The first and the last
The
New York Review of Books; New York; May 14, 1998; Isaiah Berlin;
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?ReqType=301&UserId=IPAuto&Passwd=IPAuto&JSEnabled=1&TS=925921082
Following
are the first known piece and the last essay written by Isaiah Berlin, who
died on November 5, 1997.
`The
Purpose Justifies the Ways'
Isaiah
Berlin came to England in early 1921, aged eleven, with virtually no English.
This story (untitled in the manuscript), which according to Berlin won
"a hamper of tuck" in a children's magazine competition, was
written in February 1922, when he was twelve; it is signed "L
Berlyn" at the end. As far as is known, it is his earliest surviving
extended piece of writing, as well as his only story, and shows how far his
English had developed after just a year. It appears here in an exact
transcription, apart from a few trivial alterations where total fidelity
might hold the reader up.
Moise
Solomonovich Uritsky, Commissar for Internal Affairs in the Northern Region
Commune of Soviet Russia, and Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, was murdered
by a member of the Russian gentry named Kunnegiesser on August 31, 1918.
Uritsky's "motto" has been chosen as the title because it signals
the way in which the story points forward to Berlin's repeated later insistence
on the inadmissibility of justifying present suffering as a route to some
imaginary future
state
of bliss. In this sense the story is the first recorded step on his
intellectual journey through life, a journey summarized in his last essay,
"My Intellectual Path," written seventyfour years later in 1996,
which also appears here for the first time.
Berlin
always ascribed his lifelong horror of violence, especially when
ideologically inspired, to an episode he witnessed at the age of seven during
the February Revolution in Petrograd in 1917: while out walking he watched a
policeman loyal to the tsar, white-faced with terror, being dragged off to
his death by a lynch mob. This story surely vividly reflects the power of
this early experience. -Henry Hardy
The
story of which I am going to tell is about the murder of Uritzky minister of
justice of soviet Russia in the y. 1918. already in the year 1918 the people
in Russia and its Capital Petrograd especially, were very depressed by the
Bolshevicks who terrorized the people to the utmost. One of the most noble
families in Petrograd was the family of the Ivanov's. It consisted of Andrew
Ivanov an old man aged 64, his son Peter a handsome and brave young man, and
an
old
servant named Vasily. although very depressed they had a cozy little home in
which peace and friendships reigned undisturbed until a sudden shock came
about to destroy their well earned happiness. It was a bright cold winter
morning the sun appeared as a little red disc on the clear sky. all nature
seemed to be enjoying itself lapped by the bright rays of the sun. A sudden
knock at the door was heard and the next moment an officer and two soldiers
entered
Ivanovs'
little hall.
Is
Andrew Ivanov living here? asked the officer curtly
I
am Andrew Ivanov and am at your service answered the old man quietly
"take
him away" ordered the officer signing to his soldiers-"this man is
guilty before the law for hiding some diamonds in his house, search the house
instantly and if you find any precious stones you will give them to me.*
Peter who looked at the scene with bewilderment and anger suddenly dealt the
officer a blow that send him on to the floor while himself quick as a
lightning jumped out of the window and soon was out of sight. The soldiers
followed the example of their
commander
who rose from the ground and went for Peter. But the Blow over his head made him
fall over the first stone that lay in his way and thus stopped him. in his
fall a sheet of paper fell out of his hip pocket. Old Vasili the servant who
followed him, remarkably quickly for a man of 60 picked up the paper
unnoticed by the officer.
II
Meanwhile
Peter decided to go to his cousin Leonid. Leonid a young man himself five
years elder than his cousin was dining when Peter rushed in. His burning
black eyes, wavang dark hair and the bewildered expression on his countenanse
made Leonid stunned to his place amazed and bewildered. Where do yo come from
cousin? he asked when he Recovered his breath, and what does that wild look
of yours mean?
Peter,
full of hatred told everything briefly to Leonid when a knock on the door
interrupt him-"the soldiers!" exclaimed Peter who looked through
the keyhole.
this
way pointed Leonid shortly pointing at the cupboard in the room
Peter
jumped into it without any noise. Leonid who opened the door to the soldiers
let them in and as if amazed asked what made you enter my quit house my
worthy friends?
The
deceived soldiers asked in loud voices: "Leonid Ivanov confess that your
cousin is hiding here you will not be remembered in the court as a guilty man
for we know all your little faults for which you deserve to be punished
Peter
trembled in his hiding place when he heard this.
No
my worthy friends you are on the wrong path and very much mistaken in
thinking that Peter my cousin is here. He never entered my house since his
last visit two weeks ago. Leonid played his part so well that the soldiers
were ready to believe that they made mistake
But
we saw Peter enter this house . . . in any case you would not mind if we
would search the house instantly
But
my friends Protested Leonid, surly you would not mind a glass of good wine
before you start!
ahoy!
Gregory bring some of my best wine for these worthy veterans, cried Leonid
not waiting for the answer of the soldiers now then friends let us be merry
Leonid
all the time added more and more wine to the cups of the "comrades"
while himself hardly touched his own cup. Two hours passed and the drunken
soldiers were carried off to unconscious Meanwhile Peter thanked Leonid for
his narrow escape, when suddenly Vasily the old servant of the Ivanovs rushed
in
your
father is murdered by the wretches exclaimed the man by the order of Uritzky
and there is the evidence said vasily hastily pulling out of his pocket the
document he picked up when the officer dropped it. It run like this
"By
the hand of Uritzky minister of justice in the republic of the soldier's
peasant's and
workmen's
deputies. allowance given to Captain
B. to arrest Andrew Ivanov and if necessary also Peter Ivanov.
Uritzky
when
Peter had read this he found a bit of paper between the folds of the document
"Andrew
Ivanov to be shot 3.15 p.m. at the Gorohovaya 3. Peter Ivanov to be executed
at
5.30
the same day
Uritzky
Peter
looked at his watch it showed 3.10 p.m. without telling a word he darted from
the house
in
the direction of Gorohovaya 3. he entered the gate at 3.14 1/2.
30
seconds remained not looking where he went he slipped and fell down when he
got up he
heard
a horrible scream, death and life fought in this scream boom twelve guns
sounded and
Peter
knew the fate of his father. he wondered on the streets like a madman at last
when he
came
back to Leonids house he fainted on the doorstep Leonid at once understood
what had
happened
he tried to keep himself up but failed and burst into bitter tears
after
Peter came to his senses again the old Vasily said to him Peter! thy enemies
the
BOLSHEvist
wretches have executed thy father! therefore swear theat thou wilt revenge
for thy
father
in
that minute a shot was fired through the window by the officer which came to
know how his
soldiers
were treated he fired to revenge himself for the blow he received his shot
hit Vasily in
his
back.
I
swear! said Peter meanwhile the old man's eyes for a moment closed opened and
had that
clear
look that people only get in their last moments
revenge!
he murmured and fell heavily on Peters hands unconscious a minute esllapsed
and he
opened
his eyes for the last time I'm going to meet you my Master. . . Andr. . . he
did not finish
for
death cut his bounds on the earth
as
long as I live I shall try to revenge upon Uritzky called Peter loudly And I
am with you and
Peter
cried Leonid taking a step forward and raising his hand
death
to Uritzky they cried both.
It
was the year 1919 a dark november night the wind blew outside and the soft
armchair before
the
burning stove seemed so warm and comfortable. in this deep armchair sat a man
about forty
years
old with long flowing hair which showed a big white forehead two deep little
black eyes,
covered
with long eyebrows grown to gether which gave his face a somewhat severe look
a
sharp
nose, a carnivorous mouth and a sharp chin covered with a little french
beard. this was the
famous
Uritzky.
he
possesed a clever but also cruel look and all his countenence bore an
expression of a
phanatic
he signed death verdicts, without moving his eyebrow. his leading motto in
life was
"The
purpose justifies the WAYS" he did not stop before anything for bringing
out his plans.
He
made a good impression at first but if once looked at the man with his little
burning eyes the
man
felt that Ur. read all his thoughts his eyes made an impression of a thousand
little spears
shooting
through one's brains.
His
look hypnotised people whom he wanted to obey him. This was once a famous man
"comrade"
Uritzky. The man of action
And
one of the greatest BOLSHEVIST factors.
he
divided manhood in two classes first class people that stood in his way,
second, the people
who
obeyed him.
The
former according to Uritzky's understanding did not deserve to live at all.
tzin!
tzin! sounded the bell wrung By Uritzky. a moment later Uritzky's young
secretary
appeared
his name was Michael SEREVEEV he wore a big black beard and a black curling
moustashe,
had he not the moustash and the beard which at a careful examination would be
recognised
as false you would see our old friend Peter Ivanov
"sit
down Michael said Ur. to him in a weak voice. After Michael alias Peter sat
Uritzky
continued
his talk-"come here he said melancholically and tell me a story that
would quiten my
nerves,
for I am tired of the days work, you know Michael, tell me a story that a
nurse told you
when
you were a baby it is foolish But it will quiten my nerves go on and tell me
your tale.
I
see sir answered Peter and began. "Thousands of years ago and thousands
of miles away
there
lived a folk of good people the people were kind and noble and enjoyed their
life
thoroughly
until a great disaster came along a new not worthy government ruled the
country and
destroyed
it it shed the Blood of the people at the head of it stood an ex murderer a
cruel an
clever
villain
between
others also one of the most honourable citizens was executed his son who also
was to
be
executed But HE escaped and swore to revenge his father's death upon the
villain who
signed
the death verdict And now finished Peter loudly pulling out his automatic,
the hour come!
hands
up he shouted levelling his pistol with Uritzky's forehead boom! sounded The
pistol and
Uritzky
without a groan fell heavily on the floor
Ho!
ahoy! soldiers! shouted Peter and when the soldiers appeared he faced them
with his pistol.
the
soldiers moved back in alarm, I killed your master he cried, and now my
mission on earth is
finished
my father is executed so is Leonid both without a trial, and I have not got
anybody to
live
for! Oh Father I am going to join you BOOM Fired Peter and fell heavily over
the body of
his
dead enemy when the soldiers came near they found that both were dead
My Intellectual
Path
Berlin had written nothing
substantial since 1988, when his intellectual credo, "On the Pursuit of
the Ideal" (a
response to the award of the first Agnelli Prize for his contribution to
ethics),
appeared in The New York
Review. Although his intellect was undiminished, and he had
continued to compose short
occasional pieces, it seemed clear that-reasonably enough in his
eighties--he had in effect
laid down his authorial pen.
But the Chinese project
caught his imagination: he regarded this new readership as important,
and felt an obligation to
address it. He told the professor that he would try to write something.
With a single sheet of
notes before him, he dictated a first draft onto cassette. When he had
approved an edited
transcript, making a few final insertions and adjustments, he said, with his
characteristic distaste
for revisiting his own work, that he did not wish to see the piece again. It
was to be the last essay
he wrote.
Contributors to the volume
were asked to offer guidance to readers who might wish to study
their work further. Berlin
simply directed them to two other essays of his, the Agnelli Prize essay
and "The Apotheosis
of the Romantic Will" (1975). Both are to be found in his 1990 collection,
The Crooked Timber of
Humanity, recently reissued by Princeton University Press.
-Henry Hardy
1.
Oxford
Philosophy before the Second World War
My
interest in philosophical issues started when I was an undergraduate at
Oxford in the late 1920s and early 1930s, because philosophy was part of the
course which at that time a great many students in Oxford pursued. As a
result of a continuing interest in this field I was appointed in 1932 to
teach philosophy, and my views at that time were naturally influenced by the
kind of discussions that my philosophical contemporaries held in Oxford.
There were plenty
of
other issues in philosophy, but as it happens the topics which my colleagues
and I concentrated on were the fruits of a return to empiricism which began
to dominate British philosophy before the First World War, under the
influence mainly of two celebrated Cambridge philosophers, G.E. Moore and
Bertrand Russell.
Verificationism
The
first topic which occupied our attention in the middle and late 1930s was the
nature of meaning-its relation to truth and falsehood, knowledge and opinion,
and in particular the test of meaning in terms of the verifiability of the
propositions in which it was expressed. The impulsion toward this topic came from
the members of the Vienna School, themselves disciples of Russell and greatly
influenced by thinkers such as Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Schlick. The
fashionable view was that the meaning of a proposition was the way in which
it was verifiable-that if there was no way whatever of verifying what was
being said, it was not a statement capable of truth or falsehood, not
factual, and therefore either meaningless or a case of some other use of
language, as seen in commands or expressions of desire, or in imaginative
literature, or in other forms of expression which did not lay claim to
empirical truth.
I
was influenced by this school in the sense of being absorbed in the problems
and theories which it generated, but I never became a true disciple. I
always. believed that statements that could be true or false or plausible or
dubious or interesting, while indeed they did relate to the world as
empirically conceived (and I have never conceived of the world in any other
way, from then to the present day), were nevertheless not necessarily capable
of being verified by some
simple
knockdown criterion, as the Vienna School and their logical positivist
followers asserted. From the beginning I felt that general propositions were
not verifiable in that way. Statements, whether in ordinary use or in the
natural sciences (which were the ideal of the Vienna School), could be
perfectly meaningful without being strictly verifiable. If I said "All
swans are white," I would never know if I knew this about all the swans
there were, or whether the number of swans might not be infinite; a black
swan no doubt refuted this generalization, but its positive verification in
the full sense seemed to me unattainable; nevertheless it would be absurd to
say that it had no meaning. The same was true about hypothetical
propositions, and still more so about unfulfilled hypotheticals, of which it
was plainly paradoxical to maintain that they could be shown to be true or
false by empirical observation; yet they were clearly meaningful.
I
thought of a great many other statements of this kind, which clearly had
meaning in the full sense of the word, but whose meaning escaped the narrow
criterion proposed, that of direct empirical observation-the world of the
senses. Consequently, though I took a lively part in these discussions
(indeed, what later came to be called Oxford Philosophy began in my rooms in
the evenings, at gatherings attended by such later celebrated philosophers as
A.J. Ayer, J.L. Austin, and Stuart Hampshire, influenced as they all were by
Oxford empiricism, and to some degree by Oxford realism-that is, the belief
that the external world is independent of human observers), nevertheless I
remained a heretic, though a friendly one. I have never departed from the
views I held at that time, and still believe that while empirical experience
is all that words can express that there is no other reality-nevertheless
verifiability is not the only, or indeed the most plausible, criterion of
knowledge or beliefs or hypotheses. This has remained with me for the rest of
my life, and has colored everything else that I have thought.
Another
topic which I offered for the attention of my young colleagues was the status
of such propositions as "This pink (shade) is more like this vermilion
than it is like this black." If generalized, it was clear that this was
a truth which no experience was likely to refute-the relations of visible
colors being fixed. At the same time the general proposition could not be
called a priori because it did not proceed formally from any definitions, and
did not therefore belong to the formal disciplines of logic or mathematics,
in which alone a priori propositions, then regarded as tautologies, belong.
So we had found a universal truth in the empirical sphere. What were the definitions
of "pink," "vermilion," and the rest? They had none. The
colors could be recognized only by looking, so that their definitions were
classified as ostensive, and from such definitions nothing logically
followed. This came close to the old problem of Kant's
synthetic
a priori propositions, and we discussed this and its analogues for many
months. I was convinced that my proposition was, if not strictly a priori,
self-evidently true, and that its contradictory was not intelligible. Whether
my colleagues ever raised the matter again I do not know, but the topic
entered formally into the discussions held by us at the time. It corresponded
to a view of Russell's embodied in a work called The Limits of Empiricism.
Phenomenalism
The
other main topic that my contemporaries discussed was phenomenalism -that is,
the question of whether human experience was confined to that provided by the
senses, as was taught by the British philosophers Berkeley and Hume (and in
some of their writings by Mill and Russell), or whether there existed a
reality independent of sensible experience. For some philosophers, like Locke
and his followers, there was such a reality, although it was not directly
accessible
to us-a reality which caused the sensible experiences which are all that we
can directly know. Other philosophers held that the external world was a
material reality which could be perceived directly, or misperceived as the
case might be: this was called realism, as opposed to the view that our world
was entirely created by human faculties-reason, imagination, and the like
-which was called idealism, in which I never believed. I have never believed
in any metaphysical truths-whether rationalist truths, as expounded by
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and, in his own very different fashion, Kant, or
the truths of (objective) idealism, the fathers of which are Fichte,
Friedrich Schelling, and Hegel, who still have their disciples. Thus meaning,
truth, and the nature of the external world were the topics which I thought
about, and to some extent wrote about -and some of my views on them have been
published.1
One
of the intellectual phenomena which made the greatest impact on me was the
universal search by philosophers for absolute certainty, for answers which
could not be doubted, for total intellectual security. This from the very
beginning appeared to me to be an illusory quest. No matter how solidly
based, widespread, inescapable, "self-evident" a conclusion or a
direct datum may seem to be, it is always possible to conceive that something
could modify or indeed
upset
it, even if one cannot at the moment imagine what this might be. And this
suspicion that a great deal of philosophy was set on an illusory path later
came to dominate my ideas in a quite new and different connection.
While
thus engaged in teaching and discussing the kind of philosophy I have
outlined, I was commissioned to write a biography of Karl Marx. Marx's
philosophical views never appeared to me to be particularly original or
interesting, but my study of his views led me to investigate his
predecessors, in particular the French philosophes of the eighteenth
century-the first organized adversaries of dogmatism, traditionalism,
religion, superstition, ignorance, oppression. I acquired an admiration for
the great task which the thinkers of the Encyclopedie had set themselves, and
for the great work which they did to liberate men from darkness-clerical,
metaphysical, political, and the like. And although I came in due course to
oppose some of the bases of their common beliefs, I have never lost my
admiration for and sense of solidarity with the Enlightenment of that period:
what I came to be critical of, apart from its empirical shortcomings, is some
of its consequences, both logical and social; I realized that Marx's
dogmatism, and that of his followers, in part derived from the certainties of
the eighteenth century Enlightenment.
2.
History of Ideas
and Political Theory
During
the war I served as a British official. When I came back to Oxford to teach
philosophy, I became preoccupied with two central problems. The first was
monism-the central thesis of Western philosophy from Plato to our day-and the
second, the meaning and application of the notion of freedom. I devoted a
good deal of time to each, and they shaped my thought for a good many years
to come.
Monism
Dazzled
by the spectacular successes of the natural sciences in their own century and
its predecessors, men such as Helvetius, Holbach, d'Alembert, Condillac, and
propagandists of genius such as Voltaire and Rousseau, believed that,
provided the right method was discovered, truth of a fundamental kind could
be uncovered about social, political, moral, and personal life-truth of the
kind that had scored such triumphs in the investigations of the external
world.
The
Encyclopedists believed in
scientific method as the only key to such knowledge: Rousseau and others
believed in eternal truths discovered by introspective means. But however
they differed, they belonged to a generation which was convinced that it was
on the path to the solution of all the problems that had plagued mankind from
its beginnings.
A
wider thesis underlay this: namely, that to all true questions there must be
one true answer and one only, all the other answers being false, for
otherwise the questions cannot be genuine questions. There must exist a path
which leads clear thinkers to the correct answers to these questions, as much
in the moral, social, and political worlds as in that of the natural
sciences, whether it is the same method or not; and once all the correct
answers to the deepest moral, social, and political questions that occupy (or
should occupy) mankind are put together, the result will represent the final
solution to all the problems of existence. Of course, we may never attain to
these answers: human beings may be too confused by their emotions, or too
stupid, or too unlucky, to be able to arrive at them; the answers may be too
difficult, the means may be lacking, the techniques too complicated to
discover; but however this may be, provided the questions are genuine, the
answers must exist. If we do not know, our successors may know; or perhaps
wise men in antiquity knew; and if they did not, perhaps Adam in Paradise
knew; or if he did not, the angels must know; and if even they do not know,
God must know the answers must be there.
If
the answers to social, moral, and political questions are discovered, then,
knowing them for what they are -the truth-men cannot fail to follow them, for
they would have no temptation to do otherwise. And so a perfect life can be
conceived. It may not be attainable, but in principle the conception must be
capable of being formed-indeed, the possibility of discovering the only true
answers to the great questions must in principle be believed in.
This
creed was certainly not confined to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, though
the methods recommended by others differ. Plato believed that mathematics was
the route to truth, Aristotle, perhaps, that it was biology; Jews and
Christians sought the answers in sacred books, in the pronouncements of
divinely inspired teachers and the visions of mystics; others believed that
the laboratory and mathematical methods could settle things; still others
believed, like Rousseau, that only the innocent human soul, the uncorrupted
child, the simple peasant would know the truth-better than the corrupt
inhabitants of societies ruined by civilization. But what they all agreed
about, as did their successors after the French Revolution, who may have supposed
the truth more difficult to obtain than their more naive and optimistic
predecessors (2), was that the laws of historical development could be-and by
then had been-discovered, that the answers to the questions of how to live
and what to do-morality, social life, political organization, personal
relationships-
are all capable of being organized in the light of the truths discovered by
the correct methods, whatever those may be.
This
is a philosophia perennis-what men,
thinkers, have believed from the pre-Socratics to all the reformers and
revolutionaries of our own age. It is the central belief on which human
thought has rested for two millennia. For if no true answers to questions
exist, how can knowledge ever be attainable in any province? This was the
heart of European rational, and indeed spiritual, thought for many ages. No
matter that people differ so widely, that cultures differ, moral and
political views differ; no matter that there is a vast variety of doctrines,
religions, moralities, ideas- all the same there must somewhere be a true
answer to the deepest questions that preoccupy mankind.
I
do not know why I always felt skeptical about this almost universal belief,
but I did. It may be a matter of temperament, but so it was.
Giambattista Vico
What
first shook me was my discovery of the works of the eighteenth-century
Italian thinker Giambattista Vico. He was the first philosopher, in my view,
to have conceived the idea of cultures. Vico wanted to understand the nature
of historical knowledge, of history itself: it was all very well to lean on
the natural sciences as far as the external world was concerned, but all they
could provide us with was an account of the behavior of rocks or tables or
stars or
molecules.
In thinking about the past, we go beyond behavior; we wish to understand how
human beings lived, and that means understanding their motives, their fears
and hopes and ambitions and loves and hatreds to whom they prayed, how they
expressed themselves in poetry, in art, in religion. We are able to do this
because we are ourselves human, and understand our own inner life in these
terms. We know how a rock, or a table, behaves because we observe it and make
conjectures and verify them; but we do not know why the rock wishes to be as
it is-indeed, we think it has no capacity for wishing, or for any other
consciousness. But we do know why we are what we are, what we seek, what
frustrates us, what expresses our inmost feelings and beliefs; we know more
about ourselves than we shall ever know about rocks or streams.
True
knowledge is knowledge of why things are as they are, not merely what they
are; and the more we delve into this, the more we realize that the questions
asked by the Homeric Greeks are different from the questions asked by the Romans,
that the questions asked by the Romans differ from those asked in the
Christian Middle Ages or in the seventeenth-century scientific culture or
Vico's own eighteenth-century days. The questions differ, the answers differ,
the aspirations differ; the use of language, of symbols, differs; and the
answers to one set of questions do not answer, do not have much relevance to,
the questions of other cultures. Of course Vico was a pious Roman Catholic,
and he believed that the Church alone could provide the answers. But be that
as it may, it did not prevent him from formulating the original idea that
cultures differ, that what matters to a fifth-century Greek is very different
from what matters to a Red Indian or a Chinese or a scientist in an
eighteenth-century laboratory; and therefore their outlooks differ, and there
are no universal answers to all their questions. Of course there is a common
human nature, otherwise men in one age could not understand the literature or
the art of another, or, above all, its laws, about which Vico, as a jurist.
knew most. But that did not prevent there being a wide variety of cultural
experience, so that activity of one kind was relevant to activity of some
other kind within a single culture, but did not share such close links with
the parallel activity in another culture.
J. G. Herder
Then
I read a far more relevant thinker, namely the German philosopher and poet
Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder was not the first (his teacher, Johann Georg
Hamann, has that honor) to deny the doctrine of his French contemporaries
that there are universal, timeless, unquestionable truths which hold for all
men, everywhere, at all times; and that the differences are simply due to
error and illusion, for the truth is one and universal-"quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est."3 Herder believed that different cultures
gave different answers to their central questions. He was more interested in
the humanities, the life of the spirit, than in the external world, and he
became convinced that what was true for a Portuguese was not necessarily true
for a Persian. Montesquieu had begun to say this kind of thing, but even he,
who believed that men were shaped by environment, by what he called
"climate," was in the end a universalist-he believed that the
central truths were eternal, even if the answers to local and ephemeral
questions might be different. Herder laid it down that every culture
possesses its own "center of gravity"4; each culture has its own
points of reference; there is no reason why these cultures should fight each
other-universal toleration must be possible-but unification was destruction.
Nothing was worse than imperialism. Rome, which crushed native civilizations
in
Asia
Minor in order to produce one uniform Roman culture, committed a crime. The
world was a great garden in which different flowers and plants grew, each in
its own way, each with its own claims and rights and past and future. From
which it followed that no matter what men had in common-and of course, again,
there was a common nature to some degree -there were no universally true
answers, as valid for one culture as for another.
Herder
is the father of cultural nationalism. He is not a political nationalist
(that kind of nationalism had not developed in his time), but he believed in
the independence of cultures and the need to preserve each in its uniqueness.
He believed that the desire to belong to a culture, something that united a
group or a province or a nation, was a basic human need, as deep as the desire
for food or drink or liberty; and that this need to belong to a community
where you
understood
what others said, where you could move freely, where you had emotional as
well as economic, social, and political bonds, was the basis of developed,
mature human life. Herder was not a relativist, though he is often so
described: he believed that there were basic human goals and rules of
behavior, but that they took wholly different forms in different cultures,
and that consequently, while there may have been analogies, similarities,
which made one culture intelligible to another, cultures were not to be
confused with each other-mankind was not one but many, and the answers to the
questions were many, though there might be some central essence to them all which
was one and the same.
Romanticism and
its Offspring
This
idea was developed further by the Romantics, who said something wholly new
and disturbing: that ideals were not objective truths written in heaven and
needing to be understood, copied, practiced by men; but that they were
created by men. Values were not found, but made; not discovered, but
generated-that is what some of the German Romantics certainly believed, as
against the objectivist, universalizing tendency of the superficial French.
Uniqueness mattered. A German poet writes poetry in German, in language
which, in the course of writing, he to some degree creates: he is not simply
a writer in German. The German artist is a maker of German paintings, poems,
dances-and so in all other cultures. A Russian thinker, Alexander Herzen,
once asked, "Where is the song before it is sung?"5 Where indeed?
"Nowhere" is the answer-one creates the song by singing it, by
composing it. So, too, life is created by those who
live
it, step by step. This is an aesthetic interpretation of morality and of
life, not an application of eternal models. Creation is all.
From
this sprang all kinds of diverse movements-anarchism, Romanticism,
nationalism, fascism, hero worship. I make my own values, maybe not
consciously: and besides, who is "I"? For Byronic Romantics,
"I" is indeed an individual, the outsider, the adventurer, the
outlaw, he who defies society and accepted values, and follows his own-it may
be to his doom, but this is better than conformity, enslavement to
mediocrity. But for other thinkers "I" becomes something much more
metaphysical. It is a collectivea nation, a Church, a Party, a class, an
edifice in which I am only a stone, an organism of which I am only a tiny
living fragment. It is the creator; I myself matter only insofar as I belong
to the movement, the race, the nation, the class, the Church; I do not
signify as a true individual within this superperson to whom my life is
organically bound.
Hence
German nationalism: I do this not because it is good or right or because I
like it-I do it because I am a German and this is the German way to live. So
also modern existentialism -I do it because I commit myself to this form of
existence. Nothing makes me; I do not do it because it is an objective order
which I obey, or because of universal rules to which I must adhere; I do it
because I create my own life as I do; being what I am, I give it direction
and I am responsible for it.
Denial
of universal values, this emphasis on being above all an element in, and
loyal to, a super-self, is a dangerous moment in European history, and has
led to a great deal that has been destructive and sinister in modern times;
this is where it begins, in the political ruminations and theories of the
earliest German Romantics and their disciples in France and elsewhere.6
I
never for a moment accepted the idea of these super-egos, but I recognized
their importance in modern thought and action. Slogans like "Not I but
the Party," "Not I but the Church," "My country right or
wrong, but my country" have inflicted a wound on the central faith of
human thought as I outlined it above-that the truth is universal, eternal,
for all men at all times-from which it has never recovered. Mankind not as an
object but as a subject, an ever-moving spirit,
self-creating
and self-moving, a self-composed drama in many acts, which, according to
Marx, will end in some kind of perfection-all this issues from the Romantic
revolution. While I reject this huge metaphysical interpretation of human
life in toto-I remain an empiricist, and know only what I am able to
experience, or think I could experience, and do not begin to believe in
supra-individual entities -nevertheless I own that it made some impact on me,
in the following way.
Pluralism
I
came to the conclusion that there is a plurality of ideals, as there is a
plurality of cultures and of temperaments. I am not a relativist; I do not
say "I like my coffee with milk and you like it without; I am in favor
of kindness and you prefer concentration camps"each of us with his own
values, which cannot be overcome or integrated.
This
I believe to be false. But I do believe that there is a plurality of values
which men can and do seek, and that these values differ. There is not an
infinity of them: the number of human values, of values which I can pursue
while maintaining my human semblance, my human character, is finite -let us
say 74, or perhaps 122, or 26, but finite, whatever it may be. And the
difference this makes is that if a man pursues one of these values, I, who do
not, am able to understand why he pursues it or what it would be like, in his
circumstances, for me to be induced to pursue it. Hence the possibility of
human understanding.
I
think these values are objectivethat is to say, their nature, the pursuit of
them, is part of what it is to be a human being, and this is an objective
given. The fact that men are men and women are women and not dogs or cats or
tables or chairs is an objective fact; and part of this objective fact is
that there are certain values, and only those values, which men, while
remaining men, can pursue. If I am a man or a woman with sufficient
imagination (and this I do need), I can enter into a value system which is
not my own, but which is nevertheless something I can conceive of men
pursuing while remaining human, while remaining creatures with whom I can
communicate, with whom I have some common values-for all human beings must
have some common values or they cease to be human, and also some different
values else they cease to differ, as in fact they do.
That
is why pluralism is not relativism-the multiple values are objective, part of
the essence of humanity rather than arbitrary creations of men's subjective
fancies. Nevertheless, of course, if I pursue one set of values I may detest
another, and may think it is damaging to the only form of life that I am able
to live or tolerate, for myself and others; in which case I may attack it, I
may even-in extreme cases-have to go to war against it. But I still recognize
it as a human pursuit. I find Nazi values detestable, but I can understand
how, given enough misinformation, enough false belief about reality, one
could come to believe that they are the only salvation. Of course they have
to be fought, by war if need be, but I do not regard the Nazis, as some
people do, as literally pathological or insane, only as wickedly wrong,
totally misguided about the facts, for example in believing that some beings
are subhuman, or that race is central, or that Nordic races alone are truly
creative, and so forth. I see how, with enough false education, enough
widespread illusion and error, men can, while remaining men, believe this and
commit the most unspeakable crimes.
If
pluralism is a valid view, and respect between systems of values which are
not necessarily hostile to each other is possible, then toleration and
liberal consequences follow, as they do not either from monism (only one set
of values is true, all the others are false) or from relativism (my values
are mine, yours are yours, and if we clash, too bad, neither of us can claim
to be right). My political pluralism is a product of reading Vico and Herder,
and of understanding the roots of
Romanticism, which in its violent, pathological form went too far for human
toleration.
So
with nationalism: the sense of belonging to a nation seems to me quite
natural and not in itself to be condemned, or even criticized. But in its
inflamed condition-my nation is better than yours, I know how the world
should be shaped and you must yield because you do not, because you are
inferior to me, because my nation is top and yours is far, far below mine and
must offer itself as material to mine, which is the only nation entitled to
create the best possible world-it is a form of pathological extremism which
can lead, and has led, to unimaginable horrors, and is totally incompatible
with the kind of pluralism which I have attempted to describe.
It
may be of interest to remark, incidentally, that there are certain values
that we in our world accept which were probably created by early Romanticism
and did not exist before: for example, the idea that variety is a good thing,
that a society in which many opinions are held, and those holding different
opinions are tolerant of each other, is better than a monolithic society in
which one opinion is binding on everyone. Nobody before the eighteenth
century could have
accepted
that: the truth was one and the idea of variety was inimical to it. Again,
the idea of sincerity, as a value, is something new. It was always right to
be a martyr to the truth, but only to the truth: Muslims who died for Islam
were poor, foolish, misled creatures who died for nonsense; so, for
Catholics, were Protestants and Jews and pagans; and the fact that they held
their beliefs sincerely made them no better-what was important was to be
right. In discovering
the
truth, as in every other walk of life, success was what was important, not
motive. If a man says to you that he believes that twice two is seventeen,
and someone says, "You know, he doesn't do it to annoy you, he doesn't
do it because he wants to show off or because he has been paid to say it-he
truly believes, he is a sincere believer," you would say, "This
makes it no better, he is talking irrational nonsense." That is what
Protestants were doing, in the view of Catholics, and vice versa. The more
sincere, the more dangerous; no marks were given for sincerity until the
notion that there is more than one answer to a question-that is,
pluralism-became more widespread. That is what led value to be set on motive
rather than on consequence, on sincerity rather than on success.
The
enemy of pluralism is monism the ancient belief that there is a single
harmony of truths into which everything, if it is genuine, in the end must
fit. The consequence of this belief (which is something different from, but
akin to, what Karl Popper called essentialism-to him the root of all evil) is
that those who know should command those who do not. Those who know the
answers to some of the great problems of mankind must be obeyed, for they
alone know how society should be organized, how individual lives should be
lived, how culture should be developed. This is the old Platonic belief in
the philosopher kings, who were entitled to give orders to others. There have
always been thinkers who hold that if only scientists, or scientifically
trained persons, could be put in charge of things, the world would be vastly
improved. To this I have to say that no better excuse, or even reason, has
ever been propounded for unlimited despotism on the part of an elite which
robs the majority of its essential liberties.
Someone
once remarked that in the old days men and women were brought as sacrifices
to a variety of gods; for these, the modern age has substituted new idols:
isms. To cause pain, to kill, to torture are in general rightly condemned;
but if these things are done not for my personal benefit but for an
ism-socialism, nationalism, fascism, communism, fanatically held religious
belief, or progress, or the fulfilment of the laws of history-then they are
in order. Most
revolutionaries
believe, covertly or overtly, that in order to create the ideal world eggs
must be broken, otherwise one cannot obtain the omelette. Eggs are certainly
broken -never more violently or ubiquitously than in our times-but the
omelette is far to seek, it recedes into an infinite distance. That is one of
the corollaries of unbridled monism, as I call itsome call it fanaticism, but
monism is at the root of every extremism.
Freedom
Political
freedom is a topic to which I devoted two lectures during the 1950s. The
later of these, entitled "Two Concepts of Liberty,"7 inaugurated my
Oxford Professorship, and its gist was to distinguish between two notions of
liberty (or freedom-the terms are used interchangeably), negative and
positive. By negative liberty I meant the absence of obstacles which block
human action. Quite apart from obstacles created by the external world, or by
the biological,
physiological,
psychological laws which govern human beings, there is lack of political
freedom-the central topic of my lecture -where the obstacles are man-made,
whether deliberately or unintentionally. The extent of negative liberty
depends on the degree to which such man-made obstacles are absent-on the
degree to which I am free to go down this or that path without being
prevented from doing so by man-made institutions or disciplines, or by the
activities of specific human beings.
It
is not enough to say that negative freedom simply means freedom to do what I
like, for in that case I can liberate myself from obstacles to the fulfilment
of desire simply by following the ancient Stoics and killing desire. But that
path, the gradual elimination of the desires to which obstacles can occur,
leads in the end to humans being gradually deprived of their natural, living
activities: in other words, the most perfectly free human beings will be
those who are dead, since then there is no desire and therefore no obstacles.
What I had in mind, rather, was simply the number of paths down which a man
can walk, whether or not he chooses to do so. That is the first of the two
basic senses of political freedom.
Some
have maintained, against me, that freedom must be a triadic relationship: I
can overcome or remove or be free from obstacles only in order to do
something, to be free to perform a given act or acts. But I do not accept
that. Unfreedom in its basic sense is what we ascribe to the man in jail, or
the man tied to a tree; all that such a man seeks is the breaking of his
chains, escape from the cell, without necessarily aiming at a particular
activity once he is liberated. In the larger sense, of course, freedom means
freedom from the rules of a society or its institutions, from the deployment
against one of excessive moral or physical force, or from whatever shuts off
possibilities of action which otherwise would be open. This I call
"freedom from."
The
other central sense of freedom is freedom to: if my negative freedom is
specified by answering the question "How far am I controlled?" the
question for the second sense of freedom is "Who controls me?"
Since we are talking about man-made obstacles, I can ask myself "Who
determines my actions, my life? Do I do so, freely, in whatever way I choose?
Or am I under orders from some other source of control? Is my activity
determined by parents, schoolmasters,
priests,
policemen? Am I under the discipline of a legal system, the capitalist order,
a slaveowner, the government (monarchical, oligarchic, democratic)? In what
sense am I master of my fate? My possibilities of action may be limited, but
how are they limited? Who are those who stand in my way, how much power can
they wield?
These
are the two central senses of "liberty" which I set myself to
investigate. I realized that they differed, that they were answers to two
different questions; but, although cognate, they did not in my view clash-the
answer to one did not necessarily determine the answer to the other. Both
freedoms were ultimate human ends, both were necessarily limited, and both
concepts could be perverted in the course of human history. Negative liberty
could be interpreted as economic
laissez
faire, whereby in the name of freedom owners are allowed to destroy the lives
of children in mines, or factory owners to destroy the health and character
of workers in industry. But that was a perversion, not what the concept
basically means to human beings, in my view. Equally it was said that it is a
mockery to inform a poor man that he is perfectly free to occupy a room in an
expensive hotel, although he may not be able to pay for it. But that, too, is
a confusion. He is indeed free to rent a room there, but has not the means of
using this freedom. He has not the
means,
perhaps, because he has been prevented from earning more than he does by a
man-made economic system-but that is a deprivation of freedom to earn money,
not of freedom to rent the room. This may sound a pedantic distinction, but
it is central to discussions of economic versus political freedom.
The
notion of positive freedom has led, historically, to even more frightful
perversions. Who orders my life? I do. I? Ignorant, confused, driven hither
and thither by uncontrolled passions and drives-is that all there is to me?
Is there not within me a higher, more rational, freer self, able to
understand and dominate passions, ignorance, and other defects, which I can
attain to only by a process of education or understanding, a process which
can be managed only by those
who
are wiser than myself, who make me aware of my true, "real,"
deepest self, of what I am at my best? This is a well-known metaphysical
view, according to which I can be truly free and self-controlled only if I am
truly rational-a belief which goes back to Plato-and since I am not perhaps sufficiently
rational myself, I must obey those who are indeed rational, and who therefore
know what is best not only for themselves but also for me, and who can guide
me
along
lines which will ultimately awaken my true rational self and put it in
charge, where it truly belongs. I may feel hemmed in-indeed, crushed-by these
authorities, but that is an illusion: when I have grown up and have attained
to a fully mature, "real" self, I shall understand that I would
have done for myself what has been done for me if I had been as wise, when I
was in an inferior condition, as they are now.
In
short, they are acting on my behalf, in the interests of my higher self, in
controlling my lower self; so that true liberty for the lower self consists
in total obedience to them, the wise, those who know the truth, the elite of
sages; or perhaps my obedience must be to those who understand how human
destiny is made-for if Marx is right, then it is a Party (which alone grasps
the demands of the rational goals of history) which must shape and guide me,
whichever way my
poor
empirical self may wish to go; and the Party itself must be guided by its
far-seeing leaders, and in the end by the greatest and wisest leader of all.
There
is no despot in the world who cannot use this method of argument for the
vilest oppression, in the name of an ideal self which he is seeking to bring
to fruition by his own, perhaps somewhat brutal and prima facie morally
odious means (prima facie only for the lower empirical self). The
"engineer of human souls," to use Stalin's phrase,8 knows best; he
does what he does not simply in order to do his best for his nation, but in
the name of the nation itself,
in
the name of what the nation would be doing itself if only it had attained to
this level of historical understanding. That is the great perversion which
the positive notion of liberty has been liable to: whether the tyranny issues
from a Marxist leader, a king, a fascist dictator, the masters of an
authoritarian Church or class or State, it seeks for the imprisoned,
"real" self within men, and "liberates" it, so that this
self can attain to the level of those who give the orders.
This
goes back to the naive notion that there is only one true answer to every
question: if I know the true answer and you do not, and you disagree with me,
it is because you are ignorant; if you knew the truth, you would necessarily
believe what I believe; if you seek to disobey me, this can be so only
because you are wrong, because the truth has not been revealed to you as it
has been to me. This justifies some of the most frightful forms of oppression
and enslavement in human history, and it is truly the most dangerous, and, in
our century in particular, the most violent, interpretation of the notion of
positive liberty.
This
notion of two kinds of liberty and their distortions then formed the center
of much discussion and dispute in Western and other universities, and does so
to this day.
Determinism
My
other lecture on freedom was entitled "Historical Inevitability."9
Here I stated that determinism was a doctrine very widely accepted among
philosophers for many hundreds of years. Determinism declares that every
event has a cause, from which it unavoidably follows. This is the foundation
of the natural sciences: the laws of nature and all their applications-the
entire body of natural science-rest upon the notion of an eternal order which
the sciences
investigate.
But if the rest of nature is subject to these laws, can it be that man alone
is not? When a man supposes, as most ordinary people do (though not most
scientists and philosophers), that when he rises from the chair he need not
have done so, that he did so because he chose to do so, but he need not have
chosen-when he supposes this, he is told that this is an illusion, that even
though the necessary work by psychologists has not yet been accomplished, one
day it will be (or at any rate in principle can be), and then he will know
that what he is and does is necessarily as it is, and could not be otherwise.
I believe this doctrine to be false, but I do not in this essay seek to
demonstrate this, or to refute determinism-indeed, I am not sure if such a
demonstration or refutation is possible. My only concern is to ask myself
two
questions. Why do philosophers and others think that human beings are fully
determined? And, if they are, is this compatible with normal moral sentiments
and behavior, as commonly understood?
My
thesis is that there are two main reasons for supporting the doctrine of
human determinism. The first is that, since the natural sciences are perhaps
the greatest success story in the whole history of mankind, it seems absurd
to suppose that man alone is not subject to the natural laws discovered by
the scientists. (That, indeed, is what the eighteenth-century philosophes
maintained.) The question is not, of course, whether man is wholly free of
such laws-no one but
a
madman could maintain that man does not depend on his biological or
psychological structure
or
environment, or on the laws of nature. The only question is: Is his liberty
totally exhausted thereby? Is there not some corner in which he can act as he
chooses, and not be determined to choose by antecedent causes? This may be a
tiny corner of the realm of nature, but unless it is there, his consciousness
of being free, which is undoubtedly all but universal-the fact that most
people believe that, while some of their actions are mechanical, some obey
their free will-is an enormous illusion, from the beginnings of mankind, ever
since Adam ate the apple, although told not to do so, and did not reply,
"I could not help it, I did not do it freely, Eve forced me to do
it."
The
second reason for belief in determinism is that it does devolve the
responsibility for a great many things that people do on to impersonal
causes, and therefore leaves them in a sense unblameworthy for what they do.
When I make a mistake, or commit a wrong or a crime, or do anything else
which I recognize, or which others recognize, as bad or unfortunate, I can
say, "How could I avoid it?-that was the way I was brought up" or
"That is my nature, something for
which
natural laws are responsible" or "I belong to a society, a class, a
Church, a nation, in which everyone does it, and nobody seems to condemn
it" or "I am psychologically conditioned by the way in which my
parents behaved to each other and to me, and by the economic and social
circumstances in which I was placed, or was forced into, not to be able to
choose to act otherwise" or, finally, "I was under orders."
Against
this, most people believe that everyone has at least two choices that he can
make, two possibilities that he can realize. When Eichmann says, "I
killed Jews because I was ordered to; if I had not done it I would have been
killed myself," one can say, "I see that it is improbable that you
would have chosen to be killed, but in principle you could have done it if
you had decided to do it-there was no literal compulsion, as there is in
nature, that caused you to act as you did." You may say it is unreasonable
to expect people to behave like that when facing great dangers: so it is, but
however unlikely it may be that they should decide to do so, in the literal
sense of the word they could have chosen to do so. Martyrdom cannot be
expected, but can be accepted, against whatever odds indeed, that is why it
is so greatly admired.
So
much for the reasons for which men choose to embrace determinism in history.
But if they do, there is a difficult logical consequence, to say the least.
It means that we cannot say to anyone, "Did you have to do that? Why
need you have done that?"-the assumption behind which is that he could
have refrained, or done something else. The whole of our common morality, in
which we speak of obligation and duty, right and wrong, moral praise and
blame-the way in which people are praised or condemned, rewarded or punished,
for behaving in a way in which they were not forced to behave, when they
could have behaved otherwise-this network of beliefs and practices, on which
all current morality seems to me to depend, presupposes the notion of
responsibility, and responsibility entails the ability to choose between
black and white, right and wrong, pleasure and duty; as well as, in a wider
sense, between forms of life, forms of government, and the whole
constellations of moral values in terms of which most people, however much
they may or may not be aware of it, do in fact live.
If
determinism were accepted, our vocabulary would have to be very, very
radically changed. I do not say that this is impossible in principle, but it
goes further than what most people are prepared to face. At best, aesthetics
would have to replace morality. You can admire or praise people for being
handsome, or generous, or musical-but that is not a matter of their choice, that
is "how they are made." Moral praise would have to take the same
form: if I praise you for
saving
my life at your own risk, I mean that it is wonderful that you are so made
that you could not avoid doing this, and I am glad that I encountered someone
literally determined to save my life, as opposed to someone else who was
determined to look the other way. Honorable or dishonorable conduct,
pleasure-seeking and heroic martyrdom, courage and cowardice, deceitfulness
and truthfulness, doing right against temptation-these would become like
being
good-looking
or ugly, tall or short, old or young, black or white, born of English or
Italian parents: something that we cannot alter, for everything is
determined. We can hope that things will go as we should like, but we cannot
do anything toward this-we are so made that we cannot help but act in a
particular fashion. Indeed, the very notion of an act denotes choice; but if
choice is itself determined, what is the difference between action and mere
behavior?
It
seems to me paradoxical that some political movements demand sacrifices and
yet are determinist in belief. Marxism, for example, which is founded on
historical determinismthe inevitable stages through which society must pass
before it reaches perfection-enjoins painful and dangerous acts, coercion and
killing, equally painful at times both to the perpetrators and to the
victims; but if history will inevitably bring about the perfect society, why
should one sacrifice one's life for a process which will, without one's help,
reach its proper, happy destination? Yet there is a curious human feeling
that if the stars in their courses are fighting for you, so that your cause
will triumph, then you should sacrifice yourself in order to shorten the
process, to bring the birthpangs of the new order nearer, as Marx said. But
can so many people be truly persuaded to face these dangers, just to shorten
a process which will end in happiness whatever they may do or fail to do?
This has always puzzled me, and puzzled others.
All
this I discussed in the lecture in question, which has remained
controversial, and has been much discussed and disputed, and is so still.
The Pursuit of
the Ideal
There
is one further topic which I have written about, and that is the very notion
of a perfect society, the solution to all our ills. Some of the eighteenth
century French philosophes thought
the ideal society they hoped for would inevitably come; others were more
pessimistic and supposed that human defects would fail to bring it about. Some
thought that progress toward it was inexorable, others that only great human
effort could achieve it, but might not do so. However
this
may be, the very notion of the ideal society presupposes the conception of a
perfect world in which all the great values in the light of which men have
lived for so long can be realized together, at least in principle. Quite
apart from the fact that the idea had seemed Utopian to those who thought
that such a world could not be achieved because of material or psychological
obstacles, or the incurable ignorance, weakness, or lack of rationality of
men, there is a far more formidable objection to the very notion itself.
I
do not know who else may have thought this, but it occurred to me that some
ultimate values are compatible with each other and some are not. Liberty, in
whichever sense, is an eternal human ideal, whether individual or social. So
is equality. But perfect liberty (as it must be in the perfect world) is not
compatible with perfect equality. If man is free to do anything he chooses,
then the strong will crush the weak, the wolves will eat the sheep, and this
puts an end to equality. If perfect equality is to be attained, then men must
be prevented from outdistancing each other, whether in material or in intellectual
or in spiritual achievement, otherwise inequalities will result. The
anarchist Bakunin, who believed in equality above all, thought that
universities should be abolished because they bred learned men who behaved as
if they were superior to the unlearned, and this propped up social
inequalities. Similarly, a world of perfect justice-and who can deny that
this is one of the noblest of human values?-is not compatible with perfect
mercy. I need not labor this point: either the law takes its toll, or men
forgive, but the two values cannot both be realized.
Again, knowledge and happiness may or may
not be compatible. Rationalist thinkers have supposed that knowledge always
liberates, that it saves men from being victims of forces they cannot
understand; to some degree this is no doubt true, but if I know that I have
cancer I am not thereby made happier, or freer-I must choose between always
knowing as much as I can and accepting that there are situations where
ignorance may be bliss. Nothing is more attractive than spontaneous
creativity, natural vitality, a free flowering of ideas, works of art-but
these are not often compatible with a capacity for careful and effective
planning, without which no even moderately secure society can be created.
Liberty
and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and
justice-all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet
when they are incompatible, they cannot all be attained, choices must be
made, sometimes tragic losses accepted in the pursuit of some preferred
ultimate end. But if, as I believe, this is not merely empirically but
conceptually true that is, derives from the very conception of these
values-then the very idea of
the
perfect world in which all good things are realized is incomprehensible, is
in fact conceptually incoherent. And if this is so, and I cannot see how it
could be otherwise, then the very notion of the ideal world, for which no
sacrifice can be too great, vanishes from view.
To
go back to the Encyclopedists and the Marxists and all the other movements
the purpose of which is the perfect life: it seems as if the doctrine that
all kinds of monstrous cruelties must be permitted, because without these the
ideal state of affairs cannot be attained-all the justifications of broken
eggs for the sake of the ultimate omelette, all
the brutalities, sacrifices, brainwashing, all those revolutions, everything
that has made this century perhaps the most appalling of any
since
the days of old, at any rate in the West-all this is for nothing, for the
perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything
done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy.
[Footnote]
*Once
when the Berlins' flat in Petrograd was searched the maid successfully hid
the few family jewels
in
the snow on the balcony.
[Footnote]
1
See the author's Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays (Viking,
1979).
[Footnote]
2
Fourier, an early socialist, and SaintSimon believed in a scientifically organized
society. For
Saint-Simon
it was to be headed by bankers and scientists, and inspired by artists and
poets. Their
successors
were the French socialists, such as Cabet, Pecqueur, Louis Blanc, and the
terrorist Blanqui,
and,
in the end, Marx and Engels and their followers.
[Footnote]
3"What
is believed everywhere, always, by everyone." Vincent of Lerins,
Commonitorium 2. 3. 4
Herders
Sammtliche Werke, edited by Bernhard Suphan (Berlin, 1877-1913), Vol. 5, p.
509.
[Footnote]
5
See A. I. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow, 19541966),
Vol. 6, pp. 33 and
335.
[Footnote]
6`The
Romantics viewed their notion of self-moving centers of historical activity,
thrusting forward on
their
own terms, as ultimately subjective. These were arbitrary entities-whether
Byronic, somewhat
satanic
figures at war with society, or heroes who mold around themselves groups of
followers
(robbers,
in the case of Schiller's play) or entire nations (Lycurgus,
Mosesnation-builders so much
admired
by Machiavelli-to whom there are certainly modern parallels)-creating in
accordance with freely
invented
patterns. This view was sternly opposed by such thinkers as Hegel and Marx,
who taught,
each
in his own fashion, that progress must conform to the iron laws of historical
developmentwhether
material
development, as in Marx, or spiritual, as in Hegel. Only thus can the
emancipation of human
powers
from irrational drives be achieved, and a reign be ushered in of total
justice, freedom, virtue,
happiness,
and harmonious self-realization. This idea of inexorable progress is
inherited from the
Judeo-Christian
tradition, but without the notions of the inscrutable divine will or the Last
Judgment of
mankind-the
separation of the satisfactory sheep from the unsatisfactory goats-conducted
after death.
[Footnote]
7
Delivered in 1958, and available in two collections of essays by the author:
Four Essays on Liberty
(Oxford
University Press, 1969) and The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of
Essays (Farrar,
Straus
and Giroux, 1998).
[Footnote]
8
Stalin used the phrase "engineers of human souls" in a speech on
the role of Soviet writers made at
Maxim
Gorky's house on October 26, 1932, recorded in an unpublished manuscript in
the Gorky
archive-K.
L. Zelinsky, "Vstrecha pisatelei s I. V. Stalinym" ("A meeting
of writers with I. V. Stalin")-and
published
for the first time, in English, in A. KempWelch, Stalin and the Literary
Intelligentsia,
1928--39
(Macmillan [UK], 1991), pp. 128-131: for this phrase see p. 131 (and, for the
Russian
original,
"inzhenery chelovecheskikh dum," I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya (Moscow,
19461967), Vol.13, p.
410).-H.H.
9 Delivered in 1953, and also included both in Four Essays on Liberty and in
The Proper
Study
of Mankind.
Reproduced
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution
is prohibited
without
permission.
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