There is much to praise in Freedom from Fear, including Kahan’s compelling case that liberalism must be studied in relation to the concrete conditions which shaped liberal fears and hopes; his fair-minded exploration of liberalism’s complex relationships with democracy, religion, imperialism, feminism, and economic transformation; and his recovery of important, oft-neglected figures. But, as Kahan reminds us, liberalism valorizes conflict. Accordingly, I dwell on my disagreement or doubts concerning Kahan’s definition of liberalism, his depiction of liberalism’s “third wave,” and his suggestions for liberalism’s response to populism.

Among many conundrums in Isaiah Berlin's thought are the apparent tension between a strongly “personalist” approach to ideas and appreciation for Romanticism, and his warnings against the identification of freedom with human perfection and of politics with aesthetic projects, and aversion to any form of excessive “zeal,” as potentially oppressive, callous, and cruel. Berlin the moderate, skeptical liberal coexisted with Berlin the enthusiast and hero-worshipper. This article argues that, over the course of his writing career—both in early, largely unknown writings on contemporary musicians, and in better-known work on the history of ideas and “personal impressions” of contemporaries—Berlin brought these disparate elements of his outlook together through an aesthetizing of heroism, and a close identification of the aesthetic with the ethical. It concludes by suggesting that Berlin's way of understanding heroism may have something to tell us about how commitment to liberalism and appreciation for heroism may coexist and intertwine in ways that contribute to a greater appreciation, and more compelling defense, of liberalism.

As a collection of methods oriented toward the artefacts of human expression and the minds that shaped those expressions, intellectual history seems well placed to mobilize the category of the aesthetic, yet the aesthetic is rarely a focus on methodological discussions. The special forum that this article introduces explores what an “aesthetic approach” to intellectual history might look like. It focuses on the work of leading twentieth-century liberal Isaiah Berlin (1909–97), whose amorphous role in the history of intellectual history means that his work offers a parallax view on important questions of method and approach. In introducing this special forum, this article situates Isaiah Berlin’s distinctive approach and varied work as a historian of ideas and defender of liberalism within several larger contexts. One is Berlin’s response to tendencies in post-World War II British philosophy, and his turn to the history of ideas—an understanding of this area of study as requiring essentially aesthetic qualities of judgment, imagination, pattern recognition, and empathetic entry into the perspectives of others. A second is the development of other, more influential approaches to the history of ideas, to which Berlin’s approach is briefly contrasted. A third is the ideological struggles of the Cold War; in this last connection, we explore the affinities between Berlin’s awareness, and affirmation, of the aesthetic and the ethical in his articulation of liberalism.