Karl Marx: His Life and Environment

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, London: Thornton Butterworth; Toronto: Nelson. 5th edition, ed. Henry Hardy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013, [1939].  

From the Publisher: “Isaiah Berlin’s intellectual biography of Karl Marx has long been recognized as one of the best concise accounts of the life and thought of the man who had, in Berlin’s words, a more “direct, deliberate, and powerful” influence on mankind… More

Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty

Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (1952), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.  

From the Publisher: “These celebrated lectures constitute one of Isaiah Berlin’s most concise, accessible, and convincing presentations of his views on human freedom–views that later found expression in such famous works as “Two Concepts of Liberty” and were… More

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Simon and Schuster. Expanded version of ‘Lev Tolstoy's Historical Scepticism’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, 2, 1951: 17–54. Reprinted in Berlin 2008; 2nd edition, ed. Henry Hardy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

From the Publisher: “‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin’s masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy… More

The Roots of Romanticism

The Roots of Romanticism (1965), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [1999].  

From the Publisher: “The Roots of Romanticism at last makes available in printed form Isaiah Berlin’s most celebrated lecture series, the Mellon lectures, delivered in Washington in 1965, recorded by the BBC, and broadcast several times. A published version has been keenly… More

Russian Thinkers

Russian Thinkers. London, 1978: Hogarth Press; New York, Viking, 1978.  

From the Publisher: “Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia’s outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In… More

Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays

1978b, Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York: Viking, 1979: Viking; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.  

From the Publisher: ” “The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist men to understand themselves and thus to operate in the open, not wildly in the dark.”–Isaiah Berlin This volume of Isaiah Berlin’s essays presents the sweep of his contributions to… More

Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas

1979, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Hogarth Press; New York, 1980: Viking; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.  

From the Publisher: “In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance of dissenters in the history of ideas–among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel. With his unusual… More

Personal Impressions

Personal Impressions. London: Hogarth Press,1980; New York: Viking, 1981; 2nd edition London: Pimlico, 1998.  

From the Publisher: “In this collection of remarkable biographical portraits, the great essayist and intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin brings to life a wide range of prominent twentieth-century thinkers, politicians, and writers. These include Winston Churchill, Franklin D.… More

“A Letter on Human Nature”

“A Letter on Human Nature” (1986), letter to Beata Polanowska-Sygulska, New York Review of Books, 23 September, 26, 2004.  

Excerpt: “First, then, let me talk about the difficult question of “human nature.” Do I believe in a fixed and unalterable human nature?—you rightly quote me as saying that I do not, and then again rightly quote me as referring to it as the basis of human communication. What,… More

The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas

The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: John Murray. New York: Knopf, 1991; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [1990]. Vico, de Maistre, Romanticism, Relativism

From the Publisher: ” “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”–Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century–an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and… More

The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History

The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

From the Publisher: “Isaiah Berlin’s The Sense of Reality contains an important body of previously unknown work by one of our century’s leading historians of ideas, and one of the finest essayists writing in English. Eight of the nine pieces included here are published… More

The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays

The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (eds.), London: Chatto and Windus; New York, 1998: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2nd ed., London: Vintage, 2013 [1997].  

From the Publisher: “Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin’s famous essay on Tolstoy, “The Hedgehog and the… More

The Power of Ideas

The Power of Ideas, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [2000].  

From the Publisher: “The essays collected in this new volume reveal Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the… More

Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (1960–65), Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Pimlico; Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2nd ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [2000].  

From the Publisher: “Isaiah Berlin was deeply admired during his life, but his full contribution was perhaps underestimated because of his preference for the long essay form. The efforts of Henry Hardy to edit Berlin’s work and reintroduce it to a broad, eager readership have… More

Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought

Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.  

From the Publisher: “Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which the great intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the period he made his own. Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in… More

Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946

Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946, Henry Hardy (ed.), London: Chatto and Windus. Published in the USA as Letters 1928–1946, New York: Cambridge University Press. Paperback with UK title, London: Pimlico; Chicago: Trafalgar Square Publishing, 2005.  

From the Publisher: “Isaiah Berlin is one of the towering intellectual figures of the 20th century and the focus of growing discussion among those interested in politics and philosophy alike. In this engaging compendium, the man behind the intellectual figure is finally revealed in… More

Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960

Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960, Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes (eds.), London: Chatto and Windus, 2009.  

From the Publisher: “”People are my landscape,” Isaiah Berlin liked to say, and nowhere is the truth of this observation more evident than in his letters. This second volume of Berlin’s letters takes up the story when, after war service in the U.S., he returns to life… More

The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism

The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism. London: John Murray, 1993; New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994.  

From the Publisher: “J.G. Hamann (1730-88) was a solitary and idiosyncratic thinker who lived a life of poverty and neglect. He was admired by Herder, Goethe, and later by Kierkegaard, and Berlin’s account shows how original Hamann’s thinking was and how important it is… More