Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. Isaiah Berlin

1977 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-678
Author(s):  
James J. Valone
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
History Of

Isaiah Berlin and the Animal Instinct

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Paul Delany
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Sexual Abstinence ◽  
Abstract Thinking ◽  
World War ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
Abstract Logic ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
History Of

Between Aristotle and Hegel, none of the major Western philosophers were married. Is abstract thinking, at its highest, incompatible with the messiness of everyday life? At the age of nineteen, Isaiah Berlin said he was ‘vowed to eternal celibacy’. Was there a connection between his sexual abstinence and his choice of analytical philosophy as a career? During World War II he fell in love with the gentile Patricia de Bendern; this frustrating affair coincided with Berlin’s shift from abstract logic to the history of ideas. In 1956 he took a Jewish bride, Aline Halban. His personal history reflects difficulties in choosing between endogamy and exogamy, Zionism and the diaspora, negative and positive liberty.

Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
The Core ◽  
Negative Liberty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Communism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Sacrifice

This chapter on Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty centers on the most famous piece in it, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” As a matter of genre, it is an essay in conceptual analysis. Because liberty is a historically inflected concept, it is also an essay in the history of ideas. The chapter argues that Berlin was a “Cold War liberal” only in the limited sense that he campaigned against all doctrines that licensed the sacrifice of real individuals on the altar of impersonal entities such as the proletariat or the nation, and Soviet Communism was a salient case both because of the Cold War and Berlin’s own Russian origins. Individuals have an inviolability that governments of any stripe must not infringe. That is the core of negative liberty. Positively, Berlin’s faith was that unimpeded, individuals with adequate resources would spontaneously lead varied and vivid existences.

Isaiah Berlin

2018 ◽  
pp. 164-184
Author(s):  
Seyla Benhabib
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
Civic Republicanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes Isaiah Berlin's work, stating that the relationship of liberalism to Berlin's value pluralism remains fraught, as does the question whether value pluralism can avoid relativism. Notably, Judith Shklar and Berlin admired each other and shared a skeptical temperament as well as a dedication to the study of the history of ideas as the indispensable method of pursuing political philosophy in their time. Neither shared Hannah Arendt's conviction that the legacy of failed revolutions could only be countered by the activist civic republicanism of self-governing communities. The chapter also contextualizes the varying views of Berlin's work and persona through the prism of Max Weber's doctrine of value pluralism.

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