TEHRAN – Prominent Russian-British theorist and philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s book “Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas” has been published in Persian in Tehran.

Edris Ranji is the translator of the book, which has been released by Qoqnus Publications. 

In the first section of the book written in 1976, Berlin studies the philosophical ideas of Giovanni Battista Vico, a profound and original thinker, who, after being overshadowed by Montesquieu, has been rediscovered at intervals ever since, but has even more to say to the present age than to his own. 

Johann Gottfried Herder, the subject of the second study, although commonly regarded as the father of European nationalism, originated three perhaps equally influential currents of thought: populism, the idea of artistic commitment and 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.  

Isaiah Berlin was renowned for his conversational brilliance, his defense of liberalism, his attacks on political extremism and intellectual fanaticism, and his accessible, coruscating writings on the history of ideas.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian version of “Vico and Herder: two studies in the history of ideas” by Isaiah Berlin.

ABU/YAW