Sobre o Nome "Justice for Hedgehogs" do Novo Livro de Dworkin

Por que "Justice for Hedgehogs"? O nome se refere a um famoso ensaio de Isaiah Berlin, em que ele separa os escritores e pensadores em dois tipos: Os que pensam todas as coisas a partir de uma única ideia central, que seriam os "ouriços" (hedgehogs); e os que pensam muitas coisas, cada uma a sua maneira, sem compor um sistema nem reduzi-las a um princípio único, que seriam as "raposas" (foxes). Como Dworkin pretende unificar a partir de uma única abordagem toda a gama de posições que ele expressou sobre vários assuntos ao longo de sua carreira, cai-lhe bem a descrição de que está tentando apresentar uma teoria da justiça típica de um "ouriço" no sentido de Berlin. A ideia da distinção entre ouriços e raposas está bem expressa logo no primeiro parágrafo do ensaio de Berlin, que eu transcrevo aqui:

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 defence. 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, organising 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 to 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, allembracing, 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, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.

Para baixar o ensaio inteiro (que é sobre Tolstoi e vale muito a pena) vá aqui.