Uses and Abuses of the Classics

Western Interpretations of Greek Philosophy

Jorge J. E. Gracia, Jiyuan Yu

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351143462
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

From very early on, Western philosophers have been obsessed with the understanding of a relatively few works of philosophy which have played a disproportionately large and fundamental role in developing the Western philosophical canon, dominating the curriculum in the past and in the present; there is no indication that they will not do so in the future. Uses and Abuses of the Classics examines the various ways in which the different periods of the history of philosophy have approached these texts. The editors have chosen for analysis some of the major philosophers from periods of the history of philosophy in which the interpretation of the classics has been particularly significant. Contributions to this book include entries on: Aristotle's reading of Plato; Averroes on Aristotle; Nietzsche on the Beginnings of Western Philosophy; and Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Chapter 1
Interpretation of the Philosophical Classics: Clarification and Issues

Jorge J. E. Gracia

The interpretation of philosophical classics poses two initial questions: what is a philosophical classic and what is an interpretation? Without answers to these questions, we cannot really claim to have understood all that is involved in interpreting the philosophical classics. Unfortunately, the answers to both questions are highly contested. The degree of disagreement concerning the first can easily be gauged from the fact that Italo Calvino lists more than ten different ways in which the classics can be taken in his well-known article, 'Why read the Classics?'¹ And the number of views concerning interpretation is not smaller by any means. Indeed, the philosophical literature, let alone that in other disciplines, is full of different and conflicting views about interpretation.² Here, it is not possible to examine even a small number of the views that have been proposed about the notion either of a classic or of interpretation. Rather, I shall have to make do by proposing a view of a philosophical classic and two different conceptions of interpretation that it is hoped will help readers to think about the chapters of this volume.

The Philosophical Classics

A convenient and useful way to conceive a philosophical classic is to think of it as a text of philosophy that has become established in the canon of texts that are read and reread because of their philosophical value. It is important to emphasize that the value is philosophical rather than historical. There are many texts of philosophy that had enormous influence shortly after they were composed and even in later periods of the history of philosophy, but which have subsequently ceased to be read or consulted for philosophical reasons. These texts have historical significance in that they make us understand certain periods of the history of philosophy, including the one in which they were produced. But, because they have ceased to be regarded as philosophically relevant, they cannot be considered classics in the way I have proposed here. Christian Wolff's famous Ontology was one such book for, although it was widely read for a period of time after its publication, it eventually disappeared from the philosophical canon. Indeed, I am quite sure that many Western philosophers today have never heard of it and, of those who have, only a handful have ever held the book in their hands, let alone read any part of it.

For our present purposes, even the narrow understanding of a classic that I have provided is still too broad insofar as it can include works of rather recent origin. Indeed, we often speak of the classics of modern philosophy or even of the classics of twentieth-century philosophy.³ Descartes' Discourse on Method has clearly become a classic and so has Austin's How To Do Things with Words. These texts are read and reread not only for their historical interest, but also and perhaps primarily, because of their philosophical value. Indeed, they are not just read, they are a constant source of written philosophical commentary and discussion, and have become almost indispensable tools in the analysis of certain problems of perennial interest to philosophers.

The texts with which this volume is concerned, however, comprise a much narrower category. We might say that they are the classics par excellence: they are the classic philosophical texts from Western antiquity. Normally, this category also includes works from Latin authors, but it is a fact that very few philosophical works of Roman origin are seriously discussed by philosophers today. Even such important works as Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, or some of Seneca's Letters, are read more for the historical insight they offer than for their philosophical pertinence. Perhaps this will change, and at a later time they will join the list of classics in the narrow sense I have proposed, but they are not classics now.

This last point is important because it indicates that the canon of classics, even of those belonging to ancient Greece and Rome, is not permanent. It is altogether possible that some texts will be dropped from it and some added. Canons are the product of history and as such are as open to future change as all future history is. But this, of course, is of no concern to us here, for our interest is in the Greek classics as we think of them today. For our present purposes, then, a classic is a text from ancient Greece, considered to be of perennial philosophical interest, which continues to be read and discussed today.

Interpretation

The notion of interpretation is even more contested than the notion of a classic. There are two particularly important conceptions of it that are in use, even if seldom explicitly acknowledged. According to one, an interpretation is a certain understanding that someone has of a text. Thus we speak of your or my interpretation of the first line of Aristotle's Metaphysics, 'All men by nature desire to know.' In this sense, an interpretation consists of the acts of understanding that persons entertain when they think about this line.

Another way to conceive an interpretation is as a text (call it interpretans) through which the interpreter aims to cause an understanding of another text which is under interpretation (call this interpretandum) in an audience. In this sense, Aquinas' Commentary on Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' is an interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Obviously, this is not an understanding but a text that presupposes an interpretation in the first sense, that is, an understanding on the part of the interpreter. For our purposes, both senses are important. The first is so because we need a notion of the understanding that the interpreters of the classics had and tried to express through the texts they composed about the classics. We need to be able to talk about Aquinas' interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics as his understanding of it. But, of course, we have access to Aquinas' understanding of Aristotle's Metaphysics only through what he wrote about it, that is, through the text of his Commentary, and this requires that we also use the notion of interpretation as a text. In this sense the Commentary is the interpretation.

Aims of Interpretation

One of the greatest sources of misunderstanding concerning interpretation is the belief that all interpretations have, or should have, the same aim, and this belief extends both to those who judge the value of particular interpretations and to those who engage in the production of interpretations. Before we evaluate particular interpretations of the classics, then, we need to have some ideas as to some of the most common aims that are pursued in interpretations. But before I list these, I should warn readers that very seldom do interpreters pursue one and only one of the aims I am going to list, even when they explicitly state that they are doing so. There is often a gap between the theory and the practice of interpretation. Moreover, most interpreters are not even clear about the aims they pursue except in a very general and usually unhelpful way. With these warnings in mind, let me now list some of the most common aims pursued in the interpretation of texts.

They break down into two general categories: interpretations that seek an understanding of the meaning of the text under interpretation (call them I_m), and interpretations that seek an understanding of the relation of the text, or its meaning, to something else brought into the picture by the interpreter (call them I_r). The first aim can be broken down further, because the meaning of a text can be taken in at least four different ways: the meaning as (1) determined (that is, understood or intended) by the author(s), (2) determined (that is, understood) by a particular audience or audiences, (3) considered independently of what the authors) or any particular audience(s) understood, and (4) including the implications of the meaning (taken in any one of the previous ways in which the meaning is understood).

In (1), the interpreter is after an understanding similar to the understanding the author(s) of the text had of, or intended for, it - say what Aristotle thought he meant, or intended to mean, when he wrote that 'All men by nature desire to know.' In (2), the interpreter pursues an understanding similar to that which a particular audience or audiences had of it - say, what Greeks contemporary with Aristotle understood by the mentioned sentence. In (3), the interpreter aims at an understanding of a text regardless of what its authors) or any particular audience(s) understood it to mean what 'All men by nature desire to know' means, independently of anyone's understanding of it, including the author(s). (Whether there is such a meaning is a matter of intense debate among philosophers, but the issue does not need to be settled here; indeed, some philosophers, such as Quine and Derrida appear to reject meanings altogether.) In (4), the interpreter wishes to achieve an understanding not just of the meaning of the text in any of the ways mentioned, but also of its implications; the issue is not to understand, say, just what Aristotle understood when he wrote the famous sentence, but also the implications of what he understood and of which he may or may not have been aware at the time.

So much for the aims of understanding the meaning of a text (I_m). The other aim mentioned involves understanding the relation of a text, or its meaning, to something else (I_r). Because this something else can be practically anything, the possibilities that open up are very large. Interpreters may seek to understand the relation between a text and many kinds of things: for example, a text and another text (Aristotle's Metaphysics and Aristotle's Physics); a text and a date (Aristotle's Metaphysics and the date of his birth); a view expressed by a text and the view expressed by some other text (Aristotle's view of forms put forth in the Metaphysics and Plato's view of them as presented in the Parmenides); the meaning of a text and one or more historical events (the meaning of Plato's Apology and Socrates' trial); a text and a person, whether the author or someone else (Plato's Crito and Socrates); a text and the morality of its author; and so on.

For historians of philosophy, many of these aims are pertinent, but usually the most commonly sought after involves the relation of various conceptual schemes to the views presented in a text. But what kinds of conceptual schemes are these? Here are some examples: feminist, Freudian, Marxist, Thomist, sociological, psychological, theological and literary. One may, for instance, attempt to understand Aristotle's 'All men by nature desire to know' in terms of a feminist scheme. Under these conditions, it becomes important to relate Aristotle's text and its meaning to feminist principles and to see how Aristotle's thinking as revealed by this sentence also reveals for us his view of women. The same can be applied in the other cases, so there is no need to extend the discussion further.

Naturally, in order to achieve these various ends, it is necessary to adopt particular approaches. So we need to turn next to the approaches frequently used in interpretation.

Approaches Used in Interpretation

The approach to be used in interpretation directly depends, quite naturally, on the aim pursued. But there are certain procedures or methods that seem to be conditions of all interpretations of texts, whereas there are others that are not. Whether they are or not depends in turn on the role played by various factors in interpretation. So I begin by distinguishing between general and specific factors that affect interpretation. Among the first, four stand out: linguistic, logical, historical and cultural. As groups of signs used to convey meaning, texts are linguistic entities.⁴ Interpreters, then, need to deal with them as such and are, therefore, required to know the languages of the texts: they need to know the meaning of the words used and the rules according to which the words are put together in the texts. This kind of linguistic information is essential to the interpretation of any text. Without it, interpreters are powerless to understand, or cause an understanding of, texts.

Logic is also essential. Texts are intended to convey meaning and this is constituted by concepts and their interrelations. Philosophical texts in particular often contain claims and arguments to support those claims, and logical analysis is essential in the understanding of these, for it is in logic that we learn the rules that reveal the structures of both arguments and complex claims.

Historical facts are also indispensable for interpretation, although this is sometimes disputed. Certain current philosophers claim that an interpreter is not required to know anything historical about a text, particularly literary ones, for interpreters should only be interested in what a text tells them and not in anything surrounding its history, including the identity of the author or the historical audience of the text at the time of its composition. But can we really even know that something is a text if we do not have some historical information about it? Some texts from past cultures look like artistic or decorative designs (consider Mayan and Egyptian glyphs), and it is only through the historical facts that surround them that we are able to tell they are texts. Some of these facts, such as dates, places and the identity of authors, seem very important, even if not indispensable, for the interpretation of texts. Of course, in certain interpretations these factors play more important roles than in others, but in most they play at least some role.

The fourth and final set of factors that play a role in the interpretation of texts is culture. Language, of course, is part of culture, but I have already singled out language earlier, so here I am concerned with cultural factors other than language. Culture has to do with certain practices and views that groups of people have. Among other functions, these practices serve to give meaning and significance to what members of these groups do and make. And among the things they produce are texts which, for this reason, make sense only when considered in the context of the groups' practices and views. Again, to repeat a point made earlier, although in a slightly modified form: we cannot judge that something is a text when it is taken out of its cultural context, for it is the latter that provides us with the criteria to identify it as a text. Figures and lines arranged on a wall are a text only if they are used as signs to convey meaning, and this is possible only if there is an actual composer and one or more actual or potential recipients that have some practices and views in common. Otherwise, there could be no possible communication and therefore no text. In a Wittgensteinian twist, one could say that texts are the products of ways of living or forms of life, and so knowledge of those ways or forms is essential for their identification as texts and for their understanding. To play the textual game, one must know the rules, and the rules are supplied by culture.

The exclusive consideration of each of these factors yields a different approach to the interpretation of texts: linguistic, logical, historical and cultural. But none of the approaches is by itself methodologically sound, for all four of the factors need to be taken into account if interpretations are going to be accurate and sensible, and not fall into anachronism. Imagine for a moment that logic is emphasized to the detriment of the other factors mentioned. How could the interpreter avoid linguistic mistakes, anachronisms and cultural inaccuracies?

So much for the four general kinds of approaches that are required by all interpretation. Apart from these, there are also other, specific approaches that are required for particular kinds of interpretations, although not for all. Because the number of possible kinds of interpretations is infinite, there is no point in even attempting to give a list of these approaches. Mention of a couple of examples should suffice.

An obvious case is that of theology, in theological interpretations. If interpreters seek to provide a theological interpretation of a certain text, it is essential to presuppose the theology.⁵ This supplies all kinds of principles, some of which will be hermeneutical. For example, a Roman Catholic interpretation of the Bible will presume that no interpretation of it can contradict established Roman Catholic doctrine. Texts that speak of Christ having brothers, then, must be understood to be referring to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Interpretation of the Philosophical Classics: Clarification and Issues
• 2 Plato on the Pre-Socratics
• 3 Aristotle and the Pre-Socratics
• 4 Nietzsche on the Beginnings of Western Philosophy
• 5 Aristotle's Reading of Plato
• 6 Augustine and Platomsm: The Rejection of Divided-Soul Accounts of Akrasia
• 7 Heidegger's Hermeneutic Reading of Plato
• 8 Maimomdes on Aristotle: Judaism and Science Reconsidered
• 9 Averroës on Aristotle
• 10 Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics
• 11 MacIntyre's Interpretation of Aristotle's Ethics
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index