The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas"Sir Isaiah Berlin may be our most important living philosopher, an activist of the intellect who marshals vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political pluralism. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the idea of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our present century: between the Platonic belief in absolute Truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant - and sometimes genocidal - nationalism that convulses the modern world"--Unedited summary from book cover. |
From inside the book
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Page 40
... ideal of future life of the French , because the paradise of the Muslims is not that of Jews or Christians , because a society in which a Frenchman would attain to harmonious fulfilment is a society which to a German might prove ...
... ideal of future life of the French , because the paradise of the Muslims is not that of Jews or Christians , because a society in which a Frenchman would attain to harmonious fulfilment is a society which to a German might prove ...
Page 67
... ideal world . From this it follows that to judge the attainments of any one age by applying to them a single ... ideal values of an ideal world - when in fact some of the most greatly admired works of men are organically bound up with a ...
... ideal world . From this it follows that to judge the attainments of any one age by applying to them a single ... ideal values of an ideal world - when in fact some of the most greatly admired works of men are organically bound up with a ...
Page 192
... ideal to which I consecrate my life , you have another ; our lives are not intelligible save in terms each of its own inner pattern ; if these ideals come into conflict , it is incomparably better that we fight a duel , in which one of ...
... ideal to which I consecrate my life , you have another ; our lives are not intelligible save in terms each of its own inner pattern ; if these ideals come into conflict , it is incomparably better that we fight a duel , in which one of ...
Contents
The Pursuit of the Ideal | 1 |
The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West | 20 |
Giambattista Vico and Cultural History | 49 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas Isaiah Berlin No preview available - 1990 |
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas Isaiah Berlin No preview available - 1990 |
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas Isaiah Berlin No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
ancient authority believed Bonald Christian church civilisation common conception Condorcet conflict consciousness created creative CROOKED TIMBER culture divine doctrine eighteenth century ends Enlightenment equally eternal existence fact faith Fascism feeling Fichte forces France freedom French Friedrich Schlegel German Giambattista Vico goals happiness harmonious Hegel human ideal ideas ignorance imagination incompatible individual intellectual Isaiah Berlin Johann Gottfried Herder Joseph de Maistre kind knowledge language laws Léon Bloy liberal liberty live Maistre's mankind Marx Marxist methods modern Montesquieu moral movement natural sciences nineteenth century objective organisation outlook perfect perhaps philosophers Plato political principle progress questions rationalist realise reason recognised relativism resistance revolution romantic romanticism Rousseau rules Russian scientific seek seems sense social society spirit St Petersburg thinkers thought tradition true answers truth ultimate ultramontane understand universal Utopias values Vico and Herder Vico's violent virtues vision Voltaire