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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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 Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 5:24 am Post subject: Hedgehog or Fox? |
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I"ve been an admirer for years of Isaiah Berlin. Especially his concepts of negative and positive freedom (which could inform many on this board, if they'd read about them). I'd also recommend his lecture series , "The Roots of Romanticism". He's sort of British Adorno. Crooked Timbers of Humanity and his writings on Marx are sparkling also ...
One of his most famous "notions" was that all thinkers were rounded into two distinct categories; the hedgehog and the fox......as wikipedia clumsily describes it below -- it is the idea that one knows many general things (the fox) or one knows one big thing which informs all that one thinks/writes (hedgehog). Polyglot vs religious asceticism.
Which one are you? The fox or the Hedgehog? Shakespeare or Proust? Bush or Obama?
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"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history.
The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: πόλλ οἶδ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." In Erasmus Rotterdamus's Adagia from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.)
Berlin expands upon this idea to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust) and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moli�re, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce). |
DD |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 5:29 am Post subject: |
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| Bush knows something? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Woland wrote,
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| Bush knows something? |
You are probably right but there is evidence of "thought" there, so he can be characterized as a "fox", though what he does know is so so very little. Little fox he is and why the hedgehog Rumsfeld was able to so dominant and control him (and I'm sure, still does).
DD |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 4:44 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel:
I wouldn't characterize you as either. I think a newt would be more appropriate, ddon't you think? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 7:02 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel:
I wouldn't characterize you as either. I think a newt would be more appropriate, ddon't you think? |
Hawaii 5 and O,
You are pathetic. Once again you don't post anything of substance or with reference. Rather you slander and don't answer the question. I posted and asked, "what you were, Fox or Hedgehog". Obviously you've answered in your own fashion.
A blite.
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