Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism

THE ROOTS OF ROMANTICISM

ISAIAH BERLIN WAS BORN IN RIGA, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia; there in 1917, in Petrograd, he witnessed both Revolutions Social Democratic and Bolshevik. In 1921 his family came to England, and he was educated at St Pauls School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

At Oxford he was a Fellow of All Souls, a Fellow of New College, Professor of Social and Political Theory, and founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. In addition to The Roots of Romanticism , his main published works are Karl Marx , Russian Thinkers , Concepts and Categories , Against the Current , Personal Impressions , The Crooked Timber of Humanity , The Sense of Reality , The Proper Study of Mankind , The Power of Ideas , Three Critics of the Enlightenment , Freedom and Its Betrayal , Liberty , The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age . As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlins Literary Trustees. He has edited (or co-edited) many other books by Berlin, including the first three volumes of his letters, and is currently working on the remaining volume. John Gray is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and author of Isaiah Berlin .

For further information about Isaiah Berlin visit
http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/

ALSO BY ISAIAH BERLIN

*
Karl Marx
The Hedgehog and the Fox
The Age of Enlightenment
Russian Thinkers
Concepts and Categories
Against the Current
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
Personal Impressions
The Sense of Reality
The Proper Study of Mankind
The Power of Ideas
Three Critics of the Enlightenment
Freedom and Its Betrayal
Liberty
The Soviet Mind
Political Ideas in the Romantic Age

with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska

Unfinished Dialogue

*
Flourishing: Letters 19281946
Enlightening: Letters 19461960
Building: Letters 19601975

THE ROOTS OF

ROMANTICISM

ISAIAH BERLIN

Edited by Henry Hardy

THE A. W. MELLON LECTURES IN THE FINE ARTS
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC
BOLLINGEN SERIES XXXV:45

Second Edition

Foreword by John Gray

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Published in the United States of America and Canada by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be
sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

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First edition published in the US by Princeton University Press 1999

the Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC,
The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, and Henry Hardy 1999, 2013
Portrait of Frederic Chopin (181049), Musician by Eugne Delacroix,
Louvre, image RMN-Grand Palais (Musee du Louvre)/Jean-Gilles Berizzi
Hector Berlioz by mile Signol, image Acadmie de France Rome
Napoleon I on the Battlefield at Eylau, 9 February 1807 by Antoine-Jean Gros,
Louvre, image RMN-Grand Palais (Musee du Louvre)/Daniel Arnaudet
Apotheosis of the French Heroes Who Died for Their Country During the War
of Liberation: Homage to Napoleon Bonaparte by Anne-Louis Girodet de
Roussy-Trioson, Malmaison, chateaux de Malmaison et Bois-Preau, image
RMN-Grand Palais/Franck Raux
Rue Transnonain, le 15 avril 1834 by Honor Daumier, image The Trustees
of the British Museum
Drawing of Isaiah Berlin The Washington Post 1965
Telegram from Helen Rapp the BBC 1965

The moral right of Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy to be identified as the
author and editor of this work respectively has been asserted

This is the forty-fifth volume of the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the
Fine Arts, which are delivered annually at the National Gallery of Art,
Washington. The volumes of lectures constitute Number XXXV in
Bollingen Series, sponsored by the Bollingen Foundation.

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berlin, Isaiah, 19091997.
The roots of romanticism / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy ;
foreword by John Gray. 2nd ed.
p. cm. (A. W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts)
(Bollingen series 45)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15620-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Romanticism in art.
2. Arts, Modern18th century. I.
Hardy, Henry. II. Title.
NX452.5.R64B47 2013
141.6dc23
2012035276

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In memory of Alan Bullock

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Children of Two Worlds

John Gray

THE FACT THAT IDEAS RARELY have the consequences their authors intended, and never only those consequences, is a recurring theme in Isaiah Berlins work. It is not just that ideas are very often compromised when they are put into practice a familiar enough theme. Divergences in how the ideas are understood and the tangle of human interests and motives mean that no idea can ever be implemented without adulteration or distortion. As Immanuel Kant put it in a formula that Berlin was fond of quoting, Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. Whether or not Berlin interpreted Kant correctly, the message is clear: the distance between ideas and their applications is a measure of human imperfection.

Berlins work illuminates a more interesting fact. Once they are out in the world, ideas change their shape and reappear in forms that are fundamentally at odds with the original conceptions. David Humes claim that our belief in cause and effect is a product of habit rather than rational inference was advanced as part of his philosophy of sceptical doubt. The Scottish Enlightenment thinker did not anticipate that his claim would be used in the service of religion. Had he done so, he would have been horrified. Yet that is exactly what happened when the Christian fideist J. G. Hamann used Humes argument to mount a defence of the reality of miracles. Whereas Hume used scepticism about causation to argue that we can never know that a miracle has occurred, Hamann used that same scepticism to argue that miracles did occur. For Hume the end-point of philosophical enquiry, for Hamann sceptical doubt was the starting point for a leap of faith.

As Berlin makes clear, Hamann was a key figure in the development of Romanticism: There is one man who, in my view, struck the most violent blow against the Enlightenment and began the whole Romantic process []. He [Hamann] began with Hume, and said in effect that Hume was right; that if you ask yourself how it is that you know the universe, the answer is that you know it not by intellect, but by faith. There is something paradoxical in one of the Enlightenments greatest thinkers adding to the intellectual armoury of the Counter-Enlightenment. The paradox is heightened when we remember Berlins view that Hamann was reacting against ideas that all Enlightenment thinkers shared.

It has become fashionable to question whether the quarrelling family of movements that are commonly grouped together as the Enlightenment had any shared intellectual commitments, but Berlin will have none of this. Certainly the Enlightenment was nothing like a uniform movement. Even so, what is common to all these thinkers is the view that virtue consists ultimately in knowledge; that if we know what we are, and we know what we need, and we know where to obtain it by the best means in our possession, then we can live happy, virtuous, just, free and contented lives.