Isaiah Berlin / John Gray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gray, John, 1948-

Contributor:

The Library of Chaim Potok (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Berlin, Isaiah, 1909-1997.

Berlin, Isaiah.

Philosophy.

Political science.

Penn Provenance:

Potok, Adena (donor) (Potok Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 189 pages, 1 unnumbered page ; 22 cm

Edition:

[First paperback print.].

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey. : Princeton University Press, [1997]

Summary:

In 1921, at the age of eleven, Isaiah Berlin arrived in England from Riga, Latvia. By the time he was thirty he was at the heart of British intellectual life. He has remained its commanding presence ever since, and few would dispute that he is Britain's greatest living thinker. His reputation extends worldwide - as a great conversationalist, intellectual historian, and man of letters. He has been called the century's most inspired reader. Yet Berlin's contributions to thought - in particular to moral and political philosophy, and to liberal theory - are little understood, and surprisingly neglected by the academic world. In this book, they are shown to be animated by a single, powerful, subversive idea: value-pluralism, which affirms the reality of a deep conflict between ultimate human values which reason cannot resolve. Though bracingly clear-headed, humane, and realist, Berlin's value-pluralism runs against the dominant Western traditions, secular and religious, which avow an ultimate harmony of values. It supports a highly distinctive restatement of liberalism in Berlin's work - an agonistic liberalism, which is founded not on rational choice but on the radical choices we make when faced with intractable dilemmas. It is this new statement of liberalism, the central subject of John Gray's lively and lucid book, which gives the liberal intellectual tradition a new lease on life, a new source of light, and which comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy.

Contents:

The idea of freedom

Pluralism

History

Nationalism

Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment

Agonistic liberalism.

Notes:

"This book has been composed in Trump Medieval."

"Third printing, First paperback printing."

Originally published: Great Britain : HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-177) and index.

Local Notes:

Potok Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries by Adena Potok.

ISBN:

0691026351

069104824X

9780691048246

OCLC:

37961345