Quentin Skinner, Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, discusses the concept of individual freedom, arguing that the usual practice of defining it in negative terms as “absence of interference” is in need of qualification and perhaps abandonment. Because the concept of interference is such a complex one, there has been much dispute, even within the liberal tradition, about the conditions under which it may be legitimate to claim that freedom has been infringed.
