Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin became one of our century’s
most important political theorists
for liberty and liberalism in an age of
totalitarianism. He was born in Riga,
Latvia in 1909 into a well to do
Jewish family. At the age of 12 he moved to
Petrograd and experienced
first hand the Bolshevik revolution, which would later
influence his
intellectual ideas about totalitarianism (Gray 3). In 1921 his
family moved
to London and sent Isaiah to school. His schooling lead him to
Oxford
where he took a position as philosophy professor in 1931. His
English
schooling led him to become a disciple of classical liberalism in the
English
tradition of Mill, Locke, and others (Berger). During World War II
the British
put him to work in their Foreign Service department where he
became a favorite
advisor of Churchill (Honderich 92). After the war his
major political theory
was developed as he moved into political philosophy
and history as his areas of
emphasis. His most famous and important works, a
lecture, "Two Concepts on
Liberty", and an essay, "The Hedgehog and the
Fox" where produced in the
1950’s. Knighted in 1957 and he became the
first Jewish fellow at Oxford’s
All Souls College and chair of social and
political theory at Oxford. After that
he later became president of the newly
created Wolfson College and then
President of the British Academy
(Honderich 92). After his death in 1997
historian Arthur Schlesinger stated
that he is one of the finest liberal
thinkers and political theorists of the
twentieth century (Schlesinger 1).
Isaiah Berlin is unique among
intellectuals in the fact the he didn’t produce
a magnum opus during his
life. He stated, "that he had no desire to sit in
front of a desk with a
blank piece of paper," and didn’t care about it
influencing his academic
legacy (Berger). Most of his works came in the form of
essay’s and lectures,
as his two most famous are, "The Hedgehog and the
Fox" and "Two Concepts
of Liberty." He wrote few actual books and had most
of his work collected and
published by Henry Hardy, once of his graduate
students (Gray 4). He never
tried to advocate a certain political philosophy and
was actually quite
against any "right" political philosophy. Through his
essays and lectures he
made critiques on the current systems and made
observations on liberty,
nationalism, and socialism. A strict stand against
totalitarianism is one of
the concepts that can be seen throughout much of
Berlin’s work. His
strong liberal views clashed with totalitarianism in age
where it dominated.
Much of his distaste also came from his own personal
experience with
communism and fascism. He lived during the Russian Revolution
and saw first
hand its effect on the Russian people. "I was never
pro-communist.
Never...anyone who had, like me, seen the Russian revolution at
work was not
likely to be tempted (Houston Chronicle News Service)." He
detested fascism
but not as vocally as communism since most of it had been
eradicated during
World War II. Berlin had relatives during World War II left in
Riga who
where killed both by Nazi and Soviet Communist forces (Gray 3). This
fact no
doubt further heightened his contempt for both systems. An essay in
1953
entitled the "Hedgehog and the Fox" became one of his most popular works
in
the United States. Taking its name from a line by the Greek poet
Archilochus, it
was one part literary criticism on War and Peace and an
attack on the
inevitability of history (Greenburg). Initially published under
the title "Leo
Tolstoy’s Historical Sceptiscism" he changed it to the,
which according to
British Publisher George Weidenfeld did more for his
reputation than any other (Greenburg).
Berlin asserted that individual’s
act freely in history and has a choice in
their destiny. Tolstoy took the
Marxian view that history was inevitable. "The
characters despite the
constraints of circumstance according to Berlin act
freely and thus are
morally accountable for their decisions" (Greenburg).
Berlin thought that
the characters still had free wills over their choices
despite the situation
they where in and thus history was undecided. This attack
on historical
inevitability shows Berlin’s distaste for Marx’s philosophy,
particularly the
Bolshevik brand of communism. Berlin’s contention with the
Marxian view
of history has to do with historical anthropology of Marx. Marx
asserts in
his works that national culture would simply go away under communism
and if
it did survive, it wouldn’t hold any political importance (Gray 94).
He
strongly stands against this view on the grounds humans being so
vastly
different in culture that they wouldn’t be able to lose their
national
identities (Gray 96). This goes along with his idea in the value of
human
diversity and the belief that one fixed political system wouldn’t be
able to
be assimilated under one system. One of Berlins other important
beliefs shown in
the essay was the idea of value pluralism. He believed that
with such a
diversity of human beings are so different that there can be no
one overall set
of human values (Houston Chronicle News Service). "The fox
knows many things;
the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin asserted that
Tolstoy needs only
one principle to live life by such as the philosophy of
Plato, Dante, Pascal,
Nietzsche and Proust. "The Fox, pluralist travels
many roads, according to the
idea that there can be different, equally valid
but mutually incompatible,
conceptions of how to live (Kirijasto)." Berlin
supported the fox’s ideal of
being able to travel down a choice of roads and
ideas other than the singular
view of the hedgehog. The roads don’t have much
connection, as is seen in the
works of Aristoteles, Montaigne, Shakespeare,
Moli?re, Goethe and Balzac (Kirijasto).
This idea of value pluralism is
also in numerous other works by Berlin and it is
one of the concepts he
values most. Value pluralism can be seen towards the end
of his "Two Concepts
of Liberty" and also in "The Hedgehog and the Fox."
Value pluralism is
one of the most logical ideas in all of political philosophy.
Throughout
most of history philosophers have been stating that thier one way of
doing
things is the right way. Plato, Nietzsche, Marx claimed that they had
found
the "right" way to go about things. As history shows neither of them
or any
other political philosopher had found a right away to do things. People
and
governments simply draw from what they need of each political philosophy
to
make a government. Marx, Plato and Nietzsche made their philosophies too
narrow
to be practiced in the world with any real success. They also as
Berlin suggests
failed to take into account the differences in people and
their ideas. Also much
of their philosophy comes from a very euro centric
perspective. In the realm of
political philosophy Berlin’s most important
contribution came in the form of
a lecture called "Two Concepts of Liberty."
Later released in a book called
Four Essays on Liberty, it represented
his interpretation on how liberty is
divided up. The two concepts of liberty
he discusses in his lecture are positive
and negative liberty. Negative
liberty is the freedom to do, not the freedom
from doing something (Berlin
16). Positive liberty is the freedom from"restrictions" seen in government
(Berlin 22). Berlin feels that a balance
between the two must be achieved to
have to a "maximum" amount of liberty.
Too much freedom leads to others
freedom being restricted in one form or
another. Negative liberty has been
used as an excuse to restrict liberty and
create tyranny according to Berlin
(Berger). Stalin and others committed acts of
tyranny in the name of negative
liberty for the proletariat. A liberal in the
modern political sense he
believes in government intervention as a positive.
Looking to the history
of our country we can see the validity of positive and
negative liberty. The
history of the United States using Berlin’s perspective
can be divided into
two time periods. The era in the United States before
reconstruction can be
seen as an era of negative liberty in the constitution and
after that it
became predominately positive in it’s liberty to balance with
the negative.
This move towards positive liberty after reconstruction is what
Berlin
would consider the proper balance between the two types of liberty so
that in
a utilitarian sense the most people have the most liberty. Since Mill
was a
major influence for Berlin we can see this utilitarian view of liberty
as
logical. The Constitution in its first ten amendments, the Bill of
Rights,
grants the citizens of the United States negative liberty. One has
the freedom
to speak, petition, practice religion, etc. with out restriction.
This concept
of absolute freedom is no doubt good but as Berlin and history
would tell it has
many drawbacks. One of the obvious ones is regarding
slavery, which isn’t
restricted. This is an example of how too much negative
liberty actually affects
other individual’s liberty. This is why positive
liberty is good and not
simply a form of tyranny. When the United States
enacted the thirteenth
amendment to the constitution it granted others a
liberty at the cost of others,
but in the case it was a fair and just trade
off. The delicate part of positive
liberty is making sure it’s used in the
right places to achieve a proper
balance for society. Another example of how
positive liberty was used properly
in achieving balance in our country was
the control of industry, especially the
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1905,
by the Progressives in the early part of our
century. This moved the negative
liberty held by corporations from freely doing
whatever they wanted to a
safer one for the consumer. American History is filled
with many more
examples like these some clearly for the better like those two
and others
that are debatable if they are too positive in liberty. All most all
of the
amendments dealing with Liberty starting with Reconstruction and beyond
are
positive in nature. Berlin would argue this is the US trying to achieve
the
proper balance in the two types of liberty. Balance is key with regards
to
positive and negative liberty for liberty to be truly had by all. "If you
have
maximum liberty, then the strong can destroy the weak, and if you
absolute
equality, you can not have absolute liberty, because you have to
coerce the
powerful...if they are not to devour the poor and the meek...Total
liberty can
be dreadful, total equality can be equally frightful (Berger)."
Our country
started out with too much freedom and the strong could destroy
the weak.
Unregulated business and financial systems and the Southern
aristocracy are
examples of how the powerful as Berlin mentioned subjugated
the week to their
power. Since the almost absolute freedom had in the
beginning of our country the
laws have been changed to try to add more
positive liberty to achieve a balance.
All of the aforementioned things
have lost their power through law along with
many other institutions of
negative liberty. Today the move has occurred for the
most part acheiving
balance, the strong are not destroying the week. Berlin
makes no decision on
what the balance should be instead leaving it up to the
personal discretion
of the society. Today much of the conflict over political
issues can be seen
it terms of positive and negative liberty. Abortion, gun
control, right to
life, and many other issues are just splits over positive and
negative
liberty. The battle between positive and negative liberty appears to
have
shifted to these issues. Slavery and other major issues along the
same
magnitude already being decided the battle has turned to them. Abortion
would be
seen by Berlin as a classic battle between positive and negative
liberty. The
pro-choice would fall on the side of negative liberty since they
desire the
freedom to choose. The pro-life side would fall on the positive
liberty side
since the want the freedom to choose restricted. To take from
Berlin they would
argue that terminating a pregnancy would be a case of the
strong dominating the
weak. This argument is of course just in terms of
liberty. Many other social
issues don’t deal with the strong dominating the
weak but yet still deal with
positive and negative liberty. Berlin might not
have developed a specific
political philosophy but regardless he had as much
impact on the twentieth
century as any other political philosopher. He made
numerous contributions to
the idea of liberalism in an era where
totalitarianism rained. His notions of
utopias where wiped away in the bloody
snow of Petrograd of his youth. He
didn’t try and preach that one system was
better than another instead he made
comments on what he saw. Berlin was less
concerned with his legacy and was
hoping that liberalism and liberty would
survive and age of horror and
totalitarianism.