The Proper Study of Mankind by Isaiah Berlin
This selection of the best of Berlin's essays seeks to represent the full range of his work. The opening sections include Berlin's defence of philosophy and history against assimilation to the methods of science; his seminal essays on liberty, which created the framework for subsequent discussion; and his exposition of his most distinctive doctrine - pluralism - which recognizes that equally good ultimate values may come into mortal conflict. These are followed by studies of Machiavelli, Vico and Herder, essays on Russian writers, and portraits of important contemporaries from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Churchill and Roosevelt. Thus this volume aims to encapsulate the principle movements that characterize the modern age.
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 | 9780701165277 |
| ISBN 10 | 0701165278 |
| Title | The Proper Study of Mankind |
| Author | Isaiah Berlin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 1997-02-20 |
| Number of pages | 704 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |