WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT ISAIAH BERLIN?

Isaiah Berlin would be turning 100 next year. Even people unfamiliar with his work as a public intellectual and historian know enough to speak of him with reverence. As The Economist wrote in an obituary in 1997:

As in real showbiz, his reputation spread in ever widening circles from an admiring centre. He had 23 honorary doctorates from eminent universities, possibly a record, and many academic awards. As well as being knighted, he received a rarer honour, the Order of Merit, which is limited to 24 people. A writer on western philosophy noted that a cousin of Sir Isaiah was the leader of a Jewish sect, and proclaimed by thousands of his followers to be the Messiah. Sir Isaiah did not match that but, in Oxford terms, he may have come close.

So what made him so special? Robert Cottrell, editor of thebrowser.com, says Berlin was "probably the past century’s greatest historian of ideas". Cottrell does a fine job of explaining Berlin's enduring appeal in this audio interview for The Economist: "He was capable of popularising ideas without vulgarising them."