Thinking about Liberty

An Historian’s Approach

By Quentin Skinner

2018

First Published

Number of Pages

2H22M

Audio Length

In Thinking About An Historian’s Approach, the eminent historian Quentin Skinner traces a path in the history of ideas that involves different ways of thinking about liberty – a central concept in social and political thought in today’s Western democracies – that are different from the usual liberal expectation. The definition of freedom as the absence of interference (by external agencies or by the self), though widespread, was by no means the only one prevailing. Skinner discusses two other distinct strands in the genealogy of modern liberty, besides that mentioned, namely freedom as an absence of dependence (as in the freeman or free man vs slave) and freedom as self-realisation. Skinner’s concern is to call attention to these ways of thinking about freedom that are lately in danger of being forgotten. The lecture also presents Skinner’s 2006 Balzan Prize research project, which involved young European scholars in addressing questions about the place of civil, religious and political liberty in the formation of modern Europe.

Author

Quentin Skinner

Author · 16 books

Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a Fellowship upon obtaining a double-starred first in History, Quentin Skinner accepted, however, a teaching Fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he taught until 2008, except for four years in the 1970s spent at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1978 he was appointed to the chair of Political Science at Cambridge University, and subsequently regarded as one of the two principal members (along with J.G.A. Pocock) of the influential 'Cambridge School' of the history of political thought, best known for its attention to the 'languages' of political thought. Skinner's primary interest in the 1970s and 1980s was the modern idea of the state, which resulted in two of his most highly regarded works, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume I: The Renaissance and The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume II: The Age of Reformation.