Follow the masters of interpretation. I am partial to Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein, especially their readings of the ancients, but the skills are transferable to reading others as well. — Fooloso4

Where can I follow any 'how to' descriptions or prescriptions on close reading ?
Or did they not spell it out ?

The St. John's Great Books program is (I'm pretty sure) in part based on Adler's own ideas about great book, what and which they are, and how to read them — tim wood

Interesting. What makes you think this ?

It is difficult to hear what is being said if the words already have a place in the commonly received collection of what has already been said. From that point of view, there is no reason to say anything more than has already been said. Reading should catch you alone and unaware of the dangers that lie ahead. — Valentinus

I hear this but I I don't understand. There is plenty of reason for you to say more...
Reading a book does not necessarily mean there are dangers ahead. Is this a necessary part of reading ?
This all sounds too prescriptive...a bit like the Do's and Don'ts of Tim's outline.

Adler's depiction of criticism does not include a place for that form of life. — Valentinus

Some elaboration would be appreciated.

This is new to me. I would like to hear more about this. What are the series of movements ? — Amity

Synthesis of ideas is never static; it's always in movement. This is how one might avoid a tendency to "materialize" one's beliefs and render them totalitarian, absolutely correct. I learned this from reading Theodor Adorno. Hillel also says, "Learning not increased is learning decreased." I think that about says it all.

Adorno used the Greek phil. concept of hypostasis as a metaphor to deconstruct, so to speak, the notion that ideas have an inviolable solidity, meaning or truth to them. For one thing, he was a dialectical materialist, so this is a world view about as far away from Platonic concepts as you can get, since (historical) contexts and meanings are in continual transition and transformation.

In one essay, he used the concept of hypostasis to create a metaphor based on the medical meaning of an accumulation of sediment which has separated from the liquid it was suspended in. He was referring to the action of ideology as mystification and distortion of ideas about a social reality.

This brief summary may not help at all to explain, but it's the best I can do. Adorno taught me never to "cling" to my ideas: it's not healthy.

Uncanni, thank you for the wonderful Hillel quote which has been my own viewpoint for a long time now. (Everyone else - I'll bring details to screen - am visiting screens at moment.)

understanding before interpretation - is sometimes not-so-easy — tim wood

I do not think that we first understand and then interpret. Interpretation is the way in which we come to understand.

So perhaps the question to you might be how you handle a book you want to understand but that at first seems opaque? — tim wood

It depends on the book and author. My own training was based on reading primary texts and asking questions about them - "What does Plato mean when he says this?" "Why would he say this?" "Is it true?" We were not given any introduction and knew nothing of secondary literature. It was up to us to try and make sense of it. It was up to us to form our own opinions about the issues raised. While there are certainly limits to this approach, the benefit was to learn to engage with the text rather than have it explained.

In my opinion a reliance on secondary literature can prevent us from learning to carefully attend to the text. On the other hand, without some guidance we may not make much progress with some texts. Here commentaries can be our teachers. Since they continually point back to the text they can enhance our engagement with the text.

Other secondary literature is of value though in orienting us with regard to such things as how terms are being used and who and what problems the author may be responding to. I see the works of philosophers as a dialogue across the ages. If we drop in in the middle of a conversation it can be difficult to know what is going on.

But the secondary literature can give us very different answers and so if we want to understand a primary work we cannot be too reliant on secondary literature. The truth is though, that even some professional philosophers do not read primary works. Heidegger had much to do with the current revival of interest in the ancients. Both Strauss and Klein, who I mentioned above, were at one time students of his. Although they became deeply suspicious of him, what they learned from him was to return to the source.

The St. John's Great Books program is (I'm pretty sure) in part based on Adler's own ideas about great book ... — tim wood

That is not the case. See the Wiki articles on Great Books and Saint John's.

Where can I follow any 'how to' descriptions or prescriptions on close reading ?
Or did they not spell it out ? — Amity

It is mostly by way of example. One guiding principle is to assume the superiority of the author to the reader, that whatever problems or contradictions the reader finds are things the author is aware of. Apparent contractions are to be treated as signs of something deeper, to look closer to, to see if and how they are reconciled by the author. But it may be that some things cannot be reconciled, that philosophy is ultimately aporetic.

This all sounds too prescriptive...a bit like the Do's and Don'ts of Tim's outline. — Amity

I meant to echo what Fooloso4 said about not letting secondary writing cancel the experience of letting primary writing speak for itself. Perhaps my expression of it is prescriptive. I see it more as a challenge to myself than as a rule or method that leads to particular results.

What I dislike in Adler's description of criticism is the assumption that all ideas can be stated as arguments that we can stand outside of and view together. Taken to an extreme, the encyclopedia comes to replace the knowledge it would organize.

If this is confusing - it confuses me - think about a time you have attempted to share, say, some Bach or Beethoven with an adolescent (younger children, especially young children, can be transfixed - stopped in their tracks - by those composers), only to have that adolescent not comprehend even a little bit what he's hearing, certainly incapable of any appreciation. — tim wood

I was thinking about this again. Isn't the attitude expressed in Adler's procedures exactly what drives some young people away from reading? To me, with young people it would make more sense to focus on the experience - what they find enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, or moving.

I have three children. My daughter, the eldest, was a reader from the beginning, as am I. My two sons were not. I always felt bad about that, that they wouldn't experience the pleasure and value of reading. Also, it made it harder to buy birthday and Christmas presents for them. Then, when they were in their late teens or early twenties, they started reading on their own, for their own reasons. I love it that I can have discussions with them, especially my youngest. They have sophisticated understanding of literature. They also write well, which was a surprise, given their academic history.

That is not the case. See the Wiki articles on Great Books and Saint John's. — Fooloso4

Hi Amity. As to why I thought it, it's just an impression I got from exposure to Adler's writing and involvement with Great Books' programs to being interested in the books themselves; that is, I think I read somewhere that he was involved. As to accuracy, I had to check, and found this almost immediately

From wiki: "In 1920, Professor Erskine taught the first course based on the "Great Books" program, titled "General Honors", at Columbia University. He helped mold its core curriculum. It initially failed, however, shortly after its introduction due to fallings-out between the senior faculty over the best ways to conduct classes and due to concerns about the rigor of the courses. Thus junior faculty including Mark Van Doren and Mortimer Adler after 1923, taught a part of the course. The course was discontinued in 1928, though later reconstituted. Adler left for the University of Chicago in 1929, where he continued his work on the theme, and along with the University president, Robert M. Hutchins, held an annual seminar of great books. In 1937, when Mark Van Doren redesigned the course, it was already being taught at St. John's College, Annapolis, besides University of Chicago. This course later became Humanities A for freshmen, and subsequently evolved into Literature Humanities.[10] Survivors, however, include Columbia's Core Curriculum, the Common Core at Chicago, and the Core Curriculum at Boston University, each heavily focused on the "great books" of the Western canon."

My distant acquaintance with the St. John's program (I read their catalog and course descriptions a long time ago) caused me to understand that the course was rigorous - the intent being that the students actually read the books. In as much as the list included Kant's three Critiques and Hegel, you can see it would be no joke to complete it. Also, that the experience, pressed onto the young, could only be more-or-less wasted on many of them.

My own training was based on reading primary texts and asking questions about them - "What does Plato mean when he says this?" "Why would he say this?" "Is it true?" We were not given any introduction and knew nothing of secondary literature. It was up to us to try and make sense of it. It was up to us to form our own opinions about the issues raised. While there are certainly limits to this approach, the benefit was to learn to engage with the text rather than have it explained. — Fooloso4

I trust you're far enough along to both have realized and to some extent experienced just how problematic - to be kind - the "sink or swim you're on your own" approach can be. It may get your brain cranking, and good for that! But rarely will that do for understanding. Unless Plato means what the reader says it means, when it pleases reader to say - a Midrash approach. But not an approach that settles more than it misinforms and muddles.

I agree that secondary literature can be its own set of problems, but it's always a work-in-progress. In any case it can be helpful and even enlightening. As to originals, I agree here as well. The original material should be at least attempted. My own experience was that struggle made me a lot stronger. It also confirmed for me that the original authors made sense. Excepting Hegel, mystification was neither their goal nor purpose (with some qualification concerning censors and political considerations - and translators and their translations!).

I trust you're far enough along to both have realized and to some extent experienced just how problematic - to be kind - the "sink or swim you're on your own" approach can be. — tim wood

Yes. There may be rare cases of autodidacts who can do it alone, but far more common are those who fancy themselves autodidacts who cannot. We are in need of and greatly benefit from having good teachers. Some of those teachers may be people we have had the pleasure of studying with, but given the constraints of time and geography it is "books on books" that serve as our teachers. They do not simply provide information and explanation, they guide us in our own reading of the philosopher in question.

Many years ago when I was in graduate school I met privately one on one with Gadamer who taught periodically at Boston College. I was considering doing work on the interpretation of texts, the meaning and significance of interpretation and its relation to originality. Being the kind and gentle man he was he simply suggested I first spend the next twenty-five years doing interpretation. I think it was good advice.

Many years ago when I was in graduate school I met privately one on one with Gadamer who taught periodically at Boston College. I was considering doing work on the interpretation of texts, the meaning and significance of interpretation and its relation to originality. Being the kind and gentle man he was he simply suggested I first spend the next twenty-five years doing interpretation. I think it was good advice. — Fooloso4

A great and instructive story! I Shall be glad when - if - I ever make good headway into Truth and Method.

And I shall remind myself to think twice and twice again if I imagine to suppose you're mistaken about anything on these matters again!

Here's a book for your glance by a student of Gadamer's also a long-time professor of philosophy at UMass Lowell, P. C. Smith, The Hermeneutics of Original Argument. The book findable online and some libraries. But a not-so-easy read. With your background, I imagine the title alone will inform you as to the contents more than it would most people.

And I shall remind myself to think twice and twice again if I imagine to suppose you're mistaken about anything on these matters again! — tim wood

Well the third time then you might be right.

P. C. Smith — tim wood

I thought the name sounded familiar. He translated Gadamer's Hegel's Dialectic, Dialogue and Dialectic, and The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, but since I usually skip translator's introductions unless I know the translator I don't know if I ever read him. I will have to take another look.

The Hermeneutics of Original Argument — tim wood

What is original argument? I just looked it up. It refers to rhetoric, a subject that is misunderstood and receives too little attention these days. Sounds interesting. I started reading Aristotle's Rhetoric again a few months ago but got distracted by other things and other books. Unlike some here who, based on the "Currently Reading" topic can quickly read through books, I am a slow reader. I will die before I read everything on my bookshelf, but continue to buy more.

The St. John's Great Books program is (I'm pretty sure) in part based on Adler's own ideas about great book ...
— tim wood
That is not the case. See the Wiki articles on Great Books and Saint John's. — Fooloso4

About St.John's, Great books and how they are read:
1986 article.

At St.John's... Its ''great books'' list, the work of a seven-person committee elected by the faculty, has changed some in half a century: Montesquieu, Dickens and 50 or so other authors are no longer read, while Melville, Schrodinger and Faulkner, among others, are now included. But the program itself remains much as it was 50 years ago, an island of idealism in the currently pragmatic educational sea. In sum, according to George Doskow, who has been on the faculty since 1965, ''We read the best books we can find and talk about them as well as we can.''  — Robert Kanigel

From wiki: 'The emphasis is on open discussion with limited guidance by a professor, facilitator, or tutor. Students are also expected to write papers.'

In seminar, the first rule freshmen encounter is: No unsupported opinions. ''You have to come to your point reasonably, or find something in the text that deals with it,''...
...In time, the early freshness fades. The reading is interminable, sometimes approaching a thousand pages a week, as John Schiavo's wife, Monika, also a graduate, recollects.

Students are asked an initial question e.g. about Roussea and the general will. There is silence until a few students put forward suggestions. Not all can do this. And some kind of a lengthy conversational groping takes place. With no notes taken, apparently.
----------
https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list

St. John’s College was founded in 1696 and is best known for the Great Books curriculum that was adopted in 1937. While the list of books has evolved over the last century, the tradition of all students reading foundational texts of Western civilization remains.

Works listed are studied at one or both campuses, although not always in their entirety.
VIEW THE ENTIRE ST. JOHN’S GREAT BOOKS READING LIST AS A PDF

If limited to the 'great books' of the Western canon, it provides a narrow way of looking at the world.
'It is not for everyone'. I would agree.

My own training was based on reading primary texts and asking questions about them - "What does Plato mean when he says this?" "Why would he say this?" "Is it true?" We were not given any introduction and knew nothing of secondary literature. It was up to us to try and make sense of it. It was up to us to form our own opinions about the issues raised. While there are certainly limits to this approach, the benefit was to learn to engage with the text rather than have it explained. — Fooloso4

I trust you're far enough along to both have realized and to some extent experienced just how problematic - to be kind - the "sink or swim you're on your own" approach can be. — tim wood

Yes.There may be rare cases of autodidacts who can do it alone, but far more common are those who fancy themselves autodidacts who cannot. — Fooloso4

How did you cope and engage with the St.John's approach ? As a student or teacher?
Clearly, you derived benefit from it. What about others. Was it really a case of 'sink or swim' ?
At that age, I would probably sit in silence and listen.
Floating in a sea or sigh of incomprehension...

In as much as the list included Kant's three Critiques and Hegel, you can see it would be no joke to complete it. Also, that the experience, pressed onto the young, could only be more-or-less wasted on many of them. — tim wood

Indeed. However, it is not really pressed on them.They know what they sign up for. Some are very excited about this way of learning; deliberately seeking it out.
It doesn't sound like my cuppa tea. However, as part of life experience, it would not be wasted.

Not a real paradox. How did you learn anything? And there's an ambiguity in (y)our use of "read." — tim wood

What if all paradoxes aren't real?

Anyway a book on how to read can teach us how to read - there must be an optimum method right?

Synthesis of ideas is never static; it's always in movement. This is how one might avoid a tendency to "materialize" one's beliefs and render them totalitarian, absolutely correct. I learned this from reading Theodor Adorno. Hillel also says, "Learning not increased is learning decreased." I think that about says it all. — uncanni

Well, thanks to you and others here, I am learning something new every day :smile:
I have always had a sense that a flexible mind is a healthy mind. However, I am not sure how well I synthesize ideas...especially when reading. There is still a tendency to pick out only those passages that fit own agenda. Important parts might be disregarded...

Adorno..was a dialectical materialist, so this is a world view about as far away from Platonic concepts as you can get, since (historical) contexts and meanings are in continual transition and transformation. — uncanni

I am interested in the dialectical, having just attempted to read Hegel...with limited understanding.
I note the difference between dialectical materialism and idealism...but have little knowledge.

This brief summary may not help at all to explain, but it's the best I can do. Adorno taught me never to "cling" to my ideas: it's not healthy. — uncanni

Yet again, you have been most helpful - it's a pleasure to read you.

there must be an optimum method right? — TheMadFool

How do you read ? Or look, listen and learn ?
Do you have only one way ?

Pick a book, any book !
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/120742.Mortimer_J_Adler_s_reading_list
What...only 96 ?
There must be more.

Here, 137:
https://thinkingasleverage.wordpress.com/book-lists/mortimer-adlers-reading-list/
From 1972 edition.

Rather than a prescriptive list, as in St.John's or any university, the choice is yours.
And that is where an initial survey comes in useful. From the online summary:

The final step in skim reading is to:
Decide whether to read the book or not.

If you only live for 700,000 hours (~80 years), do you really want to invest ~6 of them in this book? Is reading this book going to rock your world? Is it one of the ~1,000 good or ~100 truly great books that Adler and Doren suggest might exist?
If not, you may want to read something else.

Hopefully, you can see how a quick upfront skim and one simple question can save hundreds of hours of frustration and effort.

I would add another decision. Whether or not to continue.
Life's too short to spend months or years on Hegel :wink:
Unless you are a serious academic...or a glutton for punishment...
Are you a failure if you give up on a book before the end ? Has it been a waste of time ?
Better to have read half a book than none at all...?

How did you cope and engage with the St.John's approach ? As a student or teacher? — Amity

The instructor for my intro to philosophy class was a graduate of St. John's, but neither the philosophy major nor the undergraduate degree was based on this approach, except to the extent that most of the texts in the philosophy program were primary texts and, at least in classes with this professor, we did a close reading and discussion of the text rather than passively listen to him lecture. When I taught I used primary texts but, as has become much more common, most of the students either did not read the material or did not work to understand it.

Was it really a case of 'sink or swim' ? — Amity

No. In both cases, as a teacher and as a student, only a few dedicated students learned to swim but most did not sink, at least if sinking meant failing the class.

At that age, I would probably sit in silence and listen. — Amity

Grades were based in large part on term papers.

Floating in a sea or sigh of incomprehension... — Amity

When you asked sink or swim my immediate thought was float.

What I dislike in Adler's description of criticism is the assumption that all ideas can be stated as arguments that we can stand outside of and view together. Taken to an extreme, the encyclopedia comes to replace the knowledge it would organize. — Valentinus

Have you read the book ? Can you quote or reference the relevant parts ?
I don't see this assumption in the brief outline provided by Tim:

B. Special criteria for points of criticism
12. Show wherein the author is uninformed
13. " " " " " misinformed
14. " " " " " illogical
15. " " " author's analysis is incomplete.
Of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in view of the last point.

And I have no idea what you mean by:'Taken to an extreme, the encyclopedia comes to replace the knowledge it would organize.' ?

Appreciate your further explanation.

Floating in a sea or sigh of incomprehension...
— Amity

When you asked sink or swim my immediate thought was float. — Fooloso4

Well, some great minds think alike :wink:
I credit Tim's original either/or for providing the inspiration...

For one thing, he was a dialectical materialist, so this is a world view about as far away from Platonic concepts as you can get, since (historical) contexts and meanings are in continual transition and transformation. — uncanni

I think that this is based on a common but fundamentally misguided reading of Plato. Very briefly: the dialogues typically end in aporia, but the danger is what he calls misologic or nihilism. Plato presents a salutary public teaching - Forms, recollection, transcendence, but dialectic always falls short of knowledge of Forms. The public teaching is philosophical poetry. Plato, like Socrates, was a zetetic skeptic. The philosopher is a lover of wisdom is always in pursuit of it and never in possession of it. The image of knowledge is static and timeless but the dialogues are in motion and in continual transition and transformation. They are not based on knowledge the philosopher does not posses but on an examination of opinion.

The methods for criticism are framed within the larger task of analysis:

I. The first stage of analytical reading: rules for finding out what a book is about
1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter
2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity
3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline those parts as you have outlined the whole
4. Define the problem(s) the author has tried to solve. — M Adler

If the book being read adopts these criteria for it own purposes, then perhaps the expository task of explaining meaning this way is not a simplification or translation of ideas into the most easily digestible form possible.

But if the book makes use of many explanations and arguments to serve a number of purposes that may not all agree with each other or to show a limit of expression, then the encyclopedic type of exposition excludes itself from participating in the conversation past a certain point.

My objection is also fueled by M Adler's arguments in his other works regarding the promotion of "common sense" articulations of philosophical thought over the uses of the esoteric. While the pragmatism of this approach is commendable as a means to improve our public discourse, it avoids the difficulties of hearing many works through their own voices.

However, I am not sure how well I synthesize ideas...especially when reading. There is still a tendency to pick out only those passages that fit own agenda. Important parts might be disregarded... — Amity

I believe that this is inevitable unless one has a photographic mind (which I certainly don't). I like the way you put it, and you make me realize that there always is an agenda that shapes my focus.

I never was that into Plato (beyond the required freshman course on Western Civ that I took in the 70s), so it's all Greek to me...

I think that this is based on a common but fundamentally misguided reading of — Fooloso4

I think this line gets close to the heart of the matter. Not that you or I misread this or that book, but that the hazard of misreading is always there. And the matter is multi-layered. In one sense one might think in terms of a continuum at one end of which is the idea that the meaning (of the text) is a something in particular, and that I'm obliged to "get" it, and if I don't then I've failed and will repent my failure in sackcloth and ashes - certainly the case with a manual on auto repair! At the other end the notion that what it means is what I say it means to me in this my moment of reading, period, which it is my understanding (I may be mistaken) is the way and the only correct way to read the Koran.

And then there is Francis Bacon's dictum that "“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” And how do you now which is which, and what to do if you have a sweet tooth?

And again, how much do I need to know or want to know on a topic? Some want to know which slope the grapes that make their wine were grown on, or the annual rainfall in the year they were harvested. Others content just to enjoy their glass or bottle, still others not to drink at all.

And then there's misreading itself, which can occur for any of many reasons, and the poster-child book for misreadings is of course the Christian Bible.

Adler's plan of reading, imo, comes into play after many of these concerns have been for the moment settled. I want to "chew and digest" this book here, and read it "with diligence and attention." That settles the motivation. The next question is how to do it. Listed here in this thread are techniques along with objections, corrections, additions, and modifications - a market of possibilities. I wonder though if they're all in some sense on the same ground, on equal footing, or if some thing or single class of things underlies reading in all its manifestations and purposes.

For this latter I submit the metaphorical ideas of relationship/friendship/marriage. Underlying these is familiarity, empathy and sympathy, desire, commitment, work, a willingness to be open to change, all with the possibility and even hope that these may be of enduring long-term value; in part for knowledge and understanding and even the erotic pleasures of learning. Underlying is love; passion a source of ignition, but more as comprehension of what endures after the flames subside. Under love the primordial decision to live - to act, to know, to derive pleasure and purpose. Ultimately to know that these all require work, with the epiphany that the work they require is whatever it takes and whatever works.

I wonder though if they're all in some sense on the same ground, on equal footing, or if some thing or single class of things underlies reading in all its manifestations and purposes. — tim wood

Underlying is love; — tim wood

Yes. A love of stories - our own and others. To listen. To compare and contrast life experience. To observe and note. To turn the pages and chapters until the end. Following, being followed or simply appreciating the view on our own creative path. Without too much waffle along the way...

the hazard of misreading is always there — tim wood

Indeed. Also potential misleading and misrepresentation.
But that's another story...