Conversations with Isaiah Berlin

Conversations with Isaiah Berlin is a book-length collection of interviews with the British philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), compiled by the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo from a series of conversations with Berlin around 1988. The Chinese translation, by Yang Zhenqin, is included in the Humanities and Society Translation Series published by Yilin Press. The book consists mainly of five dialogues that interweave chronology and theme. Berlin begins with his childhood by the Baltic, the Russian Revolution, and his move to England, and recalls the academic atmosphere at Oxford in the 1930s, how he came to be commissioned to write Karl Marx, and the logical positivist climate of the Vienna Circle. He then discusses his celebrated encounters with Akhmatova and Pasternak, as well as his intellectual differences with figures such as Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. At the core of the book are the ideas Berlin repeatedly sets out: value pluralism, the distinction between negative and positive liberty, his questioning of the monism of Enlightenment reason, and his interpretations of thinkers such as Vico, Herder, Machiavelli, Herzen, Maistre, and Burke. The book also includes his comments on Russian intellectual history, Zionism, music, and literature, and his reminiscences of personal friendships with Stephen Spender, Auden, and others. Comprising five dialogues, a preface, and an index, the book is modest in length yet presents the intellectual landscape and personality of a twentieth-century liberal intellectual.