Isaiah Berlin was deeply admired during his life, but his full contribution was perhaps underestimated because of his preference for the long essay form.
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But he identifies much that is misguided in their rejection of universal values, rationalism, and science.
In Hamann\'s railings and the more considered writings of Vico and Herder, Berlin finds Critics of the Enlightenment worthy of our careful attention.
Together, they constitute an arresting interpretation of romanticism\'s precursors.
Individually, these fascinating intellectual biographies reveal Berlin\'s own great intelligence, learning, and generosity, as well as the passionate genius of his subjects.
Johann Gottfried Herder, the progenitor of populism and European nationalism, rejected universalism and rationalism but championed cultural pluralism.
In Hamann\'s chaotic and long-ignored writings, Berlin finds the first strong attack on Enlightenment rationalism and a wholly original source of the coming swell of romanticism.
But he was brilliant enough to gain the audience of Kant, Goethe, and Moses Mendelssohn.
Hamann was a pious, cranky dilettante in a peripheral German city.
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He opposed Enlightenment methods as cold and fallacious.
Giambattista Vico was the anachronistic and impoverished Neapolitan philosopher sometimes credited with founding the human sciences.
They are integral to his central project: the critical recovery of the ideas of the Counter-Enlightenment and the explanation of its appeal and consequences--both positive and (often) tragic.
These essays on Three relatively uncelebrated thinkers are not marginal ruminations, but rather among Berlin\'s most important studies in the history of ideas.
Now, Princeton is pleased to return to print, under one cover, Berlin\'s essays on these celebrated and captivating intellectual portraits: Vico, Hamann, and Herder.
The efforts of Henry Hardy to edit Berlin\'s work and reintroduce it to a broad, eager readership have gone far to remedy this.
Isaiah Berlin was deeply admired during his life, but his full contribution was perhaps underestimated because of his preference for the long essay form
