Missing Isaiah Berlin - R4 Sat 4/11/17

[aeolium]

I thought this was an interesting programme on Isaiah Berlin, which was rather strangely on R4 recently:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cvrmf

I do miss the talks he gave on various stations, mostly the Third and R3, as I thought his ideas were almost always thought-provoking and he sometimes brought my attention to the work of thinkers I hardly knew of, like Vico and Herder. I disagree with the comment early in the programme that he almost brought a conversational style to his talks and lectures. I think he was just one of those rare people who could make an unscripted lecture sound like a scripted one - but delivered very fast. As well as briefly surveying Berlin's career, the programme also goes on to discuss the role of the public intellectual today.

[vinteuil]

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... thank you for flagging this up : I missed it, and must catch it. When I was growing up, his voice and manner were the things I most envied. Well, I could never have the brains and the all-round culture - but to be able to speak like that, so assured, so fluent - yes, that was what I wanted...




And it was Berlin who was my introduction to Hamann -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Hamann

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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/11/18/the-magus-of-the-north/

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[Richard Tarleton]

but delivered very fast.

Indeed.

I knew one of the founder members of Wolfson College (the Oxford one) well in the late 60s and early 70s - he got IB to write a preface to his book on the European Romantics. IB did so - a superb essay, which to Dr Schenk's chagrin presented an entirely different interpretation to that contained in the book - by which stage it would have been impossible to not include it.....

My first contact with IB was The Hedgehog and the Fox.....I remember his moving account (also told in Michael Ignatiefff's biog and various books and articles) of his meeting with Anna Akhmatova...

[Beresford]

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... When I was growing up, his voice and manner were the things I most envied. Well, I could never have the brains and the all-round culture - but to be able to speak like that, so assured, so fluent - yes, that was what I wanted...
.

Agreed, and when I was growing up, in a Northern industrial town, his talks introduced me to the History of Ideas, which became a preoccupation for several years. Difficult to know it's value, in retrospect. But I would love to hear again (maybe) his talk on Some Sources of Romanticism. It made the focus of English literature and English philosophy of the time appear very parochial.

[aeolium]

Agreed, and when I was growing up, in a Northern industrial town, his talks introduced me to the History of Ideas, which became a preoccupation for several years. Difficult to know it's value, in retrospect. But I would love to hear again (maybe) his talk on Some Sources of Romanticism. It made the focus of English literature and English philosophy of the time appear very parochial.

Some of Berlin's talks, including the last lecture in that Mellon series The Roots of Romanticism, are available on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZACuuzyW5M8

I was also fascinated by the history of ideas, and I think it is a pity that public service broadcasting now largely fails to consider it or discuss it (compare Bryan Magee's ambitious series on philosophers in the 1970s).