"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilocus which says, 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.'"
—Isaiah Berlin

"To see one's point of view as relative to that of others means tolive in concrete relationships and to think of one's own ideas in relationship to the thought of others. To have no relationship would be death. This 'relationality' can transcend the absolutism of a single ideology and the totalitarian aspect of relativism"
~Jurgen Moltmann

I have always found the top quote intriguing possibly because I have always wondered if it is actually saying anything. How can we know many thinga outaide the context of one big thing? Or conversely how can we know one big thing without an intimate knowledge of the many little thing that make it up?

This is why I find the Moltmnann quote so brilliant. Believeing something is only worthwhile in relationship to its intellectual forbeares from which it differentiates itself. Why am I reading Barth if I'm not taking the time to read Schliermacher? Is it possible to be a post-structuralist if one is not intimately familiar with Levi-Strauss?

The bottom line is that I have come to the conlusion that learning is a never ending process of making connections (I think Ernie Boyer said something like that?). That is why it takes so much time and effort. It is important not just to read someone but to read alot of some one. To carefully examine not just the structure of someone's argument but to examine how they argue...how they reason.

Now if only I can go to grad school so I can get paid to do this...