Isaiah Berlin; Examined Philosophical, Historical Concepts of Politics

Sir Isaiah Berlin, a giant in 20th century thought who specialized in the history of political ideas and the concepts of liberty, has died at age 88.

He died Wednesday night at Oxford’s Acland Hospital, according to Oxford University, where he had worked for more than 60 years as a lecturer, professor and college president.

A Latvian-born liberal and a committed anti-Communist, Berlin examined the development of liberal and totalitarian ideas, wrote on Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, on opera and on Russian literature.

He wrote an admired book on Karl Marx in 1939, but most of his work was devoted to essays, including his best-known, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” in 1953 and 1964’s “Mr. Churchill in 1940.”

In the former, he ruminated on a line from the Greek poet Archilochus that says, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

“Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense,” Berlin wrote. “But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.”

Most of Berlin’s essays were collected in a series of more than half a dozen books. In a Times review of the most recent, “The Sense of Reality” published in July, Russell Jacoby criticized Berlin for ignoring 20th century philosophers in favor of earlier ones and said Berlin’s books suffer because his pieces originated mostly as speeches rather than as written essays. Nevertheless, Jacoby wrote, Berlin “appears to be a skilled and graceful guide through the intellectual muck of the 20th century.”

Jonathan Kirsch, reviewing Berlin’s 1991 “The Crooked Timber of Humanity” for The Times, praised Berlin as “a venerable figure--a knight, literally enough, on a moral quest--but free of the strutting intellectual arrogance that sometimes characterizes the work of professional historians.”

Gerard Cohen, Chichele professor of social and political theory at Oxford, said Thursday that Berlin “reshaped political philosophy” with his strenuous examinations of liberty.

“He could explain why it was that civilizations so distinct and opposed--for example, the United States and the Soviet Union--could both think that they were promoting freedom,” Cohen said.

Berlin was born June 6, 1909, the son of a timber merchant, in Riga, Latvia. In 1919, the family moved to Britain, where Isaiah was educated. He went on to Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, where he received two degrees.

During World War II, Berlin worked at the British Embassy in Washington, producing a weekly summary of U.S. opinion that was said to be Winston Churchill’s favorite reading.

Berlin enjoyed telling a story about Churchill inviting Irving Berlin, the American composer of “White Christmas,” to lunch in 1944, thinking his guest was Isaiah Berlin.

After the war and back at Oxford, Berlin turned from pure philosophy to the history of ideas. He is credited with establishing the academic disciplines of intellectual history and political theory.

In 1956, he married Aline de Gunzbourg, a onetime French golf champion, who survives him.

His academic career at Oxford culminated with his appointment as president of the new Wolfson College in 1968, a post he held until 1975.

He was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli prizes and, for his lifelong defense of civil liberties, the Jerusalem Prize. Berlin served as president of the Royal Academy from 1974 to 1978, was knighted in 1957, and was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to the prestigious Order of Merit in 1971.

“I have been overestimated all my life,” Berlin said in his mid-80s. “I will not pretend that this has been a source of grave distress. As someone once said to me, it is much nicer to receive more than one’s due than one’s due, and I cannot deny it.

“All the same, I cannot deceive myself.”