Search results for ""Author Isaiah Berlin""
Joseph de Maistre y los orgenes del fascismo
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Página Indómita Lo singular y lo plural conversaciones con
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Suhrkamp Verlag AG Der Igel und der Fuchs Essay ber Tolstojs
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Vintage Publishing The Crooked Timber Of Humanity
Book Synopsis'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.' Immanuel KantIsaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century - an activist of the intellect who marshalled vast erudition and eloquence in defence of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant - and sometimes genocidal - nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defence of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters and previously uncollected writings by Berlin, notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.Trade ReviewBerlin restored the history of ideas to its true place as a key to unlock the past and explain the present. It was a notable achievement. This book sustains it. -- Raymond Carr * Spectator *To read Isaiah Berlin is above all to listen to a voice, effervescent, quizzical, often self-mocking, but always full of gaiety and amusement. -- John Dunn * Times Literary Supplement *To read Berlin is to sit at an unlit window and see the landscape of European thought illuminated by a spectacular display of fireworks. -- Ian McIntyre * Independent *A history of ideas that possesses all the drama of a novel, all the immediacy of headline news. -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *
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Vintage Publishing Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann,
Book SynopsisThis book brings together three major studies from Isaiah Berlin's central intellectual project – to explain the opposition to the excessively scientistic French Enlightenment by getting under the skin of its critics and giving a sympathetic account of their views. The contributions of these particular critics could hardly be more important. Giambattista Vico estabished that the humanties are and must remain crucially different from the sciences: J G Herder – sometimes called the father of European nationalism – originated populism, expressionism and pluralism (an idea which Berlin enriched and made powerfully his own); and the anti-rationalist J.G. Hamann lit the fuse of romanticism, the major movement to arise out of the various currents of hostility to Enlightenment thought. The intellectual tension that existed between Enlightenment advocates and these critics is as crucial today as it was at its inception. With his customary humane understanding, Berlin analyses the ideas of three deeply original but often neglected thinkers, and demonstrates their disturbing relevance to the central issues of today's world.This new edition includes three previously uncollected pieces on Vico, an interesting passage excluded from the first edition of the essay on Hamann, and Berlin's thoughtful letters responding to two reviewers of that same edition.Trade ReviewIt will be a long time before students of either Vico or Herder are able to exhaust their gratitude to Berlin -- Alasdair MacIntyre * Listener *The Magus of the North is a delightful surprise... Berlin at his very best. The prose flows powerfully, at times torrentially, richly saturated in information and ideas -- Michael Rosen * Times Literary Supplement *Brilliant, impressionistic portraits of notable intellectual personalities, great fountains of adjectives and comparisons which bring the totality of their minds to life -- Anthony Quinton
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Vintage Freedom And Its Betrayal
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter - as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in Trade ReviewThese lectures are astonishing for their lucidity and power * Wall Street Journal *Berlin at his best: forceful without being bombastic, energetic without exaggerating, erudite without showing off -- Peter Watson * Times Higher Educational Supplement *This is one of the most important books on the history of ideas in Berlin's oeuvre... Extremely compelling -- Mark Lilla, University of Chicago
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Vintage Against the Current Essays in the History of
Book SynopsisBerlin''s main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of ideas of dissenters whose thinking still challenges conventional wisdom - among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, he brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times, and in the process offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life. Roger Hausheer''s introduction surveys Berlin''s whole oeuvre, and the full bibliography of his pubication has been updated for this Pimlico edition.Trade ReviewA most remarkable intellectual achievement. There are few books published in our time which more dazzlingly illuminate some of the most crucial problems of western culture and civilisation * Encounter *Berlin expounds with idea of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous clarity and imaginative empathy... exhilirating to read * Observer *The most imaginative, distinguished and erudite of historians of ideas in this country -- Anthony Quinton * Spectator *Isaiah Berlin has a masterly grasp. He is one of the most concerned liberal minds in Europe -- V.S. Pritchett * New Statesman *
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Página Indómita El poder de las ideas ensayos escogidos
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Vintage Publishing The Proper Study Of Mankind
Book SynopsisHe becomes everyman's guide to everything exciting in the history of ideas' New York Review of BooksIsaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, and one of the finest writers. The Proper Study Of Mankind selects some of his best essays in which his insights both illuminate the past and offer a key to the burning issues of today.The full (and enormous) range of his work is represented here, from the exposition of his most distinctive doctrine - pluralism - to studies of Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Churchill and Roosevelt. In these pages he encapsulates the principal movements that characterise the modern age: romanticism, historicism, Fascism, relativism, irrationalism and nationalism. His ideas are always tied to the people who conceived them, so that abstractions are brought alive. EDITED BY HENRY HARDY AND ROGER HAUSHEER AND WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY ANDREW MARRTrade ReviewHe speaks with such infectious energy that he sweeps us up and carries us with him into territory that had seemed inaccessible. He becomes everyman's guide to everything exciting in the history of ideas * New York Review of Books *A restatement of liberalism in a form by which the world could live * Observer *His uniqueness can be very well sampled in this admirable selection... Large as it is, it can serve only to stimulate the appetite * Evening Standard *The pleasure in reading Berlin lies in the clarity of the argument, in the laying out of his monumental sentences and paragraphs each of which is complete in itself while part of the greater and seemingly irrefutable whole which is gradually and massively revealed * Observer *
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Página Indómita Sobre el Nacionalismo textos escogidos
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Random House Building Letters 19601975
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter - as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in
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Orion Publishing Co The Hedgehog And The Fox
Book Synopsis''Brilliant. Searching and profound'' E.H. Carr, Times Literary Supplement''When reading Isaiah Berlin we breathe an altogether different air'' New York Review of Books''Beautifully written'' W. H. Auden, New Yorker''Ingenious. Exactly what good critical writing should be'' Max Beloff, GuardianThe fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.For Isaiah Berlin, there is a fundamental distinction in mankind: those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things - foxes - and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system - hedgehogs. It can be applied to the greatest creative minds: Dante, Ibsen and Proust are hedgehogs, while Shakespeare, Aristotle and Joyce are foxes.Yet when Berlin reaches the case of Tolstoy, he finds a fox by nature, but a hedgehog by conviction; a duality which holds the key to understanding Tolstoy''s Trade ReviewBrilliant ... searching and profound * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too * OBSERVER *Very readable, with a lively honed down style * SUNDAY MERCURY *The most important study of Tolstoy's thought written in English for a long time * THE LISTENER *Delightful to read * SUNDAY TIMES *[Berlin] has a deep and subtle feeling for the puzzle of Tolstoy's personality, and he writes throughout ... with a wonderful eloquence * NEW YORK TIMES *Beautifully written and suggestive -- W H Auden * NEW YORKER *Berlin's stunning command of the resources of scholarship, his sensitivity to literature and to character, and his eloquence as a writer give this essay the lustre of a virtuoso performance * ATLANTIC *The argument is ingenious and subtle, full of overtones - exactly what good critical writing should be * GUARDIAN *very readable, with a lively honed down style * SUNDAY MERCURY *
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Cambridge University Press Isaiah Berlin Volume 1 Letters 19281946 v 1
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Vintage The Roots of Romanticism
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions - Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter - as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in Trade ReviewExhilaratingly thought-provoking -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *Isaiah Berlin at the height of his glory -- Michael Foot * Independent on Sunday *In an era where humane intellectual discourse has been deconstructed, intertextualised, phallicised and generally kicked senseless, Berlin's writing shines like a beacon -- Rupert Christiansen * Spectator *A profound, if often tantalising, contribution to an understanding of the West's culture... This is a book that would be as salutary a read for prime ministers and presidents as for those who see themselves as cultural critics -- Peter Mudford * The Times Higher Education Supplement *
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Oxford University Press Liberty
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
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Everyman First Love And Other Stories
Book SynopsisThis volume contains two of the world's great love stories - FIRST LOVE, and SPRING TORRENTS, which show Turgenev at his very best. Simple, direct and tender, they record the pains and glories of youthful infatuation in a style which evokes exactly and in detail what it is like to be young and in love. In addition, there is a third, much shorter story, A FIRE AT SEA, translated by Isaiah Berlin, and an introduction to the whole volume by V. S. Pritchett.
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Penguin Books Ltd First Love
Book SynopsisWhen Princess Zasyekin moves next door to the country estate of Vladimir Petrovich's parents, he instantly falls in love with his new neighbour's daughter, Zinaida. But the young woman already has many admirers and as she plays her suitors against each other, Vladimir's unrequited youthful passion soon turns to torment and despair.
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Rowman & Littlefield Publishers The Soviet Mind Russian Culture Under Communism
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin''s response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Born a Russian subject in Riga in 1909, he spoke Russian as a child and witnessed both revolutions in St. Petersburg in 1917, emigrating to the West in 1921. He first returned to Russia in 1945, when he met the writers Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. These formative encounters helped shape his later work, especially his defense of political freedom and his studies of pre-Soviet Russian thinkers. Never before collected, Berlin''s writings about the USSR include his accounts of his famous meetings with Russian writers shortly after the Second World War; the celebrated 1945 Foreign Office memorandum on the state of the arts under Stalin; his account of Stalin''s manipulative ''artificial dialectic''; portraits of Osip Mandelshtam and Boris Pasternak; his survey of Soviet Russian culture written after a visit in 1956; a postscript stimulated by the events of 1989; and more. This collection includes essays that have never been published before, as well as works that are not widely known because they were published under pseudonyms to protect relatives living in Russia. The contents of this book were discussed at a seminar in Oxford in 2003, held under the auspices of the Brookings Institution. Berlin''s editor, Henry Hardy, had prepared the essays for collective publication and here recounts their history. In his foreword, Brookings president Strobe Talbott, an expert on the Soviet Union, relates the essays to Berlin''s other work. The Soviet Mind will assume its rightful place among Berlin''s works and will prove invaluable for policymakers, students, and those interested in Russian politics, past, present and future.
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Penguin Books Ltd Russian Thinkers
Book SynopsisFew, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia''s outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy''s philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, ''The Hedgehog and the Fox,'' Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, ''the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.''Trade ReviewThe enduring vitality of Berlin's characterisation of Russian thought is demonstrated by the publication [...] of a new edition of Russian Thinkers, painstakingly revised and augmented by Henry Hardy ... a series of sparkling and sympathetic essays * Times Literary Supplement *
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Rowman & Littlefield Publishers The Soviet Mind
Book SynopsisWith a revised foreword by Brookings President Strobe Talbott and a new introduction by Berlin's editor, Henry Hardy.George Kennan, the architect of US policy toward the Soviet Union, called Isaiah Berlin the patron saint among the commentators of the Russian scene. In The Soviet Mind, Berlin proves himself fully worthy of that accolade. Although the essays in this book were originally written to explore the tensions between Soviet communism and Russian culture, the thinking about the Russian mind that emerges is as relevant today under Putin's post-communist Russia as it was when this book first appeared more than a decade ago.This Brookings Classic brings together Berlin's writings about the Soviet Union. Among the highlights are accounts of Berlin's meetings with the Russian writers in the aftermath of the war; a celebrated memorandum he wrote for the British Foreign Office in 1945 about the state of the arts under Stalin; Berlin's account of Stalin's manipulative artificial dialectic; portraits of Pasternak and poet Osip Mandel''shtam; Berlin's survey of Russian culture based on a visit in 1956; and a postscript reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events in 1989.Henry Hardy prepared the essays for publication; his introductory discussions describe their history. In his foreword, revised for this new edition, Brookings's Strobe Talbott, a long-time expert on Russia and the Soviet Union, relates the essays to Berlin's other work.The essays and other pieces in The Soviet Mindwhich includes a new essay, Marxist versus Non-Marxist Ideas in Soviet Policy, and a summary of a talk on communismrepresent Berlin at his most brilliant, and are invaluable for policy-makers, students and anyone interested in Russian politics and thoughtpast, present and future.
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Random House USA Inc First Love and Other Stories
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Princeton University Press Karl Marx
Book SynopsisTells the biography of Karl Marx who has long been recognized as one of the best concise accounts of the life and thought of the man who had, in Berlin's words, a more "direct, deliberate, and powerful" influence on mankind than any other nineteenth-century thinker. This book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context.Trade Review"A model of objective clarity."--Richard Charques, Times Literary Supplement "[Berlin's] book, a perennial classic, has all the virtues of Berlin himself: charm, erudition, and (occasionally) grandiloquence."--Peter E. Gordon, New Republic "The best brief account of the life and thought of Marx."--Saturday Review "Exceptional ... [A]s a portrait of the man and the intellectual climate of the mid-nineteenth century it is, perhaps, the finest we have."--Chimen Abramsky, Jewish Chronicle "[Berlin's] accounts of Marx's theses are sometimes more effective than Marx's own words, and his descriptions of Marx as a man are remarkably vivid."--H. B. Acton, Political Studies "Berlin's attitude to his subject is exemplary, and on the whole it is the best introduction to it that we have... [The book] makes Marx intelligible, both as a person and as a thinker."--A. L. Rowse, Political QuarterlyTable of ContentsEditor's Preface to the Fifth Edition xi Foreword by Alan Ryan xix Preface to the Fourth Edition xxix Note to the Third Edition xxxiii Note to the First Edition xxxv 1 Introduction 1 2 Childhood and Adolescence 22 3 The Philosophy of 'The Spirit' 33 4 The Young Hegelians 57 5 Paris 76 6 Historical Materialism 112 7 1848 149 8 Exile in London: The First Phase 168 9 The International 205 10 'The Red Terror Doctor' 220 11 Last Years 248 Afterword by Terrell Carver 267 Guide to Further Reading by Terrell Carver 291 Index 297
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Cambridge University Press Maistre Considerations on France Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Book SynopsisJoseph de Maistre's Considerations on France is the best known French equivalent of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. This new edition of Richard Lebrun's 1974 translation is introduced by Isaiah Berlin, with a bibliography and chronology by the translator. Published in 1797, the work of the self-exiled Maistre presents a providential interpretation of the French Revolution and argues for a new alliance of throne and altar under a restored Bourbon monarchy. Although the Directory and then Napoleon delayed Maistre's influence within France until the Restoration, he is now acknowledged as the most eloquent spokesperson for continental conservatism. Considerations on France was a shrewd piece of propaganda, but, as Isaiah Berlin contends, by arguing his case in broad historical, philosophical and religious terms, Maistre raises issues of enduring importance.Trade Review"Maistre's austere, cutting ideas might even be seen by some as having acquired an increased sense of immediacy." Mark Wegierski, The Review of MetaphysicsTable of ContentsIntroduction Isaiah Berlin; Chronology; Bibliography; Note on the text; Considerations on France; Index.
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Vintage The Power Of Ideas
Book Synopsis''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 civilisation'' - Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958.The nineteen essays collected here show Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid: these short, introductory pieces provide the perfect starting point for the reader new to his work. Their linking theme is the crucial social and political role of ideas, and of their progenitors. The subjects vary widely - from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism - and the appositeness of Heine''s warning is exemplified on a broad front. The contents include Berlin''s last essay - a retrospective autobiographical survey and the classic statement of his Zionist views. As a whole the book exhibits the full range of his expertise, and demonstrates the enormously engaging individuality, as well asTrade ReviewEach of these essays fulfils Raymond Carver's criterion for the short story: to leave the reader's body temperature a degree higher or lower than when the book was opened -- Nicholas Fearn * Independent on Sunday *Shows how seriously he took the task of inspiring the general reader...displays the full breadth of his learning and experience -- Daniel Johnson * Daily Telegraph *Berlin's description of Jews in contemporary Western society is brilliant, indeed dazzling -- David Hillel-Ruben * Jewish Chronicle *
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Darío Zane Huerta Two Concepts of Liberty Freedom
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Springer VS Karl Marx Sein Leben und sein Werk
Book SynopsisEinführung.- Kindheit und Jugend.- Die Philosophie des Geistes.- Die Junghegelianer.- Paris.- Historischer Materialismus.- 1848.- Exil in London: Die erste Phase.- Die Internationale.- Der Doktor des Roten Terrors.- Die letzten Jahre.
£23.74
Alianza Editorial Karl Marx
Book SynopsisEste brillante relato de la vida y el pensamiento de Marx se ha convertido en un clásico y se considera el mejor estudio crítico del autor de El capital. La presente edición incluye un prólogo de Alan Ryan y una bibliografía actualizada." Leí por primera vez Karl Marx hace treinta y cinco años, y lo devoré de una sentada. Los nuevos lectores lo encontrarán igual de absorbente. "Alan Ryan" La biografía de Marx. abrió el ancho universo al que Isaiah intuía pertenecer: la historia de las ideas. "Michael Ignatieff" Cómo era posible que un partidario insobornable del sistema democrático, tan hostil a toda forma de colectivismo, escribiera uno de los más honestos y penetrantes estudios sobre Marx? "Mario Vargas Llosa" La admirable capacidad del autor para traducir muchas nociones abstrusas y oscuras del marxismo a un lenguaje claro y su virtuosidad para mostrar la relación entre personalidades, caracteres y actitudes, de un lado, y las cuestiones doctrinales, de otro,
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Vintage Publishing Personal Impressions
Book SynopsisThe third, enlarged edition of Isaiah Berlin's remarkable series of character portraits, Personal ImpressionsWinston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Albert Einstein, Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova: Isaiah Berlin’s Personal Impressions collects the essayist and intellectual historian’s most remarkable portraits of prominent twentieth-century thinkers, writers and politicians. For this third, enlarged edition, ten new pieces have been added, including portraits of David Ben-Gurion, Maynard and Lydia Keynes, and Stephen Spender, as well as Berlin's autobiographical reflections on Jewish Oxford and his Oxford undergraduate years. Rich and enlightening, Personal Impressions is a vibrant demonstration of Berlin's belief that ideas truly live only through people.Trade ReviewThis is more than a collection of brilliantly perceptive portraits from the life of men as various as Churchill, Namier, Einstein, Pasternak. It is also a window into one of the wisest, most spacious and generous minds of our time * Observer *This is an amazingly enjoyable book from a very gifted and fortunate man -- Christopher Hitchens * New Statesman *Marvellously good reading... A quarter of the entire volume is occupied by [an] essay in which Berlin recalls his meetings with Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956. This last essay, in particular, is simply stunning -- Alan Ryan * Sunday Times *Welcoming and rewarding… This splendid book bring[s] the past to life. It lives for Berlin, and, thanks to him, it lives for us -- Peter Stansky * New York Times Book Review *It is one of Berlin's most endearing characteristics that he can admire so many utterly diverse people, that he can tell us about them all, and see the point of them’ -- Mary Warnock * Listener *
£27.57
Vintage Publishing Affirming: Letters 1975-1997
Book Synopsis‘IB was one of the great affirmers of our time.’ John Banville, New York Review of BooksThe title of this final volume of Isaiah Berlin’s letters is echoed by John Banville’s verdict in his review of its predecessor, Building: Letters 1960–75, which saw Berlin publish some of his most important work, and create, in Oxford’s Wolfson College, an institutional and architectural legacy. In the period covered by this new volume (1975–97) he consolidates his intellectual legacy with a series of essay collections. These generate many requests for clarification from his readers, and stimulate him to reaffirm and sometimes refine his ideas, throwing substantive new light on his thought as he grapples with human issues of enduring importance.Berlin’s comments on world affairs, especially the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the collapse of Communism, are characteristically acute. This is also the era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Iranian revolution, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, and wars in the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. Berlin scrutinises the leading politicians of the day, including Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev, and draws illuminating sketches of public figures, notably contrasting the personas of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov. He declines a peerage, is awarded the Agnelli Prize for ethics, campaigns against philistine architecture in London and Jerusalem, helps run the National Gallery and Covent Garden, and talks at length to his biographer. He reflects on the ideas for which he is famous – especially liberty and pluralism – and there is a generous leavening of the conversational brilliance for which he is also renowned, as he corresponds with friends about politics, the academic world, music and musicians, art and artists, and writers and their work, always displaying a Shakespearean fascination with the variety of humankind.Affirming is the crowning achievement both of Berlin’s epistolary life and of the widely acclaimed edition of his letters whose first volume appeared in 2004.Trade ReviewOne of the great thinkers of the age. Anyone seeking to understand the 20th century should acquire this volume, and its three predecessors. They will be both stimulated and enlightened -- Vernon Bogdanor, five stars * Daily Telegraph *This fourth and final volume of Berlin's letters, admirably edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle, brings vividly back to life one of the most wise, witty and generous of men -- Philip Ziegler * Spectator *The great magus of 20th-century liberalism -- Matthew d'Ancona * Guardian *Berlin, at his best, reminding us that he was one of the great liberal thinkers of the postwar period -- David Herman * New Statesman *Modest, polite and beautifully written, these letters can be viewed as open-ended conversations with kindred spirits. They are also an important attempt to document the history of the late 20th century. * Prospect *
£999.99
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc The Proper Study of Mankind
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin''s famous essay on Tolstoy, The Hedgehog and the Fox; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.
£22.50
Princeton University Press Political Ideas in the Romantic Age
Book SynopsisArguing that the political ideas of 1760-1830 are still largely ours, down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in, this book provides an account of some of the era's influential thinkers, including Rousseau, Fichte, and Hegel.Trade Review"Indispensable for anyone interested in the history of ideas and the development of liberal thought, it contains most of the central themes of Berlin's work, together with some of its recurring ambiguities."--John Gray, New York Review of Books "A fine introduction to Berlin's thought, and a major addition to the corpus of his work."--Anthony Grayling, Literary Review "In this volume, we have one of the most central sources for much of Berlin's thought. What makes Berlin such a compelling historian, and one of the very few of whom it will always be said that he is a pleasure to read, was the way that he got under the skin of people whose opinions he found, after considered thought, abhorrent. His ideas are still worth debating today, and for the foreseeable future."--Nicholas Lezard, Guardian "An event of major importance... Hitherto, students of Berlin have been like explorers searching for the source of the Nile, but with only a network of streams to go by, not a single river; now they can stand on the shores of their very own Lake Victoria, gazing at the mighty reservoir itself."--Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph "[Political Ideas in the Romantic Age] contains, in embryo, the main ideas that were to dominate [Berlin's] thought."--Raymond Carr, Spectator "An absorbing and impressive new book ... [that] says that we still live off the intellectual capital produced by the great thinkers of the romantic age, roughly 1760 to 1830. We think as they thought. We speak as they spoke."--Robert Fulford, National Post "Berlin's text is substantially rich and essential for understanding the foundations of his early intellectual encounters with the minds of the Enlightenment and the Romantic age."--Choice "[This book] is worth a look for anyone interested in a kind of original formulation of Berlin's ideas, but it also provides a new path into a great mind for those who are not yet familiar with him."--Brandon Turner, Perspectives on Political Science "Those already interested in Berlin's scholarship will find the origins here of his broader contributions to the 'history of ideas' while at his intellectual peak."--Ann Frank Wake, Historian "At a time when the recrudescence of romantic themes has accompanied numerous new political foundings in the post-Soviet era, and in the turmoil and realignments in the Middle East and Africa, there is a refreshing clarity in this work, and a robust comprehensiveness to his commentary on romanticist ideas--romanticism insinuated exalted, but usually volatile, new ideas in old containers. Its beguiling grandeur obscured its dangers. Berlin offers incisively critical assessments of its leading thinkers."--Peter Emberley, International Political Science ReviewTable of ContentsForeword by William A. Galston xi Abbreviations and Conventions xxiii Editor's Preface xxv Isaiah Berlin's Political Ideas: From the Twentieth Century to the Romantic Age by Joshua L. Cherniss xliii POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE ROMANTIC AGE 1 Prologue 1 1 Politics as a Descriptive Science 21 2 The Idea of Freedom 112 3 Two Concepts of Freedom: Romantic and Liberal 195 4 The March of History 261 Appendix: Subjective versus Objective Ethics 325 Summaries of the Flexner Lectures 333 Note from the Editor to the Author 349 Appendix to the Second Edition The Concise 'Two Concepts of Liberty' 355 Index 389
£22.50
Princeton University Press Personal Impressions
Book SynopsisOffers a collection of remarkable biographical portraits. This book brings to life a range of prominent twentieth-century thinkers, politicians, and writers.Trade Review"Welcoming and rewarding... [Berlin] is at his most conversational. This splendid book bring[s] the past to life."--Peter Stansky, New York Times Book Review "[Berlin's] writing has all the elan of conversation. [His] sense of humor ... Preserves a frank delight in human contradiction."--V. S. Pritchett, New York Review of Books "Contains many amusing and revealing anecdotes."--Dan Jacobson, Times Literary Supplement "An amazingly enjoyable book."--Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman "Marvellously good reading."--Alan Ryan, Sunday Times (London) "A thrilling and agreeable work... [W]armly commended."--Peter Jay, Washington Post Book World "An enthralling collection... It is hard to think of any other writer who is so penetrating, so amusing, and yet so entirely free of malice."--Anthony Storr, Spectator "Marvellous... It is one of Berlin's most endearing characteristics that he can admire so many utterly diverse people, that he can tell us about them all, and see the point of them."--Mary Warnock, Listener "Provides an invigorating spectacle of the liberal mind at its most assured and unobstructed, glorying in the variety of human character and achievement."--Anthony Quinton, EncounterTable of ContentsList of Illustrations xi Foreword by Hermione Lee xv Author's Preface to the First Edition xxxi Editor's Preface xxxv Winston Churchill in 1940 1 Hubert Henderson at All Souls 30 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 37 Richard Pares 50 Chaim Weizmann 57 Felix Frankfurter at Oxford 97 Aldous Huxley 108 L. B. Namier 121 Maurice Bowra 148 J. L. Austin and the Early Beginnings of Oxford Philosophy 156 John Petrov Plamenatz 177 Auberon Herbert 187 Einstein and Israel 195 Where Was I? 211 Maynard and Lydia Keynes 218 Nahum Goldmann 225 Memories of Brief Meetings with Ben-Gurion 235 Martin Cooper 243 Yitzhak Sadeh 252 Adam von Trott 269 David Cecil 273 Edmund Wilson at Oxford 283 Memories of Virginia Woolf 298 Alexander and Salome Halpern 304 Jewish Oxford 323 Herbert Hart 330 Corpuscle 337 Stephen Spender 347 Meetings with Russian Writers in 1945 and 1956 356 Epilogue: The Three Strands in My Life 433 Afterword by Noel Annan 441 Index 465
£22.50
Princeton University Press Three Critics of the Enlightenment Vico Hamann
Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was deeply admired during his life, but his full contribution was perhaps underestimated because of his preference for the long essay form. This title presents Berlin's essays on these celebrated and captivating intellectual portraits: Vico, Hamann, and Herder.Trade Review"Isaiah Berlin's main preoccupation was to understand the modern reaction against the Enlightenment. These essays on Counter-Enlightenment thinkers are classics and also illuminate his own ideas about the place of reason in politics. An essential volume."—Mark Lilla, Columbia University"Isaiah Berlin is among the finest intellectual historians of recent decades. Yet his position is somewhat peculiar: for while he is clearly a scholar of enormous erudition, the characteristic style of his work is closer to that of brilliant conversation than of conventional historical scholarship. His works on Vico, Herder, and Hamann deal with thinkers who were at odds with main currents of the Enlightenment. For anyone with a historical sense, the recrudescence of so many of the characteristic notions of the 'Counter-Enlightenment' under the rubric of 'postmodernism' is striking. The recovery of these ideas is all the more effective for being a critical one: Berlin reminds his readers of some of the unfortunate historical consequences of the ideas in question."—Jerry Z. Muller, Catholic University of America"Isaiah Berlin's main preoccupation throughout his productive life was understand the nature of the modern reaction against the Enlightenment. These essays on Vico, Herder, and Hamann belong with his other profound and influential studies of the leading figures of what he called the Counter-Enlightenment. But they are also crucial for anyone hoping to understand Berlin's own analysis of modern life and politics, which has received increasing attention in recent years. Anyone interested in Berlin or those he studied will find this an essential volume."—Mark Lilla, University of ChicagoTable of ContentsForeword by Jonathan Israel ix Editor's Preface xix Note on References xxv VICO AND HERDER 1 Author's Preface 5 Introduction 7 The Philosophical Ideas of Giambattista Vico 26 Vico's Theory of Knowledge and Its Sources 151 Herder and the Enlightenment 208 THE MAGUS OF THE NORTH 301 Editor's Preface 305 Foreword to the German Edition 312 Author's Preface 317 1. Introduction 320 2. Life 324 3. The Central Core 341 4. The Enlightenment 345 5. Knowledge 350 6. Language 390 7. Creative Genius 410 8. Politics 423 9. Conclusion 428 Excursus to Chapter 6 444 Bibliographical Note 449 Appendix to the Second Edition 453 Giambattista Vico: Man of Genius 455 The Reputation of Vico 479 The Workings of Providence 484 Hamann's Origins 486 Letters 489 Index 517
£23.75
Jason Aronson Inc. Publishers The Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry Biographies AI
Book SynopsisTo find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.Trade ReviewA great scholarly work that academic libraries and large public libraries with a strong Judaica collection will want to own. * Library Journal *
£83.00
Princeton University Press Concepts and Categories Philosophical Essays
Book SynopsisIncludes essays that presents the sweep of author's contributions to philosophy from his early participation in the debates surrounding logical positivism to his later work, which more evidently reflects his life-long interest in political theory, the history of ideas, and the philosophy of history.Trade Review"Being a man of the liveliest and most ingenious intellect, [Berlin] must wish that reason could do more to transform the human condition radically and quickly; being a man of common sense he knows it cannot."--Edward Crankshaw, The Observer "He left the moral quality of his voice behind him, in the long tumbling paragraphs and the clauses within clauses of his best essays, and it is to these that we can turn when we need to remind ourselves what intellectual life can be: joyful, free of illusion, and vitally alive."--Michael Ignatieff, The New York Review of BooksTable of ContentsForeword by Alasdair MacIntyre xi Editor's Preface xix Author's Preface xxv Introduction by Bernard Williams xxix The Purpose of Philosophy 1 Verification 15 Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements 41 Logical Translation 72 Equality 106 The Concept of Scientific History 135 Does Political Theory Still Exist? 187 From Hope and Fear Set Free 226 Appendix to the Second Edition Made of Wax after All 261 My Philosophical Views 277 Interview on Concepts and Categories 284 Logical Positivism 305 The Rationality of Value Judgements 315 Is a Philosophy of History Possible? 318 Pluralism and Liberalism (with Bernard Williams) 325 The Philosophy of Charles Taylor 331 Index 335
£20.90
