"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This fragment of verse by the Greek poet Archilochus describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Tolstoy, in which he underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all embracing system. Tolstoy longed for a unitary vision, Sir Isaiah observes, but his marvelous perception of people, things, and the moments of history was so acute that he could not stop himself from writing as he saw, felt, and understood. He was by nature a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog. Since its first publication in 1953 Sir Isaiah's long essay has acquired the status of a small masterpiece. In its distillation of his profound knowledge of Russian thought and more general political philosophy, The Hedgehog and the Fox is a triumph of erudition and a superb entryway into an understanding of Tolstoy's work. "This little book is so entertaining, as well as acute, that the reader hardly notices that it is learned too." Arnold Toynbee.
發表於2024-12-22
The Hedgehog and the Fox 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
圖書標籤: 以賽亞·伯林 Isaiah_Berlin 英國 政治學 哲學 思想史 philosophy 政治
Entertaining. Between you and me.
評分“...to conceive of men as ‘free’ is to think of them as capable of having, at some past juncture, acted in some fashion other than that in which they did act; it is to think of what consequences would have come of such unfulfilled possibilities, and in what respects the world would have been different, as a result, from the world as it now is.”
評分so sweeping....
評分so sweeping....
評分托確實鄙視史學傢把曆史事件都歸咎於某幾個人或因素的荒謬理論,而且認可瞭人的復雜性所造成的對曆史理解的難度,但並不能得齣他對一種“能夠解釋所有真相的理論”的渴求吧?寜可相信他是個不可知論者...
The Hedgehog and the Fox 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載