Isaiah Berlin pushes the concept of freedom beyond its confinement to forms of rights, or political, economic, or social practice, and beyond being a personal issue concerning individuals. Freedom is not merely a decision one makes, as it requires the conditions for its exercise. These conditions, tied to society and laws, however comprehensive, remain inadequate to meet the aspirations of personal liberty. Personal freedom, in turn, cannot escape laws and society, making it incompatible with the conditions of freedom itself.

Berlin views freedom as a supreme value linked to other equally important values such as justice, happiness, and love. However, he states, "there is no gain in making freedom, in any of its senses, compatible with these values, or with the conditions of freedom, or by mixing types of freedom together."

While Berlin defends individual (or personal) freedom in this book as the most significant human achievement and confronts all ideas of totalitarianism and determinism with their philosophical and religious foundations as impediments to freedom, he believes there is no universal model for freedom, or a preferred formula for personal or societal liberty. Freedom is not the only value that can or should determine behavior, and considering it an end is a gross overgeneralization, "as one freedom can abort another, and a freedom can face obstacles, or fail to create conditions that make other freedoms, a greater degree of freedom, or the freedom of other people, possible."

The fundamental meaning of freedom is liberation from constraints, from prison, and from subjugation to others; all else is an extension of meaning, or a metaphor. The struggle for freedom means striving to remove the obstacles that prevent its practice, and the fight for personal freedom means seeking to curb interference, exploitation, and enslavement by those with their own ends, not those of the victim.

• Publishing House: Dar Al-Tanweer for Printing, Publishing and Distribution
• Number of Pages: 335
• Year of Publication: 2015
• ISBN: 9789938886542