For Berlin, the relationship with others is “not merely a contingent fact about men” but part “of what we mean by men, a part of the definition of human beings as a species”...
It was Herder, the German philosopher of history, who first drew wide attention to the proposition that among elementaiy human needs—as basic as those for food, shelter, security, procreation, communication—is the need to belong to a particular group, united by some common links-especially language, collective memones, continuous life upon the same soil, to which some added characteristics of which we have heard much in our times—race, blood, religion, a sense of common mission, and the like.
... Individuals cannot define themselves apart from their relationship with others. In “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958) Berlin writes: “My individual self is not something which I can detach from my relationship with others or from those attributes of myself which consist in their attitude towards me” (FEL: 156; L: 202). One cannot define oneself without reference to the group to which the person belongs: “... I am a social being in a deeper sense than that of interaction with others. For am I not what I am to some degree, in virtue of what others think and feel me to be” (FEL: 155; L: 201). For Berlin, the ideas about oneself depend upon interaction with others. A person’s moral and social identity is intelligible only in terms of the social network...
The third reason for the need to belong is the psychological and social human need to have intimate communication and to be truly understood. This can achieved only when ways of life are shared:
When men complain of loneliness, what they mean is that nobody understands what they are saying. To be understood is to share a common past, common feelings and language, common assumptions, the possibility of intimate communication—in short, to share common forms of life. (P1: 258)
True understanding is possible only between people with a common language and background. For Berlin,
loneliness is not just the absence of others but far more a matter of living among people who do not understand what one is saying; they can truly understand only if they belong to a community where communication is effortless, almost instinctive. (Gardels 1991: 21)
... The fourth reason is the need to be recognised either by other groups within a society or by the international community. Recognition in this case means being regarded as full members of society without being ignored as a minority and the right to deviate culturally from the majority culture. For an individual, the recognition that one is a member of a particular group belongs to “some of my personal and permanent characteristics” (FEL: 155; L: 201). When this is denied, it often results in a hankering after status and recognition. This longing can be so intense that unrecognised people are prepared to fight collectively and die for that cause. The need to be recognised also explains why minorities are prepared to give up a considerable part of their negative liberty and to obey despotic leaders who are at least members of their own group or race and not some colonial oppressor (FEL: 155; L: 201). Berlin accuses contemporary liberals of often being blind to the need to belong and to be recognised (FEL: 162; L: 208).
In his view of human nature Berlin adopts the Herderian idea that individuals need to be embedded in a group for a proper formation of their identity. This is not just some accidental self-chosen group but a community with a collective identity that is based on a common history, language and traditions. This idea remained a vital part of this thought during his whole life and made him anti-cosmopolitan. In 1991 Berlin told his interviewer Nathan Gardels, "Like Herder, I regard cosmopolitanism as empty. People can’t develop unless they belong to a culture"...
Berlin recognises an important existential aspect in pathological nationalism, namely that people can find meaning and purpose in life through the identification of the individual self with thc collective self...
Berlin stressed that the tragic nature of this [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict and the equal claims the Arabs and the Jews have. It is a collision between two morally acceptable claims. “Hegel is right in saying that the essence of tragedy is the clash between right and right”"
--- Isaiah Berlin: a value pluralist and humanist view of human nature and the meaning of life; The Need to Belong and to be Recognised / Connie Aarsbergen-Ligtvoet
