The Hedgehog and the Fox

[sawyl]

Here are a few initial thoughts on Isaiah Berlin's essay The Hedgehog and the Fox. I'm sure I'll have more once I've had time to reflect, but my initial reaction is one of stunned astonishment.

According to Berlin, people can be roughly divided into two intellectual categories, depending on their outlooks on life. The first category composes the monists, people who hold a single overarching view that colours every aspect of their outlook. These people, who include amongst their number their number the likes of Dostoevsky, are the hedgehogs. The second category are pluralists, whose lives encompass many different ideas, ideas which may be eclectic and which may on cohere because they adhere to yet another idea or standard. These, Berlin says, are the foxes.

Having created these two groups, Berlin then raises a difficult question: to which group does Leo Tolstoy belong? On the face of it, this should be an easy question to answer because of the sheer volume of information available on Tolstoy's life, writings and ideas, but in practice it turns out to be quite difficult. According to Berlin, this problem exists because, whilst Tolstoy was by nature a fox, he believed in being a hedgehog and set out to systematically persuade people of this. Berlin sets out to explore this dichotomy by examining Tolstoy's theories on history, as expressed most comprehensively in War and Peace

As an intellectual experience, Hedgehog is positively thrilling. The savage brilliance of Tolstoy's mind shines through, with his scathing view of Hegel ("unintelligible gibberish interspersed with platitudes") and his whithering spoof of history as explained by the actions of great men:

By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. At this time there was a man of genius in France — Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to re-establish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year '07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year '11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people.

Rather than favouring the theory that history is shaped by great men who wield some nebulous form of power, Tolstoy takes the view that history emerges from the chaotic actions of ordinary people. Thus the events that historians see as significant, such as Pyotr Bagration on the field at Austerlitz, are merely the events that people chose to remember, whilst any number other events, which may be just as significant but which fail to contribute to the historical picture are forgotten.

Fascinating, frustrating and beguiling stuff.