The crooked timber of humanity : chapters in the history of ideas / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy ; foreword by John Banville.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berlin, Isaiah, 1909-1997.

Contributor:

Banville, John, Contributor.

Banville, John.

Hardy, Henry, Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Modern.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 p.)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Banville, John

Editor's Preface

Note on References

The Pursuit of the Ideal

The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West

Giambattista Vico and Cultural History

Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth-Century European Thought

Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism

Appendix: Violence and Terror

European Unity and Its Vicissitudes

The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will: The Revolt against the Myth of an Ideal World

The Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism

Appendix to the Second Edition

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781400847815

1400847818

OCLC:

844924532