Isaiah Berlin: Biography, Quotes, Two Concepts of Liberty, Hedgehog (1998)

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Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Latvian-British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas, widely considered to be the dominant British scholar of his generation. He excelled as an essayist, conversationalist and raconteur, and was a brilliant lecturer who spontaneously improvised richly allusive and coherently structured material. In its obituary of the scholar, the Independent stated that "Isaiah Berlin was often described, especially in his old age, by means of superlatives: the world's greatest talker, the century's most inspired reader, one of the finest minds of our time... there is no doubt that he showed in more than one direction the unexpectedly large possibilities open to us at the top end of the range of human potential." In 1932, at the age of 23, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. He translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English and, during the war, worked for the British Diplomatic Service. From 1957 to 1967 he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he played a crucial role in founding Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. Berlin was appointed a CBE in 1946, knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. An annual Isaiah Berlin Lecture is held at the Hampstead Synagogue, at Wolfson College, Oxford and at the British Academy. Berlin's work on liberal theory and on value pluralism has had a lasting influence. Apart from earlier editions of Karl Marx and The Hedgehog and the Fox, and Unfinished Dialogue, all publications listed from 1978 onwards are edited by Henry Hardy, and all but Karl Marx are compilations or transcripts of lectures, essays, and letters. Details given are of first and latest UK editions. Most titles are also available as e-books. The 11 titles marked with a '+' are available in the US market in revised editions from Princeton University Press, with additional material by Berlin, and (except in the case of Karl Marx) new forewords by contemporary authors; the new edition of Karl Marx is also available in the UK. +Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, Thornton Butterworth, 1939. 5th ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15650-7. The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New American Library, 1956. Out of print. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Chatto and Windus, 1976. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment. +The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953. 2nd ed., 2014, Phoenix. ISBN 978-1-7802-2843-3. (2nd US ed., Princeton University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4008-4663-4.) Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, 1969. Superseded by Liberty. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Chatto and Windus, 1976. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment. Russian Thinkers (co-edited with Aileen Kelly), Hogarth Press, 1978. 2nd ed. (revised by Henry Hardy), Penguin, 2008. ISBN 978-0-14-144220-4. +Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Hogarth Press, 1978. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6552-0. +Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Hogarth Press, 1979. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6690-9. +Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1980. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 1998. 978-0-7126-6601-5. +The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, John Murray, 1990. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 2013. ISBN 978-1-8459-5208-2. The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, John Murray, 1993. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment. The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, Chatto & Windus, 1996. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-7367-9. The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (co-edited with Roger Hausheer) [a one-volume selection from the whole of Berlin's work], Chatto & Windus, 1997. 2nd ed., Vintage, 2013. ISBN 978-0-0995-8276-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin