Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty

by Isaiah Berlin and henry-hardy

Book Overview

Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative anti-liberal thinkers were broadcast by the BBC in 1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years later. They comprise one of Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and on the history of ideas--views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty," and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691090998
• ISBN13: 9780691090993
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Six Enemies of Human Freedom

Isaiah Berlin has no need to be introduced. He was one of the most brilliant philosophical minds of the XX century and is still famous for his remarkably clear prose and acute analyses. * The first book I chanced to read by him was the exceptional "The Roots of Romanticism", a study on the decline of the Enlightenment ideas and the development all over Europe of a different - more emotional - sensibility. I was surprised and fascinated by his acumen. A terse and unassuming style, introducing complex arguments with few simple words and remarkable composure. An unwavering faith that ideas are not something outside history, but are the deep bone-structure of human events (a conviction he matured probably under the influence of Heinrich Heine). The rare ability to surprise the reader introducing age-old arguments in unexpected and unusual ways, eventually drawing him to unforeseen conclusions. All these features are present as well in this essay. * This work is the transcription of a series of BBC radio broadcasts held in 1952 about "the enemies of human freedom". Actually most of the original records have been lost but for the one dedicated to Rousseau and so the text has been partly restored with the use and collation of extant - sometimes shaky - transcripts. This may account for a certain roughness of the style, specially visible in the first part. * In "The Roots of Romanticism" Berlin shows the development and the fascination of the new ideas and their impact on European history: the scene is immense and philosophy intertwines with history and literature. In "Freedom and Its Betrayal" the effort is focused on a single theme, considered in its negative value (betrayal) showing how the "liberal" and individualistic modern concept of liberty has not just one, but many intellectual "enemies". The conferences expand a theme that is central in his thinking and investigate the ideas of six seminal thinkers who lived just before or not long after the French Revolution: Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Saint-Simon and De Maistre. * This is not the place to consider in depth the charges moved to each one of them (I will be glad to discuss specific issues with any reader who wants to write me), but some features of Berlin's approach are remarkable. Every introduction is more a presentation of the thinker's relevant ideas and the indictment is not directed to the author, but to the logical consequences of his ideas, with only occasional mention to the - alleged - historical outcome. Every thinker is even treated with sympathy and curiosity - an almost reverential gratitude, because philosophy to Berlin is not strictly speaking a place to administer condemnation or to grant salvation, but the place dedicated to constant and peaceful evaluation. * While the book is not so stylish and captivating as "The Roots of Romanticism", it is nonetheless hugely interesting to all those interested in the history of ideas. Occasionally and notwithstandi

Thinking out loud

I was more familiar with German philosophy, as an intellectual reaction to the French revolution, than with the French and Italian thinkers who are also discussed in the radio lectures which are included in this book. I also have the book, KARL MARX by Isaiah Berlin, and noticed some of the same themes, though this book is mainly concerned with a half century prior to the writings of Karl Marx. I try to see the humor in history, so when Isaiah Berlin says that Helvetius's principal work, published in 1758, "was found to be so atheistical, so heretical, that it was condemned both by Church and by State, and was burnt by the public hangman," (p. 11) I'm not surprised that this might be "the first clear formulation of the principle of utilitarianism." (p. 13).Rousseau is the philosopher that Berlin blames most frequently for stating opposition to those who are overly refined. This includes "All those nineteenth century thinkers who are violently anti-intellectual, and in a sense anti-cultural, indeed . . . including Nietzsche himself, are the natural descendants of Rousseau." (p. 41). The Germans were not particularly well off, politically or materially at the time, so some tried to advance themselves by studying Kant. "Therefore, Kant says, the most sacred object in the universe, the only thing which is entirely good, is the good will, that is to say the free, moral, spiritual self within the body." (p. 57). Fichte's biggest contribution to 20th century political thought in Germany has been on leadership as a solution for a crisis, and Berlin considers the hero: "The favored image is that of Luther: there he stands, he cannot move, because he serves his inner ideal." (p. 65) But Fichte went in a philosophical direction. "Fichte gradually adopts the idea that the individual himself is nothing, that man is nothing without society, that man is nothing without the group, that the human being hardly exists at all." (p. 67). The first three pages of notes are mainly citations. The notes on Fichte cover seven pages and include additional phrases from Fichte's work not mentioned in Berlin's lectures but noted on the manuscript. This provides the opportunity to read bits like, "the natural institution of the State ends this independence provisionally and melts the separate parts into one whole, until finally morality recreates the whole species into one." (p. 166).The notes on Hegel provide a citation for `slaughter-bench.' Hegel gets credit for a new way of looking at the history of everything which is so inspired by greatness that "To see a vast human upheaval and then to condemn it because it is cruel or because it is unjust to the innocent is for Hegel profoundly foolish and contemptible." (p. 92). Also, "Hegel's most original achievement was to invent the very idea of the history of thought." (p. 99). From there, it figures that Saint-Simon would expect the French to produce rationally a society. "For him, history is a story of