----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com>
"There is no more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things; and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity . . .
Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there's no one book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busies itself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation. The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and perplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed among ourselves: "this book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it?""
Montaigne, "On Experience" -------------------------------------
I do understand all that, truly I do.
I was referring more to the difference between reading the Federalist Papers and reading a standard textbook about the constitutional convention....if your aim is to understand the forces at play in creating the constitution rather than the forces at play in creating textbooks to kill the desire to learn.
I was not getting metaphysical about ur-texts or the imputed unfiltered quality of direct experience.
Joanna