Abstract
This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin’s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and what do we lose by dubbing his philosophy Jewish. The discussion will proceed as follows: after describing the conceptual tension (Section 1), I will examine Berlin’s discussion of nationalism and explain why comparisons between him and Hans Kohn as well as communitarian interpretations of him are incomplete and have limited merit. I will continue with a brief discussion of Berlin’s Jewishness and Zionism (Section 3) and explain why I define this position “Diaspora Zionism”. The two concluding sections will discuss Berlin’s place within a larger Cold War liberal discourse (Section 5) and why I find it problematic to see his political writings as part of a Jewish political tradition (Section 6).
Highlights
This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin‘s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular
With one leg rooted in each political tradition, Berlin was motivated to philosophize politically precisely because the combination generated a dilemma; and when this dilemma, I argue, is contextualized historically, what is ―Jewish‖ about Berlin‘s philosophy becomes much clearer
The formulation of freedom as an opportunity concept, which we find dominant feature in Berlin‘s Zionist writings, predates ―Two Concepts.‖ While it would not be until 1958 that he would use a term such as ―negative freedom,‖ the philosophic formula juxtaposing choice, liberty and nationality appears as soon as October 1951 [59]. Without this essential component one cannot appreciate fully what Berlin means by the term ―negative freedom.‖ The journey that famously ended with ―Two Concepts,‖ in short, begun because postwar Zionism, demanding Jews to choose between immigration and assimilation, created an impossible either-or situation to which Berlin felt compelled to reply
Summary
―No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine.‖. ―[N]ationalist, communist, authoritarian, and totalitarian creeds of our day,‖ he wrote in ―Two Concepts‖, are ―[s]ocialized forms‖ of ―the positive doctrine of liberation [21].‖ The ideology of nationalism rested on a far-fetched theory, which, like many other autocratic regimes, molested the idea of liberation, taking it way beyond any ethically justifiable standard This ―positive,‖ intense ―pathological inflammation,‖ Berlin insisted, should not be equated with the natural sense of collective fate and solidarity, from normal patriotism, and even from that modest sense of pride one derives from a sense of difference which distinguishes his social group from that of others. With one leg rooted in each political tradition, Berlin was motivated to philosophize politically precisely because the combination generated a dilemma; and when this dilemma, I argue, is contextualized historically, what is ―Jewish‖ about Berlin‘s philosophy becomes much clearer
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