How to read (part eleven): With texts against interpretations

A telling fact about human intelligence is that we can hold a lot of false beliefs and still survive or even live a jolly good life. For all I know, there are flat-earthers around whose beliefs don’t seem to interfere much with other beliefs. It’s telling because it raises the question of how much really depends on our knowing the truth (imagine the word capitalised). Much less spectacular but vital for philosophers and historians of philosophy, the same might be true for our understanding of texts.* Many of us might live with grand misinterpretations without ever noticing. (I, for one, lived with a mistaken understanding of what the term “proposition” means roughly until I wrote a paper about it. ) This fact triggers at least two responses: (1) A fair amount of people think that this sad state of affairs can be amended by proper reading which will eventually lead to a proper understanding. “I just read carefully and see what it says”, or something like that. (2) To this a more sceptically inclined colleague might respond: “Well yeah, but it’s all down to your interpretation.” These fairly common yet opposed responses give rise to two opposed myths about reading: The first is that the text simply contains what we can say about it. This kind of hermeneutical givenism is often met with what one might call interpretationism, that is, the idea that there is no text an sich but only interpretations. This opposition is frustrating because it polarises approaches that actually depend on one another. As I see it, the relation between them is not one of contrariety but of a dialectical swinging back and forth. Even if there is not one single correct understanding of a text, there are many false ones. If this is correct, we should exploit this fact for (becoming aware of) our practice of reading by looking for frictions between what we think we know and what the text presents us with. In what follows, I would like to share some ideas how to exploit such frictions. The crucial point is that a claim on what a given text is about should be refined in the course of confronting the actual text. You may start with the assumption that a text is about X. If you’ve done some proper work, you should find that the text is about Y. Here is how:

What are philosophical texts about? – Contrary to a widespread assumption, the answer to that question is normally not given in the text itself. Philosophical texts typically consist of arguments for a certain claim. That’s at least what should be true of our currently most common genre, the philosophical paper or essay. Thus, a good way to read those is to begin by identifying the conclusion that is argued for and then to look for the premisses supporting to the conclusion. How do you find the conclusion, though? What’s often overlooked is that this question is twofold. It has a textual or grammatical sense and a topical or disciplinary sense. In the textual sense, papers or passages often contain a line saying “the aim is to show”, an explicit statement with the defended view or a “therefore” (or “thus” or a similar word or phrase) introducing a conclusion. You should by all means look for such items when reading, but I suppose that the assumption of what a given text or passage is about is settled well in advance by what I call topical sense. Usually, you don’t just bump into a text wondering what it’s about. That question is normally settled by a a course instructor, secondary literature or a bibliography listing this text under a course title or keyword. In this sense, the conclusion is generally embedded in a topical network of a topic (the nature of the mind) as related to a discipline (like philosophy of mind), a common problem (how do mind and body interact), and a set of positions (say, dualism vs monism) on that problem. So even if you look for the conclusion in the text, it will be the topic suggested by the instructor or some other context that guides your search for the conclusion. I bet that if you were to list Cinderella in a syllabus for a consciousness course, people would start looking for the pertinent points in the text. What this comes down to is, again, twofold: On the one hand, a philosophical text is about (arguing for) a conclusion; and identifying the conclusion settles what you take the premisses to be. However, on the other hand, the conclusion is commonly assumed in advance, since the text is given to you in a topical context that suggests and constrains potential conclusions. If this is correct, it seems that prior interpretations (taken on authority) often settle what a text is about. Try reading Descartes’ Meditations as a text that is not in some sense about dualism and you’ll see what I mean. It’s not impossible, but many people will think you’re avoiding the elephant in the room.

Points of contact. – Guiding topical assumptions might seem problematic, but they are not. They belong to the way we receive the text. Rival interpretations often argue about the right topical context. They can be quite controversial and seem mutually exclusive. Just think of the Bible as a religious text as opposed to a historical document. Sometimes they seem more complementary. You can see the Bible as both a historical document and a religious foundation. The point is, then, not to avoid such contexts (and go for givenism), but to see what actually connects text and interpretations. In other words, you should look for points of contact. What are the interpretations arguing about and how do they relate to the text. Interpretations worth your time do not only argue about the proper topical context but do so by also pointing out a concrete term or passage in the text. This is the proper point of contact. Interpretations and related disagreement must have a clear textual basis.

Where are you now and what is next? – If you have found one or several points of contact, you can begin to see what the text is about – in keeping with various interpretations. Don’t downplay this! Figuring out a point of contact is an achievement going well beyond engaging with doxography or an individual interpretation. You could now write something about the state of the art. But note that, so far, you have not begun to work with the text as such. But how do you begin that and why should you bother? Many people won’t even delve into different interpretations but stick to a doxography telling them authoritatively what certain texts are about. Although doxographies initially derive from engagements with the text, they don’t make these engagments explicit. No one today will actually argue that Locke was an empiricist. Such interpretations are taken for granted, not in the sense that they are taken to be true, but in that they are taken to belong to an interpretive tradition. (In the same way, we wouldn’t call a map of Paris from 1250 or from 1950 false; although it still tells us something, we know that it’s outdated.) If you want to move on, you should know what you want. Do you actually want to read the text or do you want to pass an exam? Are you interested in a certain kind of philosophy or do you want to see how it was or is done, that is, written? As I like to put it, if you’re merely doing philosophy, it’s enough to get the hang of some interpretations. If you want to do history of philosophy, you have to engage with the text. But how?

Build up friction between the text and the interpretations. – Topical contextualisations or doxographies are often taken as a starting point, but they do obscure (earlier) failures of understanding. Students often don’t notice that they have mainly learned to project an interpretation into a text, rather than reading a text. So how do you move ahead? Start from your point of contact, but rather than taking an interpretation for granted, ask yourself what the term or passage in question is about. Begin by trying to explain the passage in virtue of the other parts of the same text. How? Explanations like “Locke is an empiricist” or “This passage contains Locke’s account of linguistic meaning”, for example, will commonly block actual reading. You’ll notice this when you ask for details in the text. Once people parse Locke’s famous claim that “Words in their primary and immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them …” with the assumption that Locke discusses meaning, they are likely to think that “signification” means “meaning”. Arguably, Locke’s text doesn’t offer any such account. So what do you do instead?

• Provide an analysis of the content and style of the passage as such: explain (technical) terms, see how they hang together and get taken up. Look at logical operators and connections between sentences. See whether it contains arguments or explications of terms. See whether it contains examples. References to other authors or texts. See whether it contains metaphorical expressions. Ask yourself what work the metaphors do.
• Make a strict distinction between the content and the function of a passage in the overall text. Does it function as an introduction or is it a refinement of something earlier? Is it a key passage in the text itself or part of a larger argument?
• See whether the technical terms used are part of a common terminology. Study the terminology through dictionaries, handbooks or related texts.
• Check the translation (if it is one) for consistency with regard to technical terms. Is it a use of terms that’s still common or now part of a different discipline?

Going through some of these considerations will quickly challenge the interpretive ideas. You will likely notice that a text, once you look at the whole, can be part of quite different topics or disciplines and also that the priorities provided in the text rarely match what is deemed relevant in current interpretations. As Jenny Ahworth has shown with regard to Locke’s notion of signification, sometimes a different understanding of one technical term can turn over whole traditions of reading a text. But even if you don’t intend to contribute original research, you’ll have made a first step to developing a solid and independent understanding.

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* Here is part one of my series on how to read.