Philosophers : Isaiah Berlin: A Life

Isaiah Berlin: A Life

EUR 18,95


Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century, and one of its fastest talkers. Born in the Latvian port of Riga in 1909, his family survived the Russian Revolution, but its chilly aftermath forced his Anglophile father to resettle them in Surbiton in 1921. Isaiah assimilated quickly, becoming in his mind equal parts Russian, English and Jewish, and subsequently he became the first Jew to be elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was to spend most of his life studying and lecturing at Oxford, developing his concept of negative liberty, but although he longed to know one big thing, to be a hedgehog in his own famous definition, instead he felt more naturally a fox, knowing many smaller things. This Reynard instinct, however, made him wonderful company, and he became that rarity: a British public intellectual, who made learning attractive. Michael Ignatieff has written a book that stands somewhere between a biography and a ghost-written autobiography, relying mostly on Berlin s own recollections gathered from conversations between them over a 10-year period. Berlin had his detractors, including himself (superficial), and a more critical evaluation of his contribution to philosophy will be written, but Ignatieff captures the human side of this wise and cosmopolitan man, whose deceptive lightness of being concealed a soul that stared at the horrors of his century. --David Vincent

A Wonderful Biography - I just finished reading Isaiah Berlin and must say that it is one of the finest books I have ever read. The story of Mr. Berlin s life if fascinating, from his childhoon in Russia and England, to his education, his service in the Foreign Office during WWII, his meetings with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, his career as an Oxford don, etc. Mr. Ignatieff tells the story, interspersed with the substance of his developing philosophical views, with warmth and insight. Even if you care not for philosophy (and I generally do not), this book deserves attention simply because it is a wonderful life and well told.

An excepcional book - Few biographies turn out to be such good books: Ignatieff s empathy for its subject mirrors Berlin s ability to understand/feel, and explains the glow that remains when you finally put the book down, in that sense it is a very unusual biography, fitting a most unusual man. Objectivity and love make a fair, warm testemony that does not cut intellectual corners. Berlin was lucky with his biographer, but then he always was. One criticism: I think it s the first chapter(Albany), not the last, that should have closed the book - it is there that Ignatieff gives a clearer feeling of who I.Berlin was. I went back to the begining and repeated that first chapter, and only then did the book seem complete.

Go Gently, Not - I d only vaguely recalled Isaiah Berlin s name from my casual reading in the 60 s and 70 s. I knew he was an esteemed Oxford don, a philosopher who had once passed through the periphery of the Kennedy years, as many quasi- and semi-quasi celebrities of any rank did then, and who had finally emerged as a sort of stone-gray eminence of Western thought. Voila for first impressions and fashionable facsimilies.Upon discovering Turgenev s wonderful Fathers and Sons, I also found Berlin s Romanes Lecture Fathers and Children as a 60-odd page prelude and was instantly enthralled. I not only glowed at Berlin s intimate feel for history, but for his nakedly innate empathy, notwithstanding and god-blessing his ability to make it all meaningful to me, the humble reader.Either because I was so enamoured with Turgenev and/or really finding Berlin at last, I ll never know. To me then, neither was more important than the other. It s only after years and much living do I realize ultime: Turgenev was a god and Berlin only an intuitive but skeptically timid genuis. How nice, expecially when Michael Ignatieff writes a dynamite biography and makes me weep for Isaiah. Shalom

Michael Ignatieff s grasp of THE LIFE - This is one of the most insightful, educated, emotional, and inspiring biographies I have ever read. Michael Ignatieff has accomplished one of the most difficult tasks for a non-Russian biographer writing about a Russian persona: Mr. Ignatieff has guessed and grasped the subdelties of one of the most interesting, and surprising minds of the times. The author throughout the book never let go of I. Berlin s Russian Jewish descent, M. Ignatieff never underestimated Berlins s belonging to his very spesific past and most vulnerable identity. Also the language of the biography is sympathetically emotional, sincere, eloquent, in other words totally in accordance with Isaiah Berlin s life. This book has become one of my most satisfactory literary experiences.

A great read about a fascinating life. - I would give this brilliant book six stars if I could. It was a great read, and I learned a lot about myself, as well as about Berlin. It gave coherence and voice to many of my beliefs that followed Isaiah Berlin s, even though I only knew of him, if at all, as a mythic English intellectual whose writings were Delphic and seemed opaque to me.I, too, could never identify with the smugness of idealogues on the left or the right. The narrow strand between these groups has been lonely terrain for the past 50 years of my adult life.I congratulate Michael Ignatieff on a masterpiece, an evocation of a great, courageous man who literally kept his cool over the better part of the century, when all about him were shouting fire. I hope his values take root for the next century.



Isaiah Berlin: A Life