Name: Freedom and its Betrayal
SKU: 53511365
Price: 30.01 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Isaiah Berlin
ISBN: 9780712668422

Type

Physical Book

Author

Isaiah Berlin

Publisher

Pimlico

Year

2003

Language

English

Pages

208

Format

Paperback

ISBN13

9780712668422

Freedom and its Betrayal

Isaiah Berlin (Author) · Pimlico · Paperback

New Book Imported to Austria

Delivery: 11 Sep - 15 Sep

30,01 €

Import costs and 10% VAT included in the price ✅

30,01 €

Add to Wishlist

Synopsis "Freedom and its Betrayal "

Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative anti-liberal thinkers were delivered on the BBC's Third Programme in 1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years on. Freedom and its Betrayal is one of Isaiah Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and the history of ideas, views which later found expression in such famous works as 'Two Concepts of Liberty', and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. In his lucid examinations of sometimes difficult ideas Berlin demonstrates that a balanced understanding and a resilient defence of human liberty depend on learning both from the errors of freedom's alleged defenders and from the dark insights of its avowed antagonists. This book throws light on the early development of Berlin's ideas, and supplements his already published writings with fuller treatments of Helvétius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Saint-Simon, with the ultra-conservative traditionalist Maistre bringing up the rear. Freedom and its Betrayal shows Berlin at his liveliest and most torrentially spontaneous, testifying to his talents as a teacher of rare brilliance and impact. Listeners tuned in expectantly each week to the broadcasts and found themselves mesmerised by Berlin's astonishingly fluent extempore style. A leading historian of ideas, who was then a schoolboy, records that the lectures 'excited me so much that I sat, for every talk, on the floor beside the wireless, taking notes'. This excitement is at last recreated here for all to share.

Isaiah Berlin

(Author)

View Author's Page

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) was an influential British philosopher and thinker of Latvian origin, known for his contributions to political theory and the history of ideas. Born in Riga, Latvia, his family emigrated to England in 1921. He studied at the University of Oxford, where he became a fellow of All Souls College and New College, and also founded Wolfson College. During World War II, he worked as a diplomat in Washington and Moscow. He was president of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978 and received various awards for his intellectual work.

His most famous essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), interprets Leon Tolstoy's view of history through an Archilochus metaphor: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin classifies thinkers into two types: the "hedgehogs," who structure their worldview around a single central idea, and the "foxes," who have a more scattered and multiple perspective. According to Berlin, Tolstoy embodies both roles: by his talent, a fox; by his convictions, a hedgehog.

This essay has become an essential work for understanding the different approaches to thought and history.

See less