Isaiah Berlin on the goods all human cultures share
But we don't always see it
A Russian Jew who lived through the Russian Revolution and came to England with his family in 1921, when he was twelve, Isaiah Berlin spent most of his life at Oxford, for many years at All Souls College, specializing in the history of ideas and in the defense of liberalism and value pluralism. He wrote very few books, but his various addresses and papers were assembled into many. This insight comes from Reflections of a Historian of Ideas, a book of interviews with Berlin.
If one wishes to prevent the harm done by fanatics, one must try to understand the intellectual, not merely the psychological, roots of their beliefs; one must try to demonstrate to them that they are wrong. If this fails, then one may have to go to war against them. But the attempt to persuade must always be made. Marxism goes to war too easily and quickly. So do some religious movements.
They ignore what is common to men’s beliefs. Rational methods, roads to the truth, apart from their value in themselves, are, as Socrates taught, of cardinal importance to the fate of individuals and societies: about that the central traditions of Western philosophy are right. . . .
Understanding oneself and others, rational methods, verification, the basis of our knowledge and of all science, as well as the attempt to check intuitive certainties, are of cardinal importance.
The idea of human rights rests on the true belief that there are certain goods — freedom, justice, pursuit of happiness, honesty, love — that are in the interest of all human beings, as such, not as members of this or that nationality, religion, profession, character; and that it is right to meet these claims and to protect people against those who ignore or deny them.
There are certain things which human beings require as such, not because they are Frenchmen, Germans or medieval scholars or grocers but because they lead human lives as men and women.
Previous: Fintan O’Toole on nationalism and its deformations.