The Roots of Romanticism | Princeton University Press Skip Nav Books Resources About Ideas Subjects Menu The Roots of Romanticism Isaiah Berlin Paperback ISBN: 9780691156200 $12.95 Not for sale in the Commonwealth (except Canada) and Europe Shipping to: Choose Country United States Canada Afghanistan Algeria American Samoa Angola Anguilla Antarctica Argentina Armenia Aruba Azerbaijan Bahrain Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, Democratic Republic Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote D'Ivoire Cuba Curaçao Djibouti Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Greenland Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Haiti Heard Island & Mcdonald Islands Honduras Hong Kong Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic Of Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Korea Korea People' Republic Of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Lebanon Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Macao Madagascar Maldives Mali Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States Of Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Myanmar Nepal New Caledonia Nicaragua Niger Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Oman Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Saint Barthelemy Saint Helena Saint Martin Saint Pierre And Miquelon Sao Tome And Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Somalia South Georgia And Sandwich Isl. South Sudan Sudan Suriname Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks And Caicos Islands United Arab Emirates United States Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Wallis And Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zimbabwe Add to Cart ebooks Many of our ebooks are available for purchase from these online vendors: Amazon Kindle Google Play Rakuten Kobo Barnes & Noble Nook Apple Books Many of our ebooks are available through library electronic resources including these platforms: Books at JSTOR EBSCO Ebooks Ebrary MyiLibrary Ebook Library Philosophy The Roots of Romanticism: Second Edition Isaiah Berlin Edited by Henry Hardy Foreword by John Gray Collections: Bollingen Series (General) Series: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts Paperback Price: $12.95 ISBN: 9780691156200 Published: Jun 2, 2013 Copyright: 2013 Pages: 248 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. Illus: 6 halftones. More ebook Price: $12.95 ISBN: 9780691156200 Published: Jun 2, 2013 Copyright: 2013 Pages: 248 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. Illus: 6 halftones. More Buy This Not for sale in the Commonwealth (except Canada) and Europe Download Cover Share Overview Author(s) Praise 15 In The Roots of Romanticism, one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophers dissects and assesses a movement that changed the course of history. Brilliant, fresh, immediate, and eloquent, these celebrated Mellon Lectures are a bravura intellectual performance. Isaiah Berlin surveys the many attempts to define romanticism, distills its essence, traces its developments from its first stirrings to its apotheosis, and shows how it still permeates our outlook. He ranges over a cast of some of the greatest thinkers and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, the Schlegels, Novalis, Goethe, Blake, Byron, and Beethoven. The ideas and attitudes of these and other figures, Berlin argues, helped to shape twentieth-century nationalism, existentialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and our ideas about heroic individuals, self-fulfillment, and the exalted place of art. This new edition, illustrated for the first time, also features a new foreword by philosopher John Gray, in which he discusses Berlin’s belief that the influence of romanticism has been unpredictable and contradictory in the extreme, fuelling anti-liberal political movements but also reinvigorating liberalism; a revised text; and a new appendix that includes some of Berlin’s correspondence about the lectures and the reactions to them. Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. A Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, he was renowned as an essayist and as the author of many books, among them Karl Marx, Four Essays on Liberty, Russian Thinkers, The Sense of Reality, The Proper Study of Mankind, and from Princeton, Concepts and Categories, Personal Impressions, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Roots of Romanticism, The Power of Ideas, and Three Critics of the Enlightenment. Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin's literary trustees. He has edited several other volumes by Berlin, and is currently preparing Berlin's letters and remaining unpublished writings for publication. "Thoroughly brilliant, often thrilling and yet always accessible."—Publishers Weekly "Exhilaratingly thought-provoking."—The Times "Berlin at his best: quick-minded, erudite, witty and profound, and, above all, exciting. To read this book is to feel the force of living thought coming white-hot from the forge of a superb mind."—John Banville, The Irish Times "Here is Berlin doing what everyone said he did best: talk. . . . Berlin remains the tactful guest, discerning liberalism, toleration, decency and the appreciation of the imperfections of life also among the romantic movement's legacies. . . . Berlin liked to remind people that when they most believe they know where they are going, that is when they are likeliest to be wrong."—Colin Walters, The Washington Times "A fascinating intellectual history. . . . Berlin partakes in a kind of victory celebration, an often breathless study of the movement that ended the hegemony of the rationalist tradition."—Douglas A. Sylva, New York Times Book Review "A superlatively readable and absorbing primer. . . . As Berlin unfolds [Romanticism's] development, politics and art as we know them become more comprehensible than ever before."—Booklist "The lecture pace of this volume makes it an excellent resource for both beginning researcher and seasoned scholar."—Library Journal "[A] supremely intelligent and illuminating little book. . . . [A] marvelous example of Berlin doing what he did best—the judiciously poised and open-minded elucidation of 18th- and 19th-century philosophy. . . . In an era where humane intellectual discourse has been deconstructed, intertextualised, phallicised and generally kicked senseless, Berlin's writing shines like a beacon."—Rupert Christiansen, The Spectator "With The Roots of Romanticism . . . we get another instalment of scintillating, elusive, paradoxical thought. . . . [T]his is a welcome addition to Berlin's ever-growing oeuvre."—Ben Rogers, Financial Times "This small volume provides the distilled essence of Berlin and it provides wonderful examples of his technique: vast sentences in which a succession of parallel phrases draws out the meaning, inch by inch, and ends with a perfect rendering of the original clause upon which the reader has been left dangling for half a page, believing himself hopelessly lost. The experience is like waiting for an organist to resolve a mighty but elusive chord."—Anthony Smith, The Observer "This is a book that would be as salutary a read for prime ministers and presidents as for those who see themselves as cultural critics. Berlin's writing exemplifies the need for understanding and tolerance in the face of the plurality of human needs and aspirations, and the incompatibility of human ideals."—Peter Mudford, The Times Higher Education Supplement "The publication of the second edition of Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism is a welcome event. . . . [It] is one of a handful of extant books capable of tracing the beginnings, illuminating some of the many manifestations, and identifying the diverse afterlives of that fruitful and inspired ideal in the history of human creativity which has come to be known as Romanticism."—Michael J. Neth, European Legacy "Isaiah Berlin's Mellon Lectures on romanticism, a movement that he believed to be 'the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West to have occurred,' are as eloquent, sprightly, and profound as anything he ever produced. This edition is provided with fascinating addenda as well as exacting editing and full references; it presents Berlin's analysis of the contradictions, plurality, and irrationality of a vital conjunction in intellectual, political, and artistic history, and restores the voice of the magus at its most thought-provoking and beguiling."—Roy Foster, University of Oxford "This book provides an excellent account of the topics that were to preoccupy Berlin throughout his life. . . . It is a history of ideas, wonderfully under control, always with the sense of how those ideas have impacted on other ideas and eventually on the contemporary period."—Tracy B. Strong, University of California, San Diego "In a dark century, he showed what a life of the mind should be: skeptical, ironical, dispassionate and free."—Michael Ignatieff Related Books Reading Machiavelli John P. McCormick When All Else Fails Jason Brennan Irrationality Justin E. H. 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