Notes on
the writings of Isaiah Berlin
Overview
Notes on various of Berlin's writings (sometimes no more than the title).
Karl Marx, His Life and Environment
A biography of Marx (1939).
The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth Century Philosophers
A selection with commentary from the works of the philosophers of the Enlightenment (1956).
Four Essays on Liberty
(1969)
Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas
(1976)
Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays
This volume contains Berlin's essays in analytic philosophy, together with some of his earliest in the history of ideas (1979).
A collection of essays, all previously published, though some in relatively inaccessible places (1997).
Personal Impressions
(1981)
Chapters in the History of Ideas.
Six Enemies of Human Liberty.
Here is Berlin's mature account of Romanticism, an interesting contrast with his earlier attempt at "Poltical Ideas in the Romantic Age". He begins by explaining why a definition of Romanticism is impossible but Romanticism is nevertheless worth writing about as a historical phenomenon, and proceeds through four stages: first reactions against the enlightenment, the "true" fathers of Romanticism, early moderate romanticism and the later unbridled manifestations.
Five essays on liberty, and some more.
Their Rise and Influence on Modern Philosophy.
Introduction
Russian Thinkers
Russia in 1848
The Hedgehog and the Fox
An essay about Tolstoy, and also Maistre. Hedgehogs know one big thing, foxes know lots of little things. Tolstory and Maistre were foxes who wanted the big thing as well. Perhaps Berlin is too, perhaps Berlin may be closer to being a hedgehog but still not as close as he would like to be.
Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty
A Remarkable Decade
Russian Populism
Tolstoy and Enlightenment
Fathers and Children
Against the Current
Introduction
The Counter Enlightenment
The Originality of Machiavelli
According to Berlin, that different values may be incompatible.
The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities
Not Snow's "two cultures", more about ways of doing History, a gulf exposed or created by Giambattista Vico.
Vico's Concept of Knowledge
Vico and the Ideal of the Enlightenment
Montesquieu
Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism
Herzen and his Memoires
The Proper Study of Mankind
A collection of essays, all previously published, though some in relatively inaccessible places (1997).
The Pursuit of the Ideal
Also in: "The Crooked Timber of Humanity".
The Concept of Scientific History
Also in: "Concepts and Categories".
Does Political Theory Still Exist?
Also in: "Concepts and Categories".
"From Hope and Fear Set Free"
Also in: "Concepts and Categories".
Historical Inevitability
Two Concepts of Liberty
The Counter-Enlightenment
Also in: "Against the Current".
The Originality of Machiavelli
Also in: "Against the Current".
The Divorce Between the Sciences and the Humanities
Also in: "Against the Current".
Herder and the Enlightenment
The Hedgehog and the Fox
Also in "Russian Thinkers".
Herzen and his Memoires
Also in: "Against the Current".
Conversations with Akhmarova and Pasternak
The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will
Also in: "The Crooked Timber of Humanity".
Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power
Also in: "Against the Current".
Winston Churchill in 1940

The title of this essay arises from its having been commissioned as a review of the second volume of Churchill's war memoires. It is not particular to 1940. It provides an interesting analysis of the character of Churchill, shedding some light on his peculiar qualitifcations for his role in the second world war.

Berlin usually has one or two axes to grind, it is this in part that gives his essays grip. Often, however, I remain unconvinced, as in this case.

In discussing the way in which Churchill spoke for the nation during these times, Berlin perceives that Churchill was not a man exceptionally endowed with that kind of sensitivity which would inform him of the present sentiment. He was endowed with a great sense of history, but as to the present he was more a man to create a sentiment and inspire it in others that to express what might already have been there.

Berlin speaks as if the idea of one man speaking for the nation should normally be taken at face value, and that such spokesmanship is a mediating role. I find that hard to believe.

Berlin says of Churchill:

"If he did not represent the quintessence and epitome of what some at any rate of his fellow citizens feared and hoped in their hour of danger, this was because he idealised them with such intensity that in the end they approached his ideal and began to see themselves as he saw them 'the buoyant and imperturbable temper of Britain which I had the honour to express' - it was indeed, but he had a lion's share in creating it."

i.e. He didn't so much divine or embody the sentiment of the nation, as create it.

I had this slight sense of wonderment that Berlin should find this remarkable, but reading on after this moment of dissent I am swept off my reserve by the description which follows of what it is for a great man to approach a moment in history at which he is destined to fulfil a purpose for which his entire life has been a preparation.

A significant part of this review is devoted to comparison of Churchill with Roosevelt and to their relationship.

This review certainly made me feel that I would like to read the book. As it happens I probably wont, that's not the way I'm heading right now.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
Chapters in the History of Ideas.
Contents
The Pursuit of the Ideal
The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West
Giambattista Vico and Cultural History
Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth-Century European Thought
Interesting to me for the questions is raises about what relativism is.
Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism
European Unity and its Vicissitudes
Really about Romanticism and its totalitarian progeny in the twentieth century.
The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will
The Revolt Against the Myth of an Ideal World.
The Bent Twig: On the rise of Nationalism
Commentary
On Utopianism
Many of Berlin's papers, here and elsewhere, bear upon utopian thought. It is clear that Berlin is agin it..
Freedom and its Betrayal
Six Enemies of Human Liberty.
Introduction
Some things that these six thinkers have in common, and a tiny history of political philosophy in the form of answers to the question: "Why should anyone obey anyone else?".
Helvetius
Helvetius came up with a principle intended to perform for the social sciences the role which Newton's laws of motion performed for physics. The pleasure principle.
Rousseau
Rousseau is credited with enormous influence in the history of ideas. Berlin provides a cogent analysis of the source in his work of this influence.
Fichte
Hegel
Saint-Simon
Maistre
The Roots of Romanticism
Here is Berlin's mature account of Romanticism, an interesting contrast with his earlier attempt at "Poltical Ideas in the Romantic Age". He begins by explaining why a definition of Romanticism is impossible but Romanticism is nevertheless worth writing about as a historical phenomenon, and proceeds through four stages: first reactions against the enlightenment, the "true" fathers of Romanticism, early moderate romanticism and the later unbridled manifestations.
The notes do not follow exactly the breakdown into lectures, because Berlin's material for the lectures does not fit exactly with the lecture headings. For example, the discussion of Hamann, begins in "The First Attack.." but extends well into the next lecture. My notes on this will not be split across the sections.
In Search of a Definition
This is an explanation of why a definition is not to be had (though very many have been offered).
The First Attack on Enlightenment
Berlin refers here to Hamann.
The True Fathers of Romanticism
These are, according to Berlin, Herder and Kant.
The Restrained Romantics
Kant, Schiller and Fichte.
Unbridled Romanticism
Fichte's theory of knowledge, the French Revolution and Goethe's ,Wilhelm Meister.
The Lasting Effects
Liberty
Five essays on liberty, and some more.
Introduction
Mainly about two issues: freedom versus determinism and "negative" and "positive" liberty.
Political Ideas in the Romantic Age
Their Rise and Influence on Modern Philosophy.
Notes on the book by Isaiah Berlin associated with his Mary Flexner lectures at Bryn Mawr, Spring 1952.
Introduction
Editor's Preface
".. the ur-text or 'torso', as Berlin called it, from which a great deal of his subsequent work was derived .."
Isaiah Berlin's Political Ideas
An introduction to the book, and its place in Berlin's work, by Joshua L. Cherniss.
Prologue
Politics as a Descriptive Science
The Idea of Freedom
Two Concepts of Freedom, Romantic and Liberal
The March of History
Appendix: Subjective versus Objective Ethics

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