Name: Philosophy between the lines
ISBN: 9780226175096

Philosophy between the lines

"Philosophical esotericism--the practice of communicating one's unorthodox thoughts 'between the lines'--was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others'. Despite this long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought... Philosophy Between the Lines is the first comprehensive, book-length study of the history and theoretical basis of philosophical esotericism, and it provides a crucial guide to how many major writings--philosophical, but also theological, political, and literary--were composed prior to the nineteenth century."--Publisher's Web site.

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syntheweaveMay 2023

This is actually the kind of view that Leo Strauss and his followers would support. I often recommend Arthur Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines for an exhaustive argument of this viewpoint, which is:

* All the early philosophers used esoteric writing.

* This can be shown by viewing works like The Republic not as factual explanation of knowledge, but as puzzles that contain intentional error, which the student must decipher to find true meanings.

* During the Renaissance, with writers like Machiavelli, a shift began to start arguing for the modern view.

* Upon adopting belief in this view in the Enlightenment, scholars could no longer accept esotericism, and parsed older texts at face value, leading to nonsensical interpretations.

In this light, encoding in song and story, and encoding with esotericism, both reflect a multilayered approach to knowledge transfer: the goal is not to surface large quantities of facts and figures, but to imprint a very strong impression of a few ideas, one that can survive even false readings by the unbelieving.

There is also a technical angle to the modern development, in that reliance on printed word became normalized in the later Renaissance, and therefore, "weakly encoded" ideas could proliferate at scale. Or in other words, the West became sophomoric, capable of knowing a lot of things without the wisdom to apply them usefully.

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syntheweaveDec 2022

I really feel like the world is "going dark" along multiple axes, not just the AI one. The globalized economy seems to have passed its peak as the resource dependencies and energy sources have begun a long shift away from 20th century norms, and there's likewise renewed interest in privacy technologies, personalizations/customizations and optimizing around local spaces, vs "connecting the planet" and proceeding further down the path of standardized everything.

Which means that most likely, we have a future where we don't have any designated global sources of truth, as was the assumption going into the Enlightenment. It'll be a little more like Aristotle's time, where the true lessons were taught esoterically, by devising puzzle-like texts with intentional tricks and flaws. (This is the Leo Strauss thesis, which is explained very well by Arthur Melzer in "Philosophy Between the Lines".) To uncover the knowledge you have to demonstrate the critical thinking necessary to undermine its surface.

It's something I should probably try writing fiction about. It could be a long trend or a temporary blip, but it's worthy of speculation.

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syntheweaveMar 2022

The traditional method seen in philosophical writing is to not address Plato's cave directly, but rather to present an esoteric puzzle that interested minds can only solve by overcoming their own core beliefs. When facts are laid against other facts directly in a way that decoheres a belief, the tendency is simply to go find a scapegoat that will, if defeated, set things right, which plays into the hands of propagandists who will supply an endless number of such scapegoats to an audience desperately craving such, and willful misinterpretations of media to make it say an opposite meaning. The use of esotericism combats this by presenting a text that is nonsense - presenting easy conclusions contrary to facts - until it is analyzed and deduced, at which point it's too late and the contrary thought has been had.

The core beliefs themselves tend to be set during adolescence, and the will of the individual to hold onto them or let them go involves a confluence of factors since they are often absorbed into identity. While you can present the puzzle, you can't stop people from gripping onto what they have as tightly as possible and sacrificing the rest of their life to do so. It's a strategy that appeals mostly towards development of elite thinking, rather than trying to sway the masses(who will continually look for easy beliefs to latch onto).

For more on the topic of esoteric writing I suggest Arthur Melzer's "Philosophy Between the Lines".

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megameterMar 2021

In the Melzer Philosophy Between the Lines book mentioned in the article, the author does a pretty throrough job of making the case that pre-modern philosophical writing defaulted to esoteric style, while in the modern era we default to exoteric.

He does this by pointing to the allusions and references they use and the clear contradictions within them - often inversions of meaning from the original sources that are alluded to. Socrates makes these errors, as does Machiavelli. If you assume the errors are mistakes, the work's apparent conclusions become more shaky, but if they are intentional puzzles, the work gains additional meaning. We often use puzzles as teaching devices and writing isn't really different in that respect.

It's not really different from reading for literary subtext, it just applies that toolbox more widely. I believe it's more useful for writing than for reading because esotericism makes it easy to encode something legible only to intended recipients. I would not expect to parse new wisdom from the utterings of a CEO, as in article's example, until I become familiar with corporate culture in general.

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junglerNov 2018

This is a problem that is somewhat well-known: If you send your message in esoteric terms it will be read by the great majority as a face value validation. Even some very direct statements tend to be read preferentially.

Whether this is problematic or not depends somewhat on your view of the world. I recommend Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines for a much more thorough historical treatment of the subject. By his reckoning it goes back to the ancient Greeks, at least.

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buzzybeeNov 2016

I've thought lately that the cosmopolitan outlook, which I do hold and generally enjoy, is also a rootless one. In accepting the ever-present change, respecting the multitude of outlooks, it often denies connecting with traditions in favor of a single "modern, rational, progressive" view that buries its internal contradictions beneath fleeting surface treasures.

At the same time, it supports the imperial concept of misappropriating original traditions as a convenient fancy, a reference to the exotic, or a belittling of the other, which you give a great example of - with the pretext that this is somehow contributing to progress. Appropriation can be "done right" and produce great new works, but it can't be done easily. It's so much easier to simply loot the past without thinking.

One of the books I like that considers similar thoughts at various points is Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Philosophy. [0]

[0] http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo186...

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