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The compelling story of a decades-long collaboration between social and political theorist Isaiah Berlin and his editor, Henry Hardy, who made it his vocation to bring Berlin's huge body of work into print. Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – have become even more prescient and vital today. But who was the man behind such influential views? Hardy discovered that Berlin had written far more than people thought, much of it unpublished. As he describes his struggles with Berlin, who was almost on principle unwilling to have his work published, an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher emerges. This is a unique portrait of a man who gave us a new way of thinking about the human predicament, and whose work had for most of his life remained largely out of view.
These celebrated lectures constitute one of Isaiah Berlin's most concise, accessible, and convincing presentations of his views on human freedom—views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty" and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. When they were broadcast on BBC radio in 1952, the lectures created a sensation and confirmed Berlin’s reputation as an intellectual who could speak to the public in an appealing and compelling way. A recording of only one of the lectures has survived, but Henry Hardy has recreated them all here from BBC transcripts and Berlin’s annotated drafts. Hardy has also added, as an appendix to this new edition, a revealing text of "Two Concepts" based on Berlin’s earliest surviving drafts, which throws light on some of the issues raised by the essay. And, in a new foreword, historian Enrique Krauze traces the origin of Berlin’s idea of negative freedom to his rejection of the notion that the creation of the State of Israel left Jews with only two choices: to emigrate to Israel or to renounce Jewish identity.
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Introduction : the vices of virtue : liberalism and the problem of ruthlessness -- "Squeamishness is the crime" : ruthlessness, ethos, and the critique of liberalism -- Between tragedy and utopia : Weber and Lukács on ethics and politics -- A just man : Albert Camus and the search for a decent heroism -- The "morality of prudence" and the fertility of doubt : Raymond Aron's defense of a "realist" liberalism -- Against cynicism and sentimentality : Reinhold Niebuhr's chastened liberal realism -- "The courage of... our doubts and uncertainties" : Isaiah Berlin, ethical moderation, and liberal ethos -- Conclusion : good characters for good liberals? : ethos and the reconstruction of liberalism.
Briefly traces the life of the eighteenth century German philosopher, discusses his major ideas, and looks at the relevance of his work today
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Since his death in 1997, Isaiah Berlin’s writings have generated continual interest among scholars and educated readers, especially in regard to his ideas about liberalism, value pluralism, and "positive" and "negative" liberty. Most books on Berlin have examined his general political theory, but this volume uses a contemporary perspective to focus specifically on his ideas about freedom and liberty. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom brings together an integrated collection of essays by noted and emerging political theorists that commemorate in a critical spirit the recent 50th anniversary of Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture and essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." The contributors us...
This book explores the social, political and religious differences among Christians and asks the question: can Christians be pluralists?
Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment explores the development of Berlin's conception of the Enlightenment, noting its indebtedness to a specific German intellectual tradition. The book examines his comments on individual writers, arguing that some assigned to the Counter-Enlightenment have closer affinities to the Enlightenment than he recognized