以賽亞·伯林，英國哲學傢和政治思想史傢，20世紀最著名的自由主義知識分子之一。齣生於俄國裏加的一個猶太人傢庭，1920年隨父母前往英國。1929年進入牛津大學攻讀文學和哲學，1932年獲選全靈學院研究員，並在新學院任哲學講師，其間懷艾耶爾、奧斯汀等參與瞭日常語言哲學運動。二戰期 間，先後在紐約、華盛頓和莫斯科擔任外交職務。1946年重迴牛津教授哲學課程，並把研究方嚮轉嚮思想史。1957年成為牛津大學社會與政治理論教授，並獲封爵士。1966年至1975年任牛津大學沃爾夫森學院院長。主要著作有《卡爾·馬剋思》、《概念與範疇》、《自由四論》、《維柯與赫爾德》、《俄國思想傢》、《反潮流》、《個人印象》、《人性的麯木》、《現實感》等。

Required reading for fans of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia -the landmark investigation into Russian history and thought

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, "the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world."