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. |
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... violent fanatics convinced they have discerned the final goal of history. We see what can happen to such people in the essay on Sorel, which traces the bloody-minded politics of the will from belle époque anarchism to Italian Fascism ...
... violently against the German Aufklärer, including his old friend Immanuel Kant. But on that trip he also discovered David Hume's scepticism and became a leading proponent of it in Germany. This was unexpected. After all, Hume's ...
... untouched. The really violent and devastating attack, which shook these. 1[A phrase coined by Jacob Burckhardt in a letter of 24 July 1889 to Friedrich von Preen.] 1B v 264. 35–6. 2B vi 108. 24. 3B vii Introduction • lvii.
... violent and devastating attack, which shook these major assumptions once and for all, was launched by a band of dark, tortured and deeply disturbing thinkers from the remoter corners of the German-speaking world: the story of the far ...
... violent expropriation of property. And, as Berlin points out, though the lives of entire nations have been transformed by the revolution to which Marx and Engels dedicated their lives, violent expropriation of the property-owning ...
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 |