In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams tells the story of programmers who create an amazing supercomputer, Deep Thought (the second greatest computer of all time and space...), to calculate and reveal to them the "ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything." Deep Thought takes 7.5 million years to calculate the answer, but then finally makes his long-awaited proclaimation: The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything is...42.

The programmers (well, their distant descendants...) feel--perhaps justly--confused and irate: The answer "42" makes no sense.

Of course not, Deep Thought tells them; they don't have the question for which this "ultimate answer" makes sense. And so, naturally, the programmers ask Deep Thought: Can it reveal to them the question, for which "42" is the answer?

No, Deep Thought declares: it isn't nearly powerful enough. However, it can design a bigger, better computer for them, one which will eventually produce the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Those familiar with the five-book-trilogy know where the story goes from here: The supercomputer designed by Deep Thought is the planet Earth, which--after a small setback, and under the watchful eye of the mice--takes 10 million years to run the program which will produce the question, only to be destroyed by the Vogons five minutes before successful completion. But in this story are two aspects which might help us to think about reading philosophy:

1. "The Answer" is no good if you don't know which question it answers.
2. "The Question" can actually be harder to find than "The Answer."

The up-shot of this advice is a distinction between something I like to call "Reading 1.0" and "Reading 2.0": Reading 1.0 is what we usually mean when we say, "I learned how to read when I was 4," or "Why Johnny Can't Read." It's the ability to decode a sentence to find its literal meaning--in other words, the ability to read a text and find "the answers." Most of us mastered Reading 1.0 in grade school, moving up the difficulty levels from Dick and Jane, through The Catcher in the Rye, onto research papers on physics, blogs on economics, history books, whatever. The epitome of Reading 1.0 is seen every time we pick up a newspaper: the article is given a title which summarizes the answers contained therein, and quickly reading the article will allow the reader to find a half-dozen related answers. (For example: An article might be titled, "Money for (almost) nothing: Fat paychecks for very little work." Reading the article, we find a list of "answers": Former WaMu CEO Alan Fisherman spent 17 days in his position and walked away with over $19 million for his troubles; Michael Ovitz, Billy Dee Williams, Carl Pavano, and Edward McSweegan are also people who have made obscene amounts of money for little-to-no work...etc.) This is, in fact, what we mean when we talk about "reading comprehension": Can you read a passage and "comprehend" the "answers" it contains?

Reading 2.0, on the other hand, is an entirely separate skill-set, one which builds on the skills of Reading 1.0 (hence Reading 2.0, and not, say, Hermeneutics 1.0...), but is not always an accompanyment to Reading 1.0. Not only do we not tend to teach our children this skill-set as a necessary part of "reading," but in fact--as the newspaper example shows all too well--it's entirely possible to go through adult life as a "competent reader" without having ever utilized--let alone mastered!--Reading 2.0.

This, I think, is one of the major reasons that perfectly literate students walk into a philosophy class only to discover that the texts they are assigned to read "don't make sense." Nor should we immediately slip into the "wise professor, naive student" diagnosis here: All too frequently, the professor takes on the role of "interpreter" or "explainer," a role designed to transform the text into a set of "answers," which the student can then master using his or her previously-developed Reading 1.0 skills. As Jacques Ranciere has argued, this role has a stultifying effect on the student; it essentially carries the message, "You are not smart enough to understand this on your own; you need a teacher to explain it to you." It is not that students are not capable of reading philosophy unaided; it is rather that Reading 2.0 is a skillset that must be developed, and the professor who chooses to lecture "about" the text ultimately fails his or her students.

A philosophy text can be read as a series of answers; sometimes this is easy and relatively straightforward (I think of the texts of Thomas Aquinas), other times infuriating (those infamously "difficult" philosophers like Derrida, Nietzsche, etc.). Either way, however, this is to dodge the philosophical practice of reading, one which understands the meaning of the answers by seeing how they are shaped and given sense by the question(s) which underlie them.

As an example of Reading 2.0, and a way of hopefully making this 1.0/2.0 distinction clearer, I thought I'd take an example which I have found particularly helpful for demonstrating this method: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Then, as a wrapup, I thought I'd briefly consider the example of Louis Althusser for a gesture at what Reading 2.5 might entail...

The Nicomachean Ethics and the Question of Happiness

A quick read through the first few books of the Nicomachean Ethics shows that Aristotle covers a lot of ground; purposive action, various popular definitions for happiness, and the functions which separate humans from other types of living things; a general definition for virtue, and then an in-depth consideration of its two major types (intellectual and moral); the role of friendship in life, and the proper definition of true friendship (as distinguished from two lesser types); a consideration of pleasure, and how it both contributes to and differs from happiness; and a running concern with political science as "the science of the highest good for man"--the book is, in fact, a lengthy lead-in to Aristotle's following book, the Politics. The book is full of answers. But is there a central question organizing the text?

Given the title--Nicomachean Ethics--we are tempted to assume that the book is written to teach us the difference between right and wrong. But this is obviously too simple; the discussions of friendship, happiness, and types of life would all seem superfluous--and furthermore, Aristotle's definition of the virtues isn't exactly a rubric for deciding to "do the right thing." Taking "ethics" in a broader sense, though, we might perhaps say that the book is teaching us how to live "correctly"; the right way of making friends, the right way of experiencing pleasure, and the virtues as models for correct behavior...Not only does this reading strip the book of its philosophical character (the book becomes essentially an ancient "Miss Manners" guide...), we are also thereby tempted to mis-place the opening discussion of happiness: is Aristotle merely trying to tell us the correct, "moral" way of pursuing happiness? Such may be a concern of Kant, but it never seems to crop up in Aristotle's discussion; in ten books of Nicomachean Ethics, we find no mention of any situation in which we might have to forsake our own happiness for the sake of what is right, nor any mention of "unethical" pursuits of happiness at all!

If you are familiar with the text, this will already seem like needless jumping-about...but I want to make clear that the typical Reading 1.0 approach to reading "hard texts" still leaves us far short of understanding the book as a whole. Most reading guides will suggest that, with difficult texts, one should try reading once through quickly to get a general sense of "what the text is about," fill in the broad strokes of the argument, and then go back a second time to read for more detail. In other words, get the "big answers" down first, and then fill in with the "smaller answers." If, on the other hand, we start at the beginning of the text and simply follow Aristotle along, asking ourselves, "What is the question he's answering, here?" we will immediately get a better impression of the project as a whole; in fact, we can look solely at book I in this way, and already have a better general sense of "what the book is about":

Book I, chapter 1 (1094a1-18):

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

The book opens with a simple observation: all human activities are done for the sake of some "good." We note first, then, that "good" is here being used in the strictly subjective, pragmatic sense: "seen as good for." Despite the title, Aristotle has not presupposed any moral notion of "goodness." But secondly, and beyond this, the opening sentence points out that humans are purposive creatures: we act for a reason, or we don't act at all. And third, to put the previous two points together: if a human takes action, it is because he/she feels (s)he has a reason to act; and that, further, (s)he views this reason as being a good one. What question has Aristotle just answered? It seems fairly obvious: "Why do people do things?" It's also a fairly broad, imprecise question. But no matter: Aristotle spends the rest of the chapter building the idea of a hierarchy of "goods": If I do X because it's "good for achieving Y," and I want to achieve Y because it's "good for Z," then ultimately I have done X because it's good for Z. For example, I might take notes because they are good for helping me study; but I'm only studying because it's good for helping me pass the test; but I want to pass the test because it's good for helping me pass the class; and I'm trying to pass the class because it's a required course, and therefore good for helping me get my degree. And so I am, essentially, taking notes because it's good to help me get my degree.

Book I, chapters 2 and 3 (1094a19-1095a13):

Aristotle interweaves a discussion of political science as the science studying the "highest good for man" in with a more general discussion of a "highest good" in general. Which is to say: our earlier question about why people act led to the consideration of a sort of "end-point causality"; which is to say, I do something because of the end result I'm looking for, not simply for the immediate result. And so the discussion of a highest good is a way of redirecting our focus: if we take the immediate action X because it's "good for" achieving not only the immediate purpose, but also some further purpose, then what is the ultimate good we act to achieve? This will be the "ultimate reason" people act. Furthermore, we should also immediately realize that if the ultimatereason is removed, the intermediate goals will also disappear: if my school loses its accredidation, and will not be able to grant me a degree, then passing the class will not get me any closer to this goal; and so passing the test will not help me achieve this goal; and so taking notes will not be good for this purpose, either. If this is really the reason I'm taking notes, then as soon as my school loses its accredidation, I should simply be wasting my time to continue to take notes. Or, to put this another way: if I am unable to take notes (a broken wrist, a strange policy of the professor, etc.), I will still come to class; but if I am unable to come to class (an illness, a cancellation, etc.), I will not sit at home and take notes as I watch television. If X is good for Y, and Y is impossible, then X is no longer "good."

Book I, chapter 4 (1095a14-1095b13):

With our somewhat refined question now stated as, "What is the ultimate reason people do anything at all?" we see that Aristotle opens chapter 4 with his own version of the same question: "what is the highest of all goods achievable by action?" Aristotle immediately gives an answer:

Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise.

The very fact of being purposive creatures, then, means that when we as humans take action, we do so for what we think are "good reasons." And the ultimate reason for which we do anything is: "because I think it will lead to my happiness." Again, we should remember the long-term goal, not simply the immediate one: I don't take notes because "I think taking notes will make me happy." But if I take notes because somewhere down the line it's good for getting my degree, we can still ask, "But why do you want your degree?" A typical answer might run: "Because I want to get a good job." But why? "Because a good job will provide me with financial stability, etc..." And why do you see this as good? "Because that will give me a good life." And why do you want a "good life"? "Because that will make me happy."

Ah: But what happens when we ask you, "But why do you want to be happy?" Now we seem to fall off into nonsense: "I want to be happy because...that's what makes me happy?" Or perhaps, "I want to be happy because...I don't want to be unhappy?" And so it seems for all people: We act--that is to say, we do anything at all--because we think it will ultimately lead closer to our happiness. Happiness is the ultimate reason humans do anything at all.

It might now seem like we have an answer to the initial question we thought Aristotle was answering; and yet we are still at the very beginning of the book. Does he now move on to ask other questions, so that perhaps we were better off simply listing the answers we find, Reading 1.0-style? Not at all: For while "happiness" is indeed an answer of sorts, it is also--or more precisely--a restatement of the question. For as Aristotle points out, everyone seems to agree that the "happiness" for which they do everything basically means "living well and doing well," but it would seem that we get conflicting answers when we ask for anything more specific. Aristotle spends the rest of this chapter and the next examining various simple or "obvious" answers to the question, "What is happiness?" By the end of chapter 5, Aristotle has rejected a number of answers, but the new, refined question still stands: What is happiness?

Notice that it is not a move from one question to another, but instead the slow refinement of one central question that drives the first few chapters. Over the course of chapters 1 through 6, we move with Aristotle from the very general question, "Why do humans act?" to the more refined version, "What is the ultimate reason driving human activity?" until we can give the question its most precise form, "What is true human happiness?" From this point on, each and every new topic for discussion will be dictated by the course we take to answer this one, central question. In chapter 7, when Aristotle turns to consider the "function of man," he does so only insofar as it will provide us a better account of happiness:

Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man.

And again, in chapter 13, when this discussion leads to a consideration of a full account of virtue, it is only because it is the next step in tracing a full account of happiness:

Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness.

In this way, we can see how the entire book essentially revolves around the question of happiness; and we understand the entire text much more clearly if we can see the way this central question moves the discussion along its path. Insofar as it is a book of "ethics" at all, it is only because Aristotle here has the insight that acting in my own best interest must sometimes entail acting against my immediate inclination. Or, to put it another way: acting for happiness means sometimes acting against immediate pleasure.

Reading 2.0 And Beyond

This is already an epic post, and it's certainly not the place for a full account of the Nicomachean Ethics. But if Reading 1.0 might ask us to start with the answers, and then build from there (toward a Reading 1.5, say...), in the same way one might already see the direction indicated: by identifying the central question in the text, and then critically re-engaging with the text on the basis of that question, certain new anomalies can appear, and new critical paths open. By tracking the path of the central question, "What is happiness?" through the book, we can better engage critically with certain "anomalies" that pop up: the possibility of two competing accounts of happiness, for example, or even the lingering question about the role to be played by the Politics. In other words, as we start to compare the question to its own answers, certain critical spaces can open up within the text.

Perhaps already indicated in this direction, but further along the path, is what Louis Althusser calls a symptomatic reading. As he puts it in Reading Capital, a symptomatic reading consists of "measuring the problematic initially visible in [the text] against the invisible problematic contained in the paradox of an answer which does not correspond to any question posed" (28). Althusser looks at the tension not simply between the central question and its answers, but between the explicit and implicit "central questions" in the text. As we look at the "answers" and try to trace them back to their questions, we occasionally find that we have an answer to a question that the author him/herself does not pose! In opening up a critical space between questions, Althusser is ultimately able to get even deeper into the text. Hence, I think, we have an indication along a road from Reading 2.0 to Reading 2.5, and--possibly--beyond...

Anyway, if you've read this far, I hope it's been of some interest; the above is (as always with this journal!) largely a way of ordering some of my own thoughts on a page, in the interest of better teaching the practice of philosophy. Expect more "Teaching Philosophy" posts to follow in the coming months, as the practice of teaching is very much on my mind these days.