James Kreines, writing about the third critique, makes the very sensible observation that
[c]harity is crucial if we are to discover and understand the lasting philosphical importance of figures in the history of philosophy. But charity should not mean that we seek to interpret Kant's conclusions so that they are as near as possible to those favored by contemporary tastes. It should mean rather that we seek to understand the real philosophical strengths of Kant's arguments—even and especially where those arguments support conclusions which challenge contemporary tastes…
Quite so, as far as the conclusions go. Of course, the really interesting thing here (which it is perhaps understandable that Kreines doesn't mention, it in the first place not really being to the point and in the second perhaps intemperate to include in a scholarly article, such things being by their nature aimed at advancing the state of the author as well as the state of the art) is that the line of thinking which has it that the Great Philosophers of the Past, having been Great Philosophers, must have meant something along the lines of what is currently thought, even if they did not always express themselves perspicuously, gets counted a form of interpretive charity in the first place. The interpreter arguably extends more charity to himself than to his object, when following this method. (Notwithstanding that, obviously, one will think that what one thinks is right, is right.)
If I am not mistaken, one of the reasons Burnyeat's "Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible?" was assigned in a seminar on De Anima was precisely that it doesn't do that.
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