Professor David Auerbach forwarded to me this link to Isaac
Deutscher’s 1955 takedown of Isaiah Berlin’s monograph Historical Inevitability. I
am a connoisseur of intellectual
hatchet jobs, especially those that are done with a certain style, so I read it
with enjoyment. I have never been one of
Berlin’s fans [and I am one of
Deutscher’s fans] so I read the review with enjoyment. There was, however, a tinge of sadness,
because I owe Berlin a very large debt that I was never able to repay. He was more or less directly the cause of my writing
my most widely read work, In Defense of
Anarchism. It happened like this.
Harper & Row
asked Arthur Danto to assemble ten philosophers willing to write lengthy
essays, each on a different field of philosophy, to be gathered together into
an impressive volume entitled The Harper Guide
to Philosophy. Arthur had rounded up
nine splendid people, but Berlin had turned him down for the Political
Philosophy chapter. When I joined the
Columbia Philosophy Department in 1964, Arthur asked me to substitute for the
unwilling Berlin, and in order to get the $500 advance for my psychoanalysis, which was
just then beginning, I said yes. I wrote
the essay in the summer of ’65, and five years later, after Harper had dumped the project, the essay
was published by Harper Torchbooks under
what is now its title. Without Berlin, I
might be just another tedious Kant scholar laboring in obscurity.
9 comments:
Ugh Berlin is the worst. Glad something good came out of his career.
Berlin also kept Deutscher out of the university by blacklisting him, so no tears lost ovee this review
Speaking of hatchet jobs, I recall Dr.Wolff giving an informal talk at UMASS on what I would characterize as the ‘structuralist/Althusserian turn in the Econ. Dep’t. It was in 1979 (I think) and delivered in a room in the student center. Hatchet job is too crass a term for the talk, rather it was an artfully delivered critique. Is that talk in your archives? I roomed with a couple of Econ grad students who spent a lot of time trying to convince me that Adorno and Marcuse couldn’t hold a candle to Althusser. Perhaps unfairly, it seemed to me that Althusser was simply tying to put a new philosophical spin on vulgar Marxism.
Alas, Chris, I do not think it is, though I will check. Those were the days!
@Michael above: Berlin's blacklisting of Deutscher was (allegedly) caused by that review. A petty man.
No (true) Kant scholars are tedious---with the possible exception of my room-mate.
Didn't Berlin also blacklist someone for being a homosexual? Could have swore I read that somewhere. Which shows just how committed to liberty and freedom that hack really was.
Incidentally, if you like a good hatchet job, then I don't think you can do much better than this searing review of Bret Easton Ellis' most recent steaming pile. https://www.bookforum.com/inprint/026_01/20825
What is it about Isaiah Berlin that you guys dislike so much? I thought his profiles of various Enlightenment thinkers were actually very good. There's also a book about Marx, which I haven't read, but which some people I know consider a classic.
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