The One Big Thing: “What I Do Not Know, I Do Not Even Suppose That I Know”

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Introduction

Isaiah Berlin’s essay The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953) opens with a fragment by Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” From this simple line, Berlin constructs a taxonomy of intellectual temperaments. The hedgehog organizes the world through a single unifying vision; the fox thrives amid diversity, pursuing many unrelated aims. “For there exists a great chasm,” Berlin writes, “between those who relate everything to a single central vision, and those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory” (The Hedgehog and the Fox, p. 3).

This opposition—visionary unity versus analytical plurality—offers a striking lens through which to reread the foundations of Western philosophy. Plato’s Socrates, who knew only that he did not know, exemplifies the hedgehog’s single-mindedness. Aristotle, who multiplied the branches of knowledge and coined the names of its disciplines, embodies the fox’s expansive curiosity. Between them, the history of thought unfolds as a dialogue between the passion for the One and the fascination with the Many.

Socratic Ignorance: The One Big Thing

Few sentences have been as widely repeated—and as persistently simplified—as the Socratic confession “I know that I know nothing.” Yet the phrase, so central to Western philosophy, never appears in that form in Plato’s dialogues. In the Apology (21d–e), Socrates says instead: “I am wiser than this man to this small extent, that what I do not know I do not even suppose I know” (tr. Jowett). The Greek—ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι—literally reads: “What I do not know, I do not even think I know.” The concise version, ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα (“I know one thing: that I know nothing”), emerged later, probably through a Latin paraphrase (ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat), and only then entered philosophical tradition.

This philological precision matters. The Platonic Socrates does not proclaim total ignorance; rather, he distinguishes himself by his refusal to assume knowledge he does not possess. His “wisdom” consists in recognizing the limits of human understanding. In the Apology, the oracle at Delphi proclaims that no man is wiser than Socrates, and he interprets this not as divine praise but as irony: “He knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know” (21d). What appears as ignorance is, in fact, self-knowledge—the awareness that one’s understanding is finite.

Here lies what Berlin might call Socrates’ “one big thing.” The entire Socratic enterprise, from the elenchus to the pursuit of the Forms, unfolds from this single insight: that recognizing ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Every dialogue—whether concerning justice, beauty, or virtue—returns to the same demand to define, to clarify, to expose the illusion of knowing. Socratic humility becomes the generative principle of philosophy itself, the stance from which all inquiry radiates.

Yet the Socratic “I” we hear is already filtered through Plato’s art. Socrates left no writings; the Apology, Phaedo, and Republic are dramatic compositions in which the teacher’s voice becomes the vehicle for the disciple’s metaphysics. As Gregory Vlastos observes, “Socrates did not write, and Plato’s Socrates is a philosophical instrument” (Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, 1991, p. 5). The historical Socrates may have been an ethical gadfly; the Platonic Socrates is the architect of dialectic. Still, both share the hedgehog’s temperament: a unity of vision so concentrated that it shapes the very form of philosophy.

Through this “one big thing”—the wisdom of not knowing—Socrates turns ignorance into illumination. It is the paradox that grounds the Platonic ascent from opinion to knowledge, from the cave’s shadow to the light of the Idea.

Aristotle: The Fox Who Knew Many Things

Aristotle’s temperament stands at the opposite pole. Where Plato and Socrates sought unity in the Idea of the Good, Aristotle multiplied the forms of knowing. He systematized the sciences, distinguishing their methods and objects: bios (life) in biology, psyche (soul) in psychology, ethos (character) in ethics. For him, philosophy was not a single ascent but a network of inquiries, each grounded in empirical observation and logical order.

The Aristotelian impulse is profoundly fox-like: it dissects reality into categories, genera, and species; it catalogues causes, motions, and purposes. The aim is not to dissolve difference into one transcendent vision but to understand relations within a coherent whole. His Metaphysics begins not with doubt but with wonder: “All men by nature desire to know” (Metaphysics A.1, 980a).

Where Socrates finds wisdom in recognizing ignorance, Aristotle finds it in organizing knowledge. The two approaches mark complementary epistemic stances—the hedgehog’s centripetal motion toward unity and the fox’s centrifugal curiosity.

The Spirit of the Modern Academy

Modern universities, with their myriad disciplines and departments, inherit Aristotle’s fox-like legacy. Each field defines its own methods, languages, and truths. Biology, economics, linguistics, and political theory proceed independently, rarely united by a single metaphysical vision. The architecture of knowledge mirrors Aristotle’s taxonomy more than Plato’s dialectic.

Yet the Socratic hedgehog endures as the conscience of this multiplicity. Every specialized science presupposes the humility of inquiry—the acknowledgment that knowing begins in not knowing. The Socratic confession remains the ethical ground of the fox’s curiosity. In that sense, the hedgehog’s “one big thing” and the fox’s “many things” are not adversaries but partners in the life of reason.

Conclusion

Berlin’s metaphor illuminates an enduring polarity: the drive toward unity and the delight in diversity. Socrates and Plato exemplify the former—the “one big thing” as the awareness of ignorance that opens the path to truth. Aristotle embodies the latter—the plurality of sciences as the structure of knowledge itself.

To the question “Who is wiser—the hedgehog or the fox?” philosophy gives no final answer. Every age needs both: the hedgehog’s vision to orient thought and the fox’s craft to explore its infinite ramifications. The Socratic “I do not know” remains the beginning of inquiry; Aristotle’s logos ensures its continuation. Together they form the two instincts that sustain the life of the mind.

Bibliography

• Archilochus, fragment 201 (West).
• Aristotle. Metaphysics, tr. W. D. Ross. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Berlin, Isaiah. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953.
• Plato. Apology, tr. Benjamin Jowett. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
• Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
• Xenophon. Memorabilia, tr. E. C. Marchant. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, 1923.