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Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford Paperbacks)
 
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Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford Paperbacks) (Paperback)

by Isaiah Berlin (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 286 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks (1 Jun 1969)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0192810340
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192810342
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13.2 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 230,476 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #98 in  Books > History > Essays, Journals, Letters & True Accounts > 20th Century

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Product Description

Product Description

The four essays are `Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century'; `Historical Inevitability', which the Economist described as `a magnificent assertion of the reality of human freedom, of the role of free choice in history'; `Two Concepts of Liberty', a ringing manifesto for pluralism and individual freedom; and `John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life'. There is also a long and masterly introduction written specially for this collection, in which the author replies to his critics. This book is intended for students from undergraduate level upwards studying philosopohy, history, politics. Admirers of Isaiah Berlin's writings.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Freedom of the wolves has often meant death of the sheep, 2 Dec 2006
By Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Liberty is a very precious and rare quality of a living condition.
As I. Berlin states, `The periods and societies in which civil liberties were respected, and variety of opinion and faith tolerated, have been very few and far between, oases in the desert of human uniformity, intolerance and oppression.'

I. Berlin explains clearly that liberty has two faces: a positive and a negative one.
Positive liberty is the answer to the question: who controls? Am I my own master?
Negative liberty circumscribes the area wherein a third person can prevent anybody to make a free choice.
On these bases, a free society can be organized, with 1) absolute rights (not absolute powers) and 2) frontiers, defined in terms of rules, within which men should be inviolable.
For the author, freedom is not an end, but a means to create `room for personal ends', for happiness. He rightly criticizes E. Fromm: freedom is the opportunity to act, not action itself.

Philosophically, freedom has been ferociously contested by the determinists, the defenders of `historical inevitability' (Hegel, Marx, Bacon, Fourier, Comte). The author remarks judiciously that if the world is ruled by determinism, nobody is responsible: there is no free will, no morality, and no justice. Individual choice is an illusion. Determinism represents the world as a prison.
A more brutal kind of determinism is presented by those who believe that there is a final answer, a unique goal, a central principle that governs our life. This principle and its executioners provoked barbarous consequences.

Isaiah Berlin's reflections on liberty are profound and still very actual.
Not to be missed.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The nub of Berlin's Thinking, 7 Jun 2001
The four essays included in this book really get to the nub of Berlin's thinking in a way that is more difficult in his other more intellectual history based writing. His polemic Two Concepts of Liberty is in here which is one of the best contemporary examinations of the ever elusive concept of freedom. The other three essays included can sometimes waffle on points which seem superfluous, yet their themes always return to an examination of freedom. Read this if you want to understand what Berlin really thought, and if you want to understand contemporary political debates about freedom.
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