Proper Study of Mankind,The:An Anthology of Essays by Isaiah Berlin

Proper Study of Mankind,The:An Anthology of Essays by Isaiah Berlin

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Summary

First published in 1997, this selection of Berlin's work includes his defence of philosophy and history against assimilation to the methods of science, his seminal essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism. These are followed by studies of intellectual originators, Russian writers and some of his most distinguished contemporaries.

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Proper Study of Mankind,The:An Anthology of Essays by Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of the century, and one of the finest writers. The Proper Study Of Mankind selects some of the best of his essays. The full (and enormous) range of his work is represented here, from the exposition of his most distinctive doctrine - pluralism - to studies of Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Churchill and Roosevelt. In these pages he encapsulates the principal movements that characterise the modern age: romanticism, historicism, Fascism, relativism, irrationalism and nationalism. His ideas are always tied to the people who conceived them, so that abstractions are brought alive. His insights both illuminate the past and offer a key to the burning issues of the today.
"He speaks with such infectious energy that he sweeps us up and carries us with him into territory that had seemed inaccessibleHe becomes everyman's guide to everything exciting in the history of ideas" New York Review of Books "A restatement of liberalism in a form by which the world could live" Observer "His uniqueness can be very well sampled in this admirable selection... Large as it is, it can serve only to stimulate the appetite" Evening Standard
Isaiah was born in Riga, capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia; there in 1917, in Petrograd, he witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic, and Bolshevik. In 1921, his family came to England, and he was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was a fellow of All Souls, a Fellow of New College, Professor of Social and Political Theory and 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 Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Sense of Reality, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and its Betrayal and Liberty. As an exponent of the history of ideas Berlin 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. Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin's Literary Trustees. He has edited several other books by Berlin, and is currently preparing a selection of his letters for publication. Roger Hausheer, Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Bradford, is writing an intellectual life of Isaiah Berlin. He also wrote the introduction to Against the Current.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780712673228
ISBN 10 0712673229
Title Proper Study of Mankind,The:An Anthology of Essays
Author Isaiah Berlin
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Year published 1998-03-05
Number of pages 704
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.