Liberty

Rating:
Summary: A Philosopher Dedicated to Freedom
Review:
The Late Isaiah Berlin was authority on philosophy and a historian of ideas. Born in Latvia, he moved to Russia with his parents when he was six. As an eight year-old he witnessed the May Revolution and the October Bolshevik Revolution that installed Lennin and instituted the Soviet reign of terror. He escaped to England with his family in 1921 where he was educated at St. Paul's School and Oxford, University. His early experience with totalitarianism colored his life's work in the world of ideas and throughout his career he was an articulate and sometimes lonely voice for liberty and the liberal, pluralistic society. This book "Liberty" is a newly edited and expanded edition of Berlin's most famous work "Four Essays in Liberty." Since his death, his editor Henry Hardy had drawn together his books and essays and they have been assembled in new editions.
In "Liberty" he sets out to follow the concept of Liberty. In one of the most illuminating essays he sets out to answer the question: "What is Political Liberty" which then segues into the "The Birth of Greek Individualism." In "Two Concepts of Liberty" he takes western intellectuals to task for the results of the dangerous ideas that they heralded. He cites Henrich Heine who warned us that "philosophical concepts in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization." In his essay "Historical Inevitably" he attacks the Marxist notion that there are inevitable stages of history, that one stage follows another as winter follows fall and he traces the path of thought in the past terrible epoch in "Political Ideas in the 20th Century." Each of the essays are thoughtful, trenchant and well argued. In a time when far too many intellectuals still adhere to ideas that were the foundation of terror, Isaiah Berlin's advocacy and exploration of human freedom should find a wide audience.

Rating:
Summary: Champion of Liberty
Review: Berlin's essays provide some of the most original arguments for the priority of individual liberty, and particularly so-called negative rights, those that give us the right to be left alone. His writing is at once lucid and colorful. An essential volume for those interested in freedom.