Abstract
Renowned primarily for his thoughts about pluralism, it is surprising to note that relatively little attention has been paid to what Isaiah Berlin says about the idea of monism. Usually treated as a prefatory consideration, commentators have tended to gloss Berlin’s thoughts about monism. This is, I believe, a mistake. For when one attends to what Berlin says one notes the various forms of monism in his essays, as well as the different implications of each. Berlin presents monism in different ways according to topic, and thereby highlights different issues. Considering his discussions of monism as regards history, philosophy, and politics allows for a much more nuanced account of Berlin’s position, as well as a better appreciation of what he thinks the problems of monism are.
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Notes
- 1.
For a good overview of the critical literature on Berlin, see: Ian Harris, “Berlin and His Critics,” in Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 349–374; George Crowder, “After Berlin: The Literature since 2002,” accessed May 21, 2019, http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/onib/after-berlin.pdf, and the exhaustive bibliography of secondary literature compiled by Henry Hardy on the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library website that can be found at http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/onib/other.html. For more specifically about the relativism-pluralism debate see: George Crowder, “Pluralism, Relativism, and Liberalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah Berlin, ed. Joshua L. Cherniss and Steven B. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 229–249.
- 2.
Compare: Isaiah Berlin, “European Unity and its Vicissitudes,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 183–185; Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 4–5; Isaiah Berlin, “The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities,” in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 1997), 80–81; Isaiah Berlin, “My Intellectual Path,” in The Power of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 5; and Isaiah Berlin, “The Birth of Greek Individualism,” in Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 290.
- 3.
For a different take on this issue see: Sara Lagi, “Sir Isaiah Berlin: against Monism (1953–1958),” in Monisms and Pluralisms in the History of Political Thought, ed. Andrea Cantanzaro and Sara Lagi (Rome: Edizioni Epokė, 2015), 139–154, and Luke MacInnis, “Two Concepts of Monism: Axiomatic and Asymptotic,” The Review of Politics 77, no. 4 (2015): 603–635.
- 4.
For examples of both the ways Berlin speaks about monism, see: Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” 5–6; Berlin, “The Birth of Greek Individualism,” 290–294; Isaiah Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 24–27; and Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 21–23.
- 5.
One of the most famous instances of this is the distinction Berlin draws between “foxes” and “hedgehogs.” See: Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History,” in Russian Thinkers, 2nd edition, ed. Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 24–92. Eric Mack, however, is particularly critical of Berlin’s reading of history in this manner. See: Eric Mack, “Isaiah Berlin and Liberalism Pluralism,” Public Affairs Quarterly 7, no. 3 (1993): 216 f.
- 6.
Compare: Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” 24–26 and Isaiah Berlin, “The Naïveté of Verdi,” in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 1997), 287–290.
- 7.
Isaiah Berlin, “The Concept of a Scientific History,” in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 103.
- 8.
Isaiah Berlin, “The Sense of Reality,” in The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996), 19–20.
- 9.
Isaiah Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” in Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 104–110.
- 10.
Berlin, “The Concept of Scientific History,” 104–105.
- 11.
Berlin, “The Sense of Reality,” 25–26.
- 12.
Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” 109.
- 13.
Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” 110.
- 14.
Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” 114 f.
- 15.
Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” 161–162. Compare: Isaiah Berlin, “Introduction,” in Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 4–7.
- 16.
Isaiah Berlin, “The Purpose of Philosophy,” in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3. Compare: Isaiah Berlin, “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 144–148.
- 17.
Berlin, “The Purpose of Philosophy,” 3. Compare: Isaiah Berlin, “The Philosophers of the Enlightenment,” in The Power of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 36–38.
- 18.
Isaiah Berlin, “Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements,” in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 40.
- 19.
Berlin, “Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements,” 39–43, 46–47.
- 20.
Isaiah Berlin, “Verification,” Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 25.
- 21.
Isaiah Berlin, “Logical Translation,” in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 77–79. Compare: Berlin, “My Intellectual Path,” 2–4.
- 22.
For more on Berlin’s lack of discussion about the mechanisms of governance, see: Jeremy Waldron, “Isaiah Berlin’s Neglect of Enlightenment Constitutionalism,” in Political Political Theory: Essays on Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), as well as George Crowder, “Value Pluralism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy: Waldron and Berlin in Debate,” The Review of Politics 81, no. 1 (2019): 101–127.
- 23.
Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” 24–25, 27.
- 24.
Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” 27.
- 25.
Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” 28.
- 26.
Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” 28–29.
- 27.
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 169–181.
- 28.
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 191.
- 29.
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 214.
- 30.
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 192–198. Compare: Berlin, “My Intellectual Path,” 16–18.
- 31.
Berlin, “European Unity and its Vicissitudes,” 181–182.
- 32.
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 198.
- 33.
Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
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Ferrell, J. (2020). Isaiah Berlin on Monism. In: Callahan, G., McIntyre, K.B. (eds) Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42599-9_16
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