Isaiah Berlin & the history of ideas
In 1915 Berlin's family moved to St. Petersburg where, some months later, he was an eyewitness to the Russian Social-Democratic revolution (March 1917) and the Bolshevik revolution (October 1917) events which, in his own opinion, changed him for life.
In 1920 the Berlin family moved back to Riga, now the capital of an independent Latvia, and then emigrated to London, where they had business interests.
As a boy Berlin had had some Jewish religious education, this was continued in London, where he had his bar mitzvah. It appears that his Jewish background proved to be an obstacle to his being accepted as a pupil at Westminster School with the result that his family sought his being educated at St. Paul's.
At St. Paul's Berlin proved to be only a fair student and, on that basis was denied admission to Balliol College, Oxford, but managed to gain a scholarship to Corpus Christi. At the end of a course in humane letters Berlin was awarded a "bad" first but he then took another course, in philosophy, in which he was awarded a "better" first.
At this stage of his life Berlin had no definite thoughts as to a career. He attended an unsuccessful interview for a journalistic position with the Manchester Guardian, he declined his father's invitation to join him in the family business as he felt he could not belong in that world, he also considered law until this continued indecision was eventually interrupted by an offer of a teaching post in philosophy at Oxford University.
Berlin became a lecturer in philosophy at New College in 1932 and was appointed a Fellow of All Souls College at a remarkably young age. He was also the first Jew to hold such a fellowship.
Some of the leading analytic philosophers of the day including J.L. Austin, A.J. Ayer, Stuart Hampshire, Donald MacKinnon, and Donald Macnabb often attended meetings held in Berlin's rooms at All Souls College.
The outbreak of the Second World War led to Berlin being redeployed and sent to New York, where he worked for the British Information Service, and then to Washington, where his assignment was to report on the direction of opinions and moods in America.
After the war Berlin was seconded briefly to the British Embassy in Moscow where he was given a role in preparing commentary on the output of the Russian press. It was his first visit to Russia since his family had left for Riga in 1920. Berlin was advised by British diplomats that he would find extreme difficulty in speaking with anyone other than the officials assigned to him by the communist regime which had a tradition of attempting to discourage meetings between Soviet citizens and foreigners. It transpired that he was able to independently meet a number of Russian artists and writers, and he wrote that "it was like speaking to the victims of a shipwreck on a desert island, cut off for decades from civilization."
Berlin later wrote an article about his meetings with Russian writers in which he expressed a sympathetic regret for the conditions under which they were obliged to live due to the restrictions imposed by the Soviet regime on most forms of artistic expression.
Berlin spent the years from 1947 to 1958 as a writer and lecturer in Oxford and London, and also in the United States at Washington, and at the universities as Harvard, Princeton, Bryn Mawr, and Chicago.
In the 1950s, Berlin fell in love with Aline de Gunzbourg, a Frenchwoman who was the descendant of a noble Russian family and whom he married in 1956.
Berlin was so beguiling a conversationalist that when Prime Minister Harold MacMillan nominated him in 1957 for the queen's list he noted that the knighthood should be bestowed "for talking."
From 1957 to 1967, Sir Isaiah held the prestigious Chichele Chair in Social and Political Theory. As the first president of Wolfson College from 1966 to 1975, he was instrumental in attracting a strong faculty to a new school at Oxford.
The Hedgehog and the Fox
His best-known essay in the United States, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," a 1953 study of Tolstoy's view of history as embodied in "War and Peace." is regarded as a classic of political inquiry and literary criticism. In this essay, which became part of a great body of work by Sir Isaiah on Russian thinkers of the 19th century, he drew a distinction between two human types: those, like the fox, who pursue many ends, often unrelated, even contradictory, and those, like the hedgehog, who relate everything to a single universal organizing principle.
... there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision ... and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory ... The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes ...
Two Concepts of Liberty
Sir Isaiah's 1959 essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, is considered a major contribution to political theory. In it, he made a distinction between negative liberty, that which the individual must be allowed to enjoy without state interference, and positive liberty, that which the state permits by imposing regulations that, by necessity, limit some freedoms in the name of greater liberty for all. He argued that both kinds of liberty were required for a just society.
In addition, Sir Isaiah was the author of five other books: "Karl Marx," (1939); "The Age of Enlightenment" (1956), "Four Essays on Liberty " (1969); "Vico and Herder"( 1976); and "The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism" (1993).
Until the publication of the Hardy collections, Sir Isaiah had been known as a man who talked much but wrote little and had, in fact, been taken to task for not producing a major opus.
Sir Isaiah had begun to move away from analytic philosophy towards the history of ideas at the time of his return to academic life in Oxford after the Second World War. After his involvements with the earth shattering events of the war years analytic philosophy seemed to be a little disconnected from history and from the human lives lived in historical contexts. An initial opening of Berlin's interest to the whole area of the history of ideas, and of their influence, arising through his becoming familiar with the work of the Russian philosopher and revolutionary Alexander Herzen.
Herzen's writings about the history of social and political ideas made a tremendous impression on Isaiah Berlin and he increasingly involved himself in far-reaching related studies.
Sir Noel Annan, who wrote the introduction to Sir Isaiah's 1980 book, "Personal Impressions," observed:-
"Nobody in our time
has invested ideas with such personality, given them a corporeal
shape and breathed life into them more than Isaiah Berlin; and he
succeeds in doing so because ideas for him are not mere
abstractions. They live ... in the minds of men and women,
inspiring them, shaping their lives, influencing their actions
and changing the course of history."
Sir Isaiah came to believe in the overriding importance of ideas. "When ideas are neglected by those who ought to attend to them -- that is to say, those who have been trained to think critically about ideas -- they often acquire an unchecked momentum and an irresistible power over multitudes of men that may grow too violent to be affected by rational criticism," he wrote in "Two Concepts of Liberty." He added:-
"Over a hundred
years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to
underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured
in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a
civilization. ... If professors can truly wield this fatal power,
may it not be that only other professors, or, at least, other
thinkers (and not governments or congressional committees) can
alone disarm them? Our philosophers seem oddly unaware of these
devastating effects of their activities."
A staunch advocate of pluralism in a century in which totalitarians and utopians claimed title to the one, single truth, Sir Isaiah considered the very notion that there could be one final answer to organizing human society a dangerous illusion that would lead to nothing but bloodshed, coercion, and deprivation of liberty.
The theme that runs throughout his work is his concern with liberty and the dignity of human beings, and he sought to emphasize that at all times, difficult, even tragic, tradeoffs had to be made. It was his view that man must forever choose among incommensurable and often incompatible values, that equality, for example, must at times be sacrificed to liberty.
Sir Isaiah did however believe that the "great man" can bring about significant historical change. He was also a critic of the concept of 'historical inevitability' and of a 'determinist interpretation of human affairs' :-
"Principally it seems to me to spring from a desire
to resign from our responsibility, to cease from judging provided
we be not judged ourselves and, above all, are not compelled to
judge ourselves; from a desire to flee for refuge to some vast
amoral, impersonal, monolthic whole, nature or history, or class,
or race, or 'harsh realities of our time,' or 'the irresistible
evolution of the social structure' ..."
As an exponent of the history of ideas Sir Isaiah was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli prizes and was also awarded the Order of Merit, Britain's highest honour for intellectual achievement.
Sir Isaiah was interested in the arts and was at various times Chairman of the Trustees of the National Gallery, a Trustee of the British Museum and a Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
He was also a supporter of Zionism holding that Jews living as religious minorities in many states often effectively lived on a basis of compromise where they were tolerated, to varying degrees, rather than fully accepted as integral to the life of the state. Outside a Jewish state citizens who were Jewish by faith were thus usually denied a full living of their lives "in the light of day."
Sir Isaiah Berlin, philosopher and noted exponent of the history of ideas, revered for his intellect and cherished for his wit and his gift for friendship, died on Wednesday night, November 12th, 1997, of a heart attack in Oxford, England. He was 88.
Since Sir Isaiah's death his literary trustees have continued to make available books that are assembled from the many essays, lectures, and articles that are attributable to him. Two of these being 'Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty' and 'Liberty' this last being an expansion upon Sir Isaiah's "Four Essays on Liberty."
Isaiah Berlin quotes
"All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate."
"The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds."
"Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
"Participation is not my thing; by nature I am an observer."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) was, in his time, the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States. He remains widely influential to this day through his essays, lectures, poems, and philosophical writings.
In the later eighteen-twenties Ralph Waldo Emerson read, and was very significantly influenced by, a work by a French philosopher named Victor Cousin.
A key section of Cousin's work reads as follows:
"What is the business of history? What is the stuff of which it is made? Who is the personage of history? Man : evidently man and human nature.
There are many different elements in history. What are they? Evidently again, the elements of human nature. History is therefore the development of humanity,
and of humanity only; for nothing else but humanity develops itself, for nothing else than humanity is free. …
… Moreover, when we have all the elements, I mean all the essential elements, their mutual relations do, as it were, discover themselves. We draw from the nature of these different elements, if not all their possible relations, at least their general and fundamental relations."
Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1829)
… Moreover, when we have all the elements, I mean all the essential elements, their mutual relations do, as it were, discover themselves. We draw from the nature of these different elements, if not all their possible relations, at least their general and fundamental relations."
Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1829)
Even before he had first read Cousin, (in 1829), Emerson had expressed views in his private Journals which suggest that he accepted that Human Nature, and Human Beings, tend to display three identifiable aspects and orientations:
Imagine hope to be removed from the human breast & see how Society will sink, how the strong bands of order & improvement will be relaxed & what a deathlike stillness would take the place of the restless energies that now move the world. The scholar will extinguish his midnight lamp, the merchant will furl his white sails & bid them seek the deep no more. The anxious patriot who stood out for his country to the last & devised in the last beleagured citadel, profound schemes for its deliverance and aggrandizement, will sheathe his sword and blot his fame. Remove hope, & the world becomes a blank and rottenness.
(Journal entry made between October and December, 1823)
In all districts of all lands, in all the classes of communities thousands of minds are intently occupied, the merchant in his compting house, the mechanist over his plans, the statesman at his map, his treaty, & his tariff, the scholar in the skilful history & eloquence of antiquity, each stung to the quick with the desire of exalting himself to a hasty & yet unfound height above the level of his peers. Each is absorbed in the prospect of good accruing to himself but each is no less contributing to the utmost of his ability to fix & adorn human civilization. (Journal entry of December, 1824)
Our neighbours are occupied with employments of infinite diversity. Some are intent on commercial speculations; some engage warmly in political contention; some are found all day long at their books … (This dates from January - February, 1828)
In all districts of all lands, in all the classes of communities thousands of minds are intently occupied, the merchant in his compting house, the mechanist over his plans, the statesman at his map, his treaty, & his tariff, the scholar in the skilful history & eloquence of antiquity, each stung to the quick with the desire of exalting himself to a hasty & yet unfound height above the level of his peers. Each is absorbed in the prospect of good accruing to himself but each is no less contributing to the utmost of his ability to fix & adorn human civilization. (Journal entry of December, 1824)
Our neighbours are occupied with employments of infinite diversity. Some are intent on commercial speculations; some engage warmly in political contention; some are found all day long at their books … (This dates from January - February, 1828)
The quotes from Emerson are reminiscent of a line from another "leading voice of intellectual culture" - William Shakespeare.
There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.
William Shakespeare: Henry IV (Pt 1), Act I, Scene II
William Shakespeare: Henry IV (Pt 1), Act I, Scene II
Plato, Socrates and Shakespeare endorse a 'Tripartite Soul' view of Human Nature. Platos' Republic
Popular European History pages
at Age-of-the-Sage
The European Revolutions of 1848 begin
The French Revolution of 1848
Italian Unification - Cavour, Garibaldi and the Unification of Risorgimento Italy
Otto von Bismarck & The wars of German unification
The French Revolution of 1848
Italian Unification - Cavour, Garibaldi and the Unification of Risorgimento Italy
Otto von Bismarck & The wars of German unification
The preparation of these pages was influenced to some degree by a particular "Philosophy of History" as suggested by this quote from the famous Essay "History" by Ralph Waldo Emerson:-
There is one mind common to all individual men...
Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.
Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world.