Will I Get An 'A' On This Poly-Sci Paper?

Poly-Sci? Why not Polysics instead?

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
So, should you read, then interprete, then review the interpretation, then re-interprete the interpretation to make sure that your interpretation of what you have read is what you have interpreted, or should you read and interprete the peice several times to compare and contrast each interpretation of each reading?
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I think Leo Strauss means that interpretation is such a hard problem that we should rarely progress to explanation.

The idea of interpretation, as I have outlined above, is really the attempt to understand the author’s work as the author understood it. This may not be worth the effort, especially for vulgar writers.

That is, when engaged in a debate with our peers, we ought to understand their arguments before putting forward our own. When listening into a debate between greater thinkers than ourselves, our focus ought to be on truly understanding what is being said.

In any case, the student should demonstrate that he or she has understood the arguments before attempting to make any further comment.

[quote]The Mage wrote:
Poly-Sci? Why not Polysics instead?

I hear blood.

[quote]nephorm wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
So, should you read, then interprete, then review the interpretation, then re-interprete the interpretation to make sure that your interpretation of what you have read is what you have interpreted, or should you read and interprete the peice several times to compare and contrast each interpretation of each reading?

I think Leo Strauss means that interpretation is such a hard problem that we should rarely progress to explanation.

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Yeah, what I was doing there was a play on that concept, coupled with the problem of expressing thought using language.

Bad joke poorly executed, I guess.

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Yeah, what I was doing there was a play on that concept, coupled with the problem of expressing thought using language.

Bad joke poorly executed, I guess.
[/quote]

No, hey… funny stuff.

Somebody once said (about an email I had written) “this is why no one invites Mr. Spock to parties.”

[quote]nephorm wrote:
But one must be careful not to allow suppositions to entirely color the interpretation. If we have evidence that the writer lied, this is germane to intpretation. We must ask ourselves whether he lied, why he lied, and what he understood by the lying. This is rarely fruitful when reading popular contemporary authors, mostly because it is difficult to believe popular writers intelligent enough to remain consistent and maintain a plan throughout a single work, much less several. Our interpretation is limited by the level of skill of the author, since we must rely on his plan - if, indeed, he has one - to inform our interpretation.
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I’m curious why you separate modern authors from ancient ones in terms of their continuity of works and guiding purpose. I believe the length of time that separates us from ancient authors gives us better perspective into their body of work, but I also think that modern authors are fully capable of producing an opus equally as guided and influential. The trick is to not simply throw out all modern work but instead to read it with a careful eye at that author’s past.

I think the truer distinction is that there are only so many ancient writers, whereas there are hundreds of thousands of modern ones. It’s easier to deeply interpret a smaller collection and ignore the larger body of potentially good ideas.

[quote]Joshsz wrote:
I’m curious why you separate modern authors from ancient ones in terms of their continuity of works and guiding purpose. I believe the length of time that separates us from ancient authors gives us better perspective into their body of work, but I also think that modern authors are fully capable of producing an opus equally as guided and influential. The trick is to not simply throw out all modern work but instead to read it with a careful eye at that author’s past.

I think the truer distinction is that there are only so many ancient writers, whereas there are hundreds of thousands of modern ones. It’s easier to deeply interpret a smaller collection and ignore the larger body of potentially good ideas.[/quote]

The distinction is not between moderns and ancients; there were many fine modern writers (Hobbes, Locke, and Swift to name a few).

To be serious - I was writing against contemporary, popular writers. Not contemporary writers in general. I might expect cleverness from Ann Coulter or Al Franken, but not profound explorations of human nature. And any such attempt from either would be suspect on a number of grounds.

There were, by the way, a very large number of ancient authors. What we have available to us, and what we take seriously as philosophy, is partially a product of the difficulty of preserving texts prior to Gutenberg. For a work to survive, it had to be worth not only reading, but hand-copying. Or, in some cases, writing entire books devoted to the interpretation of the original.

Anyway, there are a few contemporary writers worth reading with care. As Francis Bacon said: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.”

Still, the odds are that the older the book, the more likely it is worth one’s effort.

I still think Plato’s Republic is garbage :wink: