Keep on Keeping On

The great 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill attributed his success as “an original and independent thinker” to his intellectual tenaciousness:  “that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored because they did not appear important; never thinking that I perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.”  (The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, p. 100 (NY: Signet Classics 1964))

You will recall that in chapter 2 of Reading I stated that pinning down an author’s meaning is a matter of always asking the next question of the text.  Why does the author say that?  What does she mean by that?  Does she have any evidence for saying X?  And so on.  (Reading, pp. 16, 21.)  I characterized that activity as being persistent or intellectually aggressive.     

Mill’s point and mine are essentially the same, although he expressed it far more eloquently than I did.  When you are embarked on an intellectual activity, don’t give up too soon; keep pressing for greater understanding as far as you can.  Keep on keeping on, to use the words of an old R&B song.

What do you do when you have run out of questions to ask of a text but are still not sure you understand it completely? Go to the sources of meaning we discussed in Reading and ask yourself if they suggest further questions to ask. In other words, you can use the sources of meaning as analytic tools, or at least as jumping off points for analysis, for further dialogue with the text. For example, the structure of a text is a source of meaning because it relates the argumentative parts of the text to each other, on the one hand, and the argumentative parts of the text to the nonargumentative parts, on the other hand, and all of the parts to the whole. Examine and question those relations.

The need for intellectual persistence is entirely general and not limited to any one type of intellectual activity.  It applies, however, with particular force to reading complex argumentative texts.  At times, you may find the analysis of one of these texts difficult. But never forget: You can do it.  You can do it.