Isaiah Berlin; The Journey of a Jewish Liberal
New York, N.Y. Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. 2012. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xiv, 316, [2] pages. Includes Acknowledgments, and Abbreviations and Archives. Also includes Introduction: Explaining the Liberal Predicament. Includes Part I: The Importance of Being Witty; Part II: The Pink Liberal; and Part III: The Anticosmopolitan Pluralist. Also includes Notes, Bibliography, and an Index, as well as 9 black and white illustrations. This is one of the Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. This study offers an intellectual biography of the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas Sir Isaiah Berlin. It aims to provide the first historically contextualized monographic study of Berlin's formative years and identify different stages in his intellectual development, allowing a reappraisal of his theory of liberalism. This groundbreaking intellectual biography offers a fresh reappraisal of the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, from his childhood to the apex of his career as a scholar and public figure. Applying a "double perspective" that examines Berlin both as an East European Jewish Emigre as well as a British Liberal Intellectual, Arie M. Dubnov illuminates the powerful tensions that defined Berlin's work, stressing the very ambivalent relation between his liberal philosophy and his Zionism. Powerfully relevant to the intellectual and political crises of today, this is a long overdue reassessment of one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century thought. More