The Hedgehog and the Fox
The Hedgehog and the Fox is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Lev Tolstoy's theory of history.
The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: πόλλ οἶδ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.")
In Berlin's analysis, he compares Tolstoy to a fox (but a fox who wants to become a hedgehog), and portrays him as a person who draws on a wide and often disparate array of knowledge and wisdom. He then contrasts Tolstoy to other authors and intellectuals of his time, called hedgehogs, who frequently displayed a fanatical adherence to one big idea, at the exclusion of possible objections and alternatives to that idea.
The essay has been published separately and as part of the collection Russian Thinkers, edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly.
Some authors, for instance Michael Walzer, have used the same pattern of description on Berlin, as a person who knows many things, compared to the purported narrowness of many other contemporary political philosophers.
External link
 | This article about a non-fiction book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |