Category Archives: Scholarship

The “Verbatim Standard” of Quoting Texts

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You construe it exactly, Theatetus.  For I say it is necessary for us to make the path in this way, as if they were present while we learn by asking them (translation mine, Sophist, 243d6-8). [1]

In the previous post I discussed the infamous critique of writing from Plato’s dialogue, the Phaedrus.  Much of the gravity of Plato’s critique depends on the conviction that the written word is an inadequate representation of the language breathed by a real-life author.  Of course, for this to have its proper impact, the author is, metaphorically, the master, while the text is the slave.  That is, the text is fully subordinate to the designs of the author, to whom we should really or imaginatively direct our questions and critiques.

One non-obvious consequence that follows from such a view is the principle of charity.  When a given text is like an envoy, limited in the expression of official policy, we will not attack vulnerable nouns and verbs to manipulate into contradiction.  We are to understand, or imagine, that the author would readily refute our misunderstandings or mischaracterizations.

Yet there is another aspect in the critique of writing relating to how we do the history of philosophy.  Some would claim, as I have written before, that “ancient philosophy” is not out there as a hunted animal to be found, but it must be created from a dilapidated carcass, more or less well as it turns out, if we are bad or good reconstructive taxidermists.  An extreme, yet not unfamiliar version is that the text can be nothing until it is interpreted in some way–– meaning not that there is always a need for a reader, but that the reader has the freedom to call forth a privileged reading of the text exclusively, and perhaps non-critically, available only to himself.

If one is committed to this view about texts though, there is actually little to encourage him to reference an opponent’s actual words.  That is, verbatim citation is superfluous and rudimentary: what is valuable is the textual chemistry that has been brought into being, the ingredients which spurred the reading are merely an intellectual curio.  Nor would it seem very fruitful to excavate the means by which the reader arrived at the particular interpretation, for this would involve an impossible penetration into the workings of an idiosyncratic mind and a dynamic text.  Furthermore there would be little ground to stand on to support the criticism, as there often is now, about Plato or Aristotle for instance, who seem to have loose criteria for what qualifies as quotations.  If a loyal reading of Parmenides emerges for Plato, then his lack of accuracy when it comes to quotations is unproblematic.  On the other hand, if Plato’s reading of Parmenides does not maintain a certain fidelity to its source, then this does not matter either, for on the view we have been considering, there is no such original entity, nor, we may assume, is there an author of something which does not exist.

 

REFERENCES:

[1] Κατὰ πόδα γε, ὦ Θεαίτητε, ὑπέλαβες. λέγω γὰρ
δὴ ταύτῃ δεῖν ποιεῖσθαι τὴν μέθοδον ἡμᾶς, οἷον αὐτῶν
παρόντων ἀναπυνθανομένους ὧδε·

Is the History of Philosophy Created or Discovered?

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I have been recently reading a few reflections on how the history of philosophy is, or ought to be done.  I will engage with these issues on a specific basis in the near future, but in general they come across as somewhat jaded–– no doubt the wisdom of a realist, in the eyes of these authors.  It so happened that Ancient Philosophy was particularly in view, but the ideas broadly apply to any scholarship in the history of philosophy, or really any scholarship dealing with the interpretation of texts.  I, like many others, have, and have had for a long time, thoughts about what it is to “do” ancient philosophy in an academic setting.  This performance of ancient philosophy scholarship, if I may call it that, has always been in my mind grounded on what ancient philosophers actually believed, even if, as it turns out, e.g., Aristotle was wrong about women having less teeth than men.  Thus, to turn this into an absurd example, no one could write a journal article on the premise that  Aristotle was a proto-feminist because he argued for dental egalitarianism, not because the former claim is laughable and false, although it is, but because the latter claim is baldly untrue.  On this view, history of philosophy, right or wrong, good or bad, must ultimately be dependent on the gold or dross, whatever they be by hap, which we find in the ancient philosophers.

On the other hand, there is a view, perhaps even earnestly practiced–– there need be no suspect design–– that skeptically approaches not a dialogue with the philosophers, but a series of encounters with “texts.”  There is not necessarily a correct view of Plato, only what one can, with adequate footnotes (of course!), persuasively put forth as emanating from the given Platonic texts one has chosen to invoke.  On this view, scholars are free to cobble together a great variety of creative interpretations, not liable to constraint by what the philosophers said, but by what they can be made to say by ingenuity and literary resilience.

One way this division between those who think that the history of philosophy is discovered or created, for this is what I think it amounts to, is to ask this question, “Would you write a paper or book that could be brilliantly sustained (though wrongly, in your honest opinion) by given textual readings?”  This option would be especially tempting if the reading was novel in the good sense, a truly insightful and counter-conventional interpretation of a text.  Yet should one still produce a work advancing a view of a philosopher, even if, by your philosophical compass, you believe it false?   What I worry about is not that too many today think that the history of philosophy is created, as opposed to discovered; rather it is the fear that many have never reflected on the possibility that they are anything but the same.