Work · Political Philosophy & Ethics (20th–21st c.)
The Hedgehog and the Fox
Essay on Tolstoy’s view of history: the fox knows many things, the hedgehog one big thing – Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog.
Introduction
The essay grew out of a paper on Tolstoy’s view of history published in Oxford Slavonic Papers in 1951; the expanded version appeared as a small book in 1953. Its title comes from a line by the Greek poet Archilochus: the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Berlin begins by playfully sorting writers into hedgehogs, who relate everything to a single vision (Plato, Dante, Dostoevsky), and foxes, who pursue many unconnected ends (Aristotle, Shakespeare, Pushkin). He then turns to War and Peace, in which Tolstoy, unrivalled at depicting the variety of life, longed for a single law of history. Berlin later said he had not meant the classification seriously, but it passed into common use.
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