Showing posts with label tyger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tyger. Show all posts

Sunday, January 28, 2007

ISAIAH BERLIN WITHOUT REAL ANIMAL BASIC INSTINCT part 4

Berlin was a master of rhetoric and almost a cult figure. How else might we explain why his essay on "Hedgehogs and Foxes" hit the headlines so often. I will not go into detail of this essay ( easily found and on the net) but Berlin polarises hedgehogs and foxes in a vain attempt to promote value pluralism. In other words he wants to have his cake and eat it at the same time. He got away with it too. Any undergraduate with a good keen supervisor would have quickly been tied up in knots if such an essay had been put forward during a third year but Berlin was a cult figure and it helped his fame. A fox is like a cunning mover whereas the poor hedgehog is stuck into one main idea.

Berlin thinks Goethe and Balzac a fox. He thinks that the likes of a Tolstoy and any of the many one-big-idea-theme lot to be hedgehogs. I doubt this polarisation by Berlin is worth taking seriously unless we find it reasonable for play.

What would we say about our related bloggers like the Yellow DUCK. What is this type of being? Is the Duck like a fox?
Then we have the resident Tyger !!! Is this Tyger a "burning bright" light, immortal with SYMMETRY and a fearful presence - therefore akin to a hedgehog? - in dark times like this.

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