Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Second edition

385 Pages·2013·6.59 MB·English

by  MacIntyre

Concepts and Categories
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 he and his parents came to England, and
he was educated at St Paul’s 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 Concepts and Categories,
his main published works are Karl Marx, Russian Thinkers,
Against the Current, Personal Impressions, The Crooked Timber
of Humanity, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind,
The Roots of Romanticism, 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 Berlin’s Literary Trustees. He has edited (or co-edited)
many other books by Berlin, including the first three of four
volumes of his letters, and is currently working on the remaining
volume.
Alasdair MacIntyre most recently taught philosophy at Duke
University and the University of Notre Dame. He is now a
Research Fellow at London Metropolitan University.
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
Against the Current
Personal Impressions
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
The Sense of Reality
The Proper Study of Mankind
The Roots of Romanticism
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 1928–1 946
Enlightening: Letters 1946– 1960
Building: Letters 1960– 1975

CONCEPTS AND
CATEGORIES
Philosophical Essays
•
Isaiah Berlin
Edited by Henry Hardy
Introduction by Bernard Williams
Second Edition
Foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Published in the United States of America, its territories, dependencies,
and the Philippine Islands 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.
Copyright Isaiah Berlin 1937, 1939, 1950, 1956
© Isaiah Berlin 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1978, 1994, 1996
This selection, editorial matter and letters from Henry Hardy © Henry
Hardy 1978, 1999, 2013
Introduction © Bernard Williams 1978
Letters from Isaiah Berlin © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2013
Letter from Bernard Williams © the estate of Bernard Williams 2013
Interview with Frans Boenders © Frans Boenders and Isaiah Berlin 1979
‘Pluralism and Liberalism’ © Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams 1994
Foreword © Princeton University Press 2013
The moral right of Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy to be identified as the
author and editor respectively of this work has been asserted
First published in the USA by the Viking Press 1978
Second edition published by Princeton University Press 2013
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berlin, Isaiah, 1909–1997.
[Essays. Selections]
Concepts and categories : philosophical essays / Isaiah Berlin ; Edited
by Henry Hardy ; Introduction by Bernard Williams. – Second Edition /
Foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-15749-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-691-15749-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy. 2. Logic.
I. Hardy, Henry, editor of compilation. II. Williams, Bernard, 1929–
2003, writer of added commentary. III. MacIntyre, Alasdair C., writer of
added commentary. IV. Title.
B29.B446 2013
192–dc23 2013008399
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Garamond Pro
Printed on acid-free paper ♾
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To the memory of J. L. Austin
Austin came to be the most powerful influence in Oxford
philosophy, and him I knew very well and very intimately,
and he probably had a greater influence on me, at least
on what I believed as a philosopher, than anybody else in
Oxford at that time.
Isaiah Berlin1
1 Interview with Frans Boenders (286–7 below).
‘Philosophy’ is a very general term. It has been used with many
meanings, vague and precise, since its first beginnings among the
Greeks. It has been described as ‘the contemplation of all life and all
existence’,1 as ‘the soul speaking to itself ’2 and, by an Austrian satirist
of our own time, as ‘the systematic abuse of a terminology specially
invented for that purpose’,3 but such epigrams do not convey its
essence.
[. . .] in the West, in particular during the last 400 years, it has
mainly consisted in the critical examination of the most general
categories and concepts embedded in men’s thought and action, such
as true and false, good and bad, same and different, things and persons.
One of its most important tasks has been to elicit the presuppositions
of the central and most lasting beliefs of human societies – in the
West, naturally enough, of Western society – and the attempt to
assess their validity by the use of rational methods; sometimes the
assessment of those rational methods themselves by appeals to other
sources of knowledge.
The most frequent questions asked in this connection are
‘How do you know?’ and ‘What does this mean?’, as well as the
older metaphysical query ‘What is really there and what is mere
appearance?’ These questions can be, and have been, asked in every
province of human thought and action, and this is the sense in which
philosophy is the most general enquiry there is.
Isaiah Berlin, ‘On Philosophy’4
1 Untraced.
2 ‘Thought is the (silent) conversation of the soul with itself ’: Plato, Sophist
263e–264a. ‘Silent’ occurs only in the first of two statements of this definition
in this passage. Cf. Theaetetus 189e.
3 Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London, 1964), 89 (given as an
example of an epigram, whose authorship is not made explicit).
4 Good Book Guide 8 (Spring 1980), 10.
Contents
Foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre xi
Editor’s Preface xix
Author’s Preface xxv
Introduction by Bernard Williams xxix
The Purpose of Philosophy 1
Verification 15
Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical
Statements 41
Logical Translation 72
Equality 106
The Concept of Scientific History 135
Does Political Theory Still Exist? 187
From Hope and Fear Set Free 226
Appendix to the Second Edition
Made of Wax after All 261
My Philosophical Views 277
Interview on Concepts and Categories 284
Logical Positivism 305