Of hedgehogs and foxes
Of philosopher and theorist Isaiah Berlin’s many contributions to public life, perhaps the most unexpected is his popularisation of the idea of the hedgehog and the fox.
This wasn’t Berlin’s attempt at inclusion in an updated edition of Aesop’s Fables. It was, in his words, an “enjoyable intellectual game”. Inspired by the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus, Berlin’s essay – later a book – seeks to categorise some of history’s most eminent thinkers as either “hedgehogs” or “foxes”.
So – what is a hedgehog, and what is a fox? Archilochus summarises it best in his fragment which inspired Berlin’s original essay: “a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”. Extended further, this means that some people believe that there is one Big Idea Which Explains The World (the hedgehogs), while others believe that the world is so complex that it cannot be explained by one theory or idea (the foxes). To employ more modern jargon, we might call the hedgehog the ‘specialist’ and the fox the ‘all-rounder’. Or we might say that the hedgehog privileges depth, while the fox loves breadth.
Needless to say, such a highly schematic model of the world is inevitably wrong. How could it not be? If Berlin’s delineation seemed dubious in 1953 (when his essay was published), then it looks even more suspect in 2022. The world is moving at such a dizzying pace that to claim there is a single answer to the basic question of “what the hell is going on?” takes a lot of chutzpah.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be clarifying or helpful. This is, ultimately, the purpose of such analogies. They create categories that help us to understand the perspectives from which different people view the world. That can bring enlightenment or, at least, greater understanding of each other – always a worthwhile goal.
Who, according to Berlin, was a fox and who was a hedgehog?
He saw fit to toss the following figures in the bucket marked hedgehog: Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Proust, and Braudel. As for foxes, Berlin offers the following: Herodotus, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and James Joyce.
It’s an intriguing list. But, as with many things devised in the mid-20th century (and this is not to denigrate Berlin!), it’s a bit pale, male and stale. I think, therefore, that we can have some fun and speculate which side of the line which divided hedgehogs and foxes some famous modern-day public figures would fall on.
Oprah Winfrey – hedgehog
Elon Musk – fox
Janet Yellen – fox
Adele – hedgehog
Greta Thunberg – hedgehog
LeBron James – fox
Angela Merkel – fox
Quentin Tarantino – hedgehog
Taylor Swift – hedgehog
Jacinda Ardern – fox
Margaret Atwood – hedgehog
Steve Jobs – hedgehog
At this stage, dear reader, you may have a question: how is this relevant to speechwriting? I’m glad you asked, because I’m about to attempt an answer.
Speechwriters are foxes. So much so, in fact, that I would go further and argue that it is the very fact of us being foxes (remember, the fox knows many things) that predisposes us to being speechwriters. We’re not subject-matter specialists. We can’t just know “one big thing”. Frankly, we can’t afford to have a limited range. We need to know at least a little about a lot of different things, and we certainly can’t do what we do and believe that almost everything can be boiled down to one thing.
Speechwriters are shapeshifters. We’re ghosts (quite literally, if we’re also ghostwriters). We are capable in the peculiar and highly specific art of assuming the voice and mannerisms of someone else. We are a device for efficiently – and, one hopes, stylishly – translating the thoughts of a client to the page or the podium.
We might be foxes. But we love hedgehogs. How can we not? The most exciting clients are the visionaries. The dreamers. The weirdos, basically. The challenge of taking a big, hairy idea, and making the case for its explanatory power or its potential to change the world is a lot of fun and, on occasion, a real privilege. And the hedgehogs need us. Not just because, usually, we have more experience in that translation from mind to page. But because a successful collaboration between foxes and hedgehogs marries the prudence of the fox and the boldness of the hedgehog to create something more compelling than either of those worldviews can provide on their own.
Perhaps it’s useful to divide the world into hedgehogs and foxes. Or perhaps it’s a silly little game, devised in a hurry by a thinker who never expected people to take him very seriously. But every good speechwriter is, at heart, a fox. And the fox and the hedgehog need each other.