The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays - Couverture rigide

Berlin, Isaiah; Hausheer, Roger

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0374237506 ISBN 13 : 9780374237509

Editeur : Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998

Synopsis

Series; Pimlico ; 287. Physical description; xxxvi, 667 p. ; 25 cm. Notes; Includes concise bibliography of Berlin's writings (p. [638]-643). Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents; The pursuit of the ideal -- Philosophical foundations. The concept of scientific history; Does political theory still exist? -- Freedom and determinism. 'From hope and fear set free'; Historical inevitability -- Political liberty and pluralism. Two concepts of liberty -- History of ideas. The counter-enlightenment; The originality of Machiavelli; The divorce between the sciences and the humanities; Herder and the enlightenment -- Russian writers. The hedgehog and the fox; Herzen and his memoirs; Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak -- Romanticism and nationalism in the modern age. The apotheosis of the romantic will; Nationalism : past neglect and present power -- Twentieth-century figures. Winston Churchill in 1940; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Summary; This book is wide ranging, penetrating, innovative and extremely readable. It includes Berlin's famous essays on liberty, pluralism and nationalism as well as studies of figures such as Churchill and Roosevelt.

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture :

'He 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

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of the century, and one of the finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind provides a selection of the best of his essays. 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 principle 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. His insights illuminate the past and offer a key to the burning issues of today.

"A restatement of liberalism in a form by which the world could live."

Anthony Smith, Observer

'His uniqueness can be very well sampled in this admirable selection...Large as it is, it can serve only to stimulate the appetite.' Anthony Quinton, Evening Standard

Biographie de l'auteur :

Isaiah 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 the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Date d'édition: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0374237506
• ISBN 13: 9780374237509
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 667
• Éditeur: Hardy Henry, Hausneer Roger