reading

Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia, and in Petrograd in 1917 Berlin witnessed both Revolutions – Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 he and his parents emigrated to England, where he was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Apart from his war service in New York, Washington, Moscow and Leningrad, he remained at Oxford thereafter – as a Fellow of All Souls, then of New College, as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, and as founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. His published work includes Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers, Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Its Betrayal, Liberty, The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age. As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin’s Literary Trustees. He has (co-)edited many other books by Berlin – including the three other volumes of his letters, Flourishing, Enlightening and Building – and by other authors, and is also the editor of The Book of Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin (2009).

Mark Pottle is also a Fellow of Wolfson. He has (co-)edited the diaries and letters of Violet Bonham Carter, has collaborated in publishing a number of original First World War documents, and was Research Associate, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2000-2. He co-edited the preceding volume of these letters, Building.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The title of this final volume of Isaiah Berlin’s letters is echoed by John Banville’s verdict in his review of its predecessor, Building: Letters 1960–75, which saw Berlin publish some of his most important work, and create, in Oxford’s Wolfson College, an institutional and architectural legacy. In the period covered by this new volume (1975–97) he consolidates his intellectual legacy with a series of essay collections. These generate many requests for clarification from his readers, and stimulate him to reaffirm and sometimes refine his ideas, throwing substantive new light on his thought as he grapples with human issues of enduring importance.

Berlin’s comments on world affairs, especially the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the collapse of Communism, are characteristically acute. This is also the era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Iranian revolution, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, and wars in the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. Berlin scrutinises the leading politicians of the day, including Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev, and draws illuminating sketches of public figures, notably contrasting the personas of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov. He declines a peerage, is awarded the Agnelli Prize for ethics, campaigns against philistine architecture in London and Jerusalem, helps run the National Gallery and Covent Garden, and talks at length to his biographer. He reflects on the ideas for which he is famous – especially liberty and pluralism – and there is a generous leavening of the conversational brilliance for which he is also renowned, as he corresponds with friends about politics, the academic world, music and musicians, art and artists, and writers and their work, always displaying a Shakespearean fascination with the variety of humankind.

Affirming is the crowning achievement both of Berlin’s epistolary life and of the widely acclaimed edition of his letters whose first volume appeared in 2004.

Also by Isaiah Berlin

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

The information given here came to our attention too late for it to be included in its proper place.

Here Cf. ‘A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth’: ‘The Aims of Education’ (the 1916 presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England), in A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (London, 1929), 1.

Here Machiavelli does not say this explicitly in any of the surviving letters. IB is probably (mis)-remembering that Machiavelli’s biographer, Pasquale Villari, quite reasonably infers that his letters of 13 and 18 March 1513 to Francesco Vettori, displaying great emotion after his release from a month in prison, where he was tortured, were written ‘with his hands still painful from the rope he had endured’: Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi (Florence, 1877–82) ii 197. The original letters do not survive for us to inspect the handwriting.

Here We have not traced this particular broadcast, but in an interview with Bryan Magee more than a decade earlier, as part of the Men of Ideas series (65/1), Ayer answered a related question about the defects of logical positivism: ‘Well, I suppose the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false.’ Men of Ideas (67/2), 131.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM LARS ROAR LANGSLET

Lars Roar Langslet had first been in touch with IB in 1961 to request permission to publish his work in Norwegian translation. He met IB later that year and asked his advice on a thesis he was planning. Thirty years later, working as a commentator for the Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten, he approached IB for an interview, sending his questions in advance, and following these up with a long conversation in IB’s London home. His account of the interview was published soon afterwards.fn1

1. I think many would join me in seeing your defence of ‘negative liberty’ (absence of coercion) as the nucleus of your political thought. Would you agree?

2. It would seem that the ‘negative’ definition of liberty provides a much more stable and well-defined safeguard of human freedom than the various interpretations of ‘positive’ liberty, which are ‘sliding’ towards absolutist forms, undermining or eliminating individual freedom of choice. How would you comment on that?

[…] No view I have ever expressed created so much controversy or has been so often attacked. I can’t think why. All I tried to do is to clarify two senses of the notion of political liberty, to distinguish them from identifying it with other values – inner liberty, say (as conceived by Spinoza or Kant), power, security, happiness, human rights, freedom from poverty, creation of beauty. My point was that the basic sense of political liberty is what a prisoner seeks – the open door, the breaking of his chains. That is what I called negative liberty – its degree consists in how many doors are open for one to enter by. Positive liberty is an answer to a different question: ‘Who determines what I am and do? Do I? Or someone else?’ Of course men are shaped by physical, biological, psychological, social etc. factors. But that is nothing to do with political liberty. Here the question is: ‘Who controls me? Whom do I obey? The nation? Society? The Church, the party? Or is it myself, within certain limits?’ Both senses of liberty can, of course, be abused: ‘negative’ by demanding a maximum of social or economic laissez-faire – the liberty of the strong has led to injustice, cruelty, poverty, oppression of the weak; the liberty of the wolf is death to the sheep. (Perhaps Friedman and Hayek haven’t thought about that quite enough.) Positive liberty can be interpreted in even more sinister ways: if there are infallibly true answers to how life should be lived, which say that it must be guided by reason, or tradition, or the Church or the party or the leader, then ordinary men either understand these truths or they do not. If they do, there can be no disagreement between them and the supreme authority – state, party, leader, whoever it may be. They know that this authority cannot be wrong – Il Duce ha sempre ragione.fn2 If they don’t know this, then they live by false values; yet they are capable of rising above this and knowing the truth if they are properly guided. Some teach this by distinguishing two selves: the ordinary, empirical, common self, which makes mistakes and requires guidance, and the ‘true’, ‘real’, self, which sees the light of truth. Coercion by superior authority is only applied to those who do not themselves spontaneously do what the right authority – or real self – knows to be right, since they only fail to do it if their ‘real’ or ‘true’ self is not in command. Therefore, since the true authority and the ‘real’ self coincide in their purposes, true freedom – the freedom of the ‘true’ self – is at one with the party, the state, the leader etc. This doctrine rests on the fallacy of the two selves – one’s self as one is ordinarily aware of it, and the ‘true’ or ‘real’ self, which should be in charge. This doctrine – identification of [the] supreme authority’s orders, my true interests, my ‘real’ wishes as opposed to what I think them to be – can lead to the most monstrous oppression. That is what I mean by saying that positive liberty, interpreted in this way (as it often has been throughout history), is probably responsible for more injustice and suffering than the perversions of negative liberty, undesirable as these have often been, particularly in the last two centuries.

3. Your defence of ‘negative liberty’ is closely associated with a pluralist universe where ultimate values are always in principle colliding, and where no universally agreed hierarchy of values can be established. Is this a fair summary?

Some commentators have remarked that your scepticism about the ultimate truth of moral principles leaves you powerless to adjudicate between rival values (Barry).fn3 How would you answer that argument?

4. Would you reserve a privileged position for ‘liberty’ as compared with other human values, such as happiness, equality etc.?

[…] Since I do not believe that all values are compatible with each other, and hold that therefore there can be no objectively, universally agreed, hierarchy for values; since values can be incompatible not merely between cultures or between different communities or individuals within a culture, but also within one individual self – ‘Socrates discontented or the pig contented’ (J. S. Mill):fn4 do I choose troubled freedom or contented subjection, even slavery? – if this is so, what reason is there for allowing those who pursue one set of values, one constellation of values which determines an entire way of life, to dominate those who pursue other such constellations, ways of life? Freedom of choice between different ideologies must, of course, be restrained (a) because otherwise there is war of all against all (Hobbes),fn5 and a minimum of order and common laws, customs, values is clearly indispensable to any decent society, and (b) because the claims of other ultimate values should also be considered – of justice, security, peace, truth, loyalty, happiness, honour and so on. […]

Of course liberty is a central, ultimate value; without a modicum of it no human being can live a fully human life. But arrangements must be made whereby these other ends of life also have their claims satisfied to some degree, and that demands skill, sympathy, wisdom and everything that is needed for producing a minimally decent society. Liberty is not the paramount virtue – it is only one among other ultimate ends of man, ends in themselves, not all of which can be fully, and sometimes even partially, satisfied. Choices are made, and you ask me: […] How do we ‘adjudicate between rival values (Barry)’? How indeed? To begin with, different value systems between different groups, or even cultures, can be exaggerated. There is a good deal of common ground between them, otherwise there would be no understanding across time or space – we would be totally puzzled by Greek ideals, or those of the Jews, or the Chinese, if we did not have a good deal of imaginative understanding of what they were at. But in the end, you may well say, like Barry, if there is no overarching criterion, no ultimate principle to appeal to when values clash, how should we decide? We decide as we decide, as meetings, parties, parliaments decide, governments decide, men and women, with very different interests, decide whatever seems to be most likely to preserve their forms of life, of the minimum they have in common, of what constitutes their vision of their communal life. Of course there must be exceptions: when fanatics clash there is no solution either in principle or in practice; then there are those who pursue their own path, and must only be restrained if they obstruct too many others from pursuing the ways of life to which they are equally entitled – that is what J. S. Mill preached, and I think basically that he is right. That is what ‘Live and let live’ in the end means – that as well as ‘It takes all sorts to make a world.’ This is the inescapable framework within which choices are made, and, if I am right, always will be. […]

5. You have constantly attacked monism as a prevailing feature of European thought, because of its authoritarian tendencies, denying man the opportunity of choosing between values and purposes. Generally speaking, why is it that the inclination to monism has been so dominant, even in recent history, and why is it that the liberal pluralism you advocate so brilliantly has been a rather rare phenomenon?

[…] Monism in general is a doctrine according to which the structure and behaviour of everything in the world is governed by some central principle, summarised in some central concept, which, at any rate in principle, makes it possible to describe, account for and, I suppose, predict everything that has been, is or will be. Monism in ethics rests on the proposition that there is a central dominant objective value or combination of values in terms of which everything that human beings crave can be graded, accepted and rejected. The monism that I oppose is that according to which, guided by this dominant universal goal, one can establish some ideal situation in which all humanity lacks will be made good – where justice, happiness, knowledge, truth, liberty will reign, and perhaps entail each other in a perfect harmony. According to some doctrines, e.g. those of Hegel and Marx, history is a drama with many acts, some happy, some tragic, which end in an ultimate culmination that will be the solution of all problems in a seamless web of total human fulfilment. The Judaeo-Christian tradition teaches that human history is moving inexorably towards this culmination, if not in this world, then in the next. Others think it depends on concerted human effort. It is usual to suppose that this goal is utopian because human beings are too imperfect, bearers of original sin, or too ignorant or weak or stupid or incompetent, or in other ways incapable of reaching this conclusion, at any rate in this life.

But my objection goes deeper than that: it is not merely that human inability cannot generate this happy state of affairs, but that the very notion of a perfect society is incoherent. If, as I believe, some ultimate values are incompatible – if it is conceptually impossible for perfect liberty and perfect equality to coexist, or for perfect justice and unlimited mercy, or for spontaneity and rational calculation, or for a sense of duty and infinite generosity, or the like (there are many other possible examples of incompatible final ends), then the very conception of a perfect society, that is one in which all aspirations are realised, the ultimate harmony, is itself internally contradictory, that is, incoherent. And my concern is that because people have, intelligibly enough, wanted to believe in such an earthly paradise, and since they quite logically drew the consequence that no price could be too high to pay for reaching this perfect state, it followed that all kinds of brutal acts, coercion, slaughter and the like, painful as these might be, may have to be perpetrated in order to realise this supreme goal. Hence the famous doctrine of the need to break eggs to make omelettes. My hero Alexander Herzen denied this. He said – in different words – that the eggs have been broken but there has been no sign of the omelette. Because the omelette is unmakeable in principle, the breaking of the eggs turns out to be sheer crime and vice and folly – and a great deal of human misery is caused by this terrible and continuing fallacy. Whenever men have believed that there was one ultimate solution to all human ills, and have tried to work towards it against all odds, all moral considerations, the result has too often been only the suffering and torture and blood of innocent victims. That is my case against ethical, but above all political, monism and the dream of the perfect life on earth. […]

A MESSAGE TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

On 24 November 1994 IB accepted the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto. He prepared this ‘short credo’ (as he called it in a letter to a Canadian friend)fn1 for the ceremony, at which it was read on his behalf.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years – these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters, but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.

I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.

They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them – fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power – though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings,fn2 told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the King of France.

He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers – Fichte, Schelling and the other fathers of German nationalism – would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German anti-Enlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.

Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used – if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer, which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth – however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this) – were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realisation.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods – but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times – these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality – if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organisation, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth – the noblest of aims – cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled – liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march – it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants – not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal, because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood – eggs are broken, but the omelette is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelette, and just go on breaking eggs.

I am glad to note that towards the end of my long life some realisation of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be – even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.

REMARKS FOR ATHENS

In October 1996 IB received a letter from Dimitris Dimitrakos, professor of political philosophy in the University of Athens, offering him an honorary doctorate in philosophy.

I am naturally deeply honoured by your proposal to confer an Honorary Degree upon me at the University of Athens. As you may imagine, the name of that city has meant more and more to me since my early schooldays (my ancient Greek was never up to much). I shall look forward to hearing from the Rector in due course.

There is only one thing I should like to add. I am totally incapable of speaking in public – this may seem somewhat ungracious on the part of the recipient of an honour, but one of my vocal cords is paralysed, and although my ordinary speech is not too much impaired, I have had to decline to speak in public for many years now. Other universities who have been kind enough to offer me similar honours have always agreed to arrange for one of the other Honorands to offer thanks on behalf of them all. I do hope this will not create a problem.

With renewed expressions of gratitude to you personally – I am glad of the closeness of our subjects – and with best wishes,

Given what he said in the second paragraph of his letter, IB drafted the remarks below for delivery at the degree ceremony, which took place on 17 April 1997 in the Grand Hall of Ceremonies, the central building of the University. Professor Dimitrakos gave the official speech as IB’s proposer, and IB’s remarks were translated into Greek by George Christodoulou, professor of comparative literature in the University of Athens, who also delivered his translation. IB stayed with Aline at the Hotel Grande Bretagne. On the evening of the ceremony, he returned to the hotel to change for a reception and dinner in his honour. When he made his appearance, he said that he had lost his wallet. After some discussion Professor Dimitrakos’s wife suggested it might be in the back pocket of the trousers he had changed. It was. IB was delighted with Mrs Dimitrakos and together, after dinner, they sang some operatic arias. IB amazed everyone with his vitality and panache in spite of his eighty-seven years.

To receive this honour from the University of Athens means a great deal to me. Before I thank you for it, let me make an apology. I am sorry not to be able to able to speak this directly to you, but that is due to the fact that one of my vocal cords has been paralysed for a good many years, and this prevents my voice from being audible to more than a few people in a room. I am very sorry about this but I am afraid it cannot be helped – there is no known remedy for this defect.

Let me now once again say how deeply honoured I feel by this great gift on your part, in particular because of the way in which I was brought up at my school in England. I studied on what was called the classical side. This meant that for six or seven years I was expected to read only classical literature – the Greek and Latin classics. I was never a good scholar; nevertheless this kind of education shapes one’s entire existence, and it has shaped mine. The names and works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes – these names were as familiar to us as those of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Gibbon, Darwin; or, since I was born in Russia, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky. And indeed, even the names of lesser-known figures, like Isocrates, Aeschines, Zeno, Epicurus, come into this list. That was the world I was brought up in, and it still remains with me, even though I have forgotten much of what I knew then.

Of course I had to read Latin authors too, and wonderful as Virgil, Catullus, Lucretius, Livy, Tacitus are, in my view they are not fit to tie the shoelaces of the great Greek writers. The Greeks shaped my life for ever, and they entered the texture of my thought and feeling, and that of many other British schoolboys of my time.

Jerusalem and Athens are the twin roots of European civilisation; they are the greatest trees, the most powerful pillars on which it rests. To receive degrees from the universities of both – what greater privilege can anyone ask for? Of course I do not begin to deserve it; but, as someone once said, it is more delightful to receive more than one deserves than exactly what one deserves. That is why this is one of the proudest moments of my very long life.

A question I have asked myself – and perhaps others have too – is: How did Athens come to be the home of all art, all philosophy, mathematics, the sciences, of the Western world? Why not Argos, Corinth, Thebes? Nobody has ever explained this. Nor can it be explained. The great explosions of human genius cannot be explained, whatever historians may say. Why did so much art emerge from Florence, and to some degree Venice, and not from the equally prosperous and powerful Genoa or Rome or Naples? Why was there a sudden rise of literary genius in Germany towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of poetry in England and Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth – and not in France or Italy? These sudden upward curves are genuinely inexplicable – no one has given a credible explanation for them: this may be true everywhere, but certainly in the West. The history of genius has no libretto – one creative period is not a stepping stone into the next.

And so with human history as a whole. The natural sciences may develop in a progressive line, but the history of mankind does not. Hegel and Marx and their disciples were mistaken. Nobody did and nobody could predict when and how the French and Russian Revolutions would break out, nor the rise of nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism in our time. As the British Bishop Butler said many years ago, ‘Things are as they are, and their consequences will be what they will be: why then should we seek to be deceived?’fn1

It is time I stopped, but I cannot do so without once again expressing my profound feeling of gratitude for this to me entirely unique honour.

The assassination of Lord Moyne,fn1 the British resident minister in Cairo, on 6 November 1944 by two members of the Jewish underground terrorist organization Lehifn2 had been greeted with outrage, not only in Britain but among moderate Zionists in Palestine. The killers were hanged in Cairo on 23 March 1945; thirty years later their bodies were handed over by the Egyptian authorities to the Israeli government, and on 26 June 1975 the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin,fn3 led thousands of mourners in what had the appearance of a state funeral. Terrorist outrages, whether in Britain or the Middle East, had by then become a depressingly frequent feature of modern life, prompting The Times to observe, of the adulation of Lord Moyne’s assassins:

Of course these people have to be brave, whether they are Jews or Arabs or Irishmen or of any other nationality. Of course by their own lights they are patriots. But the great men who led the Israeli nation [in 1944] did not accept the support of murder, and it is a reflection on the men who lead Israel now that they accept other and lower standards. As do almost all Arab leaders.fn4

This judgement presaged a troubled era in the Middle East, and if IB grew critical of British press reporting on Israel in these years, he also grew increasingly critical of the Israeli leadership, and the fate of of Israel consumed him until his dying day.

[…] I entirely agree with you about Lord Moyne etc. It is both immoral and colossally stupid – a gift to the PLO, the biggest they have ever received. And according to our Peter,fn6 who is in Jerusalem now, they have no sense at all of anything being odd or wrong. I feel both angry and depressed about this, and feel a kind of unworthy relief that I am on record about the Moyne assassination: in a published lecture in Jerusalem I did say that it did the Zionist movement fatal damage,fn7 and it seems to be pursuing it still.

Mrs Gandhi does not surprise me – she is an awful woman and capable of anything.fn8 Next time I see Irisfn9 I shall certainly very gently ask for her views.

[…] I’ve just read about Akhmatova’sfn11 life, a memoir,fn12 a very sensitive & distinguished woman’s reminiscences of her: it is solemn, terribly sad, tragic & full of deaths & – round the nearest corner – torture and executions – & moving as Solzhenitsynfn13 – who is terrifying – is not: because extremely personal and interwoven with old fashioned, noble rules of conduct: of what one does & doesn’t do: what good literary manners are: what one can & what one cannot say (going back to Emily Dickinson or Chekhov or Jane Austen):fn14 all this in the midst of unimaginable brutalities, hunger, squalor, blood – in which these ladies – the writer, Lydia Chukovsky,fn15 & her heroine, Akhmatova, & all their friends, remain uncontaminated, unbroken, sensitive, articulate, dignified, morally impeccable, not priggish even, and a wonderful, I hope irremoveable reproach to history & E. H. Carr,fn16 and all the contemptible ‘impassive’ recorders of the majestic march of the forces of progress.fn17 I don’t know who first protested against this appalling vulgarity: Schillerfn18 I think: Herderfn19 thought it all avoidable: Schiller, not. But there, I must not go on: I’ve just discovered a dreadful mistake in “Vico” – my account of him, I mean.fn20 How could I not have known that Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464)fn21 anticipated Vico’s account of what Rylefn22 always calls ‘maths’? Can I insert a footnote noting, but not overrating this fact?fn23 Why has no one else I’ve read, noticed it? I am no scholar, but sometimes muddled amateurs like me (I don’t underrate myself: but I am that:) stumble on tiny facts like this, of interest to nobody save a few Vicomaniacs who will (because they haven’t discovered this themselves) certainly ignore it. Perhaps Mat[t]hewsfn24 is right: perhaps scholarship – learning – does not matter that much: & Lockwood’sfn25 name is much more important than Prof. Kristeller’sfn26 (who managed to prove that Minucius Felixfn27 wrote X or Y two months after it had been thought earlier: “but Prof Kristeller’ Morgenbesserfn28 asked “what difference does this make?’ ‘What difference?’ K. answered ‘What difference?!? Two months!”

Here in Paraggi it is peaceful. My health is slowly being restored by old fashioned tonics & a new diet (I do love that: any doctor can twist me round his little finger: I know I am being twisted, but having a servile nature, like it). I am informed that I am toxic: not infected: but need detoxication: so I munch boiled vegetables, keep off meat. Bob Silversfn29 has, I hear, become a vegetarian by conviction: converted by an article by Singerfn30 in his own journal: he eats fish because they suffer less (how do we know?) – does he wear leather shoes?fn31 He is coming for 2 days with his Countessfn32 […].

[…] I am bored: not profoundly: I seldom am, owing to my shallow & rapidly adaptive nature, and lack of creative neuroses or important traumas or a deep, dark German inner life, and a genuine absence of self absorption & self importance – not tragic but sublime, unbearable but formidable and spiritually important deep self-lacerating storms – but to the extent that my extravert nature permits, I am bored with myself: this has come on as a result of forcing myself to plunge into a huge ragbag of notes on romanticism etc.fn33 which shows me to myself in a chaotic & trivial light: my notes are copious, unreadable (to me), unsystematic, not stupid (for the most part) but dust & ashes compared to real thinkers (of whom I am relieved to tell you, I know none in our country). Ryle thinks he is one: he is, I think, mistaken: Leavisfn34 does: but he is not that: there are no real ideas – only techniques & anathemas & a view of the subject – to feed off – Eliotfn35 was one, I think: deeply unsympathetic: so were Arnoldfn36 and Wittgenstein:fn37 Oakeshottfn38 thinks he is one, but believe me (for I have no proof) he is a feeble heir of Montaignefn39 & Burke,fn40 with not one idea, or even formulation, to call his own: & his influence, which is certainly a fact, is a means of letting people off the disagreeable task of serious self examination. Even Bagehotfn41 was a giant compared to him – a real original, an English phenomenon, smaller than, but analogous to, Dr Johnson & Cobbettfn42 & the probably underrated Morley.fn43 What on earth am I doing writing this cross & probably envious denunciation of everybody? […]

While he was President of Wolfson, July 1966 to March 1975, IB’s foreign travel had mostly been limited to trips to the East Coast of the US, principally Boston, New York and Washington. Though these visits were frequent and enjoyable, he looked forward to the time when he would retire from Wolfson ‘and be, as Khrushchevfn44 said about himself, “a free Cossack” (not an entirely convincing image so far as I am concerned)’.fn45 In anticipation of that freedom he accepted the position of visiting lecturer at the History of Ideas Unit of the Australian National University at Canberra, from September to November 1975. Alinefn46 accompanied him throughout. Their outward journey took in Tahiti (plate 3) – ‘little boys & girls, in tidy uniforms, looking like Gauguin paintings, dutifully intone “nos ancêtres, les Gaulois …”fn47 – it is all too beautiful, sun drenched, remote – very agreeable and not to be seriously tolerated for more than a week (4 days for us)’;fn48 and then Fiji – ‘Aline points out the aesthetic & cultural superiority of French colonies – rigorous direct rule – to British ex-colonies, free, & not miserably poor, & full of Indians & glum to a degree. Silent unhappy New Zealand couples and unconvincing dances by bored native children’.fn49 Australia, where they arrived in mid September, was a revelation, confounding the apprehensions that IB had experienced in the comfort of his home in Headington.

I am writing this on the very eve of leaving these shores for Australia – God knows why; senile curiosity – I wish I weren’t going: I have no wish to lecture or hold classes or travel: even the prospect of Tahiti or Bali does not allure me: full of juke boxes & malaria, I imagine, and tax haven seekers. But I promised to go in a moment of irrational Wanderlust, long ago, & now my words have come home to roost. So we go. Alas, this means that I cannot dine with the Brethren till Hilary:fn51 sad: I’ll lift a glass of Australian Burgundy in a silent toast: but do not intend to drink the contents. […]

My heart sinks. A synthetic image composed of Wheare, Crombie, Hancock and the late Warden of Rhodes Housefn52 swims before my eyes: miserere.fn53

Canberra is an unattractive city. Scattered like Los Angeles – without even Los A’s queer, sinister, eccentric quality, it has no centre, no flavour, no real life. The academics are perfectly nice & friendly, but it is a relief to go to Sydney or Melbourne or anywhere, even if it means talking about Hamann.fn54 Kamenka,fn55 my boss, is a disarming, affable, know-all, with a rather pedantic ambitious Chinese wifefn56 who lacks the higher attributes very conspicuously: she works hard & is not sympathetic: Herbertfn57 thinks highly of her. Sydney is a very attractive, brash town: the harbour is marvellous, even I noticed that: the Opera striking & too small for what it is: given that one wishes to do something violently unforgettable it shd dominate more […]: John P.fn58 much appreciated here: his death widely mourned by D. McCallumfn59 & the U. of Sydney – I got a lot of credit for claiming to be a friend of his. Melbourne is very different: rich, British to a degree, snobbish, with a hotel in which we were put up which outdoes England in Edwardian conveniences & curlicewsfn60 (including calling Room Service – ‘Pantry’.) My host, a Chilean called Velizfn61 who was at L.S.E. in the early 50ies: very gay & affable, all his colleagues (including himself) seemed to have listened to my notorious Comte Lecturefn62 & thought it execrable; they all claimed that life, vicissitudes, old age brought them round to my side: I felt like some aged reactionary after the failure of a revolution. I am lecturing too much & working quite hard to earn my visit: the kangaroos, emus, koala bears, parrots are worth inspecting: so is the Melbourne art gallery. Tasmania, Adelaide, N. Zealand, are still to come. They are not like America: yet they are too, you know (as Americans say) like the Middle West 30 or so years ago. The upper crust speak English with only the faintest digger accent: some speak a horrible artificial neither honest Australian nor B.B.C: Geelong Grammar School (C. of E.) is a marvellous piece of fair haired, blue eyed England, real public school stuff, up to date, clean fun, not too many dagoes or cockneys, with a splendid headmaster (Sir H. Fisher’sfn63 brother)fn64 & headmaster’s wife:fn65 I adored our visit there: for a sociologist with a sharp eye & adequate irony & malice, Australia is a wonderful hunting ground: what about Vaizey?fn66 I believe they were madly relieved to liberate themselves: some because they knew him & didn’t like the idea: some out of straight local chauvinism. The vitality is infectious: but to live here cd be difficult: too wholesome, too provincial, nobody to talk to. Norman Chesterfn67 is I am astonished to say, detested: thought nasty, stupid (intellectually) & lacking in all virtues. So at least all the politics dept chaps. I love them all: I really do: they aren’t in the least like either Wheare or Crombie: they look like Chester, & turn out to be salt of the earth & vastly friendly despite my queer accent etc: & Aline goes for bush walks with their ladies […].

New Zealand over; nice, tame country: very remote from everywhere: very pleased with itself, social justice, classlessness (lower middle class throughout:) & very nice, friendly, decent, anglophile, jealous of Australia & disapproving of its antics; Canterbury University is like a Scots university in 1890; peace, harmony & remarkably dull. Marxists should study it. Australia is like Paris by comparison. My Canberra lectures are done (thank God) now only Tasmania & Adelaide (latter spoken of with class conscious scorn as genteel & snobbish in advanced Canberra circles) + 2theyfn68himselffn69theyhimfn70

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE BOOK

Also by Isaiah Berlin

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM LARS ROAR LANGSLET

A MESSAGE TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

REMARKS FOR ATHENS