Human Rights for Foxes and Hedgehogs
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
| Author | Antoine Buyse |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934411503300305 |
| Subject Matter | Part C: Inaugural Lecture |
Netherlands Qu arterly of Human Ri ghts, Vol. 33/3, 355–364, 2015.
© Netherlands I nstitute of Human Rig hts (SIM), Printed in the Net herlands. 355
PART C: INAUGURAL LECTURE
is public lecture was delivered by Prof. Dr. Antoine Buyse on the occasion of his
appointment to the Chair of Human Rights in a Multidisciplinar y Perspective. e
lecture was delivered at Utrecht University, the Netherland s on 16June 2015.
HUMAN RIGHTS FOR FOXES
AND HEDGEHOGS
A B*
ere are two kinds of th inkers, according to the l iberal philosopher Isaia h Berlin:
hedgehogs and foxes.1 Hedgehogs are those people who try to incor porate everyth ing
in the world into one single vision or over-arching t ruth. By contrast, foxes are people
who draw on a wide range of observat ions, ideas and perspectives. eir t houghts are
manifold and they do not tr y and squeeze reality i nto one straightjacket. Put in scienti c
terms: foxes easily jump from one parad igm to another wit hout asserting that a ny of
them represents the nal truth. Berlin developed this metaphor by building on a line
from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus which runs as follows: “ e fox knows many
things, but the hedgehog k nows one big thing.”2 Dante Alighieri, Plato, and Proust are,
in Berlin’s view hedgehogs. Aris totle, Montaigne and James Joyce are foxes. Berl in, in his
essay e Hedgehog and the Fox, speci c ally applied the metaphor to t he famous Russian
novelist Lev Tolstoy, author of the great 19th century novel War and Peace. Tolstoy was,
to Berlin, the prime ex ample of a fox who desperately tried to be a hedgehog.
So, you may wonder by now, what does this have to do with human rights? Let me
assure you that you have not stepped into a lectu re on Greek or Russian literature.
Neither will t his be a talk about a nimal rights. R ather, what I propose to do today is
to use this metaphor of the fox and t he hedgehog to look at the current state of human
rights in the world and more speci cally, to look at those who study human r ights:
that strange lit tle tribe called academics. I wi ll do so by addressing how a number of
academic elds have engaged wit h human rights and their big gest academic support
group: the human rights law yers. I will argue that studying human rights from non-
legal perspectives, f rom di erent disciplines, is key to acquiring new i nsights in the
* Professor of Human R ights in a Multid isciplinar y Perspective a nd Director of the Net herlands
Institute of Huma n Rights (SIM), Utrecht Law Scho ol, Utrecht University, the Netherla nds.
1 I. Berlin, e Hedgehog and the Fox . An Essay on Tolstoy’s view of His tory, Weidenfeld and Nicholson:
London 1967 ( rst edition 1953).
2 e original of Arch ilochus (c. 680 – c. 645 BC) read s: πόλλ’ οδ’ λώπηξ, λλ’ χνο ν έγα.
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