Isaiah Berlin: A Life — 7: The Brethren

1. 1. Isaiah Berlin first visited Palestine in 1934, during a lull between the 1929 Arab riots and the 1936 Arab revolt.
2. 2. Berlin was emotionally moved upon seeing a Jewish official in authority for the first time when crossing into Palestine.
3. 3. Berlin felt both appalled and enthralled by Tel Aviv's manic energy, comparing it to the Klondike gold rush due to an influx of German Jewish refugees.
4. 4. Berlin viewed Palestine through English public-school metaphors, seeing the High Commissioner as headmaster and Jews as the disliked house.
5. 5. Berlin predicted that Arab nationalists would become 'sincere, incorruptible, utterly brutal Fascists' within fifteen years.
6. 6. Berlin met Abraham Stern, who later founded the radical Lekhi group, and Stern declared they would fight British plans for a legislative council in Palestine even if blood were shed.
7. 7. A. J. Ayer introduced logical positivism to Oxford, arguing that only empirically verifiable or logically analytic statements are meaningful.
8. 8. Berlin and J. L. Austin formed a close philosophical partnership, with Austin famously remarking that he had never met a true determinist.
9. 9. Berlin organized a Thursday evening philosophy group at All Souls from 1937 to 1939, including Ayer, Austin, Hampshire, and others.
10. 10. Berlin critiqued logical positivism by arguing that verifiability depends on intelligibility, not vice versa, and that many meaningful statements cannot be verified.
11. 11. Berlin's work on Marx shifted his focus from analytical philosophy to the history of ideas, where he found his true intellectual home.
12. 12. Berlin met Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1940, where Wittgenstein dismissed his solipsism paper and gave a memorable analogy about a clock.