Etymology

"The effect of etymological retracing is not to ground the word solidly but to render it unstable, equivocal, wavering, abysmal. All etymology is false etymology, both in the sense that there is always some bend or discontinuity in the etymological line, and in the sense that etymology always fails to find an etymon, a true literal meaning at the origin." - J. Hillis Miller

This is what Nehamas is getting at by quoting Valéry's "Il n'y a pas une parole qu'on puisse comprendre, si l'on va au fond": "There is not one word that you can understand, if you go deep enough." As a person who loves etymology and philology, these are frightening notions to me. I love discovering how words began, evolved, gained meaning, lost meaning. Looking up "ἔτυμον" and "etymon" in Liddell & Scott's Greek Lexicon and the Oxford English Dictionary, though, I see no mention of "literal" meaning, as Miller suggests. Both sources simply mention the "true meaning of a word," and I think it's a mistake to conflate the "literal" and "true" meanings of words.

Even so, I do not take Miller's statement about etymology to mean that texts are unreadable, as Nehamas suggests. When the author specifically and purposefully chose which word to use, she also chose a specific usage from that word's vast array of meanings. Though there are many possible meanings and nuances of each word, there is only one meaning the author intends, and this guards against a pluralistic view.