Tolstoy's Hedgehog

Isaiah Berlin once famously wrote that intellectuals can be split into two types: hedgehogs and foxes. He argues that Leo Tolstoy falls into both camps simultaneously, resulting in a profound tension that provides the fundamental epistemological dilemma of War and Peace. The problem with this oft-quoted argument is that it focuses on only one aspect of the novel—Tolstoy's depiction of the scientific method. In so doing, Berlin overlooks a larger modern phenomenon that is fundamental to the major events of the novel: the deification of reason. In essence, Tolstoy argues that the deification of reason, a shift which adheres to the notion that there is a knowable Truth, and that reason is the sole means to know it, increases the likelihood and severity of violence in times of war as well as the intensification of domestic conflict in times of peace. This article explores Tolstoy's depiction of how three different manifestations of this deified reason lead to heightened levels of conflict. It concludes with an examination of the four forms of Romantic idealism that Tolstoy suggests are the preferred alternatives to it

Art · Depiction · Dilemma · Epistemology · Idealism · Literature · Phenomenon · Romance · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought