8月26日，耶鲁大学发布校长彼得·沙洛维(Peter Salovey)致新生的演讲。在这个技术创新呼啸着奔向未来的时代，我们应该成为什么样的学习者?公元前七世纪，希腊诗人讲述了一个关于狐狸和刺猬的故事，自此之后，狐狸和刺猬成为两种对称出现的学习者代表，“狐狸观天下之事，刺猬以一事观天下”，狐狸寻求广泛的知识，刺猬向内追寻世界的根本原则。我们要如何寻求自己的求知之路?耶鲁校长讲给新生的这番话，可能启迪所有人的思考。

　　双语文稿：

　　Thinking Like a Fox

　　– Yale College Opening Assembly Address, Class of 2021

　　Peter Salovey, President of Yale University

　　Saturday, August 26, 2017

      原音视频：

　　Good morning and welcome – to my colleagues here on stage, to the family members who are here with us today, and most of all, to the Class of 2021! I want to give a special shout-out to Marvin Chun, who’s beginning his first year as the new dean of Yale College. And I know you all enjoyed his remarks just as much as I did. To Marvin Chun…

　　大家早上好，欢迎各位同事、各位家长，尤其是2021届的本科新生们!也特别欢迎马文(Marvin Chun)，我们今年新上任的本科生院院长。

　　A few years ago, I helped a friend – a member of the Yale College Class of 1982, in fact – I helped him teach a Yale College seminar called “Great Big Ideas.” Each week, students in the seminar considered a “big idea” from a different field of study. For homework, they watched video lectures delivered by various experts and read primary sources. Then they came to [the] class ready to debate each week’s “big idea.” By the end of the course, they had become conversant in major debates and questions in art history, political philosophy, evolutionary biology, and other fields as well. My friend described the educational impact of the course as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

　　几年前，我帮一位朋友上过一门耶鲁本科生的讨论课，名字叫做“伟大的思想”——这位朋友其实是耶鲁本科1982届的校友。每周，上讨论课的学生都会思考不同研究领域的一个“伟大思想”。课后作业是观看各领域专家的视频讲座，并阅读一手文献，做好发言的准备。然后来上这一周的课，课上就本周的“伟大思想”进行辩论。到课程结束时，他们对许多领域的重大问题和思想便有所掌握，诸如艺术史、政治哲学、进化生物学等。我的朋友将这门课的教学效果描述为，“宽达一里，深仅一寸”，也就是“涉猎广泛、浅尝辄止”。

　　I was thinking about Great Big Ideas over the summer. Reflecting on the goal for the course reminded me of the story of the fox and the hedgehog. Now, this is a distinction attributed to Archilochus, the seventh century B.C. Greek poet and warrior, who said, “a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog, one important thing.” When threatened, the fox remains flexible, coming up with a clever way to deal with the particular matter at hand. The hedgehog, however, responds the same way to every threat: it rolls up into a ball. The fox is wily and resilient. The hedgehog, consistent but inflexible.

　　这门课今年夏天一直在我脑海萦绕，回想这门课的目标，让我想起“狐狸与刺猬”的故事。这二者的区别，据说最早是公元前七世纪的古希腊诗人阿尔奇洛克斯(Archilochus)提出来的，他说“狐狸知道很多的事，刺猬则只知道一桩大事。”当受到威胁时，狐狸会随机应变，想出一个聪明的办法来应对。然而，刺猬总是用同一种方法来对应对威胁：就是把自己卷成一个球。这两种动物，一个聪明狡猾，灵活善变，另一个恪守成式，以不变应万变。

　　The philosopher Isaiah Berlin popularized this distinction in a 1953 essay. Berlin described the hedgehog as a thinker who sees the world through a single, grand idea – a focused lens. Someone like Karl Marx or Ayn Rand might be considered a hedgehog. The fox, on the other hand, becomes knowledgeable about many different things. It draws on a multitude of ideas and experiences, depending on the situation at hand. Perhaps Confucius and Aristotle are best described as foxes.

　　哲学家以赛亚· 柏林(Isaiah Berlin)在1953年发表的一篇论文中推介了这一区别。柏林将刺猬描述为一个思想家，他的方式是透过一个巨大的思想，好比一个聚焦的镜头，观察思考这个世界;马克思与安·兰德(Ayn Rand)大概算是这一类。而狐狸可谓是一部百科全书，知道许多事情，会根据眼前状况参考大量的想法和经验;孔子与亚里士多德可能是最好的代表。

　　As Berlin says, “there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single vision…a single, universal organizing principle” – the hedgehogs – and “those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, in some de facto way.” These are the foxes.

　　正如柏林所说，这两者之间存在着显著的差异，刺猬坚持一种普遍原则，万事万物都用一种理念来解释;而狐狸则从多个维度出发，抓住那些常常看似不相干甚至矛盾的线索，发现实际是有关联的。

　　This dichotomy is obviously an over-simplification, as Berlin himself recognized. I am actually reminded of an old joke about there being two kinds of psychologists: those who believe that humanity can be divided into two types of people, and those who do not. In any case, the story of the fox and the hedgehog may help you today, right now,as you consider how to approach your time at Yale.

　　柏林自己也意识到，这种二分法过于简单化了。这让我想起一个笑话，说有两种心理学家，一种认为人可以被分成两类，另一种认为不可以。不管怎样，希望狐狸与刺猬的故事，能够让每一个在耶鲁学习的人有所思考：要以何种方式度过在耶鲁的这段时光。

　　Your education in Yale College will expose you to some grand ideas that may seem compelling as unifying life philosophies. You will learn about and from some brilliant hedgehogs and brilliant foxes. But at this stage of your education, I want to urge you to emulate the fox. As inspired as you might be by a single idea or way of looking at the world, I suggest that you entertain many different ways of thinking and consider various points of view. Try them all on; see what fits you best.

　　在耶鲁的本科学习过程中，你们会接触到一些伟大的思想，堪称很好的人生哲学。也会了解并且师从一些“伟大的刺猬”与“伟大的狐狸”。但是在这个阶段，我想鼓励大家多效仿狐狸。你可能会对某一种思想或世界观产生强烈的共鸣，但是我建议你们，多学习不同的思想、多考虑不同的观点。尽量都去尝试一下，最后再决定什么是最适合自己的。

　　The beauty of a liberal education – the education that Yale College offers – is that it liberates you from having to pursue a narrow, vocationally-oriented program of study. I hope you will take advantage of – and enjoy – this intellectual freedom. You will be able to choose from a wide variety of courses, learning about how people in many different fields think and understand the world. Your professors will introduce you to a panoply of ideas and ask you to think critically about all of them. You will be expected to question conventional orthodoxies rather than subscribe to a single view of the world. This work will be challenging – have no doubt – but it will also be exhilarating and, yes, liberating.

　　人文教育之美在于将你从狭隘的、以职业为导向的学习计划中解放出来——这也正是耶鲁本科学院所提供的教育。我希望你们能够好好利用并享受这种思想自由。你们可以选择各种课程，了解不同领域的人是如何思考并理解这个世界的。你们的教授会给你们介绍很多丰富有趣的观点，并且要求你们进行思辨。教授会要求你们对那些正统观念提出质疑，而不是对某一观点深信不疑地接受。这样的学习，毫无疑问，将充满挑战，但也是思想解放、振奋人心的一次经历。

　　There will be plenty of time later to hone your focus, to specialize and develop your expertise. Perhaps you’ll decide to pursue a doctorate or attend professional school. And there may even be times here at Yale College when you will delve deeply into a certain topic for a paper or a project. When I received my graduate education here at Yale, for example, there were times when I had to be a hedgehog. Hedgehogs, too, have many fine qualities.

　　之后，你们会有很多时间寻找自己要专攻的方向，培养自己的专长。也许你将继续深造，攻读博士学位，也许会进入某个专业学院学习。甚至在这里学习期间，有时会为了一篇论文或是一个课题深入研究某个问题。比如，当我在耶鲁读研究生时，有时候不得不像一个刺猬。刺猬也有许多优良的品质。