Ever since Quine and Davidson, it has almost become a platitude that “translation is always interpretation”. While I’m unaware of anyone on ILP presently engaged in a translation project (though if you are out there, I’d love to hear from you) I think the basic thrust of this idea, that there is a tension between what is meant and what is said and how best to resolve that. Is there some duty of philosophers to strive for textual accuracy or should texts simply be used as tools to justify whatever interpretation the philosopher(s) favors at that moment. How important is the role of exegesis in the process of hermeneutics?
In the case of textual religions, I think that there is a clear prima facia assumption that those engaged in interpretation are heavily-invested in the accuracy game. But what about philosophy as a whole? Should accuracy be included within the ideal of the “Lover of Truth”, or should the lover of truth eschew textual accuracy in favor of their own vision of the truth as they see it?
Personally, I think the difference lies in “expanding†the text vs. just plain making stuff up. As an example, I’ll use the Ames and Hall, two philosophers from the University of Hawaii’s East Asian studies department. They take a strong Whiteheadian view and apply it to everything. – they will make that square peg fit through a circular hole! Thankfully, because of the Yijing (The Classic of Changes), this approach actually works quite well for most East Asian philosophers. So they’ve taken modern philosophical developments and used them to expand on ancient texts and thereby deepen them. Perhaps even shed light on something that was already present but had been overlooked. Let’s contrast that general approach (which I think is a useful line of study) with their work “Thinking Through Confuciusâ€. In that book, they take a passage from the Analects that is very clearly a later addition (and therefore not something Confucius said) and use it as their thesis around which the rest of the book is built. In my opinion, that is pretty bogus, given that the book is attempting to clarify the thought of Confucius.
So it is all about perspective. Some Whiteheadians applying their world-view to other philosophical contexts and making it work is an enriching exercise for all concerned parties. However, people trying to get into the mind of an ancient thinker while throwing anything resembling good philology and history out the window. My feelings on this issue rest on two rather large assumptions: 1) The truth exists and 2) we can approach it. Given that, I think it is reasonable to think that people from the past had some grasp on the truth and that grasp may differ from our own. If we approach their understanding with sincerity, we can use it to more fully understand what is going on.
Let’s use alchemy as a context and gunpowder as the example. I don’t think anyone would argue against the idea that when studying something like gunpowder, it makes sense to apply modern chemistry to ingredients were used in its discovery. You know, “such-and-such is the sulfur source, this reduces that, and the following reaction is extremely exothermic.†I think that sort of thing expands on the texts and makes them clearer. However, I think it is a mistake to take it one step further, and use the alchemical justification to explain the chemical one and suggest that the Chinese knew that all along when clearly they didn’t.
Right? I think the gunpowder example, where the violation of accuracy is obvious to everyone is the same as the Ames and Hall violation of accuracy where the violation may be somewhat more obscure or obscured since we are discussing philosophy instead of chemistry.
This also feeds into the idea of accuracy vs. implementation. Nietzsche gets thrown around a lot on ILP, and many of his fans will quote him chapter-and-verse in their arguments. I often find this ironic since Nietzsche emphasized creativity above all else, so while they may be wholly accurate in their handling of Nietzsche, one has to ask whether they are actually implementing Nietzsche. That creates a bit of a paradox, don’t you think? Can accuracy exist without implementation? Personally, I don’t think so: the failure to act on one’s understanding suggests a failure in understanding.