The Fox and the Hedgehog

David Brooks' column this morning  put me in mind of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The title was based on a fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus about the nature of knowledge: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. There is naturally lots of disagreement abut the meaning of these words. Typically, the scholars might postulate that the fox for all his cunning is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. Berlin goes on to suggest a quite different interpretation: Essentially, this describes the differences among human beings. On one side are those who think in terms of a single organizing principle giving meaning to all that they think and experience. On the other are those who pursue many ends and ideas, very possibly unrelated and contradictory, moving through their lives operating on many levels, without any compulsion to fit their experiences or thoughts into any overarching framework. The first group constitute the "hedgehogs," the second the "foxes." Berlin proceeds to relate this to the domain of aesthetics, classifying Dante as a hedgehog, Shakespeare as a fox, Pushkin a fox and Dostoevsky as the quintessential hedgehog. I don't need to follow the meat of his essay, which goes on to explore the appropriate place of Tolstoy.

My question of the moment is: Where am I in this great dichotomy. And the corollary (because I have such deep faith that Barack Obama is the right man at the right time to lead at this turning point in American, and perhaps Human history) is where is President Obama. I note from today's survey results that I am not alone in my confidence in the President. But where are we being led? If I have developed any philosophy over the years, it is pragmatism: If it works, use it, it has meaning; and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Obama and his "propeller heads" may not have the answer, may not even know the question, but we have to wait until it plays out for at least a few bars. Too many are prepared to condemn policies and approaches out of ideological prejudgments. My tentative conclusion is that the President is the Fox-in-chief at this stage, and I believe that is the right place to be.

As for me, I too am a fox, but a pretty pitiful one. As I said last night, I believe the old saw: If you can keep your head when all about you men are losing theirs, then you probably don't understand the situation.