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Isaiah Berlin
by John Gray
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Princeton University Press (1997-08-29)
ISBN: 069104824X
EAN: 9780691048246
Dewy Decimal #: 190
Paperback: 200 pages
SKU: T081824-5503
Condition: New
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In 1921, at the age of eleven, Isaiah Berlin arrived in England from Riga, Lativa. 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 was one of Britain's greatest thinkers. 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 that 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 agnostic 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 life, and which comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy.
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Amazon.com Review
For more than half a century, the renowned liberal thinker Sir Isaiah Berlin has occupied an important spot at the center of British intellectual and public life. Recipient of knighthood and the Order of Merit, he has been the head of an Oxford College and the director of the Royal Opera House. During World War II, he acted as Winston Churchill's eyes and ears in America. He is also a talented and prolific writer with five volumes of essays to his name. Surprisingly, John Gray's book is only the third full-length examination of one of this century's seminal thinkers.
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Customer Reviews
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Excellent
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-07-20
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
For some reason, the other reviews, with one exception, are not reviews of John Gray's, "Isaiah Berlin;" they are instead reviews of a compilation of Berlin's writing, "Four Essays on Liberty." I don't know how this happened, but I will review Gray's book, ISBN 0691026351.
Gray presents a compact (168 pages) intellectual biography of Berlin, an affectionate, fair, yet critical survey of his thought and works. It is an excellent resource, and it provides the reader with the background and context necessary for understanding Berlin's rather voluminous and disparate writings. This is especially valuable, as Berlin was a loquacious and sometimes untidy writer, circling around, over, and back through his ideas in way that some may find confusing more than clarifying. In fact, his key ideas were not that many, and not that difficult to grasp, when set out as carefully as Gray sets them out.
If you want more narrative of Berlin's very interesting life, you should consider Michael Ignatieff's, "Isaiah Berlin: A Life," which is also superbly done. Gray concentrates on Berlin's ideas, summarizing the whole of his life in one paragraph in the Introduction.
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Lays out Berlin's thoughts pretty well!
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-05-19
This book came out in the mid 1990s right when the biggest debates were dealing with cultural diversity and affirmative action. No book not even this one can capture the essence and writings of Berlin's writing that expanded nearly six decades yet it provides a fresh analysis of his ideas to those who aren't familiar with the 'history of ideas' and unleashed in the public debate about what to do about the remnants of liberalism and multiculturalism in this day and age. I recommend buying this highly.
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