Of Hedgehogs and Foxes - a footnote
"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by Isaiah Berlin, which takes its title from the following fragment of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Archilochus:
That's it. That's the fragment in its entirety - all that remains of the original poem.
Although nobody can tell exactly what Archilochus meant, Berlin uses the fox/hedgehog distinction to describe two types of personality, or, more accurately, two types of mentality.
Hedgehogs tend to see things in terms of one overarching idea or set of principles, whereas foxes tend to experience the world in multifarious terms.
This distinction loosely corresponds to some of the dichotomies we use everyday to divide the world into "two kinds of people" - e.g. idealists (hedgehogs) and realists (foxes).
In Berlin's words:
"For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."
Berlin goes on to list a number of celebrated hedgehogs and foxes to illustrate the distinction, for instance: Plato (hedgehog) and Aristotle (fox), Dante (hedgehog) and Shakespeare (fox).
"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is actually an essay about Tolstoy (specifically, it is about Tolstoy's view of history) and the discussion of hedgehogs and foxes is preliminary to Berlin's thesis that Tolstoy is one thinker who cannot easily be categorized in these terms because he is a fox who wanted to be, and tried hard to be, a hedgehog. He thus tried to develop ideas that were at odds with his own nature.
It has struck me that John McCain suffers from an analogous inner division. I would not compare him to Tolstoy in any other way, of course.
The fox knows many things,
But the hedgehog knows one big thing.
But the hedgehog knows one big thing.
That's it. That's the fragment in its entirety - all that remains of the original poem.
Although nobody can tell exactly what Archilochus meant, Berlin uses the fox/hedgehog distinction to describe two types of personality, or, more accurately, two types of mentality.
Hedgehogs tend to see things in terms of one overarching idea or set of principles, whereas foxes tend to experience the world in multifarious terms.
This distinction loosely corresponds to some of the dichotomies we use everyday to divide the world into "two kinds of people" - e.g. idealists (hedgehogs) and realists (foxes).
In Berlin's words:
"For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."
Berlin goes on to list a number of celebrated hedgehogs and foxes to illustrate the distinction, for instance: Plato (hedgehog) and Aristotle (fox), Dante (hedgehog) and Shakespeare (fox).
"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is actually an essay about Tolstoy (specifically, it is about Tolstoy's view of history) and the discussion of hedgehogs and foxes is preliminary to Berlin's thesis that Tolstoy is one thinker who cannot easily be categorized in these terms because he is a fox who wanted to be, and tried hard to be, a hedgehog. He thus tried to develop ideas that were at odds with his own nature.
It has struck me that John McCain suffers from an analogous inner division. I would not compare him to Tolstoy in any other way, of course.