Description
Book SynopsisAn edition of Isaiah Berlin's classic of liberalism, "Four Essays on Liberty", this book incorporates a fifth essay, and adds further pieces on the same topic, so that Berlin's principal statements on liberty are available together. This book throws biographical light on Berlin's preoccupation with liberty in appendices drawn from his writings.
Trade ReviewA magnificent and indispensable volume: the best introduction to the most important and enduring of Berlin's ideas. * John Gray *
For anyone wishing to have the essence of Berlin's thinking, Liberty is the volume to have. * John Banville, Irish Times *
'Liberty not only offers a comprehensive overview of Isaiah Berlin's main topics and ideas, but also enables us to understand the development and relevance of those ideas in the context of his personality. * Steffen Gross, Dialektik *
Practically every paragraph introduces us to half a dozen new ideas and as many thinkers - the landscape flashes past, peopled with familiar and unfamiliar people, all arguing incessantly. It is all a very long way from the austere eloquence of Mill's marvellous essay On Liberty, with which this collection's title seems to challenge comparison; but it is a measure of the stature of these essays that they stand such a comparison. * Alan Ryan, New Society *
These famous essays ... are informed by that radical humanism, in the truest sense of that impoverished word, which has attached Sir Isaiah so closely to such nineteenth century figures as Herzen and Mill ... * Philip Toynbee, Observer *
Table of ContentsTHE EDITOR'S TALE; FIVE ESSAYS ON LIBERTY; OTHER WRITINGS ON LIBERTY; AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPENDICES; BERLIN AND HIS CRITICS BY IAN HARRIS; INDEX
