This collection of Isaiah Berlin's writings* focuses on his views regarding pluralism, which he repeatedly distinguishes from relativism, and nationalism, which he differentiates from national consciousness.
I was especially intrigued by Berlin's point about how our values change over time. For example, we admire a person who remains true to his or her principles, even if we think those principles are wrong. People in the Middle Ages or earlier would find this admiration almost inconceivable: dedication to the truth is the only virtue. Valuing fidelity to one's own ideas only makes sense in the context of a Romantic worldview, where personal expression is a key value.
The central essay, the longest in the book, is about a thinker I never knew previously: the arch-conservative Catholic Joseph de Maistre, from the early 19th century. Maistre believed that all of the most important things in life are the irrational parts shrouded in darkness, and that therefore men needed to avoid applying reason and just submit to their betters, who received direction from the Church and God. Berlin cites Bertrand Russell as saying that "truly to understand the central doctrines of an original thinker, it is necessary...to grasp the particular vision of the universe which lies at the heart of his thought." Berlin does an excellent job of that for Maistre, so that I can apply pluralism and understand (while condemning) his values and worldview.
Reading The Crooked Timber of Humanity reminded me of reading Hilary Putnam's Mind, Language, and Reality, which was similarly a collection of papers that overlap to a great extent, providing multiple opportunities to hear his arguments and see how they apply in different contexts. Berlin's approach and prose reminded me of William James': they both have a warm conversational style that lacks the rigor of most professional philosophers, and they both offer optimistic views about the possibility of people living together in harmony.
* Apparently, Berlin didn't really "write" most of his work. Instead, he dictated it or had it transcribed from his lectures. This fact goes a long way toward explaining his conversational tone and lack of footnotes, and makes his complex sentence structure more impressive.
'I prefer coffee, you prefer champagne. We have different tastes. There is no more to be said.' That is relativism. ... Pluralism [is] the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and deriving light from each other, as we derive it from reading Plato or the novels of medieval Japan - worlds, outlooks, very different from our own. ... We are free to criticise the values of other cultures, to condemn them, but we cannot pretend not to understand them at all, or to regard them simply as subjective...
National consciousness I regard as a normal human feeling, which is not at all to be condemned, which creates solidarity, loyalty, patriotism and other feelings which unite human beings. ... Nationalism [is] the condition where members of the nation regard themselves as superior to others, and entitled to dominate them as being selected by God or by Providence to play a special role in the development of mankind...Berlin's key point, repeated in several pieces, is that up to the time of the Enlightenment, people believed in an immutable human nature and a single set of universal values; in principle we could discover them and design a way to live that conformed to them. The past two centuries have shown that the universal set includes contradictory values, making it impossible to avoid moral conflict.
I was especially intrigued by Berlin's point about how our values change over time. For example, we admire a person who remains true to his or her principles, even if we think those principles are wrong. People in the Middle Ages or earlier would find this admiration almost inconceivable: dedication to the truth is the only virtue. Valuing fidelity to one's own ideas only makes sense in the context of a Romantic worldview, where personal expression is a key value.
The central essay, the longest in the book, is about a thinker I never knew previously: the arch-conservative Catholic Joseph de Maistre, from the early 19th century. Maistre believed that all of the most important things in life are the irrational parts shrouded in darkness, and that therefore men needed to avoid applying reason and just submit to their betters, who received direction from the Church and God. Berlin cites Bertrand Russell as saying that "truly to understand the central doctrines of an original thinker, it is necessary...to grasp the particular vision of the universe which lies at the heart of his thought." Berlin does an excellent job of that for Maistre, so that I can apply pluralism and understand (while condemning) his values and worldview.
Reading The Crooked Timber of Humanity reminded me of reading Hilary Putnam's Mind, Language, and Reality, which was similarly a collection of papers that overlap to a great extent, providing multiple opportunities to hear his arguments and see how they apply in different contexts. Berlin's approach and prose reminded me of William James': they both have a warm conversational style that lacks the rigor of most professional philosophers, and they both offer optimistic views about the possibility of people living together in harmony.
* Apparently, Berlin didn't really "write" most of his work. Instead, he dictated it or had it transcribed from his lectures. This fact goes a long way toward explaining his conversational tone and lack of footnotes, and makes his complex sentence structure more impressive.
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