Nobody who is interested in writing about liberty can avoid Abraham Lincoln’s famous line on the topic: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty.” But why should this be so? The difficulty may have to do with a related question: Is liberty one thing or many things? Friedrich Hayek claimed that liberty is one thing, whereas “liberties appear only when liberty is lacking: they are special privileges and exemptions that groups and individuals may acquire while the rest are more or less free.” Hayek’s antagonists on this question included Raymond Aron, his fellow anti-totalitarian liberal. The great French political thinker, columnist, and Cold Warrior confessed his dislike for employing “liberty” in the singular. He devoted his last lecture at the Collège de France on April 4, 1978, to this very topic. Thanks to Princeton University Press, this last lecture is now available in English, paired with an epilogue by his longtime assistant, Pierre Manent.
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