Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays - Second Edition

I haven't finalized my conclusions about the book, but i do think lit is worth the read.

This book is very useful in showing how Berlin came to believe the understanding of the history of ideas as vital to our present understanding of ourselves-perhaps more important philosophy itself.

I'm not able to evaluate the philosophy. One reason is that I don't have enough background. Another reason is that the writing is so atrocious that it's hard to make sense of the essays. I've copied below the third sentence of the essay "Verification":"The thesis which I shall try to establish is that the principle of verifiability or verification, after playing a decisive role in the history of modern philosophy, by clearing up confusions, exposing major errors and indicating what were and what were not questions proper for philosophers to ask, which has enabled it to exercise in our day a function not unlike that which Kant's critical method performed for his generation, cannot, for all that, be accepted as a final criterion of empirical significance, since such acceptance leads to wholly untenable consequences."Mr. Simmons, my high school English teacher, would have wept.