Isaiah Berlin’s Neglect of Enlightenment Constitutionalism
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Description
Enlightenment constitutionalism established the idea of a constitution as an intricate mechanism designed to house the untidiness and pluralism of human politics. It left, as one of its most important legacies, the unprecedented achievement of the framing and ratification of the Constitution of the United States. Yet Isaiah Berlin, supposedly one of our greatest interpreters of the Enlightenment, said almost nothing about it. This chapter speculates about the reasons for this neglect. Was it because it leant spurious credibility to Berlin’s well-known claim that Enlightenment social design was perfectionist, monistic, and potentially totalitarian? By ignoring Enlightenment constitutionalism, Berlin implicitly directed us away from precisely the body of work that might have refuted this view of Enlightenment social design.
Source Publication
Isaiah Berlin and the Enlightenment
Source Editors/Authors
Laurence Brockliss, Ritchie Robertson
Publication Date
2016
Recommended Citation
Waldron, Jeremy, "Isaiah Berlin’s Neglect of Enlightenment Constitutionalism" (2016). Faculty Chapters. 1553.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1553
