Isaiah Berlin: The Hedgehog and the Fox

THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX

ISAIAH BERLIN WAS BORN IN RIGA, now capital of Latvia, in 1909. When he was six, his family moved to Russia; there in 1917, in Petrograd, he witnessed the March and October Revolutions. In 1921 his family emigrated to England, and he was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

At Oxford he was a Fellow of All Souls, a Fellow of New College, Professor of Social and Political Theory and founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. In addition to The Hedgehog and the Fox, his main published works are Karl Marx,Russian Thinkers,Concepts and Categories,Against the Current,Personal Impressions,The Crooked Timber of Humanity,The Sense of Reality,The Proper Study of Mankind,The Roots of Romanticism,The Power of Ideas,Three Critics of the Enlightenment,Freedom and Its Betrayal,Liberty,The Soviet Mind and Political Ideas in the Romantic Age . As an exponent of the history of ideas he was awarded the Erasmus, Lippincott and Agnelli Prizes; he also received the Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties. He died in 1997.

Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of Isaiah Berlin’s Literary Trustees. He has edited (or co-edited) several other books by Berlin, including the first three volumes of his selected letters, and is currently working on the remaining volume.

Michael Ignatieff, writer, teacher and former politician, is the author of Isaiah Berlin: A Life .

For further information about Isaiah Berlin visit

‹http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/›

ALSO BY ISAIAH BERLIN

*

Karl Marx

The Age of Enlightenment

Russian Thinkers

Concepts and Categories

Against the Current

Personal Impressions

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

The Sense of Reality

The Proper Study of Mankind

The Roots of Romanticism

The Power of Ideas

Three Critics of the Enlightenment

Freedom and Its Betrayal

Liberty

The Soviet Mind

Political Ideas in the Romantic Age

with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska

Unfinished Dialogue

*

Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946

Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960

Building: Letters 1960–1975

Frontispiece to George Waring, The Squirrels and Other Animals:

Or, Illustrations of the Habits and Instincts of Many of the Smaller

British Quadrupeds (London, [1842])

THE HEDGEHOG

AND THE FOX

AN ESSAY ON TOLSTOY’S

VIEW OF HISTORY

ISAIAH BERLIN

Second Edition

Edited by Henry Hardy

Foreword by Michael Ignatieff

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Published in the United States of America, its territories, dependencies,

and the Philippine Islands by Princeton University Press, 41 William

Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be

sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

press.princeton.edu

First published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd 1953

This edition is published by arrangement with the Orion Publishing

Group Ltd, London

Copyright Isaiah Berlin 1951, 1953

Second edition © The Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust

and Henry Hardy 2013

Editorial matter © Henry Hardy 2013

Foreword © Princeton University Press 2013

Exchange in the New York Review of Books © John S. Bowman,

Jonathan Lieberson, Sidney Morgenbesser and Isaiah Berlin 1980

The moral right of Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy to be identified as the

author and editor respectively of this work has been asserted

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berlin, Isaiah, 1909–1997.

The hedgehog and the fox : an essay on Tolstoy’s view of history /

Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy ;

foreword by Michael Ignatieff. – Second Edition.

pages cm

Previously published: London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-691-15600-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Tolstoy, Leo, graf,

1828-1910–Knowledge–History. 2. Tolstoy, Leo, graf,

1828–1910–Political and social views. 3. History–Philosophy. I. Hardy,

Henry. II. Title.

PG3415.H5B4 2013

891.73′3–dc23

2012035272

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

Forewordby Michael Ignatieff

ix

Editor’s Preface

xiii

Author’s Note

xvii

The Hedgehog and the Fox

1

Appendix to the Second Edition

91

Index

117

FOREWORD

Michael Ignatieff

IT IS WORTH TRYING to understand why this extraordinary essay, first delivered as a lecture in Oxford, then reprinted in an obscure Slavic studies journal in 1951, then re-titled and re-published in 1953, has been enjoying such a robust and enduring afterlife. Along with ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, 1the distinction between the hedgehog and the fox has proved to be enduringly fertile, and has been put to uses Berlin could never have imagined or intended. What began life as a common-room parlour game in the late 1930s – an Oxford undergraduate introduced him to the shimmering and mysterious sentence in the Greek original and Isaiah took it up to divide his friends into hedgehogs and foxes 2– Berlin then turned into the structuring insight for a great essay on Tolstoy. It has now passed into the culture as a way to classify those around us and to think about two basic orientations towards reality itself.

It is not merely that the fox knows many things. The fox accepts that he can only know many things and that the unity of reality must escape his grasp. The critical feature of foxes is that they are reconciled to the limits of what they know. As Berlin puts it, ‘We are part of a larger scheme of things than we can understand. […] we ourselves live in this whole and by it, and are wise only in the measure to which we make our peace with it.’ 1

A hedgehog will not make peace with the world. He is not reconciled. He cannot accept that he knows only many things. He seeks to know one big thing, and strives without ceasing to give reality a unifying shape. Foxes settle for what they know and may live happy lives. Hedgehogs will not settle and their lives may not be happy.

All of us, Berlin suggests, have elements of both fox and hedgehog within us. The essay is an unparalleled portrait of human dividedness. We are riven creatures and we have to choose whether to accept the incompleteness of our knowledge or to hold out for certainty and truth. Only the most determined among us will refuse to settle for what the fox knows and hold out for the certainties of the hedgehog.