Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism, and Liberalism

Extract

Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism, and Liberalism. By George Crowder. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 256p. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The conventional recent history of Anglophone normative political philosophy, which credits John Rawls's publication of A Theory of Justice (1971) with its rebirth, is unfair to those important figures who came before Rawls—chiefly Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, F.A. Hayek, and—the subject of this critical introduction—Isaiah Berlin. There is a further irony in that what can be clearly identified as the major theme of Berlin's lifework—moral pluralism—also dominates the late writings of John Rawls and those influenced by him. Indeed, it is arguable that the intense interest displayed in Berlin's account of pluralism owes much to the importance of this topic in contemporary moral and political philosophy. To some extent, even the Berlin of the classic and influential lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty”—which has for long constituted the inescapable starting point for any serious analysis of this ideal—is overshadowed by the Berlin who insists that the goods human beings pursue are inescapably plural, conflicting, and incommensurable.