Isaiah Berlin - Softcover

Gray, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069104824X ISBN 13: 9780691048246

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

For more than half a century, the renowned liberal thinker Sir Isaiah Berlin has occupied an important spot at the center of British intellectual and public life. Recipient of knighthood and the Order of Merit, he has been the head of an Oxford College and the director of the Royal Opera House. During World War II, he acted as Winston Churchill's eyes and ears in America. He is also a talented and prolific writer with five volumes of essays to his name. Surprisingly, John Gray's book is only the third full-length examination of one of this century's seminal thinkers.

About the Author:

John Gray is a Fellow in Jesus College at the University of Oxford. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Tulane, and Yale universities. Among his other books are Mill on Liberty: A Defence, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, and Beyond the New Right.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 069104824X
• ISBN 13: 9780691048246
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 197