It began with belonging. This wasn’t some kind of irrelevance, as many liberals had treated it, or something for people to discard as they grew more sophisticated. It was a central feature of the human condition. Like Orwell, Berlin was intent on looking at how people really behaved in their day-to-day lives, and prioritising that empirical self over abstract theories. ‘This rejection of natural ties,’ he said, ‘seems to me noble but misguided. When men complain of loneliness, what they mean is that nobody understands what they are saying: to be understood is to share a common past, common
...more
