BERLIN (Isaiah).
Vico and Herder. Two Studies in the History of Ideas.
INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR
A presentation copy, inscribed by the author ‘For Neville, from Isaiah, with great regard and gratitude, 18.3.76’ in black ink to the front free endpaper. The recipient, Neville Williams (1924-1977), was a historian and served as Secretary to the British Academy.
A key text in Berlin’s establishment of the concept of an eighteenth century Counter-Enlightenment, one less invested in rationalist epistemologies than in Romantic currents of relativism and vitalism. The philosophers Giovanni Vico and Johann Herder are used as exemplary figures in this alternative intellectual history, both framed as thinkers who in their respective conceptions of a philosophy of history and of specific cultural belonging offer the groundwork for Berlin’s own metaethical theory of value pluralism.
