Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas
by Isaiah Berlin
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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 show more 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. show lessTags
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Isaiah Berlin was a master of the philosophical essay. In fact, nearly all of his literary output comes to us in this form. His essays are timeless, mentally stimulating, and simply a pleasure to read. He is one of those authors whose works inevitably lead one to other authors, usually the classics. His point of view is fresh and his writing is engaging. Don’t miss out on the experience of reading Isaiah Berlin.
Isaiah Berlin was a master of the philosophical essay. In fact, nearly all of his literary output comes to us in this form. His essays are timeless, mentally stimulating, and simply a pleasure to read. He is one of those authors whose works inevitably lead one to other authors, usually the classics. His point of view is fresh and his writing is engaging. Don't miss out on the experience of reading Isaiah Berlin.
Another one I didn't finish. Another one of those books to get back to someday.
Un placer leer estos ensayos de ciencia política. Una revisión de la historia del pensamiento en algunos de los aspectos desde Maquiavelo, pasando por los anti ilustración, los socialistas y el surgir del nacionalismo.
Sep 15, 2018Spanish
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84+ Works 9,149 Members
Philosopher, political theorist, and essayist, Isaiah Berlin was born in 1909 to Russian-speaking Jewish parents in Latvia. Reared in Latvia and later in Russia, Berlin developed a strong Russian-Jewish identity, having witnessed both the Social-Democratic and the Bolshevik Revolutions. At the age of 12, Berlin moved with his family to England, show more where he attended prep school and then St. Paul's. In 1928, he went up as a scholar to Corpus Christi College in Oxford. After an unsuccessful attempt at the Manchester Guardian, Berlin was offered a position as lecturer in philosophy at New College. Almost immediately, he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls. During this time at All Souls, Berlin wrote his brilliant biographical study of Marx, titled Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939), for the Home University Library. Berlin continued to teach through early World War II, and was then sent to New York by the Ministry of Information, and subsequently to the Foreign Office in Washington, D.C. It was during these years that he drafted several fine works regarding the changing political mood of the United States, collected in Washington Despatches 1941-1945 (1981). By the end of the war, Berlin had shifted his focus from philosophy to the history of ideas, and in 1950 he returned to All Souls. In 1957, he was elected to the Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory, delivering his influential and best-known inaugural lecture, Two Concepts of Liberty. Some of his works include Liberty, The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Flourishing: Selected Letters 1928 - 1946, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought, and Unfinished Dialogue, Prometheus. Berlin died in Oxford on November 5, 1997. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas
- Original title
- Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas
- Original publication date
- 1979
- People/Characters
- Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli; Giambattista Vico; Montesquieu; Hume, David, 1711-1776; Alexander Herzen; Moses Hess (show all 10); Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield; Karl Marx; Giuseppe Verdi; Georges Sorel
- Blurbers
- Rees, Garonwy; Thomas, Keith; Quinton, Anthony; Pritchett, V. S.; Storr, Anthony
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 490
- Popularity
- 61,574
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.20)
- Languages
- 6 — English, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 19
- ASINs
- 4
