Isaiah Berlin
An Interpretation of His Thought
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was the greatest intellectual historian of the twentieth century. But his work also made an original and important contribution to moral and political philosophy and to liberal theory.
In 1921, at the age of eleven, Isaiah Berlin arrived in England from Riga, Latvia. By the time he was thirty he was at the heart of British intellectual life. He has remained its commanding presence ever since, and few would dispute that he was one of Britain's greatest thinkers. His reputation extends worldwide--as a great conversationalist, intellectual historian, and man of letters. He has been called the century's most inspired reader.
Yet Berlin's contributions to thought--in particular to moral and political philosophy, and to liberal theory--are little understood, and surprisingly neglected by the academic world. In this book, they are shown to be animated by a single, powerful, subversive idea: value-pluralism which affirms the reality of a deep conflict between ultimate human values that reason cannot resolve. Though bracingly clear-headed, humane and realist, Berlin's value-pluralism runs against the dominant Western traditions, secular and religious, which avow an ultimate harmony of values. It supports a highly distinctive restatement of liberalism in Berlin's work--an agnostic liberalism, which is founded not on rational choice but on the radical choices we make when faced with intractable dilemmas. It is this new statement of liberalism, the central subject of John Gray's lively and lucid book, which gives the liberal intellectual tradition a new lease on life, a new source of life, and which comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy.
In a new introduction, Gray argues that, in a world in which human freedom has spread more slowly than democracy, Berlin's account of liberty and basic decency is more instructive and useful than ever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Isaiah Berlin was part of a vital time at Oxford in the 1960s and 1970s when Gilbert Ryle and R.M. Hare expounded linguistic analysis and A.J. Ayer came up from London to preach logical positivism. He was, however, a man apart, concerned not with language but with primary issues: Berlin did not want to fiddle with words while the world burned. In this careful study of his political philosophy, Gray, who is also an Oxford don, explains and analyzes his dominant ideas. As Gray interprets him, Berlin claims that "human values are objective but irreducibly diverse," which means that, for practical purposes, they might as well be relative. People will always be in conflict over rival goods and evils, and reason is inadequate to resolve these conflicts-even if people would listen to reason. Berlin therefore embraces a value pluralism, not a belief in an identifiable, ideal life. This pluralism finally leads him to liberalism because it implies tolerance (never mind the paradox of giving liberalism privileged status in a world of equal values). Gray (Mill on Liberty) astutely guides readers through the complex ideas of an important philosopher, even if his study is somewhat arid at times. But to fault an academic study for being dry is like complaining that sloths are slow-moving: that's just the nature of the beast.