Isaiah Berlin - The Hedgehog and the Fox

Again, that may be my own prejudice. At the very least we may allow that Berlin’s translation – and his thesis – award equal status to these two animals. Yet when we look closer at the original Archilochus, or rather at some other translations, the issue is not so clear. To begin with, ‘thing’ tends to become ‘trick’, and the ‘one big thing’ that Berlin’s hedgehog knows is how to curl itself into a ball to escape its enemies – including, presumably, the fox. There is thus the implied, if not explicit, suggestion that although the fox knows many tricks, it is the hedgehog with one ‘big trick’ that ends up defeating the fox. In this reading, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky would not just be taking different routes to reality: they would be in conflict – and Dostoevsky would outfox Tolstoy!

This version of the Archilochus is given its most committed translation by Guy Davenport when he first translates the original with what he states are the literal seven words: ‘Fox knows many, / Hedgehog one / Solid trick.’ 1Davenport then provides an alternate translation that he claims expresses the true thrust of the original: ‘Fox knows / Eleventythree / Tricks and still / Gets caught: / Hedgehog knows / One but it / Always works.’ Not all translators go this far, but others do imply that (1) the hedgehog’s trick is superior to the fox’s many tricks, and (2) the hedgehog’s trick may actually defeat the fox.

Nor is that the end of the problem. It has been suggested by at least one (hedgehoggy? foxy?) student of this matter that although the hedgehog may roll itself into a ball to elude the fox, it has been observed in nature that a fox may roll said hedgehog down a slope into water, where the hedgehog will either drown or be forced ashore to be killed by the fox. Your reviewers of Berlin may be hinting at this when they write that ‘an ironist would remark’ that the one big thing that the hedgehogs of this world know is ‘that there is not, or should not be, any hedgehog’s thesis about human affairs to expound’. (Note that it is the fox’s way, again, that is being favoured.)

But I am willing to call a halt at such convolutions. My question is really quite straightforward: Do any readers of this journal have any solid thoughts to offer on this topic? As to why we all should be concerned, it is because the Berlin version of the Archilochus is referred to several times a year in journals such as this – in the sense, that is, that there are two different ways of knowing reality, not fighting enemies, and that both ways are of at least equal value. Certainly we should all want to know what this allusion is based on. 1

Whatever the response, I do not expect ever to see the end of this (mis)representation of Archilochus […].

John S. Bowman

Northampton, Massachusetts

From the reply by Jonathan Lieberson and Sidney Morgenbesser

Mr Bowman seems to be correct that the Archilochean fragment is compatible with diverse interpretations, as several Greek scholars of our acquaintance have assured us. Indeed, an allusion to the ancient secular tradition of ‘practical knowledge’ (or, better, the cunning of knowing how to ‘get on’ in the world) seems to be contained in the fragment, which would suggest that the hedgehog does indeed ‘compete’ with the fox and does know the one ‘solid’ trick that the fox does not – as the translations of Guy Davenport (cited by Mr Bowman) and François Lasserre would indicate. 2Thus, we fear the most that can be said about the Archilochean fragment is that there is no one transparently correct interpretation of it – only many different risky ones.

But in his charming and serious letter Mr Bowman raises or implies a number of questions about pluralism, reality and knowledge, only some of which can be addressed here. Some readers have taken our article to suggest that Berlin supports a currently fashionable view – sometimes called ‘pluralism’ – that at any given time scientists possess a number of theories that are mutually inconsistent but that, in light of the available data, are equally plausible, and that they enjoy the luxury of picking and choosing among them, whether on grounds of simplicity or ideology or aesthetic considerations. We think this interpretation of Berlin is based on a misreading of his work. His qualified defence of Vico and Herder commits him, it is true, to the pluralistic thesis that diverse cultures may each have their own ways of interpreting human experience. But this pluralistic thesis applies within history and the humanities, and is not the extreme relativistic view we have just outlined. Berlin is not claiming certainty for Vico and Herder, but he does think their views are more plausible than those of better-known thinkers such as Descartes and Voltaire and their modern successors.

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 edition 1(to which I was led by a passage about Archilochus in one of Herder’s literary essays), 2it 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’; 3the present title was suggested by the publisher of it in book form). 4Since 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. 1Needless 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.