Blackwell Reference Online

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British philosopher and historian of ideas, born in Riga, Latvia, educated and taught at Oxford, knighted in 1957. Berlin was a leading liberal thinker who turned from analytic philosophy to the history of ideas. He was an important figure in the contemporary revival of political philosophy in the English-speaking world. His commitment to the diversity of incompatible ultimate values led him to reject claims that there is a single ideal of the good life. He also rejected Hegelian and Marxist claims of the inevitability of objective progress of history. He envisaged a liberal society in which a variety of ends of life are pursued and social organization is based on small autonomous communities. He famously distinguishes two senses of liberty: the negative liberty characterized as the absence of obstructions, and the positive liberty characterized by self-mastery, and claimed that the latter was liable to lead to totalitarianism. His major works include Historical Inevitability (1954), Two Concepts of Liberty (1959), Vico and Herder (1976), Concepts and Categories (1979), Against the Current (1980), The Crooked Timbers of Humanity (1991), and Magus of the North (1993). ... log in or subscribe to read full text