Realism

Author: Isaiah Berlin
Translator: Pan Rongrong, Lin Mao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: Reality is the foundation of the Elizabeth Carter Cabot Lectures, delivered on October 9, 1953, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the title Realism in History. Some of the issues discussed by Berlin have already been addressed in other articles, such as The Hedgehog and the Fox and The Concept of Historical Understanding, but this is his explicit discussion of the topic, clearly deserving a place in this collection. Among the nine essays included in this book, Isaiah Berlin explores some of the core ideas that have dominated European historical development over the past three centuries, particularly tracing the rise and evolution of important intellectual currents such as nationalism, liberalism, and Marxism. Berlin's themes include: realism in history, political judgment, the history of socialism, the essence and influence of Marxism, the radical cultural revolution stirred by romanticism, the Russian concept of artistic responsibility, and the origins and practice of nationalism. These essays showcase Berlin's profound erudition and thought-provoking insights. Isaiah Berlin's writings engage with so many disparate fields of thought and research, with such different, sometimes unexpected directions, that one might to ask: what guiding principle ultimately directs or unifies his engagement with these vastly different intellectual terrains? This question is not as easy to answer as it seems; even for some of his admirers, it may seem inappropriate and fail to capture the essence. For they might argue that the unique value of Berlin's achievement lies largely in its apparent lack of any unified ambition or systematic claims; the infinite diversity of his range and subjects, and his readiness to approach conflicting beliefs and their proponents in ways that depend on the issue itself, have played a crucial role in broadening horizons and freeing us from obstructive biases or dogmas. Berlin himself described those who tend to suppress what they might suspect to be true as "dogmatic," and his own views are undoubtedly entirely opposed to this. Even so, and despite his consistent demonstration of the openness and objectivity of his method, it is still possible to discern in his work the outlines of his particular concerns and themes, giving his work an inner consistency, though relatively less prominent and yet equally memorable. It seems that tangential or seemingly irrelevant lines of thought, upon closer examination, often form part of a larger pattern, a component of a broader whole. In other words, they can be seen as a complex web of subtly interconnected ideas, rather than belonging to a rigid theoretical framework. Moreover, this very complex web itself can be said to reflect the existence of certain central issues whose decisive influence manifests in various ways, running through the entirety of Berlin's intellectual career. One such recurring issue is his concern with the nature and meaning of history, which is the theme of this collection. Berlin often claimed that he was not, and never had been, a historian. If this is true, then perhaps he was using the term "historian" in a recognized but limited sense. In any case, the fact remains that he made unique and outstanding contributions to the study of the history of ideas, and possessed exceptional and well-suited knowledge in addressing the issues raised by this kind of research into the human past. Moreover, in his study of the thought of the 18th and 19th centuries, he inevitably encountered a wide range of theories about the characteristics of historical processes and the theories of how people come to understand them. Thus, in writing his first major work, Karl Marx, he was compelled not only to grasp Marx's highly influential description of the forces that control historical change and development but also to read the works of important predecessors such as,,, and. These authors, in different ways, shared the belief, prevalent among French Enlightenment thinkers, that the scientific methods and categories that had proven so successful in advancing our understanding of nature should be extended to the study of humanity and its history. Berlin has elsewhere described how, in the course of researching the origins of such claims, he tried to understand the dilemmas that troubled those who proposed them; in his view, the past could only be revitalized by "entering" the minds of those who held such thoughts and their social or cultural context. However, in following this procedure, he found that his own approach diverged significantly from the views promoted by the thinkers he was studying. The kind of imaginative and empathetic understanding he was advocating had no clear parallel or counterpart in the natural sciences. On the other hand, he found resonance in the works of two 18th-century thinkers with very different intellectual temperaments: Vico and Herder. In many respects, they stood in stark contrast to the dominant trends of their time, particularly in their attitudes toward the nature of the subject matter they considered the domain of historians. In their view, this was an attempt to assimilate the methods of historical research into scientific methods that had, in principle, been misunderstood. For the latter, they argued, we could only gain a "purely external" knowledge of the phenomena they studied, while our relationship to specific historical phenomena was of a completely different nature. Moreover, it was possible to grasp directly or intrinsically the behavior of historical figures and the psychological processes they revealed in their creations; the shared fundamental humanity between historians and the people they sought to understand allowed them to determine from within what propelled and guided their subjects, even when the issue was—as often happened—to reconstruct the inner lives of other eras or cultures whose concerns and concerns were entirely different from their own. Vico and Herder, though in different ways, both suggested that such a method was fundamental to all meaningful human research, and this historical practice concept was one that Berlin—and his 20th-century admirers and followers, R.G. Collingwood—has consistently emphasized. The influence of these claims about the fundamental independence of historical thinking and understanding can be said to lie behind some of the arguments put forward in Reality, an essay in which the comparison between history and other disciplines reminds us of Berlin's multi-faceted engagement with this complex issue in some of his famous articles. But this time, his line of thought differs significantly from other discussions in important ways. Here, his perspective is broader, encompassing numerous practical and academic issues. Even the title of this essay reflects this, and it also partly reflects the typical Berlinian skepticism toward attempts to simplify or reduce the "vast unknown factors" that constitute human life into arbitrary abstract terms, whether these attempts are made for purely theoretical purposes or to implement comprehensive political or social programs. He has consistently shown that he is very aware of the enduring allure of discovering some absolute formula or panacea that could solve the myriad problems of human existence without leaving any unresolved loose ends or unresolved issues. And in this regard, he has also emphasized to what extent this ambition was reflected in modernity—roughly from the late 17th century onward—in efforts to prove that historical processes follow inevitable laws or unities, understood as being equally valid for the future and the past, thus capable of predicting the future and explaining the past. However, he still believed that this allure represented a temptation that we should reject, and that the fundamental difficulties of some of the schemes it gave rise to stemmed from misunderstandings that went beyond the boundaries of historical explanation and methodology, ultimately rooted deep in the very fabric of all human life and experience. As Berlin pointed out, the kind of theoreticalization of history he considered did not follow a single pattern. From historical accounts based on mechanically assumed regularities to those that invoked "organic" or evolutionary conceptions of development, there was a wide range. But in this book, what he was concerned with was not distinguishing and commenting on the different specific examples of this type, but questioning the notion of establishing a theory that could systematically or holistically incorporate the various factors that make up historical processes into a unified scheme. On this point, he mentioned Tolstoy with approval, it is worth noting that much of what he said on this issue resonates with the historical view expressed by the Russian writer at the end of War and Peace. Tolstoy was not only skeptical of the crude simplifications and tedious generalizations he found in the various historical and social philosophies that had been concocted up to that point, but he also further suggested that all schemes involving the use of the kinds of abstract concepts and schemes beloved by pure theorists were ultimately doomed to fail, as their very nature made them unsuitable for understanding the continuous stream of "minimal factors"—an endless series of tiny, interconnected actions and events that constitute human life and experience. In Berlin's own exploration of this issue, we find him adopting a similar critical attitude toward earlier "pseudo-scientific" theories of human behavior and history, and similarly emphasizing (though not entirely identically) how complex historical materials could hope to resist being subjected to methods and procedures originally applied to fundamentally different problems and fields of research. The close connection between Tolstoy and Berlin is not surprising. Tolstoy's exceptional talent as a creative writer made him, in Berlin's eyes, particularly adept at grasping the richness and diversity of human experience and reality: the infinite variety and uniqueness of things and people, the subtle undercurrents of emotion in social interactions and personal relationships, the deep-seated preoccupation with self-interest and the confusion of goals beneath the surface of social life—Tolstoy's extraordinary powers of observation and imagination captured millions of such phenomena, enabling his gaze to pierce through the smooth, regular outlines of historical interpretations drawn by those who claimed to explain history, revealing the uneven and often chaotic details of the lived experience they sought to conceal. It is well known that these aspects of Tolstoy's character are vividly depicted in Berlin's perceptive study of The Hedgehog and the Fox. But in that article, his main task was to contrast Tolstoy's artistic insight and talent with another aspect of his personality that stood in rather stark opposition to it: his desire for some unified or absolute truth that could completely transcend the problems and confusions of our secular life. Here, on the other hand, he wanted to show how the novelist's particular literary talent was relevant to the theme of this essay, linking it not only to the historians dedicated to reconstructing the past but also to the politicians and so-called "pragmatists" involved in the actual affairs of the world. Therefore, in the Politics of Perceptiveness, which followed Reality and elaborated on some of its views, Berlin pointed out that certain characteristics similar to those found in the thinking of imaginative writers played a role in both historical research and the practice of what he called "the art of government." Like trained historians, skilled politicians also needed a well-developed capacity to "evaluate specific situations in a non-reductive way"; a finely tuned sensitivity to the shifting contours or layers of social life, and relatedly, an instinctive "intuition" for what was practically feasible, what in complex, often elusive factual or environmental contexts was truly coherent—these were some of the outstanding qualities that distinguished exceptional political leaders from ordinary people. Berlin found that these "practical wisdom" or talents were often dismissed by systematic historians as arbitrary, "pre-scientific" methods, deemed no longer acceptable on theoretical grounds and requiring thorough transformation or replacement. However, Berlin also pointed out that some of the improvements they proposed rarely provided a satisfactory answer to this need, and the utopian experiments they invoked ultimately produced unexpected results—highly ironically—familiar to us all through history. In summary, these two essays are grand in scope, demonstrating the author's extraordinary range of knowledge and enlightening perspective. Written in the 1950s, they are filled with allusions to speculative social theories and blueprints, thus partly reflecting the concerns of an era highly sensitive to totalitarian ideologies, whose influence in the political sphere persists to this day. Nevertheless, to think that these allusions had only a limited or temporary impact on Berlin's entire thought would be wrong. From almost the very beginning, he was wary of the internal danger of misplaced "scientism," and the blurring of boundaries it easily caused; his early resistance to simplistic tendencies in epistemology and the philosophy of language foreshadowed his later opposition to influential doctrines in political and social theory. He has always believed that it is right and even admirable to show respect for and strive to learn from the methods that contributed to the achievements of the natural sciences; but extending these methods indiscriminately to unrelated fields of research or very different levels of experience is a completely different matter. We see that he considered certain 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers, as well as those who approached human affairs in the same way, to fall into the latter category. But this was not the only reason for his dissatisfaction with these thinkers. The broader skepticism he often expressed in his work forces us to consider his attitude toward the entire Enlightenment. This instinctive, half-doubting attitude can also be felt in some of the other essays included in this book. In fact, and contrary to what some people might think, Berlin was not unwilling to articulate his recognized complex position on this issue. He openly praised the representatives of the Enlightenment for their courage in opposing many of the evils of their time, including ignorance, oppression, cruelty, and superstition, and for upholding ideals such as reason, freedom, and human happiness; he succinctly told a visitor that this put him on their side. But at the same time, despite his admiration for what they stood for, he believed they tended to accept as true certain assumptions—whose sources were often tradition—dogmatically, without questioning their validity. Moreover, based on their professed respect for empirical principles, they should have questioned their correctness. This included various specific notions of a unified, unchanging human nature, as well as beliefs in closely interconnected, universal values that humans could consistently achieve in the course of their lives. The issues raised by these preconceptions are discussed in The Romantic Revolution. Berlin pointed out that the emergence of late 18th-century romanticism brought about a fundamental change in the intellectual climate of the time, challenging the objective status of established standards and norms with the rise of subjectivist doctrines, which had a profound impact in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and politics. In concluding this engaging discussion, Berlin noted one of the long-term effects of the conflict between ideas: that we today find ourselves inheriting two major traditions and often "uneasily alternating between them." He also argued, however, that romanticism