The Power of Ideas

Second Edition

Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780691092768, 9780691050188
• eBook ISBN: 9781400848843
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

The essays collected in this new volume reveal Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays.


The connecting theme of these essays, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the crucial social and political role--past, present and future--of ideas, and of their progenitors. A rich variety of subject-matters is represented--from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism--so that the truth of Heine's warning is exemplified on a broad front. It is a warning that Berlin often referred to, and provides an answer to those who ask, as from time to time they do, why intellectual history matters.


Among the contributions are "My Intellectual Path," Berlin's last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations; and "Jewish Slavery and Emancipation," the classic statement of his Zionist views, long unavailable in print. His other subjects include the Enlightenment, Giambattista Vico, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, G.V. Plekhanov, the Russian intelligentsia, the idea of liberty, political realism, nationalism, and historicism. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas.


"Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization."--Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958.


This new edition adds a number of previously uncollected pieces, including Berlin's earliest statement of the pluralism of values for which he is famous.

INDEX

Douglas Matthews

Adler, Victor, 162

Aeschylus, 151

Agnelli Prize, xxvii

Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich, 95, 97

alchemy, 29

Alembert, Jean le Rond d’, 6

Alexander II, Tsar of Russia: assassinated, 156

Alexander the Great, 176

alienation (of man), 75 n, 147–8

anarchism, 12

Angell, (Ralph) Norman, 304

animism, 78

Annenkov, Pavel Vasil´evich, 91, 95

Annensky, Innokenty Fedorovich, 105

answers: discoverable, 8, 245–6

anthropomorphism, 78

anti-Semitism, 212

Aristotle: on biology as route to truth, 7, 40; on inbuilt purpose of things, 37; on final causes, 50; on natural law, 78; innovative ideas, 84; on contemplative life, 294

Asquith, Herbert Henry, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, 296–7

astrology, 29

astronomy, 33–4, 45

Athens (ancient), 76

Auerbach, Erich, 211

Augustus Caesar, 74

Austin, John Langshaw, xviii, 3

Austro-Hungarian empire: revolution (1848), 304

authoritarianism, 20–1; and State, 41

authority: and liberty, 136, 242

Ayer, Alfred Jules, xviii, 3

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 207–8

Bagehot, Walter, 121

Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich: friendship with Belinsky, 97; friendship with Herzen, 107, 111; reputation, 109; irresponsibility, 160

Balfour Declaration, 174

Balkans: intelligentsia in, 127

Bal´mont, Konstantin Dmitrievich, 105

Barzun, Jacques Martin, 284

Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 246

Bayle, Pierre, 117

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 103, 206

behaviour: laws of, 61

beliefs: passionately held, 16–17

Belinsky, Vissarion Grigor´evich: ideas and convictions, 90, 91, 98–101, 103, 105, 128; influence and reputation, 95; life and career, 97–8, 103; temperament, 101; friendship with Herzen, 107; related to Plekhanov’s mother, 153

Bell, The (periodical), 110–11

Belloc, (Jos...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Note on References
• Foreword
• Editor’s Preface
• My Intellectual Path
• The Purpose of Philosophy
• The Philosophers of the Enlightenment
• One of the Boldest Innovators in the History of Human Thought
• Russian Intellectual History
• The Man Who Became a Myth
• A Revolutionary without Fanaticism
• The Role of the Intelligentsia
• Liberty
• The Philosophy of Karl Marx
• The Father of Russian Marxism
• Realism in Politics
• The Origins of Israel
• Jewish Slavery and Emancipation
• Chaim Weizmann’s Leadership
• The Search for Status
• The Essence of European Romanticism
• Meinecke and Historicism
• General Education
• Appendix to the Second Edition
• Index