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dngoldman's review
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
No one is better at writing about political theory than Berlin. Berlin masters at combing the intellectual landscape for forgot ideas and thinkers, tying odd pieces of theory together, and to create a take that is both fresh and within Berlin’s overall theory. Whether it’s a fresh take on well known theorists such as Machiavelli or resurrecting Vico, Berlin’s essays are wilding entertaining, while scholarly. Of course, the common complaint about Berlin is that regardless of the author, you are getting more Berlin than the person being reviewed. But you just have take one.
Philosophy is distinguished from two classes of questions the empirical which includes science and formal ones of mathematics logic and deductive reasoning Berlin distinguishes a class of questions with your properly philosophical in the case that there is no university accredited method for discovering answers to them. Distinguishes between the content of experience and the concepts of categories in which we organize and interpret it.
The enlightenment focused on the rational, mechanistic, scientific and progress. While these ideas freed humanity for superstition, they also boxed into theories of abstraction. The counter-englightment thinkers “the proclamation of the find me a reason and the methods of natural science based on observation is the soul reliable method of knowledge And the consequence rejection of the authority of revelation sacred writings in there at separate interpreters tradition prescription in every form nonrational source of knowledge. The rejection of the central principle of the light universality objectivity rationality in the capacity to provide permanent solutions to all genuine problems of life for thought and accessibility of rational methods occurred in various forms, conservative or liberal reactionary or revolutionary. “
And to quote the section Herzen
believe the individual human being should not be sacrificed on the altar of abstractions weather in the name of progress Justice humanity the state nation history itself or any other fictitious metaphysical entity The core of this outlook is the belief that the perennial basic human problems are not soluble at all that men can only do their best in the situation in which they find themselves with no a priori guarantee of ultimate success for hers in the agony of choice cannot be avoided. In the universe which is not a rational cosmos but chaotic and open to unforeseeable change there could be no absolute values or universal ideals.
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