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The view from an ivory tower can sometimes provide a clear line of historical, social and political vision and an understanding of ultimate human values. The difficulty of deciding how far these values might be applied in rational terms was the life work of Sir Isaiah Berlin, a great modern historian of ideas. Born in Riga in 1909, he spent most of his life, until his death in 1997, as an Oxford don. His great work, in addition to his critique of Historical Inevitability and his advocacy of an ethical theory that he termed moral pluralism, was to distinguish between two concepts of personal freedom, positive liberty and negative liberty, in the context of potential political abuse and totalitarianism. Berlin’s writings are powerfully relevant in the present defence of Enlightenment, liberal, pluralist values.

One to read: Russian Thinkers — which includes the essay The Hedgehog and the Fox (1978)

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Wolfson College, Oxford, maintains a tribute site for their first President

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