Berlin and the emergence of liberal pluralism

Abstract

Isaiah Berlin stands in the tradition of Erasmus: he is independent, satiric, penetrating. In this century no one has picked his way more surefootedly, or with a more devastatingly effective armoury of intellect, learning, worldly experience and gently mocking wit and humour (which on rare occasions can grow withering and mordant), through the vast oppressive forests of opposing ideologies and orthodoxies, in which individuals wander and are crushed. But to pin him down and categorize him is impossible: you cannot portray Proteus. To offer a comprehensive account of his work in the space of some thirty pages is like seeking to combine the dual impossibility of writing a brief book on the universe - so vast and various is the expanse to be surveyed; and producing a précis of a list of proper names - so sharp, specific and unique are the figures and movements he describes. It is, indeed, to borrow the words used by T.S. Eliot in another context, ‘a subject to demand all the learning, profundity and torrential eloquence of..... Isaiah Berlin’ himself. He combines the weighty scholarship of an Acton with the destructive mockery of a Lucian; the incomparable powers of empathy of his hero Herder with the analytic acuteness of the no less respected Russell; and never once has he forfeited the priceless gift of absolute independence. He has never come down one- sidedly in favour of any single party, movement, organization, political creed or philosophy. Always he has sought, and expounded with enthusiasm, what seems to him both true and life-enhancing, and exploded whatever was sinister and oppressive. There is not the faintest trace of the partisan or the dogmatic in his writinġs.