Isaiah Berlin [Hardcover]

John Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

Few would dispute that Isaiah Berlin is Britain's greatest living thinker, 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. 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 and comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy".Gray's book is as much a reconstruction as a presentation of Berlin's thought.... Gray's reconstruction is ... impressive and revealing. It points persuasively to both the overall coherence and the internal tensions of Berlin's thought.... Gray has written an acute and illuminating exposition of Berlin's world view.... He probably gets closer to Berlin than anyone else has done".--Michael Walzer, The New York Review of Books"Succeed[s] in bringing the daring of [Berlin's] thinking so clearly into view.... Berlin's commitment to liberalism for all its difficulties remains solid, and Mr. Gray's argument is that this 'agonistic' liberalism is our best bet.... It is an argument not to be missed".--Colin Walters, The Washington Times"An excellent exposition of Isaiah Berlin's ideas. [Gray] is particularly interesting in his account of Berlin's idea of negative freedom".--William Phillips, Partisan Review

Editorial Reviews

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.

From Publishers Weekly

Isaiah Berlin was part of a vital time at Oxford in the 1960s and 1970s when Gilbert Ryle and R.M. Hare expounded linguistic analysis and A.J. Ayer came up from London to preach logical positivism. He was, however, a man apart, concerned not with language but with primary issues: Berlin did not want to fiddle with words while the world burned. In this careful study of his political philosophy, Gray, who is also an Oxford don, explains and analyzes his dominant ideas. As Gray interprets him, Berlin claims that "human values are objective but irreducibly diverse," which means that, for practical purposes, they might as well be relative. People will always be in conflict over rival goods and evils, and reason is inadequate to resolve these conflicts-even if people would listen to reason. Berlin therefore embraces a value pluralism, not a belief in an identifiable, ideal life. This pluralism finally leads him to liberalism because it implies tolerance (never mind the paradox of giving liberalism privileged status in a world of equal values). Gray (Mill on Liberty) astutely guides readers through the complex ideas of an important philosopher, even if his study is somewhat arid at times. But to fault an academic study for being dry is like complaining that sloths are slow-moving: that's just the nature of the beast.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; First Printing edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691026351
• ISBN-13: 978-0691026350
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,243,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JOHN GRAY is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement and the author of over a dozen books, including Heresies and the bestselling Straw Dogs. False Dawn has been translated into sixteen languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, July 20, 2006

By 

meadowreader (Sandia Park, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Isaiah Berlin (Hardcover)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lays out Berlin's thoughts pretty well!, May 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Isaiah Berlin (Hardcover)

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.