http://ept.sagepub.

com/
Theory
European Journal of Political
http://ept.sagepub.com/content/12/1/5
The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1474885112463645
2012
2013 12: 5 originally published online 6 December European Journal of Political Theory
Joshua L. Cherniss
Isaiah Berlin's thought and its legacy: Critical reflections on a symposium

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: European Journal of Political Theory Additional services and information for

http://ept.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://ept.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:

What is This?

- Dec 6, 2012 OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Dec 21, 2012 Version of Record >>

at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
European Journal of Political Theory
12(1) 523
! The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1474885112463645
ept.sagepub.com
EJ PT
Article
Isaiah Berlins thought and
its legacy: Critical reflections
on a symposium
Joshua L. Cherniss
Harvard University
Abstract
The papers published in this issue of the EJPT discuss facets of the work of Isaiah Berlin
from different perspectives and making use of varying intellectual approaches. At the
same time, they focus attention on a few, central themes of Berlins work: his complex
relationship to liberalism and nationalism, his theories of liberty and value pluralism, and
his perception and uses of the history of ideas. Consideration of the differences and
overlap between these articles presents an occasion to take stock of Berlins work as a
whole; and a critical response to the interpretations and criticisms of Berlin presented
here afford an opportunity to re-evaluate, criticize and defend central aspects of Berlins
intellectual position. This article goes beyond summary to present a critical, interpretive
adjudication between the claims of Berlins work, and the interpretations of that work
presented in the other articles in this issue. Drawing on each of these, I present an
interpretation of Berlins contributions to thinking about the Enlightenment, nationalism
and cultural pluralism, utopianism and political ethics, liberty, and value pluralism; I also
consider the difficulties of interpreting Berlins work, and applying his ideas today.
Keywords
Enlightenment, Isaiah Berlin, liberalism, liberty, nationalism, pluralism, political ethics,
utopianism
The articles published here were presented at a conference held at Harvard
University in September 2009 to mark the centenary of Isaiah Berlins birth,
which occurred in Riga in 1909.
1
While the setting was appropriate Berlin had
been a visiting professor at Harvard on several occasions, and a visitor to
Cambridge, MA, more frequently than that it was a world away from the
Baltic port of the Russian empire in which Berlin had been born. The conference
also reected an intellectual world very dierent from that which Berlin inhabited.
Corresponding author:
Joshua L. Cherniss, Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: cherniss@fas.harvard.edu
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
One crucial change was in the political context. Berlin is closely associated with
the Cold War. Whether one sees him as a champion of freedom against its perver-
sion by totalitarians on the left (and not only the left), or as an apologist for a
complacent liberal status quo, it is natural to situate Berlin in the now past world of
Cold War politics and polemics.
2
Berlins concern with nationalism and political
extremism remains all too timely; but even here there are open questions about how
useful Berlins thoughts on these matters are to contemporary political thought.
There were more narrowly intellectual changes apparent as well. While the con-
ference was able to mirror the range of Berlins interests and the reach of his
learning (by involving scholars of Slavic and English literature, international rela-
tions and European history, as well as philosophers and political theorists), there
can be no denying that it reected the increased professionalization of academic
life. As a result, themes which were interwoven in the dense and complex fabric of
Berlins work and Weltanschauung were treated separately, from a number of dis-
tinct disciplinary perspectives.
In light of these changes, two sorts of approaches are available to us in evaluat-
ing Berlins thought for our time. Both can be fruitful, as our contributors show.
One is to apply to his work intellectual renements which were largely absent from
it, as Janos Kis has done here. Alternatively, one may try to meet Berlin on his own
ground, evoking the personal Weltanschauung exemplied in his work, via a mode
of reection that is informed by history but strives for generality. Alan Ryan,
Michael Walzer and Bernard Yack have, to varying extents, tended toward this
approach though they, too, have sought to correct or rene Berlins perceptions
of philosophy, politics and history.
While their approaches vary, the articles revolve around ve central themes of
Berlins thought: cultural diversity and national sentiment; the framing of the his-
tory of ideas in terms of a larger clash between monism and pluralism, and a more
specic tension, in modern times, between the legacies of the Enlightenment and
Counter-Enlightenment; the defence of a modest liberal politics against political
utopianism; and the connections between Berlins pluralism, his account of values
and his defence of freedom.
Here my concern is not to summarize every aspect of each authors contribution
(to which I cannot do justice in a single introductory essay). Rather, I will respond
to those interpretations and criticisms of Berlin that seem to me both to shed
particular light on central features of Berlins work and its legacy and to call
out for amplication, revision, and adjudication. What follows is not merely a tour
of the major themes spanning the individual pieces that follow, but also, and pri-
marily, a reection on Berlins work through the lenses provided by those pieces,
which reects the authors own opinions (and draws on my own work) on Berlin.
3
I
Having begun his career as an academic philosopher, preoccupied with questions of
knowledge (and the logic of claims about knowledge), Berlin came on his own
account to abandon philosophy for the history of ideas; and while he held the
6 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
position of Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, it was as a historian
of ideas that Berlin preferred to present himself.
4
Above all, Berlin was concerned
with the contributions to subsequent thought of the thinkers of the Enlightenment,
and their critics (or enemies); this central concern, and Berlins provocative
thoughts on it, are the subject of Bernard Yacks contribution to this issue. In
contrast to other recent scholars,
5
Yack does not question the existence of a
single Enlightenment, nor does he seek to downplay the opposition between
Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. But he thinks that Berlin mischarac-
terized both sides of this conict. The philosophes should be seen as dedicated, not
to monistic assumptions and utopian goals, but to practical reform on behalf of
toleration and freedom of thought. Herder, in contrast, is signicant for his
rehabilitation of prejudice.
6
The exclusion of this point is a major weakness in
Berlins account of Herders project and its signicance one which arises, Yack
suggests, from Berlins tendency to look at value pluralism from the perspective of
an observer or consumer, and not (as Herder did) from the perspective of the
(culturally limited) producers.
7
Yack notes that in his account of the Enlightenment Berlin under-emphasizes
the negative, practical motivations of the philosophes. Yacks own account tends to
the opposite extreme, presenting the philosophes outlook as motivated primarily by
an awareness of evils and a commitment to social reform, stressing their mission of
disseminating practical knowledge and underplaying the optimism and awe with
which progressive thinkers of the 18th century regarded the development of
modern science, and the fervour with which they sought to extend this progress
to society. As Berlin insisted, this encouraged (even in those he himself identied as
sceptics, such as Hume and Montesquieu) a scientistic approach to social studies
and problems.
8
This scientism was emphasized and inherited by the writer who
did more than any other to shape the young Berlins view of the Enlightenment, the
Russian Marxist Plekhanov.
9
Berlins perception of the Enlightenment was doubly
shaped by Marxism: while his historical account closely echoed that of Plekhanov,
the spectre of Bolshevik-Marxist thinking, with its Five-Year Plans and engineers
of human souls, shaped his perception of the dangers of scientism applied to
politics.
10
Accordingly, what seems to have rst drawn Berlin to Herder was that thinkers
contribution to the counter-revolution against positivism and rationalism, his
contrast between scientic rationalism and the properties that create civilizations
and make them intelligible;
11
while Berlins post-war political concerns are
reected in the emphasis he places on Herders hatred of mechanism and technoc-
racy.
12
More broadly, Berlin connected Herders anti-scientism and distaste for
uniformity to a larger intellectual aversion to generalization, a belief that (as
Berlin expressed it in his own voice) you can only tell what is what by looking
at the actual situation &. . . indicating the truth without fear of disloyalty to prin-
ciples. Once principles are applied rigorously absurdities follow: attempts to erect
turnstiles however enlightened end in dogmatism & denying the facts.
13
This par-
ticularism (which contrasted with Berlins own penchant for sweeping generaliza-
tions) was not only a matter of intellectual hygiene: it had moral and political
Cherniss 7
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
implications. The uncritical, dogmatic imposition of dead formulae on human life
led to nonsense in thought and monstrous behaviour in practice
14
Berlin saw the
tendency to generalization as linked to impatience with dierence and the untidy
recalcitrance of human realities. Herder, Berlin wrote, was opposed to uniformity as
the enemy of life and freedom, which maims and kills.
15
The tendency to reduce
or ignore dierences was, for Berlin, both sinister and false.
16
Another important theme in both the thought of the Enlightenment, and
Berlins use of it, is that of progress, to which Yack devotes an illuminating dis-
cussion, arguing that the Enlightenment idea of progress was not based on monism
because it is seen as movement away from evil, not towards perfection. This argu-
ment corrects and complicates Berlins general portrayal of utopianism. Yet it
does not demonstrate that philosophes such as Condorcet are immune to Berlins
pluralist critique. The belief that progress may be limitless, because there are no
insurmountable limits to it, is one of the beliefs that Berlins pluralism is meant to
undermine: the incompatibility of values means that the sort of limitless progress
envisioned by Condorcet is impossible, because a gain for one goal or good will
come at the expense of another valid goal or genuine good. Yack is right that the
broader Enlightenment project of promoting human happiness (or lessening
human misery) through the dissemination of knowledge is not necessarily under-
mined by a pluralist critique of monism. But if Berlins pluralism is accepted, some
of the condence about that project must be tempered by the awareness of its
limitations and costs. It is to the costs of progress and to the dangers involved
in a facile acceptance of these costs that Herder and Berlin direct our attention.
II
While Berlin attracts interest as both practitioner and subject of historical study,
his most inuential intellectual legacy remains the arguments he has bequeathed to
political theory. One reason for Berlins staying power is that, while he could be
strikingly aloof from the practice and empirical study of politics, his thought gives
central place to essential features of political experience: conict and dierence.
The conicts between values and ideals of life, the diversity of and divergence
among individuals, cultures and epochs, are the subjects of nearly everything
Berlin wrote.
Michael Walzers article, Should we Reclaim Political Utopianism?, is both a
response to Berlin, and the latest of Walzers searching contributions to thinking
about political ethics and liberal democracy. Walzer denes liberalism as com-
mitted to limited government and the legal and political protection of civil liberties
and rights, particularly the right of opposition. Liberalism thus accepts political
conict as a permanent feature of life. The hope of liberal theory is that those who
are socialized by liberal institutions will come to accept a you win some, you lose
some attitude, so that liberalism will by means of freedom, rather than constraint
largely remove cruelty and repression from politics.
Many have doubted that things will work out so nicely. Walzer worries too. He
fears that liberal politics will tend towards the anti-liberal vices of authoritarianism
8 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
and hierarchy, because liberalism underestimates the love of power that motivates
political rulers, and fosters authoritarianism; while it turns an indulgent eye on the
selshness and injustice of some, and the apathy or powerlessness of others, that
produce hierarchies. To protect against these anti-liberal fruits of liberal compla-
cence, liberal democracies need insurgent movements. Berlin was therefore too
quick to dismiss political utopianism, which is necessary to motivate such move-
ments against liberalisms corruption.
Berlin did direct his political preachings against the absolutism of utopian aspir-
ations, and on behalf of a politics and political temper of moderation he adopted
as his motto Talleyrands injunction Surtout, Messieurs, point de ze` le.
17
Yet his
feelings were more ambivalent than Walzer allows. Berlin worried over the dull-
ness of calm liberal decency,
18
and in his portrait of Churchill produced a vivid,
perceptive paean to the love of glory that is part of politics.
19
He also lamented the
collapse of the international left and the world shift to the Right.
20
And his
appreciation for at least some sorts of utopianism comes out in his writings on
Zionism. Berlin noted that Zionism had seemed a heroic, sentimental gesture,
divorced from real life and that many Zionist leaders were utopians with little
feeling for human realities. He nevertheless celebrated Zionist utopianism for its
deance of realist perceptions of what was possible and impossible, its vindication
of human political agency against perceptions of historical inevitability.
21
Berlin
also evinced sympathetic aection for the idealistic revolutionaries of the mid-19th
century (as against the more hard-headed, anti-utopian Marx).
22
Yet Berlin did take utopianism and monism as his primary targets in his political
writings. One reason why he did so was that he seems to have been less condent
about the decline of utopian impulses than Walzer suggests. His works recurrently
stress how widespread and emotionally appealing monism and the aspiration to
utopia have always been.
23
While he thought the former untenable, this did not
mean that he thought that it was on the wane: the mere fact that an outlook could
be intellectually refuted did not mean that it would not still be defended: the age-
old dream of utopia persists side by side with the reality of collisions of
values.
24
Another element in Berlins case against utopianism, which converges with
Walzers argument, was his (sometimes ambiguous) acceptance of politics. As
already noted, central to Berlins political thought is an insistence that conict
based on normative disagreements is ineradicable, and that therefore both political
theory and political contestation are inescapable (contra those who would replace
political theory with value-free social science, and politics with scientic adminis-
tration).
25
Yet Berlin also evinced a protective aversion to the unruliness of politics.
Politics, Berlin accepted, is about passionate disagreement and practical conict;
where these are lacking, technocratic tyranny threatens. But for this very reason it
is important to maintain an area of (negative) freedom where individuals can evade
the demands, disruptions and dangers of politics.
26
Berlins ambivalence about politics nds its mirror in the utopians he criticized.
Genuine utopians ultimately want to abolish politics, because they wish to
overcome conict; they embrace politics as a means for achieving an ultimately
Cherniss 9
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
anti-political goal.
27
The longing for a nal solution, the desire to overcome dis-
agreement and disorder once and for all, was one of the central features that Berlin
identied and attacked in utopianism. He wanted political conicts to be tem-
pered, limited, kept at bay; but he would also agree with Walzer that liberalism
needs to be asserted and then reasserted against powerful enemies.
Berlins anti-utopianism, then, seems more nuanced, and better able to deal with
political realities, than Walzer suggests. On the other hand, Walzers own position
involves a problem (which he readily acknowledges). Insurgent movements are just
as prone to the iron law of oligarchy as stable liberal political systems and an
ideologically self-righteous oligarchy poses special dangers. We should hope that
insurgent movements arise, and root for their success but for their limited success.
A central problem of liberal politics, as Walzer says, is how to resist the corrup-
tion of liberal democracy by the aggrandizement of the rich and powerful, without
falling prey to the dangers of political extremism.
Walzers discussion of this central problem of liberal politics emphasizes insti-
tutions and political culture. Another way of responding to this problem (which is
very much in the spirit of Walzers work, but which he does not pursue here) is the
articulation of a liberal political ethic. Berlin helps us to think about what such an
ethic would involve, particularly with his account of Herzen, a revolutionary with-
out fanaticism and without ruthlessness.
28
Although Herzen longed passionately
for reform, he did not (at least on Berlins account) long for the nality and per-
fection, or suer from the moral denial or blindness, which Berlin associates with
utopianism. Most importantly, Berlins Herzen was guided by awareness of the
immediate, particular experiences of actual individuals, rather than by visions of
future ourishing. This way of thinking about politics as well as the quality of
his personal temperament saved Herzen from the ruthlessness of his fellow
revolutionaries.
Berlin tied utopian aspirations to a politics of extremism and an ethic of ruth-
lessness by claiming that, if it is believed possible to achieve a nal solution to all
human ills, which will make all or most human beings virtuous and happy, then
surely no price is too heavy to pay for it; no amount of oppression, cruelty, repres-
sion, coercion will be too great.
29
But there is a dierence which Berlin elides
here between holding that it is possible nally to remedy human ills (utopianism),
and the idea that no price, no amount of cruelty and suering, is too great. Berlin
was right to stress that the former can certainly serve as a motivation to, or increase
the plausibility of the latter; but it does not entail it. It is dicult, but one can be a
revolutionary without fanaticism, an idealist without extremism. On the other
hand, liberalism cannot embrace an insurgent movement, however needed, which
has not learned to eschew ruthlessness and fanaticism. It would seem that Berlins
argument is both compatible with, and oers guidance in pursuing, Walzers pro-
ject to appreciate and foster, in those situations where they prove necessary, decent
and democratic insurgent movements. The disagreement between them, on this
point at least, seems more apparent than real.
30
Another common thread between Berlins thought, and Walzers response to
it, is the way in which the sort of political theory practised by both is deeply
10 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
context-relevant. Berlin, as Walzer notes, counselled learn[ing] from our disasters.
Walzer proposes, also using the resources of political and intellectual history, to
learn from our (partial) successes. In adopting these dierent perspectives, Berlin
was looking largely at Russian, and more broadly European, politics; Walzer expli-
citly addresses the experience of Western liberal democracies experiences that
are very dierent from those of Russia, or mid-20th-century Europe. This raises the
question of how broadly applicable the arguments of each writer are. If dierent
times and places call for dierent responses and have need of dierent lessons, how
much can be said, on a general level, based on the lessons of history? (Berlin seems
to acknowledge this when he sagely notes that in resisting great present evils, it is
as well not to be blinded to the possible danger of the total triumph of any one
principle, including ones own.
31
)
At the same time, the dierence here cannot be reduced to matters of personal
circumstance. There is a recurrent, perhaps permanent, divergence between the sort
of cautious reformism favoured by Berlin, and the chastened but hopeful radical-
ism expounded by Walzer. If the juxtaposition of the two reveals some blind spots
of cautious liberalism, it also raises the question of how necessary and how
dangerous radical hope is. It may well be both vitally necessary, and potentially
rather dangerous which is why we need both visions.
III
Like Walzer, Janos Kis agrees with many of the general goals of Berlins political
thought, but seeks to redress its tendency to foster a less armatively democratic
liberalism. In Berlins Two Concepts of Positive Liberty, Kis applies careful con-
ceptual analysis to Berlins dichotomy between negative and positive liberty and
particularly his convoluted characterization of the latter. While much has been
written on this subject, it has rarely received treatment as sophisticated and sym-
pathetic as that oered by Kis here.
Freedom was a value with which Berlins work was explicitly concerned from
more or less the beginning: one of his rst surviving writings is an essay on
Freedom written as an 18-year-old schoolboy in 1928, and his earliest writings
on politics give central weight to the idea of freedom and the dangers to it.
32
Yet,
as Kis shows, the account of liberty that Berlin developed was marked by genuine
and deep tensions. Part of the problem, Kis points out, is that Two Concepts is
about much more than concepts of liberty. The account of positive liberty is
concerned with the consequences of the conjunction of a conception of liberty
with particular theories of the self (as divided between a rational true and a
muddled and divided empirical self), of society (as an organic whole), and of the
nature and relationship of human values (monism). Berlin saw all of these as
playing a role in the development of the idea of positive liberty that he depicted,
and he rejected all of them. But it is not clear that, if one accepts Berlins critiques
of monism, organicism and the hierarchical self, rejection of the positive concept of
liberty follows and not only because, as Kis charges, Berlins account oscillates
between two distinct conceptions of positive liberty.
Cherniss 11
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Beyond his careful dissection of the logical cogency of Berlins account, Kiss
discussion makes important substantive points about two issues central to the
argument of Two Concepts: the relationship between individual liberty and col-
lective self-rule; and Berlins value pluralism. Regarding the former, Kis argues that
Berlin was wrong to see a conict between democracy and individual (negative)
liberty. Despite his appreciation of the claims of both collective self-rule and indi-
vidual liberty, Berlin saw the two values as separate and unconnected, and poten-
tially conicting. For Kis, if we understand collective self-rule properly, we will
recognize that it requires respect for the rights of the individuals who are partners
in self-government.
33
This is an attractive argument, but some Berlinian doubts remain. First, while
the conict may not, as Kis says, exist at the theoretical level, a practical conict
may persist, and it seems to be with this that Berlin was concerned: following
through with commitment to collective self-government (or to an understanding
of liberty as being realized in the instantiation of collective self-government) may
lead one to neglect individual liberty. On the other hand, thinking of collective self-
government primarily or solely in terms of the realization of the priority-bearing
value of individual rights neglects other claims on behalf of self-government. In this
connection, it is notable that Kis deals with one form of the idea of self-government
addressed by Berlin democracy but not another national self-determination.
34
When he comes to Berlins value pluralism, Kis nds deep inconsistencies. If
negative and positive liberty are genuine, independent, potentially conicting
values, according to Berlins pluralism there is no way of evaluating the value of
one with reference to that of the other, and no common perspective from which to
evaluate both and hence, no way to deliberate rationally between their competing
claims. Kis notes that this may be taken to point to a decisionistic conclusion: one
must simply choose, arbitrarily, between the two values, and there is no reason not
to give ones full allegiance to one at the expense of the other. Berlin rejected such
an approach, advocating instead striking compromises [between values] with
which people can live.
35
But there is no necessary connection between pluralism
and toleration.
36
Yet necessary connections are not the only sort of connection that may exist
between a theory of values and political behaviour, or indeed normative political
argument. There are also questions of motivational connections, of psychological
(or, as Kis says, elective) anities. Recognition of the validity of a variety of
forms of human life added to the awareness, following from this, that there is
no rational basis for imposing a single way of life or conception of the good life on
all human beings need not compel one to adopt toleration; but it will tend to
encourage it. It is far easier to act intolerantly and ruthlessly when one believes
ones opponents to be evil or wrong; by reminding us that those with whom we
disagree are often neither, but are rather committed to genuine values, pluralism
undermines a propensity towards zealotry and encourages an ethos of tolerance.
And while monism neednt promote intolerance, it can sustain a view of oneself as
having a monopoly on righteousness, which pluralism cannot; and this sense of
having a monopoly on righteousness is a major source of political intolerance.
37
12 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
And while it is true, as Kis points out, that acceptance of pluralism need not entail
commitment to nding compromises between conicting values, it does give us
good reason to search for such compromises, and not to deny that compromise
is necessary (because one value simply has priority) or desirable (because there are
no genuine claims on us made by either or both values, which demand that we
strive to respect both as much as possible).
Even if my claims are true, they do not aect Kiss charge that Berlins pluralism
cannot identify which potential compromise between competing values we should
adopt (or which value we should prefer, in a given case). Kis here underscores,
without directly articulating, an important implication of Berlins thought: a scep-
ticism about the ability of philosophy to prescribe solutions to practical ethical
problems by identifying one correct line of action among possible alternatives.
Finding an acceptable compromise may simply not be a task best carried out at
the level of moral philosophy; or it may be that the best that philosophy can do is
to clarify what is at stake in the choice between alternative courses, and point to the
advantages and disadvantages of each.
The inability to reveal what choice we should make in a given clash between
values, then, need not be a problem for Berlins pluralism on its own terms. It may
indeed be a virtue, in pointing to the limits of philosophys ability to determine
practical choices. Yet it does seem to be a problem for Berlins contention, in Two
Concepts, that negative liberty should enjoy preference over (even genuine) posi-
tive liberty: for how can a theory based on pluralism purport to give us a reason to
(presumptively) prefer one value over another, if both are genuine values?
38
Here
Berlins position is vulnerable, though perhaps not as vulnerable as Kis suggests.
Part of Berlins problem, on Kiss analysis, is the tension between his conception of
negative liberty as involving a minimum area, and the idea of negative liberty as
something of which one can have less or more. Here Kis does seem to me to be
nding contradiction where there is none. Berlin, as Kis notes, tended towards
spatial metaphors in characterizing negative liberty. The number of doors open
to one (that is, the number of choices one can make without interference) may be
more or less numerous, the space around one (that is, the eld of choices one can
make protected from interference) may be more or less extensive this is what is
meant by saying that negative liberty is something of which there can be more or
less. Berlins argument is that, given a certain conception of human nature and the
nature of values, there is a minimum space or extent of negative liberty which
must be preserved, or else misery and dehumanization will follow. On the other
hand, beyond this space, trade-os may occur. We may have more or less negative
liberty; but if we lose too much negative liberty or if we lose our negative liberty
in particularly vital matters our basic moral interests as human beings will be
signicantly damaged.
The idea of giving priority to the preservation of a minimum area of negative
liberty over the maximization of other values points to a way of thinking about
compromises between values more generally. Up to a point, various values may be
amenable to compromise or trade-os. But at some point, sacrices of certain
values will come to threaten our notions of what human beings fundamentally
Cherniss 13
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
require to live truly human lives. At that point, such sacrices are no longer
acceptable, because they undermine our ability to live, or to treat others, in a
fully human way.
This approach, however, does not resolve the question of what to do if cases
arise where it appears that one must choose between maintaining a minimum level
of either one essential value, or another. Emergency situations in which security
and personal liberties make competing claims
39
one of the most urgent, and
dicult, issues for normative political theorists today may be one such case;
and Kiss discussion of it is sensitive and wise. Kiss argument that it may in
certain drastic emergency cases be permissible to violate individual rights, but that
this is very dierent from saying that under emergency conditions one can redraw
the boundaries of the right itself is also very much along the lines of Berlins claim
that, in conicts of values, where one value or moral interest is sacriced to
another, there occurs a real loss, and that we should acknowledge this, rather
than insisting that the permissibility of over-riding one of the values means that
no damage to moral interests in fact occurred.
40
This view is not necessitated by any sort of pluralism; it is the conclusion of
Berlins pluralism a pluralism which is modulated by an insistence on respect for
other persons, their moral interests and their moral values. This commitment,
which we might call Berlins humanism, was independent of Berlins pluralism;
it was neither supported nor undermined by it, but in combination with pluralism
provided the rationale for Berlins political and ethical outlook.
IV
The importance of this humanism to Berlins outlook and work is stressed by
Alan Ryan who also urges a way of approaching Berlins work very dierent
from that adopted by Kis. In his personal impression of Berlin which includes
one of the better brief overviews of Berlins life and career
41
Ryan raises and
addresses the question of whether Berlin really is best thought of as a political
theorist; and, if so, what was the nature of his work in political theory. Ryan
points, rightly, to the distance between Berlins way of doing political theory,
and the more systematic, analytic, widely emulated approach of his friend John
Rawls.
42
This was not just a matter of Berlin failing to meet the standards of
argumentative rigour that have come to be expected by political philosophers
writing in Rawlss wake. Nor is it merely that Berlin refrained from advancing a
comprehensive, programmatic account of either an ideal society or a set of prin-
ciples by which to evaluate the institutions and practices of existing societies. In
addition, Ryan suggests, Berlin was not really concerned with the entire project of
justication, which is central to Rawlss approach. He was, however, concerned
with evaluation, of a partly moral, partly aesthetic, sort: with the attractiveness and
repulsiveness of social and political ideas and, we may add, of dierent visions of
life, types of character, and ways of being. This may make his work seem irrelevant,
or at least lightweight, to political theorists formed in the Rawlsian mold. Yet
(as Ryan fair-mindedly suggests) there are merits to the Berlinian conception of
14 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
political theory. For one thing, Berlin did not fall into the philosophers tendency
of over-estimating the power of theory to identify principles of justice acceptable to
all reasonable people. And he recognized if only implicitly the potential of
theories that well-meaningly insist on public justication to swamp individuality.
Beyond this, Berlins work draws the attention of political theorists to the role of
individual sensibility, personality, and immediate experience, as against general
principles, decision-procedures, and so on. In focusing on the style and ethos, as
opposed to the principles and institutions, of liberalism, Berlins work usefully
supplements much recent normative political theory; if it lacks some of that
body of works virtues, it also makes up for some of its omissions.
Ryan also stresses that Berlins writings on the history of ideas similarly depart
from the canons and goals of intellectual history, and seek instead an internal,
empathetic understanding, a psychological reconstruction, of the outlook and
experience of past thinkers. As Ryan notes, such an internalist approach was
meant as an alternative, and rebuke, to scientistic approaches to human experi-
ence. Ryan does not go quite so far as to draw an explicit connection here between
Berlins intellectual approach and his moral commitments, both of which can be
viewed as involving a struggle against dierent sorts of dehumanization whether
the brutal dehumanization of totalitarian practice, or the much subtler dehuman-
ization of a scientistic approach to understanding human problems.
This approach had its problems. Berlins tendency to relate to the thinkers he
studied as if they were individuals he had come to know sometimes gave him the
sense that he understood that thinker as a person and to resolve interpretive
problems based on that sense of the sort of person a past thinker was. The results
were not always happy as when Berlins personal dislike for Rousseau led him to
a one-sided (though not wholly unperceptive) account of that complicated thinker;
his strong sense of Marxs personality similarly led him to some questionable con-
clusions
43
(even if his 1939 biography of Marx is hardly the anti-Marxist polemic
that some expect it to be before reading it). On the other hand, as Ryan notes, the
benets of this approach are considerable: it makes for lively, imagination-expand-
ing evocations and explications of past eras and their problems, past minds and
their predicaments.
In making these points, it is signicant that Ryan turns not to Berlins writings
on the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, on positive and negative lib-
erty, on Machiavelli, Marx, Mill and Maistre, but to his heartfelt explorations of
Russian thinkers above all, Alexander Herzen. Russian sources played a crucial
role in forming Berlins political-ethical imagination; and Berlins defence of a
conventionally British political ethos of moderation and tolerance derived its
peculiar tonality and urgency from the utterly dierent conditions of Russian pol-
itical life, and the distinctive ethos of the radical Russian intelligentsia.
44
This ethos
revealed, with particular sharpness, the dangers and plausibility of an extremist
approach to politics but also the virtues of a certain sort of political idealism.
Furthermore, in the Russian intelligentsias model of integrity, total commit-
ment and social responsibility its passionate rejection of attempts to divorce
theory from practice, politics from morality, personal character from public stances
Cherniss 15
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Berlin found a model for his own conviction that politics and morality were
inseparable, as well as a rationale for his tendency to approach questions of pol-
itical action in relation to personal experience, outlook and temperament. At the
same time, the dangers of such a model of complete commitment informed Berlins
articulation of a liberal ethos that taught the virtues of both commitment and
detachment; and in Herzen, a passionate political moralist without fanaticism, he
found a near-ideal mixture of humanitarian political commitment and cultivated
scepticism and irony.
The works of Herzen and other Russian thinkers and writers also allowed Berlin
to explore one of the major concerns of his own thought: the ethical demands and
dangers of political commitment. More specically, Berlin was concerned with the
conict between the demands of political engagement and other ethical ideals;
45
and with the relationship between the embrace and pursuit of political and social
ideals and general moral principles, and the practical choices involved in pursuing
those ideals and answering the demands of those theories with, that is, the prob-
lem of the relationship of ends and means.
46
These themes are central to Berlins
discussions of Herzen, and his masterful long essay on Turgenev (to which Ryan
gives somewhat short shrift).
Ryan shrewdly notes the tension, or equivocation, in Berlins mind between a
scepticism regarding philosophys capacity to establish any truths about political
and moral matters; and his passionate adherence to this conviction that individuals
are ends in themselves, and that it is a crime and a horror to make people serve
ends that they have not chosen for themselves, whether through violence or
manipulation. As Ryan also reports, it is signicant that in repeatedly attacking
the tendency to regard and use human beings as means towards some larger design
or goal, Berlin drew on Herzens passionate polemics against political utopianism,
rather than on Kants severe (and, as Berlin acknowledged, epochal but obscure)
positing of an absolute moral duty to treat humanity as an end in itself, and not a
means. It was not just Kants rationalism and denial of moral pluralism that made
him a dicult (though powerful) gure for Berlin, but his related tendency to
abstract from actual, esh-and-blood persons to regard humanity, rather than
individual human beings, as that which was most sacred and morally demanding.
And, where Kant identied freedom with moral autonomy the giving to oneself,
and obedience to, a moral law Berlin, following his beloved Russian thinkers,
preferred to celebrate a free human personality developing in unpredictable,
multiform ways.
47
In his resistance to over-analysing Berlin, Ryan, it seems to me, overlooks a
further way in which Berlins approach of evoking individual personalities may
contribute to liberal political theory. Berlins writings suggest that liberals must be
concerned with questions of moral character and development, but resistant to
programmes of moral indoctrination. One response to this potential impasse is
to embrace Tolstoys conviction that true education Bildung, the development
of free, self-directing individuals could be brought about only through
precept . . . the example of our own lives. Thus, against attempts to mold character
and impose belief by force, Tolstoy favored a pedagogic mode of exemplication.
48
16 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
But such exemplication, for a pluralist, cannot consist in holding up a single type
of life or character as ideal. Rather, the pluralist will seek to illuminate the virtues
of a variety of dierent, not always mutually reconcilable characters and lives. At
the same time, Berlins own intellectual personality as revealed in these works is
itself exemplary in modelling a generosity of approach an openness and recep-
tivity to the ideas of others that, if cultivated, may allow us to be more sensitive,
less blind, to the rich variety of human character and achievement, and less likely to
be intolerant and stiing/constricting in our judgements and treatment of others.
Berlins work may thus contribute to the same cause championed by Mill a century
earlier albeit in a very dierent way.
V
While approaching Berlin through dierent authors discussions of distinct themes
in his work is illuminating, it runs the risk of failing to capture the elusive, unsys-
tematic, but recalcitrant unity that marks his work. To capture this, it is helpful to
return directly to an example of Berlins own writings. Berlins views on the nature
of values, and the hallmarks of his moral vision more generally, are revealed par-
ticularly clearly in a lecture delivered almost exactly 50 years before the conference
at which the papers presented here were given.
49
Although not one of his most-
cited works, European Unity and Its Vicissitudes encapsulates both Berlins
account of the trajectory of modern European thought, and the core commitments
that motivated both his historical narratives and his political arguments.
European Unity reects Berlins attempts to strike a balance between
Romanticism and liberal universalism, a celebration of human creativity and free-
dom, and assertion of the moral limits on what human beings may do to one
another. Berlin acknowledged, and indeed emphasized, the contribution of
Romantic subjectivism to the catastrophic advance of political irrationalism and
aestheticism. But he also distinguished, and celebrated, another face of
Romanticism what he called Romantic humanism. This held that the essence
of man is not consciousness, nor the invention of tools, but the power of choice,
and that
The glory and dignity of man consists in the fact that it is he who chooses, and is not
chosen for, that he can be his own master . . . that he is not compelled to purchase
security and tranquility at the price of letting himself be tted into a neat pigeon-hole
in a totalitarian structure which contrives to rob him of responsibility, freedom and
respect both for himself and others.
50
Thanks to the Romantic view of values as deriving their authority from their
human creators, Berlin claimed:
. . . ideals of individual human beings commanded respect and even reverence, even if
no guarantee of objective validity could be provided. Fidelity to an ideal, indestruct-
ible regard for what a man himself, whatever his reasons, believed to be true, or right,
Cherniss 17
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
became something in the name of which men were prepared to defy the big battalions,
even if these were identied with the mysterious power of history or reality itself.
51
At the same time, while human values might be endowed with their value by free
choice, the value of each human individual was intrinsic. From this Romantic
insight, Berlin believed, it followed that man must not be slaughtered in the
name of anything higher than himself whether such allegedly higher things are
abstract ideas such as progress or freedom, or institutions, which are themselves
made not only by, but for, human beings for there is nothing higher. The worst
of all sins, he insisted here and throughout his writings was to degrade or
humiliate human beings for the sake of some Procrustean pattern into which they
are to be forced against their wills, a pattern that has some objective authority
irrespective of human aspirations.
52
Despite Berlins apparent regard for the Romantic view that the maker of
values is man,
53
European Unity does not present an argument for subjectivism.
Berlin insisted that there does exist a scale of values by which the majority of
mankind . . . in fact live, because this scale of values constitutes the essential nature
of man.
54
This basic human nature includes the freedom to choose, and thus to
change and to be dierent from others. At the same time, the fact of individual
variety should reinforce, rather than undermine, our recognition of fundamental
human moral equality the concept of humanity itself. It is when we regard others
as unequal, as less than fully human, as not making claims on us as equal members
of the human race, that the horrible crimes of totalitarianism Communist or
fascist follow. For Berlin, pluralism, far from undermining this idea of
common humanity and thus of moral equality, reinforced it: for pluralism, the
theory of values and the understanding of human experience it involves, allows
us to recognize how individuals who adhere to dierent values and ways of life can
nevertheless be equally rational, equally human and make equal claims to respect
and recognition.
Berlins appeal was ultimately not to philosophical sources, but to the great and
widespread sense of horror caused by totalitarian savagery: because these rules
were outed, we have been forced to become conscious of them.
55
Yet if these
thoughts grew out of particular experiences of totalitarianism and political terror
the degradation of human personality that we have witnessed in our time
56
they
have nevertheless lost none of their force or, alas, relevance. More than a hundred
years after his birth, despite the vicissitudes of history and the limitations of his
work, Isaiah Berlins thought speaks to us in important ways as demonstrated by
the excellent and thoughtful studies inspired by his work presented here.
Notes
I am grateful to the authors of the pieces discussed, and also to Henry Hardy and Nancy
Rosenblum for their comments on a draft of this article.
1. The conference was initiated by the author and organized by the author and Professor
Michael Rosen, both of the Harvard Department of Government, with funding from the
Departments of Government and Philosophy, the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center
18 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
for Ethics, and the Program in Judaic Studies, all at Harvard. I am grateful to Professor
Rosen, to Professor Nancy Rosenblum and Mr Thom Wall of the Department of
Government and to Professor T. M. Scanlon of the Department of Philosophy, and
to the many others who helped in organizing the conference.
2. See Michael Kenny (2000) Isaiah Berlins Contribution to Modern Political Theory,
Political Studies 48: 102639. Duncan Kelly (2002) The Political Thought of Isaiah
Berlin, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 4(1): 2548. Jan-Werner
Mu ller (2008) Fear and Freedom: On Cold War Liberalism, European Journal of
Political Theory 7 (Jan.2008): 4564. See also the account in Michael Ignatieff (1998)
Isaiah Berlin: A Life. New York: Metropolitan Books.
3. Primarily contained in A Mind and its Time: The Development of Isaiah Berlins Political
Thought, 19281953, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
4. The meaning and adequacy of these categorizations of Berlins work are discussed in
Alan Ryans contribution to this issue.
5. On these trends see Sankar Muthu (2003) The Politics of Enlightened Histories,
Political Theory 31(2): 30214.
6. Ironically, Herders attacks on the Parisian philosophes were largely inspired by what he
perceived as their complacent prejudices, and a major project of his thought is to dis-
mantle those easy prejudices.
7. While there is truth in this, Berlins affirmation of Herderian populism seems to allot
value to cultural diversity from the producers point of view, as does his appreciation
for Herders expressivism, according to which cultural diversity is valuable in express-
ing the personality of the producer(s), not in providing a variegated cultural tableau for
the enjoyment of the consumer. See Berlin (2000) Three Critics of the Enlightenment:
Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 176. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
8. The weight Berlin placed on the scientism of the philosophes and the affinity between
scientism and monism more generally can be gauged from his discussion of monism in
his retrospective account of his work, My Intellectual Path (2000) The Power of
Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 5. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Given the
influence of logical positivism on Berlins early intellectual life, this is hardly surprising
(ibid. pp. 14).
9. See Berlin, review of G. V. Plekhanov, In Defense of Materialism, tr. Andrew Rothstein
(194950) Slavonic Review 28: 25762. Berlin (1977) Preface to (1996) Karl Marx: His
Life and Environment, 4th edn, p. x. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1st edn 1939.
Ignatieff (n. 2), p. 71. Robert Wokler (2008) A Guide to Isaiah Berlins Political Ideas in
the Romantic Age, History of Political Thought 29(2): 34469.
10. Berlin invoked this Stalinist phrase repeatedly. See e.g. Political Ideas in the Twentieth
Century, in Berlin (2002) Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 82. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. Philosophy and Government Repression, in Berlin (1996) The Sense of Reality:
Studies in Ideas and their History, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 73. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux. Berlins reading of the Enlightenment through Marx and Marxism is pointed
out by Michael Walzer in the discussion in Ronald Dworkin, Mark Lilla and Robert B.
Silvers (eds) (2001) The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin, p. 64. New York: New York Review
Books. On Berlins opposition to scientism in the human sciences, see Ryan Patrick
Hanley (2004) Political Science and Political Understanding: Isaiah Berlin on the
Nature of Political Inquiry, American Political Science Review 98: 32739. Ryan
Patrick Hanley (2007) Berlin and History, in George Crowder and Henry Hardy
(eds) The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin, pp. 15980. Amherst NY:
Cherniss 19
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Prometheus Books. For the influence of scientism on Berlins political thought see
Joshua L. Cherniss (2007) Berlins Early Political Thought, ibid. pp. 95117.
11. Berlin to Elizabeth Jennings, 8 March 1960, in (2009) Enlightening: Letters 19461960,
ed. Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, p. 728. London: Chatto & Windus.
12. See e.g. Berlin (n. 7), pp. 182, 186, 200.
13. Berlin to Myron Gilmore, 26 Dec. 1949 (n. 11), p. 151. Cf. Berlin (n. 7), p. 201, for
Berlins citing of Herders condemnation of wretched generalisations. Berlin was also
drawn to Hamann by that thinkers impassioned particularism; see e.g. ibid. p. 350.
14. Ibid. p. 227.
15. Ibid., p. 200; see also p. 202.
16. See e.g. ibid. p. 213.
17. Berlin (2002, in n. 10), p. 92; Berlin, answers to the Marcel Proust Questionnaire: (1993)
Frageboden, Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin (22 Jan.), 27.
18. See Berlin (1950) The Trends in Culture, contribution to The Year 1949 in Historical
Perspective, in 1950 Britannica Book of the Year, pp. xxiixxxi. Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica.
19. Winston Churchill in 1940, in Berlin (1998) Personal Impressions, ed. Henry Hardy,
2nd edn, pp. 123. London: Pimlico.
20. Berlin and Ramin Jahanbegloo (1991) Conversations with Isaiah Berlin, p. 128. New
York: Charles Scribners Sons.
21. See Berlin, The Origins of Israel (n. 8), pp. 14361 passim; Berlin, Chaim Weizmann,
(n. 19), pp. 3841. Berlin, The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess, in (2001 [1979])
Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 251.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
22. See Berlin (1996, in n. 9), pp. 623, 157, 2067. Berlin to Stuart Hampshire [July 1937];
to Cressida Bonham Carter, 26 Aug. 1938, (2004) Flourishing: Letters, 19281946, ed.
Henry Hardy, pp. 239, 279. London: Chatto & Windus.
23. See e.g. Berlin (2006) Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on
Modern Thought, ed. Henry Hardy, pp. 545, 778. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. Two Concepts of Liberty, in (2002) Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 217. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. Aileen Kelly A Complex Vision, introduction to Berlin (2008)
Russian Thinkers, ed. Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly, 2nd edn, pp. xxvxxvii. London:
Penguin.
24. Berlin, The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West (1992) The Crooked Timber of
Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy, p. 47. New York: Vintage.
25. See Berlin (2002, in n. 10); (2002, in n. 23); (1981) Does Political Theory Still Exist?, in
Concepts and Categories, ed. Henry Hardy, pp. 14372. New York: Penguin.
26. Cf. Nancy L. Rosenblum (1987) Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the
Reconstruction of Liberal Thought, pp. 747. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
27. E.g. The Pursuit of the Ideal (n. 24), pp. 1418.
28. See Alexander Herzen (1956), in (2008, in n. 23), pp. 21239; A Revolutionary
Without Fanaticism (1956), in (n. 8), pp. 88102; and, particularly, Herzen and
Bakunin on Individual Liberty (2008, in n. 23), pp. 93129.
29. Berlin (n. 24), p. 47.
30. This may be because, when they write of utopianism, Berlin and Walzer are referring to
somewhat different things. Berlin is speaking of movements inspired by an ideal of
perfection, and premised on a particular philosophical faith. Walzer refers to move-
ments that, while they invoked such visions, were in their immediate goals defined by
20 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
opposition to existing injustices. And their goals were, indeed, rather less than the per-
fect unity and fulfilment associated by Berlin with utopianism: they wanted a fair
chance, a decent life, equal and adequate protection under the law, an end to unjust
wars and persecutions. They also, for the most part, did not depend on a dogma of
historically inevitable perfection another bugbear that Berlin lumped in with
utopianism.
31. Introduction (2002, in n. 10), p. 50.
32. See e.g. Literature and the Crisis (1935), published as (2001) A Sense of Impending
Doom, The Times Literary Supplement (27 July): 1112; (2004) Democracy,
Communism and the Individual, http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/nachlass/demco-
mind.pdf; (2002, in n. 10). For an analysis of these and other early writings see
Cherniss (n. 10).
33. Cf. Kis (2003) Constitutional Democracy, tr. Zoltan Miklosi. New York: Central
European University Press.
34. See Berlin (2002, in n. 23), pp. 2016.
35. One reason for his doing so, not discussed by Kis, is that he rejected the Weberian model
according to which conflicts between values amount to a stark choice of committing
oneself fully to one way of life or another. Berlin, in contrast, held to a model of
conflicts and choices between values in which individuals and societies are engaged in
constant deliberations between the claims of different values, in different cases and at
different times choices that do not involve, as they seem to in Webers account, an
arbitrary choice of self-binding fealty to one or another god or demon. See Berlin and
Bernard Williams (1994) Pluralism and Liberalism: A Reply, Political Studies 42: 306
9, which also rejects the radical value-decisionists contention that in cases of disagree-
ment over value there is nothing reasonable to be said in favour of one judgement or
decision over the other.
36. Berlin acknowledged the lack of a necessary connection between pluralism and either
liberalism or toleration. However, what he had to say about the subject was sometimes
confusing, or confused. For instance, he acknowledged that liberalism and pluralism
were not the same or even overlapping or logically connected; but instantly added
that pluralism entails a minimum degree of toleration (Berlin and Jahanbegloo (n.
20), p. 44). Berlins claim is probably better stated as holding that toleration follows if
one accepts both the basic contentions of pluralism, and the further contentions that
destructive conflict should be minimized, and that individuals are entitled to adopt
conflicting values. The former of these additional premises does not follow straightfor-
wardly from pluralism; the latter may be negatively supported by pluralism, in that
individuals might not be entitled to give different answers to questions involving con-
flicts between values if they were compelled (by reason, or morality) to accept one value
over the other. However, Berlin seems to have been tacitly committed to more than this
to a positive view about individuals claims to make decisions about how to live their
lives for themselves.
37. Cf. the broadly similar argument advanced by Michael Walzer (1995) Are there Limits
to Liberalism?, New York Review of Books 42: 16 (19 Oct.): 2831. William Galston
(2002) Liberal Pluralism, pp. 612. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For criti-
cism of this line of argument see George Crowder (2002) Liberalism and Value Pluralism,
pp. 910, 1867. London: Continuum. Berlin and Williams also point towards this
general approach to the problem of the relationship between pluralism and political
theory in (n. 35), p. 309. For a perceptive analysis of monisms relationship to illiber-
alism and a case for why, even where monism does not lead to illiberalism, it should
Cherniss 21
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
still be eschewed see Jonathan Allen (2009) Whats the Matter with Monism?, Critical
Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 12(3): 46989.
38. This point is the nub of the argument that has been vigorously advanced by John Gray:
see e.g. (1996) Isaiah Berlin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
39. We may note that in such cases we are dealing not only with a conflict between collective
security and individual liberties and rights, but also between individual rights and indi-
vidual security, since individuals are the potential victims of e.g. terrorist attacks. At the
same time, the case for rights can also be expressed in terms of individual security (in this
case, against coercive and unlawful governmental or collective force). Thus the conflict
is not simply between two different values, but within values (or between different
actualizations of the same value).
40. On this point, see Two Concepts and Introduction (2002, in n. 10), pp. 21317, 424,
as well as the contributions by Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel and Charles Taylor in
Dworkin et al. (n. 10), pp. 91121.
41. Ryan does, however, perhaps amplify some of Berlins moments of unkindness or bad
judgement by leaving out the qualifications with which Berlin regularly rimmed his
judgements: thus his full comment on Strawsons classic work Individuals is: Have
you read Strawsons book? Is it any good? Would I be able to tell? It looks to me a
decent, but ultimately provincial, performance. That is my view of him in general but I
am told that I am deeply mistaken and that I might have thought the same about Kant.
(To Morton White, 6 Feb. 1959 (n. 11), p. 676.) But Berlin had judged Strawsons earlier
articles minor masterpieces (to White, Nov. 1950, ibid. p. 202).
42. Rawlss own interest in the theoretical foundations of liberalism had been fertilized by a
seminar given by Berlin and Stuart Hampshire in Oxford. See Thomas Pogge (2007)
John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, p. 16. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
43. See G. A. Cohen (1991) Isaiahs Marx, and Mine, in Edna Ullmann-Margalit and
Avishai Margalit (eds) Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration, pp. 11026. London: Hogarth Press.
44. Berlin himself noted that when I really have something that I want to say it can only
occur in the Russian context (to Anna Kallin, 17 Nov. 1970); and declared that every-
thing he believed really spring[s] from the heart of the Russian intelligentsia (Berlin to
Nicolas Nabokov, 25 June 1970).
45. See e.g. The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia (2008, in n. 23), pp. 144, 1467, 149;
Artistic Commitment: A Russian Legacy (1996, in n. 10), pp. 194231 passim.
46. As Berlin remarked, The dilemma of means and ends is the deepest and most agonising
problem that tormented both the Russian radicals of the 19th century, and the revo-
lutionary movements of our day [1960]. Russian Populism (2008, in n. 23), p. 254.
47. See Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty (2008, in n. 23), p. 108; Vissarion
Belinsky, ibid. pp. 192, 195, 196; Tolstoy and Enlightenment, ibid. p. 292. The
phrase free human personality appears in Berlins translation of an address by the
Russian poet Alexander Blok: (1931) The Collapse of Humanism, Oxford Outlook
11(55): 89112.
48. (2008, in n. 23), p. 296.
49. The lecture was delivered on 21 Nov. 1959.
50. European Unity and its Vicissitudes, in Berlin (n. 24), pp. 201, 202.
51. Ibid. p. 200. Berlin also recognized, however, that insistence on heroism, on scaling the
heights of human excellence, could promote a destructive, sinister approach to politics.
See ibid. pp. 1935, 196; (2002) Freedom and its Betrayal, ed. Henry Hardy, pp. 70, 93.
London: Chatto & Windus. (2006, in n. 23), pp. 1778, 1889, 2027, 232. The
Apotheosis of the Romantic Will (n. 24), pp. 2301, 237. See also Berlins comment
22 European Journal of Political Theory 12(1)
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from
that strong personalities . . . can extinguish liberty, both their own and other peoples,
while weak personalities can do their best to preserve it. Berlin and Beata Polanowska-
Sygulska (2006) Unfinished Dialogue, p. 203. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
52. Berlin (n. 24), p. 199.
53. Ibid. p. 199. Cf. Berlin (n. 7), pp. 168, 229; My Intellectual Path (n. 8), pp. 911. As
time went on, Berlin sought to bolster this element of his pluralism against charges of
relativism, by insisting on the objectivity of values (see e.g. The Pursuit of the Ideal
and Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth Century European Thought, in (n. 24), pp. 119,
7090; (n. 7), p. 198, n. 1). But what he meant by holding values to be objective is
somewhat obscure. On what is probably Berlins clearest statement of his position,
values are objective in that
. . . their nature, the pursuit of them, is part of what it is to be a human being,
and this is an objective given. The fact that men are men and women are
women and not dogs or cats or tables or chairs is an objective fact; and part of
this objective fact is that there are certain values, and only those values, which
men, while remaining men, can pursue . . . the multiple values [posited by plur-
alism] are objective, part of the essence of humanity rather than arbitrary
creations of mens subjective fancies.
(n. 8), p. 12. The last sentence, reiterating the objectivity of values, was drafted by
Henry Hardy, but approved by Berlin. Values may be said to be objective, then, in two
senses: that 1) human beings recognize the force of certain values is simply an objective
fact about human beings; and 2) once we recognize the facts about the nature of human
beings our common humanity, our nature as free, thinking, vulnerable and striving
beings the recognition of the importance of certain values follows. For more on the
issue of what Berlin might (or should) have meant in describing values as objective, see
George Crowder (2004) Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism. Cambridge: Polity.
Crowder and Henry Hardy, Berlins Universal Values Core or Horizon? (n. 10),
pp. 2937.
54. Berlin (n. 24), p. 203.
55. Ibid. pp. 203, 204.
56. Ibid. p. 205.
Cherniss 23
at U DE G (CUCSH) on October 5, 2014 ept.sagepub.com Downloaded from