Four Essays on Liberty

by Isaiah Berlin

Book Overview

"Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century", Historical Inevitability", "Two Concepts of Liberty", "John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life". These four essays deal with the various aspects of individual liberty, including the distinction between positive and negative liberty and the necessity of rejecting determinism if we wish to keep hold of the notions of human responsibility and freedom.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192810340
• ISBN13: 9780192810342
• Release Date: June 1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Freedom of the wolves has often meant death of the sheep

Liberty is a very precious and rare quality of a living condition. As I. Berlin states, `The periods and societies in which civil liberties were respected, and variety of opinion and faith tolerated, have been very few and far between, oases in the desert of human uniformity, intolerance and oppression.' I. Berlin explains clearly that liberty has two faces: a positive and a negative one. Positive liberty is the answer to the question: who controls? Am I my own master? Negative liberty circumscribes the area wherein a third person can prevent anybody to make a free choice. On these bases, a free society can be organized, with 1) absolute rights (not absolute powers) and 2) frontiers, defined in terms of rules, within which men should be inviolable. For the author, freedom is not an end, but a means to create `room for personal ends', for happiness. He rightly criticizes E. Fromm: freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself. Philosophically, freedom has been ferociously contested by the determinists, the defenders of `historical inevitability' (Hegel, Marx, Bacon, Fourier, Comte). The author remarks judiciously that if the world is ruled by determinism, nobody is responsible: there is no free will, no morality, and no justice. Individual choice is an illusion. Determinism represents the world as a prison. A more brutal kind of determinism is presented by those who believe that there is a final answer, a unique goal, a central principle that governs our life. This principle and its executioners provoked barbarous consequences. Isaiah Berlin's reflections on liberty are profound and still very actual. Not to be missed.

Political philosophy at its best

The four essays in this work are 1) Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century 2)Historical Inevitability 3) Two Concepts of Liberty 4) John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life." In the first essay Berlin laments the tendency of twentieth century thinking to deprive the great questions of their significance and substitute for them technical questions alone. In the second Berlin argues that the notion of historical inevitabity is untenable and that our everyday life and historical experience require a kind of liberty . In the third he makes his famous contrast between freedom from, and freedom to, or for. And in the last he explores the political thought of John Stuart Mill one of his great predecessors and through Mill's mirror develops some of his own ideas. First and above all Berlin stands against the idea that there is a single system or idea an absolute which all Mankind should be coerced into obedience to. Berlin in his thinking points to the plurality of ends and values in life, and the contradictions between various systems of values. He is a liberal philosopher who connects the dignity of Mankind with this liberty from external coercion and oppression. His writing is profound and yet somehow conversational and flowing . This work contains the heart of the thought of one of the great political thinkers of our time.

THE 20th Century's Man of Letters

I won't review the four essays, except to state the obvious: They concern liberty, and what liberty entails. But that much one could ascertain from the title.What the title does not reveal is how penetrating Berlin's analyses of the myriad subjects he comments on. His prose is exemplary, and his style endearing. Many learned people think Lionel Trilling, Erich Auerbach, Jacques Barzun, etc., are the men of letters for the 20th century reader. As enjoyable as many of these and other authors of the 20th century have been, I am amazed at how infrequently Berlin is listed among them. Yet, his mind is keener, his prose more mellifluous, and his ideas more interesting than almost anyone else of his Age. Berlin is not a difficult read, but he is a challenging one. His weave of ideas and his elaborate critiques will require attention, but give him your attention, and he'll reward you plenteously. He is a genuine philosopher who deals with issues of the common man, not the nuances of linguistics; he is concerned with freedom, the life well-lived, and ideas that are important (not just fasionable). This collection of four essays is as good a place as any to introduce yourself to one of the 20th century's true giants of belle letters.

A Serious Vision

Agreed. Berlin's book is not the easiest in the world to read. But, then again, neither is Plato, or John Locke, or even Mill for that matter. He writes in a 19th century style, but one which, I think is beautiful and elegant. This is not a book to be devoured, but to be savored. Each word is carefully crafted. To me, Berlin is like diving into a pool of the english language, and just floating in ideas and language. And the ideas are wonderful. More than any other political philosopher, Berlin has diagnosed the problems, and the dangers, of modern social and political thinking. When he argues that those who advocate limits on liberty, in the name of justice, or equality, or another ideal, are in fact diminishing the amount of liberty in society as a whole it is hard not to agree with him. His analysis of the problems of modern philosophy and political thought is as acute. These are the ideas that I now find most compelling in this book. The essay of the two types of liberty is wonderful, as is the one on Historical Inevitability. But it is the essay on Political Ideas in the 20th Century that has become my favorite over the year, for the simple reason that he was incredibly prophetic. In the 19th century, Berlin argues, conservatives and liberal, even socialists, despite their differences agreed on the fundamental questions of politics; who should rule? What is the basis of authority? Why should I obey? What are the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship? In the 20th century, we no longer even consider the questions to be important, or relevant. All political problems have been reduced to either technical matters, of social or economic engineering, or are treated as psychological disorders, that need theraputic treatment. We accept the lost of liberty because we no longer think of it as important, as a question that needs solving. Problems like poverty, or equality, or a cleaner environment, which are suseptible of technical solutions. Anyone who worried about liberty in the face of all of these problems was, ipso facto, crazy, and a refusal to face reality. Hence, prozac or lithium is the prescribed course of treatment, to remove the source, or at least the feeling, of discontent. It is time to take another look at Berlin, not merely as a defender of liberty, but as an analyst of modern political and social thinking, and the dead ends to which it is leading us.

for those who hate the 20th century

Do you dislike 20th century totalitarianism and the putrid odor which determinism and the "modern" social sciences have brought to the world? Do you wonder what ever happened to the spirit of J.S. Mill, James Madison and the other lovers of freedom? Do you hate the condescending attitude of "progressives" who would deign to make decisions from on high for the rest of us? - knowing better than we do, of course. If so, then the incredibly erudite and eloquent Sir Isaiah Berline is for you. Political pluralism need not give up the field to Marxists and determinists rampaging like vandals through the modern research university. I read recently how in today's "advanced" scholarship Berlin only rehashes "ancient" arguments about free will. Well, if you are one of "those who value liberty for its own sake, believe that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human," then you want to make Berlin one of your intellectual supports and companions. Maybe we have more to learn from "ancients" like Berlin (still alive today in 1997) than the "modern scholars" who would dismiss him as out of date.