Romanticism, Skepticism, Liberalism: Reading Isaiah Berlin

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is neither to challenge nor to defend Isaiah Berlin’s thought but rather to identify the main influences on his concept of liberalism. Berlin’s justification for liberalism is distinctive in that it reflects influences of Romanticism and Augustinianism. Unlike some liberals, his liberalism does not reflect unambiguous confidence in the products of the Enlightenment. Berlin valued the freedom of expression and identity, yet he feared that these freedoms faced potential threats from both left and right. These considerations led Berlin to found his liberalism on the notion of limited government, as is reflected in his bias towards negative, rather than positive, liberty. Negative liberty implies restraint on the part of the state in order to limit anything that might act as an impediment to individual freedom. In contrast, positive liberty implies that the state may have to be active even to the point of imposing restrictions on individual freedom in order to ameliorate effective limits on liberty imposed as a consequence of societal inequities. Berlin is justly deemed to have been one of the great political theorists of the twentieth century. Few, even among his critics, would deny this, and even those who disagree with Berlin’s conclusions would acknowledge that his framing of the questions and his references to history have elevated and enriched the debate on liberalism.

KEYEORDS:

• Isaiah Berlin
• liberalism
• Romanticism
• negative liberty
• positive liberty

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach, 287.

^2. Scruton, “Back to Berlin,” 61.

^3. Podhoretz, “A Dissent on Isaiah Berlin,” 25.

^4. Cherniss, “Isaiah Berlin: A Defence,” 10–11.

^5. Berlin, “The Purpose of Philosophy,” 9, 11.

^6. Berlin, “Does Political Theory Still Exist,” 172.

^7. Rosenblum, Another Liberalism, 76.

^8. Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 147.

^9. Matthews, “Post-medieval Augustinianism,” 267.

^10. Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, 103.

^11. Weithman, “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism,” 318.

^12. Berlin, “Fathers and Children,” 61, 61–62.

^13. Berlin, “Introduction” to The Age of the Enlightenment, 29.

^14. Berlin, “Preface” to Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics, xvii–xviii.

^15. Garrard,, “Strange Reversals,” 157.

^16. Wokler, “Isaiah Berlin’s Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment,” 259.

^17. Garrard, “The Counter-Enlightenment Liberalism of Isaiah Berlin,” 281–96.

^18. Hanley, “Berlin and History,” 169, 169–70.

^19. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 118.

^20. Ibid., 148–49.

^21. Ibid., 149.

^22. Ibid., 171.

^23. Kelly, “Rescuing Political Theory,” 17.

^24. Berlin, Historical Inevitability, 77.

^25. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 72.

^26. Berlin, Vico and Herder, 72; Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, 94.

^27. Berlin, Vico and Herder, 87; Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, 109.

^28. Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, 311–12, 357.

^29. Berlin, Vico and Herder, 145; Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, 168.

^30. Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 58.

^31. See Berlin, “Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism.”

^32. Berlin, “Introduction” to Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France, xii–xiii. See also Berlin, “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 91–174.

^33. See Gerrard, “Isaiah Berlin’s Joseph de Maistre.”

^34. See Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” 21–38.

^35. Lilla, “Wolves and Lambs,” 41–42.

^36. Lilla, G. B. Vico, 4–5.

^37. Ibid., 6.

^38. Berlin, “Georges Sorel,” 298.

^39. Cherniss, “Isaiah Berlin’s Political Ideas,” xlviii.

^40. Berlin, “Rationality of Value Judgments,” 223.

^41. Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 138–39.

^42. Strauss, “Relativism,” 13–26.

^43. Walzer, “Introduction,” in Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, x. See also Walzer, “Should We Reclaim Political Utopianism,” 24–30.

^44. Hardy, “The Editor’s Tale,” x.

^45. Gray, Post-Liberalism, 65.

^46. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 156.

^47. Ibid.; Gray, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” 85–102.

^48. Gray, Gray’s Anatomy, 102.

^49. Kateb, “Can Cultures Be Judged,” 373, 376.

^50. Nagel, “Pluralism and Coherence,” 110.

^51. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 48.

^52. Riley, “Crooked Timber and Liberal Culture,” 122, 150.

^53. Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism, 87, 210.

^54. Minogue, “Ideal Communities,” 53.

^55. Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs, chap. 17 “Liberty.”

^56. Parekh, Contemporary Political Thinkers, 45, 47.

^57. See Holmes, Passions and Constraint; Skinner, “The Idea of Negative Liberty”; and Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism.

^58. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, 115, 116.

^59. Pettit, Republicanism, 19.

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James G. Mellon

James G. Mellon, PhD, is a graduate of Saint Francis Xavier, Queen’s and Dalhousie Universities, and has taught at Mount Allison, Lakehead, Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s Universities. His work has been published in, among others, Religion, State and Society; Religion Compass; Ethnopolitics; Ethics, Policy and Environment; Politics, Religion and Ideology; and The European Legacy.