But none of them are really very coherent. Currently I’m thinking a lot about fiction and recontextualization. Those two things go pretty much hand-in-hand for me.
I’ve also been thinking quite a bit about Stanley Cavell’s statement in Pursuits of Happiness (which I can’t seem to find, and thus can’t quote directly), that amounts to something like: ‘Reading philosophy means allowing the text to teach you how to read itself.’
This strikes me especially powerfully in relation to my thoughts on fiction and recontextualization since it suggests that philosophy is not so much a type of work as a way of approaching a work. (This seems supported, at least in part, by Cavell’s project in the book: the treatment of a certain set of films as philosophical ‘texts’.)
In turn, this suggests that what I’m currently calling ‘reading as fiction’ in my head is about taking what you read and recontextualizing it based upon your own experiences. And that on the other hand, what I’m calling ‘reading as philosophy’ is about setting aside one’s personal context in order to try to read the work from the context of the author.
That’s pretty roughly put, but it does match up with my existing thoughts that reading and writing the best sort of philosophy is about trying to convey how one thinks. Reading Kant’s Critiques is about understanding, in a very real sense, how Kant’s mind worked. It’s not just about understanding his ideas, but also about understanding how he came up with those ideas and why they matter to him (and why he thinks they should matter to others).
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this mini-revelation, though I suppose I might try reading some fiction as philosophy to see what happens. Then again, perhaps I won’t.
Thomas
If I’m understanding you at all correctly, I read philosophy the way that you read fiction: to understand it in terms of my own experience; and fiction as you read philosophy: to enter another’s experience.