Review of Against the Current by Isaiah Berlin
The romantic reaction to the hyper-rationalism of the philosophes
Berlin's great themes are the elaboration of the scientific methodology by Enlightenment philosophes and the reaction against them in the Counter-Enlightenment, or Romanticism. In this inspiring series of intellectual portraits of romantic intellectuals, he explores the ways that irrationalism and relativism worked their ways into the political discourses of the time; they eventually culminated in nationalism, socialism, and proto-fascism. For the most part, he covers men of the 19th Century, although there are a few outliers, such as Machiavelli or Georges Sorel, who went from anarchic socialism through the Drefusards, to antisemitism and a fanatical admiration for both Mussolini and Lenin. This is intellectual adventure at its best.
Berlin starts with an essay defining the Counter-Enlightenment. As he sees it, the philosophes elaborated on the Platonic tradition: that every question, discussed rationally, could arrive at a single, true answer that was valid in all contexts and at all times. What the philosophes added was a scientific methodology, in particular using mathematics (Descartes) and empirical verification (Bacon) by observation rather than relying on metaphysical sources such as the Bible or a priori ancient authorities (e.g., Aristotle). While a significant departure, the philosophes’ approach remained monist, that is, everything related to a single, over-arching truth and hence, implying the right way to do things that was rational and irrefutable. Moreover, the philosophes continued, states should be governed not by democrats but by enlightened autocrats or some other elite. In his way, Hegel's "world spirit" - headed as it was towards justice and freedom - reflected this.
Berlin then turns to Machiavelli as the first to "crack" the monist block, arguing not for an amoral politics but for a practical way to a good society (instilling virtu, or stability, security, unity and harmony, and a sense of power and splendor); the perfect society, based on Christian precepts, he argued, is impossible because man cannot conform to its ideals. This opened the way to relativism, to conflicting concepts of good governance that ultimately were not compatible and could not be reconciled by reason. The next great thinker was Vico, who sought to look at human history not as conforming to the monist plan, but as a unique set of outcomes that depended on a myriad of factors, by extension relativist and pluralist. Vico disagreed with Voltaire, who had argued that only Periklean Athens, Augustan Rome, Republican Florence, and enlightened autocrat Louis XIV were worthy of historical study because of what they had to teach. In The Spirit of Law, Montesquieu added the systematic, comparative study of institutions to the mix, maintaining that there was no single right way to construct a constitutional (or other effective) government, but many ways. Montesquieu's approach, Berlin notes, opened the way to anthropology and sociology, in spite of his many obsolete observations and maxims.
The concluding essays in the book are about the interplay of these 2 approaches - monist and pluralist - in the great debates of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Most of the thinkers are obscure or of interest only to intellectual historians, but illustrate the complexity of the debates. While Marx is a towering presence, his focus on the proletariat and class conflict as the driving forces in human history were an adaptation of Hegel's world spirit, which many of his socialist critics found dogmatic and narrow. Many, such as Moses Hess (the founder of Zionism 30 years before it was articulated by Herzl), argued for more pluralistic conceptions of socialism that, while inching toward social justice, could have a wider variety of outcomes. The impact, which Berlin only implies, would result in the Soviet brand of totalitarianism.
Perhaps Berlin's most fascinating argument involves nationalism. Berlin defines nationalism as 1) belief in the need to belong to a nation, often following some shared trauma; 2) the unique elements that organically compose a potential nation (language, religion, historical circumstances, etc.); 3) great value in it being "ours"; 4) the right to eliminate or subordinate inferior rival nations. In his view, the first nationalist movement arose in Germany: not only was there a reaction of French domination (both intellectual and military), but it served as a unifying force to absorb and transform the breakdown of a number of conditions that had under-girded societal stability for centuries (feudal hierarchies, petty princedoms, etc.) into a single, functioning nation-state. In the coming decades, this would lead to fascism.
A sub-theme of the book is political identity, which he sees as a motivating force of many of these men. In a wonderful chapter on Disraeli and Marx, Berlin argues that both of them needed to find a group that would replace their lost identity as Jews; both of them had obsequious fathers, who were in the first generation to be liberated from ghettos by Napoleonic forces. Disraeli found the British aristocracy, which he sought to dominate while never being truly accepted or even understanding it. For his part, Marx championed the proletariat, which he treated more as an abstraction than real people in need of practical help.
Though Berlin's prose is somewhat uneven, much of the book rises to vivid eloquence, evoking entire periods of history and tortuous debates in dense phrases that cover an astonishing array of ideas. Truly, he has one of the most elegant minds of 20th Century political philosophers. If some of his historiology is dated and too detailed, much of the book spoke to me personally, i.e., the philosophical issues I wrestled with as a college student. Nonetheless, I had to read the book twice before I felt ready to review it, which reflects both its complexity and the disjointedness of the essays, which were brought together for this volume and can seem obscure. It is an advanced text, which assumes a very solid undergraduate knowledge base in history and political philosophy. He made me hungry for more.
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