• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Understanding this seems to be difficult for many readers today. Typically, they make either or both of two mistakes in dealing with dogmatic theology. The first mistake is to refuse to accept, even temporarily, the articles of faith that are the first principles of the author. As a result, the reader continues to struggle with these first principles, never really paying attention to the book itself. The second mistake is to assume that, because the first principles are dogmatic, the arguments based on them, the reasoning that they support, and the conclusions to which they lead are all dogmatic in the same way.

It is true enough, of course, if certain principles are accepted, and the reasoning that is based on them is cogent, that the conclusions must then be accepted too-at least to the extent that the principles are. But if the reasoning is defective, the most acceptable first principles will lead to invalid conclusions.

How to Read Philosophy 293

We are speaking here, as you can see, of the difficulties that face a non-believing reader of a theological work. His task is to accept the first principles as true while he is reading the book, and then to read it with all the care that any good expository work deserves. The faithful reader of a work that is essential to his faith has other difficulties to face. However, these problems are not confined to reading theology.

How to Read "Canon ical" Books

There is one very interesting kind of book, one kind of reading, that has not yet been discussed. We use the term

"canonical" to refer to such books; in an older tradition we might have called them "sacred" or "holy," but those words no longer apply to all such works, though they still apply to some of them.

A prime example is the Holy Bible, when it is read not as literature but instead as the revealed Word of God. For orthodox Marxists, however, the works of Marx must be read in much the same way as the Bible must be read by orthodox Jews or Christians. And Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book has an equally canonical character for a "faithful" Chinese Communist.

The notion of a canonical book can be extended beyond these obvious examples. Consider any institution-a church, a political party, a society-that among other things ( 1 ) is a teaching institution, ( 2 ) has a body of doctrine to teach, and ( 3 ) has a faithful and obedient membership. The members of any such organization read reverentially. They do not-even cannot-question the authorized or right reading of the books that to them are canonical. The faithful are debarred by their faith from finding error in the "sacred" text, to say nothing of finding nonsense there.

Orthodox Jews read the old Testament in this way; Christians, the New Testament; Muslims, the Koran; orthodox Marxists, the works of Marx and Lenin and, depending on the 294 HOW TO READ A BOOK

political climate, those of Stalin; orthodox Freudian psychoanalysts, the works of Freud; U.S. Army officers, the infantry manual. And you can think of many more examples by yourself.

In fact, ahnost all of us, even if we have not quite reached it, have approached the situation in which we must read canonically. A fledgling lawyer, intent on passing the bar exams, must read certain texts in a certain way in order to attain a pedect score. So with doctors and other professionals; and indeed so with all of us when, as students, we were required at the peril of "failure" to read a text according to our professor's interpretation of it. ( Of course, not all professors fail their students for disagreeing with them! ) The characteristics of this kind of reading are perhaps summed up in the word "orthodox," which is almost always applicable. The word comes from two Greek roots, meaning

"right opinion." These are books for which there is one and only one right reading; any other reading or interpretation is fraught with peril, from the loss of an "A" to the damnation of one's soul. This characteristic carries with it an obligation.

The faithful