Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas - Second EditionIn this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance of dissenters in the history of ideas--among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, Berlin brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times--and still challenge conventional wisdom. |
From inside the book
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... reason, the nature of language, the role of the imagination, the foundation of morality, the concept of justice, the conflicting claims of citizenship and community, the meaning of history. But he reasoned about them in a manner adapted ...
... 1954] (Paris, 1987), 295–6 (my translation); cf. By Way of Sainte-Beuve (Contre Sainte-Beuve), trans. Sylvia Townsend Warner (London, 1958), 193. of reason, the movement that he initiated would not have Foreword • xiii.
... reason, the movement that he initiated would not have had its 1Though it is hard to think of Berlin as a Kiplingenthusiast, the phrase he quotes from Kipling's Pagett, M.P. express something of his own capacity for sympathy and loathing ...
... reason's inability to infer cause from effect were intended to undermine the claims of religion. Hamann, though, argued that by denying religion the support of reason, Hume had also protected it from rational scrutiny, leaving the field ...
... Reason. But in the history of ideas one mainly studies interesting failures. Which, as scientists know, is more fruitful than studying success. Why do philosophers get things wrong? Berlin's essays suggest that in the interesting 'cases ...
Contents
ix | |
xxi | |
xxiii | |
xxix | |
xxxi | |
1 | |
The Originality of Machiavelli | 33 |
The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities | 101 |
Hume and the Sources of German AntiRationalism | 204 |
Herzen and His Memoirs | 236 |
The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess | 267 |
Benjamin Disraeli Karl Marx and the Search for Identity | 317 |
The Naivety of Verdi | 361 |
Georges Sorel | 373 |
Past Neglect and Present Power | 420 |
Appendix to the Second Edition | 449 |
Vicos Concept of Knowledge | 140 |
Vico and the Ideal of the Enlightenment | 151 |
Montesquieu | 164 |
Index | 467 |
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Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas - Second Edition Isaiah Berlin Limited preview - 2013 |