Isaiah Berlin

by John Gray

Isaiah Berlin

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

John Nicholas Gray is a English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer.

Reviews

[Hamed Mahdavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

نیمه‌ی اول کتاب بسیار عالی بود. در نیمه‌ی دوم به نظر میومد که گاهی اوقات نویسنده تعدادی از گزاره‌ها و کلمات رو بارها و بارها تکرار می‌کنه. این قضیه بیش از این که فرم مرور داشته باشه، متن رو تا حدی خسته‌کننده می‌کرد، تا حدی که فهمیدن متن این کتاب که شرحی بر آیزایا برلینه از خود نوشته‌های آیزایا برلین سخت‌تر بود. در کل به نظر حجم این قسمت می‌تونست کمتر باشه.

[Daniel B-G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isaiah Berlin and John Gray are up there at the top of my list of favourite non fiction writers, so latter writing about the former should be amazing? Sadly not. At their best, the two of them have a flair for the particular, the concrete, the real, that makes their prose fly, gives it life in a way that most philosophy totally fails. Sadly, some times they also write for other philosophers, and when writing for that audience, they cannot help but fall back on academese and write turgid tedious prose filled with overly specific jargon that is repeated endlessly. This isn't to say I got nothing from this book, far from it. It has helped to clarify a few areas of Berlin's thoughts, but I can't say I enjoyed the experience. It felt far too much like work, and when reading both Berlin and Gray at their best it only ever feels like pleasure.

[Cyril Hédoin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and provocative, even if contentious, interpretation of Isaiah Berlin's philosophical and political views. Gray's main claim is that the validity of Berlin's thesis about value pluralism does not entail, contrary to what Berlin tended to argue, any priority for (negative) liberty over other values, nor any commitment toward liberal forms of life. The privileged normative status of liberty can only be ascertained within liberal forms of life, and the latter cannot be demonstrated as being superiors to an infinite range of nonliberal forms of life. Gray goes across Berlin's numerous writings, and extract from them a complex portrait of a thought aiming at an articulation between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the historicism of romantist thinkers.

[Mark Singer · Rating 3 out of 5]

What did Isaiah Berlin believe? Gray tries too hard to explain, and in so doing, confuses the forest for the trees. As of February 24, 2022, I have only read two collections of Berlins' works: Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas; and The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas; but do want to read more.

[Delaney Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appreciated discussions of his value pluralism the most but felt like the ultimate conclusion of agonistic liberalism as a special case of agonistic pluralism could have been worked out a bit more and perhaps with less assumptions that felt not entirely true to Berlin himself??

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them

Reading John Gray’s 'Isaiah Berlin' felt like watching a subtle intellectual duel conducted under the guise of biography. Gray writes with admiration, but never surrender, and what struck me most on returning to the book was how insistently it frames Berlin less as a system-builder than as a moral temperament.

Berlin emerges here not as a philosopher of answers but of resistances—resistant to monism, resistant to historical inevitability, resistant to any vision of human flourishing that demands sacrifice in the name of coherence.

Gray’s great strength lies in taking that pluralism seriously without embalming it into piety. He recognizes Berlin’s brilliance in diagnosing the dangers of totalizing ideologies, while also pressing gently on the limits of a worldview that excels at warning but hesitates when prescription is required.

Reading it now, I felt the attraction and the frustration of Berlin’s liberalism more sharply: its ethical decency, its historical sensitivity, and its refusal of cruelty sit alongside a certain political quietism that can feel inadequate in moments of crisis. Gray does not caricature this tension; he inhabits it.

The prose is lucid, controlled, and quietly polemical, mirroring Berlin’s own style while subtly diverging from his conclusions.

What lingered with me was the sense that Berlin’s legacy is less a doctrine than a stance—an insistence that human values are many, conflicting, and irreducible, and that any attempt to rank them absolutely risks violence.

Yet Gray’s portrait also exposes the cost of that insight: paralysis, moderation mistaken for virtue, and a faith that tragedy can be managed rather than confronted. Finishing the book, I didn’t feel instructed so much as orientated.

'Isaiah Berlin' reads like a conversation across generations about the moral price of certainty and the uneasy responsibilities of freedom.

It doesn’t settle the debate it stages, but it sharpens it—and in doing so, it honours Berlin more honestly than uncritical reverence ever could.

Most recommended.

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isaiah Berlin is one of my favorite thinkers and I think this book does a very good job of explaining value-pluralism. I also have a fondness for Gray, but he does the usual Gray thing of being brilliant, and then taking it just a wee bit too far and overselling certain aspects (I get that value-pluralism is Berlin's most well-known idea, but, dude, it does not define everything he did/said).

Anyway, I think this an interesting, if somewhat revisionist, look at Gray's thought and it forced me to pick up some of Berlin's work again to see if I agree with Gray. The jury is still out on that one.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isaiah Berlin's philosophy has intigued me for along time. His "self-creation through choice-making" reminds me of the transcendentalists, especially Margaret Fuller. This competent book discusses his concept of value pluralism, including "rivalrous and incommensurable" values (p. 177). Berlin says decent society must "maintain a precarious equilibrium that will prevent the occurance of desperate situations, of intolerable choices" among values. (p.201) We need to understand this, don't we? We must learn that our world is not a place of uniformity in our thinking or in our values and beliefs.

[Hugh Stewart]

One hero writing about another

[Marco den Ouden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent overview of Berlin's thought, including detailed discussion of determinism, value-pluralism, romanticism, and agonistic liberalism. Larger review to follow on my blog.