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Books

The Power of Ideas by Isaiah Berlin

Antony Flew devours a vastly varied collection of essays by the late Isaiah Berlin.

The title for this selection from Berlin’s essays is ideally descriptive of what the editor has actually produced. One effect of a collection of all Berlin’s essays, or of any selection there from, is always to reveal something of the power of ideas as an historical force; the prime purpose of this collection was to reveal this power as fully and as clearly as possible to those who have never before had the instructive delight of reading anything by Berlin.

These eighteen essays begin with the autobiographical ‘My Intellectual Path’. This shows how Berlin came by his sympathy with all the great European cultural traditions and his appreciation of all their greatest individual figures. After considering ‘The Purpose of Philosophy’ and ‘The Philosophies of the Enlightenment’ we move onto Giambattista Vico.

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