Three Critics of the Enlightenment - Softcover

Berlin, Isaiah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845952138 ISBN 13: 9781845952136

Publisher: Pimlico, 1719

Synopsis

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From the Back Cover:

"Isaiah Berlin's main preoccupation throughout his productive life was understand the nature of the modern reaction against the Enlightenment. These essays on Vico, Herder, and Hamann belong with his other profound and influential studies of the leading figures of what he called the Counter-Enlightenment. But they are also crucial for anyone hoping to understand Berlin's own analysis of modern life and politics, which has received increasing attention in recent years. Anyone interested in Berlin or those he studied will find this an essential volume."--Mark Lilla, University of Chicago

"Isaiah Berlin is among the finest intellectual historians of recent decades. Yet his position is somewhat peculiar: for while he is clearly a scholar of enormous erudition, the characteristic style of his work is closer to that of brilliant conversation than of conventional historical scholarship. His works on Vico, Herder, and Hamann deal with thinkers who were at odds with main currents of the Enlightenment. For anyone with a historical sense, the recrudescence of so many of the characteristic notions of the 'Counter-Enlightenment' under the rubric of 'postmodernism' is striking. The recovery of these ideas is all the more effective for being a critical one: Berlin reminds his readers of some of the unfortunate historical consequences of the ideas in question."--Jerry Z. Muller, Catholic University of America

About the Author:

Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter - as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 1719
• ISBN 10: 1845952138
• ISBN 13: 9781845952136
• Binding: Paperback