"This conception of man, inherited from the Romantic movement, remains in us to this day: it is something which, despite all that mankind has lived through, we in Europe have not abandoned. For this reason, when Hegel and Marx prophesied inevitable doom for all those who defied the march of history, their threats came too late. Hegel and Marx, each in his fashion, tried to tell human beings that only one path to liberty and salvation lay before them - that which was offered them by history, which embodied cosmic reason; that those who failed to adapt themselves, or to realise that rationality, interest, duty, power, success were, in the long run, identical with one another, and with morality and wisdom, would be destroyed by 'the forces of history', to defy which was suicidal folly. But this line of metaphysical intimidation proved on the whole ineffective. Too many men were prepared to defend their principles even against the irresistible power with which Marx threatened to annihilate them. The ideals of individual human beings commanded respect and even reverence, even if no guarantees of objective validity could be provided. Fidelity to an ideal, indestructible regard for what a man himself, whatever his reasons, believed to be true, or right, became something in the name of which men were prepared to defy the big battalions, even if these were identified with the mysterious power of history or reality itself. It was no longer possible to persuade men that Don Quixote was not merely foolish and unpractical and obsolete (which no one had denied), but that because he had ignored the historic position of his nation, or race, or class, he was defying the forces of progress and was therefore vicious and wicked too. Men stood up, as they had always done, and became martyrs for their beliefs, and were admired for it, at times even by those who destroyed them. They were tortured and died for principles which, so at any rate they believed, were universal and binding on all men, part of the human essence in virtue of which men were rightly called men. They could not break these principles, without feeling that they had forfeited all right to human respect. They could not betray them and face themselves or others. For this reason the appeals to realism made to defeated countries in 1940 by victorious German leaders, who said, reasonably enough, that resistance was useless, that the new order was coming, that this order would transform the values of all the world, that to resist was not only to be crushed, but to be written off as fools or enemies of the light by later generations, inevitably conditioned by the morality of the victors - this type of argument failed to break the spirit of those who truly believed in universal human values. Some resisted in the name of universal ideal enshrined in Churches, or national traditions, or objective knowledge of the truth, others stood up for goals which were nonetheless sacred because they were individual and private to their possessors.
          This dedication to ideals, irrespective of their 'source' - it is sometimes even denied that there is a source to seek - has an affinity with the modern existentialist position, which declares that the attempt to seek guarantees for moral beliefs in some vast, objective metaphysical order is no more than a pathetic attempt on the part of men to look for help outside themselves, to lean on something stronger than themselves, to derive rational justification for their acts by proving that they are ordained by some objective establishment; that they do this because they have not the courage to face the fact that there may exist no such establishment, that their values are what they are, and men commit themselves as they do, for no reason, or rather for the only reason that can, in principle, be given, namely that, being what they are, this particular end - whatever it may be - is what they have chosen, is their ultimate goal - that is what choice entails - and beyond it there is no other, and since a final goal justifies all else it cannot itself need justification. Such existentialist are legitimate descendants of that humanist Romanticism which declares that man is independent and is free, that is to say, that the essence of man is not consciousness, nor the invention of tools, but the power of choice. Human history, as a famous Russian thinker once remarked, has no libretto: the actors must improvise their parts. Reality bursts through the patterns in which we try - in our effort to find assurance and comfort - to arrange it. The universe is not a jigsaw puzzle of which we try to piece together the fragments, in the knowledge that one pattern exists, and one alone, in which they must all fit. We are faced with conflicting values: the dogma that they must somehow, somewhere be reconcilable is a mere pious hope; experience shows that it is false. We must choose, and in choosing one thing lose another, irretrievably perhaps. If we choose individual liberty, this may entail a sacrifice of some form of organization which might have led to greater efficiency. If we choose justice, we may be forced to sacrifice mercy. If we choose knowledge, we may sacrifice innocence and happiness. If we choose democracy, we may sacrifice a strength that comes from militarisation or from obedient hierarchies. If we choose equality, we may sacrifice some degree of individual freedom. If we choose to fight for our lives, we may sacrifice many civilized values, much that we have laboured greatly to create. Nevertheless, the glory and dignity of man consist in the fact that it is he who chooses, and is not chosen for, that he can be his own master (even if at times this fills him with fear and sense of solitude), that he is not compelled to purchase security and tranquillity at the price of letting himself be fitted into a neat pigeon-hole in a totalitarian structure which contrives to rob him of responsibility, freedom and respect both for himself and others, at one single stroke" (p. 211-14). 

'Choice'


- Isaiah Berlin,

The crooked timber of humanity (2013)