The Peripatetic Philosopher elaborates:

Isaiah Berlin & Why He Resonates With Me!

JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© October 15, 2017

A READER WONDERS – About Isaiah Berlin’s “hedgehogs” & “foxes”

So, is a hedgehog like a broken record while a fox is like a cd on random play? 

In your opinion, did Isaiah Berlin succeed in getting his essential message across? Was his genius in distilling his thinking, reducing the complex to a single all encompassing truth, easily grasped by dolts? ☺ 

Marketing people and sales people understand this very well I believe. People like brief explanations... or rather, they drift off if they are required to absorb long drawn out explanations. We lose them when we cannot "get to the point". Some engineers I know are like that. VP's too.😀

Regards,

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Isaiah Berlin was just the opposite of what you construe as essential to success in business or any other enterprise.  

Moreover, he didn't think the complex could be reduced to a simple universal truth, but quite the opposite.  In fact, he believed that conflict existed between "liberty, fraternity and equality," and that painful choices had to be made.  In other words, one or more of these attributes would necessarily have to be sacrificed or diminished at the expense of the others.  For example, in order to realize some semblance of equality freedom could not but be diminished.  

That is one reason why social justice is easy to formulate and so difficult if not impossible to implement.   Idealists are not willing to recognize much less accept this reality.    

If you attempt to carry the burden of someone else, in most cases, you weaken them and their resolve.  The American nation, after 72 years of weakening such resolve since WWII, now wrestles with the consequences of that policy and philosophy.    

My writing is all about conflict, but managed conflict.  It is also about exalting the individual to be his own man and all that he can be.  It is not about carrying another man's water but energizing man to realize the freedom and satisfaction that is derived when he accepts that burden, himself. 

Long before I ever read Berlin, I was weary of absolutes or of simplistic or universal approaches to truth, which I realized much as Berlin did that your truth is not my truth and my truth is not your truth.  

Berlin has had an amazing impact on Western society while being much less of a philosopher than an advocate of the plurality of approaches to life.  Long before I ever knew he existed, I understood that it was more important to understand an organization's culture than the selective views of its personnel.  A plurality of cultures exists in one's neighborhood why are we so surprised when we find that it exists as well in ethnic groups and nations, or indeed, in different functional groups within an organization?  

As a chemical sales engineer, I never sold as a cognitive engineer while my friend William L. Livingston III has always been so inclined.  There is room for a diversity of approaches to life.  I'm just profiling mine for whatever it is worth to my readers.

PS What you describe is true.  Media and advertisers have been successful in reinforcing the attention deficit disorder common to our times.  They successfully exploit the "herd mentality," which is now quite in vogue.  It has less sustaining power than one might think for eventually people even become bored with being bored.  We see this in automobiles commercials on television for the umpteenth time.  We are approaching WORK WITHOUT WORKERS. but already, we have been anesthetized to making purchases on automatic pilot as part of the herd mentality.