Reviews

Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty by Henry Hardy, Isaiah Berlin

maryska's review against another edition

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4.0

I've read only "Two concepts on liberty", however, I'd love to go back and finish the whole book at some point.

daaan's review against another edition

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4.0

This took a while to read as it's very dense. The core essays are of course two of the most important in Berlin's career. If you've never read anything by him, these are an excellent start. They came as less of a surprise for me as I've already read some of the ancillary works that build on this. Nevertheless, the ideas are persuasive and some have been borne out by later science (e.g. historical determinism can be seen as scientifically valid in the context of a pre-Chaos theory model of physics). Moreover, discussions on the subjects of liberty, what the word means, have never been more topical as the edifice of what it means to be a liberal society shows all signs of crumbling.
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