Skidmore College

Isaiah Berlin: IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN LUKES Author(s): ISAIAH BERLIN and Steven Lukes Reviewed work(s): Source: Salmagundi, No. 120 (FALL 1998), pp. 52-134 Published by: Skidmore College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40549054 . Accessed: 01/06/2012 14:20

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http://www.jstor.org Isaiah Berlin

IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN LUKES

I. FromRiga to Oxford

Childhood and the Russian Revolution

SL: Tellme about your father

IB: My fatherwas theadopted grandson of a richman who was a timbermerchant who owned forestsin Russia.The timberwas floated downthe river and then sawn in Riga, where there were sawmills, and then exportedto the West. My fatherwas theperson who went to the West and dealtwith various businesses in westerncountries, and consequently,as wellas knowingRussian and German, both of whichhe knewperfectly, he also learntEnglish and French.

SL: Is ittrue that your family was originallyHasidicl

IB: Certainly.I am descended,as indeedYehudi Menuhin is, from thefounder of theChabad Hasidim, now normally known as Lubavich. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 53

The founderwas a Rabbi called Shneur Zalman, who was then called Shneersonbecause Jewshad tohave familynames. He was bornsome time in the firsthalf of the 18thCentury. He died in 1812. He was the creator of that particularbranch of the Hasidic movement. There were many branches.He lived in a towncalled Lubavichi and he had his courtthere and my familywas directlydescended fromhim. My grandparentswere pious Hasidim.

SL: Oh, your grandparentswere. . .

IB: Absolutely,hundred percent. My parentswere broughtup in it.

SL: So yourfather rebelled against it!

IB: No, driftedfrom it. Became évolué.

SL: Withoutit leaving traces!

IB: No, he took a great interestin it. Sentimentallydisposed. My mother too, they were firstcousins. They were both descendants. I rememberas a child being taken to a little synagogue created by my adoptive greatgrandfather who was a veryrich Hasid in Riga.

SL: So he was also a Hasid!

IB: Yes, inevitably,he wouldn't have adopted my grandfatherif he hadn't been. They reallywere a veryclose-knit body of people. They used to go and see the Rebbe, as he was called, once a year. I can't remember when it was, probablyPassover or some such time.Women wentin order to ask advice. For example ifthey wanted children he mightin some way tryto help them,by praying to God; and men went for advice about business or about whom you should marryyour daughtersto. He was a guru. He was the Delphic oracle, this man. But of course now it has degenerated. 54 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Butthey have a verypowerful continuity, the Hasidim.

IB: I am afraidso.

SL: And thegenerations continue. And so foryour father to have driftedaway was surelythen exceptional.

IB: No, notat all. By hisgeneration, a great many Jews had drifted intosecular life. I thinkby that time the relative emancipation was suchin Russiathat all mycousins were not Hasidim at all. His brothersand sisters weren't,his cousinsweren't. He didn'tbecome a flamingatheist. Some did.One ofthe cousins became a memberof the Cheka. My father'ssister was nearlyarrested for some kind of revolutionary activity in Warsawat one stagein the1905 Revolution and so on. SirLewis Namierexplained thisextremely clearly. He said thatEast EuropeanJudaism was a frozen massuntil the rays the Western Enlightenment began to beaton it.Then someof itremained frozen, some evaporated - thatmeant assimilation anddrifting, and somemelted into powerful streams: one was socialism and theother Zionism. That's exactly right.

SL: Well howdoes yourfamily fit into that!

IB : Neitherone nor the other. My mother was a Zionist,but my father was not.He was simplyhalf-molten, he remainedin a quietpool.

SL: An agnostic!

IB : Well,yes. He wentto Synagogue. He thoughthe believed in God. He hopedthere was a futurelife. He regardedhimself as a memberof the Jewishcommunity as indeedI do, exceptI happennot to believe in God. It makeslittle difference. Now of course,the Hasidim have becomea somewhataggressive movement and a numberhave becomepolitically very,very reactionary.

SL: So youlived in Riga. Wasit a verycosmopolitan city! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 55 IB: No, it was mainlyGerman, basically German. There were not manyRussians, and of course Letts.

SL: Giveme a sketchof the sociology of Riga at thattime.

IB: At thetop were the Baltic barons. They were of German origin, fanaticalsupporters of the Czarist throne and they held high offices in the Russiangovernment. They were not too popular in that country. At home theytended to speakGerman. Below themcame the prosperous German merchantstogether with Scandinavians - Danes, Swedes, as well as Scotsmenand Englishmen - a colonyof merchants who were basically responsiblefor exporting Russian goods to the west. I don'tsuppose that thetotal inhabitants of Riga could have numbered more than two hundred thousandand perhaps there was a foreigncolony of saytwenty thousand and say threethousand Russians, sixty thousand Germans and forty thousandJews and a hundredto a hundredand fifty thousand Letts.

SL: So at thetop of the scale werethe Baltic barons and thenthe rich merchants.And then!

IB: Thencame theJews. Now theprosperous Jews spoke German, since theycouldn't mostly get theirchildren into Russian universities, mainlybecause there was a strictquota for Jews. It was a verysore point. A good manysent their children, who spoke perfectGerman, to the Universityof Berlinor Koenigsberg.Then there came themiddle class RussianJews who talkedRussian, and thencame theJews of theself- createdGhetto. Riga was outsidethe Pale. TheGhetto was notan official ghettoand they were employed by other Jews. You see,Jews could remain outsidethe Pale ofSettlement ifthey were rich beyond a certainpoint. If the turn-overof theirbusiness was morethan so much,if theywere merchantsof theFirst Guild so-called,or if theywere professionals or artisans- doctors,dentists, metal workers, milkmen and the like. If you werea Jewishdentist you might have thirty assistants, none of whom knew anythingabout dentistry; you bribed the police and they were allowed to stay. 56 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: So yourfamily was German-speaking!

IB: Germanand Russian.

SL: As a boy,what language did you speak!

IB: My nursetalked German but my governess- and thiswas deliberate- talkedRussian. My parentstalked Russian to me.

SL: Andof course never Yiddish!

IB: NeverYiddish. They spoke it to theirparents but not to each other.

SL: Andyour father was sellingwood!

IB: Yes, timber.

SL: Whenyou were eight the Russian Revolution occurred,

IB : In 19 15 myparents moved to Petrograd to be nearertheir forests, lestthe German armies cut them off. En routewe lived near a villagewhere therewere young women in gauze dresseswho picked mushrooms and youngofficers waiting to be sentto thefront, and soldiers who sang and playedbalalaikas. There was an old squire slowly dying in his manor house in a wildpark. It was likesomething in Turgenev,or in Chekhov.It was a ratherunique kind of experience for somebody aged six.

SL: Theywent to Petrograd, your parents, because they foresaw

IB: The mainoffice was there.

SL: /see. Andyou arrived in Petrogradin 1916.

IB: Yes. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 57 SL: And thenearly in 1917, in February,the first revolution oc- curred.

IB: Correct.I saw thecrowd fraternising with the revolutionaries. Bannersflying saying 'Land and Liberty','All Power to the Duma', 'Down withthe Czar'.

SL: Andyour family was whollyin favour of this!

IB: Entirely.I didn'tknow anybody who wasn't.My fatherhad Russianfriends who were not Jews, but they were all liberalsand in favour, certainly.The wholefamily, my father's four brothers, my mother's three sisters,were all in favourof therevolution. There was greatexcitement. The Jewishdisabilities were gradually removed.

SL: Was ita verypolitically conscious family!

IB:IB: No. But aftersome months they heard of Leninand Trotsky.

SL: Andwhat did theyhear!

IB: They thoughtthey were terriblepeople, who were going to depriveeverybody of their property, oppress the people, create a reignof terror.That' s whatthey thought. I never met a Russiancommunist in those days.No memberof my family joined the Communist Party. Some were SRs - Social Revolutionaries- I had an unclewho was one of theSR Militia,who afterwardsbecame an Israelihero because he dulycreated Palmach,the frappe de force ofthe Israelis. It's along story.There is a splendidmemorial to him.He was a left-wingfigure.

SL: Andwas he moresympathetic to theBolsheviks than the rest of thefamily!

IB : No. He wascalled Isaac Landsberg,he was a boxer,a wrestlerand a footballplayer. Not very usual in Russian middle-class families, least of all amongJews. He marriedmy aunt. He was also a firstcousin of my 58 ISAIAH BERLIN father.He joinedthe Russian army in 1914,then became a memberof the SR militia.He cameto our flat in Petrograd with a hugeMauser pistol. This so frightenedmy mother, she put it in a bathof cold water,like a bomb, incase itblew up. In Novemberhe thenjoined the Red Guards.After that hejoined the Whites. He wasa manwith a tastefor fighting. When among theWhites, he foundhimself in a campon thecoast of the Black Sea; the officerswere so anti-semiticthat he decided that that was notthe place for him,so he and his wifetook the next boat and wentto Palestine.

SL: Whatwas your family circle like ? I meanwhat was itlike in your home?You were educated at homeby a governess!

IB: Yes, I was educatedat homeand I was neversent to schoolin Russia.Students came and taught me - privatetutors, I practised talking veryinfantile Hebrew, I read theBible, I was takento theSynagogue perhapsfour or fivetimes a year.

SL: Only!

IB: Yes

SL: So theyweren 't religious,your parents.

IB: They weren'tdevout, they were like everybourgeoisie, like membersof theChurch of England or someCatholics in Italy who don't go to Churchregularly. It was ordinarymiddle-class behaviour. They weremembers of the Jewish community. They had seats in the Synagogue.

SL: Did youtalk to them much about anything, didyou discuss things withthem?

IB : I can't remember, probably a greatdeal, but I spentmy time with otherlittle boys that I knew

SL: So youhad manyfriends! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 59 IB: Threeor fouror five- and I read books. Above us lived a GeorgianPrincess. The nextfloor of our house was occupiedby the AssistantMinister of FinnishAffairs, Ivanov, a Czaristminister. His daughterwas my friend. We usedto go outfor walks, accompanied by our parents,by hergoverness or bymine, and talkedabout books. I mether friends,some of whom were girls from the ballet school. Some werevery prettyand elegant. I metmy friend, Ivanov's daughter, in Brown Univer- sity in the UnitedStates sixtyyears laterand we talkedabout our childhood.

SL: Did youdo lotsof reading at thattime!

IB: I readall thenovels of Jules Verne.

SL: Atthat age!

IB: At theage of ten.I read Warand Peace, I readAnna Karenina whichI couldn'tunderstand at all,I readan Englishwriter whom Russian childrenread, who has neverbeen heard of, called Captain Mayne Reade, whowrote adventure stories.

SL: Wasall thisunder the influence of your governess!

IB: No, also of otherchildren. She suppliedthe books. My parents had quitea good libraryof Russianand Germanclassics. I didn'tread German,so whenthey read Heine I readPushkin.

SL: Andall ofthis was bythe age often!

IB: Yes, tenand a half.I came to Englandin 1920.

SL: Butbefore we getto your coming to Englandtell me aboutthe secondrevolution, the November Revolution.

IB: My familydidn't know whathad happened.Nobody knew. Suddenlythere was a generalstrike, against the Bolsheviks. Everything 60 ISAIAH BERLIN stopped.There was no lift(we lived on thefourth floor), no trams,no trains, no newspapers. There was a liberal newspaper called 'Day'; it was suppressed; it appeared as 'Evening'; suppressed; then as 'Night'; sup- pressed; thenas 'Midnight'; suppressed;then as 'Dead-of-night'.Then it was finallysuppressed. That I do remember.

SL: And what was it thatmade you realise thatthis revolutionhad actually succeeded.

IB: Simply thatit wenton. Men came witharmbands and rifles.

SL: Where!

IB: To our house. They said, 'Look, you may not know it,but there is a Soviet revolution.The head of it is VladimirIlyich Lenin. You have to forma house committeefor the purpose of runningthe house. The secretaryof the committeeis to be the stoker,called Koshkin. Now rememberthese orders: you mustcollect togetherin such and such a room and he will tell you whatto do.' When thishappened he orderedeveryone to clean out theyard. My motherfor some reason was on good termswith himso we weren'tmade to do anything.Pure favouritism.But thePrincess and Rimsky-Korsakov'sdaughter who lived six floorsup and his son-in- law Steinberg,the famous cellist, all had to work,stoke the stoves, sweep, remove refuse,and so on.

SL: And yourfather!

IB: My fatherdidn't have to. We were favourites.It was all because we were on verygood termswith the stoker.We had a maid who was a strongCzarist. Our moneyand jewellery were stacked away in thesnow on the balcony outside and when militiamencame to search the flatshe appeared beforethem and she said 'Out you go, don't you dare go any further'- she was obviously a peasant; in thefinal weeks of 1918 no one could gainsay the will of the people; theyleft; we were never searched.

SL: So yourparents very quickly saw thatthis wasn 'taplace inwhich to stay? A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 61

IB: Yes theydid. The streetswere plastered with caricatures of the bourgeoisie.

SL: Andcaricatures of Jews ? Wasthere any sense ofanti-semitism ?

IB: No, notduring the early years of the revolution. But my parents wantedTrotsky hanged. They thought he was destroyingthem and the country.

SL: Theyfelt more strongly about Trotsky than Leninl

IB: Yes.

SL: Because he was Jewish?

IB: Maybe,but Trotsky made veryviolent speeches, while Lenin madedignified, strong but not hysterical speeches.

SL: Did yousee them?

IB: No.

SL: Did membersof your family?

IB: No, myaunts and uncles,liberals and social democratswent to meetingsduring the February revolution but not afterwards.

SL: How didyour departure come about!

IB: My fathersupplied timber to theRussian railways and wenton doingthat under the Soviet regime. We werenot arrested, we weren't touched,there were of course occasional searches, but nothing was found. We livedin one little room. There was verylittle fuel. I was madeto stand inqueues for food, for perhaps six hourson end,wearing huge felt boots. We wentto theatres,to the Opera, I heardChaliapin singing Boris Godunov.I was notat all unhappy. 62 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Thenyou went back to Riga?

IB: Yes, we werenatives and thereforecould opt to be citizensof Latvia. My fatherhated the Soviet regime from the beginning, and he decidedthe sooner we gotout the better. We wentback to Riga becauseit was ouronly way out. My fatheralways wanted to go to England.

SL: Why!

IB : He wasan anglo-maniac. Middle class Russian Jews often looked up to England.

SL: Why!

IB: Theylived in a countrywhere they were heavily discriminated against,where there was a greatdeal ofanti-semitism and where the anti- Jewishlaws couldonly be avoidedby bribing the police and so on. Jews werethere on sufferance.My friendDr. Weizmann,later President of Israel,was notpermitted to staya singlenight either in Moscow or in Petrograd.When he did so hewas arrested. That was the situation. England was a liberalcountry, Jews were notpersecuted, they had quite high positions.England and Hollandwere nobleliberal European countries. Francenot so muchbecause of Dreyfus.That was stillremembered. Americawas wherethe poorer Jews went. For some reason my father had notthe slightest wish to go there.

SL: So itwas alwaysto be England!

IB: Yes. Theywent to Riga but they had to leave everything behind. Theycame withsmall pieces of luggage. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 63 School-Boy in London

SL: So yourparents arrived in England as poorJews ?

IB: Theyarrived penniless. They had relationsin Riga withwhom theylived, but then my father had had business in England before the war and throughsome accident quite a largesum of money which was owed tohim was neversent across by the bank in London to Russia as intheory itshould have been. To hissurprise and gratification itturned out that he ownednearly ten thousand pounds in London,a hugesum of money.So he wentto London,and setup againas a timbermerchant.

SL: Anddid you continue to be educatedby a governess!

IB: No. We lived in Surbiton,of all places, because my father's businessacquaintances told him, 'but you can't live in London.The Englishdon't like towns,they like livingin the country.We live in Surbiton,so comeand live near us'. Thisturned out to be a suburb.I was sentto schoolin Surbiton,a preparatoryschool for a year.I was almost eleven.

SL: Andthen after that year!

IB: We movedto London.

SL: Andwhere did you go to school!

IB: St. Paul's.

SL: Andyou got a scholarship!

IB : Notat first, but after two years I thinkI applied again and got one.

SL: Andwhat did you basically study at schoolthat you remember?

IB: Classics- Latinand Greek. 64 ISAIAH BERLIN

SL: And youflourished?

IB: Not particularly,but I was quite happy. I was never top of the form,I was neversecond or third,I was about seventhor eighthin a class of 26 boys. I made out. I learntLatin and Greek,a little English literature. Some history.Not much.

SL: And nothingelse ?

IB: Oh, well, we had a Frenchmaster and a German master.

SL: Yourfamily was nota particularlyintellectual or scholarlyone!

IB: No, my fatherlived veryquietly in Kensington.My parentsmet no White Russian emigres.

SL: Whynot!

IB : Because theywanted to live theirown lives in England. Because theywere anglomane, and had littlewish to meet Russians in London.

SL: And theyweren ft particularly living among Jews either!

IB: No.

SL: So theywere assimilating!

IB: They knew Jews, theywent to synagogue, the New West-End synagogue, frequentedby grand English Jews. Some of them were neighboursand knew us in Kensington,but we were a quiet family.My fathercame home and read theEvening Standard, had dinner,read a book and went to bed.

SL: You were an only child.

IB: Yes. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 65

SL: And thenyou acquired Englishfriends at St. Paul's.

IB : Certainly,and at prep-schooltoo. There wereplenty of Jews at St. Paul's. But I musttell you, I was put down forWestminster but the man who was coaching me in Classics said 'Your name is Isaiah. I thinksome of theboys may findit a funnyname. You may getteased. Don't you think you could change your name to somethingmore English like James or Charles?' I thoughtthat if it is betterto change my name I don't want to go to that kind of school so I opted for St. Paul's, because it had a respectableJewish population of sixtyor seventyboys out of say five or six hundred.Among my friends were both Jews and non-Jews. I had a close friendcalled JackStephenson, James Whitely , thenotorious John Daven- port,Arthur Calder Marshall,the novelist; Clare Parsons,a poet,then there was Leonard Schapiro. Wolf Halpern who was killed in the Battle of Britain.He was half-Jewish.

Studentand Teacherat Oxford

SL: And you wentstraight on to Universityfrom St. Paul's!

IB: Yes. I got a scholarshipto Corpus ChristiCollege.

SL: And you studied?

' IB : Greats- Classics - forthree years. I didn tdo Mods. One of the dons said 'You are really not very good at Latin or Greek. Betternot.' Corpus tended not to take Paulines because they were all regarded as dilettantes.Rotten before theywere ripe. Too knowing. We were over- worked at St. Paul's - it was a cramming establishment.Then the Paulines came to Oxfordexhausted and tendedto fallby thewayside. Still, theytook me. Corpus was a veryconservative college, wherethe President didn't use a typewriterand had no secretariesand wroteeverything in a copper-platehand. They offereda scholarship in Latin and Greek and modernhistory combined. For themit was a new departure.I was twice rejectedby Balliol. I triedfor a Balliol scholarshipbut I didn't get thatand 66 ISAIAH BERLIN thenmy school asked 'Could he be a commoner?'and Balliol said no, not goodenough. Corpus gave me this odd scholarship, so I didGreats in three yearsand thenPhilosophy, Politics and Economics.

SL: So youdid twofirst degrees!

IB: Yes, I gota bad firstin Greats and a goodfirst in P.P.E.. I didn't havea politicstutor because that wasn't allowed.

SL: Whichteachers influenced you most!

IB: WellI don'tknow if teachers influenced me much but there was Hardie,my philosophy tutor. He wasa wonderfultutor, he was scrupulous, extremelyminute and an extremelynice man. Sharp brain, very kind and ' ' youcouldn t get past him : ifyou produced a sentencethat wasn tclear you werestopped and you had to clarifyit. That was a verygood training.

SL: Andwhat were you studying with him basically?

IB: Philosophy,the Ancientsand Moderns.Plato, Aristotleand modernphilosophy.

SL: Wereyou mainly at thispoint interested in philosophy.

IB: I became so and that'swhere I met variousphilosophers at Oxford.Herbert Hart, Dick Crossman, H. B. Acton,Freddy Ayer who was ayearjuniortome.

SL: Andyou met them all as under-graduates!

IB: Yes.

SL: Anddid you discuss philosophy a lotwith them!

IB: Yes, I did.I livedfor two years in Collegeand then moved into WellingtonSquare wheremy housemateswere a man called Bernard A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 67

Spencer,who was quite a goodpoet, a minorpoet, but very genuine. Ernest Copleston,the brother of theJésuite thinker Father Copleston. He went intothe civil service, - and otherpeople .

SL: Andso youdescribe the teaching you got from Hardie as very challenging!

IB: Yes, itwas fascinating.One gotaddicted.

SL: Whatdo you rememberparticularly addicting you? Was it the studyof great systems of thought!

IB: No, I was madeto read Hegelian philosophers. Couldn't under- standa word.I readBradley, I readBosanquet. Not a word.But then I read G. E. Moore's PrincipiaEthica . I was illuminated.Of courseI rejectit now,but the lucidity, the strictness, the honesty, that was wonderful.

SL: So thatwas a mainturning-point!

IB: Yes. ThenI becamea kindof realist.I beganreading Bertrand Russelland Moore, and I beganreading, oh, Oxford philosophers, Joseph and Cook-Wilson, they seemed rigorous and clear and rational.

SL: Wereyou reading any European philosophy at thattime!

IB: No, Hegel. Kantof course,and of courseDescartes as well as Hobbes,Locke, Berkeley, Hume. No Spinoza,and only a littleLeibniz.

SL: Butnothing other in thetwentieth century!

IB: No, butwhat was therefor us to read?Do you meanBergson? Husserl?Nobody had ever heard of him.

SL: Croce!

IB : J.A. Smithand Collingwood were the only ones who read Croce. Thatwas thoughtout of theway. 68 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: AndCollingwood!

IB : I wentto his lectures as anundergraduate and I knewhim. He was an interestingman and talkedvery well. He was highlycourteous, his fatherhad beenRuskin's secretary. His motherwas a VienneseJewess. We talkedabout literatureand Roman history.He would say 'How wonderfulfor Croce, he is nota professor,he doesn't have all theseboring pupils.He is a richman, he can do whathe likes.That's how one should live. Here I have all thesestupid pupils at PembrokeCollege'. He was interestedin the nature of history, the influence of cultures. He was a boat buildertoo and a chicken-farmer.Ofall thishe was veryproud. He was a fascinatingman, and outsidethe main tradition, on hisown.

SL: Washe muchrespected in Oxford!

IB: He was regardedas beingoutside the stream. He was respectedas an independentthinker on hisown.

SL: Did he influenceyou, do youthink!

IB : Yes, he influencedme in thedirection of philosophy of history, butnever as a thinker.He introducedme to Vico. He hadtranslated Croce' s bookon Vico intoEnglish, and he lecturedon thephilosophy of history. I thoughtthat was extremely interesting, ofno usefor my exams, but I was interestedbecause I had takenan interestin thevariety of cultures.He mentioneda lotof names- vistasopened!.

SL: So thiswas thehistory of ideas!

IB: Yes.

SL: FromHardie you got thesense of the importance of argument andfrom Collingwood an interestin thephilosophy of historyand the historyof ideas.

IB: Thatis right. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 69 SL: Whoelse interestedyou among the philosophers ofthat time?

IB: I wentto hearProfessor Price, a philosophicalrealist. I wentto GilbertRyle, original, bold and a verydull lecturer.

SL: Prichardl

IB: Yes, on ethics,that I admiredvery much. The premiseswere naive,but the tautness of the argument, the rigour, the sheer intensity was somethingI had nevermet before, until my colleague Austin who had a similargift.

SL: Did youknow Austin then!

IB: No, I knewhim later at All Souls.

SL: So youdid the undergraduate course in Greats yyou then did a one yeardegree in PPE (philosophy,politics and economics)focussing on philosophy.And then you became a fellowof All Soulspretty quickly!

IB: In 1932,1 think.I firstbecame a lecturerin New College.

SL: Teachingphilosophy!

IB : RichardCrossman was madea fellowof New Collegebefore he evertook his final examinations. Crossman taught half ancient history and halfphilosophy.

SL: Andyou!

IB: And I took the otherhalf and so I was made a lecturerin philosophy.I had not known what to do withmyself, I couldn't think of a career.I tooka fairlyprominent part in thephilosophical societies such as theJowett Society. Crossman wanted a quietphilosopher who would do all thepedantic stuff, so thathe was freeto give these magnificent general lecturesthat excited people. He was a terrificlecturer; but a philosopher he was not. 70 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: So whatwere you basically teaching!

IB: For two monthsI taughttheory of knowledge,logic, ethics, politicaltheory. No aesthetics,no philosoophyof history.My only departurefrom the curriculumwas the lecturesI gave on the French Enlightenment.

SL: Andthen you became a fellowof All Souls.

IB Yes, in 1932.It was a greatsurprise.

SL: Andthat must have been a greatliberation.

IB: It was a liberation.

SL: Andwhat did itliberate you to do ?

IB: Well,I wenton teachingat New College,otherwise I couldn't havesurvived financially.

SL: Butat thatstage you wanted to be a philosopher,you wanted to do philosophy?

IB: Yes, I was a professionalteacher of philosophy, a regulardon in philosophy,nothing else. In 1933a yearlater, Mr. Fisher, the Warden of New College asked me to writea book on Karl Marx forthe Home UniversityLibrary. I said 'Whatis theaudience for the book?' He said "squashprofessionals". I was notthe first person he askedto do thebook. The firstto be invitedwas HaroldLaski, who refused. The secondwas FrankPakenham (Lord Longford), who refused. Then one or twomore. Finallyhe cameto me, I had neverread a lineof Marx, but I thoughtthat ' Marxwas likely to be more rather than less important; ifI don twrite about Marx,I'll neverread it. At first it was hideouslyboring. I triedto read Das Kapital,I gotstuck in the first chapter so I thought,well, if I haveto write aboutit, maybe I'll findout what it is about.So I readMarx in German and Russianbecause theedition of Marx's Gesamtausgabewas stoppedin A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 7 1

Germanyin 1933by Hitler but went on inMoscow. I readfar more Marx thanwill ever be good forme or anybodyelse.

SL: Did itstart to interestyou!

IB : Ofcourse. I wasinterested inMarx as a person,and his ideas were interesting.I discovered that two, maybe three ideas in Marx were wholly original,everything else came fromsomeone else. His synthesiswas remarkableand amounted to genius. The ideaof Marx that was genuinely originalwas the idea of the influenceof technologyon culture,that technologicalchange influences culture to a profounddegree. Saint- Simonhad indeedsaid it beforequite clearly, but not perhaps clearly enough.The otheridea was aboutbig business and whatit did. I thinkhe probablyinvented this.

SL: Tell memore about what you mean by that.

IB: That therewould be a phenomenonof big business,huge centralisedcontrol of production and manufacture and exchange, which in hisday didn't exist.

SL: So he projectedinto the future the way that big businesswas goingto develop!

IB: Yes, includingmultinationals.

SL: In otherwords he saw thatcapitalism was goingto becomean internationalphenomenon.

IB: Thatit was goingto becomea hugecentralised dominant world force;that I thinkis dueto Marx. What we call bigbusiness is nota phrase used in the 19thcentury. The thirdidea is thatof theclass war.Class warfarehas beenexaggerated, but nevertheless exists as a phenomenon. Thereis sucha thingas conflictbetween classes. 72 ISAIAH BERLIN

SL: Of course he said thatall otherconflict could be reduced to it.

IB: Patently false, of course. Nevertheless there is value in his enormousemphasis on thefact that a greatdeal derives fromeither overt or to some extentsemi-conscious class conflict- thereis value here if class is notdefined as he definedit, as a positionin theproductive process, but as entireways of livingin whichlanguage and thehouses thatpeople live in and thekind of language thatthey use, thepermanent relations that theyhave, all that- that's what we mean by class. When you say upper class and lower class, you don't just mean in relation to the systemof productionin a narrowsense, you mean all therest, all elementsof a way of life.

SL: You mean definingclass culturally!

IB: Ways of life. Of course the relationto theproductive process is essential,but it' s a muchwider concept than that. And thatMarx neverpaid attentionto. In thatsense thereis a conflict.But not the sharpconflict he thoughtabout. Because one class melts into anotherfar more frequently thanMarx allowed for.Still, an importantpart of theidea can be attributed to him.

SL: So you would thinkthat that was an original ideal

IB: Yes, thoughyou can derive,you can reconstructit out of other people's ideas. Marx's greatoriginality consists in a marvelloussynthesis.

SL: Well that's a kindof originality.

IB: Indeed, indeed. I quite agree, he was a thinkerof genius. I don't denythat. But it was thesynthesis that was important.He neveracknowl- edged a single debt. His theoryis a compound of previous ideas. It was a shock to me, notthat it was a compound,but his totalrefusal to acknowl- edge a debt to anyone. I didn't get to like him as a man, I thoughtI knew what it would be like to meet him.

SL: How long did it take you to writethe book! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 73

IB: About threeyears, I musthave startedin '33 and finishedin 1937. The book was published in 1939.

SL: And wereyou completelyabsorbed in all ofthis during that time!

IB: No, I wenton teachingphilosophy.

SL: But it musthave been completelyabsorbing to read all of Marx.

IB: Not very.When I began readingMarx I did become absorbed in his anticipators,in the 18thCentury, in thePhilosophes of theEnlighten- ment.They were wonderfulreading. Helvétius, Holbach, Condorcet,and much of Voltaire - I foundRousseau more difficult.

SL: So Marx led you backwards..

IB : Of course I readPlekhanov, who was thebest of all commentators on Marx, among his disciples.

SL: Do you thinksol

IB: Yes. Better than Kautsky, better than Bernstein. A brilliant Russian writer,he wrote books about these 18thCentury thinkers, so I went back to them and then I became interestedin them and began lecturingon themin the 30' s .

SL: Did thismean thatyou were basically, in effect,taking a decision tofocus on the historyof ideas!

IB: This grew gradually,I didn't determineto do it,but fromMarx I went to the French - Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon. Then to the Russian forerunnersof theRevolution. That began by pure accident,you mightsay.

SL: How did thatcome about! 74 ISAIAH BERLIN

IB : I used to go to theLondon Library.They had a wonderfulRussian collection. The librarian there,Hagberg Wright,was a Russian and Scandinavian scholar, and so the historycollection was superb. I saw Alexander Herzen' s name on the back of a book. I had a vague idea that therewas a bearded social thinkerof thenineteenth century of thatname. It meant nothingto me. I took out one of the volumes. It was Herzen's autobiography.I neverlooked back. It stillseems to me thebest autobiog- raphywritten in the 18thor 19thcentury. Even betterthan Rousseau or Gibbon.

SL: So your interest in Romanticismand in the idea of cultural specificity,it was somethingwhich emerged from reading Herzen?

IB: Emerged fromreading Marx's predecessorsplus theRussians. I asked myself:'How did itall come about? Which was thebreaking-point? Why were the French philosophers rejected? Why didn't everybody become a pupil of Bentham? What happened?' Hence - the Germans. Kantians,romantics and so on.

SL: So you were doing thisas the 30' s proceeded.

IB: The late 30' s, yes.

SL: You were at All Souls which,as we both well know,was famous for some of its Fellows' friendlinessto the idea of appeasement.

IB: A handfulof them. The idea thatappeasement was nurturedin All Souls is untrue.There were about fiveof them.I knew theappeasers. They were politicallypowerful, important people, and I can give you their names. But the ex-bursarof All Souls looked throughthe All Souls 'Kitchen Lists'. The Kitchen Lists record who were eating dinnersand lunches at given week-ends. The appeasers almost never came simulta- neously,never five at a time. Cliveden - Lady Astor's house - was the real home of appeasement.

SL: So it wasn 't, so to speak, thatthe cabal occurred at All Souls? A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 75 IB: Therewas no cabal. There were appeasers. They were a powerful andinfluential group, all ofwhom I gotto know. There was LordHalifax. Therewas Lang (Archbishop of Canterbury). There was Geoffrey Dawson, (Editorof The Times).There was Simon,who at thattime was Foreign Secretary.There was Lionel Curtis at TheDaily Telegraph.They brought gueststo All Souls,and the guests were of a similarmind. You knewwhat theywere at, and you wouldlearn from knowing them how thingswere donein governmentcircles.

SL: Youwere engaged in this intellectual activity. You had written the bookon Marx by 1937, you were exploring the French Enlightenment and its aftermathand you had startedto read Herzenand otherRussian thinkers.At the same timea politicalcrisis was approaching.

IB: Yes. My colleaguesat All Souls, by and largeall thejunior colleagues,were anti-appeasement to a man,with the exception of the presentLord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg) whowas electedto Parliament in the famous1938 bye-electionat Oxfordas a Chamberlinite,but my personalfriends and indeed half the college were very anti-appeasement.

SL: Andyou were part of this!

IB: Oh, yes,certainly, but outside the college I don't thinkmany Oxforddons took much interest in politics

SL: Butyou did!

IB: No, notespecially, I was anti-appeasement.I was anti-theAbys- sinianwar, I was anti-Franco.I packed parcels for the Spanish Republic. I was neverpro-communist. Never. Some of mycontemporaries gravi- tatedto communism,but anyone who had, like me, seen theRussian Revolutionat work was notlikely to be tempted.I saw someterrible sights in Russiabefore 1919.

SL: Suchas what! 76 ISAIAH BERLIN IB: Well,I saw a policemanbeing dragged off to be lynched,I saw corpsesin thestreet. I readstories about perfectly innocent people being condemnedto death for selling matches in the streets. These were the sort ofpeople nobody ever heard of, a fewof my innocent relations certainly wentto jail. I realisedthat the Headquarters of the Cheka in 1918-19was a terrifyingworld, we were frightenedof iteven as children- a torture chamber,a hellfrom which few emerged alive.

SL: Butsome people would certainly have said thatthe ideas are one thingbut the Bolshevik practice was another.

IB: Theymight. The pointwas thatreading Karl Marx was very interestingbut I realisedthat the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat meantsheer despotism and couldn't be anythingelse - Marx mademe pro-Communard,but not for long.

SL: Butyou didn yt at anypoint in your work on Marxfeel genuinely sympathetic?

IB: Of course.You haveread my book on Marx.

SL: Yes,I havemany times, and ofcourse the book is sympatheticin a way to Marx and you get inside his thought,but were you ever sympatheticto Marxism!

IB: No, I was sympatheticto theWelfare State, to a mildform of socialism.I votedfor the Labour Party, mainly because they were anti- Franco,anti-Mussolini and anti-Hitler, and anti-Chamberlainand Co.

SL: So youreally unquestionably identified yourself with the Left?

IB: Withoutdoubt.

SL: Withouthowever being particularly politically active!

IB: I was alwaysanti-communist. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 11

SL: And your marxistcontemporaries knew this!

IB: There weren't many marxistcontemporaries in Oxford. Some undergraduateswere. I didn't know a single don who was. I knew ChristopherHill extremelywell, but I neverknew thathe was a member of the CommunistParty. Everybody else did.

SL: What about G.D.H. Cole, who was of course, not a marxist, thoughhe was a socialist!

IB: I was on very good terms with him, not in the thirties,but afterwards.There was beforethe war a leftistbody called a Pink Lunch Club. Cole organised it. The following people came to it from 1934 onwards: R.H.S.Crossman, A.L. Rowse, G.F. Hudson, JohnAustin, J.E. Meade, Roy Harrod, ChristopherHill, Stuart Hampshire, after 1936, people fromRuskin, PatrickGordon-Walker, Frank Pakenham, A. H. Jones,and people would come to talkto us, like SydneyWebb, or German communistor socialist exiles; theycame to talk about currentevents. But I didn't know any don thento be a communist.Not one.

SL: Whatabout undergraduates!

IB : Yes. Philip Toynbee, NormanBrown, forexample. I knew them both extremelywell, I thoughtthey were both foolish. We were great friends,I am still on excellent termswith Norman Brown.

SL: Do you see him!

IB: No, he lives too faraway, in California,but I get letters,oh, yes, I am veryfond of him. I believe thatit was he who convertedChristopher Hill to communism.There were also crypto-communists.I knew a man called Bill Davis, who was killed in thewar, and one or two others.There were a numberof themin an institutioncalled the October Club. 78 ISAIAH BERLIN The War Years in Washington

SL: Now, whenthe War broke out, you wereat All Souls. Didyou then feel thatyou wantedto take a moreactive role? How didyou come to end up in Washington!

IB: It's quite simple, I had to fill in a formabout war service, but I wasn't given anything,because I was notBritish born, so theCivil Service said theycouldn't take me. Most of my colleagues did various formsof wartimeservice. I stayedbehind, rathergloomily. I was physicallyunfit forthe army.I had, and have, a bad leftarm.

SL: You were sort of leftstranded .

IB: Well, yes. I taught,because the under-graduatesweren't taken away in the firstyear of the war. They were allowed to take final examinations,in case theysurvived, in which case this would help with theircareers. This went on untilJune 1940. I happened to know Guy Burgess, butI neverknew he was a communist.'What naïveté!' you may say, butit was so. Guy Burgess used tocome and see me aboutonce a year. He used to get drunkin my rooms but he nevertalked about politics. He would talk about JaneAusten, George Eliot, Cambridge gossip, Keynes, E.M. Forster,Victorian worthies, and thatwas it. Then, in about 1936, 1 heardthat he hadjoined somethingcalled 'BritanniaYouth' , whichwas an outfitpresided over by theMayor of Hove, whoeverhe was, which took schoolboys to the Nazi Parteitag in Nürnberg; I decided thathe had always been somewhatmad, and neverhad a moral basis to his life,and became a fascist.By thenhe didn't tryto see me. In 1940, 1 was sitting quietlyin my room in New College, when he suddenlycalled on me and he said, Ί know whatyou mustthink about me, butthat was an aberration, a madness. I knowthat you mustdespise me and thatyou don' t wantto talk to me. You are perfectlyright. I hate myself.'It was all nonsense; he was obviously planted by the Party,that's clear, just like Philby, who was decorated by Franco. He said, 'Harold Nicolson (who was his great patron)thinks you oughtto go toMoscow as press-attache.Would you like to go? You know Russian. None of our people talks Russian, theyneed A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 79 somebody like you. Would you go?' 'Well', I said, 'Well, the British Governmenthasn't given me any otherpost, I am doing nothinghere. I'll go wheneverthe governmentsends me.'

SL: Harold Nicholson was at thattime. . . .

IB: Number two at the Ministryof Information.He asked me to go and see himand said 'good idea thatyou should go' butI said: 'Look, what about theNazi-Soviet pact? Do you reallythink that I musttry to get some Britishpropaganda into Pravdal Not very feasible'. He said, 'Cripps thinksthat because you talkRussian you'd be veryuseful.' So he talkedme into it. Then I was sent to the Foreign Office and I was orderedto go to Moscow withBurgess as myNumber Two. It was obviouslyhis (Burgess's) scheme. He was thenworking in theBritish intelligence, he was in SIS by thattime. We got as faras Washington.At thatpoint he was recalled. He thenwent to theBBC. I thensent a message askingwhether I should come back,I didn't know what to do. They said thatit was notintended to employ Mr. Berlin in Moscow or anywhereelse and I could do what I liked. I realised thatI was in a false position in Washington,I thoughtI must go back, so I went back to Oxfordand began to teach,and nobody bothered me foran entireterm. Suddenly I receiveda letterfrom the British Ministry of Informationsaying 'Why are you overstayingyour leave?' I said 'What leave? So faras I know I have no post'. Then I learntfrom the officialat theMinistry of Information that I had been appointedto a job in New York; butthey forgot to tellme. This on thebasis ofmy having been in theU.S.A. forsix weeks. So I wentback and became a Britishinformation officer in New York.

SL: And you remainedthere until the end of the War!

IB: No, I was transferredto theEmbassy in Washingtonin 1942 and thereI remaineduntil 1945, when I went to Moscow.

SL: Wereyou basically reportingon Americanpolitics!

IB: I was a propagandistfor the firstyear and a reporterfor the remainder. 80 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Reportingon theAmerican political scene!

IB: Yes.

SL: To theBritish Government?

IB: Yes.

SL: Youobviously did thisvery well, because Churchillliked it.

IB: Well,so theysay.

SL: Do youstill have those despatches!

IB: Some werepublished by Herbert Nicholas. They are incredibly boring,unreadable. He publishedthem as a book.They didn't sell very well,published by Weidenfeld in Englandand Chicago University Press in theStates.

SL: Did thiswork completely preoccupy you? Thismust have been veryabsorbing.

IB: It was veryinteresting. I lived in Washington,I talkedto Americanofficials, journalists and otherpeople and read the press. Everyoneknew what I was doing.It wasn'tsecret, but let us sayif, let us say,someone in the State Department wanted to convey that they were not pleasedwith something that the British had done, and they didn't want to do itofficially because then there would be an exchangeof telegrams and a fuss,I was usedand reported their views informally. This did not require acknowledgementor an officialreaction.

SL: Did theNew Deal makea particularimpact on youduring the war?

IB: No. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 81

SL: Butyou must have met many New Dealers.

IB : Wellof course, I was insympathy with them. We believedin the samething. I was a verykeen New Dealer, very pro-Roosevelt. But I never sawhim. Never met him. It was a formof pragmatic idealism. It was a kind ofadaptation to conditions and did not on thewhole curtail human liberty as muchas socialismcan do. Atthe same time it had a considerableeffect in promotingindividual liberty, social justice and just distributionof goods.

SL: Whichthinkers inspired the New Deal, do youthink!

IB: Thereare no politicalthinkers that one thinksof immediately whohad anyinfluence on Rooseveltand his friends.Only Keynes.

SL: Perhapsthat's not an accident,I meanit wasn 't an ideological

IB: Oh, it was. The New Dealerswere perfectly prepared to defend theideas of theNew Deal, notjust thepractices. But theyweren't under theinfluence of a particularthinker. It's whaton thewhole saved America fromsocialism. If youthink it was saved.It's exactlylike Lloyd George. The beginningsof the New Deal wereI supposeLloyd George's policies in England.His reformshad a strongelement of theNew Deal in them.

SL: Whichwere the origins of the British welfare state.

IB: Well, of course.If you ask whatLloyd George's historical achievementwas, it was to save Englandfrom the centralisingand unifyingeffect of stronglyheld socialism. 82 ISAIAH BERLIN Moscowand Leningradin 1945

SL: Now,when the War came to an end,you went to Moscow.

IB: I wentto Moscow in 1945for about four months.

SL: Whatwas thatlike!

IB: Marvellous.Very little work. Very amusing and odd Ambassa- dor.

SL: In whatcapacity did you go to Moscow!

IB: FirstSecretary.

SL: To do what!

IB: Ordinarywork at theembassy - helpout.

SL: Andthat is whenyou met Akhmatova!

IB: Yes, in November1945.

SL: Youwent to seekher out!

IB: No, I didn't.

SL: How did itcome about!

IB : I wentto Leningrad with a memberof the British Council because I had heardthat the books were cheaperto buy,Russian books, in Leningrad,than they were in Moscow. There was a terriblesiege, people someof whom perished sold books to survive, or just left them when they weretoo feeble to be able to do much,so thebookshops were filled with booksthat belonged to perfectly civilised people. So I wentto a bookshop witha friendfrom the Embassy to look at theshelves, I saw anotherman also looking,and gradually we gotinto conversation and he said tome Ί A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 83 see youare looking at this book. Do youlike Blok?' andI said,'Yes I love Blok' andhe said Ί mustsend you what I havewritten about him' . We got intoconversation. He was a critic.We chattedand I askedhim what had happenedto the writers during the blockade. He spokeof survivors among thewriters. I asked him about Akhmatova. I had vaguely heard of her name frommy friend Maurice Bowra.

SL: Oh,you had onlyheard of her name!

IB: I hadnever seen anything she had written. Nobody, I believe,in Englandknew that she was alive.Maurice Bowra had translated her. My friendsaid 'sheis livinground the corner. Would you like to meet her?' It was as ifsomeone had said Christina Rossetti was livinground the corner. Well I havedescribed it all inmy book Personal Impressions. Anyway, I calledon herand we spenta remarkablenight and talked.

SL: Did youbecome close to her!

IB: We talkedfor twelve hours about everything. It was themost marvellousconversation I ever had withanyone.

SL: But youseem to havemade quite an impacton her.

IB: Well,that could be.

SL: Well,that's what she said, wasn't it!

IB: No, notquite that. But she dedicatedpoems to me.

SL: Did you meetmany others? Did you makecontact with other Russianwriters!

IB: Pasternak,he livedin Moscow.

SL: So youmust have been sorry to leave Moscow. 84 ISAIAH BERLIN IB: Well, ... yes. I was. I knewI had to. I used to say to myself, supposingI foundmyself with a Sovietpassport, because I hadonce been a Sovietcitizen, in 1917,because myfather was. SupposingI found myselfwith a Sovietpassport, what would I do? I wouldhave blown my brainsout. It was themost frightful regime I haveever been under. There is no doubtabout that. I hada continuoussense of horror.I met no party member.

SL: It was a particularlyhorrible time to be there!

Ib: No. Nobodyknew who was friendand who was foe.They lived in a fool'sparadise. I saw quitea lotof veryremarkable people. It didn't do themany good.

SL: Did youknow you were being closely watched!

IB: Oh, yes,because that was doneopenly, not to watchmy move- ments,but ad terrorem.I remember that when I wentby an underground train,the chauffeur of the embassywas in thesame carriage.He was employedby the Soviet secret police. We all knewthat.

Return to Oxford

SL: Youreturned to Britain immediately!

IB: In January1946. Then I wentto America to complete my duties there,and I came backin April.

SL: Back to thescholarly life, back to New College.To do what!

IB: Teachphilosophy at New College.

SL: Butall thisexperience of Washington and thenMoscow, did all thatchange your idea ofwhat you were about in theacademic world! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 85

IB: Yes, it made me more interestedin the historyof ideas, particu- larlythe Russians, so I announcedthat I wishedto abandon philosophyand writeabout the historyof ideas.

SL: Now, how did thatdecision come about? Whydid you make it!

IB: Because I found thatI wanted to read Bakunin, Belinsky and Herzen. I wantedto know whythey thought what they thought, more than I wantedto solve philosophicalproblems. Philosophical problemsdid not keep me awake at night,and I thought,well, here I am - a second-class philosopher.

SL: Did you thinkthat!

IB: Oh, yes. I was.

SL: Really!

IB: Yes.

SL: And you knewthat? You were sure of it!

IB: Yes, quite certain,I was a perfectlydecent tutor,but, I mean, I wasn't the equal of Austinor Ryle or people at thatlevel.

SL: In thatdomain.

IB: In thatdomain.

SL: Was it a kindof sudden decision!

IB: No, I'll tell you how it happened. When I was in Washingtonin 1944, 1 wenton a visitto Harvard,Cambridge, Mass. I knew people there, and I meta famousold logician called HarrySheffer. He made important discoveries in logic. Felix Frankfurtergave me a letterto him.I had lunch withhim at theFaculty Club at Harvard.He said to me, 'You know, it's a 86 ISAIAH BERLIN funnything; philosophy can't make progress in thesense in whichother subjectscan. In Psychologythere can be discoveries,so too in logic,or mathematics,or thehistory of philosophy, but you can't talk about a man who is learnedin ethicsor scholarlyin epistemology.It doesn'tmake sense.They are marvellous subjects, but they are not cumulative' . He was right,and then he said 'If I hadknown what Carnap would have made of thesort of things I did,I wouldnever have begun'. Later that same year, 1944,I travelledin an aeroplaneto England.It was nightand it was unpressurisedand I hadto takeoxygen so I couldn'tsleep and I couldn't readbecause there was no light,so forseven or eight hours I hadto think: thatis alwayspainful. I decidedin thecourse of it that Sheffer was right. I realisedthat I wantedto knowmore at theend of mylife than at the beginning.This clearlycouldn't be done by pursuingphilosophy, so I madeup mymind during the flight. Then I announcedto myastonished colleaguesthat I wishedto stop doing philosophy and they said 'Afterthe warwe shallbe prettyshort-handed, for God's sakecontinue for a bit!For threeor fouryears!'

SL: Butwhen you saidyou were going to stop doing philosophy, what wereyou going to do instead!

IB: Historyof ideas.

SL: Did yougive it that name ?

IB: Yes

SL: So howdid you then embark on if!

IB: Nothinguntil 1949. 1 wrotean articleon politicalideas in the twentiethcentury and thenI wrotea piece on Tolstoy- TheHedgehog ' andthe Fox. I didnt have any time for anything else, I wasa full-timetutor.

SL: Andyou wereactually teaching philosophy.

IB: Yes, fulltime. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 87

SL: Butpursuing history of ideas inyour spare time.

IB : Privatelyso tospeak, but then All Souls was kindenough to take me back in 1950 and so I decided to workon the historyof ideas, particularlyRussian ideas. Then I produceda piece on HistoricalDeter- minism- itwas called 'HistoricalInevitability'.

SL: /suppose working on thehistory of ideas is a peculiarEuropean kindof activity, perhaps even particularlyan Italianone ratherthan an Englishor Britishone.

IB: Scarcelyanyone in Englanddid it.

SL: Do you referto thesetraditional European ways of doingthe subject?

IB: Of courseI did,and I readexcellent German and Italians at that time.I readsome excellent books on thehistory of the 1 8th century ideas, booksabout the revolt against scientism, and on romanticism.

SL: Did yourinterest in Vicodevelop at thattime, tool

IB: Yes, veryprofoundly, I remember that I beganreading him in an Englishtranslation.

SL: Whatwas itabout Vico that interested you in particular?

IB: Vico interestedme notbecause of his cyclicalview of history, whichwas a common-placeview, which I thinkbegins with Plato and Polybiusand is foundin Machiavelli, and is I thinkone of the weakest and leastoriginal parts of Vico, but because he was the first man, in my opinion, whograsped the idea of culture as such.I don'tthink anybody before him conceivedof it, had a conceptionof it. He doesn't call itthat, but that' s what it comes to. And when he discussesthe past of the humanrace he distinguishesvarious cultures in it whichhe thinksone can analyseand understandby studying their religious rites, their poetry, their ways of life, 88 ISAIAH BERLIN

theirmetaphors, their use of language. That for him is the key to the understandingof how humanbeings viewed themselves.

SL: An almost anthropologicalview of culture!

IB: Exactly. How people viewed themselvesin theirrelation to the world. He is a fatherof anthropologyin thatprecise sense.

SL: And Montesquieu,wouldn yt you say ?

IB: No. Far less. Montesquieu thinksthat cultures differ from each other,that what is good formy auntin Bukhara is no good formy aunt in Birmingham.That' s somewhatdifferent. He is muchmore rigid and much moreuniversalistic. Montesquieu believes in absolutejustice thatdoesn't differfrom culture to culture. He thinksthat art has absolutely rigid criteria,you'll find out in his journals, and thereis no question of the relativityof taste.

SL: And so you would say that Vico is a relativist!

IB: No, I wouldn't. Well, perhaps in a sense he was.

SL: In what sense!

IB: In a sense thateach culturepursued its own values, and thatone culturewas in no positionto criticisethe values of another,although there were links between them.

SL: But in what sense was he not a relativist!

IB : He was nota relativistbecause he thoughtthat these values were not simply differentvalues fordifferent cultures but sprang fromsome kind of evolution of a common human nature which evolved in this particularway.

SL: So therewas an overall theoryof progress! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 89

IB: No. There was not.Momigliano in his review of my book on the subject thinksthat there is a theoryof progressin Vico and if you look at thelast pages of theNew Science you may thinkthat there is some hintof that,but broadlyspeaking no. The point is thateach culturehas its own beginnings,its own growth,its own development,its own climax, and its own decline. You can't say thatthere is a continuousprogress between them.What there is is a linkagewhich makes themunderstand one another. If like Spengler you thinkthat each culture is a self-containedentity surroundedby impenetrableMackintosh cloth which you cannot pen- etrate,then the problem is how we ever understandcultures of thepast at all. Vico says thatit is exactly not so. And the idea of a succession of cultures,or even of difference, of a particularkind of pluralism,of the varietyof humanconditions, is muchmore clearly spelt out in Vico. In the 18th Century there was a thinkercalled Galiani who was a memberof the Neapolitan delegation in Paris who does rathercontemptuously say that Montesquieu is a man who managed to progresswhere a previous thinker stumbledand had gone about rathererratically. That's a criticismof Vico, in praise of Montesquieu.Now thereis a questionof whetherMontesquieu read Vico. That's a permanentproblem. Nobody knows. In his library thereis no traceof Vico' s writings.Croce was quiteclear thatMontesquieu borrowedfrom Vico. But thereis no evidence of it.He didn'trefer to Vico. But when he wentto Venice, I thinkthat a Count or an Abbé theretalked to him about Vico or said somethingto him , but thereis no evidence of actual perusal.

SL: Was your interesteven then,as you described, before,focussed on the 18thcentury and the revoltagainst it!

IB: Well, it was only because I decided thatit was, is interestingto look at rationalistideas and the opposition to them- a greatrevolt.

SL: So it was really the Enlightenmentand its criticsthat was your focus!

IB: That was how I got going, plus theRussians. 90 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Butnot only did you get going, you continued to returnto it.

IB : Ofcourse, plus the Russians, who were fruits of rationalism and itsopponents. Some of them lived ideas. Nobody else takesideas quite so seriously.I was interestedin this andalso ofcourse I readthe language, becauseI wantedto know what were the sources of the Russian revolution. I becameabsorbed with this.

SL: So thethinkers you were focussing on at thatstage were Vico, Herder,Tolstoy.

IB: And of coursethe Encyclopaedists, Fichte, Schelling up to a point,Maine de Biran,de Maistre- I wrotemy first piece on de Maistre butit was neverpublished. When I readde MaistreI thoughthe was a brilliantenemy of theEnlightenment.

SL: / havejust read thatfirst piece on de Maistreand indeedI rememberyour giving it as a lecturein Oxford. If s a verypowerful piece and you were obviouslyvery attracted by de Maistrein a way. He obviouslygot under your skin.

IB: Welllet me explain. I ambored by reading people who are allies, people of roughlythe same views,because by now thesethings seem largelyto be a collectionof platitudes because we all acceptthem, we all believethem. What is interestingis to read the enemy, because the enemy penetratesthe defences, the weak points, because what interests me is what is wrongwith the ideas in which I believe- whyit may be rightto modify or evenabandon them.

SL: Do you thinkthat's a unifyingthread which unites the various thinkersthat you have been interested in!

IB: Yes. I am interestedin Hamann,de Maistre,Sorel. These are hostilethinkers, I am againstthem, but they said thingsthat make one think.So it's no good reading.... A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 9 1 SL: Voltaire!

IB: Well,he wasn'tan originalthinker anyway.

SL: JohnStuart Mill!

IB: I tookMill almostfor granted.

SL: Butyou wroteabout himand you gave a ratherexistentialist readingof him.

IB: Well,I didn'tthink he was theutilitarian he thoughthe was. I didn'tenjoy Mill. Save forthe essay on Liberty.I didn'tread Bentham properly,I read - whowere the important names? - Carlyle,Emerson; whoelse was therein England?

SL: T. H. Green.

IB : I was notdeeply impressed by him, nor by Hobhouse, admirable as theyare. You see,it's theenemy who interests me, brilliant opponents whoso to speakput their swords, their rapiers into one andfind the weak spot.

SL: Do youthink that description applies to Marx]

IB : Yes, upto a pointit does. The point is thathis particular criticisms of the liberalshe wroteabout did not seem to me to be particularly effective.His positiveideas wereof greatimportance but the idea that libertyis a bourgeoisconcept and all thatsort of thing,or thatit was a capitalistconcept - no.But I didread Lasalle andI was impressedby his analysisof profit and marginal utility. I want to retractwhat I said about J.S. Mill. I admirehim immensely. He is a major,great British positive thinker.

SL: You mentionedHamann before and I recall thathe seemedto playa verycentral role in your lectures on Romanticism. 92 ISAIAH BERLIN IB: Well of course,because he was a violentopponent of the Enlightenment,the firstone who reallyhated the whole thingfrom beginningto end.

SL: Now you weredoing this in theearly 50s and thenyou were elevatedand became the Professor of social and political theory at Oxford in 1957. Why?

IB: Whydid I becomea professor?I can tellyou. Because I thought ifI didn'tI'd wastemy time. As a researchfellow I didn'thave enough disciplineto makeme workproperly.

SL: So youdid itfor self-disciplinary reasons!

IB: Exactly.

SL: Butyou said earlierthat you had decidedyou were not going to do philosophy,you were going to do thehistory of ideas. But your famous * inaugurallecture, Two Conceptsof Liberty - whichhas beena kindof land-markand beena veryinfluential text - is a workof philosophy in a way,isn't it?

IB : Certainly.Itreally has to do withthe fact that I was maddenedby all themarxist cheating which went on, all thethings that were said about "trueliberty", Stalinist and communist patter about 'true freedom' . Popper is right- thistalk cost innocent lives.

SL: What'sinteresting about the lecture is thatin a wayit's a piece ofconceptual analysis, but behind it very clearly there lies a verypowerful politicalmotivation.

IB: Oh, certainly.

SL : Anda politicalmessage!

IB: It can'tbe deniedthat it was anti-marxist,quite deliberately. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 93 SI: It's nota piece ofneutral conceptual analysis.

Ib: Oh no,nor meant to be, certainlynot. I stillstand by it.

SL: Do youthink that any of the criticisms - andit has receivedmany - reallycut deep!

IB: Yes. I oughtto have made more of the horrors of negative liberty and whatthat led to.

SL: Butyou don 7 reallythink they are comparablewith the horrors ofpositive liberty, do you!

IB: Well,there is perversionin each case. Negativeliberty is basic; positiveliberty is also basic.They are both perfectly good forms of liberty whichwe all pursue.I am not at all againstpositive liberty, properly conceived.But theyare notthe same, and even clash.

SL: Butthe text doesn 't quitesay that,does it?

IB: No, thatis not properlyexplained. The questionof negative libertyis howmany doors are open? The question of positive liberty is who governsme? Do I governmyself or am I the victim?Very different questions.

SL: But as I recallthe argument starts off like that, but in theend positiveliberty becomes the villain.

IB: Because positiveliberty was politicallyperverted far more. Negativeliberty led to laissez-faire.The sufferingsof childrenin coal minesor poverty , but positive liberty became total despotism, the crushing of all ideas,the crushing of lifeand thought.But I agreeI oughtto have made it clearerthat positive liberty is as noble and basic an ideal as negative. 94 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: As a professoryou say you made it a chairin the history of ideas, and indeedyou did, and I rememberthat well, but as wesaid beforeit was nota particularlyBritish idea, was it?It was an innovationin Britain.

IB: Yes, certainly,by no meansBritish. I was perfectlyBritish until then.I taughtphilosophy until 1950. Afterthat I brokeaway. I was professorof social andpolitical theory

SL: Butteaching the history of ideas.

IB: Of politicalideas, yes.

SL: Did youfeel thatyou met resistance in Oxford!

IB: Onlyon thepart of marxists.

SL: Butmany of the marxists, people we both know, were students of yoursbut only disagreed with you at thelevel of argument.

IB: Oh,yes, and I was on verygood terms with them and we argued peacefully.

SL: Butwould you say thatyou went on beinga philosopherreally ?

IB: Impossibleto tell.I thinkonce a philosopher,always a philoso- pher,and I am againstpolitical theorists who have never done philosophy and whoseviews therefore are sometimescrude. This was,for example, trueof E. H. Carr,and that was becausehe was onlya studentof history, he wasn'treally able tocope withconcepts.

SL: But,subsequently, in theBritish tradition the practice of the historyof ideas has becomerather important - /am thinkingfor example ofthe Cambridge school, and inparticular Quentin Skinner.

IB: Thisis notquite history of ideas in mysense. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 95 SL: Whynot!

IB: QuentinSkinner rightly says you that can onlyfully understand ideas if you understandthe politicalcircumstances in whichthey are produced,whom they were directed against, whom they were in favour of, whatwas a consequenceof what political and social development. That's all quiteright. But theessence of theideas themselvesdoes notemerge fromQuentin Skinner's historical acounts. If he wereright we wouldnot be able to understandPlato or Aristotle.We don't knowwhat Athens lookedor felt like. We don't know save in very vague terms, whether itwas likea cityin the Caucasus or Beirut. We don'tknow what kind of society Aristotlelived in when he taughtAlexander the Great, what daily life in it was like. We don'tknow what his morals were: the historians, dramatists, orators,don't provide evidence enough. Yet theideas themselveshave lasted.They have moved and excited people for more than two thousand years.If Skinner'srequirements are not met, how can thisbe? It can'tbe thatthe understanding of ideas dependssolely upon an adequateunder- standingof context. Knowledge of thecontext of course helps, the more themerrier. What Quentin Skinner does is of coursevaluable. It can be veryilluminating. But whatI grasp about Machiavelli,even if it is incomplete,seems to me tobe moreimportant than whether Machiavelli didor did not write a 'Mirrorfor Princes' which resembled other mirrors or did not.

SL: Youthen went on beingprofessor until . .

IB: 1966.

SL: Andwere you glad togive it up?

IB: Yes.

SL: Youhad doneenough lecturing!

IB : Yes, enoughlecturing and enough teaching of graduate students. I didnot feel I wasbasically a politicalphilosopher, I thought that my Chair shouldbe heldby someone more committed to contemporaryissues. 96 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Butyou went on pursuing the same lines of thought. You went on writingabout thinkers who interested you. You went on developingthese themes.

IB: Certainly,and in particularthe questionof the relationship betweensocialism, liberalism and valuepluralism.

SL: Welllet me ask you about liberalism.The liberalismthat you espouseinvites comparison with that of other contemporary liberals in Europe.I thinkon theone handof Raymond Ar on, who was roughlythe samegeneration as you.

IB: A bitolder.

SL: Andin ItalyNorberto Bobbio.

IB: I havea veryhigh opinion of Bobbio.

SL: AndAront

IB: Well I thoughtthat Aron was a verybrilliant publicist. His analysesof the French and English situation were always remarkable. His bookon Peace and Warwas interesting,also his bookon Clausewitz.I didn'tthink that his early works on theGerman philosophy of historyor on sociologywere interesting.

SL: Thoughit 's interestingthat he had an interestin Max Weberwho should,it seems to me,have interested you.

IB: I neverread much Weber, one ofmy great deficiencies, which I couldremedy but neverhave. I havenever ceased to lamentnot reading enoughMax Weber.

SL: /think, if I maysay so, thatit is becauseyou always had rather a prejudiceagainst sociology. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 97

IB: Maybe against the scientificclaims of 'sociology'.

SL: Yes, but that's whyyou never read thegreat sociologists.

IB: True. Well I always thought- you know my views on contem- porarysociology.

SL: / do, but surelyDurkheim and Weber ...

IB: I admire themvery much. It's not themI am against - or Karl Marx, who was certainlya sociologist. All I object to is people who study nothing but sociologists. Marx, Weber, Durkheim began with law, history,philosophy.

SL: But now what about Bobbio ? You say thatyou admire him very much.

IB: Well I haven't read him extensivelyenough, but he also distin- guishes betweenpositive and negativeliberty, and is extremelygood on the opposition to natural law, and I think he provides a very firm foundationfor Italian liberal and socialist thought.

SL: And also, interestingly,like you veryfirmly a liberal - no doubt about that- but also clearly a man of the left.

IB: I know. That,I believe, is because of theRoman Church.In any countryunder the ascendancy of the Roman Church, there arises an intelligentsiawhich invariably turns to theleft. Why did Croce studyKarl Marx? Why was Gaetano Salvemini intenselyanti-clerical? They moved to the leftby reaction.The Churchof England doesn't create thatkind of reaction.Take France, Italy, Spain, Russia: thereyou finda pre-revolu- tionary, left-inclinedintelligentsia, critical of Czar and Church, even thoughthere were a few leftistpriests.

SL: And you thinkthat still remains true? 98 ISAIAH BERLIN IB : Now I amnot sure, because communism has largely collapsed in theSoviet Union, and nobody knows where it is going.I havealways been in favourof theNew Deal, of theWelfare State, and thatI remain.I am againstundiluted laissez-faire, against reducing the role of thestate to a minimum.I have neverpreached that. Constant was a considerable influenceon me. So wasPopper' s book,The Open Society and its Enemies. It is to someextent mistaken in itsanalysis of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, but collectivelyit's a powerfuland importantanti-totalitarian and anti- authoritarianand, indeed, anti-conservative work.

SL: So itwas an influenceon you.

IB: Yes.

SL: Therewere a numberof books at thattime and ofthattype, for examplethe book by Talmon on theOrigins of TotalitarianDemocracy, and also Hayek.

IB: I was notinfluenced by Hayek. As forTalmon' s thesis- I had thoughtof thatindependently, and I hadalready delivered my lecture on libertyby then. But itis an interestingbook.

SL: Whydo yousay you are infavour of the New Deal!

IB: I thoughtthat the New Deal was themost successful, admirable experimentpromoting both justice and prosperityin a societywithout introducingthe rather restrictive aspects of socialism.As suchit was an arrangementrather like Attlee' s. Itwas a formof welfare state. That' s what theNew Deal was. And it was promotedby extremely able and morally sympatheticcharacters.

SL: Anddo youthink that it is generalisablel

IB: Of course.As a formof governmentand as a formof society.

SL: Andif you identify a political position today, or rathera political possibilitytoday, ... A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 99 IB: I'd sayit is exactlythe same. I see no reasonwhy not. I meanthe welfarestate in Englandwas admirableand theNew Deal in America underRoosevelt was verygood; itunfortunately had to be modifiedas a resultof therequirements of warbut it came backto somedegree under Trumanand on thewhole it left a permanentimpact on Americansociety. The realopposition to the policies of Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan and theothers derives from memories of and faithin thevalues of theNew Deal.

SL: Liberalismin theAmerican sense.

IB: New Dealism.

SL: Andin Europe,would you equate that with social democracy!

IB: No, we havenever had it.

SL: /see, so youthink that the New Deal is somethingquite distinctive whichEurope has nothad!

IB: I do thinkthat. Well, thenearest thing to it,as I say, was the welfarestate under Attlee and corresponding forms of government inNew Zealand,Scandinavia and so on. Thereare a lotof affinities.

II. The Plural Societyand its Enemies Pluralism, Relativismand Liberalism

SL: We've been talkingabout liberalism.Let's now turnto value pluralism.One threadthat runs through your new book, and you stress it particularlyin theAgnelli lecture, is thetheme of pluralism.

IB: True. 100 ISAIAH BERLIN

SL: Butyou also say thatpluralism is notrelativism. What is itexactly thatdistinguishes pluralism from relativism!

IB: Well if you say "exactly",I may not be able to satisfyyou. Can we talkabout values? We are notmaking common sense statementsabout the externalworld of a factual,empirical nature. What are they?Let me beginwith my difficulty. My difficultyis thatpeople say, forexample, that Hume is a relativist,or thatothers are. In contrastto what? In contrast presumablyto knowing thatcertain values are absolute quite indepen- dentlyof whatyou may thinkor want.That's presumablywhat Kant says, and whatthe Bible says and whatmost religions say: thatthere are certain values known a priori to be valid - so that the personal opinion of individualsmakes no differenceto theirobjective status. That's something I don't really understand- of course I understandthe meaning of the words when I read them, but I don't know what it would be like to recognisecertain beliefs as beingtrue independently of whatanyone might possiblythink. I can see thatkind of realismabout theexternal world. I can perfectlyunderstand, though some people wouldn't, the claim thatthe tableis made of wood whetherI thinkso or not.But to say that,for example, murderis wrong whetherI thinkso or not seems to me to be, curiously enough,puzzling. Because when I say rightor wrong,I mean in the light of values that I, in my personal life, regard as ends in themselves, everythingelse being a means towardsthem, for the sake of which I am prepared to act, and which in some way form,with other values, the constellationof values whichshapes my way of life.All thatI understand. My way of life, our way of life perhaps, more widely. I have never understoodwhat it would be like forHume's so-called relativistvalues (butI don't thinkhe is a relativistfor a moment,but that's another matter), for Hume's allegedly relativistvalues to be seen as not relative but objectiveand absolute.What would itbe like toperceive this? Γ ve no idea. Relativism is anothermatter.

SL: Well,tell me whatyou thinkpluralism is.

IB : Pluralismis as nearto objectivevalues as I can get.To beginwith, I wishto make a point,which I have made rathertoo often,that some values A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 101

are incompatiblewith each other.Both values of entirecultures or values of groups of individuals or values withina human being himself. For example,to give themost obvious example,absolute freedom is incompat- ible with absolute equality. If you want absolute political equality you must restrainthe libertiesof people fromdisturbing it, for example by dominatingothers. I thinkthat spontaneity, which I regardas a virtue,is incompatiblewith being good at planning,as justice is withmercy, and so on. I would even go so far as to say that knowledge is sometimes incompatiblewith happiness. Plato and otherswould denythat totally. So would Marx. If I know thatI have cancer,I don't believe thatI am made happierby the knowledge. Some people would say thatit gives me more freedombecause I would thenknow what to do; butI would notnecessarily know this. Cancer is often fatal, in which case I am no doubt made miserable by the awareness of having it. And so on. Values don't all collide. A good manyvalues are perfectlycompatible, but enough values aren't,both between cultures and withincultures, within groups and within persons.This being so, choices have to be made. If you choose one value, you must sacrificeanother. Sacrifices can be agonising, but unless you refrainfrom choosing, (which would make you inhuman,because making choices is intrinsicto being a human being), unless you cancel that,you have to choose and thereforeyou have to sacrificesomething, namely the values you don't realise. Now thevalues thatI sacrifice,as opposed to the values whichI choose, are thevalues whichmight be equally ultimatefor me. By 'ultimate'I mean values whichI regardas ends in themselves,and nota means to otherends - whatutilitarianism was to Mill or knowledge to Plato . Even thoughI may sacrificea given value, I can perfectlywell understandwhat it would be like if I had sacrificeda rival one. In either case, the values I am guided by are what determinemy general moral universe.Values are not isolated. They are, save forfanatics, connected withother values whichbetween them form a constellation,a way of life. That's as nearto objectivityas I can get.That's whatmy lifeis lived in the lightof. If I am toldthat these ends are universallyvalid, whetherI believe in them or understandthem or not, I don't follow. In a sense I am an existentialist- that's to say I commitmyself, or find thatI am in fact committed,to constellationsof certainvalues. This is how I live. Others may live differently.But I am what I am. 102 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Wellthat does raisethe issue I wantto ask you about, namely the questionof choice. I meanthere are otherwriters than yourself whom I couldthink of - forexample Max Weber,or Nietzscheor Carl Schmitt, whohave observed this clash between values but have drawn conclusions thatare ratherdifferent from yours - notablyI thinkof Carl Schmitt.. .

IB: ... and also Weber?

SL: ... whodraws a veryharsh conclusion from this, really, that the choicecan 7 be givenany kind of rational formulation. It's just a question in theend of who is myfriend and whois myenemy.

IB: For Schmittand Nietzsche too do youthink ?

SL: Yes.

IB: Whatabout Weber?

SL: Weberhas a somewhatmore complex position subject to differ- entinterpretations.

IB: Let me tellyou that I firsthave to admitto yousomething very shaming.When I firstformulated this idea, which is a longtime ago, I'd neverread a pageof Weber. I hadno idea thathe saidthese things. People oftenask me, but surely Weber was the first person to say this. I answerthat I am surehe is, butI had no idea of it.

SL: No, butit came from Nietzsche, as faras Weberwas concerned.

IB: I know,but I said thesethings entirely on my own, without Nietzscheand withoutWeber.

SL: Butyou drew liberal conclusions from it.

IB: But whatabout Weber, what does he say? About these cul- tureswhich collide? A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 103 SL: Well,Weber certainly thought you had to take sides, but he didn 't drawthe kind of humane generous liberal conclusions which you seek to draw.

IB: But?

SL: Well,Weber became a ratherardent nationalist.

IB: All right,but how did he defendit?

SL: In theend he said youhad to takea side.

IB: Like Carl Schmitt.You plump.

SL: Yes,in theend.

IB: Ofcourse, in the end. You takesides. Well I don'tdisagree with thateither. I believethat too.

SL: Butyou say, and yousay it in theend in theAgnelli lecture if I remember,you say that you have this clash, this diversity of ultimate ends, thisincompatibility between ultimate values, and youeven say someare incommensurable.

IB: Some are.

SL: Yes,some are. Andthen you say thatnevertheless they can be tradedoff.

IB: I havebeen attacked for saying that, e.g. byMr. Perry Anderson, andMarxists. Well I canexplain it. But let me go onto something else first.

SL: All right.

IB: Andthat's the following. I think the number of ends that human beingscan pursue is notinfinite. In theoryit may be, but in practice human 104 ISAIAH BERLIN beings would not be humanif thatwere so. The numberof humanvalues is finite.

SL: So theyare limitedby mutualintelligibility.

IB : The numberof ends whichpeople can pursueand remainas what we regardas fullyformed human beings is, letus say, ninety-two, or sixty- seven, or forty-one,but not an indefinitenumber. Now, if people pursue values, even a culturepursues values differentfrom mine, or fromwhat Germanscall myKulturkreis or culturalcircle, I can understandit, because theseare values whichare compatiblewith being a fullydeveloped human being. But some values are not, theyare outside the rim. The limitsof intelligibilityof values forme means thatI can communicatewith people who pursue themand understandhow in theirposition, supposing thatI lived where and when and how theylived, I mighthave pursued these values myself,or again I mightnot, I may reject these values now, and perhaps I would have rejectedthem then, in favourof some rival values, but at least I understandwhat it would have been like to devote my life to thepursuit of theseother values - to me, let us say, unsympatheticends.

SL: So the range is limitedby mutualintelligibility.

IB: It is to me. Let me give you an example of non-intelligibility, because otherwise the concept of intelligibilitybecomes too vague. Supposing a man comes along and he pushes pins intopeople, and I say to him: 'why do you do this?' The man says: 'because I enjoy it.' I say: 'are you enjoyinggiving pain to people?' 'no, notparticularly.' That would be an intelligibleaim. Sadism I understand.Then I ask him: 'but whydo you doit?' And he says: 'because I ratherlike it.' 'But you realise thatit causes themgreat pain'; andhesays, 'yesldo.' 'But then,they might do itto you.' 'No theywouldn't because I am strongerthan they are, and I would stop them.' So far so good. But thenI say: 'but why do you do it?' And he answers: 'but I like doing it. I like pushingpins intoresilient surfaces.' 'If I give you a tennisball, would thatbe just as good?' 'Of course,just as good', he replies, 'as humanskin'. At thispoint I stop understandinghim. To talk to a man forwhom inflictingpain is somethingof no importance, A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 105 doesn't make any difference,is totallypuzzling. I repeat:'you are inflictingpain' ; andhe says:'so what?Why do youmention it ?' This 'so what'means that we do notlive in the same world. I call himmad. People in his kindof mentalcondition are lockedup in asylums,not prisons.

SL: Onthis point, do you think that the limits of intelligibility - which we can countas intelligible- are preset? Or do you thinkthat the practiceof studying other cultures could increase the range of what can be intelligible?

IB: Of course,it could and does.

SL: Butnevertheless there are limitsthere somehow,

IB: The whole value of discoveringthe past and studyingother culturesis to understandmore, so thatyou understand yourself better.

SL: //is notonly that you understand more, but what can be intelli- gibleincreases.

IB: Yes. You mayunderstand something which at a previoustime youdidn't understand. Something may be explainedto youby a manof geniusand you suddenly understand something which had beenopaque, or evenmeaningless.

SL: So thatin principle the scope of valuesthat could inprinciple clash witheach othercan be an expandingscope!

IB : Itcan be,but nevertheless I believe it to be finite,because I think thatin theend there is somethingcalled human nature. It's modifiable,it takesdifferent forms in differentcultures but unless there were a human nature,the very notion of humanbeings would become unintelligible.

SL: That'sa pointabout the scope ofthe values that clash, but let's returnto theclash itselfand theconclusion that you draw from it. There are reallytwo points here at issue.First there is thepoint about how you 106 ISAIAH BERLIN can on theone hand say that they are incompatibleand indeedincommen- surable,andyeton the other hand speak about putting them into some kind ofbalance and equilibriumand indeedtrade-off, that question. Perhaps youcould talk about that first. Then secondly there is thequestion of why thisshould lead topositive liberal conclusions. Let's talkabout the first questionfirst.

IB: All right,well now,trade-offs. A commercialterm. Perhaps I shoulduse the term 'compromise' . The point is this.If you have a collision ofvalues - let'stake something morally painful: you may have to decide thatthere can be no trade-offs.Take a man under Nazi occupationin Franceduring the last war; his choice is betweenjoining the resistance or thehigh likelihood of being forced to see hiswife, child, parents tortured bythe Nazis ifand whenthey discover this. Then there is no questionof trade-offs:you can't establish a delicatebalance between the probability of tortureand theobligation of resisting an absolutelyevil regime.

SL: Wellthis is thekind of case thatSartre was concernedwith.

IB : Yes ofcourse. It is anagonising choice. There are many possibili- tiesof agonisingchoices.

SL: Moral dilemmas.There can be no questionof trade-offwhen thereare moraldilemmas!

IB : Ifthey are acute moral dilemmas, there can no questionof trade- off.Let me tell you a storythat someone once told me. During the last war therewas a Britishofficer in the Intelligence service, and in 1945he went tosee a resistancegroup in France which had captured a Frenchmanwho hadworked for the Gestapo, a veryyoung man, an agentfor the Gestapo. Theycaptured him, and the British officer wanted to interrogate him and findout what he knew.The resistancemen told him thathe could interrogatethe prisoner if he likedbut that they were going to shoothim thenext morning; he could notescape this.The Britishofficer met the youngman and asked him questions. The mansaid, 'If youcan save my lifeI'll talk.But if you can't save mylife, then why should I?' Now,what A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 107 shouldthe officer have done? As an intelligenceofficer, obliged to extract informationwhich might help to save thelives of innocent victims of the Nazis,he was boundto lie, to say Ί can save yourlife, if you tell me what I wantto know.'Alternatively, he could have fudgedthings and said: 'Well, I'll talkto them,I'll tryand persuadethem not to shootyou', knowingthat he wouldnot be ableto persuade them: we'll assumethat he knewthat as well as anythingcan be knownin thisworld. As an officer involvedin the war, he was bound to lie; you may say that people are bound tolie inwars for the cause that is theirs.At the same time, the thought that thevery last thing the man would realise before he was shotwould be that he hadbeen liedto by oneself would surely deter one. One wouldn'tbe a decenthuman being if one wasn'tdeterred - one wouldbe a monster.In thissituation, what should one do? Again:what does a Jewin the situation describedby Miss Arendtdo? You area leaderof some Jews in Lithuania. A Nazi officialcomes to youfrom the Gestapo and he says,'You are in chargeof the Jewshere, they trust you, you manage their lives, youare thehead manof theJewish community, appointed by us. Give us their namesand addresses, we wish toknow this. Of course we coulddiscover thiswithout you, but it wouldtake us longer,and thatwould be rathera nuisancefor us. If youdo thisfor us, we'll letyou go, and youcan take seventy-twoother people with you. If you don't do it,you know what will happen,to you as wellas toall theothers.' You mightsay to yourself: 'how dareI, whoam I tochoose seventy-two people out of all thesepeople to be saved?' Miss Arendtin effectsaid thatyou had no rightto sup withthe devil:you should allow yourself to be shot,and that'sthat. I disagree.In myview there are fourpossible choices. One is thatyou say, Ί am not playingyour game' - in thatcase youare probably soon executed. The secondchoice is to commitsuicide rather than talk to theGestapo - at leastyou'll kill yourself - perfectlyworthy, at leastyour conscience is clear - but perhapsnot quite clear, because you mighthave saved seventy-twopeople. The thirdchoice is to say,all right,I'll giveyou the names- andthen you tell all theJews that they must do everythingthey canto flee; and you know that once your act is discoveredyou are virtually certainto be killed,that the possibility of escaping is verysmall. The fourth choiceis to accept:you get away, with seventy-two others. There was a manwho did this. He was ultimatelyassassinated in Israel by a relativeof 108 ISAIAH BERLIN one of those he leftbehind. What is the morallycorrect answer to this? There can be no question of any trade-offbetween any of thesepossibili- ties. In so extremea situation,no act by thevictims can (pace Miss Arendt) be condemned.Whatever is done mustbe regardedas fullyjustified. It is inexpressiblearrogance on thepart of those who have neverbeen placed in so appalling a situationto pass judgementon thedecisions and actions of those who have. Praise and blame are out of place - normal moral categories do not apply. All fourchoices - heroic martyrdom,and the saving of innocentlives at the expense of those of others,can only be applauded.

SL: So that's thecase in acute moral dilemmas.But now, whatabout cases ofpublic policy?

IB: There trade-offsdo come in. Let me give you an example. Either you can build a churchor a cinema. There are no resourcesfor both. There is a greatdemand foreach. A hundredpeople long fora church,but three hundredpeople crave a cinema. You can decide on utilitariangrounds, whichseems to me perfectlysensible: ifwe build a cinema,we shall make morepeople happy.But whybe utilitarian?That depends on thesituation - one mustweigh the intensity of thedesires against the number of voters. Quality has to be balanced againstquantity. There is no rule accordingto which thiscan be done - one mustjust decide.

SL: But let's change the example slightly:suppose it's a choice betweenthe opera house and the sportsground?

IB: Then I can say thatopera houses are intrinsicallymore valuable thansports grounds. Why? Because artis an end in itselfand to be pursued as an end in itself,not as a means forsomething outside itself. That is what ad majoremdei gloriammeant. The purposeof artis notjust pleasure; the purpose of artis art,of creationis to create,just as thepurpose of love is love. And the purpose of football is perhaps football to those who are dedicated to it,but mainlyto give pleasure to the spectatorsand to foster competitionin skills among theplayers and to excite. You have to choose. You plump.How muchmoney do we have? Not enoughfor both. You may judge thatthis community is so barbarousthat it needs culturemore than A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 109 itneeds football grounds, or you can saythat this community is civilised, andthe rich can pay for an operahouse themselves. That's not a trade-off, that'sa decision.A trade-offmeans it mighthave a verysmall football groundand a tinyopera house.

SL: Butthen the idea oftrade-off seems to applyin theeasy cases.

IB: A trade-offapplies only when neither choice is morallybinding, whereit is simplya questionof choosing something which on thewhole preventsintolerable alternatives from arising, which on thewhole dimin- ishesagony or misery.

SL: So thereis a kindof meta-principle of a utilitariansort?

IB: Well,if you call it utilitarian.It meansthe choice of whatever doesn'tfrustrate too many people's ultimateends. I am nota utilitarian. The idea thatyou must give religious people a churchin whichto pray is notutilitarian. It isn't because it will make them happier, it's because they believeand have a rightto practise their faith. Rights can conflict. The ends of theJews and theArabs collide. It's a bettercase of incompatibilityof ends.

SL: Good. I wantedto cometo culturalconflict.

IB: In myview, both sides have claims to Palestine. The Arabshave a claimbecause people have a claimto a landin which they have lived long enoughand in whichthey are the natives. They have a rightto create and continuea formof lifeon thesoil in whichmost of theirancestors have lived, in whichtheir language is spokenand theircustoms and values prevail.So farso good. The Jewshave survivedagainst all odds as a minorityeverywhere. There is nota singleJew living, baptised or not, who does notfeel a certaindegree of social uneasiness, of not quite belonging to theworld dominated by the majority of the population. It's not,in my view,tolerable morally that a peopleshould be a minorityeverywhere. Everyonehas a rightto live in some societyin whichthey needn't constantlyworry about what they look like to others, and so be psychically HO ISAIAH BERLIN distorted,conditioned to somedegree of (Sartrean)mauvaise foi. That givesthe Jews a rightto a countryof their own. In practicePalestine was theonly country to whichthey could collectivelygo, mostlyat some sacrificeto themselves. That alone gives them a claimto livein a stateof theirown, in Palestine.Maybe not the whole of it,only some of it.The Arabsreject this claim. They say thecountry is theirs.The Jewswholly reject,at least some do, theArabs' claim.They say thattheir claim is blessedby God, by His Bible - thattheir dreadful martyrdom, ending in theHolocaust, gives them this right. If youhave a collisionbetween two morallyacceptable claims, you have a tragicsituation, and Hegel is right insaying that the essence of tragedy is theclash between right and right - as inthis case. In thiscase, to avoidtotal rejection of a right,you have to have trade-off.You ask: 'whatwill cause theleast misery to all these peopletaken together?' You areentitled to reply to each: 'You can'thave thewhole of Palestine.' Arabs have Jordan - thatwas cutoff in order to makea homefor the Arabs. That is alreadya trade-off.Jews can onlylive westof theJordan. Then you add thatArabs continue to liveWest of the Jordantoo - byright of conquest; that it is painfulto leave these people underforeign rule. It is. Andtherefore you believe that it is possiblefor theJewish state to develop normally within frontiers that do notinvolve an occupationof theWest Bank, they should make that sacrifice, since it doesn'tjeopardise the state's survival. If theyare right in supposingthat it does endangertheir security, then they must keep a slice of the West Bank,and leave the rest, and accept a frontierwhich does not satisfy either partybut does notcondemn either of themto a fatewhich, on thewhole, can, by a disinterestedobserver, be consideredpolitically, socially or economicallyintolerable. There is no reasonto thinkthat this cannot be found.

SL: / see that,but one problemthere is that theprinciple of minimisingmisery isn't one whichthe parties themselves regard as the mainthing. ' IB : Thatdoesn tmatter. The parties themselves may have a fanatical vision.And fanaticscan neverbe satisfied. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 111 SL: Wellwhat does a liberaldo aboutfanaticism!

IB : He triesto control it. He triesto not allow fanatics to have any part ofwhat they want as fanatics.Take rights.We weretalking about misery; rightsare different from utilitarianism. For human beings rights entail that thereare certain things that are very important for people's lives as human beings.Never mind whether they enjoy them or not. It's nota questionof misery.To takeaway these rights may make them miserable but the point is not that,the point is thatit dehumanisesthem. The pointis thatit diminishesthem. It cuts off something that as humanbeings they find that it'sterrible to live without. In whichcase also youcan have trade-offs. You can'tdeprive human beings of certain basic rights as humanbeings. You can deprivea Frenchmanof certain rights as a Frenchman.

SL: Butthen that 's exactlywhat I wasgoing to ask. A nationalist,not necessarilya Frenchman,may well count as absolutelyessential to his vitalinterests ...

IB: He is wrong.

SL: Buthow do youdecide then what the bases for rightsare!

IB: How do youdecide anything? How do theobjectivists decide? How does Kant decide? You see, if it's writtenin fieryletters in the heavens,then you know. If it's writtenin a sacredbook which tells you, thenit's offyour conscience. It's entirelydone in accordancewith some dictatefrom Above. If thereis an Above.

SL: Butdoes thatmean that the liberalism you espouse is one which allowsyou, I meanthe liberal, to decide what the bas es for people }s rights are independentlyoftheir own judgement!

IB: No. I haveto taketheir own judgements as partof therights to whichthey have a claim.People havea rightto strivefor whatever they regardas necessaryfor them even if it isn't.

SL: But in thatcase nationalism... 112 ISAIAH BERLIN

IB: I musttake nationalist feelings into consideration. I won't squash them.

SL: Butyou won 't countcertain claims, certain extreme nationalist claimsas beinglegitimate ...

IB : Γ 11only count the fact that they are going to be madeunhappy by findingthese, to me,mistaken claims unfulfilled. I can't ignorethat. A nationsaying that without Alsace France is notFrance, it has happened,I can't ignorethe fact that Frenchmen may commit suicide if Alsace isn't theirs.I can'tignore it, but it doesn't make me necessarilygive Alsace to theFrench.

SL: /see, so it's a kindof pragmatic constraint.

IB: Well that'sall trade-offsare. Whatis a trade-off?Trade-off meansthat neither value can be satisfiedfully.

SL: Is a trade-offa compromise!

IB: Yes. Trade-offmeans you say so muchof this, so muchof that, andthe consequence ofthat is thatyou gain more than you lose. Both sides gain.

SL: Tellme, how do youdistinguish this position, your position, from Rawls's position?Rawls after all thinksthat it's possible to havea just frameworkwhere different moralities can all befittedtogether into a just frameworkand it's notjust a questionof a compromise.

IB: I respectRawls deeplybut the question is who formulatesthe rulesof justice. Who formulatesthem? How do we discoverthem?

SL: Wellthere are twoanswers in Rawls. There 's thepicture of the originalposition, but this is meantto be a representationofthe idea that people can be broughtrationally to agree uponthese principles from withindifferent perspectives. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 113

IB : You mean because theyask themselves:if I know nothingabout whereI am or will findmyself, am I prepared....?

SL: Yes,andyou can ask thisfrom different viewpoints, from different perspectives; and thus there could be an overlapping consensus. The original position is one answer, the overlapping consensus is the other, and theyare both basically intendedto be the same answer

IB: Well I don't know ifI accept that.Of course ifthat could be done, thenI'd be happy,but I don't thinkit can. Why it can't be done is thatif justice is an ultimatevalue it is not compatible withmercy. It just isn't. There are cases where thelaw says thatjustice demands theexecution or punishmentor eliminationof personsor societies or groups,but if you are mercifulyou say I can't bringmyself to do this,and you say but some people will suffer,but mercyis also veryimportant. Believers talk about God being whollyjust and mostmerciful. Justice and mercyare quite often notcompatible . Which do you choose? You should be as just as you can be withoutbeing too merciless.You are as mercifulas you can be without being too unjust.That's one point.The otheris the irrationalimpulses of men, to which I pay attentionbut Rawls doesn't. I thinkthat you cannot establish political governmentpurely on the basis of what is rational, thoughsome people obviously thinkyou can. But I thinkthat there are too many irrationaldrives in men which even universalpsychoanalysis may not eliminate,which are neverthelesspart of basic human natureas I conceive it. If people didn't have deep irrationalelements in themthere would be no religion,no art,no love. None of these thingsare justifiable by purely rational means. Love is not justified because it's rational, because it makes somebody happy. The justificationof love is thatit is whatit is. What is thepurpose of art?What is therational purpose of art? Art.What is thepurpose of beauty?Beauty. Therefore,I have to say that some ofthe elements in humanlives whichderive from emotional cravings have to enterinto the total picture of thepainful choices or the trade-offs. The main point of the trade-offsis that fanaticismcannot be allowed because it trampleson too many rights,and too much happiness, and thereforetrade-off means thatbigots cannot ever be allowed to have their own way. 114 ISAIAH BERLIN

SL: Do you think,as I thinkRawls does, thatfanaticism can be tamed!

IB: By education?

SL: Yes, and of course manyliberals have thoughtthis, as you well know.

IB: I know.

SL: Do you thinkthat somehow - and I guess thisis part of theidea of the overlapping consensus - from apparently extremelyopposed positions thatare not reconcilable,you can extractsomething that people fromdifferent points of view can agree upon!

IB : If thathappens, that' s fine.

SL: How optimisticare you about that as a process, I mean for example in Israeli

IB: Well, we have been subjectedin thiscentury to so muchmurder- ous fanaticism,by virtuallyeveryone, that it is ratherdifficult to be optimistic.It sounds superficialto say: well, human beings are human, enough argument,enough kindness,enough decency, thensurely .... but at the same time you can't rule it out. It would be utterlywrong and irrationalto say thatit is notso. Two thingscan be done. One is, I suppose, thatpersuasion, and empiricalenlightenment, can occur.

SL: Whatdo you mean by that!

IB: I'll tell you. Take theNazis. People thoughtthey were mad. I do notthink that. Evil, yes. But literallymad? Supposing thatyou believe that thereare creaturesdescribable as subhuman,Untermenschen, and they have certainattributes, and in virtueof theseattributes they bore intoyour culturelike termites,and destroyeverything that you value and respectand love, particularlythe Germanic qualities of the German people. Then it will follow thatthese people must somehow be eliminated fromyour A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 115 system,either by emigration - beingpushed out or, if that's not feasible, bymurder. But that depends on an empiricallyfalse conception of what it is tobe sub-human,a monstrous and refutable idea. Then you decide who is sub-human,and that the Jews are sub-human, and in virtueofthat they mustbe eliminated.What is itthat Jews do, or aremistakenly thought to do orbe, thatmakes the life of the majority of Germans intolerable? And evensupposing it is an obstacleto German-ness, have they a rightto expel them?Can a liberalsociety expel mavericks because they are tiresome? So inthat sense I thinkthat knowledge, sheer empirical knowledge, as itwere, of thefacts as theEnlightenment conceived of this,does modify,can modifybigotry - notalways, but it can. If you do getbigots to whom this meansnothing, who are completely fanatical, then who can tell- maybe persuasion,an attemptto showhow much they are tramplingon others, howmuch misery they are causing,may shake some of them.There are casesof converted bigots, after all, there are cases of Nazis whowere sorry theywere Nazis becausethey were wrong. But in generalI admitI don't holdout high hopes of curing bigots. But they can be forciblyrestrained, or shouldbe.

SL: To go back to thecase ofIsrael, do you thinkthere have been manysigns of empirical enlightenment?

IB: Too little.I don'tthink that the Palestinians think that the Jews are inhumannor do I thinkthat Jews think that Arabs are. But it's quite naturalthat each side shouldthink that they cannot lead freelives in an integratedsociety if the others are there in quantity,and therefore this is not,in general, a case ofsheer bigotry. Some Jews are bigoted, some Arabs are.It is bigotedto say that the Lord said that you shall have every inch of thesoil ofJudea and Sumaria and no foreignersmay be allowedto touch the sacredsoil. That's bigoted.Knowledge, Rawlsian fairness, won't remedythat.

SL: Thevery situation itself doesn 't encourage empirical enlighten- ment. 116 ISAIAH BERLIN IB: No,because it's difficult, when you have two peoples of different originsand very different cultures, for them to livetogether in peace and amity.It doesn'thappen in other countries either. We usedto think in the nineteenthcentury that multicultural societies were desireable because varietywas a good thing,that people who are quitedifferent can live in peace witheach other.Then therecame the fermentof the French Canadians,the Flemingsin Belgium, Basques in Spain, Corsicans, Bretons,Tamils, Irishmen, Jews, and Arabs,Georgians and Armenians, Nagorno-Karabakh- Indiansand Pakistanis.So muchfor variety in unity.

SL: It's strikingthat when one goes intoconflict situations like this, whetherin SouthAfrica or in Israel, amongbelievers of one sortor another,liberalism tends to be a dirtyword, it tends to be usedas a word to meanthose who are tryingto imposean ideologyon us.

IB : Becauseit dilutes what means most to us. The essence of what we livefor. We areGermans, we live for being Germans and liberalism means thatthe French are just as good.Impossible.

SL: Wellhow do youanswer that question!

IB: Answerwhat?

SL: Thatobjection that 's madeby the very agents in the drama we are discussing.When a nationalistsays this kind ofthing to a liberalwhat does a liberalreply?

IB: You meanwhere the enemies are liberals?

SL: Yes.

IB: Why?Because theydestroy, undermine the values whichwe believein?

SL: Yes,liberals often make claims, but I don't imagineyou have done thisparticularly, many liberals these days make claims to beingin someway neutral or impartial. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 117 IB: Between values?

SL: Yes.As betweencontending moral values.

IB: Well youcan be, unlessyou are forcedto foreswearone or the other.To otherpeople's values you can take a perfectlycalm stand outside and letthem fight it out; and washyour hands.

SL: So youdon *t think that liberals are committedto neutrality!

IB: Certainlynot. Anything but. Liberals are committed to creating a societyin whichas manypeople as possiblecan live freelives, lives in whichthey fulfill as manyof their potentialities as theycan providedthat theydon' t abort those of others. That is exactlywhat John Stuart Mill said.

SL: Of coursesome of theirpotentialities are prettyharmful and disagreeable.

IB: Well thenI thinkyou have to have trade-offs. You ask me what I do withbigots. I don'thang them and I don'tshoot them except in cases of necessity.If thereis a waror revolutionperhaps I do, butin ordinary circumstancesof peacefulexistence if bigotsbecome a danger,for exampleas withthe fascists and the communists, I have to ask myselfthe old,old question:"How manyof these people can a liberalsociety carry? How dangerousare they? How muchdo theyendanger the free society of mutualtoleration in whichI live?"If I see toomany, then I haveto take steps againstthem. I may have to deprivethem of votes,to protect toleration,to prevent oppression, or expel them or controlthem in some possiblyrather severe fashion. That may happen. If thereare too many fascists,we musttake steps. And to preventa communistPutsch, too.

SL: Butwhy toleration!

IB : Becauseall humanends are ends. My difficulty is that the notion of rationalends is somethingI have neverunderstood. Means, yes, are anothermatter. Take 'rationality'as a concept.What is rationality? 118 ISAIAH BERLIN Rationalityis thecapacity to generalise, which beasts don' t have: as Locke said,"Brutes abstract not." Rationality is a capacityfor following logical arguments,for being consistent, for knowing what means lead to what ends(which is empiricalknowledge), for needing to give reasons for what youdo, whichmeans giving reasons in termsultimately of theends you pursue,which we thenexamine to consider whether they really are ends whichyou think you are justified in pursuing, given how many other ends maybe excluded.All thatis rational,but a rationalend which everybody else talksabout - a rationalpurpose which is a well-knownphilosophical concept(it has existedsince Plato's day) is to me notintelligible. I think endsare ends. People pursue what they pursue. Not an infinitevariety, as I said before,but a finitenumber.

SL: Butyou nevertheless think that some ends are humanlyintelli- gibleand othersare not!

IB: Well ifthey are nothumanly intelligible they are notends.

SL: But among those whichare humanlyintelligible would you includesadistic ends, ends that actually involve the infliction ofsuffering ?

IB: Yes, and thenof course I haveto say thatpsychologists tell me thatsadistic ends are not truly what people aim for, because the desire to inflictpain arises because you have had certain traumas in your childhood, orsomething ofthat sort, and does notdo foryou what you truly seek. But howeverthat may be, I thinkthat sadism tramples on toomany people's rightsand that it deprives people of free and satisfying lives; and therefore I wouldlike to diminishor eliminateit.

SL: Butsatisfying lives can be liveswhich satisfy sadistic ends.

IB : Oh,certainly. Then I haveto take a viewof the group as a whole, andask how many people trample on howmany other people. If there are veryfew tramplers and they do nottrample too freely - I acceptit as an inevitablesocial defect. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 119 SL: It seemsto me thatwhat lies behindthis is a kindof Kantian respectnot only for persons but for their ends.

IB: Certainly.I regard ends in themselves - a Kantiannotion - but he thoughtthat you could discover what they were by a magiceye of some kindcalled Reason. I can'tbelieve this. I thinkthat people may have ends whichhorrify me, against which reason is helpless.

SL: Butthose also youthink should be respected.

IB: No I don't.

SL: Whynot!

IB: If theycause toomuch suffering, or cause toomuch deprivation ofother people's rights, then they must be controlled,maybe eliminated, aboveall ifI can do itby peaceful means, by persuasion. But if this fails, coercionmay be justified.

SL: Do you thinkthat the phenomenon of culturalpluralism - by whichI meanthe co-existence of diverse forms of lifein contemporary society- is becomingmore complex: that is tosay that moral diversity and moralcomplexity are becomingmore problematic and thatliberalism is nowfacing a largerproblem than it did before!

IB: Yes. But thesituation is nothopeless. Western cultures have a greatdeal in common. One can exaggerate the absence of common ground. A greatmany people believe, roughly speaking, the same sortof thing. Morepeople in more countries at more times accept more common values thanis oftenbelieved.

SL: So you thinkthe diversity of morals has beengreatly exagger- ated!

IB: In theWest - yes.The beliefs of other parts of the world were not muchthought of in theWest. What the Chinese believed or Indiansor 120 ISAIAH BERLIN Japaneseor, I don'tknow, Hottentots believed did not seriously preoccupy Westerners.Some oftheir values may be whollyopposed to thoseof the West,but not all, notall byany means. Now theworld is one. Therefore theconflict may be compounded,may be growinggreater.

SL: So it's becomeinternal to ourown society.

IB: Notnecessarily. It's becomeinternal to us only inthe sense that we have becomeaware of a necessityof havinga commonworld, of comingto someagreement.

SL: Butdon 't you think both things are true,that we have an external and an internalproblem. I meanthat there is a senseof a commonworld now,but also, secondly, that with the process of migration and thegeneral movementof peoples,our own societiesthemselves have toface new problems.

IB: The problemsare notgreater than they were before.

SL: Don ytyou think they are!

IB : The immigrantstothe West tend to have values not dissimilar to thoseof thepeoples which they join .

SL: So theyget more easily assimilated!

IB: Whatimmigrants are you thinking of? The EastEuropeans who emigratedto America in the 1 890s certainly had much in common with the WASPs. The WASPs despisedthem socially, but they were all against murder,they were all fondof their children. They all soughtlife, liberty, thepursuit of a notvery dissimilar happiness.

SL: Butthe Asians and theAfricans who have come West,are they readyfor assimilation! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 121

IB: Maybe not. It may be thatthese otherkinds of Immigrantshave only become a problemnow. It wasn't a problemin yoursense in the 19th centurybecause then mostimmigrants weren't that different. Poor Italian peasants fromSicily weren't thatdifferent from Bostonians.

SL: But don 't you thinkit 's differentnow!

IB : Yes, because cultureswhich have grownup withno contactwith one anotherhave now collided.

SL: That's what I am tryingto get at.

IB: That is a serious problem.One hopes forassimilation. Not total. Because we like varietybut we need sufficientassimilation not to create injustice,cruelty and misery.

SL: So that's interesting;you thinkthat the liberalism that you espouse is committedto assimilation.

IB: Some assimilation of strangersyes, of real strangers.Not the assimilationof people who have lived togetherfor a long time,and may have differentviews .

SL: Do you thinkthat liberalism is, in thissense, essentiallyEuro- pean, then? Or Western?

IB: It was certainlyinvented in Europe.

SL: Historically,of course. But, I mean, now - is it an essentially Westernprinciple!

IB: Yes. I suspect thatthere may not be much liberalismin Korea. I doubtif there is much liberalismeven in Latin America. I thinkliberalism is essentiallythe belief of people who have lived on thesame soil fora long time in comparativepeace with each other.An English invention.The English have notbeen invaded fora veryvery long time.That's whythey 122 ISAIAH BERLIN canafford to praise these virtues. I see thatif you were exposed to constant pogromsyou mightbe a littlemore suspicious of the possibilityof liberalism.

SL: Whatdo youthink of its prospects in EasternEurope!

IB: Oh,I can'tprophesy, in spite of my first name. I thinkthat there willbe trouble,particularly now. The Soviet Union is filledwith real racial andcultural conflict which was suppressedbefore both under Czarist and communistregimes. I don'tbelieve in totalself-determination. I believe thatself-determination has itslimits if it inflictstoo muchtrampling on humanrights, and itcan.

SL: It certainlycan. Do you thinkthat any of these national move- mentsin the Soviet Union now offer any prospect for liberaloutcomes, or outcomesthat are relativelyfriendly to liberty!

IB: Who can tell?In theBaltic states maybe. The Balticstates are muchmore like the West than some other parts of the Soviet Union. Not, ofcourse, that a goodmany people in the Baltic states didn't cooperate with theNazis in exterminatingJews. No doubtabout that, and thereforeyou can'tsay they are particularly liberal. But, as a resultof what has happened to them,I shouldthink that they might with comparative ease go backto thestatus which they had between1919 and 1939 whichwas reasonably liberaluntil the middle 30s whendictatorships took over Latvia, and, I am told,to a minorextent, Lithuania too. Estonia liquidated its own Fascist party.They were very virtuous. I think they are a liberalpeople. They have a liberalpast to whichthey can return.But somecountries don't

SL: For exampleRomania.

IB: Oh indeed.Liberalism in Rumania has neverbeen very great, or in Russia itself.The onlytime when Russia was liberalwas between Februaryand November 1917, and not at anyother time. There is a view thatRussia was an autocracyin which liberalism was alwaysvery feeble, A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 123 and thereforethe idea thatit wouldpass fromCzarism to some kindof Western-styleconstitutional liberalism was alwaysvery remote. I don't agree.Russian history shows one that the number of perfectly good liberals inthe Western sense in the80s andthe 90s ofthe 19th century was much higherthan people allow: doctors,lawyers, agricultural experts, engi- neers,writers, professors, schoolmasters tended to have a greatdeal of respectfor and understanding ofWestern values. Therefore the idea that Russiahad inevitablyto pass fromone despotismto another(as Maistre oncepredicted) is false.If Lenin had been debilitated by some accident in April1917, there would have been no Bolshevikrevolution. There might havebeen a civilwar between Left and Right,and theRight might have won,in whichcase maybeRussia would not have been a liberalcountry, butit wouldhave been less despoticthan it turnedout, something like Alexander'sYugoslavia; or theLeft might have won in whichcase we mighthave had a ratheruntidy liberal state; but what happened needn't havehappened.

SL: /agree withyou.

IB: Therewere no objectivefactors which made it even probable. E.H. Carris completelywrong.

The Left Today

SL: Youdid saysomething interesting when you said thatif the Left had wonyou might have had a liberalstate. Do youthink that liberalism is essentially,or was thenhistorically and is and has subsequentlybeen associatedwith, the Left!

IB: In a sense,yes; it wouldhave opposed centralized state power; butof course the Left in our day can also be veryhighly fanatical; that's thevery great difficulty about using the word 'Left'; todayStalinists in Russiaare regarded as Right,while people who supported Sakharov are regardedas Left.In thatsense liberalism is Leftof centre,certainly. 124 ISAIAH BERLIN

SL: Wellthen there is a great deal ofconfusion about thisthese days.

IB: Yes. But ifwe go back to theold use of 'left' and 'right'as in the 19thcentury, then I would say yes, liberalismis associated withthe left because theywere on the whole suspicious of and opposed to too much power on the partof authority,which leaned on tradition,on irrational values, on force.That is whatqualified the Right, and thereforeopposition to thatin favourof tolerationof humanvalues was necessarilyassociated withthe Left. The Bolsheviks wentfar beyond anything called Left-wing beforethem.

SL: And whydo you thinkwe can 't use these words any more?

IB: Well simply because of the Soviet Union. It has ruined the terminology.Let me ask you a question.

SL: Do.

IB : In youropinion, what is itthat has deprivedthe world of respected left-wingleaders of any kind?Let me explain whatI mean. Whatmight be called 'the Left' could be said to have begun in Paris or in France in the early 18th century. Voltaire was reallythe founder of whatmight be called the opposition to Church, the King's arbitraryauthority, in favour of toleration,reason , science - and live and letlive. Voltairehated the Bible because it was intolerant. He was anti-Christianbecause it was irrational and intolerant.He had respect for an imaginaryChina, but not the barbariansin between.

SL: He didn't much like theJews.

IB: He certainlydidn't. Partlybecause he was an anti-semiteany- way, mostpeople were,and partlybecause theJews were responsiblefor horribleChristianity. He was a leader,of a liberal kind. He was followed by theEncyclopaedists who were thenatural opposition to whatmight be called authoritariangovernment. They were followed by the French Revolution which became authoritarianunder the Terrorbut didn't last A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 125 verylong. Then we have Napoleon - who was not irrational- in some ways progressive- and thenwe have theRestoration. Then in Paris,after yearsof undergroundactivity, conspiracies of all kinds,you getthe radical movementsof the 1830s and 40s. It was a haven forrevolutionaries. Who was notthere? Bakunin, Marx, Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Herzen , Proudhon, Heine, George Sand, Leroux, all quarrelingwith each other.Then we have 1848. Then - I'm only talkingabout France and indeed Paris - under Napoleon III, Victor Hugo and Michelet go into exile ratherthan put up withthe tyrant. Then in 1871 thereis theCommune; afterthe Commune, at least two or three socialist parties. Marxists and Allemanists - Possibilistes and others. Then the Dreyfus case, the great rise of anti- clericalismand anti-authoritarianism.Then theFirst World War foughton the whole against an authoritarianstate by people who thoughtof them- selves as liberals. Then you have the French CommunistParty which is powerfuland goes on being so untilabout 1970. Add also Les Evénements in 1968. Afterthat what? Give me a a few Left wing names.

SL: Foucault.

IB: No, no - not whatI mean. Suppose I'm a youngman and I am forthe poor against the rich.I hate capitalism,I want social equality and justice. I want thekind of ideals thatthe Left fortwo centurieseither had or professedto have. Who is my leader? It's no good sayingFoucault. He had no political programme.For 22 years therehas been nobody.

SI: In Paris, therewas Althusserand various marxistsfora while, but basically you are quite right.The supply ran out.

IB : What happenedwas thatthe Soviet Union underminedthe whole affair.

SL: Well I was going to give theanswer you have just supplied.

IB: Exactly. 126 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: / thinkthere was a dissolutionavant la lettre,before the actual collapseof 1989.

IB: Whereis therean activeLeft-wing now? In Latin America maybe,because they are oppressed and the left is anti-oppression;maybe inKorea for all I know.Fifty years ago whenI was youngthere were Left- wingleaders in England - Laski,Cole, Tawney,John Strachey, Victor Gollancz.Where are they now? Où sontles neigesd'antanl It's thefirst timethis has happenedfor 250 years. I admiredTawney, Cole, even, mistakenly,the Webbs, Shaw, Wells,never Laski. But whathas hap- pened?Where are the Sartreans?

SL: It's perfectlytrue, but there have beencycles, there have been waves.

IB: Butthey have never not had leaders. The leadersmay have been in exile.

SL: Whydid you ask meabout leaders!

IB: Peoplelook up topeople whose ideas wouldattract, that's what I meanby leaders.

SL: Youmeant originators of ideas ?

IB: Or holdersof ideas, that'squite enough,provided that they expressthem with such eloquence and forcethat people follow them.

SL: But you see whatI am askingyou: thissuggests that it's the individualleader who is thekey.

IB: Yes, ofcourse. I meanwhen a youngman is asked'what attracts you?',he says,'well, the sort ofthing which x,y and ζ preachwith such forceand so convincingly.'They could say thatfor 250 years. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 127 SL: So inthis respect the individual makes a significantdifference to historicalmovement and historicalchange.

IB: I've alwayssaid that,in anycase. Atcritical moments, what the individualmay do can makea criticaldifference to thecourse of history; I certainlybelieve that. I do notbelieve in a sociologicaltheory of history at all. Of coursethere are impersonal forces which shape us. Whoam I to denyit? But at critical moments the individual can makea verygreat deal ofdifference.

SL: But whenyou ask me aboutthe Left and thefuture of theLeft, whenyou ask meabout leaders, you are talkingabout ideas, individuals whohave ideas thatmake a difference.

IB: Yes, yesof course.Socialism was createdby socialist leaders.

SL: Butit wasn 't Lenin's ideas thatmade all thedifference!

IB: Yes, itcertainly was. He proposedthem with extreme fanaticism eventhough they weren't his own.You maysay thathe borrowedthem fromMarx or Chernychevskyor whoever,but they certainly were ideas andhe wrotethem down and his followers slavishly followed and obeyed them.

SL: WereStalin 's ideas important!

IB: Well, he wrotesome books,although whether he wrotethem himselfis notso clear.I supposethere were some Stalinist ideas, but they wereof no great importance. They were meant, on thewhole, officially as a developmentof Lenin.

SL: Nowyou asked me to namea Left-wingthinker of our day. And I ratherprovocatively said Foucault.

IB: WellI supposeFoucault is a Left-wingthinker but the very idea thatlanguage itself can exercise a despoticfunction and that it is a product 128 ISAIAH BERLIN ofclass differentiationand class strugglesdoesn't seem to me to be very plausible.But he certainlybelieved it.

SL: Butyou were asking me in a senseabout thinkers who are leaders to whomthe young looked up.

IB: Could lookup.

SL: All right,but suppose instead of FoucaultI had said Vaclav Havel.

IB: Well,Vaclav Havel is a noblecharacter, but his ideas are not all thatdifferent from those of Masaryk.

SL: /could perhaps have said Masarykl

IB : Well,he is dead.As forHavel, he is an honourableliberal man of action.

SL: Butyou said beforeit's not the origination but rather the holding ofthe ideas thatmatters.

IB: I agree.

SL: AndHavel does representa setof ideas. . .

IB: He does,yes, but I don'twant to talk about Havel, whom I have nevermet and whomI greatlyadmire.

SL: Me too.

IB: ButI don'tthink that there is a setof ideas that can be attributed tohim in a waythat they could be attributedto thelate Professor Laski. I mean,what does Havel preach?He is a sortof left-wingliberal.

SL: Yes,and ofa verymoralistic sort. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 129

IB: Certainly.That's verycommonplace. But thereis no Havel doctrineor Havel practicewhich can be identifiedin sharpterms.

SL: Wellthere isn *t a theoryof institutional design.

IB: Noteven a theory.

SL: Butthere is a politicalmorality.

IB: But he is not a concreteexample of an identifiablepolitical directionwhich one can summarisein any way. But he is a highly sympatheticleft-wing liberal thinker and manof action.

SL: ButHavel afterall is a verysignificant political actor.

IB: Of course.So is Lech Walesa.

SL: Wouldyou say of them that they represent something that could be describedas theLeft in thatpart of Europe!

IB: Yes.

SL: Butof course some people say thatthe distinction between Left and Rightno longermakes sense in thatpart of Europe.

IB : Thisis nonsense.We all knowthe difference between Havel and Mrs.Thatcher. Sakharov, when I askedhim if he belongedto a party,said 'yes'. I said,'what party?' He said 'theCommunist party.' 'What kind of Communistparty?' Ί917.' I said, 'whatdoes thatmean?' 'Thatmeans factoriesto the workers, land to the peasants.' Then I askedhim 'who are thepeople you most admire in theWest?' He andhis wifeboth said 'No difficultyabout that - Reaganand Mrs. Thatcher' . I understandperfectly whatthey meant. They saw through communism, through Russia, through theSoviet Union, through the Evil Empire.He was againstGorbachev, Sakharov,for what he saw as a betrayalof democracy. He didn'tbelieve in one manone vote.What they thought was thatReagan and Thatcher representeda force against everything they hated. 130 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: But,to return to your question to me, it is truethat there has been a massivedissolution, a massive collapse of the Left in our part of Europe.

IB: The troubleis, I think,that the Left committeditself, in varying degrees, to the Soviet Union. They thoughtthat maybe it has committed errors,crimes, monstrosities, but it's thebest we have. It is in some sense going in the rightdirection.

SL: Butnot everyone on theLeft said this.

IB: Of course not,but I mean people who were quite decent triedto persuade themselvesthat it was a model of socialism; althoughmistakes were made and crueltiesoccurred, in theend it was betterthan capitalism.

SL: Andof course that was especiallytrue in Paris whereyour story started.

IB: Of course.

SL: ButI don't believethis is theend of the story.

IB : Nothingis ever theend of any story,but whatI am asking you is whithernow? I am asking you what next?

SL: WellI thinkwhat we havenow are lotsof fragments. I think like youthat it's becomemore difficult to use theterm 'Left'. I thinkthat the Left-Rightdistinction is difficultto use nowpartly because thevarious causes theLeft has espousedhave got fragmented one from another. You have the environment,you have the women'smovement, the peace movement,the anti-racist movement and othersocial movements.In the past theywere united by some kind of overall programme, some general strivingfor or projectof equality.

IB: That stillexists. What about feministsand ecologists?

SL: Theydon 't see themselvesnecessarily as part of the same movement.That's the point. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 131 IB: Well,they are. They are probably all againstinequality, they are probablyagainst needless coercion. . .

SL: Butmy answer to your question is thatI thinkthat the Left until quite recentlycould believein an overallproject, a projectin which differentcampaigns r,let 's sayfor more women fs equality or for relieving classoppression, could be seenas partof a largerstory in which there was an overallproject which everybody felt committed to. I don7 thinkthat any longerpeople can believein this.

IB: No, butmaybe if you look at themyou can findquite a lot of commonground, general oppositional movements of a non-authoritarian kind.

SL: Yes,they may well have things in common which still entitles you to say,perhaps, that they are all partof the Left.

IB: But theydon't feel it themselves?

SL: Exactly.

IB: Well someonecould arisewho wouldunite them. He is yetto arise.

SL: /don 't think it is a questionof a person,I thinkit's a questionof whetherthere is an adequateidea.

IB: Well,again, you could say that they are all at leastagainst gross inequalities,against capitalism.

SL: No, butyou see it's notthat the left was alwaysmarxist, always opposedto a particularset of enemies.

IB: In the 19thcentury marxism was a rigoroussystem which coveredevery aspect of lifeand thought.But, it was stillonly a sect. 132 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Butin the19th century you had theLiberal story.

IB: Butyou also had a Socialiststory.

SL: Yes,you had both.Both of them involved a kindof overall story.

IB: Marxismonly became a focus when the Soviet Union was created.

SL: /absolutely agree, but nevertheless what is commonto boththe 19thand the20th centuries until recently is thevery idea ofan overall story.The idea thathistory was movingin a certaindirection.

IB: Oh yescertainly, that history is a drama.

SL: But notjust that- thatthe overcoming of inequalitywas a processin whichonce you have overcome one instanceof inequality you thenmove onto the next.

IB: It was a deterministstory of a dramawith many acts.

SL: Yes.

IB: Whichin theend would lead to paradise.

SL: Wellyou mightn 't add thatlast bit.

IB: But that'swhat progress is.

SL: Wellyou might be sceptical about paradise. Let 's takean English example.You might be someone like T. H. Marshallor even Richard Titmus or evenTawney. You mightn 'tbe veryUtopian, you might not have a very grandvision of thefuture; nevertheless you mightstill believe as T.H. Marshalldid, thatfirst of all yougot civilrights, then you movedonto social rightsand economic rights: that it was a gradualprogressive story. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 133 IB: Towards what?

SL: Towardssomething like the welfare state.

IB: Well all right,that's a paradise- of sorts- butnot the end of thestory surely.

SL: Yes.

IB : Butthe point is thatyou believed that paradise was inevitable,or thatit could be constructed.

SL: Yes, one or the other,whereas my attempt to answeryour questionis tosay that I thinkthat now people - eventhose whom we might stillwant to say are on theleft - havelost that belief.

IB: I am sorryto hear it, if what you say is true.You askedme what I believein. I believein the Welfare State. That is exactlywhat I do believe in,I believein theNew Deal. Thatis roughlywhat my beliefs are. If you tellme thatthat's obsolete...

SL: No, I didn't say that.

IB: Butyou said thatmany people think like that.

SL: Butpart of the problem is we havereached it. That 's tosay - of coursein thiscountry it has beendismantled to some extent over the last fewyears - butnevertheless the Welfare state is a destinationthat has beenreached, so thenthe question is wherenext!

IB : Whereindeed? Well theanswer to this of course is thatyou then eliminateother forms of miseryand inequality.

SL: Butthen you still have feminists, you have ecolo gists, you have anti-racists,and different movements and groups having various inequali- tiesas theirtargets, but they don't see themselvesas partof an overall project. 134 ISAIAH BERLIN IB: The inegalitariansdo.

SL: Yes,they do; and theycan identifythe Left without difficulty.

IB: Well thenlet me tellyou - thishas alwayshappened. First you havea movementin favourof something,and then the children get what theparents want, then the grandchildren get bored with it, because they have it,and thenthe other side, which never was in favour,seems more excitingbecause they are against it, and whenthey get what they want they willget bored with it too, and so we progress,or perhaps not progress; so we move.

SL: Butlet me ask youone lastquestion: why do youthink it is that it is theneo- conservative right that's on theideological offensive now?

IB: Because theother side is bored,because the other side has lost momentum.They have always existed, the Right, but they have felt rather discouraged,couldn't do all thatmuch. The collapseof the Soviet Union has encouragedthem too. Theycan nowcrow with satisfaction, saying "youpoor fools !" Andto that extent, the reactionaries whom you and I are againstare, alas, right.Their day will end - and then?