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Among the seven essays collected in Russian Thinkers is perhaps Isaiah Berlin's most famous work, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," which begins with an ancient Greek proverb ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing") before taking on Leo Tolstoy's philosophy of history, showing how Tolstoy "was by nature a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog." The other half dozen pieces examine other Russian writers and philosophers, including Alexander Herzen, Ivan Turgenev, and Mikhail Bakunin--although the latter, Berlin says, "is not a serious thinker. There are no coherent ideas to be extracted from his writings of any period, only fire and imagination, violence and poetry, and an ungovernable desire for strong sensations." Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptibly about Russian thought and culture as the Latvian-born Berlin, and the history covered in Russian Thinkers is a unique elaboration of Berlin's theses concerning the impact of ideas upon culture.
Customer Reviews:
Berlin at his best - the true fox .......2004-11-11
This study of Russian thinkers is profound and moving. Isaiah Berlin was capable of writing about 'ideas' and their ' development' in a constantly fascinating way. His most well- known essay ' The Hedgehog and the Fox' is in this volume and it seems that Berlin himself was one of those who knew many things and wanted to know many things. His political ideas also took the shape of recognizing conflicting value systems as having validity even when those came from within a single person. Here he writes about the great Russian social and political thinkers Tolstoy, Herzen,Belinsky , Bakunin , Turgenev with characteristic insight, irony and sympathy.
This is a volume anyone interested in the history of ideas should not miss.
Highly Useful Historic Resource.......2002-10-28
This book provides an excellent introduction to the history of Russian thought. I supplemented it with the pertinent chapters of Billington's "The Icon and the Axe" to piece together a general outline of the evolution of Russian political philosophy. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention to Berlin's own philosophizing, but then that wasn't my objective. I found one of his general observations about Russian thought to be particularly useful, i.e. the tendency to follow an idea through to its fullest consequences, no matter how extreme or objectionable. The book nicely sets the stage for how Marxism was able to take hold, showing that it was in some ways an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, intellectual development. The problem is, now that the book has allowed me to cobble together a general framework of Russian thought, the only possible next step is to start directly reading Hegel and Marx! And who wouldn't try to put off a daunting task like that?
Worth the read but...........2002-10-09
Berlin is an interesting and I agree knowing commentator, but one gets the feeling that he understands there is something awry in Communism, but he's not quite sure what. His ideas of freedom are on the mark, but in the post-Communist world they don't quite get to the point. I highly reccomend papal biographer and political pholosopher George Weigel's recent commentaties, (available online). Liberalism was not and is not a sufficient answer to utopian ideology, which Berlin nevertheless correctly asserts will inevitably degenerate into totalitatianism. Even more, in the post-cold war world, relativism has usurped "true" freedom, which presents perhaps an even more dangerous problem than the Soviet one.
The Liberal Predicament.......2002-06-15
This is one of these intellectual & spiritual odysseys of the mind that, after you've digested them, remain embedded in the protoplasm of your mental being. All the Russian 19th century greats (except Pushkin and Dostoevsky ) are here: Herzen, Belinsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bakunin. In a book so saturated with ideas, it is not easy to make a pick- my favorite ones are:
-the hedgehog and the fox metaphor ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"). Human beings are categorized as either "hedgehogs" (whose lives are embodiment of a single, central vision of reality according to which they "feel", breathe, experience and think- "system addicts", in short. Examples include Plato, Dante, Proust and Nietzsche.) or "foxes" ( who live rather centrifugal than centripetal lives, pursue many divergent ends and, generally, possess a sense of reality that prevents them from formulating a definite grand system of "everything"-simply because they "know" that life is too complex to be squeezed into any Procrustean unitary scheme. Montaigne, Balzac, Goethe and Shakespeare are, in various degrees, foxes.)
-precarious position of liberalism-something Berlin was well aware of. A "non-belief belief", liberalism certainly doesn't satisfy "deeper" human needs; also, it managed, following its very nature, to stay away from planned genocides & siren songs of totalitarian power. Yet- Berlin has failed (maybe due to the "history of ideas" nature of this compilation of essays) to answer more fundamental questions plaguing liberal mindset: is it fit to grapple with the 20th/21st century burning issues ? Or- has it mutated into a dark parody of itself, making a pact with postmodern imperial power(s) as represented by X-Filesque military & financial "Free World" greedy elites which batten on the unenviable position of the much of the globe (Latin America, Africa, East Europe & the greater part of Asia) ?
-on strong side, essays on Herzen (Berlin's hero), Turgenev ("Fathers and Children" controversy) and Bakunin (juxtaposed to Herzen) are fresh, universal & not dated at all. Tolstoy is covered unsurpassably, and I doubt it can be done better. On the other hand, some essays, like those on Russia and 1848 revolutions, German Romanticism and Russian populism, although brilliantly weaven, are, in my opinion, more of historical interest than pertinent to our contemporary metastable anxiety condition.
Be as it may: this is an exquisite intellectual tapestry. Buy it.
From Tolstoy to Chernobyl.......2000-06-05
Consider Isaiah Berlin a leading expert on theories of history and Russia an immense problem. The first step is the realization of how big this problem looms in the history of the world. The approach taken by Isaiah Berlin is a combination of history, philosophy, and literature. The most famous chapter of this book, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," examines the falsifications used in WAR AND PEACE to belittle what is usually considered historical in order to prove what Tolstoy believed about real complexity. Some knowledge of calculus (college-level mathematics) might be helpful to get the overall picture. "Our ignorance of how things happen is not due to some inherent inaccessibility of the first causes, only to their multiplicity, the smallness of the ultimate units, and our own inability to see and hear and remember and record and coordinate enough of the available material." (pp. 44-45) The ludicrous embrace of a doctrine like communism was doomed as soon as communism became an enemy of the multiplicity involved in actually getting anything done in a reasonable way, but the people involved needed an ideology to convince them that they had a system for generating nuclear power at Chernobyl, for example. That example is the best, at the moment, for showing how right Tolstoy could be at times. More recent efforts to make Russia function as a free marketplace have demonstrated a danger to which any notion that might be used as an attempt to free a people who don't know the first thing about doing things right could fall prey. All in all, I would rather read this book, as difficult as it is, than be the president of Russia or worse, a newspaper reporter there.
Book Description
In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom--among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, Berlin brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times.
Customer Reviews:
Do you want to make a step to understand the present world?.......2006-07-26
If you think the present world is full of contradictions, of opposing philosophies, and that it might be doomed, please give a chance at this set of essais by Isaiah Berlin. Not only his writing is clear and flowing, but his argumentation is very enlightening. Isaiah Berlin will never be controversial. He will never take a strong position. He will let you decide. Like an archeologist, he put back to life the ideas who were considered crazy at their time, and now looked much more reasonable. Even the introduction by Roger Hausheer gives you a lecherous taste of what is inside. And I was not disappointed. Thinking that there are ten more books on essays by Berlin, my head is spining. Did he not say already everything in this one...?
The special joy of seeing a great mind work.......2005-01-17
Itis simply a great pleasure to read Isaiah Berlin. His richness in thought, his verbal fluency his strong sense of values and clear understanding of the historical context in which he is presenting the ideas- all this combines to make reading him an adventure of the mind. In this work the third group of his essays put together by his faithful student and friend Henry Hardy the theme is those thinkers who go against the current, who walk their own way, hear their own drummer. Macchiavelli, Vico,Hume,Montesquieu, Herzen, Disraeli,Moses Hess, Verdi, and Marx, Sorel are all interpreted here . There is an essay on' The Counter- Enlightentment, one on The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities, one on ' Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power. The introduction to the volume is written by Roger Hausher.
As with all the writings of Berlin one will learn a great deal by reading this work- and have great pleasure in doing so.
Brilliant!.......2002-09-05
Sir Isaiah Berlin was the greatest exponent of Liberal Pluralism
in the 20th Century. "Against The Current" is probably his best collection of essays. The essays on Verdi and George Sorel are worth the price of the book alone. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You will not regret it.
Brilliant!.......2002-09-05
Sir Isaiah Berlin was the greatest exponent of Liberal Pluralism
in the 20th Century. "Against The Current" is probably his best collection of essays. The essays on Verdi and George Sorel are worth the price of the book alone. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You will not regret it.
Phenomenal, rambling, tour de force........2000-06-24
In this, his most accessible work, Berlin deals with a host of subjects. The volume contains one of the truly great critical essays on Machiavelli, a brilliant parallel lives exposition of Marx and Disraeli, the classic essay on the Counter-Enlightenment and an amazing 'Hedgehog and Fox'-like analysis of Verdi. Yet again Berlin shows us his gift of imaginative insight - what Vico called 'entrare' - that allows him apparent access to minds, ideologies and cultures utterly alien to his own. He also shows us his gifts as a musician and rhetoriceur, using all his old tricks of repitition and word association. This is, as is usual in his works, as much a flaw as a blessing,and his 'entrare' often ends on a note achingly reminiscent of his own political pluralism, but for all that it is still a masterly collection.
Average customer rating:
- A memorable essay in the history of ideas
- Tolstoy's views on history elucidated
- A brilliant book....
- A creative interpretation of Tolstoy
- A view of existance, history that many never think.
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The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
Isaiah Berlin
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Book Description
The masterly essay on Tolstoy's view of history, in which Sir Isaiah underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too. --Arnold Toynbee
Customer Reviews:
A memorable essay in the history of ideas .......2004-10-18
This is perhaps the most famous essay ever written in the history of ideas. Berlin analyzes the mind of Tolstoy as revealed in 'War and Peace'. He uses a quotation from Aristochulus , "The hedgehog knows one big thing, but the fox knows many little things "He then categorizes various intellectual figures as hedgehogs or foxes. He says that Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. In other words Tolstoy longed to put all reality into one great explanatory system but his faithfulness to his own remarkable sense of perception led him to see everywhere the fine distinctions and individual differences which constitute his own richly varied world.
What is interesting is that Berlin himself was fundamentally a fox in the world of ideas. He believed that there could be no one fundamental system explaining all. He not simply reveled in the variety of ideas, but he thought in terms of values that ' ideal ends' even within the individual's own thought are incompatible. That is that it is not simply a question of the ' variety of the world' which confounds the system - builder but the ' inherent contradictions ' within it , which cannot be resolved into any great single Platonic or Hegelian system.
A celebrator of the variety of life and existence Berlin saw that Tolstoy could represent and create such variety in the highest possible way while still somehow wishing he were able to unite it all into one.
Apparently there is 'no unified field theory' in the world of history or the history of ideas , either.
Tolstoy's views on history elucidated.......2003-05-28
Sir Isaiah Berlin has written a critical acclaim of the historic views of famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy as expressed in one of his masterpieces "War and Piece". In 'The Hedgehog and The Fox' (1953), Dr. Berlin compares and contracts the monist and pluralist historical philosophies. According to Archilochus "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This can be interpreted that there is a philosophy of a single undiminished holistic truth or principle governing all history, or there is a myriad little ideas, truths and inclinations which together govern mens historical experience.
Tolstoy, according to Berlin, is a fox (whose talent is by the way in precisely being a fox), who is however convinced in the ways of the hedgehog. Tolstoy is at his greatest when he describes the subtle undertones of human existence, these barely perceptible little differences which makes living so full and colorful, range of emotions and feelings. He does not believe, however, that this is all that is, and insists on some ill-defined fundamental truth. This makes his writing wooden, unhistorical, and simplistic at times.
Berlin makes a perceptive observations on the interest of Tolstoy's in some of the figures of Counter-Enlightenment (such as Maestre and Vico). These proponents of the view of the world which denies all-pervasive powers of reductionist science and allocates the central place to a simple idea (e.g. Christian moral idea) are closer to Tolstoy; and from this point of view and interest Tolstoy's last "religious" period owes its inspiration. Berlin shows Tolstoy as a tragic genius riddled with contradictions and frustrations of misapprehension of his enormous talents in inability to say what he wanted to say the most - paint a true picture of human historical experience.
Style of Berlin's polemic is as always colorful, insightful, supremely observant and scholarly. Essay is no longer then 75 pages and would make for a delightful Sunday afternoon reading. Highly recommended!
A brilliant book...........2000-10-19
I really want to disagree with the reviewer below who said that this book is "overly academic" and "not interesting to someone without a serous research interest in Tolstoy". C'mon.
This is a HIGHLY readable book though probably only one that should be read after having read 'War and Peace'. In combination, the boring sections of 'War and Peace' and this book provide a pretty interesting dialogue and line of thought that can be comprehended by most anyone.....
This is a beautiful book and one that can be appreciated by tons the teeming multitudes and not just self-righteous undergraduates at small colleges in Massachusetts. Berlin is a very readable philosopher, which explains much of the reason WHY he is held in such esteem in the Anglo-American philosophical community....
Finally, who could ever say that this little tiny red book was worth neither the effort nor the expense. A must-buy.
A creative interpretation of Tolstoy.......2000-07-19
In this essay, Isaiah Berlin discusses and interprets Tolstoy's view of history. In the process, he uses Tolstoy's enormous novel, WAR AND PEACE, as his major source. Those of you who have read WAR AND PEACE will remember the frequent theoretical passages that discuss the practice and philosophy of history. These passages provide Berlin with fodder for his examination.
Berlin claims that there are two broad categories of thinkers: hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs single-mindedly pursue one ideological goal and organize their thoughts in relation to it. Foxes are knowledgeable in a number of areas but do not specialize in any one.
The basic claim of Berlin's essay is that Tolstoy is a fox masquerading as a hedgehog. Tolstoy desperately wants to believe in a single thing, but is thwarted by his own personality. This dynamic profoundly affects Tolstoy's view of history. As a fox, he exposes past philosophies of history as the oversimplifications they are. They do not sufficiently take into account the complexity of every event and of every individual. However, Tolstoy is unable to produce the positive theory of history which he demands of himself (i.e. he is unable to make himself a hedgehog).
Berlin's essay is a very innovative and interesting interpretation of an aspect of Tolstoy's thought that is frequently dismissed. It is also a work of literary and philosophical criticism. Its tone is academic, and if Tolstoy's own digressions in WAR AND PEACE bore you, you may not want to pick this book up. Given the interest, though, this book is a thought-provoking complement to the work of this sometimes enigmatic Russian author.
A view of existance, history that many never think........1998-05-04
An easy read--written in extremely beautiful language--that makes one re-think of the world and society around.
Book Description
Liberty is a revised and expanded edition of the book that Isaiah Berlin regarded as his most important - Four Essays on Liberty, a standard text of liberalism, constantly in demand and constantly discussed since it was first published in 1969. Writing in Harper's, Irving Howe described it as 'an exhilarating performance - this, one tells oneself, is what the life of the mind can be'. Berlin's editor Henry Hardy has revised the text, incorporating a fifth essay that Berlin himself had wanted to include. He has also added further pieces that bear on the same topic, so that Berlin's principal statements on liberty are at last available together in one volume. Finally, in an extended preface and in appendices drawn from Berlin's unpublished writings he exhibits some of the biographical sources of Berlin's lifelong preoccupation with liberalism. These additions help us to grasp the nature of Berlin's 'inner citadel', as he called it - the core of personal conviction from which some of his most influential writing sprang.
Customer Reviews:
Great treatise on the meaning of liberty.......2007-08-14
I read this book for a graduate class in Philosophy. Berlin in the book is talking about different understandings on liberty. How do liberals think about liberty? Not only liberals think about liberty, many isms do, there are many different ways to think about liberty. Berlin makes a few distinctions on liberty. In "Two Concepts of Liberty," he distinguishes between political liberty and individual Liberty. Political Liberty, democratic liberty having a vote and participating, like in Greek city-state. No limit on power of the government over any aspect of citizen's life, but a citizen has some control over government through his vote. Not all are citizens, women, slaves, etc. Liberals are interested in individual liberty; choose the activities they want to do. A tension between Political Liberty and Individual Liberty. Political Liberty implies that there is majority rule through the vote. Maybe a majority won't impose on people, but that can change through the majority vote. If you have a system that you set up to insure certain individual rights like the U.S. does you protect certain liberties like the 1st amendment to free speech. These rights are taken away from voting on by the majority and to change them you need a super majority. This takes away Political Liberty, so there is that antagonism between both liberties. Unless you are an anarchist, there are certain functions and liberties that must be given up to the government. The more individual freedoms you keep from government the less value Political Liberty has to citizens the fewer things we get to decide.
The famous concepts Berlin distinguishes between are Positive Liberty and Negative Liberty. 1. Positive Liberty means self-control over your own life. 2. Negative liberty means you are free from interference from other people. Other people can't force you to do something. Positive liberty is self-mastery, self-control. Negative liberty means you are free from interference from other people. Others can't compel you to act in a way you don't want to act. At first these sound like two sides of the same coin. What Berlin points out historically is that people who believe in Positive Liberty have taken it in a very different direction than those that believe in Negative Liberty. What they (Positive Liberty adherents) have done is to infer that from each person you can distinguish between what he or she thinks he or she wants, and what his or her better self or true self would want. Therefore, there is this idea that we all might have certain desires that we want but that they are not expressive of our real essence. An obvious case is an addict who has some part of them that really don't want the drug. Even though they put all their time and energy in getting the drug it might be tempting to think that they really don't want the drug. Once they got the distinction between ordinary desires that you are aware of and the desires that you truly want, then the Positive Liberty people are tempted to say that for someone to really have charge of their life to really have liberty than we have to make sure that they are doing what their true self wants to do, not the self that they are consciously aware of, not the self not the desires that seem to them to be strongest. But what the angels of their better nature want, that's real freedom. Even when the person is protesting that that isn't what they want, if you are making them do what their true self wants really then you are making them do good. Kant would be a supporter of this view.
We have two aspects of human nature. The numeral self and nominal self. The numeral self is our true self and is the basis of morality this is why we are morally obligated to do things because our true self accepts a certain kind of law and imposes it on us. We are obligated to obey it because it is a law our true self chooses even though we may not be consciously aware of it, we may have all kinds of desires pulling us in different directions. We are obligated to do it because it is what our true self chooses. Rousseau is very much in this tradition. He says people can be forced to be free. Historically, this is the direction that many people who believe in Positive Liberty go in.
The Negative liberty people tend to say that other people don't tell them what to do. They could have gone the same route thinking about two kinds of selves, and they could say negative liberty is when your lower self doesn't tell your higher self what to do, but that historically hasn't happened. That is not the kind of liberty they have been thinking about. Liberals generally belong to this kind of negative liberty position. The kind of liberty liberals tend to care about is freedom from other individuals or the government. Free to the extent no one tells you what to do, none of this true self-stuff. You are free if other people can't stop you from doing what you want to do. All the different liberals are going to believe that people should have a significant amount of this kind of (negative), liberty. All the critics of liberalism are not all going to want to take all this kind of liberty away, but they are going to definitely say that liberty is not as important as the liberals think it is and that it ought to be restricted in some significant ways.
Berlin says, once you see how the Positive Liberty idea was developed, it turns out not to have the same kind of tension with Political Liberty that Negative Liberty does. Since, you could always have the view what peoples true selves want can be discovered by a kind of democratic process, so that what the majority votes for is what everyone wants, even the minority, they just didn't really know what they wanted. We all really want what is best for our community, as Rousseau would say.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.
Freedom of the wolves has often meant death of the sheep.......2007-04-14
Liberty is a very precious and rare quality of a living condition.
As I. Berlin states, `The periods and societies in which civil liberties were respected, and variety of opinion and faith tolerated, have been very few and far between, oases in the desert of human uniformity, intolerance and oppression.'
I. Berlin explains clearly that liberty has two faces: a positive and a negative one.
Positive liberty is the answer to the question: who controls? Am I my own master?
Negative liberty circumscribes the area wherein a third person can prevent anybody to make a free choice.
On these bases, a free society can be organized, with 1) absolute rights (not absolute powers) and 2) frontiers, defined in terms of rules, within which men should be inviolable.
For the author, freedom is not an end, but a means to create `room for personal ends', for happiness. He rightly criticizes E. Fromm: freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself.
Philosophically, freedom has been ferociously contested by the determinists, the defenders of `historical inevitability' (Hegel, Marx, Bacon, Fourier, Comte). The author remarks judiciously that if the world is ruled by determinism, nobody is responsible: there is no free will, no morality, and no justice. Individual choice is an illusion. Determinism represents the world as a prison.
A more brutal kind of determinism is presented by those who believe that there is a final answer, a unique goal, a central principle that governs our life. This principle and its executioners provoked barbarous consequences.
Isaiah Berlin's reflections on liberty are profound and still very actual.
Not to be missed.
Stimulating but Perhaps Dated.......2007-02-26
Berlin's considerable reputation rests largely on his essays. In his chosen areas of political philosophy and intellectual history, he produced no major systematic works. His essays, particularly those in the history of ideas, are long, insightful, and informed by impressive breadth of knowledge and a humane temperament. He was a consistently excellent and sometimes elegant writer. Of all his essays, he felt his most substantial work was the writings on Liberty collected in this volume. The core of this book is the Four Essays on Liberty, which appeared originally as a book of that title about 40 years ago.
How good are these essays? They were written originally in the late 1940s through late 1950s and were directed, at least in part, at issues that preoccupied British intellectuals of that period. The backdrop was the Cold War, and debates about the justification of socialist ideals and the nature of socialism. Most of these essays have not worn well. I don't think there is much original or profound in either the first or last essays of the four; Political Ideas in the 20th Century, and John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life. I suspect most critical readers will find the essay entitled Historical Inevitability to be fairly pedestrian. This leaves the most celebrated of these essays, Two Concepts of Liberty. It is on this essay and some of his best historical studies that Berlin's reputation rests.
In Two Concepts, Berlin developed his famous distinction between "negative" and "positive" concepts of liberty. He particularly focused on how a certain rationalist conception of "positive" liberty can become, though often via a tortuous route, a justification for attacks on "negative" liberty and assault basic human rights. Berlin argues that this conception of "positive" liberty leads to the great crimes of the 20th century. This leads to an eloquent plea for some form of pluralism in regard to ultimate human goals. Berlin develops this argument brilliantly and with a self-assured writing style that is a pleasure to read.
But how good is his argument? As he himself points out, there are circumstances underwhich the distinction between "negative" and "positive" liberty can be cloudy, casting doubt on the utility and reality of this distinction. He is incorrect in assigning blame for all the terrible crimes of the 20th century to the rationalist view of "positive" liberty. This is certainly a fair criticism with respect to Marxism and the great crimes of Marxist states. But does it apply to Fascism and violent nationalism? These movements were marked by wholesale rejection of rationalism and exaltation of emotion, quite different from what he describes as the rationalist wellspring of all the crimes of the 20th century.
Berlin is an interesting and thought provoking essayist but not a major figure in political thought or intellectual history.
Essays of the master moral philosopher of political liberty .......2006-04-27
Henry Hardy the devoted student and editor of the work of Isaiah Berlin has reedited and expanded Berlin's on Liberty. These essays are at the heart of Berlin's liberal political philsophy. And their most well- known conception is the distinction between 'negative and positive liberty'.
This is the way Wikipedia makes the distinction.
"He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. I am more "negatively free" to the extent that fewer opportunities for possible action are foreclosed or interfered with. Positive liberty he associated with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, he believed that as a matter of history, the positive concept of liberty has proven more susceptible to political abuse. He argued that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers were frequently tempted to equate liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when the relevant ideals of positive liberty were, in the course of the 19th century, used to defend ideals of national self-determination, imperatives of democratic self-government, and the communist notion of humanity collectively asserting rational control over its own destiny. In this way of thinking, Berlin contended, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline - those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and perhaps of humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism."
Another of Berlin's major essays in this work deals with the conception of 'Historical Inevitability'. Here he is most fierce in his critique of Marxism with its posited inevitable stages of history. Something of a great man himself, Berlin was a strong champion of the idea that great individuals shape human events, and introduce novel transformations of reality.
A third center of Berlin's thought has to do with his 'pluralism' his sense of the differing ideals and values different societies have. His pluralism however is what he called an 'objective pluralism' as he thought that there are certain values such as 'individual liberty' which should prevail in all societies.
Ultimately though he claimed that both for the individual and for society 'ideal ends' often conflict, and that perfect realization in action, is therefore impossible. Life for Berlin moral decision for Berlin thus has a tragic element of incompleteness and contradiction.
In this sense of our limitation deriving from our own ideal ends and actions, Berlin 's thought ultimately corresponds to arguments concerning the limitations of Mind which have been made in modern thought regard to a wide variety of other areas of human inquiry, from theology to mathematics.
not another conservative or neo-liberal.......2005-10-04
I've read amazon reviews of this book that seemed to claim Berlin's liberalism for some kind of conservative or neo-liberal stance.
I find this misleading. I hope that nobody will be kept from looking into Berlins writings by that.
It is true that, especially in this book, Berlin argues against the fallacies of Marxism. And some shorter texts that the editors published here for the first time and an editorial essay make altogether clear, that Berlin intended a defence against the totalitarian currents in contemporary thinking of his time – being a victim of the Russian Revolution himself.
I read these essays very closely to see whether Berlin appeared to me like some kind of precursor of neo-liberlism (like Leo Strauss) but he is nothing of the kind. I am quite sure, that given the different situation today he would argue just as concisely against the neo-liberal ideology as he did against Marxism. For instance he admits that certain material means have to be furnished for freedom to be properly acted out. He does not leave everything to the supposedly free (if poor) individual. But active social politics were not the problem of his time. The welfare state was growing if anything rather too strong than to weak – it is missing today when the state is abused by neo-liberals.
His point was to defend freedom against any claim that there was „only one true way of seeing things“ which is precisely what Marxism did and what the preachers of the Washington Consensus etc. and propagandists like Fukuyama with his silly „end of history babble“ do today.
Berlin's argument is basically defensive – against the totalitarian impact of nationalism and communism. That is why he favors „negative freedom“ instead of positive freedom (i.e. the aspect: who governs which he links to the well-known totalitarian concept of true self, higher self, higher political conscience and so forth in the name of which so much manipulation and pressure was executed).
But while one sympathizes with his motives and his scepticism one can't overlook that negative freedom is just one important aspect. Berlin writes the basic image of freedom was the man tied to a tree or put in jail. Negative freedom meant being free from such (political) obstacles.
He doesn't seem to see that he is confusing liberty and liberation.
The main question (to this reader) is: what will we do once we ARE liberated?
That leads me to the question of inner freedom, i.e. psychological aspects of consciousness that Berlin avoids like most other scholars. That doesn't help.
If one wants to understand why man – born free – always enslaves himself again, negative freedom (liberation) alone is no answer.
Berlin stresses – although sceptically – the importance of knowledge to avoid prejudice and nationalism. But he doesn't care enough about the functioning of the subject that is supposed to use this knowledge.
He might have argued like so many before and after him that this was much to tricky terrain. But so is history, so is politics.
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- Freedom of the wolves has often meant death of the sheep
- Political philosophy at its best
- It's Deeper Than You Might Suppose!
- THE 20th Century's Man of Letters
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Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford Paperbacks)
Isaiah Berlin
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ASIN: 0192810340 |
Book Description
Focusing on related aspects of individual liberty, this volume contains the essays Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century, Historical Inevitability, Two Concepts of Liberty, and John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life.
Customer Reviews:
Freedom of the wolves has often meant death of the sheep.......2006-12-02
Liberty is a very precious and rare quality of a living condition.
As I. Berlin states, `The periods and societies in which civil liberties were respected, and variety of opinion and faith tolerated, have been very few and far between, oases in the desert of human uniformity, intolerance and oppression.'
I. Berlin explains clearly that liberty has two faces: a positive and a negative one.
Positive liberty is the answer to the question: who controls? Am I my own master?
Negative liberty circumscribes the area wherein a third person can prevent anybody to make a free choice.
On these bases, a free society can be organized, with 1) absolute rights (not absolute powers) and 2) frontiers, defined in terms of rules, within which men should be inviolable.
For the author, freedom is not an end, but a means to create `room for personal ends', for happiness. He rightly criticizes E. Fromm: freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself.
Philosophically, freedom has been ferociously contested by the determinists, the defenders of `historical inevitability' (Hegel, Marx, Bacon, Fourier, Comte). The author remarks judiciously that if the world is ruled by determinism, nobody is responsible: there is no free will, no morality, and no justice. Individual choice is an illusion. Determinism represents the world as a prison.
A more brutal kind of determinism is presented by those who believe that there is a final answer, a unique goal, a central principle that governs our life. This principle and its executioners provoked barbarous consequences.
Isaiah Berlin's reflections on liberty are profound and still very actual.
Not to be missed.
Political philosophy at its best.......2004-11-24
The four essays in this work are 1) Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century 2)Historical Inevitability 3) Two Concepts of Liberty 4) John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life."
In the first essay Berlin laments the tendency of twentieth century thinking to deprive the great questions of their significance and substitute for them technical questions alone. In the second Berlin argues that the notion of historical inevitabity is untenable and that our everyday life and historical experience require a kind of liberty . In the third he makes his famous contrast between freedom from, and freedom to, or for. And in the last he explores the political thought of John Stuart Mill one of his great predecessors and through Mill's mirror develops some of his own ideas.
First and above all Berlin stands against the idea that there is a single system or idea an absolute which all Mankind should be coerced into obedience to. Berlin in his thinking points to the plurality of ends and values in life, and the contradictions between various systems of values. He is a liberal philosopher who connects the dignity of Mankind with this liberty from external coercion and oppression.
His writing is profound and yet somehow conversational and flowing .
This work contains the heart of the thought of one of the great political thinkers of our time.
It's Deeper Than You Might Suppose!.......2002-05-07
"One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great ideas....This is the belief, that somewhere in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker...there is a final solution."
Isaiah Berlin has been somewhat wrongly looked at simply as a historian of ideas. While he is that, this book is fertile with ideas, old, new, original and daring. What start out as four essays on liberty, turn out to reveal an astute world view. The one quoted above is taken from the third essay, his famous "Two Concepts of Liberty." In it he argues that the division between 'freedom from' and 'freedom to' is a subtle intertwine, more delicate than we often suppose. In the end, we must err on the side of 'freedom from' for one important reason; while the abscence of coercion might leave loose ends, by trying to tighten all loose ends, the rope loses all slack. Without the metaphor, by coercing others, we assume that our viewpoint is the only correct one and force others to live uniform to our ideas.
This is the theme that runs through all four essays. The first, "Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century" examines the failure of all the isms then en vogue; communism, fascism, socialism. Same idea. They preached of a graspable absolute truth that in the end, proved not so handleable. The second essay, "Historical Inevitability" tackles the problem at the root; the belief that our actions are determined and that free will is an illusion. Berlin, while not trying to disprove it (try, you can't do it!), exposes it as untenable. Every thought, action, word and concept we evoke is dependant upon belief in human autonomy. This essay is quite long and began to repeat itself a bit. Fight off the urge to skip through it. Very meaty!!
The last essay, "John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life" is something of a recap of the ideas presented in the book. It is Berlins tribute and critique (Mill would've approved) of Mill, his philosophy and his life which unlike most philosophers, was lived in complete accordance with his views.
Great book. The only problems I had were the length of the second essay and Berlin's annoying habit of turning every sentence into a twenty-one lined, 12 comma, infinitive after split infinitive beast. Although his language is beautiful (a la Barzun), this was hard to get used to. HIs thoughts, though, are classic.
THE 20th Century's Man of Letters.......2002-03-07
I won't review the four essays, except to state the obvious: They concern liberty, and what liberty entails. But that much one could ascertain from the title.
What the title does not reveal is how penetrating Berlin's analyses of the myriad subjects he comments on. His prose is exemplary, and his style endearing. Many learned people think Lionel Trilling, Erich Auerbach, Jacques Barzun, etc., are the men of letters for the 20th century reader. As enjoyable as many of these and other authors of the 20th century have been, I am amazed at how infrequently Berlin is listed among them. Yet, his mind is keener, his prose more mellifluous, and his ideas more interesting than almost anyone else of his Age.
Berlin is not a difficult read, but he is a challenging one. His weave of ideas and his elaborate critiques will require attention, but give him your attention, and he'll reward you plenteously. He is a genuine philosopher who deals with issues of the common man, not the nuances of linguistics; he is concerned with freedom, the life well-lived, and ideas that are important (not just fasionable). This collection of four essays is as good a place as any to introduce yourself to one of the 20th century's true giants of belle letters.
A Serious Vision.......2001-06-16
Agreed. Berlin's book is not the easiest in the world to read. But, then again, neither is Plato, or John Locke, or even Mill for that matter. He writes in a 19th century style, but one which, I think is beautiful and elegant. This is not a book to be devoured, but to be savored. Each word is carefully crafted. To me, Berlin is like diving into a pool of the english language, and just floating in ideas and language. And the ideas are wonderful. More than any other political philosopher, Berlin has diagnosed the problems, and the dangers, of modern social and political thinking. When he argues that those who advocate limits on liberty, in the name of justice, or equality, or another ideal, are in fact diminishing the amount of liberty in society as a whole it is hard not to agree with him. His analysis of the problems of modern philosophy and political thought is as acute. These are the ideas that I now find most compelling in this book. The essay of the two types of liberty is wonderful, as is the one on Historical Inevitability. But it is the essay on Political Ideas in the 20th Century that has become my favorite over the year, for the simple reason that he was incredibly prophetic. In the 19th century, Berlin argues, conservatives and liberal, even socialists, despite their differences agreed on the fundamental questions of politics; who should rule? What is the basis of authority? Why should I obey? What are the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship? In the 20th century, we no longer even consider the questions to be important, or relevant. All political problems have been reduced to either technical matters, of social or economic engineering, or are treated as psychological disorders, that need theraputic treatment. We accept the lost of liberty because we no longer think of it as important, as a question that needs solving. Problems like poverty, or equality, or a cleaner environment, which are suseptible of technical solutions. Anyone who worried about liberty in the face of all of these problems was, ipso facto, crazy, and a refusal to face reality. Hence, prozac or lithium is the prescribed course of treatment, to remove the source, or at least the feeling, of discontent. It is time to take another look at Berlin, not merely as a defender of liberty, but as an analyst of modern political and social thinking, and the dead ends to which it is leading us.
Amazon.com
The Crooked Timber of Humanity contains eight of Isaiah Berlin's deservedly influential essays in the history of ideas, all dealing with political thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the essays, "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism," is published here for the first time; this reevaluation of the Savoyard counterrevolutionary occupies almost a quarter of the book, and not a word is wasted.
Although written separately, these essays exhibit a common concern with what Berlin calls pluralism, the idea that there can be different, equally valid but mutually incompatible, conceptions of how to live. Whatever their disagreements, traditional writers on politics have implicitly assumed that there is one best way to live, whether it was in the static utopias of More and Harrington or in the dynamic dramas of Hegel and Marx. But in the 18th century, Vico and Herder embraced pluralism, thus inaugurating the historicist turn in political thought. Berlin adeptly pursues pluralism and its repercussions through history, connecting it to the decline of utopian ideas, the origins of fascism and nationalism, the rise of the discipline of cultural history, and much else.
As always, Berlin's prose is graceful and powerful, but what truly makes The Crooked Timber of Humanity exhilarating to read is the depth and power of his intellect. Berlin credits Vico with realizing that "to exercise their proper function, historians require the capacity for imaginative insight, without which the bones of the past remain dry and lifeless." It is a capacity that Berlin himself amply displays here. --Glenn Branch
Book Description
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant
Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political pluralism. In the Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our present century: between the Platonic belief in absolute Truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world.
Customer Reviews:
Some gold, some dross.......2007-05-20
The best essay here is the one on Joseph de Maistre whom Berlin shows convincingly as one of the fathers of modern Fascism. But Berlin generally is too aloof and too "common room" like to be very exciting to read.
This point might be too sharp for you.......2004-04-10
There is an index for this collection of essays, but it does not find much to point to about the United States of America, except where particular examples get mixed in with the clutter of events that are described as the context of the rise of nationalism:
"So too, it may be that no minority that has preserved its own cultural tradition or religious or racial characteristics can indefinitely tolerate the prospect of remaining a minority forever, governed by a majority with a different outlook or habits. And this may indeed account for the reaction of wounded pride, or the sense of collective injustice, which animates, for example, Zionism or its mirror-image, the movement of the Palestinian Arabs, or such `ethnic' minorities as Negroes in the United States or Irish Catholics in Ulster, the Nagas in India and the like. Certainly contemporary nationalism seldom comes in its pure, romantic form, as it did in Italy or Poland or Hungary in the early nineteenth century, but is connected far more closely with social and religious and economic grievances. . . ."
A footnote which quotes the organ of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party for 20 July 1972 shows an awareness of the global side of the picture:
"Between national and international interests not only is there no contradiction, but, on the contrary, there is a full dialectical unity."
By implication, the index identifies the policies of the United States of America with the belief that it can foster countervailing forces
"as a barrier to unbridled chauvinism - seems about as realistic (at least so far as lands outside western Europe are concerned) as Cobden's belief that the development of free trade throughout the world would of itself ensure peace and harmonious co-operation between nations. One is also reminded of Norman Angell's apparently unanswered argument a short while before 1914 that the economic interests of modern capitalistic states alone made large-scale wars impossible."
For me the most interesting part of THE CROOKED TIMBER OF HUMANITY by Isaiah Berlin is in the middle of the book: "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism." Written in the twentieth century, it is not surprising that this essay attempts to consider the political ideas which had previously supported an old order as the ideological foundation for the worst enemy of freedom as a realm of modern thought. The Bible serves as an easier reference for me, particularly the books of Kings, in which it is reported, "Ahab also put up a sacred pole and committed other crimes as well, provoking the anger of Yahweh, the God of Israel, more than all the kings of Israel who were his predecessors." (I Kings 16:33). Bad governments can come in many forms, but a prime example of how they operate can be found in I Kings 21:10 :
"Confront him with a couple of scoundrels who will accuse him like this, `You have cursed God and the king.' Then take him outside and stone him to death."
Joseph de Maistre is presented by Isaiah Berlin as a man who was above such suspicions. "Like Charles Maurras and T. S. Eliot, he stood for the trinity of classicism, monarchy and the church. . . . He is a Catholic reacrtionary, a scholar and an aristocrat . . ." And yet "Maistre may have spoken the language of the past, but the content of what he had to say presaged the future."
Maistre was the son of a recently ennobled lawyer; he was considered a jurist, a diplomat, "a philosophical critic and an exceptionally brilliant writer," a negotiator, and a man of affairs. Born in 1753, Joseph de Maistre is described as "the eldest of ten children of the President of the Senate," but we might not be familiar with this Senate because he was born in the dukedom of Savoy, part of the kingdom of Sardinia. Looking for a foundation for his ideas is to seek a form of inversion:
"An action in Maistre's universe is ineffective precisely in proportion as it is directed to the achievement of day-to-day interests, and derives from calculating, utilitarian tendencies which compose the outer surface of human character; and it is effective, memorable, in tune with the universe precisely to the degree to which it springs from unexplained and unexplainable depths, and not from reason, nor from individual will . . . What is best and strongest is often violent, irrational, gratuitous, and therefore necessarily misrepresented, and made to seem absurd, only by being falsely ascribed to intelligible motives. Human action in his sense is justified only when it derives from that tendency in human beings which is directed neither to happiness nor to comfort, nor to self-assertion and self-aggrandizement, but to the fulfillment of an unfathomable divine purpose which men cannot, and should not try to, fathom - and which they deny at their peril. This may often lead to actions involving pain and slaughter, which in terms of the rules of sensible, normal, middle-class morality may well be regarded as arrogant and unjust, but which nevertheless derive from the dark unanalysable center of all authority. This is the poetry of the world, not its prose, the source of all faith and all energy, whereby alone man is free, capable of choice, of creation and destruction, superior to the causally determined, scientifically explicable, mechanical movements of matter, or of natures lower than his, ignorant of good and evil."
Lately I have been advised that I should try working on something a bit more recent than MY VIETNAM WAR JOKE BOOK, but the copyright dates listed in the front of this book, 1959, 1972, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1990, must include years in which contemporary readers would consider Vietnam a topic which had been dealt with during years in which they were in kindergarten. I feel the same way, if not more so.
To understand the 20th century, read this book........2002-08-08
The late Isaiah Berlin was one of the foremost liberal thinkers of the 20th century, a man and scholar who developed and promoted some of the most powerful arguments for individual liberty and liberal societies while, at the same time, wrote some of the most powerful essays in the history of ideas, particularly with respect to Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment thinkers, political philosophers, and ideologues of various persuasions. Some of his essays have become legendary: the essays on liberty, on Karl Marx and Disraeli, on Tolstoy. He left behind a significant body of work, most of which has been edited by Henry Hardy (if you read all of his essays, you will find they overlap quite a bit, but that is the product of an engaging thinker who preferred conversation to writing). "The Crooked Timber of Humanity" is among his finest collection of essays.
If there is any theme to this anthology, it is that human societies are like "crooked timbers"; trying to bend them is unnatural and only results in disastrous consequences. The attempts to bend them--essentially experiments in social engineering--marked the 20th century, from Lenin's Russia to Hitler's Germany to Pol Pot's Cambodia. These experiments had deep roots in modern political thinking, extending back into the nineteenth century. They manifested themselves in illiberal, totalitarian regimes in the 20th century and took an untold number of lives.
But "The Crooked Timber of Humanity" is not a study in history, although it comes from the mind of a man who lived across the span of the century he was writing about. It is a history of ideas and, in particular, of the belief that the interests, motivations, and goals of people can be, and are, the same at all times and in all places. This type of philosophical monism holds to a single vision of how societies ought to be arranged; is characterized by an idealism and utopianism that are to be attained at all costs; and is found in a number of modern ideologies such as fascism and nationalism. Berlin's essays cover idealism, utopianism, Vico, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the views of de Maistre, all of which held to some form of singular, monistic political thinking.
Berlin's answer is reasonable and humane, a pluralstic point of view that holds that human desires and ends are varied, that utopianism in its many forms (Communism and fascism, to cite two) is conceptually incoherenet and unnatural to the experience of being human, and that human experience is multi-dimensional and constantly changing.
This collection of essays exhibit Berlin's pronounced clarity of thought (one of his wonderful trademarks) and illustrative prose (with all those rolling sentences). Berlin once said in an interview that, given his experience of the 20th century, all we should and can expect is a "minimally decent society," one that is free and liberal and open enough to allow human beings to realize their own ends, whatever imperfections such a society might have. The world since the Enlightenment, and in particular the world of the 20th century, has taught that anything else tends to lead to forceful and violent attempts to fashion society according to a specific ideal; as Berlin puts it in this book, to make such an omelette, many eggs have to be broken. He promotes a political philosophy at odds with this type of thinking and, in so doing, has become one of the great voices of liberty.
Of course, as incisive as Berlin was, he was not without controversy; his essay on de Maistre was not well received when it was first written, and, since his death, he has been lauded with every praise that can be heaped on a thinker. Whether or not he deserves all of that praise is a completely separate issue. "The Crooked Timber of Humanity" is a fine collection of essays on political philosophy and a fine sampling of Berlin's way of thinking.
The Man Who Read Too Much.......2000-03-03
Martin Gardner has an excellent review of this book in his collection of essays, _The Night is Large_, and I can add little to what he says.
The opening essay is a short, partly autobiographical account of how Berlin came to embrace his distinctive pluralism. It provides the clearest, most concise explanation I have seen to date of why Marxism and its ilk are wrong. His essay on de Maistre is longer than its subject deserves, but not uninteresting.
All of Berlin's essays display his encyclopedic knowledge and shrewd judgment. It is said that he was one of the fastest talkers on record; he writes with equal volubility, packing into each sentence a book's worth of history and theory. These essays are not for the neophyte or the casual reader -- the forthcoming _Power of Ideas_ (March 2000) promises to be more accessible -- nevertheless, they are virtuoso examples of the much praised but little practiced art of sympathetic critical interpretation.
Book Description
It is sometimes thought that the renowned essayist Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was incapable of writing a big book. But in fact he developed some of his most important essays--including "Two Concepts of Liberty" and "Historical Inevitability"--from a book-length manuscript that he intended to publish but later set aside. Published here for the first time, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the history of ideas in the period that he made his own--the Romantic age. Distilling his formative early work in the history of ideas, the book also contains much that is not found elsewhere in his writings. The last of Berlin's posthumous books, it is of great interest both for his treatment of the subject and for what it reveals about his intellectual development.
Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of the Romantic age are still largely our own--down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Vividly expounding the central political ideas of leading European thinkers in the period 1760-1830, including Helvetius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, the book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style.
The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work.
Customer Reviews:
Berlin Basic.......2006-08-24
For those with some knowledge of Berlin's contribution to modern thought "Political Ideas in the Romantic Age" is an important contribution to his already extensive writings. For those with little familiarity with this prolific English/Latvian philosopher of the history of ideas this text serves as an excellent foundation document.
In an introductory comment Joshua Cherniss provides a very useful and candid perspective on Berlin and really sets the stage for the essays that follow.
As Cherniss says "Berlin produced no great synthesis or Magnum Opus; temperamentally, and stylistically, he was an essayist". It is as an essayist that Berlin talks about subjects that have considerable current importance -- particularly value pluralism and liberalism.
But the importance of Berlin's approach is the strong historical perspective that he brings to his writing. In illuminating commentary he brings a number of of unjustifiably neglected writers and thinkers to the fore. Helvetius, Turgot and Holbach are referred to as well as others who have retained a modern currency - Adam Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, Leibniz and Hume. They are all caught up in Berlin's unique writing style which carries the reader along in powerful mix of thought and words.
No single writer can bring complete answers to modern issues and problems. Berlin would not claim that his "Two Concepts of Liberty", attitude to pluralism and values provides a total philosophical package. But to me his ideas give us a stimulating foundation with which to approach today's complex problems and issues
political ideas illuminated.......2006-07-05
a splendid demonstration of a great mind at work. these essays must be close to a standard work on the ancestry of contemporary political thought
Romantic beginnings He makes the 'life of the mind' live .......2006-05-02
Isaiah Berlin is one of the greatest modern political philosophers.
This present work was first presented as a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr college in 1952, and later revised. It is an early work containing the seeds of many of his most important ideas, including that of `two liberties'.
It also contains lengthy analysis of the works of those Continental thinkers Condorcet, Helvetius , de Maistre ,Fichte, Rousseau Hegel he learned much from, and made a more vital part of Anglo-philosophical discussion.
Carole Angier writing in the Telegraph describes the crux of Berlin's argument as follows:
"There is a long rationalist tradition, ... stretching from the ancient Greeks through Christianity to the Enlightenment and beyond, in which virtue is knowledge, as Plato said; the world is made in a certain way, by God or nature; and if we understand it rightly we will know our place in it, and what to want.
In different accounts we learn these facts in different ways: from God, nature or science; from the natural light of reason or the uncorrupted heart. But all agree that the world is a natural order, and that real freedom is fitting into that order in the right way. This is what Berlin will call positive liberty, and what he calls here non-humanist or romantic freedom. It is the freedom Rousseau finds in the "general will", which is what our real selves want, and that coincides with the good of society and the will of the ruler. If I obey the ruler, therefore, I really obey myself; and so there is no conflict between liberty and authority, freedom and obedience.
This is the "grotesque and hair-raising paradox", the "sleight of hand" that has, according to Berlin, led to all totalitarian theories and practices since, from Robespierre to Marx, in the name of "higher" freedoms or goods, which the State, or the Church, knows better than my (ordinary) self. Against it he sets Hume's distinction between fact and value, and the modest, "negative" freedom of Mill, which consists of being free from interference by other people."
This work contains the heart of Berlin's analysis of the Romantic Period.It also illustrates how skillful Berlin could be at sympathetically presenting the Utopian schemes of particular Romantic thinkers , while carefully showing his reservations about them.
Like all his works it is written in a sweeping often surprisingly emotional and exhilirating style.
This man makes the 'life of the mind' live.
Amazon.com
"Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not." So wrote Isaiah Berlin in "The Pursuit of the Ideal," the semiautobiographical essay that commences The Proper Study of Mankind, the intellectual equivalent of a "greatest hits" collection. Born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909, Berlin left the Soviet Union for England 12 years later. After being educated at St. Paul's and Oxford, he would go on to become one of the 20th century's most vigorous--and eclectic--political philosophers until his death in 1997.
The Proper Study of Mankind shows the full range of Berlin's work and the breadth of his interests. In "The Originality of Machiavelli," after summing up what others have thought of the author of The Prince, Berlin launches into his own thoughtful analysis, concluding that Machiavelli's most significant contribution to philosophy was "his de facto recognition that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration, and that this happens not merely in exceptional circumstances, as a result of abnormality or accident or error ... but ... as part of the normal human situation." This concept of pluralism is the undercurrent that flows through much of Berlin's writing on the history of ideas, whether he addresses opposition to the French Enlightenment or considers Tolstoy's theory of history. Other treats to be found in this collection include the autobiographical "Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak" and what might be considered "intellectual profiles" of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. This book is highly recommended for any reader interested in modern philosophy; one can only hope that it will inspire some to delve into more of Berlin's work. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's famous essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox"; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.
Customer Reviews:
Advice from Chapter 2.......2006-08-02
Going by the reviews that read below this one, I've decided to deliver a useful note for the prospective reader. If however you are well versed in the philosophers of the 18th-20th century, you might like to skip my review. I've yet to complete Berlin's anthology of essays as I've taken a time out to understand each of his referenced philosphers that he lists ever so extensively throughout just the 1st 2 chapters. To clearly comprehend Berlin's arguments, it is effective to consider the thoughts of most if not all the arguments he has referenced from a list of great thinkers from the 18th century. Since I have made the effort to do so, Berlin's thoughts have been raising out of the book with such greater clarity, permitting a far more entertaining read despite his solemn context.
Of the content itself, Berlin has written his essays in easy to read prose, which is very favourable. In his intelligible language he shares his philosophy, first, of a concept with which to analyse mankind that has till presently been a test to define. He then delves greater into his discourse of a proper study of mankind.
Fact of the matter is, it is truly difficult to provide a strong and consequential review of Berlin's work if one hasn't appropriately studied the works of other great thinkers of his time, and is well aquainted at least with the dogmas that have been influenced as a result. If you have a remote curiosity as to what this book might behold given it's very appropriate and self-explanatory title, enter the mind of Berlin with the motivation to learn, experience, and perhaps understand the effects, or perhaps the lack of it, in our world, that has been due to these, or the lack of, great thinkers.
I shouldn't pay any attention to the review below mine........2006-03-01
The review written below can only be the work of someone who hates the English language. Emphasising Isaiah Berlin's verbosity is like emphasising Michael Jordan's long legs or Pete Sampras' hairy arms. Berlin writes as well as any of the great Russian novelists.
The reviewer below also claims that Berlin is a cultural relativist. This is outrageously incorrect! Isaiah was a pluralist! Berlin believed that human values and ends were constant across cultures. He believed in objective, universally accessible, values. He would often support this with an idea of Wittgenstein's: if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. And yet we can understand other cultures and civilisations across the ages. Such understanding was Berlin's life-work. However, Berlin always warns, the values we hold, while constant, even universal, are irreconcilable, being conceptually incompatible: they are not in Pythagorean harmony. So we must make choices. And such choice must inevitably involve loss.
This is an anthology of Isaiah's essays. All are collected elsewhere, but this volume makes for a beautiful first collection - perfect for taking on holidays and reading on the beach.
Verbose and weak.......2005-06-27
If you want to get to the chief ideas of Berlin, buy THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX as a stand-alone book; do not waste your money on this highly verbose and repetitious book.
And what a terrible writing! Pompously and unnecessarily long sentences. At least with Hegel and Kant, you would arrive at a clear meaning after you finished carefully reading a sentence that filled a whole page. With Berlin, whose sentences are teeming with digressive parentheses, you look at a sentence and right off the page jump at you a number of ways a better writer could have condensed his prolix sentences into sentences at least three times shorter than his. In sum, it seems like Mr. Berlin never went beyond the first draft of his essays, omitting to revise, edit, and compress his writing. Yes, yes, you might say, "Well, this reviewer is probably too dumb to understand Berlin." Maybe you are right. But, I find it hard to see why it should be difficult to understand what a sentence about the biographical details of a Russian politician is trying to convey. I would have much easier time confessing to stupidity if the sentences in question were, instead, about some subtle philosophical points concerning the ontological foundations of our a priori ideas or the dialectical movement of the World Spirit, or the sources of our moral directives.
As to the ideas themselves, Berlin does have a few good ones, most notably in THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX. The fox knows many things; and the hedgehog only one big thing. It is a very profound distinction, and after reading this essay you can have a fun time classifying the people you know into these two general categories. However, this distinction is confined, I think, only to the realm of psychology and cannot be used to derogate, as Berlin does, all philosophical attempts to arrive a single system that explains the world. Yes, there is, de facto, a phenomenal variety in our world; but that in itself is not a proof of the errorneousness of all the unitary systems as a class, but rather a part of the problem these systems try, with varying success, to explain. Overall, Berlin's apotheosis of cultural relativity, which he derives from the "fallacies" of the "dogmatist" philosophies, does not rest on any sound and consistent set of arguments, but rather hopes to attain acceptance based solely on the current cultural fads. "Everything is relative!" proclaim the culturally sensitive commentators, caring very little as to how we should, then, explain the fact that there are certain values that are valid universally. Killing and stealing are frowned upon in Mozambique as well as in Montana, and even in Brooklyn. Fortunate for the philosophical supporters of cultural relativity, there are in the world much better partisans of this relativity than Berlin. Read Paul Feyerabend for a much better defense.
The best of the best .......2004-12-13
In this volume Henry Hardy Isaiah Berlin's faithful pupil and editor brings together some of the best essays from the previous volumes of Berlin essays he supervised the publication of. There are essays on 'The Pursuit of the Ideal ' on ' Philosophical Foundations' on 'Freedom and Determinism' on 'Political Liberty and Pluralism' on 'The History of Ideas ' on 'Russian Writers '
on' Romanticism and Rationalism' and on ' Twentieth Century Figures'
The volume contains Berlin's most well- known essays including the essay on 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' the one on ' Machiavelli' and the one ' On Historical Determinism'.
This is a selection of the best writing of a person who is without question one a most significant modern political thinker and historian of ideas.
Berlin's love of ideas, his vast knowledge, his tremendous verbal energy and skill, his humane understanding of character, his original consideration of fundamental historical periods and processes are all at work here.
This is a volume which should be in the library of every person who wishes to think about history and politics seriously.
Includes summaries of some long conversations.......2003-05-08
Isaiah Berlin wrote a lot of essays, as the size of this book, THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND, absolutely demonstrates. Near the middle of the book is an essay, "The Originality of Machiavelli," which shows how well Berlin could categorize intellectual activities into various kinds of significance.
"His distrust of unworldly attitudes, absolute principles divorced from empirical observation, is fanatically strong - almost romantic in its violence; the vision of the great prince playing upon human beings like an instrument intoxicates him. He assumes that different societies must always be at war with each other, since they have differing purposes. He sees history as an endless process of cut-throat competition, . . ." (p. 318).
The index is great, and even has an entry for "Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich . . . conversation with Stalin." Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin, but the question which Stalin put to Pasternak, "whether he was present when a lampoon about himself, Stalin, was recited by Mandel'shtam" (p. 533) was not what Pasternak wanted to talk about. Pasternak wanted to talk to Stalin "about ultimate issues, about life and death." (p. 534). After Stalin put down the receiver, "Pasternak tried to ring back but, not surprisingly, failed to get through to the leader." (p. 534). Stalin had been quick to decide where that conversation was going, and cut it short by observing, "If I were Mandel'shtam's friend, I should have known better how to defend him." (p. 534). It is not obvious that Stalin would have appreciated a defense which asserted that the poem about Stalin was more true than anything else that Pasternak had ever seen, read, or heard, and any decent country would have comedians that would constantly broadcast such ideas on the radio 24/7 until the invention of TV would allow people to watch movies like "Forrest Gump" in the comfort of their own homes. Stalin has been rightly condemned for being hopelessly authoritarian when judging humor that was aimed at his sorry self, and Isaiah Berlin sees the pattern as one that Russia was particularly prone to suffer indefinitely. "Whatever the differences between the old and the new Russia, suspicion and persecution of writers and artists were common to both." (p. 537).
Berlin's account of his conversations with Anna Akhmatova strive to reflect what culture means for people who actively create work like Heine's comment, "I may not deserve to be remembered as a poet, but surely as a soldier in the battle for human freedom." (p. 537). We are now such a comic society on a global level that pop mock rap on the internet can pick on the soldier's mentality in a hilarious way, but it is good to be able to read Isaiah Berlin to account for how much such humor matters.
Book Description
In 1945 Isaiah Berlin, working in Russia for the British Foreign Office, met Anna Akhmatova almost by chance in what was then Leningrad. The brief time they spent together one long November evening was a transformng experience for both, and has become a cardinal moment in modern literary history.
For Akhmatova, Berlin was a "guest from the future," her ideal reader outside the nightmare of Soviet life and a link with a lost Russian world; he became a figure in her cryptic masterpiece "Poem without a Hero." For Berlin, this "most memorable" meeting with the beautiful poet of genius was a spur to his ideas on liberty and on history. But there were tragic consequences: the Soviet authorities thought Berlin was a British spy, Akhmatova became a suspected enemy, and until her death in 1966 the KGB persecuted her family. Though Akhmatova was convinced that she and Berlin had inadvertently started the Cold War, she remembered him gratefully and he inspired some of her finest poems.
György Dalos--who inteviewed Berlin and many others who knew Akhmatova well, and who examined hitherto-secret KGB and Poliburo files--tells the inside story of how Stalin and other Soviet leaders dealt with Akhmatova. He ends with the touching story of her posthumous rehabilitation, when Russians astronomers discovered a new star and name it after her.
Customer Reviews:
Fear and the Muse.......2000-08-12
In 1946 the Russian born British philosoper Isaiah Berlin, then a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow, learned that Anna Akhmatova, one of the great poets of the 20th century, was still alive and living in Leningrad. He went to see her, spending a night talking about art, poetry, philosophy, and history. The night ended when the newspaper correspondent (and Winston's son) Randolph Churchill came to Akhmatova's house and, not knowing where to find Berlin, began bellowing Berlin's name at the top of his lungs in the building's courtyard. This may not seem like a terribly important incident; in the course of a normal life such days are usually forgotten within a few weeks of their happening...but in Stalin's Soviet Union there were no normal lives. The consequences of that night are the subject of this book, a harsh unblinking look into the workings of a paranoid society and one artist's reaction to it. For Akhmatova that night was one of the greatest of her life; unlike many other pre-Revolution writers and artists she refused to leave Russia. For her contact with someone from outside the four prison walls of Soviet society was like oxygen to someone suffocating; Berlin became "the guest from the future," the unnamed character in her great work 'Poem without a hero,' the reader she would have had if she lived in a normal society. But she did not. Dalos shows how all the forces of Stalinist repression swung into action against her; how she was publicly humiliated by the Central Committee, how her son was arrested and sent to the gulag, how Mikhail Zoshchenko, the satirist and popular writer who was condemned with her, was slowly driven mad by the government's denunciation of him and his work. If anyone is interested on the effect of totalitarianism on the lives of people this is the book to read. A great tribute to a great poet.
Average customer rating:
- Illuminating
- Engaging and inspiring
- that last review sucks
- I've Had better
- An amazing book.
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The Roots of Romanticism
Isaiah Berlin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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My Past and Thoughts
The Coast of Utopia (Box Set)
The Romantic Exiles
Fathers and Sons (Norton Critical Editions)
Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia, Part II
