Sir isaiah berlin biography templates

British philosopher (–)

This article is about the 20th-century philosopher. For the 18th-century rabbi, see Isaiah Berlin (rabbi).

Sir Isaiah BerlinOM CBE FBA (24 May/6 June ^[4] – 5 November ) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas.^[5] Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially by his principal editor from , Henry Hardy.

Born in Riga (now the capital of Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire) in , he moved to Petrograd, Russia, at the age of six, where he witnessed the revolutions of In , his family moved to the UK, and he was educated at St Paul's Institution, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.^[6] In , at the age of twenty-three, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.

In addition to his retain output, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English, and during World War II, worked for the British Diplomatic Service.

Sir Isaiah Berlin (born June 6, , Riga, Latvia, Russian Empire [now in Latvia]—died November 5, , Oxford, England) was a British philosopher and historian of ideas who was noted for his writings on political philosophy and the concept of liberty.

From to , he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from to In , he played a role in creating Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its founding President.

Berlin was appointed a CBE in , knighted in , and appointed to the Directive of Merit in He was President of the British Academy from to He also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties, and on 25 November , he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto, for which occasion he prepared a "short credo" (as he called it in a letter to a friend), now known as "A Message to the Twenty-First Century", to be read on his behalf at the ceremony.^[7]

An annual Isaiah Berlin Lecture is held at the Hampstead Synagogue, at Wolfson College, Oxford, at the British Academy, and in Riga.

Berlin's work on liberal theory and on value pluralism, as well as his disagreement to Marxism and communism, has had a lasting influence.

Early life

Berlin was born on 6 June into a wealthy Jewish family, the only son of Mendel Berlin, a timber trader (and a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman, founder of Chabad Hasidism), and his wife Marie (née Volshonok).^[8][9] His family owned a timber company, one of the largest in the Baltics,^[10] as well as forests in Russia,^[9] from where the timber was floated down the Daugava river to its sawmills in Riga.

As his father, who was the head of the Riga Association of Timber Merchants,^[10] worked for the company in its dealings with Western companies, he was fluent not only in Yiddish, Russian, and German, but also in French and English.

His Russian-speaking mother, Marie (Musya) Volshonok,^[11] was also fluent in Yiddish and Latvian.^[12] Isaiah Berlin spent his first six years in Riga and later lived in Andreapol (a minute timber town near Pskov, effectively owned by the family business)^[13] and Petrograd (now St Petersburg).

In Petrograd, the family lived first on Vasilevsky Island and then on Angliiskii Prospekt on the mainland. On Angliiskii Prospekt, they shared their building with other tenants, including an assistant Minister of Finnish affairs namned Ivanov, Princess Emeretinsky, and the composer Maximilian Steinberg with his wife Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, the daughter of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[14] With the onset of the October Revolution of , the fortunes of the building's tenants were rapidly reversed, with both the Princess Emeretinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter soon being made to stoke the building's stoves and sweep the yards.^[15] Berlin witnessed the February and October Revolutions both from his apartment windows and from walks in the city with his governess, where he recalled the crowds of protesters marching on the Winter Palace Square.^[16]

One particular childhood memory of the February Revolution marked his lifelong opposition to violence, with Berlin saying:

Well I was seven and a half and something, and then I was&#;– did I tell you the terrible sight of the policeman creature dragged&#;– not policeman, a acute shooter from the rooftop&#;– entity dragged away by a lynching bee […] In the initial parts of the revolution, the only people who remained faithful to the Tsar was the police, the Pharaon, I've never seen [the term] Pharaon in the histories of the Russian Revolution.

They existed, and they did sniping from the rooftops or attics. I saw a man like that, a Pharaon […]. That's not in the books, but it is factual. And they sniped at the revolutionaries from roofs or attics and things.

And this dude was dragged down, obviously, by a crowd, and was creature obviously taken to a not very agreeable fate, and I saw this man struggling in the middle of a crowd of about twenty […] [T]hat gave me a permanent horror of violence which has remained with me for the stop of my life.^[17]

Feeling increasingly exploited by life under Bolshevik dictate, which identified the family as bourgeoisie, the family left Petrograd, on 5 October , for Riga, but encounters with anti-Semitism and difficulties with the Latvian authorities convinced them to depart, and they moved to Britain in early (Mendel in January, Isaiah and Marie at the beginning of February), when Berlin was eleven.^[18] In London, the family first stayed in Surbiton where he was sent to Arundel House for preparatory institution, then within the year they bought a house in Kensington and six years later in Hampstead.

Berlin's native language was Russian, and his English was virtually nonexistent at first, but he reached proficiency in English within a year at around the age of ^[19] In addition to Russian and English, Berlin was fluent in French, German, and Italian, and he knew Hebrew, Latin, and Ancient Greek.

Despite his fluency in English, however, in later experience Berlin's Oxford English accent would sound increasingly Russian in its vowel sounds.^[20] Whenever he was described as an English philosopher, Berlin always insisted that he was not an English philosopher, but would forever be a Russian Jew: "I am a Russian Jew from Riga, and all my years in England cannot change this.

I care for England, I have been adv treated here, and I cherish many things about English existence, but I am a Russian Jew; that is how I was born and that is who I will be to the end of my life."^[21][22]

Education

Berlin was educated at St Paul's School in London.

According to Michael Bonavia, a British writer (and son of Ferruccio Bonavia) who was at school with him, he

made astonishing feats in the school's Junior Debating Society and the School Union Society. The rapid, even flow of his ideas, the succession of confident references to authors whom most of his contemporaries had never heard, left them mildly stupefied.

Yet there was no backlash, no resentment at these breathless marathons, because Berlin's essential modesty and good manners eliminated jealousy and disarmed hostility.^[23]

After leaving St Paul's, Berlin applied to Balliol College, Oxford, but was denied admission after a chaotic interview.

Berlin decided to apply again, only to a different college: Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Berlin was admitted and commenced his literae humanioresdegree. He graduated in , taking first-class honours in his final examinations and winning the John Locke Prize for his performance in the philosophy papers, in which he outscored A.&#;J.

Ayer.^[24] He subsequently took another degree at Oxford in philosophy, politics and economics, again taking first-class honours after less than a year on the course. He was appointed a tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford,^{[citation needed]} and soon afterwards was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, the first unconverted Jew to reach this fellowship at All Souls.^[25]

While still a student, he befriended Ayer (with whom he was to share a lifelong amicable rivalry), Stuart Hampshire, Richard Wollheim, Maurice Bowra, Roy Beddington, Stephen Spender, Inez Pearn, J.&#;L.

Austin and Nicolas Nabokov. In , he presented a philosophical manuscript on other minds to a meeting attended by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge University. Wittgenstein rejected the argument of his sheet in discussion but praised Berlin for his intellectual honesty and integrity.

Berlin was to endure at Oxford for the remain of his life, apart from a period working for British Information Services (BIS) in Recent York from to and for the British embassies in Washington, DC, and Moscow from then until Before crossing the Atlantic in , Berlin took remain in Portugal for a limited days.

He stayed in Estoril, at the Hotel Palácio, between 19 and 24 October ^[26] Prior to this service, however, Berlin was barred from participation in the British war try as a result of his being born in Latvia,^[27] and because his left arm had been damaged at birth.

In April he wrote a confidential analysis of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Foreign Office; he described Senator Arthur Capper from Kansas as a solid, stolid, year-old reactionary from the corn belt, who is the very voice of Mid-Western "grass root" isolationism.^[28] For his services, he was appointed a CBE in the New Year Honours.^[29] Meetings with Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad in November and January had a powerful effect on both of them, and serious repercussions for Akhmatova (who immortalised the meetings in her poetry).^[30]

Personal life

In Berlin married Aline Elisabeth Yvonne Halban, née de Gunzbourg (–), the former wife of nuclear physicist Hans Halban, and a former winner of the ladies' golf championship of France.^[31] She was from an exiled half Russian-aristocratic and half ennobled-Jewish banking and petroleum family (her mother was Yvonne Deutsch de la Meurthe and her grandfather was Emile Deutsch de la Meurthe, brother of Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe) based in Paris.

He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in ,^[32] and a member of the American Philosophical Society in ^[33] He was instrumental in the founding, in , of a new graduate college at Oxford University: Wolfson College.

The college was founded to be a centre of academic excellence which, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, would also be based on a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos.^[34] Berlin was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University.^[35] As later revealed, when he was asked to evaluate the academic credentials of Isaac Deutscher, Isaiah Berlin argued against a promotion, because of the profoundly pro-communist militancy of the candidate.^[36]

Berlin died in Oxford on 5 November , aged ^[5] He is buried there in Wolvercote Cemetery.

On his death, the obituarist of The Independent wrote: "he was a man of formidable intellectual power with a exceptional gift for understanding a expansive range of human motives, hopes and fears, and a prodigiously energetic capacity for enjoyment – of life, of people in all their variety, of their ideas and idiosyncrasies, of literature, of music, of art".^[37] The same publication reported: "Isaiah Berlin was often described, especially in his old age, by means of superlatives: the world's greatest talker, the century's most inspired reader, one of the finest minds of our time.

There is no doubt that he showed in more than one direction the unexpectedly large possibilities open to us at the top end of the range of human potential."^[37] The front page of The New York Times concluded: "His was an exuberant life crowded with joys – the joy of reflection, the joy of music, the joy of good friends.

The theme that runs throughout his work is his concern with liberty and the dignity of human beings Sir Isaiah radiated well-being."^[38]

Isaiah Berlin's nephew is Efraim Halevy (Hebrew: אפרים הלוי), Israeliintelligence expert and diplomat, advisor to Ariel Sharon, 9th director of the Mossad and the 3rd head of the Israeli National Security Council.

Thought

Lecturing and composition

Berlin did not enjoy writing, and his published work (including both his essays and books) was produced through dictation to a tape-recorder, or by the transcription of his improvised lectures and talks from recorded tapes.

The work of transcribing his spoken word often placed a strain on his secretaries.^[40] This reliance on dictation extended to his letters, which were recorded on a Grundig tape recorder. He would often dictate these letters while simultaneously conversing with friends, and his secretary would then transcribe them.

At times, the secretary would inadvertently include the author's jokes and laughter in the transcribed text.^[40] The product of this unique methodology was a writing style that mimicked his spoken discourse—animated, quick, and constantly jumping from one idea to another.

His everyday conversation was vividly mirrored in his works, finish with intricate grammar and punctuation.^[40]

"Two Concepts of Liberty"

Main article: Two Concepts of Liberty

Berlin is established for his inaugural lecture, "Two Concepts of Liberty", delivered in as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford.^[41][42] The lecture, later published as an essay, reintroduced the examine of political philosophy to the methods of analytic philosophy.

Berlin defined "negative liberty" as absence of coercion or interference in private actions by an external political body, which Berlin derived from the Hobbesian definition of liberty. "Positive liberty", Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do.

Born in Riga, Latvia, into a wealthy Jewish family, Isaiah Berlin was spared the restrictions of the Pale of Settlement thanks to his father's timber trade. The family settled in Saint Petersburg before escaping to England in Isaiah attended prestigious schools and later became a student at Oxford University. After graduating from Oxford, Berlin remained as a lecturer in the history of philosophy and political thought.

Berlin contended that modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational activity, based upon a rational understanding to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. This rationalist conflation was open to political abuses, which encroached on negative liberty, when such interpretations of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, paternalism, social engineering, historicism, and collective rational dominion over human destiny.^[43]

Counter-Enlightenment

Main article: Counter-Enlightenment

Further information: Three Critics of the Enlightenment

Berlin's lectures on the Enlightenment and its critics (especially Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, Joseph de Maistre and Johann Georg Hamann, to whose views Berlin referred as the Counter-Enlightenment) contributed to his advocacy of an irreducibly pluralist ethical ontology.^[1] In Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Berlin argues that Hamann was one of the first thinkers to conceive of human cognition as language – the articulation and use of symbols.

Berlin saw Hamann as having recognised as the rationalist's Cartesian fallacy the notion that there are "clear and distinct" ideas "which can be contemplated by a kind of inner eye", without the use of language – a recognition greatly sharpened in the 20th century by Wittgenstein's private language argument.^[44]

Value pluralism

Main article: Value pluralism

For Berlin, values are creations of mankind, rather than products of nature waiting to be discovered.

He argued, on the basis of the epistemic and empathetic access we contain to other cultures across history, that the nature of mankind is such that certain standards – the importance of individual liberty, for instance – will hold true across cultures, and this is what he meant by objective pluralism.

Berlin's argument was partly grounded in Wittgenstein's later theory of language, which argued that inter-translatability was supervenient on a similarity in forms of life, with the opposite implication that our epistemic access to other cultures entails an ontologically contiguous value-structure.

With his account of value pluralism, he proposed the view that moral values may be equally, or rather incommensurably, valid and yet incompatible, and may, therefore, arrive into conflict with one another in a way that admits of no resolution without reference to particular contexts of a decision.

When values clash, it may not be that one is more important than the other: keeping a promise may conflict with the pursuit of truth; liberty may clash with social justice. Moral conflicts are "an intrinsic, irremovable element in human life".

"These collisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what we are."^[45] For Berlin, this clashing of incommensurate principles within, no less than between, individuals constitutes the tragedy of human life. Alan Brown suggests, however, that Berlin ignores the fact that values are commensurable in the extent to which they contribute to the human good.^[46]

"The Hedgehog and the Fox"

Main article: The Hedgehog and the Fox

"The Hedgehog and the Fox", a title referring to a fragment of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public, reprinted in numerous editions.

Isaiah Berlin — was one of the most important political theorists, essayists, and historians of ideas of the twentieth century. One of the great defenders of liberalism, Berlin wrote extensively on Russian literature, political figures such as Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and thinkers such as Machiavelli and Herder. He is especially well known for his essays on liberty and history. Berlin was born in Riga, Latvia, in

Of the classification that gives the essay its title, Berlin once said "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a benign of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously."^[47]

Berlin expands upon this idea to distribute writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Plato), and foxes, who draw on a expansive variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a unpartnered idea (examples given include Aristotle).^[48]

Positive liberty

Berlin promoted the notion of "positive liberty" in the perception of an intrinsic link between positive freedom and participatory, Athenian-style democracy.^[49] There is a contrast with "negative liberty." Liberals in the English-speaking tradition call for negative liberty, meaning a realm of private autonomy from which the state is legally excluded.

In contrast French liberals ever since the French Revolution more often promote "positive liberty"&#;&#; that is, liberty insofar as it is tethered to collectively defined ends. They praise the state as an essential tool to emancipate the people.^[50][51]

Other work

Berlin's lecture "Historical Inevitability" () focused on a controversy in the philosophy of history.

Born in Riga now the capital of Latviathen a part of the Russian Empire inhe moved to PetrogradRussia, at the age of six, where he witnessed the revolutions of He was president of the Aristotelian Society from to Inhe played a role in creating Wolfson College, Oxfordand became its founding President. He was President of the British Academy from to

Given the choice, whether one believes that "the lives of entire peoples and societies have been decisively influenced by exceptional individuals" or, conversely, that whatever happens occurs as a result of impersonal forces unconcerned to human intentions, Berlin rejected both options and the preference itself as nonsensical.

Berlin is also well known for his writings on Russian intellectual history, most of which are unhurried in Russian Thinkers (; 2nd ed. ) and edited, as most of Berlin's work, by Henry Hardy (in the case of this volume, jointly with Aileen Kelly).

Berlin also contributed a number of essays on leading intellectuals and political figures of his time, including Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Chaim Weizmann. Eighteen of these character sketches were published together as "Personal Impressions" (; 2nd ed., with four additional essays, ; 3rd ed., with a further ten essays, ).^[52]

Commemoration

A number of commemorative events for Isaiah Berlin are held at Oxford University, as well as scholarships given out in his identify, including the Wolfson Isaiah Berlin Clarendon Scholarship, The Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship, and the annual Isaiah Berlin Lectures.

The Berlin Quadrangle of Wolfson College, Oxford, is named after him. The Isaiah Berlin Association of Latvia was founded in to promote the ideas and values of Sir Isaiah Berlin, in particular by organising an annual Isaiah Berlin day and lectures in his memory.^[53] At the British Academy, the Isaiah Berlin lecture series has been held since ^[54] Many volumes from Berlin's personal library were donated to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and develop part of the Aranne Library collection.

The Isaiah Berlin Room, on the third floor of the library, is a replica of his study at the University of Oxford.^[55] There is also the Isaiah Berlin Culture which takes place at his alma mater of St Paul's School.

The society invites society famous academics to share their research into the answers to life's great concerns and to respond to students' questions. In the last few years they have hosted: A.C. Grayling, Brad Hooker, Jonathan Dancy, John Cottingham, Tim Crane, Arif Ahmed, Hugh Mellor and David Papineau.^[56]

Published works

Apart from Unfinished Dialogue, all books/editions listed from onwards are edited (or, where stated, co-edited) by Henry Hardy, and all but Karl Marx are compilations or transcripts of lectures, essays, and letters.

Details given are of first and latest UK editions, and current US editions. Most titles are also available as e-books. The twelve titles marked with a '+' are accessible in the US market in revised editions from Princeton University Press, with additional material by Berlin, and (except in the case of Karl Marx) modern forewords by contemporary authors; the 5th edition of Karl Marx is also available in the UK.

• +Karl Marx: His Experience and Environment, Thornton Butterworth, 5th ed., Karl Marx, , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;
• The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, Fresh American Library, Out of produce.

  Second edition () available online only.^[57]

• +The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2nd ed., , Phoenix. ISBN&#; 2nd US ed., Princeton University Press, ISBN&#;
• Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, Superseded by Liberty.
• Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Chatto and Windus, Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.
• Russian Thinkers (edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly), Hogarth Press, 2nd ed.

  (revised by Henry Hardy), Penguin, ISBN&#;

• +Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Hogarth Pressurize, Pimlico. ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;
• +Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Hogarth Press, Pimlico.

  ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press.

• +Personal Impressions, Hogarth Force, 2nd ed., Pimlico, ISBN&#; 3rd ed., , Princeton University Urge. ISBN&#;
• +The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, John Murray, 2nd ed., Pimlico, ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press.

  ISBN&#;

• The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, John Murray, Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.
• +The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, Chatto & Windus, Pimlico.

  ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;

• The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer) [a one-volume selection from the whole of Berlin's work], Chatto & Windus, 2nd ed., Vintage, ISBN&#;
• +The Roots of Romanticism (lectures delivered in ), Chatto & Windus, [imlico.

  ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;

• +Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, Pimlico, 2nd ed., ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;
• +The Power of Ideas, Chatto & Windus, Pimlico.

  ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press. ISBN&#;

• +Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (lectures delivered in ), Chatto & Windus, Pimlico. ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press.

  ISBN&#;

• Liberty [revised and expanded edition of Four Essays on Liberty], Oxford University Press, ISBN&#;
• The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Brookings Institution Press, ISBN&#; 2nd ed., Brookings Classics, ISBN&#;
• +Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (), Chatto & Windus, ISBN&#; Pimlico, ISBN&#; 2nd ed., , Princeton University Press.

  ISBN&#;

• (with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) Unfinished Dialogue, Prometheus, ISBN&#;

Letters

• Flourishing: Letters – (edited by Henry Hardy), Chatto & Windus, ISBN&#; Pimlico, ISBN&#;
• Enlightening: Letters – (edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes), Chatto & Windus, ISBN&#; Pimlico, ISBN&#;
• Building: Letters – (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, ISBN&#;
• Affirming: Letters – (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, ISBN&#;

See also

References