Table of Contents

Foreword by Mark Lilla ix Author's Note xxi Editor's Preface xxiii Note on References xxix Introduction by Roger Hausheer xxxi The Counter-Enlightenment 1 The Originality of Machiavelli 33 The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities 101 Vico's Concept of Knowledge 140 Vico and the Ideal of the Enlightenment 151 Montesquieu 164 Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism 204 Herzen and His Memoirs 236 The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess 267 Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and the Search for Identity 317 The 'Naivety' of Verdi 361 Georges Sorel 373 Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power 420 Appendix to the Second Edition 449 Index 467

About the Author

Isaiah Berlin was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was renowned as an essayist and as the author of many books, among them "Karl Marx, Four Essays on Liberty, Russian Thinkers, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind", and, from Princeton, "Concepts and Categories", "Personal Impressions", "The Crooked Timber of Humanity", "The Hedgehog and the Fox", "The Roots of Romanticism", "The Power of Ideas", and "Three Critics of the Enlightenment". Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin's literary trustees. He has edited several other volumes by Berlin and is currently preparing Berlin's letters and remaining unpublished writings for publication.

Reviews

"A most remarkable intellectual achievement. There are few books published in our time which more dazzlingly illuminate some of the most crucial problems of western culture and civilisation."--Goronwy Rees, Encounter "Isaiah Berlin was the most esteemed intellectual figure in the English-speaking world. Against the Current may be the most representative of [his] books."--Mark Feeney, Boston Globe "Berlin expounds the ideas of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous clarity and imaginative empathy ... exhilarating to read."--Keith Thomas, Observer