Against the current : essays in the history of ideas / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy ; foreword by Mark Lilla ; introduction by Roger Hausheer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berlin, Isaiah, 1909-1997.

Contributor:

Hardy, Henry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy.

Idea (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (581 p.)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Lilla, Mark

Author's Note

Editor's Preface / Mill, J. S.

Note on References

Introduction / Hausheer, Roger

The Counter-Enlightenment

The Originality of Machiavelli

The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities

Vico's Concept of Knowledge

Vico and the Ideal of the Enlightenment

Montesquieu

Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism

Herzen and His Memoirs

The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess

Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and the Search for Identity

The 'Naivety' of Verdi

Georges Sorel

Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power

Appendix to the Second Edition

Index / Matthews, Douglas

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9781400843237

1400843235

OCLC:

844938995