Creative misunderstandings

Is it possible to say that the many books and texts read millions of times throughout history have been understood in the same way? Or can it be decided which of these interpretations of books is superior to another, apart from each interpretation's own historical context?

Let us take Socrates. It is known that he wrote nothing during his lifetime. He had a particular sensitivity against writing things down. By contrast, the interpretations that Plato and Aristotle, who relayed his debates with the sophists, attributed to their own views formed the first form of systematic philosophy, one whose influence would continue for thousands of years afterward. Among students of the same Socrates there were two separate and opposed tendencies. Can we say that the Cyrenaics, who made the first formulation of hedonism, and the Cynics, who expressed opposition to pleasure in its best form, or the Megarian School, each listened to the same Socrates?

The truth is that everyone found his own Socrates before him and listened to him. The Cynics, that is, those who turned Socrates' philosophy against hedonism, stood quite low in the social strata, that is, they were poor. The Cyrenaics, by contrast, belonged to the aristocratic class of society. It is clear that the strata to which they belonged deeply affected their way of seeing and listening to Socrates. Otherwise, if people who are poor to begin with had a hedonistic philosophy, how could they ever realize it?

The Aristotelian (Peripatetic) philosophers known as Islamic philosophy not only read Plato, whose translations they read, as Eflatun, but placed the famous philosopher in a context he perhaps never intended. Al-Ghazali wrote his famous work (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) explaining how incompatible with Islam was the philosophy the Peripatetic philosophers produced on the basis of Aristotle. Ibn Rushd, who came after him and wrote a refutation of his refutation, put forward an interesting claim: in fact the works of Aristotle read by the Aristotelian Muslim philosophers had been very badly misread, either because of mistranslation or because of some confusions. The Aristotle understood by Ghazali, who took these misreadings as his basis, was likewise this mistaken Aristotle or Plato that had introduced the Islamic philosophers. Yet both the Peripatetics and Ghazali himself produced their extremely rich philosophies owing to a mistaken perception or reading of Aristotle.

Should this be understood as a scandal, or should one dwell on how a great philosophy can be possible on the basis of a misunderstanding?

In another example, Marx was understood not by England or France, where he most expected to be understood, but by Russia and China. Yet Marx did not expect to be understood by these countries at all. Probably the peoples of these countries misunderstood him, in his view. Perhaps these peoples produced their own Marxes. As he stood, Marx was of no use to these peoples. They produced a Marx who could be of use to them and made their revolutions.

Althusser, who interpreted the same Marx, determined that the name Marx does not correspond to a monolithic type: there are at least two distinguishable periods in Marx's life, and between these two periods there is an epistemological break. The Marx of the first period is highly voluntarist. He believes people can change their own fate. Yet in world history there is a course that works independently of people's initiatives. In his second period Marx finally noticed this nature of human history and turned to scientificity. Althusser sees this scientistic Marx as closer to himself.

Abdullah Laroui, one of the famous Arab Islamist Marxists, says that of these two periods Althusser identified in Marx's intellectual life, the first, ideological period is better suited to our conditions, that is, to the conditions of the Arab-Islamic world. Because, the cultural background of the Arab-Islamic world's backwardness being fatalism in any case, adopting the Marxist scientific form of fatalism would be of no benefit whatsoever to these peoples. If Marxism was to be adopted, it had to be a Marxism that could convince people that they could determine their own fate, that is, a somewhat ideological Marxism.

How many Nietzsches, how many Hegels, how many Marxes do you think there are? Each of them, among many other occasions, takes on a different guise in every country in which they are read. Nations pass thinkers or ideas through a filter of perception suited to their own character. As a result of this passage, very different versions of these thinkers can emerge. If thinkers could return and see what their own thought had become as a result of such transfers, they would probably pretend not to recognize these new guises.

History is full of examples of the surprising and creative developments that such great misunderstandings have caused. Perhaps a whole Islamic philosophy became possible thanks to these misunderstandings.

However, one must not leave the subject at the level of a misunderstanding arising from simple ignorance. Many great philosophies, books and ideas have been translated afresh from the standpoint of people's own positions, but deviating from the original, to answer different needs. These manifestly wrong translations, as they stood, led to the formation of another product of thought. Especially when great ideas are read within a culture and civilization other than the one in which they emerged, it is inevitable that these readings have such selectivity.

No one should expect here the possibility of an exact meeting with the author's true intention. Perhaps it is thanks to the absence of such meetings that understanding becomes a dynamic and equally human process.