The Crooked Timber of Humanity
E80221
The Crooked Timber of Humanity is a collection of essays by philosopher Isaiah Berlin exploring pluralism, the limits of human perfectibility, and the complexities of political and moral life.
All labels observed (3)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Crooked Timber of Humanity canonical | 5 |
| The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas | 2 |
| Isaiah Berlin’s collected essays | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T641473 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Crooked Timber of Humanity Context triple: [Isaiah Berlin, notableWork, The Crooked Timber of Humanity]
-
A.
The Open Society and Its Enemies
The Open Society and Its Enemies is Karl Popper’s influential two-volume critique of totalitarianism and historicism, defending liberal democracy and the principles of an open society.
-
B.
The Poverty of Historicism
The Poverty of Historicism is a philosophical work by Karl Popper that critiques the idea that history unfolds according to discoverable laws and argues against using such supposed laws to predict or control social development.
-
C.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Lectures on the Philosophy of History is a posthumously published collection of G. W. F. Hegel’s university lectures that presents his influential view of world history as a rational process expressing the development of human freedom.
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D.
Reason and Revolution
Reason and Revolution is a seminal 1941 philosophical work by Herbert Marcuse that critically interprets Hegel and traces the development of critical theory and modern social thought.
-
E.
One-Dimensional Man
One-Dimensional Man is a 1964 philosophical critique by Herbert Marcuse that analyzes how advanced industrial societies create conformist, "one-dimensional" thinking that undermines genuine freedom and critical consciousness.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Crooked Timber of Humanity Target entity description: The Crooked Timber of Humanity is a collection of essays by philosopher Isaiah Berlin exploring pluralism, the limits of human perfectibility, and the complexities of political and moral life.
-
A.
The Open Society and Its Enemies
The Open Society and Its Enemies is Karl Popper’s influential two-volume critique of totalitarianism and historicism, defending liberal democracy and the principles of an open society.
-
B.
The Poverty of Historicism
The Poverty of Historicism is a philosophical work by Karl Popper that critiques the idea that history unfolds according to discoverable laws and argues against using such supposed laws to predict or control social development.
-
C.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Lectures on the Philosophy of History is a posthumously published collection of G. W. F. Hegel’s university lectures that presents his influential view of world history as a rational process expressing the development of human freedom.
-
D.
Reason and Revolution
Reason and Revolution is a seminal 1941 philosophical work by Herbert Marcuse that critically interprets Hegel and traces the development of critical theory and modern social thought.
-
E.
One-Dimensional Man
One-Dimensional Man is a 1964 philosophical critique by Herbert Marcuse that analyzes how advanced industrial societies create conformist, "one-dimensional" thinking that undermines genuine freedom and critical consciousness.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
essay collection
ⓘ
non-fiction book ⓘ |
| author | Isaiah Berlin ⓘ |
| containsEssay |
Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth-Century European Thought
ⓘ
European Unity and Its Vicissitudes ⓘ Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism ⓘ The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will ⓘ The Crooked Timber of Humanity self-link ⓘ The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West ⓘ The Pursuit of the Ideal ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | United Kingdom ⓘ |
| discussesThinker |
Giambattista Vico
ⓘ
Immanuel Kant ⓘ Johann Gottfried Herder ⓘ Joseph de Maistre ⓘ |
| editor | Henry Hardy ⓘ |
| genre |
intellectual history
ⓘ
philosophy ⓘ political philosophy ⓘ |
| hasCentralTheme |
anti-utopianism
ⓘ
complexity of political and moral life ⓘ liberalism ⓘ limits of human perfectibility ⓘ value pluralism ⓘ |
| hasEdition | Princeton Classics edition ⓘ |
| hasForm | collection of previously published essays ⓘ |
| hasPerspectiveOn |
Enlightenment rationalism
ⓘ
Romanticism ⓘ counter-Enlightenment thought ⓘ |
| hasSubject |
history of ideas
ⓘ
liberal political thought ⓘ moral philosophy ⓘ political ideologies ⓘ |
| influenced | contemporary liberal political theory ⓘ |
| isPartOf |
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Isaiah Berlin’s collected essays
|
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainIdea |
conflict of genuine human values is often tragic and ineliminable
ⓘ
political projects aiming at total harmony are dangerous ⓘ |
| philosophicalPositionExpressed |
liberal anti-perfectionism
ⓘ
value pluralism ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1990 ⓘ |
| publisher | Princeton University Press ⓘ |
| subjectOf | scholarly analysis in political theory ⓘ |
| titleAlludesTo | "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made" ⓘ |
| titleOrigin | Immanuel Kant quotation ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Crooked Timber of Humanity Description of subject: The Crooked Timber of Humanity is a collection of essays by philosopher Isaiah Berlin exploring pluralism, the limits of human perfectibility, and the complexities of political and moral life.
Referenced by (8)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
→
isPartOf
→
The Crooked Timber of Humanity
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
this entity surface form:
Isaiah Berlin’s collected essays
subject surface form:
Princeton Classics edition of The Crooked Timber of Humanity
subject surface form:
Princeton Classics edition of The Crooked Timber of Humanity
this entity surface form:
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
subject surface form:
Princeton Classics edition of The Crooked Timber of Humanity
this entity surface form:
The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas