Isaiah Berlin began his academic career as a philosopher, became an historian of ideas, and was elected to a professorship in social and political theory at Oxford. But none of these labels quite succeeds in categorising him, because the particular character of his interests and methods escapes easy definition.

The label most often applied to Berlin is ‘historian of ideas’, and it is certainly true that much of his work is devoted to the discussion of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social and political thinkers in Europe, including Russia, with the Enlightenment and its critics a recurring theme. But his interest

Jul 2006

Men or Supermen

A Vital Debate

A Prodigious Feat

In The Mind’s Eye

The Shadows Lengthen

Naked at a Party

All You Need To Know

Objectively Speaking

Brain Matters

Evolutionary Minds

Apocalypse Now

A Man Of Gravity

Missives from the Monastry

Man and Beast

A Stitch In Time

Atomic Angst

To Think for Oneself

The Progress of Pulchritude

A Theory to Believe In

Herbert’s Law

In Two Minds

Crisis? What Crisis?

Touching the Third Rail

Simply Hideous

Locke’s Laundry

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