On The Demands of the Past

“[T]hat the crux of a philosopher’s doctrine is to be found in those passages where he defends an unpopular thesis; his defense of accepted theses has no informational value,”—Attributed to Malebranche by Catherine Wilson [Wilson’s Dictum]

 

There is a point of diminishing returns in efforts to unearth or to reconstruct a philosopher's views about matters that he or she does not address directly and at some length. Such efforts may display impressive learning about the books a philosopher is likely to have read, about the ideas that were in the air when he or she wrote, but they generate conclusions that must be regarded as highly tentative. That is because the philosophers who demand our attention are precisely those who do not simply absorb influences and transmit them to posterity.—Matthew Stuart, (p. vii)

 

A discordant note creeps into an otherwise generous review by Ben Hill of Matthew Stuart, Locke's Metaphysics (Oxford 2013): “Stuart is also disappointingly dismissive of contextualist analysis…Stuart's analyses would have benefited in several places from paying more attention to the historical context…” Hill then attaches a footnote to the paragraph from Stuart’s text quoted above. I have not yet read Stuart’s book. Intrigued, I wrote Hill and he responded with material that I quote below (with permission). 

 

Now, in context, the quoted paragraph from Stuart is intended to defend the choice of topics and he uses a proportionality thesis: “I devote my attention proportionally to the topics to which Locke devotes his.” (vii) Hill is not objecting to this proportionality thesis. The proportionality thesis is reasonable, but it may in some cases show a lack of judgment for (at least) two reasons: (i) contemporary or future readers might benefit from disproportionate attention to some topics rather than other topics. That is to say, slavish adherence to the proportionality thesis avoids making judgments about one’s own philosophical landscape; so, it is curious to see somebody defend the idea that there are philosophers that “demand our attention,” but then pretend that acceding to this demand is disconnected from our interests and judgments.

 

There is a second, more significant reason to reject the proportionality thesis. It is often a terrible guide to the relative historical significance of the material under review even by the lights of the author that “demands” one’s attention. As Wilson’s Dictum (see the epigraph above) suggests, what matters is when an author defends an unpopular thesis. If the thesis is really unpopular she may do so very briefly. This is not esotericism; Wilson’s Dictum applies to the explicit text. Of course, some positions are deservedly unpopular, but if an author under study is willing to embrace an unpopular position this is, especially when one deals with a systematic thinker, often very telling about a whole range of other commitments. In fact, sometimes a historical author calls attention to his awareness that the proportionality thesis may be misleading; here’s Adam Smith: “Seneca, though a Stoic, the sect most opposite to that of Epicurus, yet quotes this philosopher more frequently than any other,” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)!

Knowing when the proportionality thesis is potentially misleading is a matter of contextual judgment. In the case of the first reason it is judgment about the present and future; in the case of the second judgment about the past. So, Stuart’s appeal to the proportionality thesis ought to make him more eager to defend contextual history of philosophy rather than less. To appeal to the relative number of words devoted to a topic (Stuart’s “at length”) is to forfeit one’s judgment.

Moreover, there is a kind of deeper positivism in Stuart’s stance. It’s as if he thinks that shared, tacit commitments are irrelevant and omissions not revealing. For example, if an early modern author refuses to address how his metaphysical position impacts, say, the resurrection then we have to explore if his position is trivially in accord with other people’s religious commitments or, perhaps, dangerously out of stop. That this author mentions God regularly and warmly will not settle the matter. We may have to do hard work “unearth or to reconstruct a philosopher's views about [such] matters.” (To be clear Stuart does discuss Locke’s views on the resurrection briefly.) But one good reason to return to thinkers that “demand” our attention is that we may notice that they take for granted things we might think deserving of interrogation (and vice versa, of course). 

Some of the reasons just articulated are also mentioned in Hill’s response to my query:

As I understand it (taken in conjunction with Stuart's practice in the book and additional comments and aside scattered throughout) is that this is a jab against what is typically understood as contextualist history of philosophy, and it is based on what I consider to be a fundamental disagreement/misapprehension about the aim of the history of philosophy. This disagreement/misapprehension is indicated in the final sentence of the quotation -- (1) the idea that many/most thinkers are either so original as not to simply absorb influences and transmit them to posterity or so unoriginal as to only do that is, I think, a false dichotomy; (2) the idea that it is only the original thinkers that are or ought to be of interest to historians of philosophy is, I believe, false; (3) I would argue that the idea that we can understand even the original thinkers in isolation from their engagement with traditional positions or without contrasting (and comparing) them to traditional positions is false; (4) the idea that doing (3) is possible without bringing it what a philosopher is likely to have read or what was in the air when he/she wrote is, I think, false.—Ben Hill, private correspondence (quoted with permission)

Hill and I agree to some extent about (3-4). I am probably more inclined to respond warmly to creative, potentially anachronistic readings of past authors, but that’s because I think that those authors that “demand” our attention often write knowing, or hoping, that (i) posteriority will read their works without much attention to context or (ii) that their works will influence how context is evaluated by later readers. Descartes and Hobbes keep insisting that their scholastic interlocutors are unintelligible with the expectation that later, lazier readers, who will have assimilated the commitments of the new philosophy, will agree. So, I think quite a bit of “understanding” is possible without regard to context, even intended understanding, but, of course, Hill is right that without contextual cues lots of understanding – available to past readers -- will elude the contemporary reader. While it is not the kind of history I advocate it is one of the duties of historians of philosophy to help contemporary readers recover some such historically situated understanding.

Alert readers will have noticed that this post if full of normative judgments. That’s because such methodenstreits are not merely about the proper epistemology in doing history of philosophy. They are, in part, about the moral roles of the stories we tell ourselves about our pasts and possible futures; and they are based on awareness of the significance of the images of philosophers that demand our attention that we propagate to each other and our students.

Comments

[Alan Nelson]

Intriguing post!
Application of the Proportionality Thesis is complicated. Consider:

1) The number of words devoted to a topic in the entire corpus.
2) The number of words devoted to a topic in a particular work.
3) The number of words devoted to a topic in a given time frame
And leaving aside word count:
4) WHERE in a work a topic occurs. For example, in Locke's Essay, the opening Epistle to the reader characterizes the project as epistemological. (Stuart's book is about metaphysics). Do introductions and the like in which an author characterizes the work get extra weight or (as often happens) lesser weight?
5) FOR WHOM something is written (this might be seen in the Dedication of a work or the addressee of correspondence.

It is also interesting that for some works, e.g. Hobbes' Leviathan, many scholars ignore proportionality.

[Miles Rind]

Eric, you say that the "proportionality thesis" is "potentially misleading," and you criticize Stuart's "appeal" to it, but you never make clear what the thesis in question is or how Stuart is committed to it. You seem to offer this quotation from Stuart as containing it: "I devote my attention proportionally to the topics to which Locke devotes his." But that sentence does not express any thesis, any more than does your sentence (okay, it's only part of a sentence, but I don't think I'm misrepresenting you by treating as a complete sentence for purposes of comparison) "This post is full of normative judgments." In each case, the speaker is describing what he is doing, not stating a thesis.

Now, I suppose one could say that, if Stuart intends by the quoted statement not merely to describe what he is doing in the book but also to justify it, then he is implicitly appealing to a thesis of some sort—perhaps "In writing about a historical figure in philosophy, one should give attention to specific topics in proportion to the attention that the figure himself or herself gives to them." The thesis sounds reasonable, but application of it to studies of Newton and Berkeley would require a great deal of attention to their views on alchemy and tar water, respectively. I don't think that this is likely to happen, or that anyone would want it to happen. But is Stuart committed to any such thesis? I haven't read the book beyond the paragraph that you cite, but I don't see that he is. It seems to me that he is just citing a consideration that provides support *prima facie* for the attention that he gives to various topics in Locke's philosophy.

[Eric Schliesser]

Miles, I was describing my claims as normative (not Stuart's, although he certainly also expresses normative judgments: "philosophers who demand our attention").
Yes, if you wish to describe what he is doing as providing *prima facie* support, fine. I am suggesting that this consideration ought not provide such *prima facie* support. But the proof is in the pudding; we'll have to read the book.
By the way, Newton scholarship has benefited greatly from paying attention to his alchemical manuscripts. And I once found it very fruitful to pay attention to Berkeley's reflections on tar water.