Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought - Softcover

Berlin, Isaiah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069112695X ISBN 13: 9780691126951

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2008

Synopsis

It is sometimes thought that the renowned essayist Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was incapable of writing a big book. But in fact he developed some of his most important essays--including "Two Concepts of Liberty" and "Historical Inevitability"--from a book-length manuscript that he intended to publish but later set aside. Published here for the first time, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the history of ideas in the period that he made his own--the Romantic age. Distilling his formative early work in the history of ideas, the book also contains much that is not found elsewhere in his writings. The last of Berlin's posthumous books, it is of great interest both for his treatment of the subject and for what it reveals about his intellectual development.


Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of the Romantic age are still largely our own--down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Vividly expounding the central political ideas of leading European thinkers in the period 1760-1830, including Helvetius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, the book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style.


The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work.

About this title

About the Author

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University. His books include Karl Marx, Liberty, and, from Princeton, Against the Current, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, and Freedom and Its Betrayal. Henry Hardy, one of Berlin's literary trustees and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University, has edited many of Berlin's books. Joshua L. Cherniss is completing a doctorate at Oxford University on Berlin's political thought.

From the Back Cover

"Political Ideas in the Romantic Age makes an intriguing and provocative contribution to the history of ideas, and also to the study of Berlin's own thought. The ideas Berlin examines are intrinsically interesting and hugely influential. The book integrates Berlin's analysis of liberty with his reading of the debate between the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment to an extent not found in his other works. And the editing is as meticulous as anything done by Henry Hardy, who is the best possible editor of any text by Berlin."--George Crowder, Flinders University, Australia, author ofIsaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 069112695X
• ISBN 13: 9780691126951
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Hardy Henry