by Isaiah Berlin, interviewed by Nathan Gardels

About the authors: Isaiah Berlin is a well-known political philosopher and a fellow at All Soul’s College in Oxford, England. He is the author of several books, including Karl Marx and The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Nathan Gardels is the editor of New Perspectives Quarterly magazine.

NPQ: According to Harold Isaacs, author of Idols of the Tribe, today we are witnessing a “convulsive ingathering” of nations. Open ethnic warfare rages in Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union has been rent asunder by resurgent nationalist republics.

The new world order built from the rubble of the Berlin Wall has already gone the way of the Tower of Babel. What are the origins of nationalism? Whence this ingathering storm"

Berlin: The Tower of Babel was meant to be unitary in character; a single great building...