Isaiah Berlin

Robert A. Kocis

Description

Reacting against both the British Idealists and the logical positivists, Isaiah Berlin forged a new philosophy best described as post-Idealist. This philosophy was deeply informed by Kantian categories and methods, and conditioned by Vichian themes of historical and cultural variation. An advocate of pluralism without relativism, Berlin believed that it was possible to adopt and live by values, but he could not achieve moral certainty that our values are objectively preferable to all others. Like Collingwood and Oakeshott (and some neo-Kantians), Berlin believed that concepts matter and that they have a history; that human values are numerous and incommensurable; that rationalism in politics is dangerous; and that positivists’ hopes for rigorous social sciences are unrealistic. Interestingly, Collingwood and Oakeshott, both also candidates for post-Idealism, shared Berlin’s commitment to these themes. Ultimately, Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ is perhaps best perceived as a critique of Bradley’s Ethical Studies.

Introduction
Chapter 1: The British Idealists
Chapter 2: Collingwood & Oakeshott: Post-Idealists?
Chapter 3: Concepts Matter: ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ and F. H. Bradley
Chapter 4: Berlin and the History of Concepts
Chapter 5: Berlin and Cultural Pluralism1
Chapter 6: Berlin vs. Rationalism
Chapter 7: Berlin’s Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Chapter 8: Critical Appraisals

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Political
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786838964
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY NOW
IB.indd 1 06/07/2022 13:30:44Chief Editor of the Series:
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Renato Cristi, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada
Susan Meld Shell, Boston College, Massachusetts, USA
David Boucher, Cardiff University, Wales
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Peter P. Nicholson, formerly of University of York, England
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Political Philosophy Now is a series which deals with authors,
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their relevance to current debates. The series presents a spread of
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European and New World debates in political philosophy.
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Politics and Teleology in Kant
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Identity, Politics and the Novel: The Aesthetic Moment
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IB.indd 2 06/07/2022 13:30:44POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY NOW
Isaiah Berlin
A Kantian and Post-Idealist
Thinker
Robert A. Kocis
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS • 2022
IB.indd 3 06/07/2022 13:30:44© Robert A. Kocis, 2022
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ISBN 978-1-78683-895-7
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IB.indd 4 06/07/2022 13:30:44Contents
List of Abbreviations vi
Introduction 1
1The British Idealists 13
2Collingwood and Oakeshott: Post-Idealists? 34
3Concepts Matter: ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ 70
and F. H. Bradley
4Berlin and the Histories of Concepts 96
5 Berlin and Cultural Pluralism 121
6 Berlin versus Rationalism 139
7 Berlin’s Philosophy of the Social Sciences 164
8 Critical Appraisals 180
Notes 213
Bibliography 241
Index 247
IB.indd 5 06/07/2022 13:30:44List of Abbreviations
AtC Against the Current
C & C Concepts and Categories
D & H Darwin and Hegel
DPTSE ‘Does Political Theory Still Exist?’
FEL Four Essays on Liberty
LLL ‘Lectures on Liberal Legislation’
NL negative liberty
OHC On Human Conduct
PIRA Political Ideas of the Romantic Age
PL positive liberty
RiP ‘Rationalism in Politics’
RoR Roots of Romanticism
TCL ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’
V & H Vico and Herder
IB.indd 6 06/07/2022 13:30:44Introduction
Berlin attributes to Bertrand Russell the belief that the deepest
convictions of philosophers are not to be found in their formal
arguments. Rather, their fundamental beliefs are like citadels to
be guarded against the enemy with elaborate arguments, but ‘the
inner fortress itself – the vision of life for the sake of which the war
is being waged – will, as a rule, turn out to be relatively simple and
1unsophisticated’.
For Berlin himself this inner citadel is the belief that humans –
as self-transforming beings capable of ends, as purposive beings
– require liberty to shape their destinies in accordance with their
own pluralistic values, with minimal societal or governmental
2coercion. He made no secret of his liberal proclivities:
‘Funda3mentally, I am a liberal rationalist.’ Similarly, he said that ‘I was,
4and remain, an incurably sceptical liberal, a convinced gradualist.’
While Berlin reminded us repeatedly that negative liberty (NL) is
not the only value, clearly it held a special place among the stars in
5his moral heavens. He wrote, for instance, that liberty, although
not licence nor an easy achievement, is one value without which
6‘all things wither’. His liberal roots are beyond doubt and are on
7display in virtually every piece he wrote.
In ‘John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life’, he provides one clear
exposition of this core belief while describing John Stuart Mill’s
account of liberty: ‘man differs from animals primarily neither
as the possessor of reason, nor as an inventor of tools and
methods, but as a being capable of choice, one who is most himself in
choosing and not being chosen for; the rider and not the horse; the
seeker of ends, and not merely of means, ends that he pursues, each
8in his own fashion’.
Liberty comes in (at least) two flavours, and Berlin clearly
prefers one over the other. In his well-known essay ‘Two Concepts
of Liberty’, Berlin offers reasons to prefer negative liberty (NL)
over positive liberty (PL). His language in doing so was
uncharacteristically strong. At one point, he called PL ‘a monstrous
IB.indd 1 06/07/2022 13:30:442 INTROdUCTION
impersonation’; at others he wrote of a ‘magical transformation’
or again of ‘sleight of hand’. Against whom this was this onslaught
9directed? It helps if we keep in mind Berlin’s reminders to us of
his topic. In preferring NL to PL, he was not preferring
laissez10faire capitalism over the social welfare variants. Rather, Berlin
11reminded us that he, like Benjamin Constant, is not employing
12the terms in that contemporary, colloquial way. What is critically
important is to identify the targets against whom Berlin was
directing all of his fire-power to protect that inner citadel.
It was obviously not liberals like John Stuart Mill nor the
creators of justifications for social welfare programmes like Hobhouse
13and Hobson. Berlin provides a few telling examples: his named
14targets are the Idealists of the generations preceding his own.
‘Hegel, Bradley, Bosanquet have often assured us’ that ‘by obeying
the rational man we obey ourselves: not indeed as we are, sunk
in our ignorance and our passions, weak creatures afflicted by
diseases that need a healer, wards who require a guardian, but as
15we could be if we were rational …’ He further identifies those
who believe in Objective Reason like ‘the tough, rigidly
centralized, “organic” state of Fichte …’ because they ‘certainly supposed
themselves to be fulfilling, and not resisting, the rational demands
which, however inchoate, were to be found in the breast of every
16sentient being’. In short, the basic core of Berlin’s own beliefs was
shaped in opposition to the Idealists of the generations
preceding him. Indeed, what is frequently missed in discussions of ‘Two
Concepts’ is that the target of this important essay was (arguably)
17Bradley’s Ethical Studies. (See Chapter 3.) This, then, contributes
to the central hypothesis of this work: that Berlin – and
Colling18wood and Oakeshott – responded in rather predictable ways to
the Idealists of the preceding generation.
This consequently becomes a clue that helps to reveal something
that is missing – ironically – in most efforts at understanding and
assessing Berlin’s corpus. This is ironic because Berlin thought of
19 20himself, not entirely accurately, as a historian of ideas. After he so
carefully examined so many thinkers – Machiavelli, Montesquieu,
Vico, Herder, Marx, Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Saint-Simon,
Turgenev, and de Maistre, merely as a few examples – it is a telling
piece of irony that commentary on Berlin has been predominantly
focused on certain conceptual themes (like pluralism) rather than on
21 22the historical context in which he developed his philosophy.
IB.indd 2 06/07/2022 13:30:44INTROdUCTION 3
In the history of philosophy (and of political philosophy) it is
commonplace to locate Aristotle as a thinker who followed and
was influenced by Plato before him; the Romans are typically por -
trayed as descendants of the Greeks; after Hegel came Marx; after
the doubts of Hume, Kant emerged to mitigate his scepticism; after
Kant, Fichte and Hegel tried to improve upon the master. But little
attention has been paid to the relationship of Berlin to the gener -
ations just before him. The task here is to ask in a systematic way
‘who came before Berlin and what is the relationship between them
on the one hand and him and his contemporaries on the other’?
We know that Kant was a formative influence; in Ignatieff’s
tapes, Berlin confirmed that the Kantian Rachmilevitch ‘was a
23dominant influence on me’. He has told us that
‘Anglo-Ameri24can philosophy and Kant formed me’. (During Berlin’s formative
years, the analytic school was not yet in command; the British
Idealists and then the Realists were.) Kantian themes, especially
analysis of concepts and categories of thought, appear with sur -
25prising frequency. By the same token, he was in open rebellion
against the British Idealists. Berlin himself has informed us that ‘I
was brought up or