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5.0 out of 5 stars
NINE POWERHOUSES OF INTELLECTUAL ELECTRICITY!, June 15, 1999
By A Customer
All of Isaiah Berlin's books are good. But this one is his best.
"The Sense of Reality" is a collection of nine brilliant essays on "ideas and their history." Each essay is a powerhouse of intellectual electricity!
In a style that is stimulating, compelling--and, in the end, irresistible--Berlin writes about ideas with all the nervous energy of an enthusiast.
Yet he is clear to the end. He is a great explainer. He distinguishes one thing from another. He takes on the knots, unties them, and lets go of the rope.
The effect on the reader is one of exhilarating liberation. One can breathe a little freer. At the same time, one must breathe a little harder. Up here, at high altitude, in the Sierras of the cerebellum, the air is crisp as paper. And our guide, our cicerone, our Isaiah, keeps us skipping--at a dizzying pace!--from mountaintop to mountaintop.
As the pages turn, they envelop the reader in a whirlpool of words that round up the ideas--only to plunge them into a deep sea of profound thought. Once again, we gasp for air.
Indeed, it seems that, wherever Berlin takes us--the mountains, seas, skies, stars of the mind--we are left dazzled, breathless, tottering on the edge of horizons that become elastic, expansive, infinite . . .
In the title essay, Berlin writes of the "disturbing experience," the "electric shock," of "genuinely profound insight"--which he likens to the touching of nerves deeply embedded in our most private thoughts and basic beliefs.
This is not Science. This is the Humanities. Not the mechanics of Newton. But the Pensees of Pascal. Not knowledge. But knowing that "there is too much we do not know, but dimly surmise."
Very well. But what does Berlin mean by the "sense of reality"? In his essay "Political Judgement," he drops a few more clues. It is "a sense of direct acquaintance with the texture of life." Or: "natural wisdom, imaginative understanding, insight, perceptiveness, and...intuition." Or: "practical wisdom,...a sense of what will 'work' and what will not. It is a capacity...for synthesis rather than analysis, for knowledge in the sense in which trainers know their animals, or parents their children, or conductors their orchestras, as opposed to that in which chemists know the contents of their test tubes, or mathematicians know the rules that their symbols obey."
Outside the sphere of science--i.e., in real life (personal and political)--the scientific method fails. But a "sense of reality" can work. Really? Why? How can that be? Perhaps it is because a "sense of reality" allows one to grope, feel, touch, grasp...the important things in life..., which slip through the fingers of science.
The search for truth, or for what works, whether by scientific method, or by a "sense of reality," is one thing. But will is another. Will asserts and expresses not truth but self.
According to Berlin, will manifests itself individually in Romanticism ("The Romantic Revolution") and collectively in Nationalism ("Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism").
Berlin tsks the enlightened rationalists for failing to anticipate the rise of nationalism. But who can foresee the unpredictable? Who can see the invisible? Will is wind--a forceful, violent, overpowering impulse that cannot be grasped.
Will without strength, however, is of no effect. The strong devour the weak. This truism is so obvious that it is almost always overlooked. But Berlin does not overlook it. He brings it to light. You can feel the fire in his essay on Indian Nationalism ("Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality"). And these flames from the east are reflected in the west by writers such as Machiavelli, de Maistre, de Sade, Nietzsche, and other "irrationalists" who see sharp teeth glistening behind big smiles.
Being strong of will, but weak of strength, I am drawn to Berlin's discussion of the disgusting emotions: shame, humiliation, degradation, frustrated desire, and a desperate need for recognition. Berlin holds up the mirror, and I see myself--my own desperate need for recognition compelling me to write this review!
Regardless, I read Berlin not to gain knowledge, but to hone my wits--and sharpen my teeth! The important thing is not to remember what he wrote, but to profit from reading him. And the profit I get from reading Berlin is this: I look deeper, see clearer, and believe less.
I come away from this book with a keener "sense of reality"--and a more open sense of wonder. Wonder! Not at the glittering galaxies of human achievement. But at the void, the abyss, the infinite space of the unknowable . . .
In the final analysis, there is no final analysis. Berlin does not wrap up, tie down, nail shut. Rather, he picks locks, pries open, leaves ajar...
There is no "closure"--i.e., no death--in these pages. Reading them, one gets the feeling that Berlin likes his human beings free and alive. And that puts him at odds with those deadly human engineers who like cadavers and control.
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