The Hedgehog and the Fox

I'm not sure how many of you out there are familiar with the philosopher Isaiah Berlin..actually, I can't say I'm familiar with him myself, I keep mixing him up with the composer Irving Berlin is all I can say.

But he (Isaiah B.!) is credited with an essay that in turn is based on an ancient Greek fragment, "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin applied this nugget of wisdom to the world of writing and thinking, dividing famous poets and philosophers into two categories:
foxes, who divide their interests among a wide variety of experiences and thoughts and who can't be associated with a single big idea, and hedgehogs, whose view of the world is founded on such a single big idea.

In Berlin's view, examples of hedgehogs include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust, whereas Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce are represented as foxes.

In the field of politics, my contribution would be that U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan also symbolize those two categories, with Carter a typical micro-manager who famously even involved himself in the scheduling of the White House tennis court, being a prototypical fox, and Reagan, who focused his Presidency on a few major goals ("lower taxes", "defeat communism"), set the agenda and then leaned back and let his staff do the work, standing out as a typical hedgehog.

Now, my literary and philosophical knowledge is not sufficient to analyse how fitting Berlin's categorizations are. The political example shows that you may expand the original saying somewhat to say "the hedgehog focuses on a few big things". The point I want to make is that all of us human beings have to deal with getting through this life successfully, given a limited set of ressources. And those who single-mindedly invest those ressources into a single goal or interest (the "hedgehogs") will likely go farther in that field than those who spread their ressources and interests far and wide (the "foxes"). Conversely, while they may end up more successful in their chosen field, the hedgehogs miss out on many of the joys of dabbling in various hobbies, interests and domains.

Still, the idea of hedgehogs being "better" or "wiser" than foxes (or vice versa) is certainly not true. Rather, as in many things, there has to be a "goodness of fit" among the individual's thinking style and his environment. There will be situations where it is adaptive to juggle many things simultaneously, whereas other situations may demand focus on one or two big issues. From a lifespan perspective, it would seem foolish to focus on too few things too early in life, before you had a chance to sample a wider selection of options and interests. Then, as life goes on, it may indeed be wise to focus on a few ideas and concepts that have turned out to make sense to you. Another possibility is that we need to be focused and goal-driven in our professional pursuits, while it will enhance our personal growth to have many interests in the private domain.

So, whether you see yourself as a fox or a hedgehog...or maybe as a mix of the two, I hope you have enjoyed these ramblings. Comments are always appreciated.