The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History

by Isaiah Berlin

Book Overview

The masterly essay on Tolstoy's view of history, in which Sir Isaiah underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too. --Arnold Toynbee

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671606018
• ISBN13: 9780671606015
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Toward a deep knowing

The fox looks every which way when he runs across the fields, but the hedgehog focuses almost exclusively on his burrow. So which was Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace (Modern Library Classics)? Along the way to examining this quetion, Isaiah Berlin raises some big questions himself about the nature of history, human experience, and whether our world is knowable. This is a terrific essay, very clear and lucid. Isaiah Berlin's reasoned argument is a delight to the modern reader. It does not lose anything by being over 50 years old--in fact the whole discussion takes on a timeless quality. When you are reading Isaiah Berlin, you are under the spell of a great thinker and a great writer. Berlin takes his title from the fragment of the Greek poet, Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin concludes that Tolstoy is both together. Human will and the progress of history cannot be explained by a specific line of scientific inquiry and discovery but by an expanded awareness of the flow of life experience. That's what Tolstoy is getting at according to Berlin. "And the most important and most pervasive of these is the crucial line that divides the surface from the depths--on the one hand the world of perceptible, describable, and analysable data, both physical and psycological, . . . and on the other, the order which, as it were, contains and determines the structure of experience, the framework in which it--that is, we and all that we experience--must be conceived as being set, that which enters into our habits of thought, action, feeling, our emotions, hopes, wishes, ourways of talking, believing, reacting, being . . ." We are all immersed in this medium, the flow of life. Tolsoty pportrays this vividly in certain passages of War and Peace (Modern Library Classics). His heroes Pierre, Prince Andrey and others arrive at moments of realization. There are strong similarities between an epiphany about the flow of life and history and the realizations reached by Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Emerson. A deep knowing of the flow of life was holistic, the "one big thing" which Tolstoy, the fox, was tending towards, though despite this "hedgehog" idea, Tolstoy always remains the fox because of his mastery of detail of the world in all its particulars. Tolstoy shows great mastery of concrete, particular details and descriptions, and the nuances of character. Of course, in later life Tolstoy became converted to a form of Christianity based on the Sermon on the Mount. In The Kingdom of God is Within You & What is Art? (New Edition) (see my review), a book which influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Tolstoy explains these views at great length, arguing there for pacifism, and presenting a deep-seated antipathy toward government of any kind, and the Orthodox Church as currently constituted. Isaiah Berlin, who was born in Riga, Latvia and moved to St. Petersburg, Russia where, as a child

A memorable essay in the history of ideas

This is perhaps the most famous essay ever written in the history of ideas. Berlin analyzes the mind of Tolstoy as revealed in 'War and Peace'. He uses a quotation from Aristochulus , "The hedgehog knows one big thing, but the fox knows many little things "He then categorizes various intellectual figures as hedgehogs or foxes. He says that Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. In other words Tolstoy longed to put all reality into one great explanatory system but his faithfulness to his own remarkable sense of perception led him to see everywhere the fine distinctions and individual differences which constitute his own richly varied world. What is interesting is that Berlin himself was fundamentally a fox in the world of ideas. He believed that there could be no one fundamental system explaining all. He not simply reveled in the variety of ideas, but he thought in terms of values that ' ideal ends' even within the individual's own thought are incompatible. That is that it is not simply a question of the ' variety of the world' which confounds the system - builder but the ' inherent contradictions ' within it , which cannot be resolved into any great single Platonic or Hegelian system. A celebrator of the variety of life and existence Berlin saw that Tolstoy could represent and create such variety in the highest possible way while still somehow wishing he were able to unite it all into one. Apparently there is 'no unified field theory' in the world of history or the history of ideas , either.

Tolstoy's views on history elucidated

Sir Isaiah Berlin has written a critical acclaim of the historic views of famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy as expressed in one of his masterpieces "War and Piece". In 'The Hedgehog and The Fox' (1953), Dr. Berlin compares and contracts the monist and pluralist historical philosophies. According to Archilochus "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This can be interpreted that there is a philosophy of a single undiminished holistic truth or principle governing all history, or there is a myriad little ideas, truths and inclinations which together govern mens historical experience. Tolstoy, according to Berlin, is a fox (whose talent is by the way in precisely being a fox), who is however convinced in the ways of the hedgehog. Tolstoy is at his greatest when he describes the subtle undertones of human existence, these barely perceptible little differences which makes living so full and colorful, range of emotions and feelings. He does not believe, however, that this is all that is, and insists on some ill-defined fundamental truth. This makes his writing wooden, unhistorical, and simplistic at times. Berlin makes a perceptive observations on the interest of Tolstoy's in some of the figures of Counter-Enlightenment (such as Maestre and Vico). These proponents of the view of the world which denies all-pervasive powers of reductionist science and allocates the central place to a simple idea (e.g. Christian moral idea) are closer to Tolstoy; and from this point of view and interest Tolstoy's last "religious" period owes its inspiration. Berlin shows Tolstoy as a tragic genius riddled with contradictions and frustrations of misapprehension of his enormous talents in inability to say what he wanted to say the most - paint a true picture of human historical experience. Style of Berlin's polemic is as always colorful, insightful, supremely observant and scholarly. Essay is no longer then 75 pages and would make for a delightful Sunday afternoon reading. Highly recommended!

A brilliant book....

I really want to disagree with the reviewer below who said that this book is "overly academic" and "not interesting to someone without a serous research interest in Tolstoy". C'mon.This is a HIGHLY readable book though probably only one that should be read after having read 'War and Peace'. In combination, the boring sections of 'War and Peace' and this book provide a pretty interesting dialogue and line of thought that can be comprehended by most anyone.....This is a beautiful book and one that can be appreciated by tons the teeming multitudes and not just self-righteous undergraduates at small colleges in Massachusetts. Berlin is a very readable philosopher, which explains much of the reason WHY he is held in such esteem in the Anglo-American philosophical community....Finally, who could ever say that this little tiny red book was worth neither the effort nor the expense. A must-buy.

A view of existance, history that many never think.

An easy read--written in extremely beautiful language--that makes one re-think of the world and society around.