The Fox and the Hedgehog: a different take on law/chaos

[Pielorinho]

In another thread about paladins, things got sidetracked into a discussion about what it means to be lawful. We've all seen these discussions before, and they never get anywhere. But in reading this one, I thought of an essayist I read several years ago, Isaiah Berlin, and it occurred to me that one of his central metaphors might be useful to us gamers.

The following is an excerpt from his essay, "The Fox and the Hedgehog". The first sentence of the essay, a quote from Archilochus, may provide a good way of looking at law and chaos: the chaotic person knows many things, but the lawful person knows one big thing.

What do y'all think?

Daniel

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzak, Joyce are foxes.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

This is as good as any other lawful-chaotic description, and a good deal better than most, actually.

(Although now I have this mental image of all paladins wearing plate mail w. armor spikes... )

 

[Leopold]

i disagree..the hedgehog is designed for defending one and only one point in that scenario. So a fox moves on a hunts something else or waits for him to get out of his hole and then kills him.


Taken that Law would do something to a 'T' and do it so well that it would be inflexible and not adapt after time does not make sense. Law is not unyielding, it can change and adapt, albiet much more slowly but if it sees a better way of doing something it might use new tactics to apply to it's main principle.


Likewise chaos can do lots and lots of things but never invent new ways of doing things anew. Like stagnating the thought process'.

 

[Magius del Cotto]

Likewise chaos can do lots and lots of things but never invent new ways of doing things anew. Like stagnating the thought process'.

Now, I take offense at that. Law is actually the one that is less likely to think of a new way of doing things, while Chaos is the one with all the ideas. As Michael Moorcock put it, absolute Law is crystaline, unchanging; stagnation from lack of ideas, while absolute Chaos is fluid, ever-changing, stagnation from a lack of solidarity. Both are equally good/bad, in moderation; Chaos letting you see new or different ways through or around a problem, Law giving you the discipline to follow the idea through. Thus, Neutral would be the best alignment, giving you the solidarity of Law, with the creativity of Chaos.

 

[Pielorinho]

Taken that Law would do something to a 'T' and do it so well that it would be inflexible and not adapt after time does not make sense. Law is not unyielding, it can change and adapt, albiet much more slowly but if it sees a better way of doing something it might use new tactics to apply to it's main principle.


Likewise chaos can do lots and lots of things but never invent new ways of doing things anew. Like stagnating the thought process'.

I'm not sure I follow you, Leopold. The hedgehog, in Berlin's essay, might use different tactics, but it would be in the service of one overriding principle. The fox might also use different tactics, but the fox doesn't have an overriding principle that motivates all its actions.

This would change around a lot of D&D classes, i think: a druid who believes in the balance of nature above everything else is a hedgehog and therefore lawful, under this interpretation, whereas a warrior who believes in working within the law to keep people safe, gain fame for himself and his lord, and exact vengeance on the villain who slaughtered his family would be a fox, and therefore chaotic (somewhat). Stalin and Gandhi would both be hedgehogs, be lawful, whereas Macchiavelli and Einstein would be foxes, be chaotic.

It's just an idea which works for me: the traditional law/chaos axis has never been very satisfying for me, so I'm thinking of using this one instead.

Daniel

 

[Celebrim]

I should have mentioned it earlier, but I think this is a very good post. The reason I didn't, is I couldn't think of a good responce other than 'good post'.

Mostly I'm back here to bump this post back up to the top where a few more people can look at it.

Now to throw in a little kindling for the fire.

I think there are several fairly good and related ways of defining chaos and law in a useful way. The essay Pielorinho posted is probably the most literate way I've seen it expressed. A similar way I've expressed it is that a chaotic man tries to obtain his goals for the society by transforming one individual at a time, beginning with himself. He says, "The society will be good when all its members are of good hearts. How can the law be made good when its makers are evil?"

A lawful man tries to achieve his goals for the individual by transforming the society. He says, "The individuals will be good when they live in a society that has laws and tradiations that encourage goodness. How can the children be raised up into honest men, when the laws and tradiations that are instilled in them are corrupt?"

 

[Krug]

I duno about da fox and the Hedgehog, but cute story about the beagle and the porcupine. uhhuh. uhhuh. huh huh huh.

http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/316/metro/Beagle_freed_from_pipe_porcupines+.shtml

 

[Rel]

I'm going to steal a line from Celebrim and just say, "Good post."

I think this is a very interesting take on the Law/Chaos dichotomy but until I have some time to think it over a bit more, that's all I can say about it for now.

One other thing that I've been meaning to say is that I think Pielorinho is one of the better posters on ENWorld. I don't always agree with you, Daniel, but I do think that almost every post I've ever seen of yours is worth reading. I'm also a fan of your work over at SDMB.

One thing that always throws me however is your user name. My brain always wants to make you into some kind of Paleolithic Rhinocerous. But just now realized that to truly appreciate your username, you've got to break it down into its component parts:

"Pie" - Duh, everybody likes pie. You start right off on a good note.

"lor" - This could mean a lot of things, but phonetically it sounds like "lore". This tells everybody that you've got a lot of knowledge and aren't just about the pie.

"inho" - This part seems tricky but once you break it apart even further to "in" and "ho", well, let's just say that you are into having a good time. And I don't mean just with pie and knowledge.

So what we wind up with is "Daniel: He likes Pie, Knowledge and Hookers - but not necessarily in that order."

Anyway, it was a pleasure reading your post as always and if I have further thoughts about the Fox/Hedgehog issue, I'll be sure and post them.

 

[Pielorinho]

Thanks, Rel! Now i'm all blushy.

Celebrim, thanks also -- and that's an interesting interpretation of law vs. chaos. I like.

One thing occurs to me: alignment in D&D has tangible effects, in terms of spells like protection against chaos and the like. How would this work with a nonstandard interpretation of the law/chaos dichotomy like the one I'm suggesting?

Actually, it might work fairly well. You just rename the spells: "protection against zealots" and "protection against cynics." But seriously, this might work, and would give such magic a different flavor: folks who "know many small things," that is, folks who don't ascribe to a single huge principle, might have magic that protects them against zealotry; folks who are idealists might have magic that protects them against people who don't have such a strongly focused belief in something. For even more fun, it makes it so paladins have a harder time protecting themselves from Cultists of the Void than they'd have protecting themselves from The Free Men of the Forest -- protection vs. cynics would work on the latter, but not the former.

Oh, and Rel -- my name is what a Portuguese mother who worships Pelor might name her son -- it kinda means "Little Pelor," and is the name of a necromancer PC I played a couple of years ago. But I like your interpretations better .

Daniel

 

[Celebrim]

Another possible way of looking at the law chaos dicotomy is in terms of 'what is possible to know'. The hedgehog/fox distinction is the distinction between the belief in unifying principles. You could take this further to note that all truth is to some extent a unifying principle.

At the extreme end, a complete lawful claims that all is knowable, or indeed that all that can be known is already known (by someone if not necessarily himself). Lawfuls tend to see truth as something that is stable and absolute. The extreme chaotic on the other hand claims that nothing can be known. Chaotics tend to see truth as something that is relative and transitory. Nuetrals on the law/chaos access tend to see the beliefs of chaotics and lawfuls as themselves relative. That is to say, that some things are absolute and knowable, and somethings are not. And of course, every mortal is somewhat neutral and complicated on the axis, just as no mortal is perfectly good or evil.