Book description
Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative
anti-liberal thinkers were delivered on the BBC's Third Programme in
1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years on.
Freedom and its Betrayal is one of Isaiah Berlin's earliest and most
convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and the history
of ideas, views which later found expression in such famous works as
'Two Concepts of Liberty', and were at the heart of his lifelong work
on the Enlightenment and its critics.
In his lucid examinations of sometimes difficult ideas Berlin
demonstrates that a balanced understanding and a resilient defence of
human liberty depend on learning both from the errors of freedom's
alleged defenders and from the dark insights of its avowed
antagonists. This book throws light on the early development of
Berlin's ideas, and supplements his already published writings with
fuller treatments of Helvétius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and
Saint-Simon, with the ultra-conservative traditionalist Maistre
bringing up the rear.
Freedom and its Betrayal shows Berlin at his liveliest and
most torrentially spontaneous, testifying to his talents as a teacher
of rare brilliance and impact. Listeners tuned in expectantly each
week to the broadcasts and found themselves mesmerised by Berlin's
astonishingly fluent extempore style. A leading historian of ideas,
who was then a schoolboy, records that the lectures 'excited me so
much that I sat, for every talk, on the floor beside the wireless,
taking notes'. This excitement is at last recreated here for all to share.
Sir Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909. 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 New
College, Professor of Social and Political Theory, and founding
President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British
Academy. 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 November
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.
