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Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA (24 May/6 June 1909[4] – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas.[5] Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially by his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy.

This article is about the 20th-century philosopher. For the 18th-century rabbi, see Isaiah Berlin (rabbi).

Born in Riga (now the capital of Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire) in 1909, he moved to Petrograd, Russia, at the age of six, where he witnessed the revolutions of 1917. In 1921, his family moved to the UK, and he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[6] In 1932, at the age of twenty-three, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. In addition to his own output, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English, and during World War II, worked for the British Diplomatic Service. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he played a role in creating Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its founding President. Berlin was appointed a CBE in 1946, knighted in 1957, and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties, and on 25 November 1994, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto, for which occasion he prepared a "short credo" (as he called it in a letter to a friend), now known as "A Message to the Twenty-First Century", to be read on his behalf at the ceremony.[7]


An annual Isaiah Berlin Lecture is held at the Hampstead Synagogue, at Wolfson College, Oxford, at the British Academy, and in Riga. Berlin's work on liberal theory and on value pluralism, as well as his opposition to Marxism and communism, has had a lasting influence.

Commemoration[edit]

A number of commemorative events for Isaiah Berlin are held at Oxford University, as well as scholarships given out in his name, including the Wolfson Isaiah Berlin Clarendon Scholarship, The Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship, and the annual Isaiah Berlin Lectures. The Berlin Quadrangle of Wolfson College, Oxford, is named after him. The Isaiah Berlin Association of Latvia was founded in 2011 to promote the ideas and values of Sir Isaiah Berlin, in particular by organising an annual Isaiah Berlin day and lectures in his memory.[52] At the British Academy, the Isaiah Berlin lecture series has been held since 2001.[53] Many volumes from Berlin's personal library were donated to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and form part of the Aranne Library collection. The Isaiah Berlin Room, on the third floor of the library, is a replica of his study at the University of Oxford.[54] There is also the Isaiah Berlin Society which takes place at his alma mater of St Paul's School. The society invites world famous academics to share their research into the answers to life's great concerns and to respond to students' questions. In the last few years they have hosted: A.C. Grayling, Brad Hooker, Jonathan Dancy, John Cottingham, Tim Crane, Arif Ahmed, Hugh Mellor and David Papineau.[55]

+, Thornton Butterworth, 1939. 5th ed., Karl Marx, 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691156507.

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment

, New American Library, 1956. Out of print. Second edition (2017) available online only.[56]

The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers

+, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953. 2nd ed., 2014, Phoenix. ISBN 978-1780228433. 2nd US ed., Princeton University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1400846634.

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History

Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, 1969. Superseded by Liberty.

Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Chatto and Windus, 1976. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.

Russian Thinkers (edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly), Hogarth Press, 1978. 2nd ed. (revised by Henry Hardy), Penguin, 2008.  978-0141442204.

ISBN

+Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Hogarth Press, 1978. Pimlico.  978-0712665520. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691157498.

ISBN

+, Hogarth Press, 1979. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0712666909. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press.

Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas

+Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1980. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 1998.  978-0712666015. 3rd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691157702.

ISBN

+The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, John Murray, 1990. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 2013.  978-1845952082. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691155937.

ISBN

The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, John Murray, 1993. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.

+The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, Chatto & Windus, 1996. Pimlico.  978-0712673679. 2nd ed., 2019, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691182872.

ISBN

The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer) [a one-volume selection from the whole of Berlin's work], Chatto & Windus, 1997. 2nd ed., Vintage, 2013.  978-0099582762.

ISBN

+The Roots of Romanticism (lectures delivered in 1965), Chatto & Windus, 1999. [imlico.  978-0712665445. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691156200.

ISBN

+, Pimlico, 2000. 2nd ed., 2013. ISBN 978-1845952136. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691157658.

Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

+The Power of Ideas, Chatto & Windus, 2000. Pimlico.  978-0712665544. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691157603.

ISBN

+Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (lectures delivered in 1952), Chatto & Windus, 2002. Pimlico.  978-0712668422. 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691114996.

ISBN

Liberty [revised and expanded edition of Four Essays on Liberty], Oxford University Press, 2002.  978-0199249893.

ISBN

The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Brookings Institution Press, 2004.  978-0815721550. 2nd ed., Brookings Classics, 2016. ISBN 978-0815728870.

ISBN

+Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (1952), Chatto & Windus, 2006.  0701179090. Pimlico, ISBN 978-1844139262. 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691126951.

ISBN

(with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) Unfinished Dialogue, Prometheus, 2006.  978-1591023760.

ISBN

Gerald C. MacCallum Jr.

(1998). Isaiah Berlin: A Life. New York: Metropolitan. ISBN 0805063005. OCLC 42666274. Authorised biography.

Ignatieff, Michael

Baum, Bruce and Robert Nichols, eds. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom: 'Two Concepts of Liberty' 50 Years Later, (Routledge, 2013).

. Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Benhabib, Seyla

Blattberg, Charles. From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.  0198296886. A critique of Berlin's value pluralism. Blattberg has also criticised Berlin for taking politics "too seriously."

ISBN

Brockliss, Laurence and Ritchie Robertson (eds.), Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Caute, David, Isaac and Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic (Yale University Press, 2013)

Cherniss, Joshua, and Steven Smith, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah Berlin (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

excerpt

Crowder, George. Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.  0745624766.

ISBN

Crowder, George. The Problem of Value Pluralism: Isaiah Berlin and Beyond (Routledge, 2019)

Dubnov, Arie M. Isaiah Berlin: The Journey of a Jewish Liberal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Galipeau, Claude. Isaiah Berlin's Liberalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.  0198278683.

ISBN

. Isaiah Berlin: An Interpretation of His Thought, (Princeton University Press, 1996). ISBN 069104824X.

Gray, John

Hardy, Henry, ed. Archived 1 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine (The Boydell Press, 2009).

The Book of Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin

Ignatieff, Michael. Isaiah Berlin: A Life (Chatto and Windus, 1998)

Lyons, Johnny. The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).

excerpt

Müller, Jan-Werner, ed. Isaiah Berlin’s Cold War Liberalism (Springer, 2019).

Walicki, Andrzej. Encounters with Isaiah Berlin: Story of an Intellectual Friendship (Peter Lang, 2011).

Website and bibliography of Isaiah Berlin's writings

Archived 19 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine

Full text of Concepts and Categories

Entry on Isaiah Berlin in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics

Cherniss, Joshua; Hardy, Henry. . In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"Isaiah Berlin"

at Wolfson College

Bibliography

Bragg, Melvyn, , In Our Time, BBC Radio Four, including a discussion with Michael Ignatieff, biographer, of the ideas of Berlin, a year after the latter's death

"War in the 20th Century"

Sir Isaiah Berlin's Blue Plaque on Headington House

Isaiah Berlin Day in Riga

Broadcasts