Isaiah Berlin Essays (2162 words) - Social Philosophy,

Isaiah Berlin Isaiah Berlin became one of our century's most important political theorists for liberty and liberalism in an age of totalitarianism. He was born in Riga, Latvia in 1909 into a well to do Jewish family. At the age of 12 he moved to Petrograd and experienced first hand the Bolshevik revolution, which would later influence his intellectual ideas about totalitarianism (Gray 3). In 1921 his family moved to London and sent Isaiah to school. His schooling lead him to Oxford where he took a position as philosophy professor in 1931. His English schooling led him to become a disciple of classical liberalism in the English tradition of Mill, Locke, and others (Berger). During World War II the British put him to work in their Foreign Service department where he became a favorite advisor of Churchill (Honderich 92). After the war his major political theory was developed as he moved into political philosophy and history as his areas of emphasis. His most famous and important works, a lecture, ?Tw o Concepts on Liberty?, and an essay, ?The Hedgehog and the Fox? where produced in the 1950's. Knighted in 1957 and he became the first Jewish fellow at Oxford's All Souls College and chair of social and political theory at Oxford. After that he later became president of the newly created Wolfson College and then President of the British Academy (Honderich 92). After his death in 1997 historian Arthur Schlesinger stated that he is one of the finest liberal thinkers and political theorists of the twentieth century (Schlesinger 1). Isaiah Berlin is unique among intellectuals in the fact the he didn't produce a magnum opus during his life. He stated, ?that he had no desire to sit in front of a desk with a blank piece of paper,? and didn't care about it influencing his academic legacy (Berger). Most of his works came in the form of essay's and lectures, as his two most famous are, ?The Hedgehog and the Fox? and ?Two Concepts of Liberty.? He wrote few actual books and had most of his work collected and published by Henry Hardy, once of his graduate students (Gray 4). He never tried to advocate a certain political philosophy and was actually quite against any ?right? political philosophy. Through his essays and lectures he made critiques on the current systems and made observations on liberty, nationalism, and socialism. A strict stand against totalitarianism is one of the concepts that can be seen throughout much of Berlin's work. His strong liberal views clashed with totalitarianism in age where it dominated. Much of his distaste also came from his own personal experience with communism and fascism. He lived during the Russian Revolution and saw first hand its effect on the Russian people. ?I was never pro-communist. Never?anyone who had, like me, seen the Russian revolution at work was not likely to be tempted (Houston Chronicle News Service).? He detested fascism but not as vocally as communism since most of it had been eradicated during World War II. Berlin had relatives during World War II left in Riga who where killed both by Nazi and Soviet Communist forces (Gray 3). This fact no doubt further heightened his contempt for both systems. An essay in 1953 entitled the ?Hedgehog and the Fox? became one of his most popular works in the United States. Taking its name from a line by the Greek poet Archilochus, it was one part literary criticism on War and Peace and an attack on the inevitability of history (Greenburg). Initially published under the title ?Leo Tolstoy's Historical Sceptiscism? he changed it to the, which according to British Publisher George Weidenfeld did more for his reputation than any other (Greenburg). Berlin asserted that individual's act freely in history and has a choice in their destiny. Tolstoy took the Marxian view that history was inevitable. ?The characters despite the constraints of circumstance according to Berlin act freely and thus are morally accountable for their decisions? (Greenburg). Berlin thought that the characters still had free wills over their choices despite the situation they where in and thus history was undecided. This attack on historical inevitability shows Berlin's distas te for Marx's philosophy, particularly the Bolshevik brand of communism. Berlin's contention with