Dissertation Formatted 2015

olt Brecht: 1898-1956” [1966], in Men in Dark Times. New York:Harvest, 1968, pp. 207-250.“What is Permitted to Jove : Reflections on the Poet Bertolt Brecht andHis Relation to Politics” [1966], in Reflections on Literature and Culture.Edited by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 2007, pp. 223-256.“Truth and Politics” [1967], in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercisesin Political Thought. New York: Penguin, 1968, pp. 227-64.“Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940” [1968], trans. Harry Zohn. In Men in DarkTimes. New York: Harvest, 1968, pp. 153-206.“Collective Responsibility” [1968], in Responsibility and Judgment.Edited by J. Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2003, pp. 147-158.“Philosophy and Politics: What is Political Philosophy?” [1969] course,New School for Social Research, New York, NY. Hannah Arendt Papers,Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.On Violence. New York: Harvest, 1970.“Civil Disobedience” [1970], in Crisis of the Republic. New York:Harvest, 1972, pp. 49-102.Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy [1970]. Edited by Ronald Beiner.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.“Thinking and Moral Considerations” [1971], in Responsibility andJudgment. Edited by J. Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2003, pp. 159189.“Martin Heidegger at Eighty” [1971], in Heidegger and ModernPhilosophy: Critical Essays. Edited by Michael Murray. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1978, pp. 293-303.The Life of the Mind. Vol. 1: Thinking [1971]. One-volume Edition. NewYork: Harcourt, 1978.The Life of the Mind. Vol. 2: Willing [1971]. One-volume Edition. NewYork: Harcourt, 1978.“On Hannah Arendt” [1972], in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of thePublic World. Edited by Melvyn A. Hill. New York: St. Martin’s Press,1979, pp. 301-339.Remarks Prepared for the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the AmericanSociety of Christian Ethics, Richmond, VA, January 21, 1973. HannahArendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington,DC.Remarks Prepared for the Advisory Council, Princeton University,Princeton, N.J., September 21, 1973. Hannah Arendt Papers, ManuscriptDivision, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.Hannah Arendt Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926-1969. Edited by LotteKohler and Hans Saner. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. NewYork: Harcourt, 1992.Denktagebuch, 1950-1973. Vol. 1, edited by Ursula Ludz and IngeborgNordmann. Germany: Piper, 2002.ix

D2JWDenktagebuch, 1950-1973. Vol. 2, edited by Ursula Ludz and IngeborgNordmann. Germany: Piper, 2002.The Jewish Writings. Edited by J. Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York:Schocken Books, 2007.Works by Isaiah Berlin listed in chronological RPGR“Editorial: II. Alexander Blok,” Oxford Outlook 11:55 (June 1931), pp.75-76. Emory University Archives, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare BookLibrary, Emory University.Karl Marx: His Life and Environment [1939, rev. 1948, 1963, 1978,2013]. Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.“Democracy, Communism and the Individual” [1949], in The IsaiahBerlin Virtual Library. Edited by H. Hardy. nd.pdf , pp. 1-6.“The Intellectual Life of American Universities” [1949], in Enlightening:Letters 1946-1960. Edited by H. Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, with theassistance of Serena Moore. London: Chatto & Windus, 2009, pp. 749760.“Three Essays on Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century, 1949-1951”[1950-1952], in The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library. Edited by H. Hardy. http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published works/singles/culture.docx , pp. 163.“Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century,” Foreign Affairs 28:3 (April1950), pp. 351-385.“Socialism and Socialist Theories” [1950, rev. 1966], in The Sense ofReality. Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997,pp. 77-115.Political Ideas in the Romantic Age [1950-52]. Edited by H. Hardy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History [1951,rev. 1953]. New York: Touchstone, 1986.“Jewish Slavery and Emancipation” [1951], in The Power of Ideas. Editedby H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 162-185.Freedom and Its Betrayal [1952]. Second Edition. Edited by H. Hardy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.Historical Inevitability [1953]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954.Auguste Comte Memorial Trust Lecture, May 12, 1953.“The Sense of Reality” [1953], in The Sense of Reality. Edited by H.Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, pp. 1-39.“Philosophy and Government Repression” [1954], in The Sense of Reality.Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, pp. 5476.x

TTPP“Philosophy and Beliefs,” The Twentieth Century (June 1955), pp. 495521.“Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty” [1955], in Russian Thinkers.Second Edition. Edited by H. Hardy and Aileen Kelly. New York:Penguin, 2008, pp. 93-129.“Montesquieu” [1955], in Against the Current. Edited by H. Hardy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 130-61.“The Philosophers of the Enlightenment” [1956], in The Power of Ideas.Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 3652.“A Revolutionary without Fanaticism” [1956, rev. 1979], in The Power ofIdeas. Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002,pp. 88-102.“Political Judgment” [1957], in The Sense of Reality. Edited by H. Hardy.New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, pp. 40-53.Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder [1957-58;1964]. Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.Two Concepts of Liberty [1958]. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.Inaugural Lecture, Oxford University, October 31, 1958.“European Unity and Its Vicissitudes” [1959], in The Crooked Timber ofHumanity. Edited by H. Hardy. London: John Murray, 1990, pp. 175-206.John Stuart Mill and The Ends of Life. London, 1959. The Robert WaleyCohen Memorial Lecture, 1959.“Artistic Commitment: A Russian Legacy” [1960s], in The Sense ofReality. Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997,pp. 194-231.“History and Theory: The Concept of Scientific History,” History andTheory 1:1 (1960), pp. 1-31.“The Romantic Revolution: A Crisis in the History of Modern Thought”[1960], in The Sense of Reality. Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 1997, pp. 168-193.“Tolstoy and Enlightenment” [1960], in Russian Thinkers. SecondEdition. Edited by H. Hardy and Aileen Kelly. New York: Penguin, 2008,pp. 273-298.“Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism” [1960], in The CrookedTimber of Humanity. Edited by H. Hardy. London: John Murray, 1990, pp.91-174.“The Birth of Greek Individualism” [1960-62], in Liberty. Edited by H.Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 287-321.“Does Political Theory Still Exist?” [1962], in Philosophy, Politics andSociety (Second Series). Edited by Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman.Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967, pp. 1-33.“The Purpose of Philosophy” [1962], in The Power of Ideas. Edited by H.Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 24-35.xi

WIWPJEIPS“Marxism and the International in the Nineteenth Century” [1964], in TheSense of Reality. Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus andGiroux, 1997, pp. 116-167.“Hobbes, Locke and Professor MacPherson,” The Political Quarterly 35:4(Oct.-Dec. 1964), pp. 444-468.The Roots of Romanticism [1965]. Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2001.“The Essence of European Romanticism” [1966], in The Power of Ideas.Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 200204.“The Hazards of Social Revolution” [1966], in The Environment ofChange. Edited by Aaron W. Warner, Dean Morse and Thomas M.Cooney. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969, pp. 1-27.Isaiah Berlin Letters to Andrzej Walicki 1962-1966, in Andrzej Walicki,Encounters with Isaiah Berlin: Story of an Intellectual Friendship.Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 55-166.“The Counter-Enlightenment” [1968], in Against the Current. Edited byH. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 1-24.“Fathers and Children: Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament” [1970], inIvan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans. Rosemary Edmonds. New York:Penguin, 1975, pp. 7-58.“Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism” [1972], in The Sense ofReality. Edited by H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997,pp. 232-248.“The Originality of Machiavelli” [1972], in Against the Current. Edited byH. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 25-79.“Meinecke and Historicism” [1972], in The Power of Ideas. Edited by H.Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 205-213.Interview with Isaiah Berlin by John Merson, 1974. ABC Radio National,Australia. 28 “Georges Sorel” [1974], in Against the Current. Edited by H. Hardy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 296-332.“Is A Philosophy of History Possible?” [1974], in Philosophy of Historyand Action. Edited by Yirmiahu Yovel. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel,1978, pp. 219-225.“The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will: The Revolt against the Myth of anIdeal World” [1975], in The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Edited by H.Hardy. London: John Murray, 1990, pp. 207-237.“Politics.” Interview with Peter Jay, 1975. In The Isaiah Berlin VirtualLibrary. Edited by H. Hardy. .pdf , pp. 1-26.“The End of the Ideal of the Perfect Society” [1975], in The Isaiah BerlinVirtual Library. Edited by H. Hardy. Accessed September 15, 2013. noxii

longer available online . Published in Spanish and English in IsaiahBerlin: utopía, tragedia y pluralismo, ed. Jorge Geraldo Ramí. Medellín,2010.NPNPP“Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power” [1979], in Against theCurrent. Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001,pp. 333-356.MWRW“Meetings with Russian Writers in 1945 and 1956” [1980], in PersonalImpressions. Third Edition. Edited by H. Hardy. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2014, pp. 356-432.IWEKEnrique Krauze, “An Interview with Isaiah Berlin,” Partisan Review 50:1(1983), pp. 7-28.POI“The Pursuit of the Ideal” [1988], in The Proper Study of Mankind. Editedby H. Hardy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998, pp. 1-16.Conversations Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin [1991]. NewEdition. London: Halban, 1999.IWNG“Return of the Volksgeist: Nationalism, Good and Bad” [1991], in AtCentury’s End: Great Minds Reflect on Our Times. Edited by Nathan P.Gardels. LaJolla, CA: ALTI, 1995, pp. 84-98.Death“Sir Isaiah Berlin” [1996], in Death: Breaking the Taboo. Interviews byAnna Howard. Evesham: Arthur James, 1996, pp. 30-37.MIP“My Intellectual Path” [1998], in The Power of Ideas. Edited by H. Hardy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 1-23.CWSL“Isaiah Berlin in Conversation with Steven Lukes,” Salmagundi 120 (Fall1998), pp. 52-134.SMThe Soviet Mind: Russian Culture Under Communism. Edited by H.Hardy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004.Flourishing Letters 1928-1946. Edited by H. Hardy. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004.Enlightening Enlightening: Letters 1946-1960. Edited by H. Hardy and JenniferHolmes, with the assistance of Serena Moore. London: Chatto & Windus,2009.BuildingBuilding: Letters 1960-1975. Edited by H. Hardy and Mark Pottle.London: Chatto & Windus, 2013.DialogueUnfinished Dialogue: Isaiah Berlin and Beata Polanowska-Sygulska.Foreword by H. Hardy. New York: Prometheus Books, 2006.xiii

INTRODUCTION“I think it is a secret for nobodythat our attitude to the past and to our traditionhas been greatly compromised in this century.”—Hannah Arendt1In the introduction to the publication of a series of radio talks on the Western traditiongiven by the BBC in the late 1940s, Lord Layton identified the main impulse for them as“the fear that Western civilization itself, and the moral standards and human relationshipsthat have grown up with it, are in mortal danger. Ever since the first world war thechallenge—both in theory and practice—to the basic principles underlying what thisbook calls The Western Tradition has grown in violence.”2 The talks themselves covereda range of topics related to the Western tradition, including Christianity, science, thescientific method, the Western political tradition, the rights of the individual, liberty anddemocracy, totalitarianism, nationalism, class warfare, Communism, skepticism andtolerance, and Roman Catholic and Protestant views of church and state. Lord Laytonconcluded his introduction with the hope that the book might help us “search our heartand mind afresh” and decide what we believe about what makes life most worth livingand why.3Born in the first decade of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) andIsaiah Berlin (1909-1997) both reached maturity as Hitler was rising to power and afterthe Second World War they thought that the principles of the Western tradition hadcollapsed in the face of the reality of totalitarianism in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s1Arendt, “The Archimedean Point,” Ingenor (Spring 1969), p. 5.Lord Layton, “Introduction” to The Western Tradition (London: Vox Mundi, 1951), p. 7.3Lord Layton, “Introduction,” p. 9.21

Russia. In the Preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt wrote that the“dignity” of the Western tradition had been “usurped” by the “subterranean stream ofWestern history.”4 As she emphasized a few years later, it was not the “idea” oftotalitarianism that destroyed the tradition but its very “actions” that “have clearlyexploded our categories of political thought and our standards for moral judgment.”5Berlin thought Hitler and Stalin’s crimes proved that the “banisters” of thought uponwhich the Hegelians, Marxists, and other nineteenth-century “system-builders” had builttheir philosophies of history could not withstand the determined assaults of those “whowish to change human beings by playing on irrational impulses and defying theframework of civilized life according to some arbitrary pattern of their own.”6 Moreimportantly, Berlin thought Hitler and Stalin’s unprecedented crimes were “violentaberrations” from “the habits, traditions, above all the common notions of good and evil,which reunite us to our Greek and Hebrew and Christian and humanist past.”7 Millions ofJews were murdered, Berlin believed, because totalitarianism had denied the core notionof Western civilization, the premise of “common humanity.”8In the late 1940s and 1950s, when it seemed, in Arendt’s favorite quotation fromTocqueville, that “the past has ceased to throw its light onto the future, and the mind ofman wanders in darkness,”9 and that there were no longer reliable “banisters” to connectWestern Europe to its past and to point a path to the future, Arendt and Berlin in effect4Arendt, Burden, p. ix.Arendt, UP, pp. 309-310. See also Reply and SQMP, p. 52.6Berlin, SR, p. 11. See also Conversations, p. 21.7Berlin, EUV, p. 205.8Berlin, EUV, p. 179. For a recent statement of this view, see Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, “How Auschwitz isMisunderstood,” The New York Times, January 25, 2015, p. SR3.9Arendt, Toronto, p. 337. See also Arendt, UP, p. 309.25

took up Lord Layton’s invitation to think about where they stood with respect to theunderlying principles of the Western tradition and what makes life worth living. As LordLayton’s invitation to search our own hearts and minds implies, the question of theWestern tradition is not a question about a brute fact about the world called “the Westerntradition” whose content and structure can be discovered, examined, and explained.Rather, as Arendt explained, the Western tradition is “a mental construct.”10 As she toldher students in her class on “Thinking” at the New School in the Fall of 1974, “traditionis first of all an academic matter; it depends on learning.”11 Searching their hearts andminds after the Second World War, Arendt and Berlin both felt the need to construct arationalist or metaphysical Western tradition of political philosophy to serve as a heuristicdevice for clarifying certain issues, above all the issue of the threat of totalitarianism towhat makes life worth living. They construed the Western tradition of politicalphilosophy in Platonic terms in order to examine Nazism and Communism in its light soas to understanding the meaning of these totalitarian movements and to see more clearlyour tradition’s dignity and deficiency in helping us to understand politics.In this dissertation, I set out to explore Arendt and Berlin’s understanding of theWestern tradition of political philosophy in the light of totalitarianism in their works ofthe late 1940s and 1950s. The justification for pairing Arendt and Berlin together in thisdissertation is that concern with the ongoing possibility of totalitarianism or totalitariansolutions in politics is central to their postwar concern with the Western tradition of10Hannah Arendt’s reply to J. M. Cameron, The New York Review of Books (January 1, 1970).Arendt, Speeches and Writings—Essays and Lectures—“Thinking”—Lecture, fragments—1974-1975(Series: Addition I, 1966-1977, n.d.), image 2, n.p. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library ofCongress, Washington, D.C.113

political philosophy. For as they reflected on the Western tradition, both Arendt andBerlin decided that the tradition was not just defeated by Nazi and Communisttotalitarianism, it was also in a sense realized in those regimes. Totalitarianism, in otherwords, seemed to them to be both beyond the reason and comprehension of the Westerntradition of political philosophy, and at the same time a telling example of our tradition’scentral attitude toward politics.In exploring their ambivalent attitude toward the tradition, my goal is toilluminate how Arendt and Berlin contributed to the postwar imperative to think afreshabout the Western tradition of political philosophy not only to expose its originatingflaws, but also to reconstruct political philosophy on decidedly anti-totalitarian premises.What is

Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Fathers “Founding Fathers” [1963], lecture delivered at the University of Chicago. Edited, Translated and Footnoted by Ursula Ludz based on the copy available at the Hannah Arendt Papers,