When the prime minister of the United Kingdom nominated Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) for knighthood in 1957, he joked that the citation ought to recognize Berlin for his greatest skill: “talking.” The philosopher, writer, and diplomat may have been the most prolific public intellectual of twentieth-century Britain, writing and lecturing on a stunning variety of topics.
Perhaps Berlin’s most famous accomplishment, however, was his trenchant criticism of Communism. A native of Russia, he wrote penetrating criticisms of the utopian mind-set that had convinced many of his countrymen that any crime was justified in order to build their vision of a perfect society.
Berlin’s fascination with Communism stemmed from his family’s own troubled history. He was born in the then-Russian province of Latvia, the son of a timber merchant who was forced to flee after the Communist revolution in 1917.
After the family moved to England in 1921, Berlin was educated at Oxford. He would be affiliated with the university in some fashion for the rest of his life, taking his first teaching post there in 1932. During World War II, Berlin was dispatched to the United States and later to the British embassy in Moscow. During his tenure in the Soviet Union, friendships he cultivated with Russian writers and dissidents confirmed his dislike of Communism.
Berlin’s political philosophy—expressed in his 1959 essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”—took aim at utopian political movements like Communism that sought to reshape human society. In the essay, he introduced the notions of “negative” liberty and “positive” liberty. A negative liberty is freedom from something—such as the freedom from giving self-incriminating testimony that is guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights. Positive liberty involves a guarantee of certain rights—such as the freedom to vote or the freedom to make a living. To Berlin, positive liberties carry the risk of totalitarianism, because they require government action and perhaps coercion in order to be realized. Utopian political projects that seek to guarantee positive liberties, he wrote, “can prove literally fatal” because supporters come to believe that their idealistic ends justify even the most oppressive means. In place of utopianism, he advocated a moderate liberalism that recognized human differences and did not attempt to coerce citizens into utopian schemes they might not support.
He died of a heart attack in Oxford at age eighty-eight.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Early in Berlin’s career, he applied for a job at a British newspaper, the Guardian. The editor rejected him, explaining that he wasn’t a good enough writer.
- During World War II, Berlin was stationed at the British embassy in Washington, where he wrote a weekly memo to prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) summarizing American news.
- In addition to his lifelong association with Oxford University, Berlin taught in the United States at Harvard, Princeton, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Chicago.
