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 20
... Utopias are fictions deliberately constructed as satires , intended to criticise the actual world and to shame those who control existing regimes , or those who suffer them too tamely ; or perhaps they are social fantasies - simple ...
... Utopias are fictions deliberately constructed as satires , intended to criticise the actual world and to shame those who control existing regimes , or those who suffer them too tamely ; or perhaps they are social fantasies - simple ...
Page 21
... Utopia , for then the perfect society will not perfectly satisfy everyone . Most Utopias are cast back into a remote past : once upon a time there was a golden age . So Homer talks about the happy Phaeacians , or about the blameless ...
... Utopia , for then the perfect society will not perfectly satisfy everyone . Most Utopias are cast back into a remote past : once upon a time there was a golden age . So Homer talks about the happy Phaeacians , or about the blameless ...
Page 22
... Utopias of Aristophanes there is the plan for a perfect state of Theopompus . There is the Utopia of Euhemerus , in which happy men live on islands in the Arabian Sea , where there are no wild animals , no winter , no spring , but an ...
... Utopias of Aristophanes there is the plan for a perfect state of Theopompus . There is the Utopia of Euhemerus , in which happy men live on islands in the Arabian Sea , where there are no wild animals , no winter , no spring , but an ...
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