Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
We should of course always analyse philosophical ideas, but a teacher once gave me the advice (which I think has merit) to try to accept an author's views when reading a work, and then, once you've read it, subject what you've read to critical analysis. If we start off by rejecting something outright because the author's views are unpleasant to a modern audience (which a great many works written in the past of course are), we are likely to miss the gems of wisdom that the work contains.
An example would be Aristotle's book "The Nicomachean Ethics". One of the foundation works on ethics, but the modern reader is likely to be horrified by Aristotle's views on slavery that are expressed in the book. You'd be doing yourself a disservice, though, if you avoided reading it because of that.
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I see your point (or your teacher's point) - but would argue that subjecting something to critical analysis as you read is not, necessarily, the same as rejecting it. Rather, I see it as collating a list of questions or concerns that you are seeking to get answered or resolved as you read on. Not sure if my memory is poor, or I'm easily distracted, but if I don't consciously gather the thoughts as a I go they don't always come back to me at the end.
As with that Ruskin work, there was a lot in here I could not accept at face value, even taking into consideration the time at which it was written. But (like me
) Ruskin is quite long-winded, and a lot of things do get explained in ways that had them make sense once you kept going.
Of course, if you're actually studying philosophy (rather than taking a more casual interest as I do), then you'll probably be reading through the work more than once - in which case you get the luxury of reading with acceptance first and then reading with a more critical eye later.