Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 18:48:25 +0100
From: Paul Mathias <pmat-AT-ext.jussieu.fr>
Subject: Re: PLC: Footnotes


Reg Lilly wrote:

> (...) The French, the nation of great encyclopaedists and cataloguers,
>
> often have a rather dismal critical apparatus.

Things are changing pretty quickly. It has become really trendy to be
able to quote X, Y, and Z -- even X(a), X(b), Y(a), Y(b), etc. etc. etc.
Look for instance at those Gallimard Pleiade editions, one of the most
famous issue being _The Presocratics_. The Pleiade was created to allow
people to carry literary works along their trips, for instance. Now it
has been "historicized", it has become "serious" and wants to be a model
to other publishers, French or foreign. With some success, I think.
Footnotes bring respectability, especially in "our" scholarly world.
 

> German philosophers, usually
> much better, still are much less consistent, for instance, in citing
> works in
> their original language than are, I think, American.

Well -- both love adequacy... ;) 

> But it's hard to imagine
> that this bespeaks a more developed scientific and historical spirit
> among
> American intellectuals than their European colleagues.

"scientific *and* historical" -- that's the point I think: sciences
(especially literary ones) slowly shift towards history and less and
less towards invention. That "spirit" you're referring to "naturally"
mixes sciences and history. I'm not saying they should be left apart one
another; I'm suspecting literary science is dying from historical
terror. As if we needed to be precise, not inventive.
 

> Is writing without footnotes perhaps a possible 'rhetorical'
> strategy to present one's text as more original than the 'secondary
> literature'
> that is, well, secondary?

Would you imagine Plato's dialogs larded with footnotes, or Descartes'
Discourse, or even Nietzsche's Zarathustra, which is by the way, a
footnote in itself -- to biblical and classical literature...? Now a
"non-footnoted" text is not (necessarily) a mere rhetorical
presentation. I think it can be a work of humility: "here's a text given
to you to judge not by its accuracy, but by its pertinence". Of course,
under such circumstances, we "scholars" are bound to be out of a job
soon. For what are we supposed to be, if not "accuracy experts"?

Now as it may have been noticed, I'm sometimes disrespectful towards
scholarly habits and what I happen to see as universitarian
"enfarinement" (the word is in Montaigne). To give an example: I edited
Nietzsche's Zarathustra a few years ago, and had to write an
introduction to his work. Which I did. There is not one single footnote
in the whole introduction (you find 150/200 of them in "normal"
introductions, generally...)
I even have a (personal) theory for that. Writing is about creating
something, not justifying authoritatively the adequacy of one's sources.
Or maybe I should say: there is writing that is about creating, and
writing that is about copying, and commenting upon, more or less
shrewdly.
Don't mistake me though. I think one of my strongest fantasies is to
write a "serious" work, to be able to footnote my way through a work of
universitarian art! I know it's hopeless: I have neither the patience,
neither the knowledge. Just the envy. Not even the urge to acquire the
knowledge or to become patient. I certainly do NOT want to be patient.
I'm just envious of "serious" scholars...
A publisher I was working with some time ago pictured me accurately, I
think. He told me I was launching "commando" operations into a
speculative field, and then leaving it to an hypothetical army to come
in and occupy the field. Hum! The James Bond of the concept, Nietzsche,
Plotinus, Montaigne, the internet. Do you think I could build a career
on such versatility...?
Maybe not. But it's a sign of the way I understand my personal relation
to philosophy. Most of the people I know see it as a (good) job, and
specialize into making it a good job. It's a good job all right. But
damn! it's a way of life, and I should say, a "Weltanschauung" in
itself. And frankly, I can't see my son as a footnote to my own life!

Mused enough?pM




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