Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought [Paperback]

Isaiah Berlin (Author), Henry Hardy (Editor), Joshua L. Cherniss (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 069112695X | ISBN-13: 978-0691126951 | Publication Date: February 25, 2008

It is sometimes thought that the renowned essayist Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was incapable of writing a big book. But in fact he developed some of his most important essays--including "Two Concepts of Liberty" and "Historical Inevitability"--from a book-length manuscript that he intended to publish but later set aside. Published here for the first time, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the history of ideas in the period that he made his own--the Romantic age. Distilling his formative early work in the history of ideas, the book also contains much that is not found elsewhere in his writings. The last of Berlin's posthumous books, it is of great interest both for his treatment of the subject and for what it reveals about his intellectual development.

Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of the Romantic age are still largely our own--down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Vividly expounding the central political ideas of leading European thinkers in the period 1760-1830, including Helvetius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, the book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style.

The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Indispensable for anyone interested in the history of ideas and the development of liberal thought, it contains most of the central themes of Berlin's work, together with some of its recurring ambiguities. -- John Gray, New York Review of Books



[This book] is worth a look for anyone interested in a kind of original formulation of Berlin's ideas, but it also provides a new path into a great mind for those who are not yet familiar with him. -- Brandon Turner, Perspectives on Political Science



[Political Ideas in the Romantic Age] contains, in embryo, the main ideas that were to dominate [Berlin's] thought. -- Raymond Carr, Spectator



An absorbing and impressive new book . . . [that] says that we still live off the intellectual capital produced by the great thinkers of the romantic age, roughly 1760 to 1830. We think as they thought. We speak as they spoke. -- Robert Fulford, National Post



Berlin's text is substantially rich and essential for understanding the foundations of his early intellectual encounters with the minds of the Enlightenment and the Romantic age. -- Choice



In this volume, we have one of the most central sources for much of Berlin's thought. What makes Berlin such a compelling historian, and one of the very few of whom it will always be said that he is a pleasure to read, was the way that he got under the skin of people whose opinions he found, after considered thought, abhorrent. His ideas are still worth debating today, and for the foreseeable future. -- Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian



At a time when the recrudescence of romantic themes has accompanied numerous new political foundings in the post-Soviet era, and in the turmoil and realignments in the Middle East and Africa, there is a refreshing clarity in this work, and a robust comprehensiveness to his commentary on romanticist ideas--romanticism insinuated exalted, but usually volatile, new ideas in old containers. Its beguiling grandeur obscured its dangers. Berlin offers incisively critical assessments of its leading thinkers. -- Peter Emberley, International Political Science Review



Those already interested in Berlin's scholarship will find the origins here of his broader contributions to the 'history of ideas' while at his intellectual peak. -- Ann Frank Wake, The Historian

Review

Political Ideas in the Romantic Age makes an intriguing and provocative contribution to the history of ideas, and also to the study of Berlin's own thought. The ideas Berlin examines are intrinsically interesting and hugely influential. The book integrates Berlin's analysis of liberty with his reading of the debate between the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment to an extent not found in his other works. And the editing is as meticulous as anything done by Henry Hardy, who is the best possible editor of any text by Berlin.
(George Crowder, Flinders University, Australia, author of "Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism" ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069112695X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691126951
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,844,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romantic beginnings He makes the 'life of the mind' live, May 2, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Hardcover)

Isaiah Berlin is one of the greatest modern political philosophers.
This present work was first presented as a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr college in 1952, and later revised. It is an early work containing the seeds of many of his most important ideas, including that of `two liberties'.
It also contains lengthy analysis of the works of those Continental thinkers Condorcet, Helvetius , de Maistre ,Fichte, Rousseau Hegel he learned much from, and made a more vital part of Anglo-philosophical discussion.

Carole Angier writing in the Telegraph describes the crux of Berlin's argument as follows:

"There is a long rationalist tradition, ... stretching from the ancient Greeks through Christianity to the Enlightenment and beyond, in which virtue is knowledge, as Plato said; the world is made in a certain way, by God or nature; and if we understand it rightly we will know our place in it, and what to want.
In different accounts we learn these facts in different ways: from God, nature or science; from the natural light of reason or the uncorrupted heart. But all agree that the world is a natural order, and that real freedom is fitting into that order in the right way. This is what Berlin will call positive liberty, and what he calls here non-humanist or romantic freedom. It is the freedom Rousseau finds in the "general will", which is what our real selves want, and that coincides with the good of society and the will of the ruler. If I obey the ruler, therefore, I really obey myself; and so there is no conflict between liberty and authority, freedom and obedience.
This is the "grotesque and hair-raising paradox", the "sleight of hand" that has, according to Berlin, led to all totalitarian theories and practices since, from Robespierre to Marx, in the name of "higher" freedoms or goods, which the State, or the Church, knows better than my (ordinary) self. Against it he sets Hume's distinction between fact and value, and the modest, "negative" freedom of Mill, which consists of being free from interference by other people."

This work contains the heart of Berlin's analysis of the Romantic Period.It also illustrates how skillful Berlin could be at sympathetically presenting the Utopian schemes of particular Romantic thinkers , while carefully showing his reservations about them.

Like all his works it is written in a sweeping often surprisingly emotional and exhilirating style.

This man makes the 'life of the mind' live.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Berlin Basic, August 24, 2006

By 

G. R. McGhie "Bookist" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Hardcover)

For those with some knowledge of Berlin's contribution to modern thought "Political Ideas in the Romantic Age" is an important contribution to his already extensive writings. For those with little familiarity with this prolific English/Latvian philosopher of the history of ideas this text serves as an excellent foundation document.
In an introductory comment Joshua Cherniss provides a very useful and candid perspective on Berlin and really sets the stage for the essays that follow.

As Cherniss says "Berlin produced no great synthesis or Magnum Opus; temperamentally, and stylistically, he was an essayist". It is as an essayist that Berlin talks about subjects that have considerable current importance -- particularly value pluralism and liberalism.


But the importance of Berlin's approach is the strong historical perspective that he brings to his writing. In illuminating commentary he brings a number of of unjustifiably neglected writers and thinkers to the fore. Helvetius, Turgot and Holbach are referred to as well as others who have retained a modern currency - Adam Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, Leibniz and Hume. They are all caught up in Berlin's unique writing style which carries the reader along in powerful mix of thought and words.

No single writer can bring complete answers to modern issues and problems. Berlin would not claim that his "Two Concepts of Liberty", attitude to pluralism and values provides a total philosophical package. But to me his ideas give us a stimulating foundation with which to approach today's complex problems and issues

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars political ideas illuminated, July 4, 2006

By 

Michael G. Edwards (hobart, australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Hardcover)

a splendid demonstration of a great mind at work. these essays must be close to a standard work on the ancestry of contemporary political thought