Overview

'Brilliant. Searching and profound' E.H. Carr, Times Literary Supplement 'When reading Isaiah Berlin we breathe an altogether different air' New York Review of Books 'Beautifully written' W. H. Auden, New Yorker 'Ingenious. Exactly what good critical writing should be' Max Beloff, Guardian The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. For Isaiah Berlin, there is a fundamental distinction in mankind: those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things - foxes - and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system - hedgehogs. It can be applied to the greatest creative minds: Dante, Ibsen and Proust are hedgehogs, while Shakespeare, Aristotle and Joyce are foxes. Yet when Berlin reaches the case of Tolstoy, he finds a fox by nature, but a hedgehog by conviction; a duality which holds the key to understanding Tolstoy's work, illuminating a paradox of his philosophy of history and showing why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics. With a foreword by Michael Ignatieff A W&N Essential

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9781474619707

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very readable, with a lively honed down style * SUNDAY MERCURY * The argument is ingenious and subtle, full of overtones - exactly what good critical writing should be * GUARDIAN * Berlin's stunning command of the resources of scholarship, his sensitivity to literature and to character, and his eloquence as a writer give this essay the lustre of a virtuoso performance * ATLANTIC * Beautifully written and suggestive -- W H Auden * NEW YORKER * [Berlin] has a deep and subtle feeling for the puzzle of Tolstoy's personality, and he writes throughout ... with a wonderful eloquence * NEW YORK TIMES * Delightful to read * SUNDAY TIMES * The most important study of Tolstoy's thought written in English for a long time * THE LISTENER * Very readable, with a lively honed down style * SUNDAY MERCURY * This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too * OBSERVER * Brilliant ... searching and profound * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *

Author Information

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM spent the whole of his professional life at Oxford, as a Fellow of All Souls College, a Fellow of New College, Chichele Professor of Social and Political theory and first President of Wolfson College. He is the author of many books and was President of the British Academy from 1974 until 1978. He died in 1997.

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