Social Research articles from December 1999

Social Research archives from December 1999

Editor's Introduction.
December 22, 1999... The articles in this issue were written in response to my invitation to a group of authors to reflect on the concepts of negative and positive liberalism. As exemplars of negative liberalism, our authors were sent quotes from two articles that...

Enlightenment Anti-Imperialism(*).
December 22, 1999... A REMARKABLE, though ;also a largely neglected, episode in the history of theorizing liberty and pluralism can be found in the anti-imperialist political writings of the Enlightenment era. In this essay, I explore the historically anomalous...

Can Cultures be Judged? Two Defenses of Cultural Pluralism in Isaiah Berlin's Work(*).
December 22, 1999... MY contention is that in Isaiah Berlin's work there are abundant elements for two defenses of radical cultural pluralism, even though he does not distinguish them. One is the aesthetic defense; the other is the anti-universalist defense. I...

Liberty and Pluralism in Pursuit of the Non-Ideal(*).
December 22, 1999... HUMAN beings know only a disharmonious moral universe. This is now a widely accepted idea. What is widely disputed is the value of our trying to use the powers of reason and purposeful action to create a society that captures all that is...

Negative Freedom and Cultural Belonging: An Unhealthy Tension in the Political Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin(*).
December 22, 1999... THE distance maintained by German intellectuals from the idea of a unified European culture can be measured precisely by the distance that continues to separate them from the work of Isaiah Berlin. Hardly any other scholar from this century has...

Isaiah Berlin's Modernity.
December 22, 1999... AT THE memorial convened at the Hampstead Synagogue, Alfred Brendel, Isaiah Berlin's close friend, played from the Schubert B-minor sonata. Had he spoken, he might have evoked the appealing qualities of Berlin's many essays by reading how he...

Putting Injustice First: An Alternative Approach to Liberal Pluralism.
December 22, 1999... Justice and the Marriage between Liberalism and Pluralism PLURALISM with regard to the good, the broadest possible consensus with regard to justice--such are the terms of the marriage between liberalism and pluralism as defined by leading...

Of Choice.
December 22, 1999... I FEEL ambivalent about the need to choose, but evidently some philosophers do not. For example, take Joseph Raz, the Oxford professor of law. In The Morality of Freedom, he defends the value of "competitive pluralism." A truly free society, so...

Fraternal, But Not Always Sisterly Twins: Negativity and Positivity in Liberal Theory.
December 22, 1999... THE editor of this journal invited brief comments in response to recent essays by Steven Lukes and Mark Lilla--essays that were concerned, primarily, with posthumously published works by two of the most important liberal thinkers of our time,...

Setting One's Heart on Honesty: The Tensions of Liberalism and Religion.
December 22, 1999... We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species...

Liberal Toleration.
December 22, 1999... CONFLICT and diversity: these are the circumstances that give rise to liberalism. Yet, while our pluralist age seems well suited to liberalism, it is under attack for a number of dubious reasons--for ignoring the importance of shared values and...

Individuality, Nationality, and the Jewish Question(*).
December 22, 1999... Isaiah Berlin "PROBABLY no one in our time has come nearer to being regarded as the academic equivalent of a saint than Isaiah Berlin," remarks Stefan Collini in the Times Literary Supplement. Writing several months before Berlin would...

Morality, Social Policy and Berlin's Two Concepts(*).(political philosopher Isaiah Berlin)
December 22, 1999... THE sociologist Helmut Schoeck once observed that envy is so shameful that it is the only human passion to which no one who harbours it will ever admit.(1) When we feel it, therefore, we have always to disguise it as something more respectable....