Historians of philosophy, when preparing reference publications and teaching aids, do not have the right to ignore the philosopher who turns out to be inaccessible to understanding for various reasons. A tragicomic situation arises: the professor needs to retell something that he himself does not understand. You can easily compile a textbook of ridiculous retellings by authoritative authors from the most respected scientific and educational institutions around the world. However, it seemed more fruitful to me to analyze for myself those difficulties that not only make retelling in philosophy difficult, but practically make it impossible due to the peculiarities of the text (and its surviving fragments, often in the form of quotations).
There are texts in the retelling of which the most harmful vice is interpretation, the right to which many arbitrarily arrogate to themselves. Nobody writes lyrics to be interpreted. Texts are written with the expectation of understanding, «for our own people». The interpreter puts himself in the position of an outsider in advance. In the retelling, the task is to «become your own», regardless of time and cultural distances. For «their own», the methodology changes radically: the text serves not for «interpretation», but for recognition – just as one recognizes one’s childhood friend in an old person crippled by time and circumstances. The method of physiognomy is very useful in the history of philosophy: no matter what caricatures fragments of texts are reduced to; you can always find out what they were talking about. The caricature should not be taken literally, and even bothering yourself and everyone else with «interpretations». Caricature, no matter how grotesque, is recognizable in faces and situations – for «our own».
In many specialties, the circle of «insiders» is quite recognizable: mathematicians, musicians, athletes. Unfortunately, in the history of philosophy there is no circle of «insiders»; Translators are the first to claim their place. But the translator starts from the text; his strength lies in textual analysis. Textual analysis is certainly a wonderful thing if retelling is possible. Otherwise, referring to the text is at best useless, at worst harmful. Pages of the history of philosophy, inaccessible to retelling, can be likened to individual theorems in mathematics, which only a few can prove. This, in fact, was discussed in «The Hidden Pages of the History of Western Philosophy».
Список использованной литературы
Античная литература. Антология. Часть 1. М.: Высшая школа, 1989.