Liberty Before Liberalism

Skinner argues that a distinctive 'neo-Roman' theory of liberty dominated early-modern English political thought before being eclipsed by liberalism. He rejects the liberal view, associated with Isaiah Berlin, that freedom is simply the absence of interference [citation:4]. On the neo-Roman account, a person is unfree if they depend on the arbitrary will of another—even if no actual interference occurs [citation:2][citation:6]. A slave with a kind master who never interferes remains a slave, because the master retains the capacity to interfere at will.

Skinner recovered the neo-Roman concept of freedom as non-domination: the absence of arbitrary power over one's life, not merely the absence of actual constraint [citation:4]. This concept has been central to Philip Pettit's republican theory and to contemporary debates between republicans and liberals about the nature of negative liberty [citation:14]. It has also been applied in international political theory to analyze relations of dependency between states, and in discussions of gender, slavery, and democracy [citation:11][citation:13].

Berlin distinguished negative liberty (absence of interference) from positive liberty (self-mastery). Skinner agrees with Berlin that there are historically distinct ways of thinking about liberty, but identifies a third concept that fits neither category [citation:4]. Neo-Roman liberty is not positive, because it does not require realizing a preordained goal; but it differs from negative liberty because unfreedom can exist without coercion or constraint [citation:2]. The key institutional implication: for neo-Romans, individual freedom requires a free state, while for Berlin negative liberty is compatible with autocracy [citation:4].

A central criticism, advanced by Matthew Kramer and Ian Carter, is that the distinction between non-interference and non-dependence is untenable. Kramer argues that dependency is effectively the same as coercion, so the neo-Roman view collapses into the liberal view [citation:4]. Carter contends that republicans are not offering a new concept of liberty but simply arguing that negative freedom is best promoted through certain institutions [citation:4]. Skinner himself has acknowledged these critiques but maintains the conceptual distinction is meaningful.

Liberty Before Liberalism is now firmly embedded in theoretical and historiographical culture. Skinner's neo-Roman liberty appears regularly in textbooks and scholarly commentaries, including those by skeptics of his view [citation:4]. The book has sparked a 'republican revival' and generated a substantial body of scholarship, including a 2022 volume, Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism, reassessing its impact twenty-five years on [citation:13]. Skinner himself has continued to develop the argument in subsequent work, including a 2023 book extending the analysis into the eighteenth century [citation:18].

The title signals Skinner's historiographical claim: before liberalism became the dominant political language, a different and older conception of liberty existed in early-modern Europe. This neo-Roman theory, rooted in Roman law and the civic humanism of the Italian Renaissance, understood freedom as independence from arbitrary power rather than mere non-interference [citation:10][citation:12]. By excavating this lost tradition, Skinner challenges the assumption that the liberal conception of liberty is the natural or inevitable one, showing that our present understanding reflects a historical choice between alternative possible worlds [citation:1].