>
>
>Justin Schwartz wrote:
> > More is to be learned about the dynamics of the English
> > Revolution from Milton's poetry than from many volumes of social theory.
Carol said: >
>I made this point in my mind as I read Ken, but then I wondered if he
>meant by "we can write poetry" that "we can _write_ poetry." _We_ can
>indeed learn a lot about the English Revolution by _reading_ what Milton
> >wrote (though reading him with Hill sure helps in that), but I'm not>sure
>that Milton necessarily learned about the English Revolution in the writing
>of PL?
Sure, Milton learned about the revolution in _writing_ Paradise Lost. Writing is thinking, yes? I rarely know what I think unless I write it down. ANd sure, we understand Milton and the English revolution better if we read him together with Hill and other commentators, but that isn't to say that the poetic component is idle, noncognitive, lacking in information. It's just to say that the poetry is understood better in context, just like everything else. If you read Hill without reading Milton (and how would you do that, skip all the quotes?) you'd miss the point.
Maybe Kennth has in mind something like the following. There is only one truth, so that versions that differ from it are just false. But Milton's version of the English Revolution as represented by Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes is no less valid than, say Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Hobbes' Leviathan (considered as a literary representation rather than a philosophical treatise; I mean the conception of th war of all against all), So none of them can be _the truth_, insofar as they can be valid and inconsistent. That's not a silly view, but I think it is wrong. I think, for one, that Milton's version is more valid and accurate than Hobbes'; for another, even to the extent that it is not, the competing visions offer necessary information for understanding the one (factual, propositional) truth, for a third, that there are other kinds of truth than the factual propositional, Tarskian truth, which are maybe more important for understanding and justification, and Milton is a powerful exemplar of this proposition.
--jks
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