Berlin Isaiah (1909-1997)

Berlin Isaiah (Sir Isaiah Berlin) (6 June 1909, Riga – 5 November 1997, Oxford) - a philosopher, scholar, literary critic, and political scientist, a descendant of M. M. Schneerson (Tzemach Tzedek).

Between 1915 and 1919, Isaiah Berlin lived with his family in Petrograd before returning to Riga in 1919. In 1921, he moved to the United Kingdom with his parents. He studied at Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, where he lectured in philosophy from 1932 to 1940. In 1932, he became a fellow of All Souls College, and in 1935, he earned a master’s degree.

In 1941, Berlin worked at the New York office of the British Ministry of Information. From 1942 to 1946, he served as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, where he played a key role in shaping American perceptions that it was only the United States who could save the declining Western civilisation in Europe. His reports were closely studied by Winston Churchill. After the Second World War, he served as Second Secretary at the British Embassy in the Soviet Union. While in Moscow, he maintained close ties with the Soviet cultural elite, including Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, the latter of whom dedicated several works to him.

In 1946, Isaiah Berlin returned to Oxford. From 1957, he was a professor of social and political theory at Oxford. In 1966, he became the first president of the newly founded Wolfson College at Oxford. In 1957, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 1979, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize. From 1977 to 1978, he served as president of the British Academy and was appointed a member of the Order of Merit.

From 1956 until his death, Berlin was married to Aline Halban (née Ginzburg), the niece of David Ginzburg, publisher of the Jewish Encyclopedia, and granddaughter of the Jewish philanthropist and financier Horace Ginzburg. Between 1959 and 1961, he was vice president of the British Academy, and in 1971, he became the first Jewish person elected as its president. He was one of the founders of the secular humanistic Judaism movement and served for some time on the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He held honorary doctorates from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Berlin published numerous works, including studies on the history of European political and ethical thought during the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, memoirs of Aldous Huxley, Anna Akhmatova, and Boris Pasternak, as well as translations of Russian literature (including works by Ivan Turgenev) and numerous articles on Zionism.

Selected Works:

Karl Marx (1939)

The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953)

Historical Inevitability (1953)

The Age of Enlightenment (1956)

Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

Four Essays on Liberty (1969)

Russian Thinkers (1978)

Concepts and Categories (1978)

Against the Current (1979)

Personal Impressions (1980)

The Crooked Timber of Humanity (1991)

The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (1997)