The delusion that ultimate ends can be merged into a single majestic monolithic architectonic philosophical bloc this, he believed, is the perennial source of fanaticism, destruction, bloodshed and misery in human history. Because ultimate ends are so often in conflict, human beings are confronted by the agony of choice. Here Isaiah added a darker dimension that one misses in those other great anti-monists, the ironical Hume and the ebullient James. If you choose one value, you must sacrifice another, Isaiah said. No gain could be made without a corresponding loss.
Choice imposes costs.
The ineluctable clash of values is tragic in its implication and its effect. At the same time, it places a premium on tolerance and compromise in human affairs. But tolerance and compromise, Isaiah emphasized, do not enjoin appeasement and capitulation. Isaiah was above all a most civilised man in this horribly uncivilised century the most terrible century in Western history , he called it. Wise, brave, kind, unaffected, an exemplar of moral courage, unalterably committed to the politics of decency, he was himself a stirring prediction of what a truly civilised world might be.