The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah Berlin Cambridge Companions to Philosophy Series

Isaiah Berlin (1909?1997) was a central figure in twentieth-century political thought. This volume highlights Berlin's significance for contemporary readers, covering not only his writings on liberty and liberalism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Russian thinkers and pluralism, but also the implications of his thought for political theory, history, and the social sciences, as well as the ethical challenges confronting political actors, and the nature and importance of practical judgment for politics and scholarship. His name and work are inseparable from the revival of political philosophy and the analysis of political extremism and defense of democratic liberalism following World War II. Berlin was primarily an essayist who spoke through commentary on other authors and, while his own commitments and allegiances are clear enough, much in his thought remains controversial. Berlin's work constitutes an unsystematic and incomplete, but nevertheless sweeping and profound, defense of political, ethical, and intellectual humanism in an anti-humanistic age.

Editors' introduction: why Berlin? Why now? Steven B. Smith and Joshua L. Cherniss; Part I. Berlin the Man: 1. On Isaiah Berlin Amos Oz; 2. The life and opinions of Isaiah Berlin Henry Hardy and Joshua L. Cherniss; Part II. Berlin on Philosophy, the Human Sciences, and Political Theory: 3. Berlin, analytic philosophy, and the revival of political philosophy Naomi Choi; 4. 'The sense of reality': Berlin on political judgment, political ethics, and leadership Joshua L. Cherniss; Part III. Berlin and the History of Ideas: 5. Berlin on the nature and purpose of the history of ideas Ryan Patrick Hanley; 6. Isaiah Berlin on Marx and Marxism Aurelian Craiutu; 7. Privileged access: Isaiah Berlin and Russian thought Kathleen Parthe; 8. Isaiah Berlin on the enlightenment and counter-enlightenment Steven B. Smith; 9. Berlin's romantics and their ambiguous legacy Gina Gustavsson; Part IV. Berlin and Politics: Liberalism, Nationalism, and Pluralism: 10. Isaiah Berlin on nationalism, the modern Jewish condition, and Zionism Fania Oz-Salzberger; 11. Negative liberty and the Cold War Ian Shapiro and Alicia Steinmetz; 12. Isaiah Berlin: contested conceptions of liberty and liberalism Alan Ryan; 13. Pluralism, relativism, and liberalism George Crowder; 14. Liberalism, nationalism, pluralism: the political thought of Isaiah Berlin William A. Galston; Epilogue.

Joshua L. Cherniss is the author of A Mind and its Time: The Development of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought (2013), and of journal articles and book chapters on Berlin, Reinhold Niebuhr, Max Weber, and other twentieth-century political thinkers. He has been a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, and a Graduate Fellow at the Center for European Studies and the Safra Center for Ethics, both at Harvard University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Steven B. Smith is Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He has served as the Master of Branford College at Yale and is the Co-Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions. His book Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (1997) won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize from Phi Beta Kappa. His most recent book, Modernity and its Discontents (2016), has been widely reviewed and the subject of book conference and panel discussions. He is currently working on a new book called In Defense of Patriotism.