Isaiah Berlin (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free Photo of Isaiah Berlin by Mats Lund, taken 3 February 1997Isaiah BerlinFirst published Tue Oct 26, 2004; substantive revision Fri Feb 1, 2008Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) was a British philosopher, historian ofideas, political theorist, educator and essayist. For much of his lifehe was renowned for his conversational brilliance, his defence ofliberalism, his attacks on political extremism and intellectualfanaticism, and his accessible, coruscating writings on the history ofideas. His essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958)contributed to a revival of interest in political theory in theEnglish-speaking world, and remains one of the most influential andwidely discussed texts in that field: admirers and critics agree thatBerlin's distinction between positive and negative liberty remains,for better or worse, a basic starting-point for theoreticaldiscussions of the meaning and value of political freedom. Late inhis life, the greater availability of Berlin's numerous essays beganto provoke increasing scholarly interest in his work, and particularlyin the idea of value pluralism; that Berlin's articulation of valuepluralism contains many ambiguities and even obscurities has onlyencouraged further work on the subject by other philosophers.1. Life 1.1 Intellectual Development 2. Philosophy of Knowledge and the Human Sciences 2.1 Conception of Philosophy 2.2 Basic Propositions: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Logic 2.3 Distinction Between Natural and Human Science 2.4 Free Will and Determinism 3. The History of Ideas 4. Ethical Thought and Value Pluralism 4.1 Berlin's Definition of Value Pluralism 4.2 Value Pluralism before Berlin 4.3 The Emergence of Value Pluralism in Berlin's Thought 4.4 Value Pluralism after Berlin: Some Controversies 5. Political Thought 5.1 Political Judgement and Leadership 5.2 Political Ethics: Ends, Means, Violence 5.3 The Concept of Liberty 5.4 Liberty and Pluralism 5.5 Nationalism 6. ConclusionBibliography Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Life Isaiah Berlin was born in 1909 in Riga, capital of Latvia (then partof the Russian Empire), the son of Mendel Berlin, a prosperous timbermerchant, and his wife Marie, née Volshonok. In 1915 the familymoved to Andreapol, in Russia, and in 1917 to Petrograd, where theyremained through both the Russian Revolutions of 1917, which Isaiahwould remember witnessing. Despite early persecution by theBolsheviks, the family was permitted to return to Riga in 1920; fromthere they emigrated, in 1921, to Britain. They lived in and aroundLondon; Isaiah attended St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College,Oxford, where he studied Greats (classical studies: ancient historyand philosophy) and PPE (politics, philosophy and economics). In 1932he was appointed a lecturer at New College; the same year he becamethe first Jew to be elected to a Prize Fellowship at All Souls,considered one of the highest accolades in British academic life. Throughout the 1930s Berlin was deeply involved in the development ofphilosophy at Oxford; his friends and colleagues includedJ. L. Austin, A. J. Ayer and Stuart Hampshire, who met to discussphilosophy in his rooms. However, he also evinced an early interest ina more historical approach to philosophy, and in social and politicaltheory, as reflected in his intellectual biography of Karl Marx(1939), still in print nearly 70 years later. During the Second World War Berlin served in the British InformationServices in New York City (1940–2) and at the British Embassy inWashington, DC (1942–5), where he was responsible for draftingweekly reports on the American political scene. In 1945–6 Berlinvisited the Soviet Union; his meetings there with surviving butpersecuted members of the Russian intelligentsia, particularly thepoets Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, reinforced his staunchopposition to Communism, and formed his future intellectualagenda. After the War Berlin returned to Oxford. Although he continuedto teach and write on philosophy throughout the later 1940s and intothe early 1950s, his interests had shifted to the history of ideas,particularly Russian intellectual history, the history of Marxist andsocialist theories, and the Enlightenment and its critics. He alsobegan to publish widely read articles on contemporary political andcultural trends, political ideology, and the internal workings of theSoviet Union. In 1950, election to a Research Fellowship at All Soulsallowed him to devote himself to his historical, political andliterary interests, which lay well outside the mainstream ofphilosophy as it was then practiced at Oxford. He was, however, one ofthe first of the founding generation of ‘Oxfordphilosophers’ to make regular visits to American universities,and played an important part in spreading ‘Oxfordphilosophy’ to the USA. In 1957, a year after he had married Aline Halban (née deGunzbourg), Berlin was elected Chichele Professor of Social andPolitical Theory at Oxford; his inaugural lecture, delivered in 1958,was ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. He resigned his chair in1967, the year after becoming founding President of Wolfson College,Oxford, which he largely created, retiring in 1975. In his later yearshe hoped to write a major work on the history of European romanticism,but this hope was disappointed. From 1966 to 1971 he was also avisiting Professor of Humanities at the City University of New York,and he served as President of the British Academy from 1974 to1978. Berlin was knighted in 1957, and was appointed to the Order ofMerit in 1971. Collections of his writings, edited by Henry Hardy andothers, began appearing in 1978; there are, to date, 12 such volumes,as well as an anthology, The Proper Study of Mankind, andthe first of a projected three volumes of letters. Berlin received theAgnelli, Erasmus and Lippincott Prizes for his work on the history ofideas, and the Jerusalem Prize for his life-long defence of civilliberties, as well as numerous honorary degrees. He died in 1997.1.1 Intellectual Development Berlin was early influenced by British Idealism, as expounded byGreen, Bosanquet and Bradley, which was then on the wane. While anundergraduate he was converted to the Realism of G. E. Moore and JohnCook Wilson. By the time he began teaching philosophy he had joined anew generation of rebellious empiricists, some of whom (most notablyA. J. Ayer) embraced the logical positivist doctrines of the ViennaCircle and Wittgenstein's earlier writings. Although Berlin was alwayssceptical towards logical positivism, its suspicion of metaphysicalclaims and its preoccupation with the nature and authority ofknowledge strongly influenced his early philosophicalenquiries. These, combined with his historical bent, led him back tothe study of earlier British empiricists, particularly Berkeley andHume, on both of whom he lectured in the 1930s and late '40s, andabout both of whom he contemplated writing books (never written). Berlin was also influenced by Kant and his successors. His firstphilosophical mentor was an obscure Russian-Jewish, Menshevikémigré named Solomon Rachmilevich, who had studiedphilosophy at several German universities, and who introduced Berlinto the great ideological quarrels of Russian history, as well as tothe history of German philosophy since Kant. Later, at Oxford, R.G.Collingwood fostered Berlin's interest in the history of ideas,introducing him in particular to such founders of historicism as Vicoand Herder. Collingwood also reinforced Berlin's belief—heavilyinfluenced by Kant—in the importance of the basic concepts andcategories by which human beings organise and analyse theirexperience, to human life. While working on his biography of Marx in the mid-1930s, Berlin cameacross the works of two Russian thinkers who would be importantinfluences on his political and historical outlook. One of these wasAlexander Herzen, who became a hero, and to whom Berlin wouldsometimes attribute many of his own beliefs about history, politicsand ethics. The other was the Russian Marxist publicist and historianof philosophy G. V. Plekhanov. Despite his opposition to Marxism,Berlin admired and praised Plekhanov as a man and historian ofideas. It was initially through Plekhanov's writings that Berlinbecame interested in the naturalistic, empiricist and materialistthinkers of the Enlightenment, as well as their Idealist andhistoricist critics. Plekhanov was also an early source for Berlin'sabsorption in the political debates of nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century Russian liberals and radicals of various stripes,which informed his concern with both the philosophy of history and theethics of political action. During the Second World War, separated from his Oxford philosophicalbrethren, and exposed to political action, Berlin began to drift awayfrom his early philosophical concerns. His doubts were encouraged by ameeting with the Harvard logician H. M. Sheffer, who asserted thatprogress was only possible in such sub-fields of philosophy as logicand psychology. His meeting with Sheffer led Berlin to realise that helacked the passion and the belief in his own ability to continuepursuing pure philosophy. He concluded that as a philosopher proper hewould make no original contributions, and would end his life knowingno more than he did when he began. He therefore determined to switchto the history of ideas, in which (he believed) originality was lessessential, and which would allow him to learn more than he alreadyknew. Berlin's approach to the history of ideas would, however,remain deeply informed by his philosophical persona, as well as by hispolitical beliefs. Berlin had always been a liberal; but from the early 1950s thedefence of liberalism came to assume a central place in hisintellectual concerns. This defence was, characteristically, closelyrelated to his moral beliefs and to his preoccupation with the natureand role of values in human life; in his thinking about these issuesBerlin would develop his idea of value pluralism, which assumedprominence in his work in the 1960s and '70s. In the early 1960sBerlin's focus moved from his more political concerns of the 1950s toa concern with the nature of the human sciences; throughout the 1950sand '60s he was working on the history of ideas, and from themid-1960s nearly all of his writings took the form of essays on thissubject, particularly on the romantic and reactionary critics of theEnlightenment. By the early 1950s Berlin's major ideas and beliefs had emerged outof the confluence of his philosophical preoccupations, historicalstudies, and political and moral commitments and anxieties; and hismajor ideas were either already fully formed, or developing. Suchessays of the late '50s as ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’served as the occasion for a synthesis and solidification of histhoughts. Thereafter, he would continue to refine and re-articulatehis ideas, but his course was set, and he appears to have been largelyunaffected by later intellectual developments.2. Philosophy of Knowledge and the Human Sciences2.1 Conception of Philosophy Berlin's conception of philosophy was shaped by his early exposureto, and rejection of, both Idealism and logical positivism. With theformer he associated a too exalted view of philosophy as the‘queen of the sciences’, capable of establishingfundamental, necessary, absolute and abstract truths. With the latterhe associated the reductionist and deflationary view of philosophy as,at best, a handmaiden to the natural sciences, and at worst a sign ofintellectual immaturity bred of confusion and credulity. Berlin's approach combined a sceptical empiricism with neo-Kantianismto offer a defence of philosophy.[1] Like Giambattista Vico and Wilhelm Dilthey, as well as neo-Kantianssuch as Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband, Berlin insisted onthe fundamental difference between the natural and human sciences. Heclassed philosophy among the human sciences; but even there its statuswas unique. If earlier thinkers had regarded philosophy as a scientiascientiarum, Berlin regarded it as a scientia nescientiarum, the formof enquiry concerning what cannot be the object of empiricalknowledge. In the case of non-philosophical questions, even if the answer isunknown, the means for discovering the answer is known, or accepted,by most people. Thus questions of empirical fact can be answered byobservation. Other questions can be answered deductively, by referringto established rules; this is the case, for example, with mathematics,grammar and formal logic. For example, even if we do not know thesolution to a particularly difficult mathematical problem, we do knowthe rules and techniques that would have to be employed to find theanswer. According to Berlin, philosophy concerns itself with questions suchthat not only are the answers not known, but neither are the means forarriving at an answer, or the standards of judgement by which toevaluate whether a suggested answer is plausible or implausible. Thusthe questions ‘How long does it take to drive from x toy?’ or ‘What is the cube root of 729?’ are notphilosophical; while ‘What is time?’ or ‘What is anumber?’ are. ‘What is the purpose of human life?’or ‘Are all men brothers?’ are philosophical questions,while ‘Do most of such-and-such a group of men think of oneanother as brothers?’ or ‘What did Luther believe was thepurpose of life?’ are not. Berlin related this view to Kant's distinction between matters offact and those structures or categories in terms of which facts aremade sense of. Philosophy, being concerned with questions that arisefrom people's attempts to make sense of their experiences, involvesconsideration of the concepts and categories through which experienceis perceived, organised and explained. While Kant saw these organising categories as fixed and universal,Berlin believed that at least some of them are varying, transient ormalleable. Not all categories are wholly prior to, or independent of,experience. Rather, the ideas through which we make sense of the worldare closely tied up with our experiences: they shape thoseexperiences, and are shaped by them, and as experience varies from onetime and place to another, so do basic concepts.[2] Recognition of these basic categories of human experience differsboth from the acquisition of empirical information and from deductivereasoning, for the categories are logically prior to both. Philosophy involves the study of these‘thought-spectacles’ through which we view the world; andsince at least some of these categories change over time, at leastsome philosophy is necessarily historical. Because these categoriesare so important to every aspect of our experience,philosophy—even if it is always tentative and often seemsabstract and esoteric—is an important activity, which respondsto the vital, ineradicable human need to describe and explain theworld of experience. Berlin insisted on the social usefulness of philosophy, howeverindirect and unobtrusive.[3] By bringing to light often subconscious presuppositions and models,and scrutinising their validity, philosophy identifies errors andconfusions that lead to misunderstanding, distort experience, and thusdo real harm. Because philosophy calls commonly accepted assumptionsinto question, it is inherently subversive, opposed to all orthodoxy,and often troubling; but this is inseparable from what makesphilosophy valuable, and indeed indispensable, as well asliberating. Philosophy's goal, Berlin concluded, was ‘to assistmen to understand themselves and thus operate in the open, and notwildly, in the dark’ (1978b, 11).2.2 Basic Propositions: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Logic[4] Perhaps the most important work Berlin did in ‘pure’philosophy, in the light of his most significant later ideas,concerned ‘logical translation’. In his essay of thattitle (reprinted in 1978b), Berlin criticised the assumption that allstatements, to be genuine and meaningful, or to claim correctness,must be capable of being translated into a single, ‘good’type of proposition, and asserted that the ideal of a single propertype of proposition was illusory and misleading. He identified twodifferent and opposed approaches based on this erroneousassumption. One was the ‘deflationary’ approach, whichsought to assimilate all propositions to one true type. Thusphenomenalism sought to reduce all statements to statements aboutimmediately perceived sense-data. The other was the‘inflationary’ approach, which posited entitiescorresponding to all statements, thus ‘creating’ orasserting the existence of things that (Berlin believed) didn't existat all. Both of these errors rested on the demand for the‘forcible assimilation’ of all propositions to a singletype. Berlin suggested that this demand was based, not on a trueperception of reality, but rather on the psychological need forcertainty, as well as what he termed the ‘Ionian Fallacy’,the assumption that everything is made out of, or can be reduced to orunderstood in terms of, one and the same substance or type.[5] Berlin insisted that there is no single criterion of meaningfulness,no absolutely incorrigible type of knowledge. He insisted that thequest for certainty was self-defeating: to restrict oneself to sayingonly that which could be said without any doubt or fear of beingmistaken was to sentence oneself to silence. To say anything about theworld requires bringing in something other than immediate experience:Most of the certainties on which our lives are founded […]the vast majority of the types of reasoning on which our beliefsrest, or by which we should seek to justify them […] are notreducible to formal deductive or inductive schemata, or a combinationof them […] The web is too complex, the elements too many andnot, to say the least, easily isolated and tested one by one […]we accept the total texture, compounded as it is out of literallycountless strands […] without the possibility, even inprinciple, of any test for it in its totality. For the total textureis what we begin and end with. There is no Archimedean point outsideit whence we can survey the whole and pronounce upon it […] thesense of the general texture of experience […] is itself notopen to inductive or deductive reasoning: for both these methods restupon it (1978b, 114–15). At the heart of Berlin's philosophy was an awareness of the awesomevariety and complexity of reality, which we can only begin tocomprehend: the many strands that make up human experience are“too many, too minute, too fleeting, too blurred at theedges. They criss-cross and penetrate each other at many levelssimultaneously, and the attempt to prise them apart […] and pinthem down, and classify them, and fit them into their specificcompartments turns out to be impossible” (1978b, 119). These two closely related propositions—that absolutecertainty is an impossible ideal (Berlin once wrote that, if his workdisplayed any single tendency, it was a “distrust of all claimsto the possession of incorrigible knowledge […] in any sphere ofhuman behaviour”; 1978a, viii), and that not everything can orshould be reduced or related to a single ideal, model, theory orstandard—might be considered the centrepieces of Berlin'sphilosophy. They are central to his view of language and knowledge;they are equally important to his ethics and his philosophy of thehuman sciences. Also central to these different facets of his thoughtwas Berlin's individualism or nominalism, his emphasis on theimportance, and indeed priority, of particular things as objects ofknowledge and of individual people as moral subjects.2.3 The Distinction between Natural and Human Science Berlin's individualism, the influence on him of neo-Kantianism, andwhat one scholar (Allen 1998) has called hisanti-procrusteanism—his opposition to attempts dogmatically andinappropriately to impose standards or models on aspects of humanexperience which they don't fit—shaped his view of the nature ofthe human sciences, and their relationship to the naturalsciences.[6] Berlin criticised the positivist belief that the natural sciences arethe paradigmatic form of knowledge, which the human sciences shouldmeasure themselves by and seek to emulate. He argued that the humansciences differed fundamentally from the natural sciences both in thenature of the subject of their study (as Vico and Dilthey hadmaintained), and in the sort of knowledge that they sought (as Rickertinsisted). As a result, different methods, standards and goals wereappropriate to each. Most obviously, the human sciences study the world that human beingscreate for themselves and inhabit, while the natural sciences studythe physical world of nature. Why should this make a difference in howthey are studied? One answer is that the two worlds are fundamentallydifferent in themselves. But this would seem to make claims that areinherently controversial and difficult to resolve. Berlin preferredthe argument that the human and natural worlds must be studieddifferently because of the relationship between the observer orthinker and the object of study. We study nature from without, culturefrom within. In the human sciences, the scholar's own ways ofthinking, the fabric of the scholar's life, every facet of his or herexperience, is part of the object of study. The natural sciences, onthe other hand, aim to understand nature objectively anddispassionately. The natural scientist must take as little for grantedas possible, preferring hard evidence to ‘common sense’when they diverge. But in the human sciences one cannot act in thismanner: to study human life, it is necessary to begin from ourunderstanding of other human beings, of what it is to have motives andfeelings. Such understanding is based on our own experience, which inturn necessarily involves certain ‘common sense’assumptions, which we use to fit our experience into patterns whichmake it explicable and comprehensible. These patterns may be more orless accurate; and we can judge their accuracy by seeing how well theyfit experience as we know it. But we cannot divest ourselves entirelyof the assumptions that underlie them. Berlin asserted that the human sciences also differed from thenatural sciences in that the former were concerned with understandingthe particulars of human life in and of themselves, while the naturalsciences sought to establish general laws which could explain wholeclasses of phenomena. The natural sciences are concerned with types,the human sciences with individuals. Natural scientists concentrate onsimilarities and look for regularities; at least some humanscientists—historians, in particular—are interested indifferences. To be a good historian requires a ‘concentratedinterest in particular events or persons or situations as such, andnot as instances of a generalisation’ (1978b, 138). The humansciences should not aim to emulate the natural sciences by seekinglaws to explain or predict human actions, but should concernthemselves with understanding the uniqueness of every particular humanphenomenon. In the case of a natural science we think it more rationalto put our trust in general laws than in specific phenomena; in thecase of the human sciences, the opposite is true. If someone claims tohave witnessed a phenomenon that contradicts well-established laws ofscience, we seek an explanation that will reconcile that perceptionwith science; if none is possible, we may conclude that the witness isdeceived. In the case of history we do not usually do this: we look atparticular phenomena and seek to explain them in themselves.[7] There are, Berlinclaimed, “more ways than one to defy reality”. It isunscientific to “defy, for no good logical or empirical reason,established hypotheses and laws”. But it is unhistorical, on theother hand, to “ignore or twist […] particular events,persons, predicaments, in the name of laws, theories, principlesderived from other fields, logical, ethical, metaphysical, scientific,which the nature of the medium renders inapplicable” (1978b,141–2). Berlin emphasised the importance to a sense of history of the idea ofits ‘one-directional’ flow. This sense of historicalreality makes it seem not merely inaccurate, but implausible, andindeed ridiculous, to suggest, for example, that Hamlet waswritten in the court of Genghis Khan. The historical sense involves,not knowledge of what happened—this is acquired by empiricalmeans—but a sense of what is plausible and implausible,coherent and incoherent, in accounting for human action (1978b,140). There is no a priori shortcut to such knowledge. Historicalthinking is much more like the operation of common sense, involvingthe weaving together of various logically independent concepts andpropositions, and bringing them to bear on a particular situation asbest we can, than the application of laws or formulae. The ability todo this is an empirical knack—judgement, or a sense or reality(1978b, 116). Understanding of history is based on knowledge of humanity, which isderived from direct experience, consisting not merely ofintrospection, but of interaction with others. This is the basis forVerstehen, or imaginative understanding: the“recognition of a given piece of behaviour as being part andparcel of a pattern of activity which we can follow […] and[…] describe in terms of the general laws which cannot possiblyall be rendered explicit (still less organised into a system), butwithout which the texture of normal human life—social orpersonal—is not conceivable” (1978b, 128). The challengeof history is the need for the individual to go beyond his or her ownexperience, which is the basis of his or her ability to conceive ofhuman behaviour. We must reconstruct the past not only in terms of ourown concepts and categories, but in terms of how past events must havelooked to those who participated in them. The practice of history thusrequires gaining knowledge of what consciousness was like for otherpersons, in situations other than our own, through an“imaginative projection of ourselves into the past” inorder to “capture concepts and categories that differ from thoseof the investigator by means of concepts and categories that cannotbut be his own. […] Without a capacity for sympathy andimagination beyond any required by a physicist, there is no vision ofeither past or present, neither of others nor of ourselves”(1978b, 135–6). Historical reconstruction and explanationinvolves ‘entering into’ the motives, principles, thoughtsand feelings of others; it is based on a capacity for knowing likethat of knowing someone's character or face (1978b, 132–3).2.4 Free Will and Determinism The sort of historical understanding Berlin sought to depict was‘related to moral and aesthetic analysis’. It conceives ofhuman beings not merely as organisms in space, but as “activebeings, pursuing ends, shaping their own and others' lives, feeling,reflecting, imagining, creating, in constant interaction andintercommunication with other human beings; in short, engaged in allthe forms of experience that we understand because we share in them,and do not view them purely as external observers”. For Berlin,the philosophy of history was tied not only to epistemology, but toethics. The best-known and most controversial facet of his writings onthe relationship of history to the natural sciences was his discussionof the problem of free will and determinism, which in his hands tookon a distinctly moral cast.[8] In Historical Inevitability Berlin attacked determinism (theview that human beings do not possess free will, that their actionsand indeed thoughts are pre-determined by forces beyond their control)and historical inevitability (the view that all that occurs in thecourse of history does so because it must, that history pursues aparticular course which cannot be altered, and which can bediscovered, understood and described through laws of historicaldevelopment). In particular he attacked the belief that history iscontrolled by impersonal forces beyond human control. Berlin did not assert that determinism was untrue, but rather that toaccept it required a radical transformation of the language andconcepts we use to think about human life—especially arejection of the idea of individual moral responsibility. To praise orblame individuals, to hold them responsible, is to assume that theyhave some control over their actions, and could have chosendifferently. If individuals are wholly determined by unalterableforces, it makes no more sense to praise or blame them for theiractions than it would to blame someone for being ill, or praisesomeone for obeying the laws of gravity. Indeed, Berlin suggestedthat acceptance of determinism—that is, the completeabandonment of the concept of human free will—would lead tothe collapse of all meaningful rational activity as we know it. Berlin also insisted that belief in historical inevitability wasinspired by psychological needs, and not required by known facts; andthat it had dangerous moral and political consequences, justifyingsuffering and undermining respect for the ‘losers’ ofhistory. A belief in determinism served as an ‘alibi’ forevading responsibility and blame, and for committing enormities in thename of necessity or reason. It provided an excuse both for actingbadly and for not acting at all.[9] Berlin's insistence on the importance of the idea of free will, andthe incompatibility of consistent and thoroughgoing determinism withour basic sense of ourselves and our experience as human beings, wasclosely tied to his political and moral philosophies of liberalism andpluralism, with their emphasis on the importance, necessity anddignity of individual choice. This insistence involved him in a numberof fierce debates with other philosophers and historians in the 1950sand early 1960s, and helped to provoke a spate of writing in theEnglish-speaking world on the philosophy of history, which mightotherwise have languished. Also controversial was Berlin's claim that the writing andcontemplation of history necessarily involves moral evaluation. He didnot, as some of his critics charged (e.g., Carr 1961), mean this as acall for sententious moralising on the part of historians. Berlin'sargument was that, first, our normal way of regarding human beings aschoice-making agents involves moral evaluation; to eliminate moralevaluation from our thinking completely would be to alter radicallythe way that we view the world. Nor would such an alteration trulymove beyond moral evaluation; for such strenuous attempts atobjectivity are themselves motivated by a moral commitment to theideal of objectivity. Furthermore, given the place of moralevaluation in ordinary human thought and speech, an account couched inmorally neutral terms will not be understood as morally neutral, norwill it accurately reflect the experience or self-perception of thehistorical actors in question. This last argument was particularlyimportant to Berlin, who believed that historical writing shouldreflect and convey past actors' understanding of their situation, soas to provide explanations of why, thinking as they did, they acted asthey did. He therefore insisted that the historian must attend to themoral claims and perceptions underlying historical events.3. The History of Ideas Berlin's emphasis on the subversive, liberating, anti-orthodox natureof philosophy led him to be particularly interested in moments ofradical change in the history of ideas, and in original and marginalthinkers, while his emphasis on the practical consequences of ideasled him to focus on those transformations and challenges which, in hisview, had wrought particularly decisive changes in people's moral andpolitical consciousness, and thus in their behaviour. Finally, hisawareness of the conflicts of his own day led him to concentratemainly on modern intellectual history, and to trace the emergence ofcertain ideas that he regarded as particularly important, for good orill, in the contemporary world.[10] The narrative of the history of ideas that Berlin developed andrefined over the course of his works began with the Enlightenment, andfocused on the initial rebellion against what Berlin regarded as thatepoch's dominant assumptions.[11] Many of Berlin's writings on the history of ideas were connected tohis philosophical work, and to one another, in their pursuit ofcertain overarching themes. These included the relationship betweenthe sciences and humanities and the philosophy of history; the originsof nationalism and socialism; the revolt against what Berlin called‘monism’ in general, and rationalism in particular, in theearly nineteenth century and thereafter; and the vicissitudes of ideasof liberty. In Berlin's account, the thinkers of the Enlightenment believed humanbeings to be naturally either benevolent or malleable. This created atension within Enlightenment thought between the view that naturedictates human ends, and the view that nature provides more or lessneutral material, to be moulded rationally and benevolently(ultimately the same thing) by conscious humanefforts—education, legislation, rewards and punishment, thewhole apparatus of society.[12] Berlin also attributed to the Enlightenment the beliefs that allhuman problems, both of knowledge and ethics, can be resolved throughthe discovery and application of the proper method (generally reason,the conception of which was based on the methods of the naturalsciences, particularly physics); and that genuine human goods andinterests were ultimately compatible, so that conflict, likewickedness, was the result of ignorance, or of deception andoppression practiced by corrupt authorities (particularly the Church).[13] Berlin saw the school (or schools) of thought that began to emergeshortly before the French Revolution, and became ascendant during andafter it, particularly those in Germany, as profoundly antagonistictowards the Enlightenment. He was most interested in Germanromanticism, but also looked at other members of the larger movementhe referred to as the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’. [14] Berlin's account sometimes focused on a attack on the Enlightenment'sbenevolent and optimistic liberalism by nationalists andreactionaries; sometimes on the rejection of moral and culturaluniversalism by champions of pluralism; and sometimes on the critiqueof naturalism and scientism by thinkers who advocated a historicistview of society as essentially dynamic, shaped not by the laws ofnature, but by the contingencies of history. Berlin has been viewed both as an adherent of the Enlightenment, whoshowed a fascination, whether peculiar or admirable, with its critics;and as a deep and profound critic and even opponent of theEnlightenment, and an admirer of its enemies. There is some truth inboth of these pictures, neither of which does justice to thecomplexity of Berlin's views. Berlin admired many of the thinkers ofthe Enlightenment, and explicitly regarded himself as ‘on theirside’; he believed that much of what they had accomplished hadbeen for the good; and, as an empiricist, he recognised them as partof the same philosophical tradition to which he belonged. But he alsobelieved that they were wrong, and sometimes dangerously so, aboutsome of the most important questions of society, morality andpolitics, and regarded their psychological and historical vision asshallow and naïve. He also traced to the Enlightenment atechnocratic, managerial view of human beings and political problemsto which he was profoundly opposed, and which, in the late 1940s andearly '50s, he regarded as one of the gravest dangers facing theworld. Berlin regarded the Enlightenment's enemies as in many ways dangerousand deluded, sometimes more so than the Enlightenment itself. Heattacked or dismissed their metaphysical beliefs, and particularly thephilosophies of history of Hegel and his successors. He was also waryof the aesthetic approach to politics that many romantics hadpracticed and fostered. And, while appreciative of some elements inthe romantic conception of liberty, he saw romanticism's influence onthe development of the idea of liberty as largely perverting. At thesame time, he thought the Enlightenment's opponents had pointed tomany important truths that the Enlightenment had neglected or denied,both negative (the power of unreason, and particularly the darkerpassions, in human affairs) and positive (the inherent value ofvariety and of personal virtues such as integrity and sincerity, andthe centrality to human nature and dignity of the capacity forchoice). Romanticism rebelled in particular against the constrictingorder imposed by reason, and championed the human will. Berlin wassympathetic to this stance, but also believed that the romantics hadgone too far both in their protests and in their celebrations. Heremained committed to the goal of understanding the world so as to beable to “act rationally in it and on it” (1990, 2).4. Ethical Thought and Value Pluralism The republication of Berlin's essays revealed as a centraldimension of his thought his advocacy of the doctrine of valuepluralism. Since the early 1990s value pluralism has come to be seenby many as Berlin's ‘master idea’, and has become the mostdiscussed, most praised and most controversial of his ideas. Valuepluralism was at the centre of Berlin's ethical thought; but there ismore to that thought than value pluralism alone. Berlin definedethical thought as “the systematic examination of the relationsof human beings to one another, the conceptions, interests and idealsfrom which human ways of treating one another spring, and the systemsof value on which such ends of life are based […] beliefs abouthow life should be lived, what men and women should be and do”(1990, 2–3). Just as Berlin's conception of philosophy was basedon a belief about the importance of concepts and categories inpeople's lives, his conception of ethics was founded on his belief inthe importance of normative or ethical concepts andcategories—especially values.[15] Berlin did not set out a systematic theory about the nature ofvalues, and so his view must be gleaned from his writings on thehistory of ideas. His remarks on the status and origins of values aresomewhat ambiguous, though not necessarily irreconcilable with oneanother. He seems, first, to endorse the romantic view—whichhe traces to Kant (although he also sometimes attributes it to Hume)that values are not discovered ‘out there’, as‘ingredients’ in the universe, not deduced or derived fromnature. Rather, they are human creations, and derive their authorityfrom this fact. From this followed a theory of ethics according towhich human beings are the most morally valuable things, so that theworth of ideals and actions should be judged in relation to themeanings and impact they have for and on individual human beings.This view underlay Berlin's passionate conviction of the error oflooking to theories rather than human realities, of the evil ofsacrificing living human beings to abstractions; it also related toBerlin's theory of liberty, and his belief in its specialimportance. Yet while Berlin sometimes suggests that values are human creations,at other times he seems to advance what amounts almost to a theory ofnatural law, albeit in minimalist, empirical dress. In such cases hesuggests that there are certain unvarying features of human beings, asthey have been constituted throughout recorded history, that makecertain values important, or even necessary, to them. This view of theorigin of values also comes into play in Berlin's defence of the valueof liberty, when he suggests that the freedom to think, to enquire andimagine without constraint or fear is valuable because human beingsneed to be able to have such mental freedom; to deny it to them is adenial of their nature, which imposes an intolerable burden, producingunappeasable frustration. In an attempt to reconcile these two strands, one might say that, forBerlin, the values that humans create are rooted in the nature of thebeings who pursue them. But this is simply to move the question back astep, for the question then immediately arises: Is this human natureitself something natural and fixed, or something created and alteredover time through conscious or unconscious human action? Berlin'sanswer (see, e.g., 2004c) comes in two parts. He rejects the idea of afixed, fully specified human nature, regarding natural essences withsuspicion. Yet he does believe (however under-theorised, unsystematicand undogmatic this belief may be) in boundaries to, and requirementsmade by, human nature as we know it, highly plastic as it may be. Thiscommon human nature may not be fully specifiable in terms of a list ofunvarying characteristics; but, while many characteristics may varyfrom individual to individual or culture to culture, there is a limiton the variation—just as the human face may vary greatly fromperson to person in many of its properties, while remainingrecognisably human. Furthermore, it is also possible to distinguishbetween a human and a non-human face, even if the difference betweenthem cannot be reduced to a formula. Indeed, at the core of Berlin'sthought was his insistence on the importance of humanity or thedistinctively human both as a category and as a moral reality which donot need to be reduced to an unvarying essence in order to havedescriptive and normative force. There is a related ambiguity about whether values are objective orsubjective. One might conclude from Berlin's view of values as humaninventions that he would regard them as subjective. Yet he insisted,on the contrary, that values are objective, even going so far as tolabel his position ‘objective pluralism’. It is unclearwhat exactly he meant by this, or how this belief relates to his viewof values as human creations. There are at least two accounts of theobjectivity of values that can be plausibly attributed to Berlin:first, that values are ‘objective’ in that they are simplyfacts about the people who hold them—so that, for instance,liberty is an ‘objective’ value because I value it, andwould feel frustrated and miserable without a minimal amount of it;second, that the belief in or pursuit of certain values is the resultof objective realities of human nature—so that, for instance,liberty is an ‘objective’ value because certain factsabout human nature make liberty good and desirable for humanbeings. These views are not incompatible with one another, but theyare distinct; and the latter provides a firmer basis for the minimalmoral universalism that Berlin espoused. Finally, Berlin insisted that each value is binding on human beingsby virtue of its own claims, in its own terms, and not in terms ofsome other value or goal. This view was one of the central tenets ofBerlin's pluralism.4.1 Berlin's Definition of Value Pluralism Berlin's development and definition of pluralism both begannegatively, with the identification of the opposing position, which hereferred to usually as monism, and sometimes as ‘the Ionianfallacy’ or ‘the Platonic ideal’. His definition ofmonism may be summarised as follows: All genuine questions must have a true answer, and one only; allother responses are errors. There must be a dependable path to discovering the true answers,which is in principle knowable, even if currently unknown. The true answers, when found, will be compatible with oneanother, forming a single whole; for one truth cannot be incompatiblewith another. This, in turn, is based on the metaphysical assumptionthat the universe is harmonious and coherent. We have seen that Berlin explicitly denied that the first two of theseassumptions characterised human knowledge as it now is, or ever hasbeen. In his ethical pluralism he pushed these denials further, andadded a forceful denial of the third assumption. According to Berlin'spluralism, genuine values are many, and may—and oftendo—come into conflict with one another. When two or more valuesclash, it does not mean that one or another has been misunderstood;nor can it be said, a priori, that any one value is alwaysmore important than another. Liberty can conflict with equality orwith public order; mercy with justice; love with impartiality andfairness; social and moral commitment with the disinterested pursuitof truth or beauty (the latter two values, contra Keats, maythemselves be incompatible); knowledge with happiness; spontaneity andfree-spiritedness with dependability and responsibility. Conflicts ofvalues are ‘an intrinsic, irremovable part of human life’;the idea of total human fulfilment is a chimera. ‘Thesecollisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what weare’; a world in which such conflicts are resolved is not theworld we know or understand (2002, 213). Berlin further asserted thatvalues may be not only incompatible, but incommensurable. There hasbeen considerable controversy over what Berlin meant by this, andwhether his understanding of incommensurability was either correct orcoherent. In speaking of the incommensurability of values, Berlinseems to have meant that there is no common measure, no ‘commoncurrency’ for comparison, in judging between any two values inthe abstract. Thus, one basic implication of pluralism for ethics isthe view that a quantitative approach to ethical questions (such asthat envisaged by Utilitarianism) is impossible. In addition todenying the existence of a common currency for comparison, or agoverning principle (such as the utility principle, or for that matterthe categorical imperative), value incommensurability holds that thereis no general procedure for resolving value conflicts—there isnot, for example, a lexical priority rule (that is, no value alwayshas priority over another). Berlin based these assertions on empirical grounds—on‘the world that we encounter in ordinary experience’, inwhich “we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate,and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which mustinevitably involve the sacrifice of others” (2002, 213). Yet healso held that the doctrine of pluralism reflected necessary ratherthan contingent truths about the nature of human moral life and thevalues that are its ingredients. The idea of a perfect whole, theultimate solution, is not only unattainable in practice, but alsoconceptually incoherent. To avert or overcome conflicts between valuesonce and for all would require the transformation, which amounted tothe abandonment, of those values themselves. Berlin's pluralism was not free-standing, but modified and guided byother beliefs and commitments. One of these, discussed below, wasliberalism. Another was humanism—the view that human beingsare of primary importance, and that avoiding harm to human beings isthe first moral priority. Berlin therefore held that, in navigatingbetween conflicting values, the first obligation is to avoid extremesof suffering. He insisted that moral collisions, even if unavoidable,can be softened, claims balanced, compromises reached. The goal shouldbe the maintenance of a precarious equilibrium that avoids, as far aspossible, desperate situations and intolerable choices. Philosophyitself cannot tell us how to do this, though it can help by bringingto light the problem of moral conflict and all of its implications,and by weeding out false solutions. But in dealing with conflicts ofvalues, the concrete situation is everything (1990, 17–18). One of the main features of Berlin's account of pluralism is theemphasis placed on the act of choosing between values. Pluralism holdsthat, in many cases, there is no single right answer. Berlin used thisas an argument for the importance of liberty—or, perhaps moreprecisely, an argument against the restriction of liberty in order toimpose the ‘right’ solution by force. Berlin also made alarger argument about making choices. Pluralism involves conflicts,and thus choices, not only between particular values in individualcases, but between ways of life. While Berlin seems to suggest thatindividuals have certain inherent traits—an individual nature,or character, which cannot be wholly altered or obscured—healso insisted that they make decisions about who they will be and whatthey will do. Choice is thus both an expression of an individualpersonality, and part of what makes that personality; it is essentialto the human self.4.2 Value Pluralism Before Berlin Berlin provided his own (somewhat peculiar) genealogy ofpluralism. He traced the rebellion against monism first toMachiavelli, and depicted Vico and Herder as decisive figures. Yet heacknowledged that Machiavelli wasn't really a pluralist, but adualist; and other scholars have questioned his identification of Vicoand Herder as pluralists, when both avowed belief in a higher, divineor mystical, unity behind variety. Other scholars have credited otherfigures in the history of philosophy, such as Aristotle, withpluralism (Nussbaum 1986, Evans 1996). James Fitzjames Stephenadvanced something that looks very much like Berlin's pluralism(Stephen 1873), though he allied it to a conservative critique ofMill's liberalism. In Germany, Dilthey came close to pluralism, andMax Weber towards the end of his life presented a dramatic, forcefulpicture of the tragic conflict between incommensurable values, beliefsystems and ways of life (Weber 1918, esp. 117, 126, 147–8,151–3; cf. Weber 1904, esp. 17–18). Ethical pluralismfirst emerged under that name, however, in America, inspired byWilliam James's pluralistic view of the universe. John Dewey andHastings Rashdall both approximated pluralism in certain writings(Dewey 1908, Rashdall 1907); but pluralism was apparently firstproposed, under that name, and as a specifically ethical doctrine, inlanguage strikingly similar to Berlin's, by Sterling Lamprecht, anaturalist philosopher and scholar of Hobbes and Locke in severalarticles (e.g., 1920, 1921), as well as, somewhat later, byA. P. Brogan (1931). The dramatic similarities between not only Berlinand Lamprecht's ideas, but also their language, makes it difficult tobelieve that Lamprecht was not an influence on Berlin. However, thereis no evidence that Berlin knew Lamprecht's work; and Berlin'stendency was more often to credit his own ideas to others than toclaim the work of others as his own. A version of pluralism was alsoadvocated by Berlin's contemporary Michael Oakeshott (althoughOakeshott seems to have attributed conflicts of values to a mistakenlyreflective approach to ethical issues, and suggested that they couldbe overcome through relying on a more habitual, less self-conscious,ethical approach).4.3 The Emergence of Value Pluralism in Berlin's Work Some of the elements of value pluralism are detectable in Berlin'searly essay ‘Some Procrustations’, published while he wasstill an undergraduate at Oxford. This essay, drawing on Aristotle,and focusing on literary and cultural criticism rather than philosophyproper, made the case for epistemological and methodological, ratherthan ethical, pluralism. Berlin criticised the belief in, and searchfor, a single method, or theory, which could serve as a master-key forunderstanding all experience. He insisted that, on the contrary,different standards, values and methods of enquiry are appropriate fordifferent activities, disciplines and facets of life. In this can beseen the seeds of his later work on the differences between thesciences and the humanities, of his attacks on systematic explanatoryschemes, and of his value pluralism; but all these ideas had yet to bedeveloped or applied. Berlin was further nudged towards pluralism bydiscovering a suggestion by Malebranche that happiness and goodnessare incompatible; this struck him at the time as an ‘oddinteresting view’, but it stuck, and he became convinced of itscentral and pregnant truth (2004, 72). Berlin set out his basicaccount of what he would later label monism in his biography of Marx(1939), but did not explicitly criticise it or set out a pluralisticalternative to it (although his lecture ‘Utilitarianism’,dating from the late 1930s, does set out an argument that anticipateshis later claim that values are incommensurable). The basic crux ofpluralism, and Berlin's connection of it to liberalism, is apparent inrough, telegraphic form in Berlin's notes for his lecture‘Democracy, Communism and the Individual’ (1949), andpluralism is also advanced in an aside, not under that name, inHistorical Inevitability (1954). Berlin referred to pluralism andmonism as basic, conflicting attitudes to life in 1955 (Berlinet. al., 1955). But his use of the term and his explication of theconcept did not fully come together, it appears, until Two Concepts ofLiberty (1958; even then, his articulation of pluralism is absent fromthe first draft of the essay). Thereafter variations on Berlin's account of pluralism appearthroughout his writings on romanticism. Late in his life, taking stockof his career, and trying to communicate what he felt to be his mostimportant philosophical insights, Berlin increasingly devoted himselfto the explicit articulation and refinement of pluralism as an ethicaltheory. He had referred to the discovery of the basic incompatibilityand incommensurability of values as his one genuine discovery in aprivate letter of 1969; he devoted the lecture he gave in acceptingthe Agnelli Prize in 1988, ‘The Pursuit of the Ideal’, toexplaining what pluralism meant, and this remains the most eloquentand concentrated summary of pluralism. Berlin also discussed pluralismin many interviews and printed exchanges with other scholars from the1970s onward, in an attempt to work out the conflicts, controversiesand confusions to which his ideas gave rise; but many of theseresisted Berlin's attempts at resolution, and continue to figure in,and sometimes dominate, discussions of his work.4.4 Value Pluralism after Berlin: Some Controversies Since the 1990s, pluralism has become the most widely and hotlydebated of the ideas Berlin advanced. This is due in part to Berlin'swork, and in part to that of later philosophers who, either asfollowers or allies of Berlin or independently, have also articulatedand advanced value pluralism or similar positions.[16] Although pluralism achieved its current prominence in interpretationsof Berlin's work later in his life, it was identified earlier as a keycomponent in his thought by a few prescient readers. Two of thesereaders advanced what remains one of the most common criticisms ofBerlin's pluralism: that it is indistinguishable from relativism(Strauss 1961; Momigliano 1976; see MacCallum 1967a and Kocis 1989 forother early critiques).[17] One problem that has bedevilled the debate is a persistent failure todefine the terms at issue with adequate clarity. Pluralism, of course,has been the subject of repeated definition by Berlin and others (therepetition not always serving a clarifying purpose). However, the term‘relativism’ often remains under-analysed in thesediscussions. Whether pluralism can be distinguished from relativismdepends largely on how relativism is defined, as well as on howcertain obscure or controversial components of pluralism aretreated. It should also be noted that the question of whether valuesare plural is logically distinct from the question of whether they areobjective, despite the frequent elision of the two topics in theliterature on this subject. One way of defining relativism is as a form of subjectivism or moralirrationalism. This is how Berlin defined it in his attempts to refutethe charge of relativism against his pluralism. For Berlin, the modelof a relativist statement is ‘I like my coffee white, you likeyours black; that is simply the way it is; there is nothing to choosebetween us; I don't understand how you can prefer black coffee, andyou cannot understand how I can prefer white; we cannot agree.’Applied to ethics, this same relativist attitude might say: ‘Ilike human sacrifice, and you do not; our tastes, and traditions,simply differ.’ Pluralism, on the other hand, as Berlin definesit, holds that communication and understanding of moral views ispossible among all people (unless they are so alienated from normalhuman sentiments and beliefs as to be considered reallyderanged). Relativism, in Berlin's definition, would make moralcommunication impossible; while pluralism aims to facilitate moralcommunication. Another (related) way of differentiating pluralism and relativism,employed by Berlin and others, holds that pluralism accepts a basic‘core’ of human values, and that these and other valuesadopted alongside them in a particular context fall within a‘common human horizon’. This ‘horizon’ setslimits on what is morally permissible and desirable, while the‘core’ of shared or universal values allows us to reachagreement on at least some moral issues. This view rests on a beliefin a basic, minimum, universal human nature beneath the widely diverseforms that human life and belief have taken across time and place. Itmay also involve a belief in the existence of a specifically moralfaculty or sense inherent to human beings. Berlin seems to havebelieved in such a faculty, and identified it with empathy, but didnot develop this view in his writings. Yet another way of defining relativism is to view it as holding thatthings have value only relative to particular situations; nothing isintrinsically good—that is, valuable in and for itself as anend in itself. A slightly different way of putting this would be tomaintain that there are no such things as values that are alwaysvalid; values are valid in some cases, but not others. For instance,liberty may be a value at one place and time, but has no status as avalue at another. Here, again, Berlin's pluralism is opposed torelativism, since it is premissed on a belief that, for human beings,at least some values are intrinsically rather than instrumentallygood, and that at least some values are universally valid, even ifothers aren't—and even if this universal validity isn'trecognised. He admitted that liberty, for instance, had historicallybeen upheld as an ideal only by a small minority of human beings; yethe still held it to be a genuine value for all human beings,everywhere, because of the way that human beings are constituted, and,so far as we know, will continue to be constituted. Similarly, StevenLukes has suggested that relativism seeks to avoid or dismiss moralconflict, to explain it away by holding that different values hold fordifferent people, and denying that the competing values may be, andoften are, binding on all people. Pluralism, on the other hand, seesconflicts of values as occurring both within, and across, cultures,and (at least in Lukes's formulation) maintains that custom orrelatively valid belief-systems or ways of life cannot be appealed toas ways of overcoming value-conflict (Lukes 1989). This is not aposition that Berlin explicitly advances; but his later writingssuggest a sympathy for it. Yet the charge that pluralism is equivalent to relativism is not soeasily refuted, given certain ambiguities in Berlin's account. Thesecentre on the nature and origins of values, the related question ofthe role of cultural norms, and the meaning of‘incommensurability’. As stated above, Berlin held both that values are human creations,and that they are ‘objective’; and the foundation for thislatter claim is ambiguous in Berlin's work. The claim that values areobjective in being founded on, or expressions of, and limited bycertain realities of human nature would seem to provide a defenceagainst relativism, in holding that there is an underlying, commonhuman nature which makes at least some values non-relative. However,the argument that values are objective simply because they are pursuedby human beings seems to allow for relativism, since it makes thevalidity of values dependent on nothing but human preferences, andallows any values actually pursued by human beings (and, therefore,any practices adopted in pursuing those values) to claim validity.[18] One of the knottiest dimensions of Berlin's pluralism is the idea ofincommensurability, which has been open to diverging interpretations.One can make a three-way distinction, between weak incommensurability,moderate incommensurability and radical incommensurability. Berlingoes beyond weak incommensurability, which holds that values cannot beranked quantitatively, but can be arranged in a qualitative hierarchythat applies consistently in all cases. It is not, however, clearwhether he presents a moderate or a radical vision ofincommensurability. The former holds that there is no single, ultimatescale or principle with which to measure values—no‘moral slide-rule’ or universal unit of normativemeasurement. This view is certainly consistent with all that Berlinwrote from 1931 onwards. Such a view does not necessarily lead to theconclusion that it is impossible to make judgements between values ona case-by-case basis, or that values, just because they can't becompared or ranked in terms of one master-value or formula, can't becompared or deliberated between at all. Berlin does sometimes offer more starkly dramatic accounts ofincommensurability, which make it hard to rule out this more radicalinterpretation of the concept, according to which incommensurabilityis more or less synonymous with incomparability. The latter statesthat values cannot be compared at all, since there is no ‘commoncurrency’ in terms of which tthis is itself arguable), was notsystematic, and it cannot be accurately characterised simply aspluralistic or liberal, if these terms are to have any specificmeaning or any use in analysing positions other than Berlin'sown. ‘Pluralism’ can be used, more narrowly, to describeBerlin's theory of values. It can also be employed more broadly, tocapture something of his vision of reality, the universe and humannature—that is, the view that all of these things arecomplexes made up of separate and conflicting parts: that the self isprotean and open-ended, that the universe is not a harmonious cosmos,that reality presents many separate aspects, which can and should beviewed from different perspectives. But pluralism, as explicitlydefined by Berlin and others, does not cover Berlin's empiricism, orhis historicism, or his awareness of the fallibility of humanknowledge, or his belief in the primary importance of individuals asopposed to generalisations and abstractions, or his emphasis on theimportance of free choice (which, while he sought to found it onpluralism, in fact appears to be independent of it). Nor doespluralism, with its emphasis on the place of tragic conflict and lossin human life, capture the affirmative zest for life and delightedenthusiasm for human beings that was central to Berlin's character asa man and thinker. Berlin's thought, like his writing, is made up bothof swathes of sharp colour and of minutely variegated and subtleshades of light and darkness; it thus resists summary and simpleconclusions, and repays persistent and open-ended study.BibliographyA. Worip to relativism,to the extent that liberalism is regarded as resting on a belief incertain universal values and fundamental human rights, a belief whichrelativism undermines. However, there are some who maintain that,while pluralism is distinct from, and preferable to, relativism, it isnevertheless too radical and subversive to be reconciled to liberalism(or, conversely, that liberalism is too inherently and deludedlyuniversalistic or absolutist to be compatible with pluralism). Themain proponent of this view, who is more responsible than any otherthinker for the emergence and wide discussion of this issue, is JohnGray (see, especially, Gray 1995). Gray asserts that pluralism istrue, that pluralism undermines liberalism, and that thereforeliberalism, at least as it has traditionally been conceived, should be abandoned.[19] Gray's case has spawned a vast literature, concerning both Berlin'streatment of the relationship between pluralism and liberalism inparticular, and this issue in general. Some theorists have agreed withGray (Kekes, 1993, 1997); others have sought to show that pluralismand liberalism are reconcilable, although this reconciliation mayrequire modifications to both liberalism andpluralism—modifications that are, however, justifiable, andindeed inherently desirable. The most extensive discussions to dateare those by George Crowder and William Galston (Crowder 2002, 2004,Galston 2002, 2004).[20] Berlin himself was devoted both to pluralism and to liberalism, whichhe saw not as related by logical entailment, but as interconnected andharmonious. The version of pluralism he advanced was distinctlyliberal in its assumptions, aims and conclusions, just as hisliberalism was distinctly pluralist. As Michael Walzer has remarked,Berlin's pluralism is characterised by “receptivity, generosity,and scepticism”, which are, “if not liberal values, thenqualities of mind that make it […] likely that liberal valueswill be accepted” (Galston 2002, 60–1; Walzer 1995,31). 5. Political Thought5.1 Political Judgement and Leadership Apart from his better-known writings on liberty and pluralism,Berlin's political thought centred on two topics, both of which were,for most of his career, to varying degrees marginal in the study ofpolitical theory. These were the nature of political judgement and theethics of political action. Berlin addressed the former subject bothdirectly and through his writings on individual statesmen who embodiedmodels of different sorts of successful political judgement (forthese, see the portraits collected in Berlin 1998, and Hanley2004). Berlin disputed the idea that political judgement was a body ofknowledge, a science, which could be reduced to rules. Politicalaction should be based on a ‘sense of reality’ founded onexperience, empathetic understanding of others, sensitivity to theenvironment, and personal judgement about what is true or untrue,significant or trivial, alterable or unalterable, effective or uselessetc. Such judgement necessarily involves personal instinct and flair,‘strokes of unanalysable genius’. In the realm ofpolitical action, laws are few and skill is all (1996, 43). Like the study of history, political judgement involves reaching anunderstanding of the unique set of characteristics that constitute aparticular individual, atmosphere, state of affairs or event (1996,45). This requires a capacity for integrating “a vast amalgamof constantly changing, multicoloured, evanescent, perpetuallyoverlapping data”, a “direct, almost sensuous contact withthe relevant data”, and “an acute sense of what fits withwhat, what springs from what, what leads to what […] what theresult is likely to be in a concrete situation of the interplay ofhuman beings and impersonal forces” (1996, 46). Such a sense isqualitative rather than quantitative, specific rather thangeneral. The faculty that allows for such judgement is, Berlin insists, notmetaphysical, but ‘ordinary, empirical, andquasi-aesthetic’. This sense is distinct from any sort ofethical sense; it could be possessed or lacked by both virtuous andvillainous politicians. Recognition of the importance of this sense ofpolitical reality should not discourage the spirit of scientificenquiry or serve as an excuse for obscurantism. But it shoulddiscourage the attempt to transform political action into theapplication of scientific principles, and government into technocratic administration.[21] Berlin intended his writings on political judgement as a warning topolitical theorists not to overreach themselves. Political thought cando much good in helping us to think through politics. But politicalaction is a practical matter, which should not, and cannot, be foundedon, or dictated by, theory. Berlin's writings on political judgement, activity and leadership areof a piece with his larger epistemological project: to bring to lightthe tension between the application of abstract or a prioritheory and the recognition of direct perception; and to warn againstthe dangers of the former and assert the importance of the latter (heacknowledged that it was impossible to think without the use ofanalogies and metaphors, that thought necessarily involvesgeneralisation and comparison; but he warned that it was important tobe cautious, self-conscious and critical in the use of general modelsand analogies: see 1978b, 158). These writings also reassert themessage of the youthful essay ‘Some Procrustations’: thatthe same rules should not be automatically applied to every facet ofhuman life. Rationality consists of the application, not of a singletechnique or set of rules, but of those methods that have proven towork best in each particular field or situation. This view ofpolitical judgement also relates to Berlin's attempt to vindicate theimportance of individual agency and personality, by insisting thatpolitical judgement is a personal quality, and effective politicalactivity a matter of personal consideration, decision and actionrather than impersonal administration or the deployment ofinstitutional machinery.5.2 Political Ethics: Ends, Means, Violence While Berlin emphasised the place of questions about the proper endsof political action in the subject-matter of political theory, he alsorecognised the importance of discussions of the proper means toemploy, and the relationship between these and the ends at which theyaim. Berlin did not treat this question—the question ofpolitical ethics—directly in his work; nor did he offer simpleor confident answers to the perennial questions of the morality ofpolitical action. Nevertheless, he did advance some theses about thisbranch of morality; and these were among his most heartfelt, andindeed passionate, pronouncements. Berlin's primary mouthpiece for these messages was Alexander Herzen,the nineteenth-century Russian radical publicist.[22]The words of Herzen that Berlin repeated most insistently were thosecondemning the sacrifice of human beings on the altar of abstractions,the subordination of the realities of individual happiness orunhappiness in the present to glorious dreams of the future (Berlinalso quoted similar sentiments from Benjamin Constant: see Berlin1990, 16 and 2002, 3, as well as 1978a, 82–113 and 186–209passim). The first principle of Berlin's political ethics was anopposition to such subordination, which Berlin viewed as the essenceof fanaticism, and a recipe for inhumanity that was as futile as itwas horrible. Berlin, like Herzen, believed that ‘the end of life is lifeitself’, and that each life and each age should be regarded asits own end and not as a means to some future goal. To this Berlinadded a caution (evocative as much of Max Weber as of Herzen) aboutthe unpredictability of the future. Berlin's belief in the power ofhuman agency was qualified by an awareness of how the consequences ofany course of action are unknowable, and likely to be quite differentfrom what was intended. This led Berlin, on the one hand, to stressthe need for caution and moderation; and, on the other, to insist thatuncertainty is inescapable, so that all action, however carefullyundertaken, involves the risk of error and disastrous, or at leastunexpected and troubling, consequences. The result was an ethic ofpolitical humility, similar to Weber's ethic of responsibility, butlacking its tone of grim, stoic grandeur. Berlin often noted the dangers of Utopianism, and stressed the needfor a measure of political pragmatism. He may therefore appear to havebeen staunchly in the tradition of political realism. Yet this was notquite the case: Berlin sought to warn against the dangers of idealism,and chasten it, so as to save it from itself and better defend itagainst cynicism. Berlin's pluralism points the way to a politics ofcompromise; yet Berlin also warned against the dangers of certaintypes of compromise, particularly those involving the employment ofdubious means to achieve desired ends. Indeed, the problem of therelationship between ends and means runs through Berlin'swritings. Berlin, characteristically, warned both against aninsistence on total political purity—for, when values conflictand consequences are often unexpected, purity is an impossibleideal—and against a disregard for the ethical niceties ofpolitical means. Berlin regarded such an attitude as not only morallyugly, but foolish: for good ends have a tendency to be corrupted andundermined by being pursued through unscrupulous means. Furthermore,since the consequences of actions are so uncertain, it is often thecase that political actors don't achieve their goals, or achieve themimperfectly; it is best not to make too many sacrifices along the wayto accomplishing one's political goals, since that accomplishment isuncertain. To the realist argument that ‘You cannot make anomelette without breaking eggs’, Berlin responded: “Theone thing we can be sure of is the reality of the sacrifice, the dyingand the dead. But the ideal for which they die remains unrealised. Theeggs are broken, and the habit of breaking them grows, but theomelette remains invisible” (1990, 16). Berlin was thoroughly anti-absolutist; but he did insist that therewere certain actions that were, except in the most drastic ofsituations, unacceptable. Foremost among these were the manipulationand humiliation of individuals by others, to the extent that those whoare ‘got at’ or ‘tampered with’ by others aredeprived of their humanity (see 2002, 339–43). Berlin warnedparticularly against the use of violence. He acknowledged that the useof force was sometimes necessary and justified; but he also remindedhis readers that violence has particularly volatile and unpredictableconsequences, and tends to spiral out of control, leading to terribledestruction and suffering, and undermining the noble goals it seeks toachieve. He also stressed the dangers of paternalistic, or otherwisehumiliating and disempowering, attempts to institute reform or achieveimprovement, which had a tendency to inspire a backlash of hatred andresistance. Berlin's political ethics are best summarised in his own words:Let us have the courage of our admitted ignorance, of ourdoubts and uncertainties. At least we can try to discover what others[…] require, by […] making it possible for ourselves toknow men as they truly are, by listening to them carefully andsympathetically, and understanding them and their lives and theirneeds, one by one individually. Let us try to provide them with whatthey ask for, and leave them as free as possible (1978a,258). For Berlin the acceptance of uncertainty was a call not only tocultivate humility, but to foster liberty.5.3 The Concept of Liberty Berlin's best-known contribution to political theory has been hisessay on the distinction between positive and negative liberty. Thisdistinction is explained, and the vast literature on it summarised,elsewhere in this encyclopaedia; the following therefore focuses onlyon Berlin's original argument, which has often been misunderstood, inpart because of ambiguities in Berlin's account. In Two Concepts of Liberty Berlin sought to explain thedifference between two (not, he acknowledged, the only two) differentways of thinking about political liberty which had run through modernthought, and which, he believed, were central to the ideologicalstruggles of his day. Berlin called these two conceptions of libertynegative and positive.[23] Berlin's treatment of these concepts was less than fully even-handedfrom the start: while he defined negative liberty fairly clearly andsimply, he gave positive liberty two different basic definitions, fromwhich still more distinct conceptions would branch out. Negativeliberty Berlin initially defined as freedom from, that is,the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by otherpeople. Positive liberty he defined both as freedom to, thatis, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achievewilled goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed todependence on others. Berlin's account was further complicated by combining conceptualanalysis with history. He associated negative liberty with theclassical liberal tradition as it had emerged and developed in Britainand France from the seventeenth to the early nineteenthcenturies. Berlin later regretted that he had not made more of theevils that negative liberty had been used to justify, such asexploitation under laissez-faire capitalism; in Two Conceptsitself, however, negative liberty is portrayed favourably, andbriefly. It is on positive liberty that Berlin focuses, since it is,he claims, both a more ambiguous concept, and one which has beensubject to greater and more sinister transformation, and ultimatelyperversion. Berlin traces positive liberty back to theories that focus on theautonomy, or capacity for self-rule, of the agent.[24] Of these, Berlin found Rousseau's theory of liberty particularlydangerous. For, in Berlin's account, Rousseau had equated freedom withself-rule, and self-rule with obedience to the ‘generalwill’. By this, Berlin alleged, Rousseau meant, essentially, thecommon or public interest—that is, what was best for allcitizens qua citizens. The general will was quite independent of, andwould often be at odds with, the selfish wills of individuals, who,Rousseau charged, were often deluded as to their own interests. This view went against Berlin's political and moral outlook in twoways. First, it posited the existence of a single ‘true’public interest, a single set of arrangements that was best for allcitizens, and was thus opposed to the main thrust ofpluralism. Second, it rested on a bogus transformation of the conceptof the self. In his doctrine of the general will Rousseau moved fromthe conventional and, Berlin insisted, correct view of the self asindividual to the self as citizen—which for Rousseau meant theindividual as member of a larger community. Rousseau transformed theconcept of the self's will from what the empirical individual actuallydesires to what the individual as citizen ought to desire,that is, what is in the individual's real best interest, whether he orshe realises it or not. This transformation became more sinister still in the hands of Kant'sGerman disciples. Fichte began as a radically individualist liberal.But he came to reject his earlier political outlook, and ultimatelybecame an ardent, even hysterical, nationalist—an intellectualforefather of Fascism and even Nazism. Once again, this involved amove from the individual to a collective—in Fichte's case, thenation, or Volk. In this view, the individual achievesfreedom only through renunciation of his or her desires and beliefs asan individual and submersion in a larger group. Freedom becomes amatter of overcoming the poor, flawed, false, empiricalself—what one appears to be and want—in order to realiseone's ‘true’, ‘real’, ‘noumenal’self. This ‘true’ self may be identified with one's bestor true interests, either as an individual or as a member of a largergroup or institution; or with a cause, an idea or the dictates ofrationality (as in the case, Berlin argued, of Hegel's definition ofliberty, which equated it with recognition of, and obedience to, thelaws of history as revealed by reason). Berlin traced this sinistertransformation of the idea of freedom to the totalitarian movements ofthe twentieth century, both Communist and Fascist-Nazi, which claimedto liberate people by subjecting—and oftensacrificing—them to larger groups or principles. As we haveseen, to do this was for Berlin the greatest of political evils; andto do so in the name of freedom, a political principle that Berlin, asa genuine liberal, especially cherished, struck him as a particularlymonstrous deception. Against this, Berlin championed, as ‘truerand more humane’, negative liberty and an empirical view of theself. In addition to the debates concerning the conceptual validity andhistorical accuracy of Berlin's account (extensively documented inHarris 2002), there is considerable misunderstanding of Berlin's ownattitudes to the concepts he discussed, and of the goals of hislecture. Berlin has often been interpreted, not unreasonably, as astaunch enemy of the concept of positive liberty. But this was neverwholly the case. Berlin regarded both concepts of liberty as centringon valid claims about what is necessary and good for human beings;both negative and positive liberty were for him genuine values, whichmight in some cases clash, but in other cases could be combined andmight even be mutually interdependent. Indeed, Berlin's own earlierarticulations of his political values included a notable component ofpositive liberty alongside negative liberty (see e.g., 2002,336–44). What Berlin attacked was the many ways in whichpositive liberty had been used to justify the denial, betrayal orabandonment of both negative liberty and the truest forms of positiveliberty itself. Berlin's main targets were not positive liberty assuch, but the metaphysical or psychological assumptions which,combined with the concept of positive liberty, had led to itsperversion: monism, and a metaphysical or collective conception of theself. Two Concepts of Liberty, and Berlin's liberalism, aretherefore not based on championing negative liberty against positiveliberty, but on advocating individualism, empiricism and pluralismagainst collectivism, holism, rationalistic metaphysics andmonism.5.4 Liberty and Pluralism In Berlin's account, the main connection between pluralism andliberalism centres on the centrality of choice to both. Berlin'sargument is as follows. The conflicts between values and ways of lifethat are the matter of pluralism require people to make choices. Thesechoices are of the utmost importance, because they involve the mostbasic and essential questions of human life—what one is to beand do. Those who have to make such choices are therefore likely tocare about them, and to want some say in making them. Furthermore, theability to make one's own choices between conflicting values is thecrux of one's identity and dignity as a moral agent. (This step of theargument, it should be noticed, is not entailed by pluralism itself;but it is an assumption central to Berlin's moral individualism, whichBerlin imports into his pluralism.) Why might one deny individuals the opportunity to make choices forthemselves? One answer (though not the only possible one) is thatindividuals may make the wrong choices, so that it is necessary tocoerce or manipulate them to choose correctly. But pluralism holdsthat in cases where there are conflicts between genuine values, theremay be no single right choice—more than one choice (though notnecessarily all possible choices) may equally serve genuine humanvalues and interests, even if it also involves the sacrifice orviolation of other values or interests that are no more or less trueand important. Similarly, there is no single ideal life, no singlemodel of how to think or behave or be, to which people should attempt,or be brought, to conform as far as possible. Pluralism, then, for Berlin, represents an argument that bothundermines one of the main rationales for violating freedom of choice,and vindicates the importance and value of being able to make choices freely.[25] Some interpreters have argued that Berlin's vindication of thefreedom to choose, while it rests in part on his pluralism, alsorequires the addition of moral principles, ideals and assumptionsexternal to pluralism (though this need not, contra John Gray, meanthat pluralism is incompatible with, or necessary undermines,liberalism); while others (such as George Crowder) have argued thatBerlin's liberalism can be deduced from his pluralism alone. At the same time, while pluralism is an important ingredient inBerlin's argument for the importance of liberty, it also modifies andmoderates his liberalism, and prevents Berlin from being (as manyproponents of negative liberty in the twentieth century and after havebeen) an unqualified classical liberal or libertarian. Negative andpositive liberty are both genuine values which must be balancedagainst each other; and liberty of any sort is one value among many,with which it may conflict, and against which it needs to bebalanced. Therefore Berlin was more sensitive than many classicalliberal or libertarian thinkers to the possibility that genuineliberty may in fact conflict with genuine equality, or justice, orpublic order, or security, or efficiency, or happiness, and thereforemust be balanced with, and sometimes sacrificed in favour of, othervalues. Berlin's liberalism includes both a conservative or pragmaticappreciation of the importance of maintaining a balance betweendifferent values, and a social-democratic appreciation of the need torestrict liberty in some cases so as to promote equality and justiceand protect the weak against victimisation by the strong (see 2002,214–15). Nevertheless Berlin remains a liberal in maintainingthat preserving a certain minimum of individual liberty is a primarypolitical priority. He justifies this view by an appeal to anempiricist version of a natural law argument, writing of the existenceof ‘natural rights’ based on the way that human beings areconstituted, mentally or physically; to attempt to alter or limithuman life in certain ways is to block the desires, goals, aspirationsinherent in being human as we know it (1996, 73–4). To deprivehuman beings of certain basic rights is to dehumanise them. Whileliberty should not be the only good pursued by society, and while itshould not always trump other values, ethical pluralism lends it aspecial importance: for people must be free in order to allow for therecognition and pursuit of all genuine human values. Society shouldtherefore make it a priority to provide the liberty necessary forMillian ‘experiments in living’ and for the perpetuationof social and personal variety (see Berlin 2002, 218–51).5.5. Nationalism Berlin used the term ‘nationalism’ somewhat confusingly,to refer to two quite distinct, and morally very different,phenomena. The first of these was the sense of belonging, ofcollective identity, of which Herder had written. The second was the‘inflamed’ form of this sentiment, which, feeding off ofresentment, frustration and humiliation, became‘pathological’. Berlin was sympathetic to the former,critical of the latter; but he recognised the relationship of the two,and was thus aware of the power and allure of nationalism. Berlin insisted that the struggles for national liberation thatmarked his own day—primarily in the late 1940s, '50s and'60s—were not struggles for either negative or positive libertyas such, but rather expressed a craving for collective recognition,for status, for the sense of living among and beinggoverned—however harshly—by members of one's own group.Berlin credited to Herder the insight that belonging, and the sense ofself-expression that membership bestows, are basic human needs; but itseems unlikely that he would have had to learn this lesson fromHerder—it is more probable that it was his own appreciation ofthese needs that attracted him to that author in the first place.He was sharply aware of the pain of humiliation and dependency, thehatefulness and hurtfulness of paternalistic rule. His individualismand emphasis on liberty were qualified by his understanding of thehuman need for a sense of belonging to a community—an awarenesssharpened, if not generated, by his own experience of exile, as wellas by the influence of his mother's passionate Zionism.[26] 6. Conclusion Berlin's life and work continue to be the subject of considerablescholarly attention. This attention has yet to yield a settledconsensus about the merits, or indeed the meaning, of Berlin'swork—and not only because Berlin evokes strong personalreactions, attracting admiration and affection, if not outrightveneration, as a liberal saint (see e.g., Annan 1980, 1990, 1999;Hausheer 1979 and 2004), and inspiring hostility from critics on boththe right and left, who have detected in Berlin's stance complacency,hypocrisy, a want of courage, and an excess of tolerance (see e.g.,Scruton 1989, Hitchens 1998). This is to be expected, given Berlin'sfierce opposition to Communism, combined with his refusal to allyhimself to extreme anti-Communism, as well as his ambivalence orhesitancy on many divisive political issues of his own day. However, even as the ideological battles of the Cold War begin torecede into the past, Berlin remains the object of varyinginterpretations and evaluations. This may appear odd in a thinker whowrote clearly, and without any attempt at secrecy or obscurity. But itis unsurprising, given the complexity of Berlin's vision, his aversionto systematic exposition or theorising, the multifaceted nature of hiswork, and the uniqueness of his position in the intellectual life ofhis times. These qualities make it difficult not only to evaluateBerlin, but even to situate him in the history of ideas; for heappears at once typical and atypical of the period in which he lived,and also both ahead of his time and extremely old-fashioned. In his youth Berlin's intellectual development followed that ofEnglish-language philosophy, and he was at one point deeply involvedin the advance of analytic philosophy; yet he drifted away from this,and his later writings and concerns are a world apart from mostAnglo-American philosophy of its time. On the other hand, for all hisrange of historical and cultural reference and concern with moral andaesthetic questions, and despite the influence of Kant and Kant'ssuccessors on his thought, Berlin seems out of place in the world ofContinental philosophy. Yet it would be a mistake to accept Berlin'sown judgement that he had departed from the realm of philosophyaltogether. For both the views he had formed while working as aprofessional philosopher, and his tendency to connect political,historical and cultural issues to deeper moral and epistemologicalquestions, set his work apart from that of other historians and‘public intellectuals’ of his day (to whom he otherwisebore a certain resemblance). Berlin was, for much of his life, an intellectually lonely figure,pursuing the history of ideas in an academic setting that wasunreceptive to it, and advocating a moderate liberalism in a timedominated by ideological extremism. And yet this plea for moderationand advocacy of liberalism was shared and taken up by many others atthe time.[27] Intellectually, Berlin was often prescient, yet also strangelyreactionary. His interest in political philosophy and dedication tothe defence of liberalism anticipated the work of John Rawls (who hadstudied with Berlin at Oxford while a young academic); yet theresurgence of political theory initiated by Rawls's work coincidedwith a period of eclipse in Berlin's reputation. Berlin's concern withthe problem of culture anticipated the centrality in political theoryof questions of identity and membership that began in the 1990s; hissympathy for the sentiments and needs underlying nationalism, whichset him apart from many liberal theorists of his own time, presagedthe revival of ‘liberal nationalism’ in the works ofyounger thinkers such as Michael Walzer, David Miller, Yael Tamir andMichael Ignatieff. His attack on monism, on the quest for certaintyand the project of systematic knowledge, has led him to be embraced bysome proponents of anti-foundationalism such as Richard Rorty. YetBerlin's work remains difficult to assimilate to intellectualmovements or projects such as postmodernism or multiculturalism, theexcesses and obscurities of which provoked quizzical scepticism in himtowards the end of his life. Nor is Berlin easy to identify seamlessly with those intellectualpositions that he explicitly propounded—liberalism andpluralism. Berlin's place in the history of political thought istherefore, at present, paradoxical and unsettled. He appears as animportant, and indeed emblematic, exponent of liberalism—alongwith Rawls, the most important liberal theorist of hiscentury—whose ideas may nevertheless in the end undermine, or atleast be difficult to reconcile, with liberalism. This question hascome to preoccupy many readers of Berlin's work, and predominate indiscussions of his legacy, to the extent of threatening to overshadowother aspects of his thought. The debate over pluralism and liberalism raises genuinely importantconceptual issues; yet it becomes somewhat misleading, both in itselfand particularly as a guide to Berlin's thought, if pluralism andliberalism are both taken to be comprehensive doctrines, or if theyare reified into independently existing, systematicentities. ‘Pluralism’ and ‘liberalism’ asgeneral terms are abstractions which can be helpfully used to group,analyse and compare the positions of different thinkers, or tocharacterise different facets of the thought of a singlethinker. Neither, however, is likely to capture the whole of anindividual position; and neither in itself, even if linked to theother, encompasses or sums up Berlin's own outlook. Berlin himself insisted that political and ethical theories arisefrom a thinker's basic conception of human nature, which in turn isfounded on an entire philosophical outlook, a conception of the natureof the universe, reality, knowledge etc. This is certainly true ofBerlin's own political and ethical thought, if not of that of everythinker. The vision underlying Berlin's political and ethical theory,while it may have been coherent (this is itself arguable), was notsystematic, and it cannot be accurately characterised simply aspluralistic or liberal, if these terms are to have any specificmeaning or any use in analysing positions other than Berlin'sown. ‘Pluralism’ can be used, more narrowly, to describeBerlin's theory of values. It can also be employed more broadly, tocapture something of his vision of reality, the universe and humannature—that is, the view that all of these things arecomplexes made up of separate and conflicting parts: that the self isprotean and open-ended, that the universe is not a harmonious cosmos,that reality presents many separate aspects, which can and should beviewed from different perspectives. But pluralism, as explicitlydefined by Berlin and others, does not cover Berlin's empiricism, orhis historicism, or his awareness of the fallibility of humanknowledge, or his belief in the primary importance of individuals asopposed to generalisations and abstractions, or his emphasis on theimportance of free choice (which, while he sought to found it onpluralism, in fact appears to be independent of it). Nor doespluralism, with its emphasis on the place of tragic conflict and lossin human life, capture the affirmative zest for life and delightedenthusiasm for human beings that was central to Berlin's character asa man and thinker. Berlin's thought, like his writing, is made up bothof swathes of sharp colour and of minutely variegated and subtleshades of light and darkness; it thus resists summary and simpleconclusions, and repays persistent and open-ended study.BibliographyA. Works by Berlin1937, ‘Induction and Hypothesis’, Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 16:63–102.1939, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, London:Thornton Butterworth; Toronto: Nelson. 4th ed., 1978, Oxford and NewYork: Oxford University Press.1949, ‘Democracy, Communism and the Individual’, inThe Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library, Henry Hardy (ed.) [available online in PDF].1953, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View ofHistory, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Simon andSchuster. Expanded version of ‘Lev Tolstoy's HistoricalScepticism’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, 2, 1951:17–54. Reprinted in Berlin 1978a.1954, Historical Inevitability, London: Oxford UniversityPress. Reprinted in Berlin 2002b.1955, (with Stuart Hampshire, Iris Murdoch and Anthony Quinton),‘Philosophy and Beliefs’, Twentieth Century, 157:495–521.1956, (ed.), The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-CenturyPhilosophers, Boston: Houghton Mifflin; New York: New AmericanLibrary.1958, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Berlin 2002.1972, ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’ (revisedversion of a paper first delivered in 1953), in Studies onMachiavelli, M. Gilmore (ed.), Florence: Sansoni. Reprinted inBerlin 1979.1978a, Russian Thinkers, Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly(eds), London: Hogarth Press; New York: Viking.1978b, Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays,Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York, 1979: Viking.1979, Against the Current: Essays in the History ofIdeas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York, 1980:Viking.1990, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the Historyof Ideas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: John Murray; New York, 1991:Knopf.1996, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and theirHistory, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; New York,1997: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.1997, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology ofEssays, Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (eds), London: Chatto andWindus; New York, 1998: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.1998, Personal Impressions, 2nd edn, Henry Hardy (ed.),London: Pimlico; Princeton, 2001: Princeton University Press.1999a, The First and the Last, New York: New York ReviewBooks; London: Granta.1999b, The Roots of Romanticism (1965), Henry Hardy(ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.2000a, The Power of Ideas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London:Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.2000b, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann,Herder (1960–65), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Pimlico;Princeton: Princeton University Press.2002a, Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of HumanLiberty (1952), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus;Princeton: Princeton University Press.2002b, Liberty, Henry Hardy (ed.), Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press.2004a, Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946, Henry Hardy(ed.), London: Chatto and Windus. Published in the USA as Letters1928–1946, New York: Cambridge University Press.2004b, The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism,Henry Hardy (ed.), Washington: Brookings Institution Press.2004c, ‘A Letter on Human Nature’ (1986), letter toBeata Polanowska-Sygulska, New York Review of Books, 23September, 26.2005, Letters to Andrzej Walicki in Andrzej Walicki, Russia,Poland and Marxism: Isaiah Berlin to Andrzej Walicki1962–1996 [Dialogue and Universalism 15 No9–10/2005], 53–173.2006a, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise andInfluence on Modern Thought, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chattoand Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press.2006b (with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) UnfinishedDialogue, Amherst, NY: Prometheus.B. 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Silvers, 2001, (eds),The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin, New York: New York Review Books;London: Granta.Mali, Joseph, and Robert Wokler, 2003, (eds), Isaiah Berlin'sCounter-Enlightenment [Transactions of the AmericanPhilosophical Society 93 No 3], Philadelphia: AmericanPhilosophical Society.Margalit, Edna and Avishai, 1991, (eds), Isaiah Berlin: ACelebration, London: Hogarth Press; Chicago: University ofChicago Press.Ryan, Alan, 1979, (ed.), The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honourof Isaiah Berlin, Oxford: Oxford University Press. C. Other Works Cited Allen, Jonathan, 1998, review of Berlin 1996, South AfricanJournal of Philosophy, 17/2: 173–7.Annan, Noel, 1980, introduction to Berlin 1998.-----, 1990, Our Age: Portrait of a Generation, London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Random House.-----, 1999, ‘The Don as Magus: Isaiah Berlin’, in hisThe Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses, London:HarperCollins.Baghramian, Maria, and Attracta Ingram, 2000, (eds),Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity, Londonand New York: Routledge.Blokland, Hans, 1999, ‘Berlin on Pluralism and Liberalism: ADefence’, European Legacy, 4/4: 1–23.Brogan, A. P., 1931, ‘Objective Pluralism in the Theory ofValue’, International Journal of Ethics, 41/3:287–95.Carr, E. H., 1961, What is History?, London:Macmillan.Chang, Ruth, 1997, (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability,and Practical Reason, Cambridge, Mass., and London: HarvardUniversity Press.Crowder, George, 2002, Liberalism and Value Pluralism,London and New York: Continuum.Dewey, John, 1908, ‘The Virtues’, chapter 19 of JohnDewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics, New York: Holt.Dzur, Albert W., 1998, ‘Value Pluralism versus PoliticalLiberalism?’, Social Theory and Practice, 24/3:375–92.Evans, J. D. G., 1996, ‘Cultural Realism: The AncientPhilosophical Background’, in Philosophy and Pluralism,D. Archard (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Friedman, Jeffrey, 1997, ‘Pluralism or Relativism?’,Critical Review, 11/4: 469–80.Galston, William, 2002, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications ofValue Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice, Cambridgeetc.: Cambridge University Press.Galston, William, 2004, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues andDiversity in the Liberal State, Cambridge and New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.Gray, John, 1993, Post-Liberalism: Studies in PoliticalThought, New York and London: Routledge.-----, 1998, ‘Where Liberals and Pluralists PartCompany’, International Journal of Moral and PoliticalStudies, 6/1: 17–36.-----, 2002, Two Faces of Liberalism, Cambridge:Polity.Gutmann, Amy, 1999, ‘Liberty and Pluralism in Pursuit of theNon-Ideal’, in Mack 1999.Hanley, Ryan P., 2004, ‘Political Science and PoliticalUnderstanding: Isaiah Berlin on the Nature of PoliticalInquiry’, American Political Science Review, 98/2:327–39Harris, Ian, ‘Berlin and his Critics’, in Berlin 2002.Hausheer, Roger, 1979, introduction to Berlin 1979.-----, 2004, ‘Enlightening the Enlightenment’, in Maliand Wokler 2003.Hitchens, Christopher, 1998, ‘Moderation or Death’,London Review of Books, 23 November 1998, 3–11.Katznelson, Ira, 1994, ‘A Properly Defended Liberalism: OnJohn Gray and the Filling of Political Life’, SocialResearch, 61: 611–30.Kekes, John, 1993, The Morality of Pluralism, Princeton:Princeton University Press.-----, 1997, Against Liberalism, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press.Lamprecht, Sterling, 1920, ‘The Need for a PluralisticEmphasis in Ethics’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology andScientific Methods, 17: 561–72.-----, 1921, ‘Some Political Implications of EthicalPluralism’, Journal of Philosophy, 18:225–44.Larmore, Charles, 1994, ‘Pluralism and ReasonableDisagreement’, Social Philosophy and Policy, 11/1,61–79 .Lukes, Steven, 1989, ‘Making Sense of Moral Conflict’,in Liberalism and the Moral Life, N. Rosenblum (ed.),Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.-----, 1994, ‘The Singular and the Plural: On theDistinctive Liberalism of Isaiah Berlin’, SocialResearch, 61: 687–718.-----, 1995, ‘Pluralism is not Enough’, The TimesLiterary Supplement, 10 February, 4–5.-----, 1998, ‘Berlin's Dilemma’, The TimesLiterary Supplement, 27 March, 8–10.-----, 2001, ‘An Unfashionable Fox’, in Lilla etal. 2001.Mack, Arien, 1999, (ed.), Liberty and Pluralism (SocialResearch 66/4).Mehta, Pratap B., 1997, review of Gray 1995, AmericanPolitical Science Review, 91/3: 722–4.Nussbaum, Martha, 1986, The Fragility of Goodness,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.MacCallum, Gerald C., 1967a, ‘Berlin on the Compatibility ofValues, Ideals, and “Ends” ’, Ethics, 77:139–45.-----, 1967b, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’,Philosophical Review, 76: 312–34.Momigliano, Arnaldo, 1976, ‘On the Pioneer Trail’,New York Review of Books, 11 November, 33–8.Rashdall, Hastings, 1907, ‘The Commensurability of AllValues’, chapter 2 of his The Theory of Good and Evil,vol. 2, London: Oxford University Press.Riley, Jonathan, ‘Interpreting Berlin's Liberalism’,American Political Science Review, 95: 283–95.-----, 2002, ‘Defending Cultural Pluralism within LiberalLimits’, Political Theory, 30/1: 68–97.Scruton, Roger, 1989, ‘Freedom's Cautious Defender: RogerScruton assesses the work of Sir Isaiah Berlin, 80 on Tuesday [6June]’, The Times, [Saturday] 3 June, 10.Stephen, James Fitzjames , 1873, Liberty, Equality,Fraternity, Smith, Elder.Strauss, Leo, 1961, ‘Relativism’, in Relativismand the Study of Man, H. Schoeck and J. Wiggins (eds),Princeton: Van Nostrand.Walzer, Michael, 1995, ‘Are there Limits toLiberalism?’, New York Review of Books, 19 October,28–31.Weber, Max, 1904, ‘The Meaning of “EthicalNeutrality” in Sociology and Economics’, in Max Weber,The Methodology of the Social Sciences, E. Shils and H. Finch(trans. and eds), New York/Glencoe, Illinois, 1949: Free Press.-----, 1918, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ and‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays inSociology, H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), London, 1946:Routledge and Kegan Paul.Weinstock, Daniel, 1997, ‘The Graying of Berlin’,Critical Review, 11/4: 481–501. Other Internet ResourcesThe Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library edited by Henry Hardy (Wolfson College, Oxford).Catalogue of Berlin's papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.British Library Sound Archive holdings (search for ‘Isaiah Berlin’).New York Review of Books: articles by Isaiah Berlin.Photos/portraits of Berlin in the National Portrait Gallery (London).Online articles on BerlinBBC News Online, Obituary of Isaiah Berlin.Beran, Michael Knox, ‘Was Liberalism's Philosopher-in-Chief a Conservative?’.Billington, James, Katharine Graham, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, Robert Silvers, Charles Taylor and Leon Wieseltier, contributions to ‘An American Remembrance’ of Isaiah Berlin. Chappel, James, Dignity is Everything: Isaiah Berlin and His Jewish Identity, Haverford College Senior Thesis, 25 April 2005 (in PDF). Cherniss, Joshua, ‘"A Cautious, Sober Love Affair with Humanity": Humanism in the Thought of Isaiah Berlin’ (in Word). Cherniss, Joshua, ‘Philosopher, Historian, Liberal: How Isaiah Berlin Made a Difference’ (in Word).Cohen, G. A., ‘Freedom and Money’ (in PDF).Crowder, George, ‘Galston's Liberal Pluralism’ (in PDF); abstract also available (in Word).Crowder, George, ‘Hedgehog and Fox’ (in PDF). Crowder, George, ‘Pluralism, Relativism and Liberalism in Isaiah Berlin’ (in PDF).Crowder, George, ‘Value Pluralism and the Virtues of Liberalism’ (long page: search for ‘Crowder’).Delannoi, Gil, Preface to French translation of Berlin 1996 (in PDF).Dénes, Iván Zoltán, ‘Three Concepts of Liberty’ (in PDF).Dubnov, Arie, ‘Liberal or Zionist? Ambiguity or Ambivalence? Reply to Jonathan Hogg’.Dunachie, Findlay, ‘Isaiah Berlin Lectures on Liberty and Romanticism’.Grant, Robert, Amy Guttman, Axel Honneth, George Kateb, Ira Katznelson and others, articles in Arien Mack (ed.), Liberty and Pluralism.Hardy, Henry, various articles.Hogg, Jonathan, ‘The Ambiguity of Intellectual Engagement: Towards a Reassessment of Isaiah Berlin's Legacy’; comments by Charles Blattberg.Inbari, Assaf, ‘The Spectacles of Isaiah Berlin’; reply by Alex Sztuden (the 4th letter at the linked URL) (in PDF).Johnson, Michael, ‘Meeting Isaiah Berlin’.Kukathas, Chandran, review of Gray 1995.Larmore, Charles, review of Berlin 1996.Lassman, Peter, ‘Pluralism and Liberalism in the Thought of Isaiah Berlin’ (in PDF).Rothbard, Murray N., ‘The Ethics of Liberty’.Stoppard, Tom, ‘The Presiding Spirit of Isaiah Berlin’ (in PDF).Szacki, Jerzy, review of Berlin 2006b.Thompson, Mark, ‘Versions of Pluralism: William Empson, Isaiah Berlin, and the Cold War’ (in PDF).Thorsen, Dag Einar, ‘On Berlin's Liberal Pluralism: An Examination of the Political Theories of Sir Isaiah Berlin, Concentrated around the Problem of Combining Value Pluralism and Liberalism’ (in PDF).Thorsen, Dag Einar, ‘Value Pluralism and Normative Reasoning’ (in PDF).Wentzell, Richard J., ‘Value Pluralism: Some Implications for Multiculturalism’ (in PDF).Zakaras, Alex, ‘Isaiah Berlin's Cosmopolitan Ethics’ (in PDF: wait for automatic download).Related Entries Ayer, Alfred Jules | Berkeley, George | Bosanquet, Bernard | Bradley, Francis Herbert | Carnap, Rudolf | categories | causation: the metaphysics of | Collingwood, Robin George | determinism: causal | Dilthey, Wilhelm | Enlightenment | equality | Fichte, Johann Gottlieb | free will | Green, Thomas Hill | Hamann, Johann Georg | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | Herder, Johann Gottfried von | Herzen, Alexander | history, philosophy of | Hume, David | idealism: British | Kant, Immanuel | liberalism | libertarianism | liberty: positive and negative | logical positivism | Machiavelli, Niccolò | Marx, Karl | Mill, John Stuart | Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de | Moore, George Edward | nationalism | neo-Kantianism | nominalism: in metaphysics | ordinary language | Plekhanov, Georgy | political philosophy: history of | Rickert, Heinrich | universals: the medieval problem of | value: pluralism | Vico, Giambattista | Vienna Circle | Weber, Max | Williams, Bernard | Windelband, Wilhelm | Wittgenstein, LudwigAcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank George Crowder, who read a draft of this entryand whose comments were most helpful. Copyright © 2008 byJoshua Cherniss<jl.cherniss@gmail.com>Henry Hardy<henry.hardy@wolfson.ox.ac.uk> |
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