College Record 2019

example, by organising, with Jerome Bruner,
a seminar that brought together graduate
students in philosophy, like Hardy and myself,
with graduate students in psychology like
Andrew Meltzoff. Berlin also began friendships
with other graduate students who played
important parts in Hardy’s endeavours, notably
Roger Hausheer and Aileen Kelly. Hardy sums
up Berlin’s egalitarianism when he comments
that ‘despite the large differences in age and
status between us, he never pulled rank, and
mostly treated my enquiries and suggestions
and disagreements as if they were those of an
intellectual equal.’
The first part of the book, chapters 2 to 8, tells
the story of how Hardy coaxed Berlin to agree
to the republication of large numbers of his
essays and lectures, at first into four volumes
of his Selected Writings, and later into several
more. This was no easy task, working against
Berlin’s almost pathological self-depreciation
and fear of adverse criticism, as well as his
alarming tendency to change his mind and
go back on previous agreements. The most
outrageous example of this was in 1976 when
he suddenly withdrew his approval of the
volume containing his philosophical essays.
Hardy eventually managed to persuade him to
rescind his veto, so that most, but not all, of the
essays were republished.
After a rebuff like this, it is not surprising that
Hardy did his best to avoid a recurrence.
Even so, Hardy’s chutzpah on occasions
is breathtaking, for example when he
commissioned Noel Annan to write an
introduction to the volume of Personal
Impressions, without telling Berlin, still less
asking permission from him.
The second half of the book, chapters 9 to
11, is about that aspect of the voluminous
correspondence between Hardy and Berlin
in which Hardy probed Berlin’s ideas and
sought, not always successfully, to give them
greater clarity. I am particularly interested
in the chapter on Pluralism and Religion,
having spent a good deal of my working life
inspecting independent religious schools for
the Department of Education (and Science)
as a representative of an ostensibly pluralist
state, seeking to persuade Jewish, Muslim
and Evangelical Christian proprietors to
espouse a more liberal approach without
abandoning their deeply-held beliefs. As
the laws governing independent schools
tightened up, it was no longer just a matter
of persuasion: schools, rather paradoxically,
can now be compelled to be liberal. A
definition of ‘Fundamental British Values’ first
surfaced in the Prevent strategy and was
then incorporated into secondary legislation
in the Independent School Regulations
which specify that proprietors must actively
promote ‘the fundamental British values of
democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty,
and mutual respect and tolerance of those
with different faiths and beliefs.’ While there
is nothing exclusively British about these
values, they are undoubtedly liberal.
For understandable biographical reasons,
Hardy’s view of religious adherence is rather
narrow. He writes as if people join a religion
by giving intellectual assent to a series of
theological propositions, and are then bound
to accept all the logical consequences of
these propositions. While Berlin avows that
he is tone-deaf to religious sentiment, his
understanding of religion is much broader:
even if religion may be theologically empty, it
is anthropologically of great significance.
In a book peppered with accounts of
Berlin forgetting events and conversations
completely, and even denying that he
had ever written essays and lectures that
Hardy brought to light, I feel myself in
good company when I say that I have no
recollection whatsoever of the conversation
with me that Hardy reports (pp. 48 and 49),
though I remain flattered that he thought
my opinion might cut some ice with Berlin.
THE RECORD
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