Foxes and Hedgehogs?
Someone please explain this to me? What was Judy Davis talking about? Significance please?
share[deleted]
ah that helped...thanks!! makes sense now
MovieChat Forums > Husbands and Wives (1992) Discussion > Foxes and Hedgehogs?
The philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay in which he divided people into two groups, Foxes and Hedgehogs. His inspiration was a Greek philosopher who observed that "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
So Berlin elaborated on this idea by saying that basically, human beings are categorized as either "hedgehogs" or "foxes". Hedgehogs' lives are embodiment of a single, central vision of reality according to which they "feel", breathe, experience and think - "system addicts", in short. Examples include Plato, Dante, Proust and Nietzsche. Foxes live centrifugal than centripetal lives, pursuing many divergent ends and, generally, possess a sense of reality that prevents them from formulating a definite grand system of "everything", simply because they "know" that life is too complex to be squeezed into any Procrustean unitary scheme. Montaigne, Balzac, Goethe and Shakespeare are, in various degrees, foxes.
Ah, yeah, sort of like extrovert and introvert in Jungian psychology, the extrovert (or the fox) being someone who finds value in the outside world, and the introvert (or the hedgehog) being someone who lives for an inner vision based on personal values that they impose on the world. When I saw it, I heard it as being more judgmental, the fox being a braver animal than the hedgehog.
shareYeah sorta, but in the world of ideas. So Plato is a perfect example of a hedgehog. He had one big idea, his "Theory of Forms", and all of his work was an elucidation of this one idea or system. Plato answers all of the "big" questions in this one theory; What is Virtue and why should we be virtuous? In what sense is mathematics "true"? What is the best form of government and who should govern? Plato answers all of these disparate questions in his one overarching theory.
[deleted]
Ah, yeah, sort of like extrovert and introvert in Jungian psychology, the extrovert (or the fox) being someone who finds value in the outside world, and the introvert (or the hedgehog) being someone who lives for an inner vision based on personal values that they impose on the world. When I saw it, I heard it as being more judgmental, the fox being a braver animal than the hedgehog.
Thank you for further elucidating the concept. With your post in mind, I would have to say that I'm a Hedgehog. share
I just found it very funny that she was thinking those thoughts at that moment. Thanks for the info!
I do wish we could see what got deleted, was the "that was helpful" comment sarcastic maybe?
Marianne
I assumed she was referring to personality, typical 'foxes' being much more forceful, aggressive characters who tend to get what they want, and 'hedgehogs' being much more passive characters. The people she described as 'foxes' were much more dominant, assertive types like Jack whilst 'hedgehogs' such as Michael and Gabe were fundamentally weaker, less 'take-charge' types. Judy, who was also described as a 'fox' strikes me as a deceptive, passive-aggressive type, who plays the submissive 'hedgehog' but is actually canny and manipulative to get her way. It's notable that come the end of the movie it's the 'foxes' who are mostly on top and have ended up with what they desired.
shareAll through the film there were references to her coldness and lack of intimacy and when Michael tries to have successful mutually rewarding sexual relations with her she gets close to orgasm (as she says to the interviewer/therapist) but her mind switches off sex and reverts to something trivial like equating which of her friends remind her of which animal.
It's a buffer from getting too close. She admits it in the final scene with the interviewer. There are hints all through the piece.
Those saying that there is a deeper philosophical meaning (re Plato etc) are off the mark.
It's just a way of her to deny feelings - a defense mechanism illustrating her cerebral matter-of-fact personality that is unable to fully let go.