The Hedgehog or the Fox

A famous essay by  Sir Isaiah Berlin begins with the following quote:

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

I am not about to assess the uses and values of Ancient Greek poetry. This column is not about Ancient Greek poetry. However it is mostly about European affairs, so there will be plenty of drama. And plenty of Drachmas? Hopefully not. Hopefully I will stop making puns and go back to our quote:

(…) 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 (…) and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way (…) The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.

This column lacks an “intellectual and artistic personality”, but in all other respects it’s a fox. Expect no sweeping metanarratives or grandiose claims; resign yourself to a universe of contradictory opinions, misleading impressions, and the occasional rant, all in the spirit of putting pieces together as part of a larger and ill defined whole. This, incidentally, is a good definition of Social Democracy –in practice if not in theory.

That’s it, for now. There will be more soon. In the meantime I invite you to mull over the significance of this picture. Does the hedgehog represent one-size-fits-all austerity à-la Merkel, squashing us poor southern parasites? Is perhaps the fox the rare European entrepreneur, crushed by the overwhelming weight of unsustainable welfare states? (Probably not –as you well know, the problem with the French is they lack a word for “entrepreneur”). Does it suggest drinking large amounts of wine leads to obesity and falling over baguette-holders? None of the above? I’ll let you decide on its ultimate meaning.