Liberty: Positive and Negative

What is liberty, exactly? Are there different kinds of liberty — negative and positive, for example? If so, how do these kinds of liberty relate to one another? Or are such distinctions founded on a mistake? Is there one true conception of liberty or freedom? Or do the meanings of these terms proliferate and evolve over time? What's at stake in the way we talk about liberty and freedom? Could confusion about the correct analysis of the concept of liberty threaten our freedom in the real world? Could a better appreciation of the complexity of the conceptual landscape help us better understand what it means to be free?This month in Cato Unbound we take on these big questions. Philosophers David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, authors of the recently released book A Brief History of Liberty, will try to show us the way through the thicket. And we've got a stellar line-up of philosophers at hand to tell us if they've lead us into the clear. They Tom G. Palmer of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Cato Institute, Penn State's John Christman, and Philip Pettit of Princeton. Each, we shall see, is an articulate proponent of slightly different conceptions of liberty.