When a Sage Dies, All Are His Kin

Summary

I

‘When a sage dies,’ says the Talmud, ‘all are his kin.’ 1 The rabbis were speaking practically, not philosophically. They were ruling that, when a sage dies, everyone must observe some of the practices of mourning. When a sage dies, for example, all must rend their garments. ‘But do you really think that all are his kin?’ the text asks itself, incredulously. For all are obviously not his kin. It is a big world. The injunction seems sentimental, onerous. ‘So say, rather, that all are like his kin.’ A distinction! But it is not enough of a distinction to release anybody from the duty to mourn.

And if you never knew the man, if you never sat in the dust at his feet, if you never heard him teach? Still he is not a stranger. The Talmud proceeds to the story of the death of Rabbi Safra, a scholar and a merchant of the fourth century. ‘When Rabbi Safra died, the rabbis did not rend their garments, because they said: “We did not study with him ourselves.” But Abbaye said to them: “Does it say ‘when your master dies’? No, it says ‘when a sage dies’! Besides, every day in the house of study we consider his views.”’ If you know the teaching, you know the teacher. You are required to rend.

In Oxford, last week, a sage died. And every day in the house of study we consider his views. Who are Isaiah Berlin's kin, who must mourn?

II

The pluralists are his kin, and they must mourn.

Isaiah Berlin was the most original, the most lucid, the most erudite, and the most relentless enemy of the idea of totality in his age, which was an age of totality. More precisely, an age of failed totality; and it owed that failure, which was the late and saving glory of an inglorious modernity, not least to the notions of this professor and his crowded, benevolent mind. ‘It seems to me,’ he wrote, ‘that the belief that some single formula can in principle be found whereby all the diverse ends of men can be harmoniously realised is demonstrably false.’The geniality of the statement should not obscure the scale of the claim. It is the language of a don, but it is the conception of a world-historical thinker.