This thesis presents an interpretation of Berlin’s work that challenges the criticisms depicting him as a ‘bad historian’, while at the same time strengthening the link he outlines between value pluralism and liberalism. This is achieved by reading Berlin hermeneutically, and thus transcending the categorical differentiation between the historical and philosophical methods in his work. By integrating his historical narrative of the emergence of value pluralism with his philosophical explanations of value pluralism, the thesis provides his argument with the solidity it may lack when only examined from a philosophical viewpoint. At the same time, this hermeneutic reading helps shield Berlin’s work against the usual criticisms addressed towards his approach to the history of ideas. The argument is put forward in a series of loosely tied chapters that can be ordered in three main sections.
The first section is composed of the first chapter, a biographical introduction that acts as a methodological statement. In it the dilemma on the nature of values that sits at the heart of Berlin’s work is defined by reference to his biographical context. First, it looks at Berlin’s childhood experience of the Russian revolution and his experiences in adulthood of the devastating effects of Stalin’s policies, all of which generated his initial interest in the safeguarding of individual liberties and his aversion to violence and to the politics of extremes. It also points at Berlin’s fascination with the Russian Intelligentsia and his construction of the Russian side of his identity around it as a sign of the heightened sensitivity towards the arts that he was to display for the rest of his life – and that influenced his valuing of freedom as a necessary condition in the fostering of the creative capabilities of human beings. Second, it provides a brief intellectual context of the Oxford of the late 1920’s and the 1930’s that was the site and context of Berlin’s intellectual formation. It highlights the intellectual crossroad
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that he had to face being at the heart of the group that was later to be considered the founding moment of the so-called ‘Oxford Philosophy’, with its analytic character and strong rejection of metaphysics – and thus of ethics and political philosophy – while at the same time feeling drawn to explore precisely those questions on ethics and politics that the rigid methodological approach of the Oxford Philosophers did not allow. This chapter also presents Berlin’s connection with Collingwood as an early connection to Idealism, and puts forward a case for considering this link as crucial in the development of his work, insofar as it will allow us to understand the hermeneutic character of value pluralism as something akin to the ‘metaphysical presuppositions’ described by Collingwood.98
These two elements of Berlin’s context – his linkage to the Russian Intelligentsia, and his experience of the so-called ‘Oxford Realism’ – when combined, provide the key to understanding his work as a broader statement of the relevance of method in political theory that takes shape as a hermeneutic exploration of human nature. Having grown up intellectually to reject anything that looked like metaphysics, but unable to find the normative argument to protect individual liberty in the positivist philosophy of his time and place, Berlin turns to the history of ideas in order to understand and explain the need for liberty in a way that is not entirely abstract and metaphysical, but as firmly rooted in our experience of the world as possible. This lays out the main premise of the thesis: namely that Berlin’s work should not be understood as a mere work in analytical political theory or as one in the history of ideas, but instead as a hermeneutic exploration of the presuppositions that make up our time. In addition to this, the chapter acts as a working example of the methodology to be followed in the thesis, which is in fact the same methodology which this thesis traces in Berlin’s work, and the one that has been consistently under detected by most of his critics.
98 R. G. Collingwood, 'Political Action', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 29, (1928); R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics,(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
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The second section of the thesis is formed by three chapters that look at the two central philosophical aspects of Berlin’s political thought: value pluralism, and a neo-Kantian normative ethical theory that emerges in relation to it. The first two chapters of this section analyse value pluralism with the aim of clearing it from the most common misconceptions that surround it, making it difficult to read Berlin hermeneutically. In particular, this thesis looks at theories that view value pluralism as a normative theory we can accept or reject, and proposes that instead value pluralism should be understood as a meta-ethical narrative that simply describes the composition of our ethical landscape, without attaching to it any normative implications. The third chapter of this section introduces a significant departure from all the existing scholarship on Berlin by locating a neo-Kantian normative argument in his work that acts as the link between value pluralism and liberalism. It focuses on the need for a Kantian sense of autonomy as a necessary pre-condition for value pluralism to be true, and therefore argues that these two elements are inseparable. By doing this it explains the need to favour liberalism over any alternative political doctrine, for liberalism protects first and above anything else the autonomy that is a pre-condition of value pluralism. In addition to this, by linking the meta-ethical definition of liberalism with the Kantian argument this chapter makes explicit the hermeneutic character of Berlin’s argument: the link between value pluralism and liberalism is not defined entirely by reference to abstract philosophical notions, but neither does it stand as a mere conservative reinstatement of the status-quo via a purely historical presentation of the genealogy of liberalism. Instead, the argument for liberalism is presented as something that makes philosophical sense within our current historical context. In fact, this thesis aims to highlight the way in which when it comes to providing normative arguments in politics, the lines between philosophy and history are blurred. Berlin presents his ideas making use of this methodology.
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The third and final section of the thesis aims to prove the fact that liberal theory demands a hermeneutic method in its justification, as presented in the second section. This will show the enduring relevance of Berlin’s contribution to political theory as one that transcends his own historical moment. In order to do this it will look at the work of John Rawls and Bernard Williams, both famous for their contributions to contemporary liberal theory. Although they both present defences of liberal pluralism, their opposing methodological approaches highlight the extent to which methodology can impact the normative implications of political theory. More importantly, it will show the convergence of both authors towards a more eclectic approach that is neither purely analytical, such as in Rawls’ initial case, nor purely historicist as intended by Williams, but instead one that combines the two approaches in one, just like Berlin does throughout his work.
A normative argument for liberal pluralism requires, thus, a hermeneutic methodology. This is exactly what we find in Berlin’s work, and the main point of the thesis. This is argued by introducing the origins of the methodological issue in the first section of the thesis, followed by a practical exposition of the way in which the hermeneutic method works in the second section, and finally an applied argumentation not only of the suitability of the method, but of its unavoidability, in the final section.
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