Cheerskep: Agreed. It does seem to be a universal tendency in scholarly
circles to invoke that one's perceptions are the complete and only
explanation/interpretation of a phenomenon. It appears to require too much
modesty to submit that "this is how I see it' or "this interpretation may be
helpful in shedding light on X". It's so frequent that I mentally preface
what I read with "This is this guy's take on ...." and find I'm less
offended. Even science and medicine (which presumably deal in observables
rather than opinion) progress in the beliefs held to be true. Perhaps
literature and philosophy studies can progress as well.
Geoff C
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Trivalities and profundities
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:38:09 EDT
Geoff asks:
> Cheerskep: Are you lamenting the absymal blinkering involved in the use
of
> defence mechanisms or denying that the author has taken a clear-sighted
view
> of human functioning or that that interpretation of "the meaning" of
Hamlet
> is "blinkered"?
> Geoff C
>
Hell, no, I'm not denying the commonplace observation that people
frequently
work hard to avoid facing a truth about themselves.
I'm saying Chan is himself blinkered -- both in believing there is a "THE
meaning of" HAMLET, and in adopting a tunnelized vision in his argument
that
every single detail in the play is there to support his interpretation of
what
he
calls Shakespeare's "message": we pursue trivialities to keep ourselves
from
looking at "profundities" -- especially that ultimate "profundity": "We're
all
going to die."
Chan is an academic (in literature, not philosophy), and he introduces his
book with the same self-celebrating line of many profs in English: He has
come
up with a hitherto unnoticed and unappreciated "explanation" of XXX -- in
Chan's case of that most-written about play of all time, HAMLET. What
Chan's
imagination can't accommodate in his message about Shakespeare's message,
he
ignores. Otherwise, because metaphors are not disprovable, they simply
require
a
nimbleness of mind to depict one character and event after another as
"fitting" a
thesis. Chan allows his enthusiasm to move him to say not only that all
the
details fit hs thesis, but that W.S. consciously and deliberately chose
each
of them for that purpose.
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