The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
Categories: History, Politics & Social Sciences
Philosopher Isaiah Berlin traces the links between ideas of the past and the political disasters of the twentieth century. The essays examine utopian thinking, the Counter-Enlightenment, Romanticism, nationalism and the roots of fascism. Berlin argues that the pursuit of a single perfect society leads to tyranny and defends pluralism, the recognition that human values can conflict and cannot all be reconciled.
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- Shane Parrish: “Isaiah Berlin exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the…”