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The Hedgehog and the Fox
- An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 2 hrs and 36 mins
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The Hedgehog and the Fox
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Summary
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
For Isaiah Berlin, there is a fundamental distinction in mankind: those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things - foxes - and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system - hedgehogs. It can be applied to the greatest creative minds: Dante, Ibsen and Proust are hedgehogs, while Shakespeare, Aristotle and Joyce are foxes.
Yet when Berlin reaches the case of Tolstoy, he finds a fox by nature, but a hedgehog by conviction; a duality that holds the key to understanding Tolstoy's work, illuminating a paradox of his philosophy of history and showing why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics.
With a foreword by Michael Ignatieff
A W&N Essential
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Critic reviews
"Beautifully written and suggestive." (W. H. Auden, New Yorker)
"Delightful." (Sunday Times)
"Ingenious and subtle...exactly what good critical writing should be." (Guardian)