Against the Current: Essays in the History of IdeasBerlin's main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of ideas of dissenters whose thinking still challenges conventional wisdom - among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, he brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times, and in the process offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 78
Page
... Revolutions – Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 the family emigrated to England, and Berlin was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington and Moscow, he ...
... Revolutions – Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 the family emigrated to England, and Berlin was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington and Moscow, he ...
Page
... revolutionary turn by a succession of thinkers who were more preoccupied with historical and aesthetic questions than with those of epistemology and logic. They grasped, and made a very great deal of, something to which Kant paid little ...
... revolutionary turn by a succession of thinkers who were more preoccupied with historical and aesthetic questions than with those of epistemology and logic. They grasped, and made a very great deal of, something to which Kant paid little ...
Page
... revolutionary ideas about man, history and society. The significance of his doctrines has become apparent only in the centuries since his death, and, as Berlin suggests, some of the most important among them are coming into their own ...
... revolutionary ideas about man, history and society. The significance of his doctrines has become apparent only in the centuries since his death, and, as Berlin suggests, some of the most important among them are coming into their own ...
Page
... revolution and centralising industrialism – whose life is a long, and often bitter and unsuccessful, search for identity. Unlike Disraeli, Marx makes scant reference to his Jewish origins, and is open to the suspicion of having to a ...
... revolution and centralising industrialism – whose life is a long, and often bitter and unsuccessful, search for identity. Unlike Disraeli, Marx makes scant reference to his Jewish origins, and is open to the suspicion of having to a ...
Page
... revolutionary contemporaries, Marx and Engels. Moses Hess, 'the father of German communism', as Berlin calls him, represents one of the most memorable examples of the triumph of direct moral insight and immediate, lived experience over ...
... revolutionary contemporaries, Marx and Engels. Moses Hess, 'the father of German communism', as Berlin calls him, represents one of the most memorable examples of the triumph of direct moral insight and immediate, lived experience over ...
Contents
The Originality of Machiavelli | |
The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities | |
Vicos Concept of Knowledge | |
Montesquieu | |
Hume and the Sources of German AntiRationalism | |
Herzen and his Memoirs | |
The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess | |
Benjamin Disraeli Karl Marx and the Search for Identity | |
The Naïveté of Verdi | |
Past Neglect and Present Power | |
Authors Note | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas - Second Edition Isaiah Berlin Limited preview - 2013 |
Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas - Second Edition Isaiah Berlin Limited preview - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
Aileen Kelly Alexander Herzen believed Benjamin Disraeli Berlin central century Christian civilisation common conceived conception consciousness created culture Descartes Disraeli doctrine E. H. Carr empirical ends Enlightenment essays fact faith French Georges Sorel German Giambattista Vico Hamann Hegel Henry Hardy Herder Herzen Hess history of ideas human Hume Hume’s ibid ideal imagination individual intellectual Isaiah Berlin Italian Jewish Jews justice Kant Karl Marx knowledge language laws letter liberal lives London Machiavelli man’s mankind Marx Marx’s Marxist men’s metaphysical methods modern Montesquieu moral Moses Hess myth natural sciences Niccolò Machiavelli one’s organisation original outlook Oxford passionate perhaps philosophical political Prince principles radical rationalist realise reality reason religion repr Review revolution revolutionary Roman Russian scepticism scientific seems sense social socialist society Sorel Spinoza spirit theory thinkers thought tradition trans true truth understand universal values Verdi Vico Vico’s vision Voltaire writings