"A celebrated master of the spoken as well as the written word, Isaiah Berlin here gives us a rare memoir in the form of a dialogue." "Isaiah Berlin is renowned the world over for his analysis of the ideas that have influenced or transformed societies. He has a deep commitment to liberty and pluralism, and has devoted the half century and more of his professional life as a teacher and lecturer to exploring the conditions that allow these ideals (...) to flourish, and those that threaten them." "Berlin here intersperses insights into the development of his ideas and political philosophy with rich personal reminiscences. He discusses Machiavelli, Marx, Vico, Herder, and Herzen, among others, and their influence over him." "As he leads us from Petrograd to Oxford, Washington, Moscow, London, and Jerusalem, he speaks of his friends and contemporaries: W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Igor Stravinsky, A. J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, and many others. He tells of his moving encounters with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Chaim Weizmann, and of his passion for music and literature." "Frank and engaging, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin is a remarkable record of one of the great intellectual odysseys of our time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The work reported in this monograph was begun in the winter of 1967 in a graduate seminar at Berkeley. Many of the basic data were gathered by members of the seminar and the theoretical framework presented here was initially developed in the context of the seminar discussions. Much has been discovered since1969, the date of original publication, regarding the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of universal, cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of basic color lexicons, and something, albeit less, can now also (...) be said with some confidence regarding the constraining effects of these language-independent processes of color perception and conceptualization on the direction of evolution of basic color term lexicons. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration gathers tributes, reflections, and commentaries on the great thinker and his philosophy, politics, and life-including contributions from Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, Ronald Dworkin, Stephen Spender, and many others. "Some [essays], like Joseph Brodsky's tribute, are touchingly personal. Others, like G. A. Cohen's 'Isaiah's Marx, and Mine,' mingle personal reminiscences with a more theoretical look at Berlin's ideas. . . . The volume is a fitting tribute to a thinker famed for his erudition, eclecticism, and (...) clarity of style."--Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor "One of the many merits of this rich and rewarding collection is the sense-very imperfectly conveyed here-it transmits of the tone of Berlin's writings and conversation, of the multiplicity of his interests and the variety of his achievements. . . . The essays testify to the character of Berlin's mind as a luminous prism, in which the cultural traditions of Russia, England and Judaism are marvelously refracted."--John Gray, Times Literary Supplement "[T]he collection testifies to the learning and profundity of Berlin's thought and, by way both of reminiscence and influence, to the charm and gaity of its expression."--Anthony Quinton, The Times of London. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin is heralded as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and this editied work by a group of distinguished scholars is an examination of an Humean liberal intellectual. Isaiah Berlin's legacy still excites intense scholarly debate.

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political pluralism. In the Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our present century: between the Platonic (...) belief in absolute Truth and the lure of authoritarianism between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century fascism between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world. (shrink)

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic (...) belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defense of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters by Berlin and previously uncollected writings, most notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. (shrink)

The United Nations Global Compact has generated a lively debate among academics, activists, and policy practitioners. Given the scope and ambition of this program, and the prestige of the United Nations associated with it, its supporters believe it will fundamentally reshape how businesses practice corporate social responsibility. Its critics view it as a flawed program because it does not impose verifiable obligations and does not compel its participants to adhere to their program obligations. We present an approach to study CSR (...) programs grounded in rational-choice institutionalist theory, building on previous work viewing CSR programs as clubs which can produce reputational benefits for members as well as positive societal externalities, provided that they incorporate institutional mechanisms to prevent member shirking. This perspective puts the focus squarely on the institutional rules of the UNGC and their impacts on member behavior. While we conclude that the UNGC has not yet demonstrated a capacity to generate across-the-board improvements in CSR performance beyond what member firms would have done otherwise, we are hopeful that its sponsors and leaders can undertake worthwhile changes in program design to align member incentives with program objectives. (shrink)

Liberty is an expanded edition of Isaiah Berlin's classic of liberalism, Four Essays on Liberty. Berlin's editor Henry Hardy has incorporated a fifth essay, as Berlin wished, and added further pieces on the same topic, so that Berlin's principal statements on liberty are available together for the first time. He also describes the gestation of the book and throws further biographical light on Berlin's preoccupation with liberty in appendices drawn from his unpublished writings.

"Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century", Historical Inevitability", "Two Concepts of Liberty", "John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life". These four essays deal with the various aspects of individual liberty, including the distinction between positive and negative liberty and the necessity of rejecting determinism if we wish to keep hold of the notions of human responsibility and freedom.

In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom--among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, Berlin brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times.

This lecture insisted upon negative liberty as the political complement to the human capacity for free choice, and made matching metaphysical claims: the nature of being, and especially the conflicts amongst values, were inconsistent with totalitarian claims. Berlin, arguing along this line, provided an account of the perversion of positive liberty into a warrant for such claims, discussed nationalism, and emphasized the value‐pluralism, now linked so frequently with his name.

These celebrated lectures constitute one of Isaiah Berlin's most concise, accessible, and convincing presentations of his views on human freedom—views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty" and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. When they were broadcast on BBC radio in 1952, the lectures created a sensation and confirmed Berlin’s reputation as an intellectual who could speak to the public in an appealing and (...) compelling way. A recording of only one of the lectures has survived, but Henry Hardy has recreated them all here from BBC transcripts and Berlin’s annotated drafts. Hardy has also added, as an appendix to this new edition, a revealing text of "Two Concepts" based on Berlin’s earliest surviving drafts, which throws light on some of the issues raised by the essay. And, in a new foreword, historian Enrique Krauze traces the origin of Berlin’s idea of negative freedom to his rejection of the notion that the creation of the State of Israel left Jews with only two choices: to emigrate to Israel or to renounce Jewish identity. (shrink)

About the philosophy of Giambattista Vico, 1668- 1774 and Johann Gottfried Herder, 1774-1803.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “For anyone wanting to understand the twists and turns of the history of ideas, this book will be indispensable.”―John Gray, New York Times Book Review The Sense of Reality was the last new collection of essays published by Isaiah Berlin in his lifetime. All informed by Berlin’s lifelong fascination with the history of ideas, these engaging studies range widely: the subjects explored include realism in history; judgment in politics; the (...) history of socialism; the nature and impact of Marxism; the radical cultural revolution instigated by the Romantics; Russian notions of artistic commitment; and the origins and practice of nationalism. The title essay, taking its cue from the impossibility of recreating a bygone epoch, is a superb centerpiece. Now with a new foreword by Timothy Snyder and a new appendix comprising a previously unpublished essay on the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinksy and a previously uncollected lecture on utopianism, The Sense of Reality is a rich and illuminating collection from one of the most seductive writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The masterly essay on Tolstoy’s view of history, in which Sir Isaiah Berlin underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.

These essays are not marginal ruminations, but rather Berlin's most important studies in the history of ideas.

Berlin's intense consciousness of the plurality of values, the nature of historical understanding, and the fragility of human freedom premeates essays ranging from his early debates on logical positivism to his later work.

The essays collected in this new volume reveal Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays. The connecting theme of these essays, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the (...) crucial social and political role--past, present and future--of ideas, and of their progenitors. A rich variety of subject-matters is represented--from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism--so that the truth of Heine's warning is exemplified on a broad front. It is a warning that Berlin often referred to, and provides an answer to those who ask, as from time to time they do, why intellectual history matters. Among the contributions are "My Intellectual Path," Berlin's last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations and "Jewish Slavery and Emancipation," the classic statement of his Zionist views, long unavailable in print. His other subjects include the Enlightenment, Giambattista Vico, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, G.V. Plekhanov, the Russian intelligentsia, the idea of liberty, political realism, nationalism, and historicism. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas. "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."--Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty , 1958. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance of dissenters in the history of ideas--among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, Berlin brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times--and still challenge conventional wisdom. In a new foreword to this corrected edition, which also includes a new appendix of letters in which Berlin (...) discusses and further illuminates some of its topics, noted essayist Mark Lilla argues that Berlin's decision to give up a philosophy fellowship and become a historian of ideas represented not an abandonment of philosophy but a decision to do philosophy by other, perhaps better, means. "His instinct told him," Lilla writes, "that you learn more about an idea as an idea when you know something about its genesis and understand why certain people found it compelling and were spurred to action by it." This collection of fascinating intellectual portraits is a rich demonstration of that belief. (shrink)

Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. For more than a decade, the debate over high-stakes testing has dominated the field of education. This passionate and provocative book provides a fresh perspective on the issue and powerful ammunition for opponents of high-stakes tests. Their analysis is grounded in the application of Campbell’s Law, which posits that the greater the social consequences associated (...) with a quantitative indicator, the more likely it is that the indicator itself will become corrupted—and the more likely it is that the use of the indicator will corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Nichols and Berliner illustrate both aspects of this “corruption,” showing how the pressures of high-stakes testing erode the validity of test scores and distort the integrity of the education system. Their analysis provides a coherent and comprehensive intellectual framework for the wide-ranging arguments against high-stakes testing, while putting a compelling human face on the data marshalled in support of those arguments. (shrink)

Propositions about the nature of expertise, in general, and expertise in pedagogy, in particular, are discussed. The time needed to develop expertise in teaching and the highly contextual nature of teachers’ knowledge are also discussed. Four theories of teacher development are presented, with an elaboration on the heuristic value of the theory of Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986). Examples from the pedagogical literature are used to illustrate this theory. The recent research establishing causal relationships between those identified as experts in teaching (...) and their students’ academic achievement is also presented. This research allows those who study expertise in teaching to have a more objective measure for identifying and studying expert pedagogues. (shrink)

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

This new edition features the previously unpublished delivery text of Berlin's inaugural lecture as a professor at Oxford, which derives from this volume and stands as the briefest and most pithy version of his famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty.? Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which the great intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the period he made his own. Written for a (...) series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of 1760-1830 are still largely ours, down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Berlin provides a vivid account of some of the era’s most influential thinkers, including Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Helvetius, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, and Schelling. Written in Berlin’s characteristically accessible style, this is his longest single text. Distilling his formative early work and containing much that is not to be found in his famous essays, the book is of great interest both for what it reveals about the continuing influence of Romantic political thinking and for what it shows about the development of Berlin’s own influential thought. The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work. (shrink)