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Description
Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century – a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas – especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism – have become even more prescient and vital today.
But who was the man behind such influential views? In Search of Isaiah Berlin tells the compelling story of a decades-long collaboration between Berlin and his editor, Henry Hardy, who made it his vocation to bring Berlin's huge body of work into print. Hardy discovered that Berlin had written far more than people thought, much of it unpublished. As he describes his struggles with Berlin, who was almost on principle unwilling to have his work published, an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher emerges. This is a unique portrait of a man who gave us a new way of thinking about the human predicament, and whose work had for most of his life remained largely out of view.
Table of Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Genius and the Pedant
1. The Beginning
Making Books
2. A Project is Born
3. Philosophical Letters, or, Cold Feet
4. Selected Writings
5. An Unremarkable Decade
6. The Crooked Timber of Humanity
7. The Magus of the North
8. The Sense of Reality
Probing Ideas
9. Not Angels or Lunatics: Berlin on Human Nature
10. Pluralism and Religion
11. The Moral Core and the Human Horizon
12. The End
13. Epilogue
Appendix: A Posthumous Letter to Berlin
References and Asides
Select Biographical Glossary
Index
Product details
Published | Mar 24 2020 |
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Format | Paperback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 320 |
ISBN | 9780755601318 |
Imprint | Tauris Parke |
Illustrations | 10 b/w in 8pp plates |
Dimensions | 198 x 129 mm |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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The new perspective on an important intellectual figure is of great value.
Publishers Weekly
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A touching and often fascinating memoir ... Hardy has done much to preserve the ideas and, indeed, the memory of an extraordinary man for posterity.
Literary Review
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The intellectual thrill of the accuracy of a footnote is the stuff of this work.
The Irish Times
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Written with passion, wit, and verve, […] an invitation to reread a major thinker whose ideas remain relevant today.
Aurelian Craitu, Los Angeles Review of Books
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A hugely enjoyable and accessible account of the relationship between the two men.
David Herman, Jewish Chronicle
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A wonderful book on a wonderful subject.
John Banville