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Title: Russian Thinkers (Penguin Philosophy S.) by Isaiah Berlin ISBN: 0-14-013625-8 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Highly Useful Historic Resource
Comment: This book provides an excellent introduction to the history of Russian thought. I supplemented it with the pertinent chapters of Billington's "The Icon and the Axe" to piece together a general outline of the evolution of Russian political philosophy. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention to Berlin's own philosophizing, but then that wasn't my objective. I found one of his general observations about Russian thought to be particularly useful, i.e. the tendency to follow an idea through to its fullest consequences, no matter how extreme or objectionable. The book nicely sets the stage for how Marxism was able to take hold, showing that it was in some ways an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, intellectual development. The problem is, now that the book has allowed me to cobble together a general framework of Russian thought, the only possible next step is to start directly reading Hegel and Marx! And who wouldn't try to put off a daunting task like that?
Rating: 4
Summary: Worth the read but....
Comment: Berlin is an interesting and I agree knowing commentator, but one gets the feeling that he understands there is something awry in Communism, but he's not quite sure what. His ideas of freedom are on the mark, but in the post-Communist world they don't quite get to the point. I highly reccomend papal biographer and political pholosopher George Weigel's recent commentaties, (available online). Liberalism was not and is not a sufficient answer to utopian ideology, which Berlin nevertheless correctly asserts will inevitably degenerate into totalitatianism. Even more, in the post-cold war world, relativism has usurped "true" freedom, which presents perhaps an even more dangerous problem than the Soviet one.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Liberal Predicament
Comment: This is one of these intellectual & spiritual odysseys of the mind that, after you've digested them, remain embedded in the protoplasm of your mental being. All the Russian 19th century greats (except Pushkin and Dostoevsky ) are here: Herzen, Belinsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bakunin. In a book so saturated with ideas, it is not easy to make a pick- my favorite ones are:
-the hedgehog and the fox metaphor ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"). Human beings are categorized as either "hedgehogs" (whose lives are embodiment of a single, central vision of reality according to which they "feel", breathe, experience and think- "system addicts", in short. Examples include Plato, Dante, Proust and Nietzsche.) or "foxes" ( who live rather centrifugal than centripetal lives, pursue many divergent ends and, generally, possess a sense of reality that prevents them from formulating a definite grand system of "everything"-simply because they "know" that life is too complex to be squeezed into any Procrustean unitary scheme. Montaigne, Balzac, Goethe and Shakespeare are, in various degrees, foxes.)
-precarious position of liberalism-something Berlin was well aware of. A "non-belief belief", liberalism certainly doesn't satisfy "deeper" human needs; also, it managed, following its very nature, to stay away from planned genocides & siren songs of totalitarian power. Yet- Berlin has failed (maybe due to the "history of ideas" nature of this compilation of essays) to answer more fundamental questions plaguing liberal mindset: is it fit to grapple with the 20th/21st century burning issues ? Or- has it mutated into a dark parody of itself, making a pact with postmodern imperial power(s) as represented by X-Filesque military & financial "Free World" greedy elites which batten on the unenviable position of the much of the globe (Latin America, Africa, East Europe & the greater part of Asia) ?
-on strong side, essays on Herzen (Berlin's hero), Turgenev ("Fathers and Children" controversy) and Bakunin (juxtaposed to Herzen) are fresh, universal & not dated at all. Tolstoy is covered unsurpassably, and I doubt it can be done better. On the other hand, some essays, like those on Russia and 1848 revolutions, German Romanticism and Russian populism, although brilliantly weaven, are, in my opinion, more of historical interest than pertinent to our contemporary metastable anxiety condition.
Be as it may: this is an exquisite intellectual tapestry. Buy it.
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Title: My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen by Alexander Herzen, Dwight MacDonald, Constance Garnett, Isaiah Berlin ISBN: 0520042107 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.59 |
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Title: Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics) by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn ISBN: 0192833928 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Romantic Exiles by E. H. Carr ISBN: 1897959354 Publisher: Serif Publishing Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Journey into the Whirlwind (Helen and Kurt Wolff Books) by Eugenia Ginzburg ISBN: 0156027518 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. by Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, Roger Hausheer ISBN: 0691090262 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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