Required reading for fans of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia -the landmark investigation into Russian history and thought
Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, "the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world."
以赛亚·伯林，英国哲学家和政治思想史家，20世纪最著名的自由主义知识分子之一。出生于俄国里加的一个犹太人家庭，1920年随父母前往英国。1929年进入牛津大学攻读文学和哲学，1932年获选全灵学院研究员，并在新学院任哲学讲师，其间怀艾耶尔、奥斯汀等参与了日常语言哲学运动。二战期 间，先后在纽约、华盛顿和莫斯科担任外交职务。1946年重回牛津教授哲学课程，并把研究方向转向思想史。1957年成为牛津大学社会与政治理论教授，并获封爵士。1966年至1975年任牛津大学沃尔夫森学院院长。主要著作有《卡尔·马克思》、《概念与范畴》、《自由四论》、《维柯与赫尔德》、《俄国思想家》、《反潮流》、《个人印象》、《人性的曲木》、《现实感》等。