Against the Current by Isaiah Berlin

Against the Current by Isaiah Berlin

Berlin's main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of ideas of dissenters whose thinking still challenges conventional wisdom - among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, he brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times, and in the process offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life. Roger Hausheer's introduction surveys Berlin's whole oeuvre, and the full bibliography of his pubication has been updated for this Pimlico edition.

A most remarkable intellectual achievementThere are few books published in our time which more dazzlingly illuminate some of the most crucial problems of western culture and civilisation * Encounter *
Berlin expounds with idea of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous clarity and imaginative empathy... exhilirating to read * Observer *
The most imaginative, distinguished and erudite of historians of ideas in this country -- Anthony Quinton * Spectator *
Isaiah Berlin has a masterly grasp. He is one of the most concerned liberal minds in Europe -- V.S. Pritchett * New Statesman *

Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter - as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy.

His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780712666909
ISBN 10	0712666907
Title	Against the Current
Author	Isaiah Berlin
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Vintage
Year published	1997-09-18
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable