Political ideas in the romantic age : their rise and influence on modern thought

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Political ideas in the romantic age : their rise and influence on modern thought

Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy ; with an introduction by Joshua L. Cherniss

Princeton University Press, 2006

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. lv-lx) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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, this 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, this book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style. This 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.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Conventions viii Editor's Preface ix Isaiah Berlin's Political Ideas: From the Twentieth Century to the Romantic Age Joshua L. Cherniss xxi Political Ideas in the Romantic Age Prologue 1 Chapter 1: Politics as a Descriptive Science 17 Chapter 2: The Idea of Freedom 88 Chapter 3: Two Concepts of Freedom: Romantic and Liberal 155 Chapter 4: The March of History 208 Appendix: Subjective versus Objective Ethics 260 Summaries of the Flexner Lectures 266 Note from the Editor to the Author 279 Index 285

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Details

  • NCID
    BA77255915
  • ISBN
    • 9780691126876
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Princeton, N.J.
  • Pages/Volumes
    lx, 292 p.
  • Size
    24 cm
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