Source: Law & Liberty
by Max Skjonsberg
“Quentin Skinner is surely the most prominent living historian of political thought. In a career spanning over sixty years, Skinner has written about the history of political thought from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. His oeuvre includes landmark studies on Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and ideas of the state and liberty, as well as pathbreaking works on historical methodology and hermeneutics. Skinner’s new book, Liberty as Independence, represents his fullest historical investigation into the concept of freedom to date. In the book, Skinner challenges what he takes to be the dominant conception of freedom in the modern world: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty, understood as freedom from external constraints. As an alternative to this ‘liberal’ view of freedom, Skinner proposes his preferred version of liberty understood as independence, and more precisely, self-government.” (05/05/25)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/liberty-against-liberalism/