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.
