Against the "Engineers of Human Souls": Isaiah Berlin's Anti-Managerial Liberalism.

In this paper I offer a reinterpretation of the origins and content of Isaiah Berlin's political thought. Through an examination of post-World War II social and political thought, and Berlin's response to what he saw as the central intellectual trends of this period, I suggest that his development as a political thinker -- and, particularly, his account of liberty -- was motivated not only by opposition to Soviet Communism (as the conventional view holds), but also by a reaction against what I call 'managerialism' -- the mixture of paternalism and the application of a scientific or technical model of governance to society. Berlin's critique of the assumptions behind and implications of 'managerialism' runs through his writings on politics, history, philosophy and the social sciences. This opposition to 'managerialism' was intertwined with his account of liberty; and re-examining Berlin's account of liberty in light of his 'anti-managerialism' reveals a greater sympathy on his part for 'positive liberty' than has generally been recognized by interpreters of Berlin's work. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]