Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- 8 Understanding misunderstandings The intergenerational transmission of ideas and the time–factor
- 9 Contracts and traps Bacon's contract of error and the notion of pure misunderstanding
- 10 On the misuse of language Ordinary language, formalism and the false–security pitfall
- 11 Errors and illusions Francis Bacon on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 12 The protection of belief Pure misunderstanding as the result of theoretical akrasia
- 13 On misunderstanding Malthus The reception of the Essay on Population: critics and supporters
- 14 Ideas into Politics, I The transmission of abstract thought: three levels of exchange
- 15 Ideas into politics, II Sweeping claims, the philosopher–king and pure misunderstandings
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Ideas into Politics, I The transmission of abstract thought: three levels of exchange
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- 8 Understanding misunderstandings The intergenerational transmission of ideas and the time–factor
- 9 Contracts and traps Bacon's contract of error and the notion of pure misunderstanding
- 10 On the misuse of language Ordinary language, formalism and the false–security pitfall
- 11 Errors and illusions Francis Bacon on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 12 The protection of belief Pure misunderstanding as the result of theoretical akrasia
- 13 On misunderstanding Malthus The reception of the Essay on Population: critics and supporters
- 14 Ideas into Politics, I The transmission of abstract thought: three levels of exchange
- 15 Ideas into politics, II Sweeping claims, the philosopher–king and pure misunderstandings
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The exchange of ideas is often a delicate business. Readers, it is true, are sometimes capable of enhancing the understanding of a given text. Lovejoy, to give a more extreme type of claim as example, has gone as far as to suggest that ‘one does not, in most cases, adequately understand one author – does not see what was going on in him as he wrote – unless one understands him better than he understood himself’. Authors, of course, facing claims of this nature about their work, may still think otherwise, though on occasion agreeing that a receiver has understood him (i.e. his work) better than himself.
The predominant tendency, however, seems to point in the opposite direction. The transmission of ideas, as already argued (chapter 9), normally entails a certain loss of information–content and meaning, and this ‘loss or mistaking’ in the process of exchange is rarely outweighed by the reader's positive contribution to a better understanding of the message at issue. On the other hand, there is the danger of over–interpreting: ‘He who explains a passage in an author “more deeply” than the passage was meant has not explained the author but obscured him’.
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- Information
- Beliefs in ActionEconomic Philosophy and Social Change, pp. 176 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991