Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2016 Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

abstr act

The genre of philosophical commentary is characterized by an attitude of textual deference, or what I call a principle of authority. To read in conformity with the authority principle is to forego the prerogative to judge that the author has made a mistake. This article offers a defense of the principle of authority as hermeneutical precept by showing that it facilitates the practice of philosophy as care of the self. When its function is so understood, the authority principle turns out to be com-patible with a substantial degree of intellectual autonomy and is also epistemically benign.

Keywords: commentary, textual deference, authority, care of the self, pierre hadot

introductionThe genre of commentary is in its historical manifestation strongly associ-ated with a style of reading governed by an attitude of textual deference, or what I call a principle of authority. The commentator did not suppose himself equal to the “authentic” author: he sought to learn from one of those who know. The “‘authentic’ author could neither be mistaken, nor contradict himself, nor develop his arguments poorly, nor disagree with any other authentic author” (Hadot 1995, 73–74).

The commentator’s attitude of textual deference seems from a modern philosophical perspective, distinguished as it is by an intense critical stance,

Commentary, Authority, and the Care of the Self

Dylan Futter

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 98 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

99

to embody a serious error. From a contemporary perspective, the good phil-osophical reader should not accept the propositions advanced on account of the authority of the author; she should make up her own mind by consider-ing the logical adequacy of the reasoning presented. Such is, fundamentally, a point about the value of intellectual autonomy—the philosopher must think for herself.1

This article offers a defense of the principle of authority as hermeneu-tical precept for philosophical reading.2 I do not defend the principle on the grounds that philosophical knowledge is limited to a univocal group of authorities. Instead I argue that the authority principle should be under-stood as a methodological rule designed to facilitate the practice of phi-losophy as care of the self (ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ or ἐπιμέλεια τῆς ψυχῆς). Moreover, when its function is so understood, the principle turns out to be compatible with a substantial degree of intellectual autonomy and is also epistemically benign.

commentary and authorityThe commentary is an ancient literary genre, originating in marginal notes and glosses in scrolls of papyrus in the third century BC and com-ing to be a primary instrument of philosophical education in the imperial period subsequent to Sulla’s destruction of Athens (Hadot 2002, 146).3 The philosophical activity of the major Hellenistic schools after their disper-sal throughout the Roman Empire was primarily constituted by commen-tary on the authoritative texts of their founding fathers (Hadot 2002, 146). For example, the members of the Academy would orient their learning around the Platonic writings, as the members of the Lyceum would around Aristotle’s work and similarly for the Stoic and Epicurean schools (Hadot 1995, 71–77; Hadot 2002, 148). The genre continued to flourish in late antiq-uity and into the Middle Ages, when it formed “the basis of the medieval education system” (Minnis 1988, 13). During this time, “instruction con-sisted in essentially a textual commentary, whether of the Bible, Aristotle, Boethius, or the Sentences of Peter Lombard” (Hadot 1995, 73).4

The genre of philosophical commentary was founded on the assump-tion that “the truth had been ‘given’ in the master’s texts” (Hadot 1995, 73). The  commentator’s “whole ambition [was] directed to understanding [these] authoritative texts, ‘penetrating their depths [and] assimilating them’” (Minnis et al. 1991, 14).5 The genre of commentary was therefore char-acterized by an attitude of textual deference, by which I mean, specifically,

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 99 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

100

a style of reading in conformity with a principle of authority, that is, a hermeneutical rule disallowing the attribution of authorial error. To read in conformity with the principle of authority is then to forego the prerogative to judge that the author has made a mistake or expressed himself poorly. As Hugh of St. Victor puts the point: “[Those] things that are obscure elu-cidate if you can. But if you cannot penetrate to an understanding of them, pass over them so that you may not run into the danger of error by presum-ing to attempt what you are not equal to doing. Do not be contemptuous of such things, but rather be reverent toward them, for you have heard it is written: ‘He made darkness His hiding-place’” (1968, 142). The commen-tator was not permitted to judge, for some set of designated authors, in relation to some relevant domain of discourse, that the author had stated anything other than the truth.

The principle of authority is, as is evident from the above, grounded on an assumption of authorial knowledge.6 However, in the commentary traditions the relevant sense of authority was not merely a matter of intel-lectual authority, since virtue was held to be necessary for knowledge. This view, conspicuous in Plato, especially in the Phaedo 78b–84b and 90c–91a, where the purity of the object known requires the purity of the knower (cf.  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095b, Metaphysics 1051b17–33, and On the Soul 429b3–6 and 430a), and Plotinus, where virtue is required for knowledge of god (Enneads 2, 9 (33), 15, 39), emerges as the raison d’être of the Hellenistic schools in which both philosophical learning and moral improvement were tied to the authority of the founding father.7

authority and philosophy as care of selfThe practice of commentary on texts taken as authoritative was an indispens-able part of the curriculum in the Hellenistic schools and beyond (Hadot 1995; Hadot 2002, 149ff.). This historical association between the practice of commentary and these philosophical traditions can be explained, I suggest, by the role of authority in the practice of philosophy as care of the self.

Philosophy was not always, as it is now, a merely theoretical discipline, “reduced to its conceptual content” (Hadot 2002, 104). As Pierre Hadot has shown, philosophy was in ancient Greece and Rome a way of life, initiated by existential choice and carried out in “spiritual exercises” designed to pro-duce “a transformation of one’s vision of the world and a metamorphosis of one’s personality” (Davidson 1995, 20).8 The primary goal of philosophy in these traditions was not propositional knowledge, answers to a cluster of

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 100 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

101

“philosophical” questions about the nature of mind, causation, and so on, but virtue and wisdom.9 The practice of philosophy in these ancient tradi-tions must be understood primarily as a mode of caring for the soul.

The principle of authority occupies a prominent place in the therapeutic traditions of philosophy. Hence it is reasonable to frame the hypothesis that the deferential attitude in reading and commentary was thought to facilitate the care of the soul. How could this be? How could philosophical reading on the basis of authority engender wisdom?10 I sketch an answer here.

The transformative power of a text is a function of what readers think they must do in response to it. Transformative power can be understood, in other words, as a matter of genre, conceived as an organizing principle governing readers’ expectations of what the text requires of them.11 For example, what the reader takes herself to be required to do and think when reading a self-help book is quite different from what she takes herself to be required to think and do when reading a detective story. The principle of authority can be understood within these parameters as imposing on the reader a distinctive set of expectations that promote the care of the self.

A reader’s conception of a work as belonging to a specific genre deter-mines the nature of her orientation to the text. Two basic psychological postures or modes of textual orientation can be distinguished. The first, a state of attachment, is a textual orientation in which the reader takes her-self to be required to assess the epistemic credentials of the claims being made. The second, a state of detachment, is an orientation in which the reader takes herself to be required not to assess the epistemic credentials of the claims being made. This point can be elucidated with reference to the genres of fictional discourse.12

The writer of a work of fiction does not claim that sentences that “report the situation, the objects and events of the story” are true: “He indicates in some way that he neither believes them nor expects us to believe them” (Beardsley 1958, 409, 420). Consequently, insofar as the reader regards a text as a work of a fiction, she reads from a position of detachment in which the epistemic status of the sentences that constitute it is not treated as a question.13 On the other hand, the reader of a work of nonfiction adopts an attached epistemic stance. Since she regards the claims and arguments in the text as truth-apt, she feels called on to accept or reject them or at least take up a position in response to their assertion.14

Philosophy as care of the soul can only be practiced from a perspective of detachment. One cannot care for the soul from the attached perspective

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 101 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

102

because it is a position of unself-consciousness. Persistence in asking the “Is this true or justified?” question disables one’s capacity for asking another set of questions about the self, namely, “What are the sources of my inclina-tions to answer ‘Is this true or justified?’ questions in the way that I do?”

This point can be illuminated by analogy with psychoanalysis. In a recent book, Jonathan Lear describes a patient who experienced all of her successes under “an aura of disappointment”: “If she got a raise at work, this was because her boss was shamed into it. . . . If she was invited on a date the person had already tried to go out with others and had failed. If someone congratulated her on some accomplishment, they were just being polite” (2004, 49). At least part of the therapeutic process in such a case consists in helping the patient “to see how active she [is] in creating her own disap-pointments” (49).

Now consider why the attached perspective is not conducive to ther-apeutic progress. The attached perspective is one in which one critically appraises the claims with which one is presented and tries to assess them in terms of the evidence. But if the patient critically appraises each and every assertion by the analyst she will make no progress. For the act of critical appraisal will itself manifest the (ex hypothesi) tendency to distortion that the analysis is designed to correct. In other words, the patient’s interpre-tation and evaluation of the analyst’s suggestion that she is, for example, overlooking what she has done to earn her promotion will tend to express the disposition to interpret and evaluate “under an aura of disappointment.” Attachment is then a sufficient condition for unself-consciousness. The agent’s feeling that she is required to think critically and actively make up her mind by forming judgments and beliefs disables her capacity to attend to the psychological, ethical, and epistemic sources of those distorting ten-dencies that are expressed in critical and active judgment.

This explanation for why care of the soul cannot take place from the attached perspective gives insight into why it can take place from a posi-tion of detachment. As is evident from the example of the woman who lives under an aura of disappointment, therapeutic action requires that the patient’s tendencies to self-undermining self-interpretation come to be seen by her. But this is to say that she must begin to make her own inclination to see the world in a self-defeating fashion the object of explicit attention. And this can be done only by means of a kind of psychological withdrawal. In other words, she must adopt a detached self-conscious perspective in relation to herself from which her very dispositions to interpretation are contemplated as “characteristics of the phenomenon” (Bullough 1912, 89).

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 102 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

103

The practice of philosophy as care of the soul requires self- consciousness, and self-consciousness requires detachment. But the proffered defense of the attitude of textual deference depends also on the more specific claim that the principle of authority is able to produce both detachment and self-consciousness. And this will seem counterintuitive, since the deferential attitude seems to involve passive attachment to the author and uncriti-cal acceptance of his doctrines. Hence it is surprising to discover that the principle of authority can in circumstances of textual resistance facilitate an attitude of active and self-reflexive wondering, thereby opening up spaces for psychological transformation.

By “textual resistance,” I mean, particular obstacles that prevent the commentator from understanding the meaning of the text that he seeks to understand.15 Two basic cases can be distinguished. In one, the reader fails to understand some particular proposition, because, for example, it is ambiguous or vague; in the other, although the reader grasps the proposi-tion’s ostensive meaning, it seems to him to be false or inconsistent with something else he believes.16 When encountering textual resistance, readers of a contemporary persuasion believe themselves entitled to dismiss the apparently false or imprecise proposition as false or imprecise.17 By contrast, when the commentator is unable to grasp some claim, he is not permitted to discard it, holding his author to have been saying nothing clear or true. When encountering textual resistance, the commentator cannot uncriti-cally accept the text: he does not understand what it says or how it could be right. Hence, on the one hand, textual resistance blocks passive accep-tance of the teachings of the authoritative text, and, on the other hand, the principle of authority prevents the commentator from actively rejecting the resistant text as unworthy of consideration and credence. The commenta-tor cannot find a resting place by believing or dismissing the inscrutable thought. He cannot, that is, form a judgment or belief. So he must abandon the attached attitude and become detached. This state of contemplation, of wondering at the meaning of the text, is essentially a state in which one does not judge but asks oneself what it must mean to judge correctly.18 In this way, the principle of authority transforms textual resistance into psy-chological detachment.

I have explained how the commentator comes to wonder at the mean-ing of the text. This is a position of detachment. But detachment is not sufficient for self-consciousness, since, as in the contemplation of a work of art, the self need not be the object of the contemplation. Self-consciousness requires that the interpreting self becomes an object of its own attention.

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 103 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

104

The reader must wonder at herself. So I need to explain how the self comes into view. I think that the crucial movement comes from holding oneself responsible for failing to understand the text. To make the movement of self-responsibility is to bring oneself into view.

On the account proposed, the commentator has reached a point where he cannot apply his epistemic principles or follow his own sense of what is true or plausible. He wonders at the meaning of the text. The authority principle prevents him from holding the author responsible for his lack of comprehension. Neither is he permitted to search about for a charitable reading, if this is understood as finding a meaning that makes sense to him, as he currently sees things. Rather, he must assume that he is himself to blame for his lack of comprehension. In other words, the commentator holds himself responsible because he regards the author as his epistemic superior. So the principle of authority combined with textual resistance detaches the commentator from his epistemic commitments and redirects his attention onto himself as hermeneutical agent. The locus of the respon-sibility for the failure to understand has been shifted from text onto self. The commentator is now self-conscious.

The authority principle, as I have explicated it, is grounded on both moral and epistemic authority. I suggest that the convergence of moral and intellectual virtue in authorial authority is indispensable for under-standing how the activity of commentary can improve both ethical and intellectual parts of the soul. Suppose that textual resistance and the authority principle have forced the commentator to hold himself respon-sible for his lack of comprehension. He asks himself, “What is it about me that prevents me from comprehending the truth expressed by the authoritative author?” This is to search for an explanation for his apo-ria, or an area of weakness or blindness, which needs to be remediated. Given the ethical aspect of the authority principle, the commentator cannot suppose that his failure to understand is a purely cognitive limita-tion. He must countenance the possibility that his failure to understand derives from his lack of moral virtue. Hence the movement of self-responsibility is psychologically unrestricted, incorporating the whole soul. The commentator’s failure to understand is interpreted as an indi-cation of his deficiency in both knowledge and virtue. He must become both a better knower and a better ethical agent in order to understand the authoritative text.

The commentator is now engaged in the practice of caring for the soul. He reads with himself in view. He accepts responsibility for his failure

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 104 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

105

to comprehend. He thinks of his inability to comprehend in terms of his lacking the requisite virtue and knowledge. The commentator’s desire for knowledge, which is embedded in the original position of humility consti-tutive of his acceptance of the authority principle, is effectively channeled into a desire for self-transformation, both moral and intellectual, by which he can become someone who knows.19 The commentator is now a philoso-pher in the ancient sense. He wants to modify himself in the appropriate ways so that he can know what wisdom is. He strives, in other words, to be wise.

authority and moral progressEven if “the beginning seems to be more than half of the whole” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1098b), something further must be said about how ethi-cal and intellectual progress can come about by means of commentary that embraces the principle of authority. In particular, in it might seem that the authentic author would really have to be knowledgeable and virtuous, since reliance on a false authority could be supposed to make the commentator ethically and epistemically worse. However, I do not think this is the case. The efficacy of the principle does not require that the author be, as a matter of fact, a virtuous knower.20

A first point in favor of the claim that the transformative power of the principle of authority does not depend on any facts about the author is that the commentator’s acceptance of the principle of authority is itself an ethi-cal achievement.21 The commentator’s textual deference resembles Socrates’ characteristic profession of ignorance (e.g. Euthyphro 5a3–c8; 9a, 15d, 16a). It is a position of self-consciousness in which the commentator puts him-self forward as a learner, deficient in knowledge and virtue but committed to improving the condition of his soul. Hence the commentator’s accep-tance of the principle is already constitutive of certain virtues insofar as it expresses love of the good, moral conscientiousness, and humility. The person who loves virtue is on this account, to some extent, good. The con-scientious person is more likely to improve than the moral and epistemic sluggard (cf. Meno 80b–c). And humility is “a condition of openness of the self to whatever demands may arise” (Mandelbaum 1996, 162). None of these virtuous dispositions is dependent on facts about the character of the authentic author.

Secondly, it is important to notice that the commentator’s acceptance of the authority principle amounts to the identification of author with a

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 105 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

106

moral and intellectual ideal. The commentator tries to understand the text; when he fails, he holds himself responsible for this failure to understand; he asks: how can I see better, be better, so as to see better? So the commenta-tor measures his own responses against the author considered not factually but normatively. He monitors his own moral and epistemic dispositions in relation to the idea of a better perspective in order to recognize possible dis-crepancies between his current responses and those of the excellent agent.22 Moreover, when he recognizes possible deficiencies in his own responses—conceptual avenues foreclosed, affective responses of various kinds in the thinking of certain thoughts, and so on—he attempts by whatever means necessary to rebound from the ideal in order to modify those judged poten-tially distorting. The means used to counteract the responses judged to be distorting or potentially distorting will be conceived differently in differ-ent paradigms, being dependent on such things as the conceptualization of pleasure and the role of the emotions. In this way the commentator’s self-regulation by the author is tantamount to self-regulation by the idea of the good. To be sure, it must apparently be assumed that the soul has a natural affinity with truth and virtue. But this is no more than to assume that prog-ress in virtue is possible for one who tries to become better. The role of the author is purely formal, serving merely as a regulative principle in the commentator’s striving for ethical and epistemic excellence.23 Hence the commentator’s trajectory toward knowledge and virtue does not depend on good or bad fortune in the selection of authorities.24

autonomy and philosophical progressFrom a modern perspective the principle of authority can seem to be an egregious error. The principle apparently requires the reader to accept the opinions of the author without questioning them or trying to assimilate them for herself. It appears therefore to require a stance of epistemic sub-servience, which is antithetical to a conception of the philosopher as intel-lectually autonomous, as someone who thinks for herself.

This objection depends on the assumption that philosophical inquiry aims at propositional knowledge or, more colorfully, is “a mental activity whose aim is the provision of coherent and rational systems of world inter-pretation” (Hutter 1989, 172).25 From this point of view, the principle of authority as hermeneutical precept cannot amount to anything other than the requirement that the commentator accept the author’s philosophical

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 106 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

107

beliefs on the basis of his testimony. The response to the objection is that authority principle is not a principle of belief acquisition but a lever of detachment that, by changing the agent’s mode of self-relation, conduces to self-knowledge and self-care. The commentator does not strive primarily for theoretical knowledge, propositionally understood, but moral and epis-temic excellence. Traditionally, philosophical discourse did not aim “at the acquisition of a purely abstract knowledge” (Davidson 1995, 20) but was a means of caring for the soul: it was “always intended to produce an effect, to create a habitus within the soul, or to provoke a transformation of the self ” (Hadot 2002, 176). Therefore, far from requiring epistemic dependency, the very point of the authority principle is to facilitate the active development of virtue and wisdom.26

Even if the state of striving for virtue and knowledge is an admirable mode of being, as it obviously is, and even if the principle of authority facilitates this orientation toward to the good, questions remain. How can the commentator make progress in theoretical knowledge when he assumes rather than establishes that the author is a philosophical knower? Must the commentary tradition simply deny the possibility or significance of propositional or conceptual knowledge in philosophy? This would be an unwelcome implication, for as everyone who has engaged in nonexegetical philosophy knows, philosophy does improve conceptual understanding.

The principle of authority is perfectly compatible with philosophical learning of an ordinary kind, which occurs by consideration of analyses and arguments. The commentator who works through a text by, for example, Plato or Aristotle, will acquire theoretical knowledge and will acquire it from his own understanding. The assumption that the authoritative text contains the truth does not vitiate the possibility of autonomous theoretical understanding. As Jacob Klein points out in different context,

We may confirm or deny [a] “proposition” . . . and thereby utter an opinion, for “extraneous” reasons, especially by “repeating” what other people say, as we do most of the time. Or we may assent to, or reject, that “proposition” by drawing the assent or the denial from ourselves. Such assent to, or rejection of, a proposition . . . constitutes an opinion of a different kind. It cannot be “induced” or “manipulated” because its source is not “outside” the person who holds it. It is the completion of our own thinking . . . on a given subject. (1989, 104–5)

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 107 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

108

The principle of authority does not in any way undermine the commentator’s capacity for “drawing assent or denial” from within himself and completing his own thinking on the given subject.

Presumably what concerns the contemporary philosopher is the way in which the commentator must respond to points of unclarity or disagree-ment. Suppose he judges that an authority’s argument for some proposition is unconvincing. He thinks that it contains errors; there are false premises and invalid inferences. So he finds himself in a position where the opinion of the authoritative author strikes him as wrong. Doesn’t mandatory defer-ence to the text in this sort of case undermine the possibility of epistemic progress? I argue that it does not.

The commentator’s acceptance of the authority principle does not bring the inquiry to an end. His failure to understand the authoritative text does not entail passivity. As I have explained, the principle forces the com-mentator to contemplate himself and his own tendency to attribute error to the text and also to continue to search for the author’s real meaning. So, unlike modern readers who are entitled to leave the matter at “false prem-ises and invalid arguments,” the commentator must continue to philoso-phize. And one likely consequence of continued philosophy is an improved knowledge of the topic. Even if the commentator never succeeds—from his point of view—in grasping the auctor’s real meaning, his continued exertion in inquiry will deepen his understanding of the subject.

What seems to be a deficiency in the exegetical method turns out to be its strength. The infinite deferral of knowledge is precisely the point. The failure to understand—for this is the required self-interpretation of the disposition to disagree—keeps the authoritative author at a distance. Knowledge remains out of reach. The fact that the author’s meaning cannot be grasped in any determinate and final way perpetuates the search, and the search brings about, or can bring about, progress. It may seem that some-thing more needs to be said about how this is possible. But there is nothing remarkable here or at least nothing remarkable beyond what is remarkable about philosophy itself. The authority principle forces the commentator to rethink the matter, and as anyone who has done philosophy will know, additional thought always brings further distinctions and clarifications, that is, deeper insight. The remark that one never finishes a philosophical work but merely stops writing is apposite.

It seems, then, that the authority principle can accommodate epis-temic progress of the sort that a modern philosopher would refer to as the clarification of concepts.27 Although the attempt to articulate or define

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 108 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

109

fundamental concepts—which is what the commentator is doing when he reads authoritative texts—is rarely successful, the dialectical process is not therefore unfruitful. Deeper conceptual understanding is achieved in the course of an inquiry of a sort that is perfectly compatible with the com-mentator’s adherence to authority principle.

Even if this is accepted, it may still seem that the principle of author-ity constitutes an absolute impediment to advancement in propositional knowledge. The fact of the matter is that the commentator is required by his hermeneutical standpoint to accept certain substantive and extremely controversial propositions concerning, for example, the immortality of the soul or the freedom of the will. It seems to me that although the imag-ined objector’s point is correct, it is not really an objection to the com-mentator’s philosophical practice. Although the commentator cannot move beyond certain constraining propositions, this is not a problem for exegeti-cal philosophy, since philosophy does not in any case make progress in this way. Most, if not all, of the basic questions of philosophy remain unan-swered. This is evident from the simple fact that different and contradictory answers to fundamental philosophical questions continue to be defended in the philosophical literature. What the authority principle permits, and even facilitates, is the transformation of propositional inquiry into conceptual inquiry of the sort that philosophy does make progress in.

The principle of authority allows considerable latitude in inquiry because the commentator does not in circumstances of textual resistance accept the apparently false proposition by believing it. If this were the case, inquiry would come to an end. Rather, the apparently false proposition is held as a truth that is not believed to be true. The commentator can-not believe the proposition because he does not understand it or how it could be true. Hence he lacks the epistemic resources required for belief formation (Owens 2003, 289ff.). Since the commentator cannot believe the proposition, he must, for reasons I have outlined, continue the search, think more—and more deeply—about the matter at hand. But—and this is the important point—the shape that this investigation will take is not, for example, “what is the evidence for the immortality of the soul?,” but rather, “how is this proposition to be understood so that it comes out true?” Hence the inquiry is transformed into an investigation of the conceptual elements of the apparently false proposition. The commentator is forced to rethink the nature of the soul and immortality. Perhaps soul is to be understood as an impersonal principle of life. Perhaps immortality is an experience of timelessness. The commentator will search for an interpretation of the

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 109 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

110

proposition on which it is true. There are therefore no absolute blocks on inquiry because the meaning of the authorial claims is itself under inves-tigation. The auctor’s opinions do not constitute a determinate epistemic boundary.

The model of philosophical progress sketched here can be understood as a kind of irony interpretation.28 To see this, notice that the attribution of irony to a speaker often depends on the interpreter’s apprehension that a speaker has said something false and that it always requires an assessment of the speaker’s epistemic position.29 For instance, in Dr. Johnson’s famous example, “Bolingbroke was a holy man,” irony will be attributed by some-one who knows that Bolingbroke was not a holy man and who judges that the speaker is not simply mistaken. The interpreter judges based on what she knows about the object of the irony and the speaker’s likely knowledge of this object that false assertion is evidence of irony rather than error. The judgment of irony then consists in the judgment that the speaker has not expressed her real meaning: she is using a false overt proposition to express a meaning that is different from, and perhaps even the contradictory of, the meaning of the overt proposition. In Dr. Johnson’s illustration, that is, the irony interpreter will conclude that the speaker really means to say that Bolingbroke was an unholy man.30

This account of irony attribution can be applied to the activity of com-mentary on the principle of authority as follows. The commentator is not permitted to prefer a judgment of authorial error over authorial irony in cases of apparent falsehood. This is, in essence, the content of the authority principle. But, in contradistinction with the example provided by Johnson to define irony in which an interpreter judges that the speaker has used a false proposition to express an opposite real meaning (Bolingbroke was an unholy man), the commentator is also prevented from judging that the author has asserted a false overt proposition. Since the author is assumed to be infallible, his assertion that (e.g.) the soul is immortal must be true. So the commentator cannot judge that the author is saying that the soul is not immortal or even not saying that the soul is immortal. Instead he must judge that he does not fully understand what the author means by say-ing that the soul is immortal. This judgment of irony does not distinguish between proposition meaning and speaker meaning but between the appar-ent and real meaning of the overt proposition.

With this sketch of irony attribution in place, it becomes clear that the authority principle does not inhibit progress in conceptual understanding; irony interpretation is always possible and often required. The principle of

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 110 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

111

authority transforms the inquiry from an investigation of the evidential grounding for certain philosophical statements into an exploration of the conceptual elements contained in the so-called boundary proposition. Since the principle of authority is a hermeneutical position from which judg-ments of authorial error are not permitted, the commentator is required to ironize apparent error and imprecision by interpreting them as arising from a failure to grasp the true meaning of the apparently false proposition, that is, the sense in which the proposition is true. The assumption that the author is infallible and hence that the propositions asserted are true does not settle the interpretation of the claims made. When the commenta-tor asks what the auctor could mean when he says, for example, that the soul is immortal and reasons that this claim could not mean such and such, for if he did, a contradiction would ensue and then formulates a different and better interpretation, he treats the text ironically. Genuine epistemic progress can still be made; the difference is that this “new” knowledge is conceptualized as being part of the true and deeper meaning of the text.31

What is the relationship between the judgment of authorial irony and the commentator’s self-blame, that is, his acceptance that his failure to understand the text is ultimately to be accounted for in terms of his own deficiency in moral and intellectual virtue? It should be clear by now that the attribution of irony undermines the presumption that generates the appearance of authorial error. The commentator’s ascription of irony forces reinterpretation of the surface meaning of the text, hence implying that he, the commentator, was wrong to think, however tentatively, that the author’s claim was mistaken. So the judgment of irony replaces a judgment of authorial error with a judgment of commentator error. And in so doing it opens up the possibility of epistemic progress, even in relation to putatively limiting propositions, and shifts the burden of responsibility back onto the commentator. This is an important point for answering the objection that the commentator’s entitlement to ascribe irony amounts to a failure to take responsibility. Although the commentator can use the device as a way of making the author agree with him and, hence, as a way of evading the requirement to care for himself, it need not have this consequence, and the principle of authority itself serves to inhibit it. In many ordinary cases of irony attribution, the interpreter is permitted to regard the overt proposi-tion as false and hence to interpret the speaker as saying quite the opposite of what she initially seems to be saying. Hence irony can very easily be used to make the speaker say anything. But the authority principle does not permit this, since the authorial assertion must be taken to be true. Even if

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 111 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

112

there is a significant amount of flexibility in interpretation of the author’s meaning, the commentator’s interpretation of the boundary proposition is constrained by the meaning of the overt proposition. For these reasons, then, the standpoint of authority, a kind of methodological humility, is both compatible with the understanding of the principle as facilitating the care of the soul by acceptance of self-responsibility and epistemologically benign.

It must be acknowledged that this account raises a series of ques-tions about the author’s intention. Has the author simply made an error, or did he intend the reader to recognize the underlying deeper meaning? In some cases, notably Plato, the author is clearly an ironist; in others, this is less likely, at least for one standing outside of the commentary tradition. But answers to these questions are in the present context unimportant. In understanding the ancient and medieval philosophical traditions, it is not sufficient to consider the structure and content of texts; one must also con-sider how these texts were used. The art of commentary is, perhaps, the art of using texts—or more precisely, textual resistance—for the purposes of philosophical self-modification. The art of philosophical writing is then, perhaps, the art of creating texts with sufficient depth and traction to serve as tools of philosophical self-transcendence. In the commentary tradition, the “fact that authentic texts raise questions [was not thought to be an] inherent defect. On the contrary: their obscurity . . . was only the result of a technique used by a master, who wished to hint at a great many things at once, and therefore enclosed the ‘truth’ in his formulations” (Hadot 1995, 73). Whatever reservations a modern person might have about the principle of authority, it has a clear purpose: it enables self-transformation by reading.

Philosophy Department,University of the Witwatersrand

notesI would like to express my thanks to three anonymous referees for useful commentary on an earlier version of this paper, and to Jean Hauser for guiding me through the editorial process.

1. Compare the following remarks by Hadot (1995, 76): “Philosophers of the mod-ern era, from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, refused the argument from authority and abandoned the exegetical mode of thinking. They began to consider that the truth was not a ready-made given, but was rather the result of a pro-cess of elaboration, carried out by a reason grounded in itself.” See also Frances 2010 and Zagzebski 2012.

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 112 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

113

2. I aim to defend the use of the authority principle in philosophy, not in empirical science. Moreover, I do not deny that the principle of authority can be misapplied. Clearly it can be. I focus here on what I take to be its proper use. In contemporary philosophy, Hans- Georg Gadamer defends a view suggestive of the authority principle. Consider the following remarks: “Hermeneutic philosophy, as I envision it, does not understand itself as an ‘absolute’ position, but as a path of experiencing. Its modesty consists in the fact that for it there is no higher principle than this: holding oneself open to conversation. This means, however, constantly recognising in advance the possibility that your partner is right, even recognising the possible superiority of your partner” (1997, 36). See also David Roochnik’s discussion of the “Talmudic assumption” in his review of Ronna Burger’s Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates (2010, esp. 61–63).

3. The discussion in this section builds on Futter 2015, 249–51. Since the argument of this article does not require a precise account of the commentary genre, no such account will be attempted. Nevertheless, the following remarks will help to orient the reader. The focus of this article is on philosophical rather than (e.g.) literary or philological commen-taries and, more specifically, on the activity of commentary writing rather than the written text, which may be regarded as a residue of that process. With regard to the activity of commentary, Aaron Hughes’s definition is helpful: commentary is “a genre of relating to a particular canonical moment (textual or otherwise) perceived by a group as some-how foundational to its existence” (2003, 150). On the commentary as text and its mul-tiple forms, see, for example, Geffcken 1932, Lohfink 1974, Minnis 1988, Smith 1991, and Shuttleworth Kraus 2002.

4. See Minnis (1988, 9–15) on the medieval auctors and their relation to the Holy Writ.5. The embedded quotation is from Palémon Glorieux.6. It does not, of course, follow from this that the ascription of knowledge to the

author should be understood as a factual claim or belief. It can be understood, I suggest, as a methodological standpoint of humility.

7. Hugh of St. Victor likewise suggests as much in the Middle Ages: “So it is with the minds of holy men: the more they advance in virtue or in knowledge, the more they see that the hidden places of the scriptures are profound, so that those places which to simple minds and minds still tied to the earth seem worthless, to minds which have been raised along seem sublime” (1968, 143).

8. See Futter 2014 and the articles collected in that volume.9. The primary goal of philosophy is, as one might expect, wisdom. The relationship

between wisdom (sophia) and the other virtues is difficult to define. It will be sufficient for the moment to say that virtue is completed in wisdom. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.12.1144a3–5, 6.13.1145a 6–11, and 10.6–8.

10. I do not offer any historical argument to prove that my account has definite appli-cation to some particular philosopher or philosophical school.

11. “Genre guides interpretation because it . . . specifies which types of meaning are relevant and appropriate in a particular context” (Frow 2006, 101–3).

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 113 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

114

12. Wording in the following paragraphs is borrowed from Futter 2015, 247–51.13. This point requires further elaboration. It should for the moment be understood as

a placeholder. The precise account given does not affect the main claims of the subsequent argument.

14. It should be clear that contemporary philosophical reading, at least in the analyti-cal tradition, operates from a position of attachment. This point is developed further in Futter 2015, 247–249, and Futter n.d.

15. I assume, reasonably, that textual resistance will be a significant and pervasive fea-ture of any complex philosophical text. Consider, for example, the plethora of different interpretations generated by Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” and other seminal texts in a tradition that distinguishes itself by its com-mitment to intellectual clarity.

16. For the sake of stylistic convenience, I subsume the perception of inconsistency under the category of apparent falsehood. This will capture a large number of cases, namely, those in which a proposition’s inconsistency with a fundamental doctrine gives reason for rejecting it. It goes without saying that the experience of some bit of text as false will often be a matter of seeing it as inconsistent with accepted truths. See also book 6, chapter 10, of Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon.

17. Appeal to the so-called principle of charity supports this point. First, charity sug-gests something supererogatory; secondly, the reader displays charity by interpreting the author’s views as congruent with her own assessments of plausibility. This is a way of mak-ing the author agree with her.

18. If wonder is a sentiment uniquely characteristic of philosophy (Plato, Theaetetus 155d; Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b), then the assumption of authority along with textual inscrutability produces, in a sense, philosophia.

19. I have not attempted to explain the desire to know such things; the commenta-tor’s striving for an understanding of an authoritative text is embedded in the “original” standpoint that marks his acceptance of the authority principle.

20. The present concern is not with the general question of how virtue is acquired but the more specific question of how moral progress can come about by reading on the prin-ciple of authority. The specific account of transformation by commentary that I present is compatible with a number of different theories of virtue.

21. I do not consider how it is that the commentator comes to be willing to accept the authority principle as methodological precept. Presumably the explanation has to do with such things as the influence of a religious worldview, a tendency to venerate ancient texts, and, more generally, the appropriate immersion in a commentary tradition (Smith 1991, 6ff.).

22. Presumably this implies a commitment to moral objectivity. See also Jonathan Lear’s account of “pretence-transcending aspiring” (2011).

23. See also the Platonic conception of virtue as “becoming like god as much as pos-sible,” in, for example, Theaetetus 176b1–2 and Republic 613a8–b1. For discussion, see Russell 2004.

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 114 01/12/15 5:30 PM

commentary, authority, and care of the self

115

24. Hence I do not discuss the important historical question of how auctores were selected.

25. It also depends on the assumption that such propositional knowledge is pos-sible for anyone capable of following the logos. See Smith 1991, 8, Frances 2010, 62, and Zagzebski 2012, ch. 1. This assumption, a principle of equality, effectively divorces philo-sophical knowledge from intellectual and moral virtue.

26. See Lear (2004, 4–7) for the distinction between a change in one’s beliefs and a change in the way the the soul changes its beliefs.

27. On philosophical progress in this sense, see Bealer 1998.28. The notion of irony interpretation is introduced in Futter 2013, 1–3. The account of

irony offered here is drawn from that article.29. Often, but not always. Irony can also be attributed on the basis of an incongruity

between what is said and its manner of utterance, or “utterance incongruity,” that is, logi-cal contradictoriness or contrariness in what is said. For example, in Anatole France’s “The penguins had the most powerful army in the world; so had the porpoises” (qtd. in Booth 1975, 62), inconsistent propositions are lined up next to one another; the reader is invited to reject them both and draw out the irony. This is one instance in which the assimilation of perceptions of inconsistency to perceptions of falsehood is misleading. See note 19.

30. This is a case of so-called stable irony, in which the interpreter is able to firmly reconstruct the speaker’s real meaning. But irony may be attributed even when the ironist’s true meaning remains opaque. In this case the interpreter judges that the speaker’s real meaning is different from her overt meaning without reaching an interpretation of what is actually meant. On the distinction between stable and unstable irony, see Booth 1975, 21).

31. Compare the following remarks by Hughes: “The very strangeness of the text allows for polysemous meanings, and because of this, the song [of Solomon] has exerted a tremendous influence on Jewish and Christian liturgy, mysticism, poetry and philosophy” (2003, 158). See also Hadot 1995, 71–78.

works citedBealer, George. 1999. “Intuition and the Autonomy of Philosophy.” In Rethinking Intuition:

The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, ed. Michael R. DePaul and William Ramsey, 201–39. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics, Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

Booth, Wayne. 1975. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Bullough, Edward. 1912. “‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle.”

British Journal of Psychology 5 (2): 87–118.Davidson, Arnold I. 1995. Introduction to Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I.

Davidson, 1–77. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Frances, Bryan. 2010. “The Reflective Epistemic Renegade.” Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research 81 (2): 419–63.

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 115 01/12/15 5:30 PM

dylan futter

116

Frow, John. 2006. Genre: The New Critical Idiom. Oxford: Routledge.Futter, Dylan. 2013. “On Irony Interpretation: Socratic Method in Plato’s Euthyphro.”

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (6): 1–22.———. 2014. Introduction. Philosophical Papers 43 (1): 1–6.———. 2015. “Variations in Philosophical Genre: The Platonic Dialogue.” Metaphilosophy

46 (2): 246–62.———. N.d. “Philosophical Anti-Authoritarianism.” Unpublished.Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1977. The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Chicago: Open

Court.Geffcken, Joh. 1932. “Zur Entstehung Und Zum Wesen des griechischen wissenschaftli-

chen Kommentars.” Hermes 67 (4): 397–412.Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault.

Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press.Hugh of St. Victor. 1968. The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts.

Ed. J. Taylor. Trans. J. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press.Hughes, Aaron. 2003. “Presenting the Past: The Genre of Commentary in Theoretical

Perspective.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 15 (2): 148–68.Hutter, Horst H. 1989. “Philosophy as Self-Transformation.” Historical Reflections/

Réflexions Historiques 16 (2–3): 171–98.Klein, Jacob. 1989. A Commentary on Plato’s “Meno.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Lear, Jonathan. 2004. Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony. New York: Other Press.———. 2011. A Case for Irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Lohfink, Gerhard. 1974. “Kommentar als Gattung.” Bibel und Leben 15: 1–16.Mandelbaum, Maurice. 1996. The Phenomenology of Moral Experience. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press.Minnis, Alastair J. 1988. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the

Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Minnis, Alastair J., A. Brian Scott, and David Wallace. 1991. Medieval Literary Theory and

Criticism, C. 1100–C. 1375: The Commentary-Tradition. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Owens, David John. 2003. “Does Belief Have an Aim?” Philosophical Studies 115 (3): 283–305.Quine, Willard V. O. 1951, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” Philosophical Review 60 (1):

20–43.Russell, Daniel C. 2004. “Virtue as ‘Likeness to God’ in Plato and Seneca.” Journal of the

History of Philosophy 42 (3): 241–60.Roochnik, David. 2010. “Ronna Burger’s Talmudic Reading of the Nicomachean Ethics.”

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (1): 61–79.Shuttleworth Kraus, Christina. 2002. Introduction to The Classical Commentary: Histories,

Practices, Theory, ed. Roy K. Gibson and Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, 1–28. Leiden: Brill.

Smith, Barry. 1991. “Textual Deference.” American Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1): 1–13.Strawson, Peter F. 1962. “Freedom and Resentment.” Proceedings of the British Academy 48:

1–25.Zagzebski, Linda T. 2012. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in

Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PR 49.1_05_Futter.indd 116 01/12/15 5:30 PM