Publisher's Synopsis
In the first section of the book Isaiah Berlin studies the philosophical ideas of Giovanni Battisti Vico (1668-1744), a profound and original thinker, who, after being overshadowed by Montesquieu, has been rediscovered at intervals ever since, but has probably even more to say to the present age than to his own.;Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), the subject of the second study, although commonly regarded as the father of European nationlism, originated three perhaps equally influential currents of thought: populism, the idea of artistic commitment and of art as the voice of its time and social milieu and the idea of the autonomy of cultures and the equal validity of many dissimilar systems of values.
