Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin (1983)

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a British philosopher. He was born in Riga, Latvia, which at the time was a part of the Russian Empire. He was Jewish, and was the first Jew to win the prize of a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford University.

Reputation

Isaiah Berlin was an important person of the 20th century. People see him as an important thinker of Liberalist ideas. He was made a member of the Order of Merit and was a professor at the University of Oxford. He made a distinction between positive liberty and negative liberty. His most famous work is probably Two Concepts of Liberty (where he introduced this distinction.) He died 5 November 1997.