Isaiah Berlin Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Norman Podhoretz

Critical Essay by Norman Podhoretz

SOURCE: “A Dissent on Isaiah Berlin,” Commentary, Vol. 107, No. 2, February, 1999, pp. 25-37.

Staking his Neo-Conservatism claim against Berlin's Liberalism, Podhoretz argues, in the following essay, that Berlin has been over-esteemed as a thinker and as a personality.

By the time Sir Isaiah Berlin died in 1997 at the age of eighty-eight, a thick layer of piety and even reverence had long since come to surround his name, and accordingly the obituaries both here and in England took it more or less for granted that he had been, if not the leading political philosopher of the age, then at least a strong contender for that position. He was celebrated for the brilliance of his mind, for the profundity of his thought, for the depth and range of his learning and—not least—for his steadfast defense of liberal values against their rivals both on the Left and on the Right.