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Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty
 
 
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Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (Paperback)

by Isaiah Berlin (Author), Henry Hardy (Editor) "THE SIX THINKERS whose ideas I propose to examine were prominent just before and just after the French Revolution ..." (more)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Pimlico; New edition edition (6 Feb 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 071266842X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0712668422
  • Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 15 x 1.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 157,641 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

Berlin sets out to inform, entertain, and defend the Anglo-Saxon concepts of liberty and pluralism against all comers. . . . The language is vivid, direct, playful, learned; the presentation ordered and concise. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Product Description

Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative anti-liberal thinkers were delivered on the BBC's Third Programme in 1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years on. Freedom and its Betrayal is one of Isaiah Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and the history of ideas, views which later found expression in such famous works as 'Two Concepts of Liberty', and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. In his lucid examinations of sometimes difficult ideas Berlin demonstrates that a balanced understanding and a resilient defence of human liberty depend on learning both from the errors of freedom's alleged defenders and from the dark insights of its avowed antagonists. This book throws light on the early development of Berlin's ideas, and supplements his already published writings with fuller treatments of Helvetius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel and Saint-Simon, with the ultra-conservative traditionalist Maistre bringing up the rear. Freedom and its Betrayal shows Berlin at his liveliest and most torrentially spontaneous, testifying to his talents as a teacher of rare brilliance and impact. Listeners tuned in expectantly each week to the broadcasts and found themselves mesmerised by Berlin's astonishingly fluent extempore style. A leading historian of ideas, who was then a schoolboy, records that the lectures 'excited me so much that I sat, for every talk, on the floor beside the wireless, taking notes'. This excitement is at last recreated here for all to share.
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THE SIX THINKERS whose ideas I propose to examine were prominent just before and just after the French Revolution. Read the first page
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars What's The Big Idea?, 29 Dec 2003
This review is from: Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (Hardcover)
Berlin call himself an historian of ideas, rather than a philosopher. Nevertheless, his way of reporting history throws its own light on these ideas, drawing out the ironies and ambiguities of their evolution.

In Six Enemies of Liberty, he examines in loving detail, the peculiarities of the times and the thinking of six key personalities who decisively influenced our ideas of freedom and repression, duty and justice, of our rights and our obligations.

Berlin has the wonderful art of making general trends in thought explicit, where these attitudes often were, or often are, the implicit assumptions of those who owned them. He then contrasts them with conflicting attitudes which seemed equally obvious to other people in other circumstances. This draws out the full novelty of the concepts in discussion.

Some of the thinkers (Rouseau, Kant..) are familiar to most students of philosophy or history, but we tend to think of them only as bit part players who lent key aspects of our current sense of liberty. Their inclusion in a list of 'traitors' is enough to raise an eybrow, but the book argues carefully and convincingly, that however well intended these men were, their attitudes to freedom then were finaly the opposite of what the West in the 21st century would usually regard as valuable.

As an historian, Berlin always frames their ideas in the context of the going debate of their time, bringing out the full passion of their declarations and protests. He also always manages to produce a couple of names that lie off the beaten track - De Maistre was particularly new and interesting for me - to make the whole experience richer and more entertaining.

A peculiar magic that Berlin invokes, is to show either how easily men could justify attitudes to freedom which nowadays would be found cruel and outrageous, or on the other side of the coin, how ideas which sound very credible at first, led men to conclusions which seem the very opposite of what their creators declared themselves to be fighting for.

As ever, Berlin's immense scholarship, and persuasive eloquence serve to warn us precisely against too much scholarship and eloquence. The big idea is that the almost the last thing the world needs is any more big ideas.

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Effortless Insight, 21 Sep 2003
This review is from: Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (Hardcover)
The book contains six essays orignally given as radio lectures, and the direct and straightforward way difficult ideas on philosophy are communicated shines through the beautifully flowing prose. The writing is elegant, immediate and almost casually deep. An excellent introduction to philosophy around the Enlightenment, and a wonderful display of a lively mind at work.
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