Isaiah Berlin for Thai Liberty

Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909 – 1997) was a Russian-British liberal thinker. He might be considered as one of the most important liberal thinkers in the twentieth century. When he was a child he had seen the Russian revolution, as an adult working for British diplomatic service in Washington DC and Russia, after that he became the most influential cold war intellectual to fight for liberty against dictatorship. Even he had an immense influence on western political thinking but few Thai academics have known his work not to mention people in general.

Influenced by him, I set up this project working with friends or sometimes alone by myself to translate his work to Thai readers who might find some interesting insights in IB vast understanding on liberty, counter-enlightenment thinkers, Russian thinkers, and literature, etc.  

So far, I and friends produced a book called Messages to Our Century: Three essays for Our Century, the first book introducing him to the Thai public audiences. Apart from this, we translated many of his essays also. In the future might be interesting to collect it and publish it into books.

For this project, it will not be possible if I do not get kindness, generosity, and encouragement of Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle the trustee of The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust of Wolfson College, Oxford University. I would like to thank them here.