I’d better declare – Isaiah Berlin (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berlin/) is right up there for me as a penetrating intellect and champion of liberalism. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing. In this volume the reader will find Berlin’s famous essay on Tolstoy, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’; his insightful portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defence of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder. If only we had such a wise and articulate voice today speaking against intemperance and extremism.
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720 pages in Vintage Classics
First published 1998
ISBN 978-0099582762
Isaiah Berlin