The Hedgehog and the Fox

Berlin is often interpreted as maintaining that the methods of the humanities and social sciences are not applicable to the subject matter of the natural sciences. He is said to hold that the historian may (or does) acquire knowledge by special acts of understanding or Verstehen. He makes no such claim. As we argued, Berlin is defending a number of separate theses which require distinguishing among such locutions ‘knowing that something is the case’, ‘knowing how to do something’, ‘knowing what it is to be something’ and so on. Berlin also calls our attention to the diverse cognitive skills that are needed, not only to confirm hypotheses, but even to understand them. We suggested some qualifications of Berlin’s views, but even if our qualifications are overlooked or rejected, we believe that he is best interpreted as holding, at most, that there are some ways of knowing some realities and alternative ones for knowing other aspects of other realities, and not the view implied by Bowman that there are alternative ways of knowing ‘reality’. […]

Reply by Isaiah Berlin

Mr Bowman in his polite and charming letter says that he accuses me of nothing, but nevertheless implies that my English version of Archilochus’ line about the fox and the hedgehog may have misrepresented his meaning; and adds that he does not know who is responsible for the translation. The facts are these: when I first came across the line in question in Diehl’s well-known edition¹ (to which I was led by a passage about Archilochus in one of Herder’s literary essays),² it seemed to me to be prima facie suitable as an epigraph to an article on Tolstoy’s view of history which I was then thinking of contributing to an Oxford periodical (I ought to add that the original title of the essay was ‘On Lev Tolstoy’s Historical Scepticism’;³ the present title was suggested by the publisher of it in book form).⁴ Since I am not a Greek scholar, I turned for advice on the exact meaning of the line to the three most authoritative Greek scholars personally known to me – Eduard Fraenkel, Maurice Bowra and E. R. Dodds – and asked them whether the most obvious meaning given by translators, some of whom Mr Bowman cites – that while the fox has many tricks, the hedgehog knows one, which protects him against all the fox’s stratagems – was the only valid meaning.

All three scholars, Fraenkel and Bowra by word of mouth, Dodds in a postcard (which, alas, after a quarter of a century, I cannot find) told me that the meaning of the fragment was not clear: that it might indeed mean what Mr Bowman (and I) supposed it to mean; but that the literal translation proposed by me seemed to them equally possible; and that consequently I should be justified in using it as an epigraph to my thesis on Tolstoy’s epilogue to War and Peace. Dodds added ‘little’ to ‘things’, and I accepted this.¹ Needless to say I did not for a moment wish to suggest that such concepts as the one and the many, or monism and pluralism, or the ideas of Parmenides and his critics, could have been present in any form to the mind of Archilochus. I used his isolated line as a peg on which to hang my own reflections: the metaphor of hedgehogs and foxes was not, I warned the reader, to be driven too far; it was intended, at most, as an opening to my central theme – a hypothesis about the psychological roots of Tolstoy’s historical outlook. Still less did I mean to imply that foxes were superior to hedgehogs; this was (and is) not my view. I made no judgments of value. If Mr Bowman is right (whether he is I have no way of telling), and I have indeed misled the unwary about the meaning of a line in Archilochus, I can only plead in extenuation that I acted on what was the best advice obtainable by me at that time; and that if no more than the name of this writer – one of the earliest of European poets whose physical existence is not in doubt – has thereby been made known to many who might otherwise never have heard of him, that could, perhaps, be regarded as something to set against such doubts as Mr Bowman and others may feel about the soundness of the opinions on this topic of my eminent consultants.

I should like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Sidney Morgenbesser and Mr Jonathan Lieberson for their explanatory letter, with every word of which I entirely agree.

Isaiah Berlin

Oxford, England

CONCLUDING EDITORIAL NOTE