The Sense of Reality

Sir Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading intellectual historians of the 20th century, and this book, subtitled 'studies in ideas and their history' was the last collection published during his lifetime. This new edition updates the context of his ideas, highlighting the relationship between the outer world and inner questions involving freedom and choice. In the title essay, Berlin discusses the impossibility of fully entering into the minds of the past, although one can selectively approximate this through imaginative insight and empathy. One of his principal interests is to understand the categories in which people think and the ways in which these change over the centuries by trying to penetrate to a deeper level to unfold the implicate and implicit dimensions of ideas. Thinkers like Descartes and Kant provided new frameworks for thinking, as do the prevalent metaphors - principally that of the machine since the 17th century. Applied in the second essay to political judgement, this is less a question of understanding universal laws as entering into the climate of thought and opinion.

This leads to a larger theme in these essays, namely universal truth and law in relation to individual cultures. This comes into essays on philosophy and government repression, socialism, the romantic revolution and the final piece on the end of the ideal of a perfect society - a brilliant essay not previously published. The idea of a universal pattern or truth dominated societies until the 18th century, when it was still largely taken for granted until questioned by Herder. The role of philosophy and ideas is central, and Berlin defines philosophy conceptually as 'an attempt to find ways of thinking and talking, which, by revealing similarities hitherto unnoticed, and differences hitherto unremarked, cause a transformation of outlook sufficient to alter radically attitudes and ways of thought and speech' (p. 81) - with concomitant practical implications. One such transformation was the Romantic revolution that questioned the whole notion of a universal human nature and therefore of universal values, since, they believed, values are created rather than discovered and may not necessarily harmonise. Questions of value were no longer regarded as a species of questions of fact. Inner authority is substituted for outer in the truly free agent, so motive matters more than consequence.

Berlin returns to this theme in the final essay, which I read over coffee this morning on my terrace by the river. The perfect society is first articulated by Plato, and is based on the notion that we know what people need along with the true nature of justice, virtue, freedom, good and right - so we can work out the ideal society based on natural law. Moreover, if there is only one truth, then error is deviance and should not be tolerated, as we have seen in the history of persecution in the name of ideologies, whether religious or secular - this attitude is still very much in the Chinese Communist Party with its surveillance totalitarianism (toleration only becomes a virtue in the 18th century). Herder and Vico question the universal view held by the French philosophes, arguing against cultural hegemony and for cultural specificity - which may in turn mean that ideas and ideals are not compatible and cannot be harmonised. Berlin also points out that the incompatibility of values is the source of tragedy - there is always loss involved by choosing one over another, as Antigone found in having to choose between love and honour. For liberal societies, this entails compromise and 'an exceedingly precarious' equilibrium as we are witnessing in the current political landscape with simplistic slogans prevailing over complex and subtle compromises. Perhaps these brief reflections will persuade you of the importance of reading what Berlin has to say.