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"The book has two currents. The first is an analysis of the three concepts of freedom, which are called, respectively, negative, positive, and inner. Negative freedom is defined as an absence of coercion, positive freedom as an ability to rule oneself and rule others, inner freedom as being oneself, that is, being an author of one's decisions. Each concept is analyzed both in terms of its development in the history of ideas and in terms of its internal logic. The major problem of negative freedom is to find widely accepted rules according to which this freedom can be distributed. The major problem of positive freedom is to define what constitutes a free person. The major problem of inner freedom is how to correlate it with the proper interpretation of the human self. The book advances the thesis - and this constitutes the other current of its narrative - that we have been witnessing the advent of a new form of despotism, much of it being the effect of the dominant position of liberalism. Precisely because it took a reductionist position, liberalism has impoverished our view of freedom, and consequently, our notion of human nature with its political, moral, and metaphysical dimensions"--

Society as a department store -- The trouble with toleration -- Plato's two democracies -- On postmodern liberal conservatism -- Was Hayek an instrumentalist? -- The free market in a republic -- On communist illusion -- Intellectuals and communism -- Sir Isaiah Berlin-a naïve liberal

Review recent attempts by John Gray (1989, 1993) to: (1) refute the universalist tendencies of modern liberalism, & (2) propose an alternative in the form of postmodern liberal conservatism. While largely supportive of the first, the second undertaking is critiqued as a dubious attempt to synthesize postmodern liberal anthropology with a conservative conception of the social order. Adapted from the source document.