Two Concepts of Liberty was the inaugural lecture delivered by Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford on October 31, 1958. It was subsequently published as a 57 page volume by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. It also appears in the collection of Berlin's writing entitled Four Essays on Liberty. A lecture on linear algebra at the Helsinki University of Technology A lecture is a presentation on a particular subject given in order to teach people about that subject, for example by a university or college teacher. ... Sir Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin OM (June 6, 1909 – November 5, 1997) was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 61 days remaining, as the final day of October. ... 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Oxford University Press (OUP) is a highly-respected publishing house and a department of the University of Oxford in England. ...

Berlin distinguished between two forms or concepts of liberty - negative liberty and positive liberty - and argued the latter is politically dangerous because it tempts rulers to curtail people's negative liberties "for their own good." A concept is an abstract, universal idea, notion, or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events, or relations. ... The philosophical concept of negative liberty is the absence of coercion from others. ... Positive liberty, essentially identical with the concept of positive right, an idea that was first expressed and analyzed as a separate conception of liberty by John Stuart Mill but most notably described by Isaiah Berlin, refers to the ability to act to fulfill ones own potential, as opposed to...