Adrian_Blau_The_Irrelevance_of_Straussian_Hermeneutics_NOT_FINAL_VERSION

The Irrelevance of (Straussian) Hermeneutics Adrian Blau NOT THE FINAL VERSION Chapter for Winfried Schroeder, ed., Reading Between the Lines: Leo Strauss and the History of Early Modern Philosophy (Berlin: De Gruyter) Acknowledgements: A very different version of this chapter was given at the “Reading Between The Lines” conference in Marburg, 19-20 July 2013 I am grateful to those at the conference for comments and criticisms, especially Rob Howse, Winfried Schroeder and Rudolf Schuessler A more recent draft benefited greatly from the insights of James Connelly, Robin Douglass, Humeira Iqtidar, Simon Kaye, Peter Minowitz, Joanne Paul, Dietrich Schotte, and Colin Tyler Special thanks to Peter Minowitz for challenging my 2012 critique of Strauss I have been developing the controversial arguments at the end of this chapter for several years, and in that context I thank Justin Blau, Kimberley Brownlee, Charles Devellennes, Robin Douglass, Jane Green, Christel Koop, Chrys Mantzavinos, Jon Parkin, Alan Renwick, and Colin Tyler, as well as participants at conferences and seminars at the universities of York, Reading, Durham and Kent Introduction Many writers talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutic” This term sounds innocuous But it can be misleading, even dangerous, deflecting attention from the real issue – Strauss’s inadequate hypothesis-testing Talking about hypotheses not hermeneutics makes it easier to see when Strauss does not test his claims properly: he looks for evidence which fits his suspicions, finds it, and stops At stake is more than Strauss’s work: at stake is the methodology of textual interpretation itself Although part of this chapter challenges talk of Strauss’s hermeneutic, my bigger concerns are the ideas and language of hermeneutics more generally We need different principles and different terms, I will suggest This chapter is structured as follows Section summarises my previously published critique of Strauss Section corrects, clarifies and extends that argument Section considers how Straussians could respond Section argues that talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” is too broad: it does not distinguish between methodological principles, empirical hypotheses and conclusions, hence making it harder to pinpoint Strauss’s ineffective hypothesis-testing Section suggests that the language of hermeneutics can weaken criticisms of Strauss, letting his defenders off the hook Section recommends dropping the language and ideas of hermeneutics, by questioning Ricoeur and especially Gadamer There are better ways to work out if and how to read between the lines, I suggest Section briefly considers alternative forms of hermeneutics Section concludes with the suggestion – which of course I cannot demonstrate – that if there had been better methodological principles in the 1940s and 1950s, few people would now be discussing Strauss’s esoteric interpretations “Anti-Strauss” Leo Strauss was a wide-ranging political theorist, and I focus only on one part of his work: his “esoteric” interpretations, uncovering hidden doctrines in classic texts According to Strauss, great philosophers could produce “perfect” writing (Strauss 1946, p 352), so it would have been deliberate if they not mention things which they knew and which were essential to their argument (Strauss 1952, pp 161-2) Errors and contradictions should be treated as intended: perhaps the author is subtly trying to reject an idea (Strauss 1952, pp 302) Writers may use numbers to give clues to careful readers: for example, if Machiavelli’s The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 Prince has 26 chapters, we should examine the 26th chapter of the Discourses (Strauss 1958, pp 48-9) In January 2012, I published a paper with the ever so subtle title “Anti-Strauss” I argued that Strauss was a naive interpreter with a career-long tendency to read too much into what he sees and an unwillingness to test his claims rigorously He looks for evidence that fits his hypotheses, finds it, ignores plausible alternatives, and states his conclusions without doubt My two core principles were underdetermination and uncertainty Underdetermination means that there are always at least two ways of interpreting any evidence (Newton-Smith 2000) We should thus try to reduce uncertainty about our conclusions by carefully testing the strengths and weaknesses of the main alternative interpretations, and where relevant, indicating how confident we are in our conclusions (King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 6, 89, 31-2, 76, 79, 152) We should not see ourselves as reporting facts: we are telling our readers how well we think the evidence fits our hypotheses compared to the alternatives (Blau 2012, pp 142-4) Strauss’s interpretations often fall well short of these principles Most critics only address Strauss’s esoteric phase Importantly, there are also problems with Strauss’s pre-esoteric interpretations: his 1936 book on Hobbes sees significant overstatements based on little evidence (Blau 2012, pp 144-5) True, reading Hobbes accurately is easier for us than for Strauss, as we can build on better scholarship – scholarship which Strauss’s book helped to spark But even in 1937 Strauss was accused of stretching his evidence (Oakeshott 1975, pp 143, 149-51) My critique of Strauss’s Hobbes book, incidentally, has been far surpassed by A.P Martinich’s chapter in this volume So, examining Strauss’s pre-esoteric interpretations, not just his esoteric ones, suggests that he was an over-eager interpreter throughout his career; his discovery of esotericism simply gave him more opportunities to go wrong I must stress that reading between the lines is perfectly legitimate, as Dietrich Schotte’s chapter in this volume successfully demonstrates Clearly, writers hold views which they not communicate directly (Skinner 2002, pp 80-2), and some almost certainly wrote esoterically (Patterson 1991) The question is how these possibilities are investigated “Anti-Strauss” challenged Strauss’s investigation of these possibilities in two ways First, some of his methodological principles are flawed and overly dichotomous (Blau 2012, pp 145-7) Second, and more important, he does not probe his hypotheses adequately For example, he suggests that key ideas are often central – the third example out of five, say, or an idea in the middle of a chapter – but he rarely notes when a key idea is not central or when The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 an unimportant idea is central Worse, so many things are central in one way or another that it is not surprising that key ideas are often central, simply by chance – especially when Strauss measures the centre in different ways and, rather naughtily, includes things which are merely near the centre, not actually at the centre (Blau 2012, pp 147-8) This is the Platonic Form of having your cake and eating it Other arguments of Strauss’s look implausible too (Blau 2012, pp 146-52) Overall, I argued, the problem is not Strauss’s claims about esotericism but his inadequate testing of these claims: the problem is not Strauss’s esotericism, but Strauss’s esotericism (Blau 2012, p 143) That is important for this chapter: I worry that many people see a “Straussian hermeneutic” as fundamentally different to other approaches, whereas I want to show that Strauss violates principles which should underlie all empirical investigations “Anti-Strauss” concluded by suggesting that while most readers of Strauss quickly spot his naivety, published critiques largely fail to identify precisely where he goes wrong (Blau 2012, pp 142, 153-4) Extending “Anti-Strauss” I will now extend my critique by correcting two small and two larger errors in “AntiStrauss”, then developing three ideas which need more emphasis: confirmation bias, falsification, and testing hypotheses by probing observational implications One small error was to refer to Strauss (1964a, p 52) rather than Strauss (1964b, p 52; see Blau 2012, p 146) I also wrote that “most of [Strauss’s] conclusions … are stated with excessive certainty” (Blau 2012, p 144; emphasis added), when I should merely have said that some of Strauss’s important conclusions are stated too strongly My two bigger mistakes – highly pertinent to this chapter – involve the language with which I discussed Strauss’s problems One error was to talk of his “epistemology”, his “epistemological” naivety, and so on (e.g Blau 2012, p 142) But this is methodology not epistemology More importantly, I did not say enough about hypotheses and hypothesistesting Revealingly, I wrote about “theory” not “hypotheses” (see especially Blau 2012, pp 151-2) And I referred to Strauss’s “method” when “hypotheses” would again have been more accurate, albeit more awkward (Blau 2012, p 143) – an equivalent slip to what I discuss in sections and 6, below As it is so central to this chapter, I should clarify what I mean by “hypothesis” People use this term very differently Following Carl Hempel (1966, p 19), I use it broadly, to mean The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 an empirical claim about an empirical phenomenon I not restrict it to causal propositions (Van Evera 1997, p 9), relationships (Hoover and Donovan 2011, p 24), or claims derived from theories (Babbie 2011, p 523) I want to focus on how we test any empirical claim, whether causal claims about many past and future cases (e.g “corruption hinders development”), causal claims about a single past case (e.g “an asteroid made the dinosaurs extinct”), descriptive claims about many past and future cases (e.g “all swans are white”), descriptive claims about a single past case (e.g “Plato wrote the Seventh Letter”), and so on Different hypotheses may be easier or harder to test but the same principles apply: scepticism, consideration of alternatives, and so on I now wish to expand on these ideas I will start by sharing a feeling I experienced while preparing my original critique of Strauss Near the end of that paper I wrote a satire, mimicking Strauss’s style and parodying his esoteric techniques to “prove” that Hobbes hid secret messages about Beethoven’s music – even though Hobbes died 91 years before Beethoven was born (Blau 2012, pp 152-3) Clearly we can find striking similarities even where they cannot have been intended While writing this satire I suddenly felt a bit of what it may have been like to be Leo Strauss I was spotting so many astonishing parallels between Hobbes and Beethoven that a thought started to flash into my head: “Is it possible that Hobbes was actually writing about Beethoven?” I didn’t finish this thought: of course Hobbes could not have written about Beethoven But it showed me how easily we can over-interpret coincidences So much evidence fits Strauss’s suspicions that he may have felt sure he was right The same might apply to his supporters Strauss’s critics ignore such feelings at their peril There is a tendency to portray Straussians as irrational (e.g Burnyeat 1985) but my experience while writing the satire helped me see why many Straussians sincerely believe that Strauss “proves” his esoteric claims, in Thomas Pangle’s words (2006, p 60) He has so much evidence which shows so many parallels which are so striking: surely this cannot be coincidence? Strauss’s defenders also ignore such feelings at their peril: these feelings are treacherous There is a widespread human bias to look for evidence which fits one’s ideas, or to interpret things to support one’s ideas – intentionally or unintentionally This was described by Francis Bacon in 1620 (Bacon 2000, book section 46, p 43) and is now called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1988) Although most of us fall foul of it, it is rarely stated as a key problem for textual interpreters (one exception being Wootton 1992, p 84) The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 Textual interpreters must thus take care not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations This applies to Strauss’s critics too Consider Masoud Bonyanian’s attempt to show that Strauss influenced American neoconservatives in the Bush administration: according to Bonyanian, these neoconservatives lied about why they waged war with Iraq because Strauss had argued that politicians may need to tell a noble lie to hide truths from the masses (Bonyanian 2009, pp 44-5) A simple test of this claim is to ask if politicians not influenced by Strauss lie to cover up their actions Call me cynical, but I think one or two have Why, then, suppose that Strauss’s influence explains the alleged lies of American neoconservatives? Bonyanian needs to work far harder to show this Straussians who agree with me about Bonyanian should ask if the same applies to Strauss Of course, due to confirmation bias I may have overlooked some of Strauss’s engagements with other interpretations But Straussians should, I suggest, be explicit that he often neglects plausible alternatives Comparing different hypotheses is a key way in which we have learned to counter confirmation bias, individually and collectively We also know not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations, not to assume that our evidence is necessarily reliable, not to assume that our “evidence” is necessarily evidence (sometimes patterns are coincidental), and so on Since we often fall short, there are collective mechanisms for combating confirmation bias For example, when natural scientists publish controversial findings, suspicious competitors try to see if the results really can be reproduced – a fine example of ambition countering ambition Scepticism is thus vital in empirical research (King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 323) Even when we are convinced by our argument, we can take steps to justify it to our readers (Elster 2007, pp 15-20) Convincing doubters is more important than preaching to the converted The key is be a doubter oneself and test one’s claims accordingly As Jon Elster puts it, one should “think against oneself” (Elster 2007, p 20; emphasis removed) Many scholars think about these matters in terms of falsification I now need to flesh out my brief comment in “Anti-Strauss” where I suggested that orthodox notions of falsification are not very effective when criticising Strauss (Blau 2012, p 142, referring to Pocock 1975, p 393, Gunnell 1978, p 131, and Gunn 1981, p 182) The orthodox falsificationist view is that hypotheses can be disproved but never proved “All swans are white” is unprovable, however many white swans we see; but one black swan disproves it The orthodox idea, then, is that we can falsify a hypothesis by finding contrary evidence The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 But underdetermination undermines falsification: all evidence has at least two explanations, and apparently falsifying evidence can be explained away (Newton-Smith 2000, pp 534-5) We need, rather, a weak logic of falsification (which is nonetheless consistent with the spirit of the original) On this view, falsification is not about rejecting hypotheses which have been shown to be wrong, but about seeing which hypotheses still stand when we have done our best to knock them down Where space and time permit – and often they not – we should actively consider evidence that clashes with an interpretation as well as evidence that fits, we should take alternative interpretations seriously, and we should push hard at hypotheses by testing their “observable implications” (King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 11-12, 28-31) If a hypothesis is right, what we would expect to see, and we see it? What would we not expect to see, and we see that? If a different hypothesis is right, what would we expect to see? And so on This use of observable implications underpins Stephen Van Evera’s approach to hypothesis-testing (1997, pp 31-2) We can apply three of his tests to Strauss as follows First, if Machiavelli wrote esoterically, we might see links between Machiavelli and esotericists living in Florence at the time Strauss’s case is strongly supported if these links can be found and only mildly weakened if not (since Machiavelli could have developed these techniques independently) so his followers would lose nothing by applying this “smoking gun” test Second, we should ask if Machiavelli actually needed to hide his messages Would he really have been persecuted for being explicit about these allegedly hidden ideas? Or if he was trying to keep certain ideas from ordinary readers to protect them from harm and to stop them from harming him (Strauss 1952, p 36), were these expectations reasonable? Strauss’s case is mildly supported if the answer to either question is “yes” and strongly weakened if not, so this “hoop test” is vital Third, and most crucial, we can ask if Strauss’s approach allows us to find esoteric messages in writers who presumably did not write esoterically (e.g Graham Greene, J.K Rowling), or if it suggests impossible results (e.g claims about Adolf Hitler in the Old Testament or about Martin Luther King in Moby Dick) If we never see such things, this strongly suggests that Strauss’s findings are not coincidence If we can easily see such things, this strongly weakens his case This “doubly decisive” test is a powerful antidote to confirmation bias Straussian responses The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 It is perhaps surprising that Strauss’s followers have not pushed very hard at his work by asking these and similar questions (Blau 2012, p 152) The next generation of Straussians has a great opportunity to correct this, as long as their aim is to find out what is right, not to show that Strauss was right (Why would a scholar have the latter aim?) Straussians might respond to my criticisms by showing that I am guilty of confirmation bias in my reading of Strauss (or Hobbes, Habermas, or other thinkers I have interpreted) I surely am But obviously, a “tu quoque” response alone will not save Strauss Another line could be that Strauss’s evidence is stronger than I imply This response would be worthwhile but it is not enough, as discussed above: to avoid confirmation bias, hypothesis-testing should be about more than just finding evidence that fits a hypothesis Perhaps someone could argue that we can test hypotheses properly just by looking for evidence that fits them, but I suspect that this would contradict too much that we think we know about methodology and psychology Straussians could instead argue that non-Straussians not take Straussian hypotheses sufficiently seriously But this assumes that Straussian hypotheses are reasonable, and we still need more rigorous testing to show this A stronger response would be to show that nonStraussians often test their hypotheses inadequately I would welcome this response, as it is right We need wider criticism of hypothesis-testing in textual interpretation I started this section by saying that it was “perhaps surprising” that Strauss’s followers have not probed his claims hard enough In fact, some Straussians may not even think his interpretations are sincere: his errors are so obvious that he is primarily showing how to read between his own lines This is certainly possible (Blau 2012, p 143) But the main reason, I suspect, is that most Straussians think his arguments are right and thus need no further testing Strauss’s critics may have exacerbated this situation Many criticisms of Strauss are rather easy to deflect (see Blau 2012, pp 142-3) And it probably does not help when Straussians see titles like “Anti-Strauss” Combined with confirmation bias and inadequate hypothesis-testing, it is no surprise that Straussians often reject criticisms of Strauss But this problem in turn partly reflects the language with which many critics and defenders of Strauss discuss his work, as I now seek to show How talk of “hermeneutics” masks Strauss’s errors The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 Our inadequate methodological vocabulary has helped to conceal Strauss’s problems The next two sections thus argue that talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” averts attention from his ineffective hypothesis-testing Even criticisms of Strauss can lose some or all of their force when expressed in terms of hermeneutics I have two key concerns: (1) Talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutics” often fails to distinguish between Strauss’s methodological principles and his empirical hypotheses This may misleadingly imply that hypothesis-testing is not needed (2) Talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutics” sometimes fails to distinguish between Strauss’s empirical hypotheses and the results of testing those hypotheses This may misleadingly imply that his hypothesis-testing was conclusive Dropping the language of “hermeneutics” and focusing on hypotheses thus makes clearer that Strauss does not test his empirical claims properly (Note that I will not separate out the above two claims in what follows.) Before examining these claims in more detail, I shall offer two quick examples of when talk of a “hermeneutic” is misleading First, imagine a hypothetical textual interpreter called Charlotte Ann When she is unsure what an author means by a particular word, she eats cheese until she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she writes down a sentence about the dream she had She then converts each letter of that sentence into numbers (A=1, B=2, up to Z=26), sums the numbers, and sticks a pin into that page of a dictionary; whatever word she sticks the pin into is the meaning that the author intended Clearly this is so ludicrous that we would not take her seriously if she defended herself against critics by saying “well, you just have a different hermeneutic” Such a claim already implies that her hermeneutic is reasonable Nor can anyone defend Strauss simply by saying that he has a different hermeneutic to his critics Second, consider the following analogy from political science There is a large statistical literature on the causes and effects of corruption in different countries This literature can be challenged in at least three ways: the data may be unreliable, the methods may be inappropriate for distinguishing causation from correlation, and the hypotheses may not be tested rigorously enough (Treisman 2007, p 212) Political scientists criticising a The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p of 26 study of corruption would indicate which of these is at fault, rather than rejecting the study’s “approach” I seek similar precision in textual interpretation I must stress that I am not criticising any author for talking about Strauss’s “hermeneutic” Some authors use the term only in passing; mentioning hypotheses would often be irrelevant or unwieldy But I need to show how our methodological language has concealed what is really happening, which has stopped Strauss’s critics from pinpointing his biggest problems while letting his defenders sidestep these problems So, I hope that readers will excuse my somewhat pedantic analysis of how scholars have discussed Strauss I start with innocuous uses, where “hermeneutic” means “interpretative” I prefer the latter term, for reasons that will become apparent, but there is nothing wrong with referring to “the hermeneutic approaches of Strauss and Derrida” (Burns and Connelly 2010, p 16), or contrasting Strauss’s “hermeneutical” and non-hermeneutical texts (Sharpe 2006, p 378; see also pp 358, 421) Similarly, it is legitimate to say that Strauss’s (1952, p 154) distinction between interpretation and explanation is “instructive for our understanding of Strauss’s hermeneutics” (Luz 2005, p 270), as the interpretation/explanation distinction is a methodological principle However, Walter Soffer makes it sound like a methodological principle when he “present[s] the hermeneutic for the reading of Spinoza employed by Strauss”, referring to a specific “rule” (Strauss’s term) for dealing with apparent contradictions by Spinoza (1994, pp 143-4) Actually, this “rule” is only a hypothesis which may or may not explain the contradiction: there are other possibilities which we should address Soffer later stresses “the necessity of Strauss’s hermeneutic” if we are “to translate the exoteric presentation of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise into its esoteric teaching” (1994, p 164) This comment is understandable: we often understand a text better after testing a hypothesis, for example that Machiavelli was trying to get employment with the Medici or that Hobbes was implicitly attacking Aristotle But it remains only a hypothesis which (if important) ideally needs testing; our answer remains only a suggestion According to Robert Hunt, “[t]he Straussian hermeneutic sees the course of intellectual history as an ongoing conversation about important philosophical questions” (2009, p 60) But this is only a hypothesis, and there are reasonable alternatives Straussians and non-Straussians who read texts like this should ideally not assume what needs testing The same could be said of rational choice theorists, Marxists, anthropologists or journalists who “see” politics in a particular way We can legitimately ask if they should “see” things differently; they can ask the same of us To “see” a text in a particular way, then, is shorthand The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 10 of 26 Strauss tries to verify his findings rather than seeing both sides Smith’s comments on Strauss, like those of many critics, not zero in on Strauss’s biggest problems Straussians should drop talk of hermeneutics, focus on hypotheses, and test Strauss’s hypotheses rigorously If his claims are right then they should pass tougher tests, so Straussians who are confident in his claims have nothing to fear If his hypotheses not pass tougher tests, then the problem is not Strauss’s hypotheses about esoteric techniques but his inadequate testing of these hypotheses How talk of “hermeneutics” blunts criticisms of Strauss Our insufficiently fine-grained methodological vocabulary makes it harder to show where interpretations go wrong Consider Samuel Chambers’s suggestion that the problem with Strauss’s “hermeneutic approach” is that “it becomes very difficult to know when to take an author at his or her word” (Chambers 2010) But even without assuming esotericism, we are often unsure whether to take authors at their word If Chambers had used the terminology I favour, he could hardly complain that Strauss’s hypotheses or his testing thereof make it hard to know when to take authors at their word; and if one writes that Strauss’s conclusions make it hard to know when to take authors at their word, this begs the question of whether the conclusions are justified – and that is where we should focus Neil Robertson writes that “[t]he difficulties of directly refuting Strauss’s hermeneutic may be compared to the difficulties of refuting psychoanalysis”: both “point to” findings only uncoverable by those who already accept certain assumptions (1999, p 39) But rephrasing this in terms of hypotheses invites talk of observable implications Psychoanalytic hypotheses can actually be tested according to their observable implications (Grünbaum 1986, pp 2208) So can Strauss’s hypotheses, as discussed above Robertson’s talk of hermeneutics makes it sound as Strauss’s claims are harder to test than they are Miles Burnyeat notes that “Strauss had to use Straussian hermeneutics on the Phaedrus to get that dialogue to justify using Straussian hermeneutics on other Platonic texts,” so pointing to the Phaedrus “does nothing to extricate the Straussian approach” from a “vicious circularity” (Burnyeat 1985) This is nearly right But all interpretations have some degree of circularity This is why orthodox understandings of falsification somewhat miss the point (Blau 2012, pp 142, 152) Burnyeat is right to worry that the basis of Strauss’s approach is particularly questionable, but I think that talking of hypothesis-testing would sharpen Burnyeat’s criticism: Strauss proposed certain hypotheses about Plato’s techniques in The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 12 of 26 the Phaedrus, looked for and found evidence consistent with those hypotheses, naively inferred that this confirmed the hypotheses, and thus proposed the same hypotheses and the same inadequate testing on other Platonic texts Ultimately, the issue isn’t circularity: it’s onesided hypothesis-testing Another acute criticism is Drury’s comment that there is “really very little ‘method’ in Strauss’s hermeneutics What is important about Strauss’s ‘method’ is not its form, but its content”, in other words “particular assumptions about the nature of the world, of philosophy, of human nature and of political life” (Drury 2005, p 12) But Strauss’s “assumptions” are really “hypotheses” or “claims”, and Drury’s insight would damage Strauss even more if she adds that he tests his claims inadequately He is more like a lawyer making the case for his client than a judge trying to see both sides The irrelevance of hermeneutics Most readers will have been treating this chapter as a critique of Straussian interpretation As may now be clear, it is also a critique of critiques of Straussian interpretation And even that is not my main concern, as the parentheses in my chapter-title imply I should now be explicit: showing where Strauss goes wrong, and highlighting inadequacies in our methodological vocabulary, has been laying the foundations for me to defend a science of textual interpretation That may sound outlandish Isn’t a science of interpretation a contradiction in terms? This section suggests otherwise I will first briefly outline my position and then suggest that scientific ideas – properly understood – are more useful for us than ideas from the hermeneutics literature, which has itself sometimes caricatured science unfairly Obviously, both positions need to be expanded in future writings But please note that by “the irrelevance of hermeneutics” I merely mean that hermeneuticists have little to offer textual interpreters asking empirical questions, especially compared to how much we can learn from elsewhere I will develop these points below I will start by suggesting that textual interpreters often practise scientific ideas already We regularly make the same assumptions as natural and social scientists without realising it We think that there is a right answer to questions such as what Rousseau meant by “general will”, even though the answer cannot be known for sure, and even if the answer is “Rousseau himself did not fully know” We know that inductive inference is dangerous: if Mill defines “utility” in one place, we should not assume that this must be what he always The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 13 of 26 means by it We criticize the failure to define key terms: we would not ask if Wollstonecraft is a “feminist” without defining “feminist”, even though we know that such concepts are human constructs We may not think about “selection bias” but we know that scholars who only read the first parts of Leviathan may miss the importance of religion to Hobbes and thus misconstrue his intentions in writing it We may not talk of “under-determination” but we all know the perils of interpreting ambiguous phrases and often take steps to tackle this problem We may not refer to “triangulation” but we know that primarily textual or philosophical interpretations of texts are more convincing if contextual evidence also implies the same conclusions We may not discuss hoop tests, smoking gun tests and doubly decisive tests, but we already have an intuitive sense of such ways of probing arguments Further riches doubtless await us So, there is much overlap between textual interpretation and scientific ideas If (if) we start by assuming that there are right answers to empirical questions, and accept that evidence can always be interpreted differently, we know not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations, but instead to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different possibilities, testing hypotheses by probing their implications – arguing against ourselves as well as others This is not rocket science But it is science The advantage of thinking about textual interpretation scientifically is that theorists and practitioners of natural and social science have developed sensible tactics for investigating empirical problems Where textual interpreters not already use such an approach, we can apply it to investigate problems more thoroughly, defend interpretations more convincingly, and show where certain scholars go wrong I believe that this last option applies to Strauss He shares the core scientific assumptions that there are right answers to empirical questions about what authors meant and that we can potentially work out these answers (e.g Strauss 1952, pp 143, 154; 1996, p 323) But his approach then falls well short of scientific ideals To sceptics, I would thus ask: to the extent that you agree with my criticisms of Strauss’s methodology and his inadequate hypothesis-testing, what is the source of your agreement? Some people will see these “scientific” ideas simply as basic principles of good scholarship But where these principles come from? I believe they not and can not come from orthodox hermeneutics Philosophically important and valuable though this literature can be, it contributes surprisingly little to how we interpret texts Leading hermeneuticists often lack precision at key moments, and important claims fail when analysed carefully (Hirsch 1967, pp 247-64; Stegmüller 1977, pp The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 14 of 26 2-25; Føllesdal 1979; Martin 1994; Mantzavinos 2005, pp 9-69) Accordingly, hermeneuticists rarely help us with empirical questions such as whether Plato wrote the Seventh Letter, how Arendt understood “freedom”, how much Hume influenced Madison, or why Machiavelli wrote The Prince Fully justifying my stance on hermeneutics is beyond the scope of the present chapter; I will merely offer one short example and one longer one Consider first Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of how to validate guesses about textual meanings (1976, pp 75-9) Ricoeur’s account is by no means bad but would probably give little help to scholars struggling over ambiguous passages in Aristotle or Kant, say Its brief comments on falsification now look outmoded compared to the contributions of scholars who have thought more practically about pushing hard at hypotheses (e.g Elster 2007, pp 15-20) And it is too abstract, referring to other theorists rather than giving actual examples of textual interpretation (see Stegmüller 1977, p for a similar criticism) My longer example of the poverty of hermeneuticism involves Gadamer Of course, Gadamer is a philosophical hermeneuticist, not a literary one: he is not primarily concerned with textual interpretation but with hermeneutics as understanding Nonetheless, this philosophical analysis is highly pertinent to my current discussion, because an important theme of his book Truth and Method is that natural-science methods are not always appropriate elsewhere, including in the humanities and social sciences (e.g Gadamer 2004, pp xx-xxiii) This could be a significant obstacle to my argument I thus wish to show that Gadamer’s understanding of science is too deficient to have value for us today I am not trying to undermine Gadamer’s broader aims, including his insights about the universality of hermeneutics (e.g 2004, pp xvii-xix) But his caricatures of science need to be corrected And in the process I hope to show how scientific principles can help textual interpreters In short, when science is properly understood – which is not the case with Gadamer – we can see its relevance for textual interpreters who wish to test their claims better than Strauss Gadamer’s caricatures of science would not need correcting if they had already been corrected However, many commentators repeat his claims or pass over their deficiencies in silence (e.g Grondin 1994, pp 107-9; Grondin 1999, pp 226-7; Taylor 2002, pp 126-9; Grondin 2003, pp 20-1; Sherratt 2006, pp 94-5; Wiercinski 2009, pp 3-5; Zimmerman 2012, pp 230, 238-9, 244, 246-7, 258, 262; Kiefer 2013, pp 44, 57) Non-Gadamerians often voice similar caricatures (e.g Kurki and Wight 2010, pp 18-19, 22-3) In defending a science of The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 15 of 26 interpretation I am thus battling against widespread misunderstandings of what science can offer Some commentators question Gadamer’s account of science Richard Bernstein (1983, pp 168-9) and Georgia Warnke (1987, p 4) rightly note that science has changed significantly since Gadamer wrote, while Joel Weinsheimer states that it was already changing beforehand (Weinsheimer 1985, pp 3, 17) Gadamer himself accepts that Truth and Method’s view of science is outdated: “the ideas for my book were developed in the 1930s”, when logical positivists were pushing “physicalism and the unity of science” (1997, p 41) But logical positivism is a position developed by philosophers: Gadamer should say what scientists think and Unfortunately, despite referring to “modern science” almost 60 times in Truth and Method, he does not cite a single modern natural or social scientist (D’Amico 1999, p 158) He draws on 17th-century and 18th-century sources like Bacon, Descartes and Vico, and 19th-century sources like Mill, Droysen and Dilthey No 20thcentury scientist is mentioned Perhaps Gadamer avoided going into detail about science because he wanted to keep his book short The only person Gadamer cites who might be described as a modern scientist is Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), a wide-ranging experimental and theoretical biologist and physicist Unfortunately, Gadamer’s treatment of Helmholtz is slipshod Gadamer misquotes Helmholtz’s comment on “[t]he iron labour of conscious logical reasoning”, which is merely about hard work, to make it sound as if Helmholtz thinks that scientific conclusions are certain (compare Helmholtz 1995, p 90 and Helmholtz 1950, p 151 with Gadamer 2004, p 571, 2007, p 85, and 1993, p 228) Yet Helmholtz knows that inductive science never produces certainty (Helmholtz 1995, p 315; see also Schiemann 2009, pp 159-209) Gadamer thinks that Descartes’ four rules from his Discourse on Method constitute “the veritable manifesto of modern science” (2004, p 456; see also p 273) But Descartes’ method was deductive whereas most modern science is ultimately inductive (Helmholtz 1995, pp 311, 314; King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 7-8, 99; Valieia 2001, pp 4-27) Gadamer derives a worryingly simplistic view of scientific certainty from Droysen – “the clear unambiguity of what has been seen with one’s own eyes” (Gadamer 2004, p 212) – and talks of “the certainty achieved by using scientific methods” (Gadamer 2004, p 484) But such comments would be rejected by sensible scientists (compare Gadamer 2004, pp 273, 471, 484, with Helmholtz 1995, p 315, King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 6, 8-9, 76, 79, and Chalmers 1999, pp 4-18) Science is precisely about dealing with uncertainty, and the tools that scientists have developed are relevant for textual interpreters, who face the same The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 16 of 26 problem The work of qualitative social scientists investigating single cases may be especially important for us, as with Van Evera’s tests in section above Gadamer implies that science is about uncovering laws and making predictions (2004, pp 3, 213, 229, 284) This might be true for much natural science, but not for all (Carnap 1966, pp 4-5) Gadamer’s own father may not even have done this in his own biochemical research (Meyer and Imming 2011, pp 2482-4, 2486) Most contemporary social science mentions neither laws nor prediction, which are not necessary to scientific research (e.g King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 7-9) But Gadamer’s biggest problem – and the most important oversight for textual interpreters to take note of, especially in the context of Strauss’s interpretations – is that he does not seem to grasp the logic of scientific inference He naively equates “scientific rigor” with “objectivity” (2007, p 114; see also 2004, pp 329, 450) but for most natural and social scientists, rigour depends crucially on the logic of inference, a central concern of my Strauss critique Gadamer’s oversight here is most evident in his inadequate account of scientific experiments (2004, pp 166, 212-3, 229, 342-3, 563) Apart perhaps from a few passing comments (2004, pp 343, 556; 2007, p 94), I see no sign that he understands the crucial idea of a controlled experiment by which we assess the effect of one variable by trying to control other variables (Valieia 2001, pp 7-8, 11-14) Accordingly, he does not grasp that many scientific experiments use Mill’s “method of difference” (1886, book chapter sections 2-3, pp 256-8): if two scenarios have different outcomes, and only one explanatory variable differs, this explains the different outcomes Political scientists who emulate this approach call it a “most similar systems design” (Berg-Schlosser 2001, pp 2427-30) We can even find similar kinds of inference in many thought experiments in political theory (see the account in Kamm 1996, pp 17-62, although she does not spot the connection) The logic of inference also matters for textual interpreters For example, Strauss’s treatment of centres is biased because he looks only at things which are central and important without adequately considering things which are central and unimportant, or important and non-central (Blau 2012, pp 147-8) This is a kind of selection bias (Geddes 1990) If you suspect that revolutions are caused by factor F and you find that factor F was indeed present wherever revolutions happened, you still need to look at non-revolutions: if factor F is present there too, the explanation is more complex than you first thought Strauss’s treatment of centres is similarly flawed Gadamer’s neglect of the logic of inference means he does not spot that even in 1862, Helmholtz describes what section above characterised as hypothesis-testing through the The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 17 of 26 probing of observable implications “This is a test which really never ceases”, he adds (Helmholtz 1995, p 322) Helmholtz is focusing on laws, but this kind of testing also helps scientists investigating single cases For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs “does not fall neatly into a class of events that could be studied in a systematic, comparative fashion through the application of general laws”, but nonetheless “can be studied scientifically: alternative hypotheses can be developed and tested with respect to their observational implications” (King, Keohane and Verba 1994, pp 11-12) Textual interpreters can take the same approach For example, when Timothy Raylor (2001, pp 34-56) and Noel Malcolm (2002, pp 82-5, 104-39) investigate whether Hobbes wrote the Short Tract, they ask what would we expect to see if he was the author, how the evidence fits other alleged authors, and so on Similarly, in trying to resolve Hobbes’s ambiguous discussion of the “Foole”, Kinch Hoekstra asks which interpretations fit with what the text says, with its philosophical implications, with different passages, with different texts by Hobbes, and so on (1997, pp 620-40) Importantly, Raylor, Malcolm and Hoekstra all examine different hypotheses, not just their favoured one Just as there is far more to the natural and social sciences than careful observation, so too there is far more to careful textual interpretation than “careful reading” Gadamer states that “[t]he ‘hermeneutical sciences’, or the Geisteswissenschaften [humanities], fall under the same standards of critical rationality that characterize the methodical procedures of all sciences, even though their angle of interest and procedures differ essentially from those of the natural sciences” (2007, p 264) I have suggested that empirical questions in textual interpretation are essentially the same as empirical questions in natural and social science, and some procedures are the same in terms of the logic of inference With a more nuanced understanding of science, Gadamer would have seen much more overlap We can dispute how scientific textual interpretation should be Does its avoidance of laws and of prediction make it less scientific than much other science? I would resist that claim, as my notion of science prioritises the logic of inference about empirical issues, and treats laws and prediction as secondary But I define science broadly because I wish it to include social science and aspects of textual interpretation; someone with a stricter definition of science will see things differently I have no problem with this, or with talking about textual interpretation according to different paradigms (e.g law, detective-work), or even with replacing my term “scientific” with “systematic” or “careful” – as long as the emphasis The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 18 of 26 is on testing empirical claims by considering what does and does not fit different interpretations, and so on So, what matters most is how we interpret texts How we describe this is secondary Secondary, but not unimportant: our language can influence what we do, and I fear that the language of hermeneutics – implicitly or explicitly contrasted to science – has stopped many people from seeing that part of what they is essentially scientific This has made it harder to identify Strauss’s errors A scientific hermeneutics? Some scholars in fact combine the languages of science and hermeneutics This section briefly explains why I have not gone down this route I will not discuss “objective hermeneutics”, developed by Ulrich Oevermann and others, as it is fundamentally sociological, not literary (Titscher et al 2000, pp 199-201; Reichertz 2004, p 290; Wernet 2014, pp 235-6) And Hans-Georg Soeffner’s (2004) “social scientific hermeneutics” does not seem too social-scientific to me, at least as I depict social science But to the extent that either approach is scientific, its scientific principles presumably come from science, not hermeneutics In textual interpretation, Peter Tepe’s “cognitive hermeneutics” explicitly uses scientific principles (Tepe 2011) I have not yet seen this approach in practice, as Tepe’s work is mostly in German But I myself would drop all talk of hermeneutics: it has too many unscientific and anti-scientific connotations Chrystos Mantzavinos confronts these connotations head-on, advocating “naturalist hermeneutics” (Mantzavinos 2005) Aside from his use of the H-word, my main disagreement with Mantzavinos is simply that he, like some others, depicts textual interpretation as hypothetico-deductive (Mantzavinos 2005, pp 81-6, 95, 132-45; Hirsch 1967, p 264; Føllesdal 1979, pp 322-7; Elster 2007, pp 17-20, 52-66, 246-56) In fact, these authors’ examples are all hypothetico-inductive: their predictions are merely reasonable expectations, not predictions which necessarily follow from the hypothesis (see Føllesdal 1979, pp 324, 327; Mantzavinos 2005, pp 139-44; Elster 2007, pp 17-20) It could not be otherwise for textual interpreters Even natural science is often hypothetico-inductive, as becomes clearer when scientists write informally (e.g Frazer and Hartel 2012, pp 65-72) Messy, real-world hypothetico-inductive models of science are more apt for us than clean, textbook hypothetico-deductive models My criticism here is small, especially as Mantzavinos accepts The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 19 of 26 that hypothetico-deductive analysis is only one scientific approach (2005, p 86) But just as Gadamer is dismissive of a kind of science which is inappropriate for textual interpreters, some people defend a kind of science which is not quite right for us either A science of textual interpretation thus requires careful thought about which scientific ideas are relevant (e.g hypothesis-testing, observable implications) and which are not (e.g laws, quantification) Like natural and especially social scientists, we must also adapt scientific principles to fit our subject-matter Above, I defended a weak logic of falsification against orthodox notions of falsification, and elsewhere I have shown that uncertainty in textual interpretation is subjective whereas uncertainty in statistical analysis is objective (Blau 2011, pp 362-6) And in case anyone accuses me of “the scientistic claim that the natural sciences represent a model for all legitimate knowledge” (Madison 1994, p 243), I would reply that much textual interpretation is primarily philosophical, for example when we ask if Mill’s conclusions are valid or if Plato depicted justice as act-centred and/or agentcentred Indeed, thinking philosophically can help solve empirical puzzles: for example, Quentin Skinner incisively combines empirical and philosophical analysis in trying to work out how Hobbes understands freedom (2008, pp 24, 45, 108, 132-8) Hobbes’s “Foole” passage, discussed in the previous section, probably cannot be understood unless one thinks it through philosophically I am not sure if there is a scientific analogy here But the goal remains the same: to try to get right answers to empirical problems – here, what Hobbes meant And the safest approach, again, is to examine evidence for and against one’s interpretation, to consider different interpretations of the evidence, and so on In short, scientific principles have a great deal to offer us We not usually think of textual interpretation as scientific, and many textual interpreters will strongly resist this idea But in both cases this is sometimes a consequence of the inaccurate images of science voiced by hermeneuticists like Gadamer Conclusion When considering whether to read between the lines, talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” is irrelevant and often misleading: it deflects attention from what really matters, which is inadequate hypothesis-testing by Strauss and his followers More generally, the language and ideas of hermeneutics are largely irrelevant and often misleading for textual interpreters I believe it is too late to revert to the original meaning of “hermeneutics” as the art or theory of textual interpretation The term is now The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 20 of 26 associated with writers who have not said enough about how to tackle empirical problems in textual interpretation, and whose misconceptions have held back clear thinking in this area If scientific principles of textual interpretation had been widespread in the 1940s and 1950s, I suspect that few people would still be discussing Leo Strauss’s esoteric interpretations Although they may help us to read between the lines of his own writings, his esoteric interpretations now serve mainly as a warning about what can go wrong when we not read texts scientifically The irrelevance of (Straussian) hermeneutics – Adrian Blau, King’s College London, June 2014 p 21 of 26 REFERENCES Babbie, Earl (2011): The Basics of Social Research, 5th Edition Belmont: Wadsworth Bacon, Francis (2000): The New Organon, ed Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bates, Clifford (1997): Book review In: Ancient Philosophy 17 No 1, pp 171-4 Berg-Schlosser, Dirk (2001): “Comparative Studies: Method and Design” In: Neil Smelser/Paul Baltes (Ed.): International Encyclopedia 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