Foxes And Hedgehogs

Long, long ago, when family values were more than a TV show, smoking was the height of chic, women were chained to the kitchen sink and a moon landing was a naked posterior alighting somewhere, a man called Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay.

He was a philosopher, thinker and liberal. He lectured. He did important things like creating an entire college at Oxford and wearing a hat. He was considered by some to be the Socrates of the modern world, even though he never sported a toga (or if he did, it was in private).

The essay was called “The Hedgehog and The Fox” and was based upon a fragment from an ancient Greek poem – “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. In it, he divided the world of writers and thinkers into two types of people.

The hedgehogs are those who see their work and the whole world through the lens of a single, dominating idea. Everything they do is influenced by this singular focus. There are plenty of better (highly classical) examples but I always think Tolkien is an easy one to see, since his entire output centred around Middle Earth.

The foxes, on the other hand, view the world through a kaleidoscope of ideas and influences. They change subjects, digress, follow ideas around wherever they go and regularly take new concepts on board. They’re like intellectual stalkers, always on the lookout for an attractive thought to sneak up on and have their way with. Shakespeare fits the bill here – not because of his dodgy flasher-in-a-trench-coat goatee but because of the vast array of different subjects  he covered.

Of course, the foxes and hedgehogs thing has been applied to a bunch of different subjects, from writing to business, art to politics and plenty more. But I wanted to ask you today…

Which do you think you are – a fox or a hedgehog?