Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century - a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas - especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism - have become even more prescient and vital today. But who was the man behind such influential views? In Search of Isaiah Berlin tells the compelling story of a decades-long collaboration between Berlin and his editor, Henry Hardy, who made it his vocation to bring Berlin's huge body of work into print. Hardy discovered that Berlin had written far more than people thought, much of it unpublished. As he describes his struggles with Berlin, who was almost on principle unwilling to have his work published, an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher emerges. This is a unique portrait of a man who gave us a new way of thinking about the human predicament, and whose work had for most of his life remained largely out of view.
By:
Henry Hardy
Imprint: I B TAURIS
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 198mm,
Width: 129mm,
Weight: 284g
ISBN: 9780755601318
ISBN 10: 0755601319
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 03 March 2020
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
ELT Advanced
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Preface Abbreviations Introduction: The Genius and the Pedant 1. The Beginning Making Books 2. A Project is Born 3. Philosophical Letters, or, Cold Feet 4. Selected Writings 5. An Unremarkable Decade 6. The Crooked Timber of Humanity 7. The Magus of the North 8. The Sense of Reality Probing Ideas 9. Not Angels or Lunatics: Berlin on Human Nature 10. Pluralism and Religion 11. The Moral Core and the Human Horizon 12. The End 13. Epilogue Appendix: A Posthumous Letter to Berlin References and Asides Select Biographical Glossary Index
Henry Hardy edited The Proper Study of Mankind from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Henry Hardy edited The Sense of Reality from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Reviews for In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure
The new perspective on an important intellectual figure is of great value. * Publishers Weekly * A touching and often fascinating memoir ... Hardy has done much to preserve the ideas and, indeed, the memory of an extraordinary man for posterity. * Literary Review * An essential contribution to the study of Berlin’s ideas, providing not only helpful commentary but – through its drawing on many hitherto unpublished letters – entirely new insights and bases for further debate. * Berlin Review of Books * The intellectual thrill of the accuracy of a footnote is the stuff of this work. * The Irish Times *
