Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism, premised on liberty to choose from among incommensurable goods, yields to pluralism as the irreducible condition of humanity. Straddling Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic will, albeit favoring natural law and so closer to the latter, Berlin’s work shows choice is the essence of human nature, and that philosophy can help think about dilemmas presented by competing ideas; but it cannot solve them. Man’s nature is a result of choices, and so is malleable. On the Enlightenment side, Berlin sees Kantian freedom consisting of obedience to rational will. But it is a negative liberty: if positive freedom were true, conflict could be a symptom of disorder. Instead self-creation (not autonomy) gives value to freedom. Thus he rejects a universal worldview or perfect life: goods cannot be hierarchically assembled or ranked. Contra Plato and Aristotle, Berlin contends human truths are competitive, not unifying. Turning toward the Romantic, which is also the author’s preference, laws of historical development are indefensible while Berlin asserts choices are ‘inherently intelligible’ to others and so deserving of respect. Gray revisits Berlin’s contention that the German Romantics, especially Herder, shattered prototypical Enlightenment rationalism. The author then extends Berlin’s work, contending his ‘agonistic liberalism’ is what remains of rational, moral characteristic of humanity once pluralism is established. But the ground does not hold, in Gray’s view: a choice derives from recognition there is no universal authority. (Grey asserts the Romantics ironically defend Liberal liberty more completely than the Philosophes.) The impression is Gray has enlisted Berlin for postmodernism, as a bridge from respectability to radical claims. As to Berlin himself, it seems he is willing to prove the philosopher’s claim that we don’t know much – and then stops trying. Berlin searches for answers instead of revising the question in the modern context. Perhaps he abandoned philosophy because pluralism is inconsistent with the search for knowledge? Separately, it is annoying that Berlin is perpetually running down Burke as a forerunner to radical nationalists, defined as group choice premised on folkways. (In correspondence with Conor Cruise O’Brien, published in the latter’s Great Melody, Berlin says he doesn’t understand Burke very well!) A strangely enjoyable book, for all its political baggage, because it clarifies the left’s worldview.