NP - Isaiah Berlin still speaks to us
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Fri Aug 6 15:30:28 UTC 2021
Matthew,
Nice. There is very good stuff on him in Louis Menand's new book which made
me want to grab me some Berlin.
So, I think I will.
Thanks,
Mrk
On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 11:17 AM matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I hope you are well and making the best of this less than ideal summer (at
> least for those of us not flying off to the stars with some billionaire).
>
> Recently I've been going back over Berlin's essays and have found that his
> words may be more applicable now than when he wrote them. This especially
> hit home when I was reading from "The Bent Twig", at the beginning of the
> fifth section.
>
> "What we are seeing, it seems to me, is a world reaction against the
> central doctrines of nineteenth-century liberal rationalism [...] The lines
> of battle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were more or less
> clearly drawn. On one side stood the supporters of tradition, of political
> and social hierarchies,, whether 'natural' or hallowed by history, or
> belief in, and obedience to , to divine, or at any rate transcendent,
> authority. [...] On the other side stood the unswerving champions of
> reason, who rejected faith in tradition, intuition, transcendent sources of
> authority as mere smoke-screens to justify irrationality[...]."
>
> Those forces of reason come in for some serious review by way of his work
> on Joseph De Maistre and others, but the point is that Nationalism is a
> force which many refused to recognize or dismissed. Now that we see Tucker
> Carlson going to Hungary to fawn over Orban's fascism (lite?) it is clear
> that the most noxious form of nationalism has got to be called out for what
> it is. But of course to call soem one a fascisit is to fall into the
> mudslinging that reigns in the internet. Their words and behaviour must be
> documented and categorized to show that they indeed walk like ducks because
> they are very sincere in their Goose-stepping.
>
> Go grab some Isaiah Berlin and feel the crooked timber of humanity creek
> and groan in our time.
>
> Best Regards
> Matt Cissell
>
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