REFLECTIONS ON ANCIENT AND MODERN FREEDOM as Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg Address-has deeply identified itself with the cause of freedom. One of President George W. Bush's first seemingly spontaneous responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was to say that "freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward."2 It is left to those gadflies of the world-the philosophers-to raise the awkward question, What does "freedom" mean? The answer is surprisingly elusive. An acquaintance with Western intellectual history reveals that while "freedom" is almost universally lauded as a value, there is no real consensus on its definition. Nevertheless, at least two broadly influential conceptions of freedom have emerged in the Western tradition: one is the modern liberal understanding, and the other took shape in classical Greece. Both ancient Greek and modern liberal thought are complex and involve many variations. Essentially we are speaking of the main emphasis of the modern liberal tradition on the one hand and the tradition of Greek thought that arises from Socrates on the other. With that caveat and at risk of a certain oversimplification we may call these distinctive conceptions "modern freedom" and "ancient freedom." What distinguishes the two? Perhaps the most influential account of liberalism's distinctive concept of freedom came from one of its key twentieth century champions, Isaiah Berlin, who emphasizes the notion of negative freedom as the defining element of the liberal political tradition. This is basically the idea of freedom from external constraint. This seems to be indeed what is ordinarily meant by the civic freedoms of contemporary liberal democracies. One has "freedom of speech" or "freedom of religion" to the degree one can speak as one desires or practice one's faith without external constraint, especially from the state and its 63