermining the “positive liberty” case for democratic/national self-determination; the (fascinating, perceptive, if I think pressed-too-far) observation about the trope of civilizational life-span is, IIRC, not central to his case, as it is to yours.
Hi Josh,
My 'trigger' comment was not meant to demean your response. It was just noticeable that it was long despite your lack of time!
I feel very grateful to all readers and respondents to my blog (and other scholarship), and I welcome it greatly. And yes, I feel like there is a lot of mutual admiration; so from my end apologies for my word-choice and thereby insinuate that your response was not serious. More on substance soon.