Scholarly Standards

Over this last year, I remember reading a collections of essays on Phenomenology and Islamic Philosophy. I leafed through one, and noted how it was only ten pages long and had only one or two footnotes. I thought, What passes for competent scholarship with these countries? At which point, I realized how modern American/European standards of scholarship have ingrained themselves in my brain with a fine-pointed laser.

From this, I started thinking about why we do what we do as scholars, and about the merits of the different positions. Reading this short, almost conversational article introduced me to an area of thought which I had not thought about before - Islamic Confucianism (which I still have not read up on, despite having been a major summer project). I didn't have to wade through swampy prose. My eyes were liberated from their volley between citations and body. I could enjoy reading it, in a similar way to how I could enjoy a relaxed intellectual conversation, and genuinely say that I had learned something new. And it most likely would never have been published in peer-reviewed, Euro-American journal.

There have been times where I have thought, wouldn't it be grand to be an Aristotle scholar? a Plato Scholar? Kant? maybe even Nietzsche, when I want to liven things up? But there is a drawback to studying a thinker: one must learn the secondary literature. And famous thinkers have collected a lot. It has been the rare secondary article, though, from which I have earned my knowledge in congruence with the weight of perspiration applied. I would rather be the bumbling historian who dabbles in Plato. Then I can have the sympathy of real scholars, who may tolerate my hobby and praise my toddling steps in the right direction, while I can still enjoy the thinker himself.

At the same time, I've seen other articles which have confirmed me in my standards of detail-oriented, thoroughly researched scholarship. Some articles in the book were simply awful. Assertions were so baldly stated and poorly formed that I found little to cart off of philosophical interest.

In another book, I read a comparison between Aristotle and Zhuang Zi; it promised to be an exciting paper topic for someone interested in comparative philosophy. The conclusion of the essay was, I believe, that Zhuang Zi is a much better philosopher because he realizes that an ox can be considered both as living being and as meat for a butcher, while Aristotle is locked into only one way of understanding. No discussion of the nature of form; no mention of teleology; no recognition of the difference between artifacts and natural objects (the ox was treated in exactly the same way as an axe). The author also said that an ox corpse is potentially an ox for Aristotle. I think that a person should have to at least read some of the thinker before commenting.

Sometimes, details matter. Sometimes, conversation matters.