Readers, I'd like you to write down a one-thousand digit number. Then, we'll see if your number matches up with my, the author's, number.
Sound difficult? What if I give you some clues? There are no 9s in this number. Every 7th number is a 7, it begins with a 3, and ends with an 8.
Still not enough? Fine. Let's compare numbers anyway. Jacob, you got 310 numbers correct out of 1000. Tom, you got 230. Are either of you correct? No. Is Jacob more correct than Tom, in this case? Yes.
When reading literature, there is one, absolutely correct, interpretation, and that is to discover exactly what the author meant. Some interpretations are better than others, yes, in that some interpretations will have a higher percentage of correct material. These interpretations, however, are still not correct, and there is still only one correct interpretation of this work of literature.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
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.
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.
Re: A Preference for Pluralism
Andy's post (love the title) and Bryan's response discuss the impracticality of monism. They believe that, if a work did indeed have one sole interpretation, it would be impossible to know for sure what that one interpretation is.
In response, I suggest that the impossibility of being able to know a thing is not the same as that thing not existing. Knowledge of a thing does not correlate with its existence. It may be near impossible, given our current level of technology, to know that there is a never-before-seen fossil buried deep under silt and sand at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but our ignorance of this fact has no impact on whether or not that fossil is actually there. Similarly, the near-impossibility of discovering and verifying the one true meaning of a text would not alter the fact that there is one true meaning of a text.
In response, I suggest that the impossibility of being able to know a thing is not the same as that thing not existing. Knowledge of a thing does not correlate with its existence. It may be near impossible, given our current level of technology, to know that there is a never-before-seen fossil buried deep under silt and sand at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but our ignorance of this fact has no impact on whether or not that fossil is actually there. Similarly, the near-impossibility of discovering and verifying the one true meaning of a text would not alter the fact that there is one true meaning of a text.
Sarcasm
Is sarcasm, as a stylistic flourish in writing, appropriate for philosophy and other academic writing?
It's late Tuesday night. My housemate, Liz, and I are sitting in my room, doing homework. Liz is typing furiously, hit by a sudden moment of inspiration, when she stops, looks up, ponders for a moment, then asks, "Is it okay for me to use sarcasm in a paper?"
I shrug and say, "Depends on what you're writing about, and who you're writing for. Why, what do you want to say?"
"I want to say that this guy was a great poet, and then follow it up with lines of his terrible poetry," she responded.
"Yeah," I said, "that'll go over well..."
----
On Friday, the class was a bit confused by one of Stolnitz' lines. Was this line meant to be tongue-in-cheek? Was he being sarcastic? We couldn't really tell. This is the problem with sarcasm; if you don't know the speaker well enough, it is tremendously difficult to discern whether or not he is being sarcastic. Liz's professor might not have been able to tell if Liz was being sarcastic, or if she really did just think she was quoting the lines of a great poet.
While I greatly enjoy using sarcasm in face-to-face communication (intonation and body language make sarcasm far more easy to detect), and typically delight when I come across sarcasm in fiction, I think sarcasm is inappropriate in academic writing. The benefits of sarcastic writing in academic work would be to make the reader laugh or to poke fun at another person or idea. Writers can make their readers laugh in other ways besides sarcasm, and poking fun at people or ideas in academic work betrays the intellectual virtues of charity and respect.
It's late Tuesday night. My housemate, Liz, and I are sitting in my room, doing homework. Liz is typing furiously, hit by a sudden moment of inspiration, when she stops, looks up, ponders for a moment, then asks, "Is it okay for me to use sarcasm in a paper?"
I shrug and say, "Depends on what you're writing about, and who you're writing for. Why, what do you want to say?"
"I want to say that this guy was a great poet, and then follow it up with lines of his terrible poetry," she responded.
"Yeah," I said, "that'll go over well..."
----
On Friday, the class was a bit confused by one of Stolnitz' lines. Was this line meant to be tongue-in-cheek? Was he being sarcastic? We couldn't really tell. This is the problem with sarcasm; if you don't know the speaker well enough, it is tremendously difficult to discern whether or not he is being sarcastic. Liz's professor might not have been able to tell if Liz was being sarcastic, or if she really did just think she was quoting the lines of a great poet.
While I greatly enjoy using sarcasm in face-to-face communication (intonation and body language make sarcasm far more easy to detect), and typically delight when I come across sarcasm in fiction, I think sarcasm is inappropriate in academic writing. The benefits of sarcastic writing in academic work would be to make the reader laugh or to poke fun at another person or idea. Writers can make their readers laugh in other ways besides sarcasm, and poking fun at people or ideas in academic work betrays the intellectual virtues of charity and respect.
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