During the third day of Building Bridges ’26, at the Academia Europaea Erasmus Medal Lecture for the Social Sciences Class, Björn Wittrock introduced the award and its recipient. The Erasmus Medal, Wittrock noted, is the academy’s highest scholarly distinction—recognition by peers. This year it went to Quentin Skinner, whose work has reshaped political thought and inspired the social sciences.
Wittrock sketched Skinner’s career: an early member of Academia Europaea since 1989; he began at Cambridge in 1965, spent years at the Institute for Advanced Study until 1979, and later returned to Cambridge as professor of political science. He has edited nearly 20 books, been translated into 28 languages, received more than a dozen honorary doctorates, and belongs to numerous academies. After the president, Donald B Dingwell and Skinner took the stage, and the medal was presented.
Skinner began his lecture with thanks, then asked: How should we think about liberty? The past, he suggested, shows that we may not be thinking about it in the most fruitful way. He reached back into Europe’s remote past. The Digest, commissioned by a Roman emperor, became central to legal education. Even then, it declared that all men and women are either free or slaves. The next section explained: some people are under their own authority, while others live in subjection to someone else’s. Slaves live wholly in the power of masters.
To be free, Skinner explained, is not to live in subjection. If you depend on the will and power of others, you are not free. If you are left to act as you wish but remain dependent, you are not acting entirely according to your own will. The crucial point: you can be unfree even if no one is interfering with your actions. This concept of liberty became widely known in European schools. Freedom requires self-government.
‘If you depend on the will and power of others, you are not free’
From Italy in the 12th century, cities began to overthrow overlords and become self-governing states, creating republican constitutions and the ideal of libertas. The Renaissance, printing, and circulation further developed these ideas. Livy’s Roman History explained republican freedom and gave a definition of libertas. Machiavelli’s Discorsi argued that liberty is impossible under monarchical government, citing examples such as the Netherlands, Erasmus, and the United Kingdom.
Thomas Hobbes redefined liberty again in Leviathan: liberty as the absence of external impediments, and therefore the same under monarchy or republic. James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana insisted there is no guarantee of personal freedom under a monarchy. Yet it was Hobbes’s definition, not Harrington’s, which became widely adopted. Samuel Pufendorf, in Of the Law of Nature and Nations, engaged critically with Hobbes. William Paley, in The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, reinvented the idea after the Declaration of Independence, saying liberty is not independence but the absence of constraints or restrictions. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty described liberty as without impediment, while John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice framed it in terms of constraints and interference.
‘Liberty is not only a matter of interference, but of dependence, domination, and the invisible forces that shape everyday life’
Is this historical idea still useful? Skinner thought we had gone the wrong way in thinking about liberty. The problem, he argued, is silent power. Deunionized workers under their bosses lack liberty because they live under silent power. Silent power also operates between states. It is present in the data collected from our phones and devices. We have no control over it, and it is not for our benefit. If being free means not being subject to something you cannot control, Skinner asked, then what is happening to us?
That final question hung over the lecture: a reminder that liberty is not only a matter of interference, but of dependence, domination, and the invisible forces that shape everyday life.
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