Against The Current: Essays in the History of Ideas

Isaiah Berlin

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Published by Vintage Digital, part of Vintage Publishing

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EAN: 9781446496190
Published: 18 Sep 1999

About the book

Synopsis

Berlin's main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of ideas of dissenters whose thinking still challenges conventional wisdom - among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, he brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times, and in the process offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life.

Roger Hausheer's introduction surveys Berlin's whole oeuvre, and the full bibliography of his pubication has been updated for this Pimlico edition.

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What the critics say

A most remarkable intellectual achievement. There are few books published in our time which more dazzlingly illuminate some of the most crucial problems of western culture and civilisation
- Encounter

Berlin expounds with idea of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous clarity and imaginative empathy... exhilirating to read
- Observer

The most imaginative, distinguished and erudite of historians of ideas in this country
- Spectator

Isaiah Berlin has a masterly grasp. He is one of the most concerned liberal minds in Europe
- New Statesman

By this author

About the Author

Sir Isaiah Berlin, O.M., was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1909. He came to England in 1919 and was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was a a Fellow of All Souls College (1932-8, 1950-67), a Fellow of New College (1938-50), Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory (1957-67), first President of Wolfson College (1966-75), and President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. His achievements as a historian and expositor of ideas earned him the Erasmus, Lippincott, and Agnelli Prizes, and his lifelong defence of civil liberties earned him the Jerusalem Prize. He died in 1997.