Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Identitypaperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_5407.pdf · Introduction Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), whose name are well known to the Anglo-American and

Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Identity

Tatsuya Mori

Abstract

Despite his praise of cultural pluralism, Isaiah Berlin’s conception of the self is

distinctively liberal and individualistic. In a world of contingency and value pluralism,

one must tragically choose among various and incompatible values. In general, “tragic”

sounds regrettable, but there is also a positive implication to “tragedy” which enables us

to see the imperfections but also the richness of the world. Berlin sees this richness

through his “worldliness” or “curiosity” and suggests a “humanistic remedy” to the

problem – reconciliation between world and the self through a positive attitude toward the

world. His liberalism then distinguishes various political projects of fairness from the

psychological integrity of self. On the other hand, his opinion and action about

nationalism pose a problem. Edward Said criticized Isaiah Berlin on Israel’s

exceptionalism in his liberalism. Axel Honneth attributes this to Berlin’s optimism

regarding the compatibility of negative and positive freedom. If, as Michael Ignatieff

pointed out, nationalism implies a narcissistic reaction to others, and if we are to mitigate

– if not overcome – this kind of psychological phenomena, we must consistently seek a

“liberal” remedy to the problem of personal and cultural identity in modern times.

Nevertheless, he supported the Jewish nation-state. Was it his “political realism,”

endorsed by him in the 1950’s? Further considerations are needed, especially on his

political carrier and Jewish identity.

1

Introduction

Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), whose name are well known to the Anglo-American and

Japanese intellectual world, as a historian of ideas, a philosopher of pluralism, a powerful

defender of negative freedom and a Jewish intellectual, once wrote in the introduction to

his Four Essays on Liberty as follows: “The rise and fall of the two concepts [of liberty]

can largely be traced to the specific dangers which, at a given moment, threatened a group

or society most: on the one hand excessive control and interference, or, on the other, an

uncontrolled ‘market’ economy” [Berlin 1969: xlvi].

Today, the “specific” dangers seem to have become the opposite of what he described

40 years ago. On the one hand, in the world of so-called late-modernity or post Cold War

era, there emerges a new situation in which we exercise our freedom. The overwhelming

power of global market economy accompanied by neoliberal or “advanced liberal”

political regime seems to have been making individuals more and more helpless. Now we

are enjoying the “opportunity” to make choices among options as never before,

nevertheless it seems to be becoming hard for us to “exercise” freedom to realize the good

life of our own, especially for the poor or the disadvantaged.

On the other hand, individuals are prevented, not only economically but

psychologically, from exercising their freedom well. Liberalism’s emphasis on self

responsibility requires them to come to term with their troubles and anxieties in everyday

life for themselves. What used to be “social problems” tends to be “privatized,” to be

thought as personal, “identity” problems. “To be an individual,” as Zygmunt Bauman

pointed out, “does not necessarily mean to be free. The form of individuality on offer in

late-modern or postmodern society, and indeed most common in this kind of society –

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privatized individuality – means, essentially, unfreedom” [Bauman 1999: 63]. These two

conditions are said to be interconnected. Nicolas Rose analyses these commercialized

identity-making process in terms of what Michael Foucault called “governmentality.” It

means that hitherto centralized state control or bureaucratic administration over subjects

has been replaced by self-government in the marketplace, and individual freedom to

choose has come to function not as an ideal of human liberation but as a means of

effective government. In other words, now “individuals are not merely ‘free to choose,’

but obliged to be free” [Rose 1999: 87].

German social theorist Axel Honneth has argued, with his theory of social recognition,

that this economical-psychological predicament of unfreedom has largely been promoted

by modern liberal individualist culture and politics. In a recent essay in collaboration with

Joel Anderson, he criticizes the idea of autonomy in liberal theory. Its “drive to maximize

negative liberty thus seems to rely on a misleading idealization of individuals as

self-sufficient and self-reliant. This focus on eliminating interference thus misconstrues

the demands of social justice by failing to adequately conceptualize the neediness,

vulnerability, and interdependence of individuals” [Anderson & Honneth 2005: 129]. A

political conception of justice must presuppose some substantial theory of personal

autonomy, and take into account the influences of social recognition. Liberals who try to

separate personal conception of the self from their political conception of justice cannot

answer the questions of modern society.

It is often said that the demand to be neutral or “freestanding” among rival human

goods makes political liberalism, such as John Rawls’, silent about the contents of

personal goodness. But not all kind of liberalism does this. Considerations on the

relationship between freedom and personal identity, and accordingly the idea of

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autonomy, can be found in some liberal theories which tell us the existential aspects of

human life1. I think Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism can be categorized amongst them.

Then the main purpose of this paper is to reveal Berlin’s idea on personal autonomy

and its relation to his view on politics. So first, I will present the former as a “liberal”

conception of the self, confirming the relative importance of the issue in his thought. It is

found in his value pluralism, especially in an ambivalent nature of tragic choice among

incompatible values. Second, I will reconstruct Berlin’s political conception of

liberalism by combining this with his idea of tolerance. Finally, I will try to show his

response to the question of the relationship between liberalism and identity politics

through examining his opinion of Zionism.

1

As we know, in his famous essay on social contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

distinguished three kinds of liberty: “liberté naturelle”, “liberté civile” and “liberté

morale.” [Rousseau 1962: 37]. Since he presented this third concept -- which makes

individuals “truly master” of themselves -- the ideal of human freedom cannot have been

separated from that of authenticity of the self. This idea of moral freedom has been one of

the central ideas on which the theory and practice of modern liberal democracy stands,

and has never lost its importance even in our late modern times.

In contemporary political theory, his inquiry would have been taken over by those who

advocate the so-called “the politics of identity.” First, they claim that the concept of the

person (and moral, legal and political institutions that embody it) on which modern

liberalism is based does not have universal validity, but is rather a product of historical

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contingency, and is therefore advantageous to ruling class or majority people. Second,

because of its formalist and proceduralist bias, the liberal conception of the person is

hollow, egoistic, atomistic, and makes it impossible to conceive any theory of goods or

individual autonomy in terms of interdependency of human beings.

Charles Taylor introduces this Rousseaunian problematics into his argument criticizing

Berlin’s position. According to Taylor, advocates of negative liberty attempt to rescue

liberalism by taking “Maginot line” strategy, which construe liberty only as an

“opportunity” to choose and which discards the conditions for exercising it. But

“[f]reedom can’t just be the absence of external obstacles, for there may also be internal

ones” [Taylor 1979: 193]. The Hobbesian definition is not enough to make one’s self truly

be free. Not only external conditions but also the psychological ability to set one’s ends,

to evaluate options according to her authentic value which makes her true to herself, is

required.

Agreeing with Taylor on this point, Axel Honneth argues that human freedom “cannot

be understood simply as the absence of external force or influence, but must rather signify

the lack of inner barriers as well as psychological inhibitions and fears”. And this “second

form of freedom,” he calls, “a form of trust directed inward.” It constitutes “aspects of a

positive relation-to-self that “can only be gained through the experience of recognition”

[Honneth 1995: 174, italic added]. This positive state of mind is hurt by the experience of

being disrespected, shamed, or of humiliation that “can become the motivational impetus

for a struggle of recognition” [Honneth 1995: 138].

In spite of his common image of the passionate vindicator of negative freedom, Berlin

recognized this problem of inner freedom. In his Robert Waley Cohen Memorial Lecture

John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life (delivered in 1959), he describes the uneasiness of

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individuals in modern society:

The mass neurosis of our age is agoraphobia; men are terrified of disintegration and of

too little direction: they ask, like Hobbes’s masterless men in a state of nature, for walls

to keep out the raging ocean, for order, security, organization, clear and recognizable

authority, and are alarmed by the prospect of too much freedom, which leaves them lost

in a vast, friendless vacuum, a desert without paths or landmarks or goals [Berlin 1969:

198].

Increase in one’s freedom implies increase in responsibility one must take. When we

choose, we must give up many possibilities or values not chosen. “We are doomed to

choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss” [Berlin 1990: 13]. It doesn’t

make much difference from the late-modern predicament of freedom we saw above. Its

general consequence is “the escape from freedom” that Erich Fromm once warned of, the

claim for security in our government instead of freedom from it, and not the release from

“primary ties” but the pursuit of them [Fromm 1941]. Then Berlin asks:

All this is true. Yet what solutions have we found, with all our new technological and

psychological knowledge and great new powers, save the ancient prescription

advocated by the creators of humanism – Erasmus and Spinoza, Locke and

Montesquieu, Lessing and Diderot – reason, education, self-knowledge, responsibility

– above all, self-knowledge? What other hope is there for men, or has there ever been?

[Berlin 1969: 198-199].

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What is this “humanistic remedy” presented by Berlin for the problem of freedom? I shall

term it “the liberal conception of the self” in his political thought. It can be found, first, in the

ambivalent nature of “tragedy” in his value pluralism and second, in his own ethical

temperament – what Stefan Collini calles the “liberal mind” [Collini 1999].

2

Where can we find his discussions of “freedom of mind”? Perhaps it can be found in

his essays on the history of ideas. In his A. W. Melon lecture delivered in 1965, The Roots

of Romanticism, Berlin refers to Friedrich Schiller’s idea of freedom and tragedy. “He

[Schiller] constantly speaks of spiritual freedom: freedom of reason, freedom of mind,

moral freedom, the free intelligence.” And his “theory of tragedy is founded upon this

notion of freedom” [Berlin 1999: 79]. What Schiller told us is “a vast contrast between

nature, which is this elemental, capricious, perhaps causal, perhaps chance-directed entity,

and man, who has morality, who distinguishes between desire and will, duty and interest,

the right and the wrong, and acts accordingly, if need to be against nature.” Nature is

“indifferent to man” and “amoral,” and fate is often cruel. The romantic moment of

tragedy, according to Berlin, lies in the human endeavor against such brutal power of

nature, fate and society, from which moral conflicts arise [Berlin 1999: 80-81].

William Connolly begins his book Identity�Difference with this absence of established

harmony: “The fundamental unfairness of life. Everyone encounters it, in the innocent

child who dies, the highly reflective woman in a world that restricts intellectuality to

men…” [Connolly 1991: 1]. Such a description of the world corresponds to the doctrine

of “the superfluous man” which Berlin described in the same lecture. “Werther died quite

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uselessly. René in Chateaubriand’s story of the same name dies quite uselessly. They die

uselessly because they belong to a society which is incapable of making use of them”

[Berlin 1999: 82]. It reveals a crash between the ideals of such persons and the standards

or norms of their society, and conveys indignation against its merciless treatment to them.

Justice is unrealized. Moral disorder, unintended cruelty, misfortune and absurdity, all

these are never to be terminated.

These tragic situations may seem to be lamentable, a negative aspect in human life, to

be removed from our society. But they have some other meanings. First, according to

Berlin, human freedom and morality are based on this very existence of this tragic nature

of human life. As we know, he denies the thesis of value monism, “the conviction that all

the positive values in which men have believed must, in the end, be compatible, and

perhaps even entail one another” [Berlin 1969: 167]. Hence he starts from “the ordinary

resources of empirical observation and ordinary human knowledge.” We live in a world

“in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally

absolute, the realization of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others”

[Berlin 1969: 168]. This is merely the negative proposition of value monism: not all

values can be compatible. He leads us from the world of harmony and logical consistency

to that of collision and conflict, thereby he calls attention to the confused but rich aspects

of human experience. According to Berlin, not the harmony of values or personal

integrity but the conflict of values makes us understand “the essence of what they are and

what we are” [Berlin 1990: 13]. In other words, the plurality of values exists as a

condition of moral judgment; thereby the importance of negative freedom as choice

among alternatives is understood. The question “what is to be done” is another side of this

freedom [Berlin 1990: 17]. As Connolly points out, “A free mortal forecloses alternative

8

possibilities when it chooses to do or become x; and every act of freedom is therefore

bound up with the possibilities it must forgo” [Connolly 1991: 18]2.

Secondly, it should be noticed that there is a positive aspect of the tragedy in relation to

the idea of curiosity. An essay by George Orwell, in which he compares Shakespeare with

Tolstoy in terms of their view on humanity, may reveal this point:

All of these [Shakespeare’s] tragedies start out with humanist assumption that life,

although full of sorrow, is worth living, and that Man is a noble animal – a belief which

Tolstoy in his old age did not share. [Orwell 1968: 298]

Humanism in this case means a kind of secularism, a positive attitude of accepting a

world without preestablished harmony – a literary but realistic attitude toward the human

world3. Berlin classifies Shakespeare amongst “the foxes” in his The Hedgehog and the

Fox. The foxes’ “thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon

the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves”

[Berlin 1953: 3]. He called this kind of ability common to some of historians, novelists or

politicians “the sense of reality.” It enables them “to understand a particular situation in

its full uniqueness, the particular men and events and dangers, the particular hopes and

fears which are actively at work in a particular place at a particular time” [Berlin

1996:44-45]. It is indispensable in order to recognize the world of plural values which he

advocates.

Then, the motive for accepting such an uncertain and unforeseeable world positively is

curiosity to know it. Orwell says, “Shakespeare was not a philosopher or a scientist, but

he did have curiosity: he loved the surface of the earth and the process of life” [Orwell

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1968: 300]. Berlin also had a curiosity about the richness or the inexhaustible spring of

the human world. Michael Ignatieff articulates Berlin’s curiosity by using the term

“worldliness:”

He rejoiced in worldliness, in having some grasp of the inner workings of the world of

power and influence, in knowing the gossip, in understanding what low motives

actually did make the world turn. ‘Worldliness’, in his lexicon, became nearly

synonymous with having that ‘sense of reality’ which most intellectuals and dons

conspicuously lacked. [Ignatieff 1998: 63]

8]

And:

He has never tired of life’s theatre and he imagines himself watching its lighted stage

for ever. [Ignatieff 1998:

This is the characteristic common to what Orwell’s Shakespeare has4.

For Berlin, pluralism is ”the conception that there are many different ends that men may

seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and

sympathizing and deriving light from each other” [Berlin 1990: 11]. On the one hand, this

attitude of “understanding each other” is not such a thing as to be done if you want or if

possible, but rather exists inescapably among peoples of having different values or

cultures. “We are free to criticize the values of other cultures, to condemn them, but we

cannot pretend not to understand at all, or to regard them simply as subjective, the

products of creatures in different circumstances with different tastes from our own, which

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do not speak to us at all” [Berlin 1990: 11, italic added]. Others appear in front of us

whether we like it or not, and they also see us as those who have different kind of values

or cultures from theirs. Their view of the world and the words and metaphors they use are

unfamiliar to us, and they sometimes condemn us, or even refuse us. So they teach the

limits of the reach of our control and dominance. But on the other hand, they do also

broaden our limits of language through their unfamiliar but unique language-games and

metaphors, so do the limits of our world in Wittgenstein’s sense5 . To accept these

conditions positively is to recognize that our control or power is not infinite, to know the

world of plural values or ideals, and to find positive values in such a condition.

Some implications can be drawn out from this. First, to recognize the plurality of values

and the radical contingency of the self is to accept a Stoic idea that ”one will not become

attached to that which does not come under our control” in order to guarantee our

freedom [Foucault 1990: 64]. In other words, conceiving her self under such a condition

requires one to distinguish what she can do from what she cannot do in each particular

situation. It is true that, as Berlin himself remarked, this Stoic idea contains a paradox:

getting freedom by eliminating one’s wants and desires [Berlin 1969: 135-141]. But the

opposite of this, affirming every wants and desires as valid and taking every situation

where the satisfaction of them is prevented as injustice, is doomed to failure. Between

these two extremes, ”to accept in the relation to the self only that which can depend in the

subject’s free and rational choice” [Foucault 1990: 64] seems to be essential to the

practice of freedom. Michael Kenny summarizes this: “Incommensurability implies that

individuals must learn to manage the tensions arising from the crash of competing values,

as well as the tragic necessity of compromise” [Kenny 2004: 145]6.

The important thing here is the distinction between the various ways of one’s

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reconciling with her state of being and the institutional guarantee of freedom. Although

Berlin does not deny the Stoic self-restraint as a personal ideal, but criticizes the direct

application of it into political institutions: “The stoic sense of freedom, however sublime,

must be distinguished from the freedom or liberty which the oppressor, or the oppressive

institutionalized practice, curtails or destroys.” It ”may contribute to his happiness or his

security; but it will not increase his civil or political freedom” [Berlin 1969: xxxix]. A

liberal conception of the good (which is expressed here as “happiness” or “security”)

must be distinguished, if not completely, from a political conception of liberalism7.

Second, radical choice is accompanied by certain tendency to neurosis. A range of

one’s freedom and responsibility cannot be decided by some a priori principle, but rather

practically in each case. In his lecture Historical Inevitability Berlin says, “Where the

frontier between freedom and causal laws is to be determined is a crucial practical issue”

[Berlin 1969: 74, italic added]. Therefore in principle, our sense of freedom and

responsibility could ever be eliminated completely. If “neuroses… spring from the fear of

having to choose among alternatives,” abandoning freedom of choice may also be an

answer to the problem. ”Where there is no choice there is no anxiety; and a happy release

from responsibility” [Berlin 1969: 112]. One can attribute the responsibility of her action

to someone else or some impersonal forces which is not under her control. But such a

release from anxiety is possible only by full obedience to some authority or acceptance of

determinism. It means that the liberal social practice now we are accepting is overthrown.

So Berlin opposed such an idea. Perhaps it will bring her a kind of happiness, but not

freedom. If we want freedom of choice in any way in the world of value pluralism, this

neurotic tendency must more or less be received.

As we know, in the introduction to his Four Essays, Berlin criticized Erich Fromm’s

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idea of positive freedom8. Berlin’s position can be construed as this: he denied the

possibility of full realization of personal integrity by casting doubt on the compatibility of

the integrity of the self and the freedom to choose among alternatives. In other words, that

the plurality of values and the radical choice among them cannot fully be eliminated

means that the full attainment of personal integrity is impossible on the premise of value

pluralism, and the self in there has certain inclination towards disintegration or

schizophrenia which can never be removed.

3

Now one may wonder whether such a conception of the self lacks any “bonds” or “ties”

to connect one’s various aspects of life, social roles or “identities”. For without them,

each part of her identity may be left disconnected, and in pieces. Liberalism has often

been criticized in this point. Berlin’s conception of the self also seems so far to lack such

an idea. Let us examine whether this is the case or not.

As to the nature and concept of “identity,” we can learn much from sociology, social

psychology and cultural studies as well as from political theory [cf. Elizabeth Frazer

1999: 4]. Especially the social theory of George Herbert Mead supplies contemporary

communitarian social theorists such as Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor with the basic

idea of personal and social integrity [Honneth 1995: ch.5; Taylor 1992: 33].

First, according to Mead, an individual comes to recognize oneself through social

experiences of communication with other individuals.

The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it

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arises in social experience. After a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself

its social experiences, and so we can conceive of an absolutely solitary self. But it is

impossible to conceive of a self arising outside of social experience. [Mead 1934: 140]

Such an understanding of the self as a social product seems reasonable, as takes the

so-called reflexive nature of experience into account [cf. Giddens 1976]. Morally

autonomous selves, which liberalism sometimes assumes, are possible only after the

process of socialization. This also comes from the methodological presupposition of

social psychology itself. “For social psychology, the whole (society) is prior to the part

(the individual), not the part to the whole” [Mead 1934: 7]. Then it is assumed that the

integrity of such a self “reflects” that of the society to which one belongs [Mead 1934:

144].

The integrity of each individual self corresponds to that of the society or the stability of

the social practices in which one takes part. As the social conflicts become too great to

confuse the relationship among the social roles one is playing, her personal integrity is

also seriously affected by them and comes to be in crisis [Mead 1934: 307]. In his theory

it is necessary to find out something to bind them, thereby the theoretical task of “social

integration” is drawn out. As we know, such an idea has also had a great influence to the

political science of the twentieth century, through the social system theory of Talcott

Parsons [Parsons 1964].

According to Axel Honneth who critically inherited the social psychology of G. H.

Mead, individual autonomy is vulnerable to the influence of other persons or the society

to which one belongs. Personal autonomy needs not only certain socio-economical

conditions such as shelter, food, education and job, but also relational or intersubjective

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conditions such as intimacy, mutual trust and recognition [Anderson & Honneth 2005:

129]. One cannot lead an autonomous life with a stable state of mind unless she is able to

carry on the positive relationship to other members of the society. Following the

psychological theories of Donald Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin, he claims that it is

essential for those who on the way to being an autonomous self to be connected

intimately with “significant others9” (most of the case her mother), or to be “recognized”

by her. And the lack of it causes various psychopathological inclinations in her mind

[Honneth 1995: 98ff]. He tells this by using a metaphor of human body: “The experience

of being socially denigrated or humiliated endangers the identity of human beings, just as

infection with a disease endangers their physical life” [Honneth 1995: 135]. This

metaphor makes us understand that social recognition is as essential for human beings as

physical needs such as health, food, shelter. Then “the social guarantees associated with

those relations of recognition that are able to protect subjects most extensively from

suffering disrespect” become the primary social goal, for they contribute to “the

‘psychological health’ or integrity of human beings” [Honneth 1995: 135].

It is true that this theory of social recognition and integration reveals an important

aspect of human beings. But in sociology there has been another strand which conceives

of “identity” in a different way, thereby the very idea of social integration has been

doubted. Contrary to Honneth’s idea of the “vulnerable” and essentially “passive” form of

the self, there could also be an “active” or “flexible” self who copes with the plurality of

values and conflicts among them individually. That’s why I call this kind of self

construction as liberal. It seeks some individualistic (not completely, of course) solution

to the problem of the self, compared with communitarian, “social” solution10. Revealing

this idea will enable liberalism to reply the communitarian criticism of its unrealistic

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assumptions on the idea of autonomy.

In his famous book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity [Goffman

1968], Irving Goffman suggested an idea of personal identity largely different from

Mead’s. According to him, an individual sometimes plays several entirely different social

parts independently. It is called “double life” [Goffman 1968: 97]. A person who has the

socially stigmatized feature or identity, and wants to conceal them, often leads such a life.

Each side of her life may be in conflict with one another. According to him, the thing

which sustains her personal consistency in such a life as divided in fragments is her

“biographical” identity:

The first point to note about biographies is that we assume that an individual can

really have only one of them, this being guaranteed by the laws of physics rather than

those of society… Note that this embracing singleness of life line is in sharp contrast

to the multiplicity of selves one finds in the individual in looking at him from the

perspective of social role, where, if role and audience segregation are well managed,

he can quite handily sustain different selves and can to a degree claim to be no longer

something he was. [Goffman 1968: 80-81]

Whether she likes it or not, or even if she tries to lead each social life in any completely

separated way, one can never escape from this physical condition. In this case a person

tries not to integrate her identities but rather to be left segregated. For theorists of social

recognition, this “shadow” part of one’s life may seem to be a kind of misrecognition or

alienation accompanied by humiliation which needs to be eliminated through social

recognition or inclusion. But such a phenomenon is observed not only among the

16

stigmatized, abnormal persons, but also among the “normal” persons in entirely the same

manner.

Moreover, it is not always the case that it is good for individuals to “achieve public

‘visibility’ ” [Frazer & Honneth 2002: 249] as far as possible. We may sometimes desire

for having a dark, secret place of our own. It doesn’t necessarily mean a fake,

pathological or “inauthentic” way of life. One need not to show every social roles one

plays in her life in some integrated, “publicly justifiable” way. Double life in the broader

sense often give us some hiding place or a rest where she is able to “pull of” her publicly

recognized, sometimes stigmatized persona and feel at ease. And it also implies that this

idea of personal autonomy requires a certain degree of privacy which has played an

important role in the history and practice of liberalism.

In short, what Goffman reveals is that the problem of personal identity is not

necessarily explained in terms of certain general or particular states of society to which

one belongs. Identities which constitute one’s life may be fragmented, disintegrated, and

even in conflict with each other. Nevertheless, she is able to act reasonably as a mature

adult and accommodate this fragmentation. If she were a completely “passive” person, as

“ideal” social integration theory describes, who simply does as she is ordered by her

various social roles, ideals or beliefs, then her personality would “fall into pieces” literally.

We have to take a person’s ability to cope with such conflicts and the ethical theory which

supports such ability into consideration.

Goffman seems to have never underestimated the importance of social recognition;

nevertheless he emphasized the positive aspect of the stigmatized personality. Social

misrecognition is not only caused by ignorance of other members of society, but also by

an individual’s feelings of “being misrecognized.” On both sides he tells us softly:

17

And because normals have their troubles, too, the stigmatized individual should not

feel bitter, resentful, or self-pitying. A cheerful, outgoing manner should be

cultivated… Normals really mean to harm; when they do, it is because they don’t know

better. They should therefore bestactfully helped to act nicely. … Either no notice

should be taken or the stigmatized individual should make an effort at sympathetic

re-education of the normal, showing him, point for point, quietly and with delicacy, that

in spite of appearances the stigmatized individual is, underneath it all, a fully-human

being. [Goffman 1968: 141]

To emphasize one’s experience of being misrecognized or being victims, after all, will

reproduce the reflexive structure of re-stigmatization. This reflexive scheme of

identification leads no good solution. Considering a person’s feelings of humiliation and

exclusion only as a function of social conditions, one will underestimate her moral power,

and coerce her to play a passive role in the solution process. The world we live in is one

without moral certainty, no experience of recognition is guaranteed. The passive self

image of Honneth’s social theory which requires “being recognized” may prompt people

to feel resentment at each other. The important thing here is to recognize “social process

in which every individual participates in both roles, at least in some connections and in

some phrases of life” [Goffman 1968: 163/ 225], and to pay attention to the balance

between them.

Further discussions could be found. In his essay on Sigmund Freud published in 1985,

Peter Gay talks about what Dennis Wrong once called “the oversocialized conception of

man.”

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[T]he reigning sociological theory of our age, best exemplified in the writings of Talcott

Parsons, has tried to explain the existence of social order by man's capacity to

internalize the norms of his culture… This disastrous oversimplification discards "the

whole stress" of psychoanalysis "on inner conflict -- on the tension between powerful

impulses and superego controls." For Freud, Wrong argues, this conflict is of crucial

importance, and has proved far subtler, far closer to human experience, than that

advocated by sociologists whom Wrong criticizes… Indeed, what Freud saw, and what

these sociologists do not see, is that conflict is normal, not just deviant... By insisting on

man's malleability, on his hunger for approval from others, most social scientists have

dropped the stubborn self into view. [Gay 1985: 172-3]

Moreover, a question posed by German psychologist Ursula Nuber, that “in the last few

years, why there is ‘a remarkable trend of considering trauma in one’s childhood as

central’” to one’s identity problem [Nuber 2000: 173], seems to be more than a mere

question of inside the discipline of psychology, it would give us a chance of rethinking the

theoretical assumptions of the politics of recognition or multiculturalism and the social

and historical condition on which they stand.

A lack of personal integrity is not a disease; on the contrary, it is even a remarkable

feature of our personality, of those who live in modern multicultural society or society of

hybrid culture. British social theorist Stuart Hall emphasizes in his essay on cultural

identity the decentered, hybrid nature of personal identity in our time: “identities are

never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never

singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic,

19

discourses, practices and positions” [Hall 1996: 4]. For him, personal identity is a product

of historical construction, being influenced by various pressures of cultural and

socio-economical forces. As I noted above, for Berlin neurosis is not necessarily a

pathological phenomenon. Introducing discussions of developmental psychology directly

into social and political theory contains at least two problematics. First, it will ignore the

general fact that we must distinguish to some degree the development of personality of

infancy which needs unilateral assistance by the “significant others” from that of

adulthood. It is reasonable for the latter to be given a certain degfree of moral autonomy,

certain ability to cope with various “tragic” situations. And second, it will fail to

distinguish problems of personal identity from that of society. It is essential for any kind

of liberalism to consider how much linkage between the content of personal goodness and

the social conception of justice is appropriate.

A liberal conception of the self would thus be presented. To summarize, it is an attempt

of leading a personally autonomous life in the spirit of “foxes,” presupposing a world of

value pluralism. But still, it has not become a “political” conception of liberalism. It is

only an ethical attitude that rules an individual’s relation-to-oneself, not between the self

and the other selves. In the next section, I will discuss the latter by reading Berlin’s idea

on toleration.

4

We may ask about the relationship between liberal conception of the self and the idea of

tolerance in Berlin’s thought. His view on toleration is sometimes very sharp but also

with much vagueness. However, its basic idea appears in such sentences in his study on

20

the history of ideas as:

The view that variety is desirable, whereas uniformity is monotonous, dreary, dull…

stands in sharp contrast with the traditional view that truth is one, error many, a view

scarcely challenged before – at the earliest – the end of the seventeenth century. The

notion of toleration, not as the utilitarian expedient to avoid destructive strife, but as an

intrinsic value… all these are elements in a great mutation in western thought and

feeling that took place in the eighteenth century… [Berlin 1997: 333, italic added]

He had indicated in several occasions that in the late eighteenth century and early

nineteenth century11 the idea of toleration in European civilization had radically changed

in the course of producing “a new arrangement of values,”12 together with other social or

ideological transformations.

Leon Wieseltier shows us this historical mutation of the meaning of toleration by

distinguishing the two kinds of secularism. (a) Hard secularism, “the separation of

religion from politics that is based on truth or the falsity of religion,” presupposes an

unknown Truth, and then permits certain opinions or beliefs, because it is still uncertain

for us by which way we can reach the truth. It is said to have been an idea penetrating into

the Enlightenment liberal idea of toleration -- Locke, Milton, Jefferson and Moses

Mendelssohn. Seen on the contrary, it means that there is no room for “Muslims,” “Jews,”

“Catholics” or atheists to be tolerated. Therefore, their toleration is not “an acceptance of

diversity for its own sake”. Whereas (b) Soft secularism, “the separation of religion from

politics that is based on indifference to the truth or the falsity of religion,” detaches

various beliefs from such a requirement of truth, where “truth has been transformed into

21

opinion” and the practice of toleration has been able to find more “democratic” way

[Wieseltier 1991: 89-98].

John Stuart Mill is one whose idea of toleration consists of both “hard” and “soft”

secularism. In his lecture on Mill, Berlin abstracted Mill’s inclination to the immutable

truth (his rationalist and utilitarian aspect) from his thought and put him in a romantic

genealogy of value pluralism. “What Mill really to be asking for is diversity of opinion

for its own sake. He speaks of the need for ‘fair play to all sides of the truth’ – a phrase

that a man would scarcely employ if he believed in simple, complete truths as the early

utilitarians did” [Berlin 1969: 189-190].

Then, in the value pluralism of Berlin himself, almost all the traditional elements of

tolerance disappear. If the ambivalent nature of tragic choice is taken into view, his

positive attitude towards variety and difference will be understood. As we saw before, his

is not “forbearance” but “curiosity” to the richness or the inexhaustible spring of the

secular world, so Michael Jinkins remarked, “Berlin’s pluralism undermines toleration as

forbearance, and renders the very word tolerance problematic” [Jinkins 2004: 172]. For it

comes under the fourth or the fifth category of Michael Walzer’s fivefold division of the

idea of tolerance: (i) “a resigned acceptance of difference for peace,” (ii) “benign

indifference to difference,” (iii) “a principled recognition that the ‘others’ have rights

even if they exercise those rights in unattractive ways,” (iv) “an openness to the others;

curiosity, perhaps even respect, a willingness to listen and learn” and (v) “enthusiastic

endorsement of difference” [Walzer 1997: 10-11]. It is a serious deviation from the

traditional sense of tolerance, as Walzer asks, “how can I be said to tolerate what I in fact

endorse?” [Walzer 1997: 11].

Hence, Berlin’s liberalism in terms of this idea of tolerance is not a deontological one.

22

Tolerance as forbearance requires one, if not unconditional, to be formally indifferent or

respectful to the thoughts, religions and ways of life of others, whereas curiosity is an

affirmation of the existence of them through her interest in their particularity and

uniqueness, or even “love” of them. Not being patient with others who are unfamiliar to

her, but rather wanting them by her own egoism, this person with curiosity reminds us,

say, of Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own [Stirner 1995]. Berlin’s liberalism seems to be

unique among modern liberal philosophies.

Berlin’s idea of tolerance as curiosity is free from at least two difficulties inherent in

Taylor’s “politics of recognition.” First, being non-deontological consistently, it escapes

from the danger of “hypocrisy” [Taylor 1994: 70]. A Jacob Levy’s criticism of Taylor

makes clear on this point: “Without question it is possible to be tolerant of every religion

simultaneously. But it is not possible to affirm the positive value of each religion

simultaneously” [Levy 2000: 31]. And second, it releases pluralism from any cultural

criteria of authenticity. Taylor’s Herderian measure that “cultures that have provided the

horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and

temperaments, over a long period of time… are almost certain to have something that

deserves our admiration and respect” [Taylor 1994: 72] can be criticized, for it neglects

the worth of newly emerged cultures or subcultures.13 (However, on this point a problem

remains as to Berlin’s own praise of Herder. This will be discussed later).

It is true however, that affirmation of others through one’s curiosity of them would be a

highly precarious one. In reality, there is as much narcissism and hostility among people

as curiosity. And differences between “us” and “them” – although it is quite smaller than

characteristics common to mankind – make us fall into a dilemma, for one cannot help

referring the differences in order to identify oneself, to know who she is, as distinguished

23

from others [cf. Ignatieff 1999: 78-79]. But on the contrary, from this very dilemma a

significance of curiosity as an ethical ideal, the realization of which is neither natural nor

impossible, may appear. Perhaps the transformation of the idea of tolerance indicates a

way toward mitigating the dilemma. Curiosity to other individuals or worldliness may

help us “to awaken from the protective cocoon of our narcissism” [Ignatieff 1999: 81].

By definition, curiosity is not an attitude to be forced by someone in any sense, though

it could be edified or illuminated. Berlin’s idea of value pluralism and the tragic conflicts

among them does not supply any theoretical basis for public justification of any political

liberalism or politics of recognition14. It concerns itself, first, with individual conception

of a good life. Second, he opposed the idea of justification of norms: “The norms don’t

need justification, it is they which justify the rest, because they are the basic” [Berlin &

Jahanbegloo 1992: 113]. Other persons or cultures sometimes may not become an object

of her curiosity, but an object of criticism, dislike or even hatred. Berlin does not deny

this: “To understand is not necessarily to forgive. We may argue, attack, reject, condemn

with passion and hatred” [Berlin 1969: 184]. Therefore what secures our peaceful

coexistence is not an ethics of curiosity, but a politics of decency. The role of personal or

cultural identity in politics should not be exaggerated. Berlin continues that sentence as

follows: “But we may not suppress or strife: for that is to destroy the bad and the good,

and is tantamount to collective moral and intellectual suicide” [Berlin 1969: 184]. He tells

this is Mill’s faith, and I suggest this is Berlin’s faith too.

Berlin recognizes that there is a rational response to the Romantic pursuit of ideals and

following conflicts among them. It is a revised version of Enlightenment rationalism

through experiences of miserable struggles and wars among peoples. According to him, a

decent life is “the only kind of life which we think that human beings should follow, if

24

they are not to destroy each other” [Berlin & Jahanbegloo 1992: 114], and is said to be

one of the major consequences of Romanticism. In the last page of the Melon Lecture, he

tells:

[A]s a result of making clear the existence of a plurality of values…, they have given

prominence to and laid emphasis upon the incompatibility of human ideals. But if these

ideals are incompatible, then human beings sooner or later realize that they must make

do, they must make compromises, because if they seek to destroy others, others will

seek to destroy them; … The result of Romanticism, then, is liberalism, toleration,

decency and the appreciation of the imperfections of life; … Aiming at one thing, they

produced, fortunately for us all, almost the exact opposite. [Berlin 1999: 147]

In other words, Romanticism, which was a radical critic of Enlightenment liberalism,

produced another kind of liberalism, paradoxically. As an intellectual successor of both

the Romantic and Enlightenment legacy, Berlin insists the necessity of taming “the

apotheosis of romantic will” with the rational spirit of compromise. Berlin’s liberalism

can be construed as a combination of the ethics of curiosity and the idea of decent society

in the condition of value pluralism, and the latter which has recognized through historical

experiences of modern times requires its members to observe a certain minimum duties.

On the one hand, the curiosity to differences will function as an antidote against

narcissism and hatred to others, if not completely eliminating them. On the other hand,

the sense of reality which enables us to know the limits of one’s control or domination on

others will restrain an excessive resentment and hostility to others. Finally, the political

conception of “decent society” or politics of compromise which presupposes the plurality

25

and incompatibility of values, will try to limit the violence of intolerance, moral monism,

totalitarianism or extreme fundamentalism.

5

We have examined Berlin’s idea of liberal self and society so far. However, It seems

that there is an exception in his liberalism. Praising Berlin’s pluralist philosophy and

liberalism, Edward Said severely criticized Berlin’s attitude of pro-Zionism: “The

contradiction in all this is plain: that Berlin was a liberal, a man of fairness and

compassion, of civilized moderation in everything except where Israel was concerned”

[Said 2000: 221]. Indeed, it seems that having advocated the importance of tolerance and

compromise, Berlin had been able to propose no effective solution against the violence of

Israeli government and the chauvinistic attitude of the Israeli people. Said didn’t admire

Berlin’s last message, entitled “Israel and the Palestinians,” of his appeal for “reluctant

toleration” between two peoples [Berlin 1997b]. Because “[h]e says nothing about

military occupation, nothing about settlements, nothing about invasions, killings,

dispossessions” [Said 2000: 220]. We may wonder whether Berlin, a passionate Zionist,

had not been able to be free himself form his “prejudice” to the end of his life, and

whether it makes his liberalism void.

It seems that Said’s critical attitude is linked up with his self-image. In the last page of

his autobiography Out of Place, he notes:

I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of flowing currents. I prefer this to the idea

of a solid self, the identity to which so many attach so much significance. These

26

currents, like the themes of one’s life, flow along during the waking hours, and at their

best, they require no reconciling, no harmonizing [Said 1999: 295].

As an intellectual representative of “exiled” Palestinians, his attitude is consistent in

maintaining his decentralized, “liberal” self. Criticism from those who have such a self is

more powerful, and difficult to reply than that from the communitarians we saw above.

As Ignatieff suggests, if nationalism implies a kind of narcissism, it could even be argued

that Berlin as a liberal must not support Jewish national home which might promote the

claim of Jewish nationalism. Then “the politics of home” emerges. Several interpretations

are presented as to how Berlin understood the state of Israel. Richard Wollheim indicates

two way of “justifying” Zionism, in a symposium held in the year after Berlin’s death:

Positive justifications stress what the nation will be able to offer the world from a secure

homeland. Negative justifications stress how a secure homeland would shelter the

nation from the world. [Lilla, Dworkin & Silvers 2001: 166]

This “negative” position seems more reasonable, more liberal position than positive,

communitarian or nationalist way. Berlin favored, Wollheim believes, negative

justification for Zionism, as a shelter from the attack of anti-Semitism, especially during

the World War II. But Berlin himself once said in conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo,

“The purpose of Zionism is normalization; the creation of conditions in which the Jews

could live as a nation, like the others” [Berlin & Jahanbegloo 1992: 86]. This is more than

a “negative” justification, and Wollheim concludes that it is “an exception” in Berlin’s

liberalism [Lilla, Dworkin & Silvers 2001: 168]. The word “normalization” seems to

27

imply the opposite direction which the liberal conception of the self should pursue. Here

Axel Honneth finds Berlin’s dilemma of combining his Herderian idea of cultural

belonging and his liberalism of negative liberty, and criticizes his optimism on their

compatibility [Honneth 1999].

However, Berlin does not regard this as the only solution to be pursued by every

Jews. ”I don’t want Jews to stop living where they live. If they do no mind being a

minority, that is in order. There is nothing wrong with being a minority” [Berlin &

Jahanbegloo 1992: 86]. He does not regard Zionism as a necessary condition for the

self-realization or personal integration of every Jewish people. It is presented as a matter

of choice, not as a matter of fate. In “Jewish Slavery and Emancipation” (1953), he

opposes Arthur Koestler’s claim which put before them a choice between assimilation

and immigration. Berlin replies that for pious Jews the immigration to Palestine is not the

only possible option, rather the existence of Israel state itself functions as a spiritual

symbol, which releases them from the sense of homeless, insecurity, shame and

humiliation, and gives them the “right to live the life he chooses” [Berlin 2000a: 179].

Koestler’s position is one that regards personal identity-making through monotonous

national identity as desirable, whereas Berlin doubts such collective solution. Jewish

identity is not such a solid one as forcing them to choose those two options, but rather has

certain “elasticity” and has room for accepting an “ambiguous element.” [Berlin 2000a:

181]. To deny this ambiguity and require full loyalty to the state of Israel will, he warns,

produce chauvinistic nationalism and “a new slavery” [Berlin 2000a: 181]. Here his

opinion is not inconsistent with his liberalism.

Indeed, for Said as well as for Berlin it is not an ideal form of the self to be “exiled,” to

make one’s identity decentered, fragmented and disintegrated. Said says, “Exile is

28

strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience” [Said 2000b: 173]. Exile

brings a particular kind of neurotic fear or obsession in its train (although it also gives

intellectuals a significant ability of social criticism) [Said 2000b: 180]. It is surely a state

of mind that Berlin saw among the nineteenth century Jews such as Benjamin Disraeli

[Berlin 1997a: 253-286].

Berlin describes him as a man who has certain neurotic character almost the same way

as Said describes the personality of the exiled. Here we may ask: suppose if his neurotic

character was a product of the atmosphere of nationalism among the European people

after the French Revolution, the hardship given to the exiles might not necessarily be

immutable. If, in principle, this condition had disappeared by any change of ideological

or socio-economical transformation, their neurotic character would also have been

weakened. For liberals who seek to some individualistic solution to the problem, this

simultaneous dissolution of both narcissist nationalism and neurotic exile should be the

most desirable one. However, Berlin could not ignore the strength of nationalism which

in fact existed among people -- or even in himself. In that sense he had still caught by the

nineteenth century nationalist Weltanschauung. He had never imagined the possibility of

change caused, for example, by a vast increase of immigrants.

Moreover, in these descriptions of nationalism and Zionism, Berlin hadn’t politically

justified the movement of nationalisms in European countries or the Herderian ideal of

the “need to belong.” In other words, he might regard national sentiment as given, as a

“fact of the world” that exists among us for better or worth, and hoped to develop some

ethics that could tame such sentiment. Having witnessed the movements of nationalism

and establishing national communities, he thought what kind of liberalism was possible in

such a world and tried to articulate it.

29

Finally, it is possibly the case that for Berlin the choice to establish a Jewish nation state

was a “practical judgment” in order to tame their national sentiment reasonably in the

complex political situation of postwar era. He often said that one must choose among

alternatives, not to “remain neutral or uncommitted” [Berlin 1998: 53], and in fact he

supported Cheim Weizmann and the establishment of the Jewish nation state in Palestine.

Such a decision is sometimes inevitable and even necessary. Faced with the question

“what should be done,” one must do something unless the best answer cannot be found.

However, as he also often said, a choice is sometimes accompanied by loss or sacrifice.

The loss of value brought about by our choices makes us look on the loss, and causes

emotion of remorse or regret. It enables us to examine whether the loss was not too great,

and whether other alternatives were possible. Nevertheless, about the sacrifice caused by

the establishment of the state of Israel, he said hardly anything:

R. J. Do you think that the foundation of the state of Israel has solved the Jewish

Problem?

I. B. For individual Jews, no. Not the personal problem, but the political problem, yes.

Israelis do not feel uneasy about themselves. They certainly face other problems and

very serious ones, but they feel comfortable in their own skins. That’s what I mean.

They paid the price, and the result seems worth it. [Berlin & Jahanbegloo 1992: 86-87]

His liberal theory still has worth to be studied for its originality, but it cannot be denied

that it is shadowed by his action. I think it is possible for us not to choose receiving or

discarding all of his legacy, but to receive it selectively. It was Berlin himself who

30

opposed to support someone dogmatically, believing her thought to be absolutely true. If

it is true, we would also be permitted not to do so when we study his thought.

Notes

1 See for example, Raz 1986, Rorty 1989, Macedo 1990.

2 “The human good is shown in rival ways of living. This is no longer only a claim in

moral philosophy. It is a fact of ethical life” [Gray 2000: 34].

3 See also Michael Oakeshott’s essay “On Being Conservative:” “To rein-in one’s own

beliefs and desires, to acknowledge the current shape of things, to feel the balance of

things in one’s hand, to tolerate what is abominable, to distinguish between crime and

sin…” [Oakeshott 1990: 435-6].”

4 See also Wieseltier 1991: 81: “Berlin’s work has been a voluptuous, analytical song of

praise to the intensity and the variety of human development. Berlin loves the human

world in the way that philosophers of another age loved the natural world.”

5 See his references to later Wittgenstein and Peter Winch [Berlin 1978: 166; 2000b: 53n].

6 Amartya Sen also claims that “any choice theorist knows that characterizing the

constraints faced by the chooser is the first step in understanding any choice that is being

made. The point at issue is whether choices exist at all, and to what extent they are

substantial” [Sen 1999: 18].

7 Cf. Margalit 1996: 12-27. Berlin denies anarchism which seeks to maximize negative

freedom: “Total freedom from laws is total anarchy. But I also believe that liberty means

31

the absence of obstacles; but, of course, there must be some controls, that is, obstacles.

The word liberty to me means absence of obstacles, but I am not a disciple of Bakunin or

Kropotokin, I do not preach anarchism. I think if there are no restraints, there can be no

peace, men will destroy each other… There is no society without some authority: and this

limits liberty” [Berlin & Jahanbegloo 1991: 149-150].

8 See Berlin 1969: xlii; Fromm 1941: 284.

9 See also Taylor 1992: 33: “We are introduced to them through exchanges with others

who matter to us – what George Herbert Mead called ‘significant others.’ ”

10 See also Susan Mendus’ distinction between liberal toleration and socialist political

programs [Mendus 1993: 162].

11 Berlin 1997a: 162. See also Hacking 1994, Mori 2005.

12 Cited and retranslated from the Japanese translation of “The Decline of Utopian Ideas

in the West,” based on the originally delivered paper in Tokyo 1976. A few paragraphs

including this words was deleted in the new version of it put on The Crooked Timber of

Humanity [Berlin 1990: 20-48].

13 Mette Hjort criticizes this: “Taylor’s tendency to embrace a Romantic aesthetics has a

number of unappealing consequences, including a normative conception of literature and

a highly pejorative view of popular culture” [Tully 1994: 122]. Charles Larmore also

claims that Herder’s "pluralism fixed chiefly on the variety of societies, and not on

diversity within a society" [Larmore 1987: 96].

14 Berlin denies the logical connection between liberalism and value pluralism [Berlin &

Williams 1994: 309].

32

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―――――――――――――

Tatsuya Mori is a Special Researcher, Institute for Research in Contemporary Political

and Economic Affairs, Waseda University ([email protected]).

37