Intellectual historians have often remarked that German thought from its earliest beginnings is marked by two major features that distinguish it from the greater part of the remainder of Western European thought. These are, first, the tendency to seek some kind of participatory relationship with nature and the universe conceived in quasi-animistic terms, which represents a kind of reversion to a much older, much more primitive way of conceiving the world and man's place in it, and has led to all (...) kinds of mysticism. It is a strain in the history of German thought which has been brought out very clearly by Lévy-Bruhl and others. (shrink)

Depuis sa mort en 1997, nombreux sont ceux qui en sont venus à considérer Isaiah Berlin comme l’un des plus grands défenseurs, sur le plan philosophique, du libéralisme moral et politique au XXe siècle, et comme un possible porte-étendard de la raison, de la tolérance et de la rectitude de jugement pour des générations d’hommes et de femmes à venir. De fait, pour la complexité de..