Book description
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.
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.
