Name: Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960
Price: 918.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: Isaiah Berlin
ISBN: 9781844138340

Type

Physical Book

Author

Illustrated by

Publisher

Year

2011

Language

English

Pages

854

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

23.1 x 15.2 x 5.1 cm

Weight

1.07 kg.

ISBN13

9781844138340

Synopsis "Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960"

Written by a man with political contacts that yield an inside view of major world events--the creation of Israel, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War; as well as a writer who revels in describing his observations of human beings in all their variety to his many correspondents, this second volume of Berlin's letters is uniquely enthralling "People are my landscape," Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. This second volume of Berlin's letters takes up the story when, after war service in the U.S., he returns to life as an Oxford don. Against the background of post-war austerity, the letters chart years of academic frustration and self-doubt, the intellectual explosion when he moves from philosophy to the history of ideas, his growing national fame as broadcaster and lecturer, the publication of some of his best-known works, his election to a professorship, and his reaction to knighthood. Berlin's visits to American universities, where he sees McCarthyism at work, and his journeys eastward--to Europe, Palestine (and later Israel), and the Soviet Union--inspire acute and often very funny portraits. These are the years, too, of momentous developments in his private life: the bachelor don's loss of sexual innocence, the emotional turmoil of his father's death, his courtship of a married woman, and his transformation into husband and stepfather.

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