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Isaiah Berlin. The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History. 
Edited by Henry Hardy with an introduction by Patrick Gardiner. New York: 
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. xx + 278 pp. Bibliographic references and 
index. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-374-26092-3.  
 
Reviewed by Michael Keaney, University of Glasgow. Published by H-Review 
(July, 1998)  
 
 
In her review of philosopher Anthony Quinton's latest book, From Wodehouse 
to Wittgenstein, Mary Warnock remarks thus:  
 
     Soon after our wedding, my husband Geoffrey and I privately divided  
     our philosophical colleagues into those who knew what Smarties were  
     and those who did not. The true intellectuals, Berlin, Hampshire,  
     Hart, were much admired but slightly alarming figures: the notion of  
     a Smartie was foreign to them. The others were less cerebral, though  
     no less clever. Conversation with them could be more unguarded.[1]  
 
The internet's transcendence of national boundaries reduces the intended 
effect of this tale, so it is incumbent upon me to ensure that readers are 
aware that the Smartie is a popular item of chocolate confectionery which 
is usually sold in multiples, packaged in cardboard tubes, and easily 
recognisable.  
 
The Sense of Reality is a provocative title for a book of essays such as 
this. This is because what is being conveyed to the reader is the sense of 
a very particular reality, with which its author is especially 
well-versed, but which is otherwise not commonly acknowledged. This is not 
to say that Berlin has no business here, or that he is wasting his time: 
far from it. But it is, nonetheless, such a rarefied plane of intellectual 
existence that the value of its engagement is not always apparent. This is 
assuredly true of this volume of essays, which is something of a curate's 
egg.  
 
Berlin conveys such a mastery of what he surveys that it is, perhaps, easy 
to supplant criticism with sheer admiration. Certainly, in the essays 
where Berlin tackles his chosen subject well, one cannot help admiring the 
clarity of exposition and the command not only of the literature, but as 
much of the intellectual milieu in which the literature was produced. But 
on other occasions Berlin reels off obscure names and associated tales 
with such apparent abandon that he forgets to consider the reader's 
patience. This is especially true of the essay "Artistic Commitment: A 
Russian Legacy." Perhaps it is because Berlin is so at home with these 
mainly nineteenth-century characters, whose knowledge of Smarties would be 
similarly doubtful.  
 
The collection is itself a very worthwhile endeavour, and the editor is to 
be congratulated in bringing together the essays which comprise the 
volume. Patrick Gardiner offers an interesting introductory essay which 
reiterates some of Berlin's main concerns, such as the dual inheritance of 
rationalism and romanticism and their sometimes uneasy coexistence within 
western culture. Another aspect touched upon by Gardiner is Berlin's 
criticism of those who would seek to systematize history according to some 
stadial or teleological model. The demotion of practical wisdom in favour 
of more "scientific" approaches is given short shrift, as Berlin's 
exploration of successful statecraft is highlighted.  
 
While there is a sense in which Berlin's philosophy of history veers 
towards a romantic Toryism in his concentration upon "great men," whether 
they be politicians or philosophers or both, there is sufficient truth in 
his castigation of systematization to merit further consideration. For we 
live in an age in which human judgment and volition is being 
systematically downgraded in favour of predictability via prescriptive 
contracts and expert systems. A young Berlin beginning on his academic 
career today would find great difficulty in fitting into the disciplinary 
categories which constrain much of what passes for academic inquiry today. 
For Berlin's weaknesses are also his strengths, and at this time more 
apparently the latter. The sheer adventurousness of his intellect is not 
something we ritually prize any more, if indeed we ever did to the extent 
that he himself did.  
 
This is one consequence of the collapse of Soviet communism and the ending 
of the Cold War. Like Karl Popper, Berlin was part of an intellectual 
heavy artillery aiming at the Marxist-Leninist theoretical edifice 
supporting Soviet-style regimes. With their passing, the need for the 
eloquent advocacy of individual liberty passed too, or at most was 
permitted only to have free rein as justification for western consumerist 
culture. Popper and Berlin were not alone in having little to say to this 
end. That was the province of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the 
denizens of the Adam Smith Institute. Their crude neo-liberal populism 
would scarcely allow for the kind of institutions necessary to support the 
likes of Popper and Berlin and the "great men" so admired by the latter.  
 
In his essay on "Philosophy and Government Repression," Berlin explains 
what he believes philosophers actually do and what philosophy as a pursuit 
is all about. The major triumphs of philosophy are those occasions when it 
completely reformulates the questions individuals and societies are 
accustomed to asking, and when it upsets the previously existing synthesis 
of assumptions and habits of thought (p. 59). Philosophy is not 
empirically based:  
 
It is concerned with the formulation of problems which are genuine simply 
because they are felt as such, and the solution of these by ad hoc methods 
dictated by the nature of the problem itself, by the kind of demands which 
it makes, by the kind of perplexity which it causes; and the greatest of 
philosophers have done this, whether consciously or not, by altering the 
point of view from which the problem seemed a problem; by shifting 
emphasis, by transposing, by shifting the vision of those who are 
perplexed, in such a way that they perceived distinctions which had 
hitherto not been visible, or came to see that the distinction upon which 
they had laid much stress did not in fact exist, or rested upon muddles or 
lack of insight. (p. 60)  
 
Here Berlin sounds almost at one with the pragmatism of John Dewey. 
However, among those features of his thought which tend to distinguish him 
from Dewey is the overwhelming acceptance of what is, as opposed to the 
common effort required to reconstruct the status quo in pursuit of what 
could be. For that reason alone Berlin could not count himself among his 
litany of great men. He is Alexander Hamilton to Dewey's Thomas Jefferson. 
 
Berlin's idea of philosophical triumph is not unlike the succession of 
scientific paradigms so modeled by Thomas Kuhn. Unfortunately, success in 
philosophy is the preserve of a few, while the rest labour and toil in the 
obscurity of convention. Berlin hints at what Robert Pirsig makes explicit 
in the latter's Lila: An Inquiry into Morals: that most of what we call 
"philosophy" is in fact "philosophology": the study of others' 
philosophies. But those new, exciting, ideas which shatter old orthodoxies 
themselves become new orthodoxies in time, and as such are as vulnerable 
to obsolescence. Every philosophical idea is a product of its time. As 
inherently radical, true philosophy requires freedom "to subvert, break 
through, destroy, liberate, let air in from outside" (p. 67). We can only 
infer that Berlin would not have approved of such innovations as the 
British higher education quadrennial Research Assessment Exercise, which 
rewards convention and conformity above imagination and insight. His 
romanticism would have prevented him from so doing.  
 
By far the best essay in this collection is "Marxism and the International 
in the Nineteenth Century." Here Berlin is on solid ground and certainly 
fleet of foot. His recounting of the circumstances leading up to and 
during the First International is itself a gripping rendition of events. 
His criticisms of Marx are fundamental and are appropriately timely. In 
recent years there have been attempts to attribute blame for the failure 
of the Soviet experience upon particular individuals. Prior to these 
efforts, it was common among certain Marxists to blame Stalin for all that 
went wrong with the great social experiment. One of the latest books on 
the Soviet leaders attaches firmly to Lenin the blame for the system's 
evils.[2] After all, Lenin himself was responsible for subverting the more 
democratic elements of Marx's thought by justifying the Party's leadership 
and seizure of power on behalf of the proletariat. But Berlin identifies 
Marx as the true source of the evil that came into being, in outlining his 
theory of class warfare which legitimated the literal extermination (and 
not mere conversion) of an entire section of society in the name of 
unrelenting, inevitable historical progress. For Berlin, Lenin clearly 
understood Marx's theory and all its implications (p. 142). Whether or not 
scholars of Marx agree with this ex post rationalization, this is Berlin 
at his finest and most convincing. But in another essay he declares that 
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "however closely deduced from 
principles enunciated by Marx or Engels, was turned by Lenin into an 
instrument not dreamt of by the founding fathers" (p. 195). Whether he had 
radically altered his opinion between writing each essay, or if it is 
simply an unremarkable admission of the inability of Marx and Engels to 
foresee circumstances in Russia leading to the Bolshevik revolution and 
beyond, is not clarified. Elsewhere Berlin is careful to distinguish 
Marxism from other kinds of socialism (pp. 114-5), a distinction 
apparently missed by another contemporary heavyweight, Ernest Gellner.[3]  
 
Isaiah Berlin's legacy is as troubling as the dual inheritance of 
romanticism and rationalism he so clearly identified. His detachment from 
the everyday and consequently apparent conservatism is compounded by his 
Tory emphasis upon "great men." Yet these same great men were the radicals 
and iconoclasts who bucked the conventional wisdom to bring about radical 
upheaval. His world is almost exclusively male, just like the salons and 
rooms where the subjects of his scrutiny would have discussed and composed 
their theories. If one were to draw a single lesson from these essays, it 
would be one in humility: not for being in the presence of so great an 
intellect, but for recognising the failure of humanity's repeated attempts 
to discern the immutable destiny accorded it by history. But John Dewey 
learned this too, and to greater effect.  
 
Notes  
 
[1]. Warnock, Mary. "Jeeves, Smarties and arch aliens." Times Higher 
Education Supplement, 17 July 1998.  
 
[2]. Volkogonov, Dmitri. Autopsy of an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built 
the Soviet Regime. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.  
 
[3]. Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals. 
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.  
 
 
Citation: Michael Keaney . "Review of Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality: 
Studies in Ideas and their History," H-Review, H-Net Reviews, July, 1998. 
URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=14145901220804.  
 
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