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Isaiah Berlin's classification
of great thinkers in hedgehogs and foxes is discussed
in
Therivel's GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity.
GAM's [Berlinian]
Hedgehogs and Foxes
The above is the title of chapter 9 of volume 1 of
volume 4 of William A. Therivel's The GAM/DP Theory
of Personality and Creativity (G stands
for genetic endowment, A for assistances of youth,
M for misfortunes of youth, DP for division
of power, UP for unity of power). For an introduction
to the GAM part of the theory click "Introduction
to GAM"; for an introduction to the DP
part click on "Introduction
to DP".
In this website, the reader is also offered a shortcut:
The GAM/DP Synopsis
and an expanded version, The GAM/DP
Summary of volumes 1 through 4.
Hereafter I report the first pages of chapter 9:
In an essay of 1953,
Isaiah Berlin divided all major thinkers into hedgehogs
and foxes. He did this on the basis of an observation
by the poet Archilochus who said: "The fox knows
many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
For Berlin,
| there
exists a great chasm between those, on one side,
who relate everything to a single central vision,
one system less or more coherent or articulate,
in terms of which they understand, think and feel--a
single, universal, organizing principle in terms
of which alone all that they are and say has significance--and
on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often
unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if
at all, in some de facto way. (1967, p.1) |
Accordingly, Berlin classified Dante, Plato, Lucretius,
Pascal, Hegel, Dostoyevski, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust,
in varying degrees, as hedgehogs; Shakespeare, and Herodotus,
Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe,
Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce as foxes; and Tolstoy was
by nature a fox, while believing to be a hedgehog.
In the same vein, George Kennedy (1963), in his discussion
of the nature of classical Greek rhetoric, divided all
major thinkers into two groups bearing a striking similarity
to the Berlinian hedgehogs and foxes. For Kennedy:
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disagreement between Plato and the sophists over
rhetoric was not simply an historical contingency,
but reflects a fundamental cleavage between two
irreconcilable ways of viewing the world. There
have always been those, especially among philosophers
and religious thinkers, who have emphasized goals
and absolute standards and have talked much about
truth, while there have been as many others to whom
these concepts seem shadowy or imaginary and who
find the only certain reality in the process of
life and the present moment. In general, rhetoricians
and orators, with certain distinguished exceptions,
have held the latter view. . . . the difference
is not only that between Plato and Gorgias, but
between Demosthenes and Isocrates, Virgil and Ovid,
Dante and Petrarch, and perhaps Milton and Shakespeare.
(1963, p. 15) |
Clearly the first group (emphasizing goals and absolutes)
is composed of Berlinian hedgehogs who know one big
thing and the second group (emphasizing process and
the present) is composed of foxes who know many things.
In addition, there is the correspondence of the examples:
Plato and Dante are listed, by Kennedy, as absolute
thinkers and by Berlin as hedgehogs; Shakespeare is
listed, by Kennedy, as a thinker of process of life
and the present moment and by Berlin as fox. In the
same way, Aristotle is listed by Berlin as fox and by
Kennedy as a defender of Greek rhetoric (pp. 18-19).
At this point comes the natural question: what makes
a person a hedgehog or a fox? Is there a genetic predisposition,
or are people so at random? Can the GAM theory offer
an environmental explanation? The answer to this last
question is yes: there are indeed specific major misfortunes
of youth (when backed by sufficient assistances and
a rich G) that predispose one person to think as a hedgehog
and different misfortunes that favor the thinking as
a fox. This leaves aside the possibility of future discoveries
pointing toward a concurrent genetic explanation, say
based on the genetic roots of emotionality, activity,
sociability (cf. Buss & Plomin, 1984).
Basically, I would propose
to classify the 14 GAM challenged personality families
discussed in chapter 3 as follows:
Table 4
GAM's Hedgehogs and GAM's Foxes
| GAM# |
Family Name |
Hedgehogs |
Foxes |
| 1 |
Universalists |
all
|
|
| 2 |
Architect |
most
|
|
| 3 |
Seeker |
all |
|
| 4 |
Alchemist |
|
most |
| 5 |
Leadsman |
many
|
|
| 6 |
Reformer |
most
|
|
| 7 |
Fisher |
|
varies |
| 8 |
Brewer |
|
all |
| 9 |
Miner
|
|
all |
| 10 |
Swatter
|
|
most |
| 11 |
Tanner
|
|
most |
| 12 |
Radiologist
|
most
|
|
| 13 |
Critical
Jester |
|
most |
| 14 |
Trapper
|
|
all |
| |
|
|
|
| AA |
Eccentric
|
|
most |
Most means, for instance, that most alchemist
personalities are foxes.
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