Maatukathe III Session 3

Maatukathe III Session 3 
04.04.2015
Minutes: Shashikala Srinivasan

Reading a Classic

The class began with two questions: What is a classical text and why must we read it? Secondly, if the classical text is from another period (which it most often is), what kind of problems do we confront when we read it and how do we overcome the difficulties in accessing the text? 

The discussion on the first question led to the following points. We read classics because they are conferred the place of being great works by a tradition (or a culture). They are important to a culture because they set standards and represent the best and most important thoughts of a tradition. To recognize that it is part of our tradition is also to simultaneously recognize that it has influenced us and continues to influence us in significant ways. In other words, it is part of our cultural inheritance which has played a role in our formation and is considered part of the “educated discourse.” In order to illuminate the notion of an educated discourse, a contrast was set up between “pass the salt and pepper” kind of talk and an elevated saying like “sambhavami yuge yuge.”  The latter is seen as part of our educated discourse. The Idea of going to a classic then is to reflect on notions of an educated discourse which, with or without your knowledge, cultivates in you an attitude in the way you go about the world.  Further, it was noted that “the educated discourse” is not a distinction made between people (as in “the educated lot” and “the uneducated lot”) but within the language we use. Our educated discourse is that part of our everyday language which has traces of tradition – in terms of diction, institutions, modes of thinking, vocabulary - and can be considered to have their roots in classical traditions. The question of whether the educated discourse is an explanatory layer over everyday language or whether it is constitutive of and is embodied in the distinctions of everyday language (where the distinctions are available as actions but not as explanations of those actions) was raised by the participants. The question was resolved by equating the educated discourse to what we can call the reflective reconstructions of a culture that influences the way people go about their world. Thus, reading a classical text (whether written, oral or performative) gives us access to this reflection by making available the methodological distinctions and bringing into focus the distinctions of the educated discourse. This provides us with a clearer understanding of our actions and the way we go about the world.

We can put a classic to test by confirming its influence in different periods of time. However, even while we attempt to conceptualize these influences, we must be prepared to encounter modes of thought and reflection that are different from ours. Just as people from the same background are likely to talk the same idiom but when we meet different people from different backgrounds, different idioms and alternatives are generated, similarly, when we revisit a classic which is from a different time and period, we are bound to encounter modes of thinking that we are unaccustomed to. The more remote the classical text, the more likely we are to construct an alternative to what we are accustomed to. Therefore, the objective must not be seen as one of “recovering” the past but one of illuminating our present and making alternative models available for our contemporary world. The access to different modes of thinking would help us expand the range of possibilities about what it means to be a human being today.

The task of constructing alternative modes of thinking from the classical traditions requires that we have some idea of the various difficulties we may confront while accessing the classical text, leading to a discussion on the second question posed in the beginning of the class. We must remember that the milieu from which the classical text comes is different from ours and so are its concerns. We must necessarily, therefore must distance ourself from what we are accustomed to, in order to be able to understand the text. We must desist from projecting contemporary themes and meanings to the past works. The terms we encounter may mean differently. For instance, in Nussbaum’s “Saving Aristotle’s Appearance,” an instance of a classical text chosen for study, words such as phainomena or appearances, paradeigmata, puzzles, endoxa mean differently from what we think them to mean today. Most scholars remain inattentive to this difference in meaning and this leads to various kinds of misinterpretations. This frustrates our initial aim of accessing the classical text. Art of interpretation here then, is “to walk on the edge” for while we cannot help make Aristotle (or any other classical text) our contemporary, we must also remember not to make the mistake of making Aristotle our contemporary. To conceptualize these differences and similarities then is the function of reading a classical text. In this way, we enter into a genuine conversation with the text rather than to agree or disagree with what it is being said in it or from the point of view of judging it as right or wrong in terms of what it says.

Post Lunch Session: Saving Aristotle’s Appearances

The post lunch session took up the article “Saving Aristotle’s appearance” by Martha Nussbaum. The purpose was to illustrate what it means to read a classic and what are the interpretative tools that required. A close reading of the text, with attention to various kinds of words, their meanings and distinctions that are systematically built up by the author was the main focus of the exercise. Within what intellectual tradition does “Saving the Appearance” gain its meaning and why do appearances need saving was discussed in detail. In order to understand our current scientific methods we must reflect on the elements of our educated discourse and the long tradition of reflection on scientific method that is present. When Aristotle claims that his aim – in science, metaphysics and ethics – is to save appearances and their truth, he comes from an intellectual tradition that preserves appearances. In doing this, Aristotle was opposing the Platonic and Socrates’ line of thinking which opposed the realm of human society, the phainomena or appearances (and the cognitive states associated with them) to an extra-human realm/activity which was considered to supply us with paradigms that are purer than we are. In this platonic tradition, the opinions of imperfect, finite, limited human beings was seen as being incapable of providing evidence for truth. Nor was the world of appearances seen as capable of providing truth with its “witnesses” and paradigms (to be understood as a style or mode of thinking).  In the platonic tradition, to do philosophy then is to take the “long road to truth” where the true, real and genuine understanding are to be found outside human societies and appearances are always deemed to be false. The identification of the “pure and unhypothetical point” which is not relative to human society and language, in the Platonian tradition, is seen as the only starting point of science. Aristotle challenges this tradition by arguing that the true and real are to be found only inside appearances (within human societies, within what we say, see and believe) and not by resorting to any extra-human acts. Even the first principles of science are arrived at by ordering the mass of contradictions from appearances through a dialectical practice (through dialogue and resolving of contradictions) and not from an apiori principle which have their origins in special rational acts of intuitions. The first principle, “witnesses” and paradeigmata or the modes of thinking, Aristotle claims, are all to be found (or arrived at) within appearances. Appearances is all there is. It follows from this that scientific thinking then is not opposed to ordinary ways of thinking we perform in our everyday life but an accentuation of it. The difference is of a degree and not kind.

The title of the article indicates that Nussbaum is of the opinion that Aristotle’s notion of appearances needs “saving.” In what sense is Nussabaum “saving Aristotle’s appearances” was discussed in detail. First, Nussbaum saves Aristotle’s appearances by showing how it was misinterpreted by the Baconian, empiricist tradition to mean “hard data”, in the sense of interpretation-free data. However, this is to project later developments onto the Aristotelian notion of appearances.  Aristotle’s phainomena, which meant “what people believe and say,” made no distinction between data obtained by pure perception and beliefs of a community. Instead it involves the notion of experience which includes what a human observer perceives as his world, using his/her cognitive faculties (or Kritika) which involves making distinctions in the act of going about one’s life. Nussbaum challenges the dominant, Baconion interpretation through a textual analysis of Aristotle’s works to make available Aristotle’s notion of appearances to us. Secondly, she defends his methods which are confined to appearances. Aristotle methods follows setting up a puzzle (another important term, which consists of bringing the contradictory views of various people on an issue to the surface) and a way to think through what various people say, marshalling various considerations in such a way that we are left with no contradiction. The method of “appearance saving” therefore requires intellectual commitment to the principle of non-contradiction and maintaining consistency. Most importantly, it includes a return to phainomena and showing that our account preserves them as true. How endoxa, best understood as a pre-propositional articulation, is interpreted as “beliefs” (which are propositional) by Nussabum was pointed out. This provides us with an interesting example of how one of the most respectable scholars of Aristotle, despite her explicitly stated aim of being faithful to meanings of various terms as used by Aristotle, can still miss something important. This throws into sharp relief the kind of difficulties we are likely to face when we are reading a classical text. An account of how and why this misinterpretation happens by Nussbaum and a detailed discussion and analysis of the section on Aristotle’s method was postponed to the next day of the workshop.