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texts is available; but it is at least a reason for self-doubt that is, for methodological reflection. |
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In general, at least three principles and two canons of evidence tend to guide interpretation and at least in appearance (if not in reality) limit its risks. Most philologists seem to follow these rules more or less consistently (when they do not they are likely to be censured by the professional community); and it would be easy to show that all five are at work in Socrates' exegesis of Simonides. The three principles are all forms of the fundamental economic imperative, that a minimum of material resources and energy be used up in exchange for a maximum of gain. The first and most important one is economy of consumption: of two interpretations, the one that makes thriftier use of the text at hand, subsuming more of it as argumentative evidence and wasting less of it as irrelevant or counterproductive, is preferable. An interpretation which can account for only a small portion of the text is prima facie suspect (not, be it noted, necessarily false); an interpretation which can put the whole text into its service is prima facie attractive. The second principle is economy of expense: of two interpretations, the one that adds fewer ad hoc hypotheses to the necessary minimum is preferable. An interpretation which cannot dispense with particular hypotheses for which there is no evidence other than the plausibility of the general interpretation they are designed to reinforce is likewise suspect. The third principle is economy of scope: of two interpretations, the one that can be applied to a wider range of texts or problems beyond the one in question without yielding trivial results is preferable. A coherent interpretation of a text which results in that text's becoming anomalous within its author's œuvre, or its author anomalous within his culture, is suspect. The canons of evidence define the material upon which these principles tend to be exercised. The first is parallelism: a hypothesis' plausibility is thought to be strengthened by parallels and weakened by their lack. This is particularly important in the case of dead cultures: for here the absence of native speakers means we can only be certain that something is possible if it is attested as having been actual. But by the same token, the fact that a dead culture is transmitted only fragmentarily means we can be quite certain that many parallels which once existed for a usage have since been lost and are probably unrecoverable for us. Hence arises a paradox peculiar to those philological disciplines which are concerned with non-modern languages: on the one hand the sensible precept ''Einmal ist keinmal," on the other hand the indisputable phenomenon of the hapax legomenon. The second canon, closely allied to the first, is centripetality: the closer to the text the parallel or other supportive evidence is, the greater its explanatory power is thought to be, closeness being determined with regard to an informally but widely acknowledged hierarchy of degrees of proximity. A parallel from the author's other works in the same genre will usually have more weight than a parallel from other |
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