Isaiah Berlin (the Proper Study Of Mankind)

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I bought this having read Berlin's 'The Roots of Romanticism', which was the clearest and liveliest exposition of how the 18C romantic movement came into being that I have ever read. Berlin's style is new to me and, well - I am still wondering at just much clearer it is than other writers on the philosophy of ideas. It is true that there is sometimes a certain level of prolixity in the way Berlin explains his thoughts, but this does not work against his explanation, it simply helps to make his style all the more engaging, authentic and authoritative.
In this volume Henry Hardy, as in the 'Roots of Romanticism', acts as editor to collate a series of the most popular of Berlin's past essays. You only have to read 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' or 'The Originality of Machiavelli' to discover just how successfully and entertainingly Berlin manages to explain what many other writers struggle to do. Berlin is clearly not only deeply knowledgeable but also passionate about his topic and you can feel just how much he wants to communicate his knowledge and ideas. These essays are almost 'alive' in the sense of the man behind them breathing life into the words.
This book is very highly recommended reading for anyone who feels the need to know how we arrived at where we are today via the classical civilisations, through to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and on to today.
  1. The Proper Study Of Mankind
  2. Isaiah Berlin (the Proper Study Of Mankind) In The Bible
  3. Mankind In The Bible
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Preview — The Proper Study of Mankind by Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah 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 an...more
Published August 2nd 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1997)
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Philosophy Published in Decade: 1990s
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Aug 08, 2012Szplug marked it as intermittently-reading
Berlin is an intellectual stud—wise, thoughtful, cautious and, ultimately, uplifting. The opening essay is a sterling introduction to the tenor of the displaced Riganite: a firm declaration against the tempting lure of dogma and ideology, against the piebald dream of utopian perfection achievable by rational and scientific methods served by a priesthood of lever-pulling technicians; an illusory end that so often is sought through sanguinary means. The first batch of essays serve to build a base...more
Dec 29, 2012Hadrian marked it as read-parts-of
Berlin is one of the most perceptive and deeply learned of the 'Cold War classical liberals'. Even in his discussion of obscurer thinkers like Hamann, Herder, and Herzen, he is still new and continually relevant, especially in his discussions of democracy and political pluralism.
My personal recommendations from this collection include 'Two Concepts of Liberty', 'The Hedgehog and the Fox', 'The Originality of Machiavelli' (if you don't believe my account of his staggering knowledge base, look at...more
Aug 01, 2010Aaron Crofut rated it it was amazing
Shelves: political-theory-science, philosophy, must-read
It would be difficult to overestimate this book's influence on my own political thought. My journey towards the likes of Hayek, Rothbard, and von Mises began at Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty' and any belief I may have had in the use of the state to perfect people died when I learned a simple truth: the 'good' is not unitary. If a decision has to be made between competing goods, that is a decision best left in the hands of the individual most of the time.
Also some wonderful insights into Mac...more
Mar 11, 2019Peter Mcloughlin rated it it was amazing
Shelves: 00002both, 1890-1959, 1960-to-1989, american-history, 1801-to-1900, 1701-to-1800, 1500-to-1700, classical-world, coldwar, complexity
I listen to Berlin not because I think he is right on every point but in challenging times he had fairly good instincts for what was healthy and dangerous to a humane polity. He is a political historian of modernity and its reactionary opponents. To the enlightenment and counter-enlightenment and how these forces played out in the cataclysm of the early twentieth century. The monsters he described were dormant for a big part of my earlier life (although they were a big part of his early life) bu...more
Dec 20, 2014Marc rated it liked it
I didn't know Isaiah Berlin at all until the mid' 1990's, when I took a subscription on the New York Review of Books. Berlin regularly published articles in it. I was immediately very impressed by his wise, personal and very authoritative way of thinking and looking at the world. Up until now I never read a larger work by his hand, so this anthology makes up for this neglect.
What strikes is that Berlin wasn't a systembuilder, he didn't develop a huge system of thinking nor introduced a new way o...more
MankindApr 04, 2014Sense of History rated it liked it
Shelves: historiography, methodology-of-history, the-writing-of-history, theory-of-history
This is a very rich book, it offers a great insight into the writing and understanding of history. It's impossible to cover all angles Berlin deals with, but the main one is his relentless attempts to show that tackling history with great theories and purely scientific methods ignores reality. One of the explanations is that the very act of writing history, compiling a story is not a perfectly logical activity; in reality, practical and intuitive insights play a much larger role than (academic)...more
Mar 19, 2014Andrew added it
Sometimes I think of big thick books about history and philosophy as intellectual arm wrestling matches-- I'm throwing my weight against ideas, trying to figure out the author's strategy. When I read Isaiah Berlin, I'm playing ping-pong with a genius, and I'm being outfoxed.
Big ideas, big thinkers, many of whom no one reads anymore (Herder, Hamann)... all told in an eloquent and precise book, and all the more appropriate reading for an era when totalitarianism comes in the form of markets and el...more
Ich bin ein Berliner.
Feb 06, 2016Alex Lee rated it really liked it
There is much to admire in Isaiah Berlin. He deals with thick concepts but he is easy to read. He is clear. He also analyzes phenomenon from a variety of angles, being pretty well informed and widely read. He is also a proponent of the end of modernism, understanding the reason and concept originate with latent content, and that often the narrative structure is inappropriate to contexts outside of the originating situation. He shows us this often.
But there is an intellectual limit to his examina...more
Categorizing this book onto a shelf in Goodreads is difficult. It is so rich and varied in content. It is a collection of essays by Isaiah Berlin covering a tremendous range of topics. Each essay is essentially a dissertation for an MPhil in itself. The one on Machiavelli is incredible in its breadth of scope. The amount of reading Berlin had to do in order to summarize the scholarly literature is incredible. The essay on two forms of liberty (negative, i.e., Locke/Bentham/et al., and positive,...more
Jan 25, 2009Howard Cincotta rated it really liked it
Arguably the most important political and literary philosopher/critic of the 20th century. His essay 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' (about Tolstoy) is worth the price of admission. Like George Steiner, Berlin will throw dozens of references at you -- Kant, Wittgenstein, Hume, and a dozen others in a single paragraph -- as he builds an unassilable case for human liberty in an era of totalitarianism, and traces the origins of both through the European Enlightment and German Romanticism, among other in...more
Sep 10, 2017William Schram rated it it was amazing
Shelves: anthology, classics, essays, language, philosophy
There is not much to really say about this one. It only took me a while because I keep picking up books from the library and putting this on the back burner so to speak. This collection of essays is both inspiring and inspired. It demonstrates quite well the lucidity and power of his thought in a wide range of different things, though he seems to mostly focus on literary subjects. Reading his analysis of Machiavelli's The Prince was quite interesting. Nothing much else really sticks out in my me...more
This fascinating anthology of essays illuminates the mind of one of the most celebrated offspring of The Enlightenment, the 20th century's Isaiah Berlin. There is a great deal of information in here on the last 400 years of Western thought and a careful consideration of some of the great minds of his time. Recommended for careful, slow reading.
He writes as he spoke as he thought: in perfectly constructed long complex sentences with parentheses, subordinate clauses and footnotes; it is, therefore, a slow read but very rewarding. I think his ideas on what is freedom are of vital and current importance in the world of social and political unrest that is evolving.
Sep 13, 2016Michael Michailidis rated it really liked it
The essential Berlin. It contains some of his most famous essays like his 'Two Concepts of Liberty' along with 'The Originality of Machiavelli' which is my personal favourite. For anyone interested in the history of ideas, Berlin is a must read.
Mar 16, 2010Chris rated it liked it
'The Concept of Scientific History'--Berlin brilliantly attacks the idea that history is among the social sciences. Braudel nods.
'The Originality of Machiavelli'--great piece.
'The Counter-Enlightenment'--will read soon.
Somewhere I read Berlin's works are no longer in style. If that's the case, perhaps it is just because he discusses some obscure thinkers such as Vico, de Maistre, and Herder among others. I've been reading an essay here and there for many years and finally finished the last one I am interested in, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' which has been my introduction to Tolstoy's worldview. Berlin has a crystal clear writing style that made this essay, as well as his others, a real joy to read. This partic...more
Mar 22, 2019Cutenerd rated it it was amazing
Awesome.
Apr 17, 2015Juan rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Las cuatro estrellas se las otorgo por lo realmente valioso de su discurso sobre los conceptos de libertad positiva y libertad negativa que tan útiles han resultado para toda la Teoría Política originada tras él; la quinta estrella se la quito porque el resto del contenido del recopilatorio es demasiado específico como para ser de interés para el público generalista (son críticas pseudo-epistolares a otros autores y políticos) y porque el estilo es denso y bastante insufrible hasta el punto de q...more

The Proper Study Of Mankind

Mar 19, 2015Shawn rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I confess that I read only perhaps a quarter of the book, 'The Counter-Enlightenment,' 'Herder and the Enlightenment,' 'The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will,' and 'Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power.' These are stimulating essays that all explore European reactions to the Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and its attendant varieties of irrationalism, including the darker forms of the cult of the Will and destructive nationalism.
Jun 27, 2013John Gillis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Isaiah berlin (the proper study of mankind) 2
The title is from Alexander Pope, and the book is a compilation of Isaiah Berlin's essays. He is the best writing philosopher since Bertrand Russell; his ideas are exquisitely depicted; and his intelligence is beyond the pale. His biography 'Isaiah Berlin' by Michael Ignatieff is worth reading too.
Jan 04, 2008Megan marked it as to-read
Shelves: philosophy, political-theory, essays, non-fiction
I think I bought this with my dad when he visited the time before he built my comic book shelves. I haven't read it yet because it looks long.
A sweete, witty soule.
I just recieved this great book as a gift and have started to read it
One of those rare books from which one gains wisdom.

Isaiah Berlin (the Proper Study Of Mankind) In The Bible

Ich bin ein Berliner.
Jan 11, 2008Mitch rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Isaiah Berlin taught me to take differences between people very seriously, rid me of doctrinaire Marxism, taught me that all good things don't necessarily go together and much more.
We don't seem to get public intellectuals of this refinement of thought in 2013. His famous essay about the Fox and the Hedgehog is in here.
Barbara Butler rated it it was amazing
Apr 16, 2018
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Mankind In The Bible

Sir Isaiah Berlin was a philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. He excelled as an essayist, lecturer and conversationalist; and as a brilliant speaker who delivered, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material, whether for a lecture series at Oxford University or as a broadcaster on the BBC Thir...more
“The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. ......Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.” — 14 likes
“Reconoce que si la libertad para los poderosos y los inteligentes significa la explotación de los débiles y menos talentosos, entonces habrá que limitar la libertad de los poderosos y los inteligentes.” — 0 likes
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