Isaiah Berlin

) in Riga, engraved in Latvian, English, and Hebrew with the tribute "The British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin lived in this house 1909–1915" in Saint Petersburg, where Berlin lived as a child during the Russian Revolutions Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga (present-day Latvia) on 6 June 1909 into a wealthy Jewish family, the only son of Mendel Berlin, a timber trader (and a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman, founder of Chabad Hasidism), and his wife Marie (). His family owned a timber company, one of the largest in the Baltics, as well as forests in Russia, was also fluent in Yiddish and Latvian. Isaiah Berlin spent his first six years in Riga, and later lived in Andreapol (a small timber town near Pskov, effectively owned by the family business), and then in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). In Petrograd, the family lived first on Vasilevsky Island and then on Angliiskii Prospekt on the mainland. On Angliiskii Prospekt, they shared their building with other tenants, including an assistant Minister of Finnish affairs named Ivanov, Princess Emeretinsky, and the composer Maximilian Steinberg with his wife Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, the daughter of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. With the onset of the October Revolution of 1917, the fortunes of the building's tenants were rapidly reversed, with both Princess Emeretinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter soon being made to stoke the building's stoves and sweep the yards. Berlin witnessed the February and October Revolutions both from his apartment windows and from walks in the city with his governess, where he recalled the crowds of protesters marching on the Winter Palace Square. One particular childhood memory of the February Revolution marked his lifelong opposition to violence, with Berlin saying: blue plaque at 33 Upper Addison Gardens, Holland Park, London Feeling increasingly oppressed by life under Bolshevik rule, which identified the family as bourgeoisie, the family left Petrograd, on 5 October 1920, for Riga, but encounters with antisemitism and difficulties with the Latvian authorities convinced them to leave, and they moved to Britain in early 1921 (Mendel in January, Isaiah and Marie at the beginning of February), when Berlin was 11. In London the family first stayed in Surbiton where he was sent to Arundel House for preparatory school, then within the year they bought a house in Kensington and six years later in Hampstead. Berlin's native language was Russian, and his English was virtually nonexistent at first, but he reached proficiency in English within a year at around the age of 12. In addition to Russian and English, Berlin was fluent in French, German, and Italian, and he knew Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek. Despite his fluency in English, however, in later life Berlin's Oxford English accent would sound increasingly Russian in its vowel sounds. Whenever he was described as an English philosopher, Berlin always insisted that he was not an English philosopher, but would forever be a Russian Jew: "I am a Russian Jew from Riga, and all my years in England cannot change this. I love England, I have been well treated here, and I cherish many things about English life, but I am a Russian Jew; that is how I was born and that is who I will be to the end of my life." == Education ==

Berlin was educated at St Paul's School in London. According to Michael Bonavia, a British author (and son of Ferruccio Bonavia) who was at school with him, he After leaving St Paul's, Berlin applied to Balliol College, Oxford, but was denied admission after a chaotic interview. Berlin decided to apply again, only to a different college: Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Berlin was admitted and commenced his literae humaniores degree. He graduated in 1928, taking first-class honours in his final examinations and winning the John Locke Prize for his performance in the philosophy papers, in which he outscored A. J. Ayer. He subsequently took another degree at Oxford in philosophy, politics and economics, again taking first-class honours after less than a year on the course. He was appointed a tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford, and soon afterwards was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, the first unconverted Jew to achieve this fellowship at All Souls. While still a student, he befriended Ayer (with whom he was to share a lifelong amicable rivalry), Stuart Hampshire, Richard Wollheim, Maurice Bowra, Roy Beddington, Stephen Spender, Inez Pearn, J. L. Austin and Nicolas Nabokov. In 1940 he presented a philosophical paper on other minds to a meeting attended by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge University. Wittgenstein rejected the argument of his paper in discussion but praised Berlin for his intellectual honesty and integrity. Berlin was to remain at Oxford for the rest of his life, apart from a period working for British Information Services (BIS) in New York City from 1940 to 1942 and for the British embassies in Washington, D.C., and Moscow from then until 1946. Before crossing the Atlantic in 1940, Berlin took rest in Portugal for a few days. He stayed in Estoril, at the Hotel Palácio, between 19 and 24 October 1940. Prior to this service, however, Berlin was barred from participation in the British war effort as a result of his being born in Latvia, and because his left arm had been damaged at birth. In April 1943 he wrote a confidential analysis of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Foreign Office; he described Senator Arthur Capper from Kansas as "a solid, stolid, 78-year-old reactionary from the corn belt, who is the very voice of Mid-Western "grass root" isolationism." For his services, he was appointed a CBE in the 1946 New Year Honours. Meetings with Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad in November 1945 and January 1946 had a powerful effect on both of them, and serious repercussions for Akhmatova (who immortalised the meetings in her poetry). == Personal life ==

In 1956 Berlin married Aline Elisabeth Yvonne Halban, de Gunzbourg (1915–2014), the former wife of the nuclear physicist Hans von Halban, and a former winner of the ladies' golf championship of France. She was from an exiled half Russian-aristocratic and half ennobled-Jewish banking and petroleum family (her mother was Yvonne Deutsch de la Meurthe and her grandfather was Emile Deutsch de la Meurthe, brother of Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe) based in Paris. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959, He was instrumental in the founding, in 1966, of a new graduate college at Oxford University: Wolfson College. The college was founded to be a centre of academic excellence which, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, would also be based on a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos. Berlin was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. As later revealed, when he was asked to evaluate the academic credentials of Isaac Deutscher, Isaiah Berlin argued against a promotion, because of the profoundly pro-communist militancy of the candidate. Berlin died in Oxford on 5 November 1997, aged 88. He is buried there in Wolvercote Cemetery. On his death, the obituarist of The Independent wrote: "he was a man of formidable intellectual power with a rare gift for understanding a wide range of human motives, hopes and fears, and a prodigiously energetic capacity for enjoyment – of life, of people in all their variety, of their ideas and idiosyncrasies, of literature, of music, of art". The same publication reported: "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." The front page of The New York Times concluded: "His was an exuberant life crowded with joys – the joy of thought, the joy of music, the joy of good friends. ... The theme that runs throughout his work is his concern with liberty and the dignity of human beings ... Sir Isaiah radiated well-being." Berlin's nephew is Efraim Halevy (), Israeli intelligence expert and diplomat, advisor to Ariel Sharon, 9th director of the Mossad and the 3rd head of the Israeli National Security Council. ==Thought==

Lecturing and composition Berlin did not enjoy writing, and his published work (including both his essays and books) was produced through dictation to a tape-recorder, or by the transcription of his improvised lectures and talks from recorded tapes. The work of transcribing his spoken word often placed a strain on his secretaries. This reliance on dictation extended to his letters, which were recorded on a Grundig tape recorder. He would often dictate these letters while simultaneously conversing with friends, and his secretary would then transcribe them. At times, the secretary would inadvertently include the author's jokes and laughter in the transcribed text. The lecture, later published as an essay, reintroduced the study of political philosophy to the methods of analytic philosophy. Berlin defined "negative liberty" as absence of coercion or interference in private actions by an external political body, which Berlin derived from the Hobbesian definition of liberty. "Positive liberty", Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do. Berlin contended that modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. This rationalist conflation was open to political abuses, which encroached on negative liberty, when such interpretations of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, paternalism, social engineering, historicism, and collective rational control over human destiny. Counter-Enlightenment Berlin's lectures on the Enlightenment and its critics (especially Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, Joseph de Maistre and Johann Georg Hamann, to whose views Berlin referred as the Counter-Enlightenment) contributed to his advocacy of an irreducibly pluralist ethical ontology. Positive liberty Berlin promoted the notion of "positive liberty" in the sense of an intrinsic link between positive freedom and participatory, Athenian-style democracy. There is a contrast with "negative liberty." Liberals in the English-speaking tradition call for negative liberty, meaning a realm of private autonomy from which the state is legally excluded. In contrast French liberals ever since the French Revolution more often promote "positive liberty"that is, liberty insofar as it is tethered to collectively defined ends. They praise the state as an essential tool to emancipate the people. Other work Berlin's lecture "Historical Inevitability" (1954) focused on a controversy in the philosophy of history. Given the choice, whether one believes that "the lives of entire peoples and societies have been decisively influenced by exceptional individuals" or, conversely, that whatever happens occurs as a result of impersonal forces oblivious to human intentions, Berlin rejected both options and the choice itself as nonsensical. Berlin is also well known for his writings on Russian intellectual history, most of which are collected in Russian Thinkers (1978; 2nd ed. 2008) and edited, as most of Berlin's work, by Henry Hardy (in the case of this volume, jointly with Aileen Kelly). Berlin also contributed a number of essays on leading intellectuals and political figures of his time, including Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Chaim Weizmann. Eighteen of these character sketches were published together as Personal Impressions (1980; 2nd ed., with four additional essays, 1998; 3rd ed., with a further ten essays, 2014). ==Commemoration==

A number of commemorative events for Isaiah Berlin are held at Oxford University, as well as scholarships given out in his name, including the Wolfson Isaiah Berlin Clarendon Scholarship, The Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship, and the annual Isaiah Berlin Lectures. The Berlin Quadrangle of Wolfson College, Oxford, is named after him. The Isaiah Berlin Association of Latvia was founded in 2011 to promote the ideas and values of Sir Isaiah Berlin, in particular by organising an annual Isaiah Berlin day and lectures in his memory. At the British Academy, the Isaiah Berlin lecture series has been held since 2001. Many volumes from Berlin's personal library were donated to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and form part of the Aranne Library collection. The Isaiah Berlin Room, on the third floor of the library, is a replica of his study at the University of Oxford. There is also the Isaiah Berlin Society which takes place at his alma mater of St Paul's School. The society invites world famous academics to share their research into the answers to life's great concerns and to respond to students' questions. In the last few years they have hosted: A.C. Grayling, Brad Hooker, Jonathan Dancy, John Cottingham, Tim Crane, Arif Ahmed, Hugh Mellor and David Papineau. ==Published works==

Apart from Unfinished Dialogue, all books/editions listed from 1978 onwards are edited (or, where stated, co-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, and current US editions. Most titles are also available as e-books. The twelve 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 5th edition of Karl Marx is also available in the UK. • +Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, Thornton Butterworth, 1939. 5th ed., Karl Marx, 2013, Princeton University Press. . • The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New American Library, 1956. Out of print. Second edition (2017) available online only. • +''The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953. 2nd ed., 2014, Phoenix. . 2nd US ed., Princeton University Press, 2013. . • 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 (edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly), Hogarth Press, 1978. 2nd ed. (revised by Henry Hardy), Penguin, 2008. . • +Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Hogarth Press, 1978. Pimlico. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. . • +Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Hogarth Press, 1979. Pimlico. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. • +Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1980. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 1998. . 3rd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. . • +The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, John Murray, 1990. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 2013. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. . • 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. . 2nd ed., 2019, Princeton University Press. . • The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer) [a one-volume selection from the whole of Berlin's work], Chatto & Windus, 1997. 2nd ed., Vintage, 2013. . • +The Roots of Romanticism (lectures delivered in 1965), Chatto & Windus, 1999. [imlico. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. . • +Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, Pimlico, 2000. 2nd ed., 2013. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. . • +The Power of Ideas, Chatto & Windus, 2000. Pimlico. . 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. . • +Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (lectures delivered in 1952), Chatto & Windus, 2002. Pimlico. . 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. . • Liberty [revised and expanded edition of Four Essays on Liberty], Oxford University Press, 2002. . • The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Brookings Institution Press, 2004. . 2nd ed., Brookings Classics, 2016. . • +Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (1952), Chatto & Windus, 2006. . Pimlico, . 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. . • (with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) Unfinished Dialogue, Prometheus, 2006. . Letters • Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946 (edited by Henry Hardy), Chatto & Windus, 2004. . Pimlico, . • Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960 (edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes), Chatto & Windus, 2009. . Pimlico, . • Building: Letters 1960–1975 (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, 2013. . • Affirming: Letters 1975–1997 (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, 2015. . ==See also==