What should be done? To the question that hung over 19th-century Russia and dogs the world today, Isaiah Berlin would answer, stand firmly uncertain. Russian-born and Oxford-bred, Berlin has almost single-handedly kept alive in the West a sense of the intellectual fervor and moral complexity of pre-Revolutionary Russian thought. In these essays of 30 years, he demonstrates, with the clarity, vividness, and precision he attributes to Tolstoy, that failure of the 1848 revolution in Western Europe forced Russian intellectuals, now isolated and insulated, "to develop a native social and political outlook," harsh, unsentimental, and ultimately uncompromising; that there exists "a great chasm between those who relate everything to a single vision. . . [and] those who pursue many ends" (in "The Hedgehog and the Fox," on Tolstoy's view of history); that Herzen and Bakunin, at one in elevating the ideal of individual liberty, divided irreparably on means, Herzen, "the sworn enemy of all systems" (and Berlin's greatest hero), holding that liberty is an absolute value not to be suppressed for the sake of future happiness or any other "huge abstraction." And, in "The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia," he credits "the great Russian essayist Belinsky," hardly known in the West, with virtually inventing the kind of social criticism which enjoins art to be responsible to life—in the specifically Russian context, to set men free. Neatly to link Berlin's themes does not do justice, however, to the exceptional richness and suggestiveness of their development. Within a frame of reference that extends from the author of the Book of Job to D.H. Lawrence and Franklin Roosevelt, he exactly places the figures of his Russian protagonists; and each of them he portrays as an individual. Tolstoy "was by nature a fox, but he believed in being a hedgehog," and the conflict emerged in his unresolved (between determinism and free choice) view of history in War and Peace; the gentle, skeptical, tolerant Turgenev created, in Fathers and Children, the "brutal, fanatical, dedicated figure" of the agitator Bazarov; "Does he then symbolize progress?" Turgenev remained ambivalent, "the notoriously unsatisfactory, at times agonizing, position of the modern heirs of the liberal tradition"—to which Berlin wholeheartedly subscribes. An absorbing, arresting group of studies, and as important a book as will be published this year.
Pub Date: April 1, 1978
ISBN: 0141442204
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1978
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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