ISAIAH BERLIN
15
other. None acquired
total
ascendancy; none was obsessive; none was
wholly dominant. In Russia there was an ideological vacuum, so that
any idea that gained ground could in the relative absence of competi–
tion become very powerful. Nothing transforms ideas so much as
their being taken seriously.
Krau.ze:
Was what they had a passion for ideas or a passion for ideolo–
gies?
Berlin:
They had little passion for ideas that were not ideological. The
intellectuals were not gready interested in chemical ideas or physical
ideas; they were so, but not obsessively. 'I\'hat they wanted to know
was how to live: how to organize their lives in a humanly acceptable
pattern. What they wanted to know was how a decent society could be
created. All Turgenev's novels are filled with this-his leading charac–
ters
think
about equality, about liberty, whether liberty of the individ–
ual or of the group; they seek social justice; they believe in progress.
These are ethical,
social,
above all ideological, issues.
Krau.ze:
Ideological issues bring us to values. Values are different and not
easily reconcilable. But in the Latin American countries the common
view tends to be the opposite. Equality is often understood as a kind of
"melting value," a value that contains-or at least is preferable to–
the rest. Could you tell us a litde about the tensions between values,
especially the tensions between liberty and equality?
Berlin:
As you know, I believe-and so far as I can see not many writers
on political or ethical issues believe-that the ultimate values that
human beings pursue are not at all times the same. Throughout his–
tory there are changes, but broadly speaking there are certain basic
ends that men, in various forms, pursue. All men admire courage.
Most men admire intelligence. All men seek at the very least a mini–
mum of personal liberty-perhaps not as passionately as some
think–
ers maintain-but they do seek to be free of chains. All men seek hap–
piness, whether they know it or not, to some degree. Some men seek
knowledge, some seek justice, power, rational organization. Some
seek the realization of all their faculties. Others hate most of all being
dependents, materially or spiritually. Some of these values appear to
me to be ultimate values, that is, they are not means to other values.
Some of them seem incompatible with one another. The classical
belief is that ultimate values only seem to collide because of ignorance
on our part: we do not know how to realize them all because we don't
understand ourselves, don't understand nature.
If
we were omni–
scient, or at least if we knew enough, we could conceive of-and who
