The Proper Study of Mankind

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's famous essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox"; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.

The exceptionalism of eighteenth-century society marked every sector of contemporary culture, promoting not solely the liberation of humanity, but also profoundly affecting science, literature, philosophy, politics, and artistic traditions. This cultural transformation, called early on “Les Lumières,” was devoted to raising general education, while confronting superstition, dogma and prejudice. As Alexander Pope declared in the Essay on Man, “The proper study of mankind is man” indelibly locating the cultural movement in humanity itself. Yet, the Enlightenment, whose earliest stirrings were in French rationalism and English empiricism, transcended nationality and reached across European borders even to the shores of the Atlantic colonies. The relative and momentary peace in Europe after 1715 coupled to a rising prosperity and the premium placed on “knowledge,” fueled an increase in international travel. The affluent, educated, and often aristocratic travelers of the North headed south, primarily to Italy. Their collective travels to the Italian peninsula formed the “Grand Tour.”