Volume 43, Number 15 · October 3, 1996
On Political Judgment
By Isaiah Berlin
What is it to have good judgment in politics? What is it to be politically wise, or gifted, to be a political genius, or even to be no more than politically competent, to know how to get things done? Perhaps one way of looking for the answer is by considering what we are saying when we denounce statesmen, or pity them, for not possessing these qualities. We sometimes complain that they are blinded by prejudice or passion, but blinded to what? We say that they don't understand the times they live in, or that they are resisting something called 'the logic of the facts,' or are 'trying to put the clock back,' or that 'history is against them,' or that they are ignorant or incapable of learning, or else unpractical idealists, visionaries, Utopians, hypnotized by the dream of some fabulous past or some unrealizable future.
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