These essays focus on the social and political role - past, present and future - of ideas and of their progenitors. Contents include My Intellectual Path, an autobiographical survey of Berlin's main preoccupations, and Jewish Slavery and Emancipation, the classic statement of his Zionist views.

A collection of essays by Isaiah Berlin, which include the topics: realism in history; judgement in politics; the special right of philosophers to self-expression; the history of socialism; the nature and impact of Marxism; the radical cultural revolution instigated by romanticism; the Russian notion of artistic commitment; and the origins and practice of nationalism.

The main theme of this collection of essays is the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom. The book offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life, and it also contains an updated bibliography of Berlin's publications.

This is one of Isaiah Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and the history of ideas, views which were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics.

Included here are Berlin's early arguments against logical positivism, and later essays reflecting his interest in political theory, intellectual history and the philosophy of history. He states: The goal of philosophy is to assist men to understand themselves and not operate wildly in the dark.