Of foxes and hedgehogs

09.10.02006
The fox has many tricks; the hedgehog only one great trick. This proverb credited to the 7th century
B.C.E soldier-poet, Archilochus was immortalized by Dutch Humanist Desiderius Erasmus in the
publication of his Adagia in Paris in 1500, and it has been invoked anew by every generation since.
Fifty years ago, historian Isaiah Berlin borrowed Archilochuss parable as the title of his gem of an
essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox. Berlins nominal topic was Tolstoys view of history, but the essay
speaks eloquently about two very different worldviews. As Berlin observed, hedgehogs believe in one
thing, one truth, to the exclusion of all else. Foxes are the opposite, comfortable juggling many
competing and contradictory truths. Hedgehogs are monists; foxes are pluralists. The fox is agile; the
hedgehog doughty and immovable.
And which is the better strategist? Well, when hedgehogs are right, they can be spectacularly right,
but when they are wrong, they are usually spectacularly wrong. Foxes rarely enjoy the hedgehogs
peaks, but they also never experience the hedgehogs disastrous valleys, for foxes are constantly
adjusting their foxy strategy as they learn new information. Hedgehogs are belief-driven; foxes are
discovery-driven. Berlins list of hedgehogs includes Plato, Dante, Hegel Dostoevsky and Nietzsche; in
the pluralist fox column he places Aristotle, Shakespeare, Joyce, Picasso and wily Erasmus who
skillfully threaded his way through the tumult of the early Reformation.
Erasmuss translation of Archilochus (Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum) suggests that
the old soldier-poet thought the hedgehog wiser than the fox, but Berlin was the quintessential
pluralist, and believed that monism is the most destructive of all human inclinations. With memories of
two hedgehog-caused World Wars, it is little surprise that Berlin passionately opposed both Fascism
and Communism, and if he were still alive today (he passed away in 1997), I suspect that he would
view the rise of todays myriad fundamentalisms with equal alarm. It seems we live in a moment
suffering from an overabundance of quarrelling hedgehogs, and a shortage of foxes.