Frank Lentricchia argues that there is “no unmediated historical knowledge,” and adds: “That is reserved for God, or for theorists like Hirsch who believe that objective knowledge can be acquired in a massive act of dispossessing ourselves of the only route to knowledge that we have: the historicized self. What Hirsch’s readings of Heidegger and Gadamer may ultimately indicate is the traditional Anglo-American fear and manhandling of any sort of thought which does not work from Carestian premises.” Read more

Roger Lundin notes that modern interpretation often seeks an unmediated encounter with the text, and then adds: “Both Keith Thomas and Charles Taylor trace it, in part, to the Reformation’s anti-sacramental impulses, which fed into the desacralizing of nature that seventeenth-century science and commerce eagerly promoted. The process accelerated through the eighteenth century and issued in the romantic reaction at the end of that century.” Read more

For centuries, piano virtuosos had thrilled audiences with audacious performances of Liszt’s seventh Etude (in G minor, “Eroica”). Liszt scholars had written analyses of the music, and critics had compared various performances to one another and to what they believed was Liszt’s original intention for the music. An industrious Liszt scholar then discovered by diligent study of Liszt’s notes and manuscripts that the Etude had been mistakenly transcribed since its first publication. It was written in G major, not minor,... Read more

Archaeologists once discovered a small fragment of Greek text in the Egyptian desert. The name “Paul” appeared at the beginning of the text, and one of the words contained what looked like the first letters of the word “apostle.” Otherwise, the text did not conform to any known texts from Saint Paul. Emendations were supplied to fill the gaps. Commentaries were written. Pauline theologies were revised in the light of this newfound evidence. In South Carolina, the revised theology led... Read more

Gracia argues: “Consider a text of a message sent by a particular historical figure to another, and which is being examined by a historian. The historian wishes to determine exactly what the person who sent the message meant, and what the person who received the message understood by it, so that she can draw a connection among various events surrounding the message. It would do the historian no good in view of her purpose to understand the text of the... Read more