Product Description
Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's famous essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox"; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.

Amazon.com Review
"Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not." So wrote Isaiah Berlin in "The Pursuit of the Ideal," the semiautobiographical essay that commences The Proper Study of Mankind, the intellectual equivalent of a "greatest hits" collection. Born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909, Berlin left the Soviet Union for England 12 years later. After being educated at St. Paul's and Oxford, he would go on to become one of the 20th century's most vigorous--and eclectic--political philosophers until his death in 1997.

The Proper Study of Mankind shows the full range of Berlin's work and the breadth of his interests. In "The Originality of Machiavelli," after summing up what others have thought of the author of The Prince, Berlin launches into his own thoughtful analysis, concluding that Machiavelli's most significant contribution to philosophy was "his de facto recognition that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration, and that this happens not merely in exceptional circumstances, as a result of abnormality or accident or error ... but ... as part of the normal human situation." This concept of pluralism is the undercurrent that flows through much of Berlin's writing on the history of ideas, whether he addresses opposition to the French Enlightenment or considers Tolstoy's theory of history. Other treats to be found in this collection include the autobiographical "Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak" and what might be considered "intellectual profiles" of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. This book is highly recommended for any reader interested in modern philosophy; one can only hope that it will inspire some to delve into more of Berlin's work. --Ron Hogan

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 9 reviews)

Therapeutic philosophy

I picked up a copy of this anthalogy of essays as I was browsing the bookstore. This was a time when I was wrestling with the absolutism of monistic philosphical systems, whether religious or secular(communism, nazism, capitalism, individualism, etc...)vs. the opposite view- nihilistic and perspectivist relativism, which seems to look at the shortcomings of the virtues of each of these systems, and so then tosses them all out the window, leaving us with nothing. I was not aware that there could be a third alternative. I started reading the first essay, "the pursuit of the ideal", and felt absolutely thunderstruck! How often have you felt that way after reading a philosophical essay? Another essay in the same vein is "Two Concepts of Liberty".

What Berlin is arguing in these essays is not that values do not exist, or that they are relative. It is more subtle: who said these values are all destined to converge together to form the perfectly virtuous man, as Aristotle seemed to think? Berlin uses the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle. The various virtues are like pieces of a puzzle, but who said this puzzle was a good one- that its pieces were designed to ultimately fit together, if only we were wise enough, learned enough, read enough, spiritual or religious enough, etc... And yet we seem to cling to this Platonic Ideal, this "ancient faith", as Berlin calls it, and sacrifice ourselves and our fellow man in trying to achieve a final solution to this puzzle. In this search for a final solution, no price seems to be too high to pay.

Can one be a perfect parent and be highly successful in their career? Can one be completely honest, peace-loving, and truthful (very laudable Christian virtues) and still be an effective leader of state (Who often needs the Machiavellian virtues of stealth, secrecy, and even heartless violence if needed)? Is one wrong in acknowledging the merits of capitalism, and yet wanting to have this tempered to some extent so that society offers a bit of a safety net to those who occasionally fall off?

Berlin's solution is to realize that these ultimate virtues do not necessarily always entail one another, and that life frequently forces us to choose between these. Of course we have the enlightenment ideals of judgement, rationality, knowledge,& intelligence to help guide us. But there is also room for the Romanticist ideals of taste, temperament, and passion. It offers the best reconcililation between these world views that I am aware of. Berlin himself seems to like the label liberal objective pluralism for this kind of thinking.I have read things that echo his thought in such thinkers as William James and John Dewey, but never so clearly and eloquently written.

Do you find that there is something terribly wrong in the relativistic nihilism of postmodern thought, as well as absolutist, fundamentalist, narrow-minded and simple-minded ideologies (both religious and secular) which seem to be a backlash to that kind of thinking? Well, here is a very therapeutic third option. To me, it offers sanity in an insane world. I, like some other reviewers here, find it surprising that Berlin's views are not more often discussed in academic philosphy, as well as in public discourse on issues of values and ethics.
October 02, 2008

Advice from Chapter 2

Going by the reviews that read below this one, I've decided to deliver a useful note for the prospective reader. If however you are well versed in the philosophers of the 18th-20th century, you might like to skip my review. I've yet to complete Berlin's anthology of essays as I've taken a time out to understand each of his referenced philosphers that he lists ever so extensively throughout just the 1st 2 chapters. To clearly comprehend Berlin's arguments, it is effective to consider the thoughts of most if not all the arguments he has referenced from a list of great thinkers from the 18th century. Since I have made the effort to do so, Berlin's thoughts have been raising out of the book with such greater clarity, permitting a far more entertaining read despite his solemn context.

Of the content itself, Berlin has written his essays in easy to read prose, which is very favourable. In his intelligible language he shares his philosophy, first, of a concept with which to analyse mankind that has till presently been a test to define. He then delves greater into his discourse of a proper study of mankind.

Fact of the matter is, it is truly difficult to provide a strong and consequential review of Berlin's work if one hasn't appropriately studied the works of other great thinkers of his time, and is well aquainted at least with the dogmas that have been influenced as a result. If you have a remote curiosity as to what this book might behold given it's very appropriate and self-explanatory title, enter the mind of Berlin with the motivation to learn, experience, and perhaps understand the effects, or perhaps the lack of it, in our world, that has been due to these, or the lack of, great thinkers.
August 02, 2006

I shouldn't pay any attention to the review below mine.

The review written below can only be the work of someone who hates the English language. Emphasising Isaiah Berlin's verbosity is like emphasising Michael Jordan's long legs or Pete Sampras' hairy arms. Berlin writes as well as any of the great Russian novelists.

The reviewer below also claims that Berlin is a cultural relativist. This is outrageously incorrect! Isaiah was a pluralist! Berlin believed that human values and ends were constant across cultures. He believed in objective, universally accessible, values. He would often support this with an idea of Wittgenstein's: if a lion could speak, we would not understand him. And yet we can understand other cultures and civilisations across the ages. Such understanding was Berlin's life-work. However, Berlin always warns, the values we hold, while constant, even universal, are irreconcilable, being conceptually incompatible: they are not in Pythagorean harmony. So we must make choices. And such choice must inevitably involve loss.

This is an anthology of Isaiah's essays. All are collected elsewhere, but this volume makes for a beautiful first collection - perfect for taking on holidays and reading on the beach.

February 28, 2006

Verbose and weak

If you want to get to the chief ideas of Berlin, buy THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX as a stand-alone book; do not waste your money on this highly verbose and repetitious book.

And what a terrible writing! Pompously and unnecessarily long sentences. At least with Hegel and Kant, you would arrive at a clear meaning after you finished carefully reading a sentence that filled a whole page. With Berlin, whose sentences are teeming with digressive parentheses, you look at a sentence and right off the page jump at you a number of ways a better writer could have condensed his prolix sentences into sentences at least three times shorter than his. In sum, it seems like Mr. Berlin never went beyond the first draft of his essays, omitting to revise, edit, and compress his writing. Yes, yes, you might say, "Well, this reviewer is probably too dumb to understand Berlin." Maybe you are right. But, I find it hard to see why it should be difficult to understand what a sentence about the biographical details of a Russian politician is trying to convey. I would have much easier time confessing to stupidity if the sentences in question were, instead, about some subtle philosophical points concerning the ontological foundations of our a priori ideas or the dialectical movement of the World Spirit, or the sources of our moral directives.

As to the ideas themselves, Berlin does have a few good ones, most notably in THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX. The fox knows many things; and the hedgehog only one big thing. It is a very profound distinction, and after reading this essay you can have a fun time classifying the people you know into these two general categories. However, this distinction is confined, I think, only to the realm of psychology and cannot be used to derogate, as Berlin does, all philosophical attempts to arrive a single system that explains the world. Yes, there is, de facto, a phenomenal variety in our world; but that in itself is not a proof of the errorneousness of all the unitary systems as a class, but rather a part of the problem these systems try, with varying success, to explain. Overall, Berlin's apotheosis of cultural relativity, which he derives from the "fallacies" of the "dogmatist" philosophies, does not rest on any sound and consistent set of arguments, but rather hopes to attain acceptance based solely on the current cultural fads. "Everything is relative!" proclaim the culturally sensitive commentators, caring very little as to how we should, then, explain the fact that there are certain values that are valid universally. Killing and stealing are frowned upon in Mozambique as well as in Montana, and even in Brooklyn. Fortunate for the philosophical supporters of cultural relativity, there are in the world much better partisans of this relativity than Berlin. Read Paul Feyerabend for a much better defense.

June 26, 2005

The best of the best

In this volume Henry Hardy Isaiah Berlin's faithful pupil and editor brings together some of the best essays from the previous volumes of Berlin essays he supervised the publication of. There are essays on 'The Pursuit of the Ideal ' on ' Philosophical Foundations' on 'Freedom and Determinism' on 'Political Liberty and Pluralism' on 'The History of Ideas ' on 'Russian Writers '
on' Romanticism and Rationalism' and on ' Twentieth Century Figures'
The volume contains Berlin's most well- known essays including the essay on 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' the one on ' Machiavelli' and the one ' On Historical Determinism'.
This is a selection of the best writing of a person who is without question one a most significant modern political thinker and historian of ideas.
Berlin's love of ideas, his vast knowledge, his tremendous verbal energy and skill, his humane understanding of character, his original consideration of fundamental historical periods and processes are all at work here.
This is a volume which should be in the library of every person who wishes to think about history and politics seriously.
December 13, 2004

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History
by Isaiah Berlin
by Henry Hardy, Patrick Gardiner

The Power of Ideas
by Isaiah Berlin
by Henry Hardy

Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty
by Isaiah Berlin
by Henry Hardy

Russian Thinkers (Penguin Classics)
by Isaiah Berlin
by Jason Ferrell, Henry Hardy, Aileen Kelly, Aileen Kelly

The Roots of Romanticism
by Isaiah Berlin
by Henry Hardy