CHAPTER TWELVE The Etiquette of Talking Back and where are we now?
I said at the end of the last chapter that we have come a long way. We have learned what is required of us in the first reading of a book. That is the reading in which we analyze the book's structure. We have also learned four rules for doing a second reading of the same book—an interpretative reading. The four rules are: (i) come to terms with an author by interpreting his basic words; (2) grasp the author's leading propositions through finding his important sentences; (3) know the author's arguments by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences; (4) determine which of his problems the author solved and which he did not, and, of the latter, decide which the author knew he failed to solve.
You are now ready for the third way of reading the same book. Here you will reap the reward of all your previous efforts.
Reading a book is a kind of conversation. You may think it is not conversation at all, because the author does all the talking and you have nothing to say. If you think that, you do not realize your opportunities and obligations as a reader.
As a matter of fact, the reader has the last word. The author has had his say, and then it is the reader's turn. The conversation between a book and its reader would appear to be an orderly one, each party talking in turn, no interruptions, and so forth. If, however, the reader is undisciplined and impolite, it may be anything but orderly. The poor author cannot defend himself. He cannot say, "Here, wait till I've finished, before you start disagreeing." He cannot protest that the reader has missed his point.
Ordinary conversations between persons who confront each other are good only when they are carried on decently. I am not thinking merely of the decencies according to conventions of social politeness. There is, in addition, an intellectual etiquette one should observe. Without it, conversation is bickering rather than profitable communication. I am assuming here, of course, that the conversation is about a serious matter on which men can agree or disagree. Then it becomes important that they conduct themselves well. Otherwise, there is no profit in the enterprise. The profit in good conversation is something learned.
What is true of ordinary conversation is even more true of the rather special situation in which a book has talked to a reader and the reader answers back. That the author is well disciplined, we shall take for granted temporarily. That he has conducted his part of the conversation well can be assumed in the case of great books. What can the reader do to reciprocate? What must he do to hold up his end well?
The reader has an obligation as well as an opportunity to talk back. The opportunity is clear. Nothing can stop a reader from pronouncing judgment. The roots of the obligation, however, lie a little deeper in the nature of the relation between books and readers.
If a book is of the sort which conveys knowledge, the author's aim was to instruct. He has tried to teach. He has tried to convince or persuade his reader about something. His effort is crowned with success only if the reader finally says, "I am taught. You have convinced me that such and such is true, or persuaded me that it is probable." But even if the reader is not convinced or persuaded, the author's intention and effort should be respected. The reader owes him a considered judgment. If he cannot say, "I agree," he should at least have grounds for disagreeing or even tor suspending judgment on the question.
I am saying no more than that a good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The passive reader sins against this requirement, probably even more than against the rules of analysis and interpre. tation. He not only makes no effort to understand; he dismisses a book simply by putting it down or forgetting it. Worse than faint praise, he damns it by no critical consideration whatsoever.
What I mean by talking back, you now can see, is not something apart from reading. It is the third way in which a book must be read. There are rules here as in the case of the other two readings. Some of these are general maxims of intellectual etiquette. We shall deal with them in this chapter. Others are more specific criteria for defining the points of criticism. They will be discussed in the next chapter.
There is a tendency to think that a good book is above the criticism of the average reader. The reader and the author are not peers. The author is subject to trill only by a jury of his peers. Remember Bacon's recomn-endation to the reader: "Read not to contradict and confute; not to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider." Sir Walter Scott cast' even more direful aspersions on those "who read to doubt or read to scorn."
There is a certain truth here, as we shall see, but I do not like the aura of impeccability with which books are thus surrounded, and the false piety it breeds. Readers may be like children, in the sense that great authors can teach them, but that does not mean they must not be heard from. I am not sure Cervantes was right in saying, "There i? no book so bad but something good may be found in it." I do think, however, that there is no book so good that fault cannot be found with it.
It is true that a book which can enlightel its readers, and is in this sense their better, should not be criticized by them until they understand it. When they do, tley have elevated themselves almost to peerage with the autror. Now they are fit to exercise the rights and privileges of their new position. Unless they exercise their critical faculties now, they are doing the author an injustice. He has dote what he could to make them his equal. He deserves tiat they act like his peers, that they engage in conversation with him, that they talk back.
As I pointed out before, docility is generally confused with subservience. (We tend to forget that ihe word "docile" is derived from the Latin root which means to teach or be taught.) A person is wrongly thought to ?e docile if he is passive and pliable. On the contrary, docility is the extremely active virtue of being teachable. No one is really teachable who does not freely exercise his power of independent judgment. The most docile reader is, therefore, the most critical. He is the reader who finally responds to a book by the greatest effort to make up his own mind on the matters the author has discussed.
I say "finally" because docility requires that a teacher be fully heard and, more than that, understood, before he is judged. I should add also that sheer amount of effort is not an adequate criterion of docility. The reader must know how to judge a book, just as he must know how to arrive at an understanding of its contents. This third group of rules for reading is a guide to the last stage in the disciplined exercise of docility.
We have everywhere found a certain reciprocity between the art of teaching and the art of being taught, between the skill of the author which makes him a considerate writer and the skill of the reader which makes him handle a book considerately. We have seen how the same principles of grammar and logic underlie rules of good writing as well as rules of good reading. The rules we have so far discussed concern the achievement of intelligibility on the part of the writer and the achievement of understanding on the part of the reader. This last set of rules goes beyond understanding to critical judgment. Here is where rhetoric comes in.
There are, of course, many uses of rhetoric. We usually think of it in connection with the orator or propagandist. But in its most general significance, rhetoric is involved in every situation in which communication takes place among men. If we are the talkers, we wish not only to be understood but to be agreed with in some sense. If our purpose in trying to communicate is serious, we wish to convince or persuade— nwe precisely, to convince about theoretical matters and to persuade about matters that ultimately affect action or feeling.
To be equally serious in receiving such communication, one must be not only a responsive but a responsible listener. You are responsive to the extent that you follow what has been said and note the intention which prompts it. But you also have the responsibility of taking a position. When you take it, it is yours, not the author's. To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a freeman.
On the part of the speaker or writer, rhetorical skill is knowing how to Convince or persuade. Since this is the ultimate end in view, all the other aspects of communication must serve it. Grammatical and logical skill in writing clearly and intelligibly has virtue in itself, but it is also a means to an end. Reciprocally, on the part of the reader or listener, rhetorical skill is knowing how to react to anyone who tries to convince or persuade us. Here, too, grammatical and logical skill, which enables us to understand what is being said, prepares the way for a critical reaction.
Thus you see how the three arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric co-operate in regulating the elaborate processes of writing and reading. Skill in the first two readings comes from a mastery of grammar and logic. Skill in the third depends on the remaining art. The rules of this third reading rest on the principles of rhetoric, conceived in the broadest sense. We shall consider them as a code of etiquette to make the reader not only polite but effective in talking back.
You probably also see what the first rule is going to be. It has been intimated several times already. It is simply that you must not begin to talk back until you have listened carefully and are sure you understand. Not until you are honestly satisfied that you have accomplished the first two readings should you feel free to express yourself. When you have, you not only can justifiably turn critic, but you should.
This means that the third reading must always follow the other two in time. You have already seen how the first two readings interpenetrate each other. They are separate in time only for the beginner, and even he may have to combine them somewhat. Certainly, the expert reader can discover the contents of a book by analyzing the whole into its parts and, at the same time, constructing the whole out of its elements of thought and knowledge, its terms, propositions, and arguments. But the expert no less than the beginner must wait until he understands before he is justified in criticizing.
Let me restate this first rule of critical reading in the following form. You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, "I understand," before you can say any one of the following things: "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend Judgment." These three remarks exhaust all the critical positions you can take. I hope you have not made the error of supposing that to criticize is always to disagree. That is ap unfortunate, popular misconception. To agree is just as much an exercise of critical judgment on your part as to disagree. You can be just as wrong in agreeing as in disagreeing. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.
Though it may not be so obvious at first, suspending judgment is also an act of criticism. It is taking the position that something has not been shown. You are saying that you are not convinced or persuaded one way or the other.
This rule seems to be such obvious common sense that you may wonder why I have bothered to state it so explicitly. I have two reasons. In the first place, many people make the error I mentioned above of identifying criticism with disagreement. In the second place, though this rule seems obviously sound, my experience has been that few people' observe it in practice. Like the golden rule, it elicits more lip service than intelligent obedience.
I have had the experience, shared by all authors, of suffering book reviews by critics who did not feel obliged to do the first reading first. The critic too often thinks he does not have to be a reader as well as a judge. I have also had the experience of lecturing, both in the university and on the public platform, and of having critical questions asked which were not based on any understanding of what I had said. (By a "critical question" here, I mean that rhetorical device by which someone in the audience tries to show the speaker up.) And you may remember an occasion where someone said to a speaker, in one breath or at most two, "I don't know what you mean, but I think you're wrong."
I have gradually learned that there is no point in answering critics of this sort. The only polite thing to do is to ask them to state your position tor you, the position they claim to be challenging. If they cannot do it satisfactorily, it they cannot repeat what you have said in their own words, you know that they do not understand, and you are entirely justified in ignoring their criticisms. They are irrelevant, as all criticism must be which is not solidly based on understanding. When you find the rare person who shows that he understands what you are saying as well as you do, then you can delight in his agreement or be seriously disturbed by his dissent.
In years of reading books with students, I have found this rule more honored in the breach than in the observance. Students who plainly do not know what the author is saying seem to have no hesitation in setting themselves up as his judges. They not only disagree with something they do not understand but, what is equally bad, they often agree to a position they cannot express intelligibly in their own way. Their discussion, like their reading, is all words, words, words. Where understanding is not present, affirmations and denials are equally meaningless and unintelligent. Nor is a position of doubt or detachment any more intelligent in a reader who does not know what he is suspending judgment atout.
There are several further points to note concerning the observance of this first rule. If you are reading a great book, you ought to hesitate before you say, "I understand." The presumption certainly is that you have a lot of work to do before you can make that declaration honestly and with assurance. You must, of course, be a judge of yourself in this raatter, and that makes the responsibility even more severe.
To say "I don't understand" is, o£ course, a critical judg. ment, but only after you have tried your hardest does it reflect on the book rather than yourself. If you have done everything that can be expected of you and still do not understand, it may be because the book is unintelligible. The presumption, however, is in favor of the book, especially if it be a great one. In reading great books, failure to understand is usually the reader's fault. Hence he is obligated to stay with the task of the first two readings a long time before entering on the third. When you say "I don't understand" watch your tone of voice. Be sure it concedes the possibility that it may not be the author's fault.
There are two other conditions under which the rule requires especial care. If you are reading only part of a book, it is more difficult to be sure that you understand, and hence you should be more hesitant to criticize. And sometimes a book is related to other books by the same author, and depends upon them for its full significance. In this situation, also, you should be more circumspect about saying "I understand," and slower to raise your critical lance.
The best example of brashness in this last respect is furnished by literary critics who have agreed or disagreed with Aristotle's Poetics without realizing that the main principles in Aristotle's analysis of poetry depend in part on points made in other of his works, his treatises on psychology and logic and metaphysics. They have agreed or disagreed without understanding what it is all about.
The same is true of other writers, such as Plato and Kant, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who have not been able to aay everything they thought or knew in a single work. Those who judge Kant's Critique of Pure Reason without. reading his Critique of Practical Reason, or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations without reading his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, or The Communist Manifesto without Marx's dos Kapital, are more likely than not to be agreeing or disagreeing with something they do not fully understand.
The second general maxim of critical reading is as obvious as the first, but needs explicit statement, nevertheless, for the same reason. It is that there is no point in winning an argument if you know or suspect you are wrong. Practically, of course, it may get you ahead in the world for a short time. But honesty is the better policy in the slightly longer run.
As thus stated, I learned the maxim from Mr. Beards-ley Rumi, at the time he was dean of the Social Science Division in Chicago. He formulated it in the light of many sad experiences, both in the academic world and out. He has since become a leader in the mercantile world, and he still finds it true that many people think a conversation is an occasion for personal aggrandizement. They think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth.
He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong. The reader who approaches a book in this spirit reads it only to find something he can disagree with. For the disputatious and contentious, a bone can always be found to pick on. It makes no difference whether the bone is really a chip off the other man's shoulder. What is sought is a casus belli—like an incident in the Far East or in middle Europe.
Now in a conversation which a reader has with a book in the privacy of his own study, there is nothing to prevent the reader from winning the argument. He can dominate the situation. The author is not there to defend himself. If all he wants is the empty satisfaction of seeming to show the author up, he can get it readily. He scarcely has to read the book through to get it. Glancing at the first few pages will suffice.
But if he realizes that the only profit in conversation, with live or dead teachers, is what one can learn from them, if he realizes that yon win only by gaining knowledge, not by knocking the other fellow down, he may see the futility of mere contentiousness. I am not saying that a reader should not ultimately disagree and try to show where the author is wrong. I am saying only that he should be as prepared to agree as to disagree. Whichever he does should be motivated by one consideration alone—the facts and the truth about them.
More than honesty is required here. It goes without saying that a reader should admit a point when he sees it. But he also should not feel whipped by having to agree with an author, instead of dissenting. If he feels that way, he is chronically disputatious. In the light of this second maxim, [ would advise him to go to a psychoanalyst before he tries to do much serious reading.
The third maxim is closely related to the second. It states another condition prior to the undertaking of criticism. It recommends that you regard disagreements as capable of being resolved. Where the second maxim urged you not to disagree disputatiously, this one warns you against disagreeing hopelessly. One is hopeless about the fruitfulness of discussion if one does not recognize that all rational men can agree. Note that I said "can agree." I did not say all rational men do agree. I am saying that even when they do not agree, they can. And the point I am trying to make is that disagreement is futile agitation unless it is undertaken with the hope that it may lead to the resolution of an issue.
These two facts, that men do disagree and can agree, arise from the complexity of human nature. Men are rational animals. Their rationality is the source of their power to agree. Their animality, and the imperfections of their reason which it entails, is the cause of most of the disagreements that occur. They are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest as well as inadequately transparent tor thought. Yet to the extent that men are rational, these obstacles to their understanding one another can be overcome. The sort of disagreement which is only apparent, resulting from misunderstanding, is certainly curable.
There is, of course, another sort of disagreement, which is due to inequalities of knowledge. The ignorant often foolishly disagree with the learned about matters exceeding their knowledge. The more learned, however, have a right to be critical of errors made by those who lack relevant knowledge. Disagreements of this sort can also be corrected. Inequality in knowledge is always curable by instruction.
In other words, I am saying that all human disagreements can be resolved by the removal of misunderstanding or of ignorance. Both cures are always possible, though sometimes difficult. Hence the man who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of an-' other. He should always keep before him the possibility that he misunderstands or that he is ignorant on some point. No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
But the trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine. You have yours. Our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he ends up holding the same opinions he started with.
I cannot take this view. I think that knowledge can be communicated and that discussion can result in learning. If knowledge, not opinion, is at stake, then either disagreements are apparent only—to be removed by coming to terms and a meeting of minds; or, if they are real, then the genuine issues can always be resolved—in the long run, of course—by appeals to fact and reason. The maxim of rationality concerning disagreements is to be patient for the long run. I am saying, in short, that disagreements are arguable matters. And argument is both empty and vicious unless it is undertaken on the supposition that there is attainable truth which, when attained by reason in the light of all the relevant evidence, resolves the original issues.
How does this third maxim apply to the conversation between reader and author? It deals with the situation in which the reader finds himself disagreeing with something iki a book. It requires him first to be sure that the disagreement is not due to misunderstanding. Suppose that the reader has been careful to observe the rule that he must not begin a critical reading until he understands, and is therefore satisfied that there is no misunderstanding here. What then?
This maxim then requires him to distinguish between knowledge and opinion, and to regard an issue concerning knowledge as one which can be resolved. It he pursues the matter further he may be instructed by the author on points which will change his mind. If that does not happen, he may be justified in his criticism, and, metaphorically at least, be able to instruct the author. He can at least hope that were the author alive and present, his mind could be changed.
You may remember something that was said in the previous chapter. If an author does not give reasons for his propositions, they can be treated only as expressions of opinion on his part. The reader who does not distinguish between the reasoned statement of knowledge and the flat expression of opinion is not reading to learn. He is at most interested in the author's personality and is using the book as a case history. Such a reader will, of course, neither agree nor disagree. He does not judge the book but the man.
If, however, the reader is primarily interested in the book and not the man—it, seeking to learn, he looks for knowledge not opinion—he should take his critical obligations seriously. The distinction between knowledge and opinion applies to him as well as to the author. The reader must do more than make judgments of agreement or disagreement. He must give reasons for them. In the former case, of course, it suffices if he actively share the author's reasons for the point on which they agree. But when he disagrees, he must give his own grounds for doing so. Other' wise, he is treating a matter of knowledge as if it were opinion.
Let me summarize now the three general maxims I have discussed. The three together state the conditions of a critical reading and the manner in which the reader should proceed to talk back.
The first requires the reader to complete the task of understanding before rushing in. The second adjures him not to be disputatious or contentious. The third asks him to view disagreement about matters of knowledge as remediable. It goes further. It commands him to give reasons for his disagreements so that issues are not merely stated but defined. In that lies all hope for resolution.
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