Croce index card: This was a short review, important because of the author. Since I had already found the book reviewed, I copied only this single, significant opinion. Look at the final squared brackets: that statement represents exactly what I did in my thesis, two years later.
Biondolillo index card: This is a polemical index card, showing all the irritation of the neophyte who sees his argument scorned. I found it necessary to record my ideas this way, perhaps to insert a polemical note in my work.
Glunz index card: I quickly consulted with a German friend who helped me understand precisely what this thick book discussed. This book did not have immediate relevance to my work, but it was perhaps worthy of a note.
Maritain index card: I already knew Art and Scholasticism, this author’s fundamental work, but I did not find him very trustworthy. At the end of the card, I made a note that would remind me not to trust the accuracy of his quotes without a subsequent check.
Chenu index card: This is a short essay by a serious scholar on a very important theme in my work, and I squeezed as much juice from it as I could. This essay was the classic case of an indirect source; I noted only what I could then check directly. This card was more of a bibliographical supplement than a readings index card.
Curtius index card: An important book that I consulted only for a particular section. I was in a hurry, so I only skimmed the rest of the book. I did return to it and read it later for other purposes, after I completed my thesis. Marc index card: An interesting article from which I extracted the juice.
Segond index card: This is what we might call a “disposal” index card, as its purpose was essentially to remind me that I did not need this source for my thesis.
Table 4.4
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.5
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.6
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.7
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.8
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.9
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.10
READINGS INDEX CARD
Table 4.11
READINGS INDEX CARD
As you can see, I used abbreviations in the top right corner of these cards in the manner I have described above. In fact, the lower-case letters in parentheses replace colored points that were on the original cards. There is no need for me to explain exactly to what these referred; it is only important to note that I used them to organize my cards.
4.2.4 Academic Humility
Do not let this subsection’s title frighten you. It is not an ethical disquisition. It concerns reading and filing methods.
You may have noticed that on one of the cards, as a young scholar, I teased the author Biondolillo by dismissing him in a few words. I am still convinced that I was justified in doing so, because the author attempted to explain the important topic of the aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas in only 18 lines. This case was extreme, but I filed the card on the book, and I noted the author’s opinion anyway. I did this not only because we must record all the opinions expressed on our topic, but also because the best ideas may not come from the major authors. And now, to prove this, I will tell you the story of the abbot Vallet.
To fully understand this story, I should explain the question that my thesis posed, and the interpretive stumbling block that obstructed my work for about a year. Since this problem is not of general interest, let us say succinctly that for contemporary aesthetics, the moment of the perception of beauty is generally an intuitive moment, but for St. Thomas the category of intuition did not exist. Many contemporary interpreters have striven to demonstrate that he had somehow talked about intuition, and in the process they did violence to his work. On the other hand, St. Thomas’s moment of the perception of objects was so rapid and instantaneous that it did not explain the enjoyment of complex aesthetic qualities, such as the contrast of proportions, the relationship between the essence of a thing and the way in which this essence organizes matter, etc. The solution was (and I arrived at it only a month before completing my thesis) in the discovery that aesthetic contemplation lay in the much more complex act of judgment. But St. Thomas did not explicitly say this. Nevertheless, the way in which he spoke of the contemplation of beauty could only lead to this conclusion. Often this is precisely the scope of interpretive research: to bring an author to say explicitly what he did not say, but that he could not have avoided saying had the question been posed to him. In other words, to show how, by comparing the various statements, that answer must emerge, in the terms of the author’s scrutinized thought. Maybe the author did not give the answer because he thought it obvious, or because—as in the case of St. Thomas— he had never organically treated the question of aesthetics, but always discussed it incidentally, taking the matter for granted.
Therefore, I had a problem, and none of the authors I was reading helped me solve it (although if there was anything original in my thesis, it was precisely this question, with the answer that was to come out of it). And one day, while I was wandering disconsolate and looking for texts to aid me, I found at a stand in Paris a little book that attracted me at first for its beautiful binding. I opened it and found that it was a book by a certain abbot Vallet, titled L’idée du Beau dans la philosophie de Saint Thomas d’Aquin (The idea of beauty in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas) (Louvain, 1887). I had not found it in any bibliography. It was the work of a minor nineteenth-century author. Naturally I purchased it (and it was even inexpensive). I began to read it, and I realized that the abbot Vallet was a poor fellow who repeated preconceived ideas and did not discover anything new. If I continued to read him, it was not for “academic humility,” but for pure stubbornness, and to recoup the money I had spent. (I did not know such humility yet, and in fact I learned it reading that book. The abbot Vallet was to become my great mentor.) I continued reading, and at a certain point—almost in parentheses, said probably unintentionally, the abbot not realizing his statement’s significance—I found a reference to the theory of judgment linked to that of beauty. Eureka!
I had found the key, provided by the poor abbot Vallet, who had died a hundred years before, who was long since forgotten, and yet who still had something to teach to someone willing to listen.
This is academic humility: the knowledge that anyone can teach us something. Perhaps this is because we are so clever that we succeed in having someone less skilled than us teach us something; or because even someone who does not seem very clever to us has some hidden skills; or also because someone who inspires us may not inspire others. The reasons are many. The point is that we must listen with respect to anyone, without this exempting us from pronouncing our value judgments; or from the knowledge that an author’s opinion is very different from ours, and that he is ideologically very distant from us. But even the sternest opponent can suggest some ideas to us. It may depend on the weather, the season, and the hour of the day. Perhaps, had I read the abbot Vallet a year before, I would not have caught the hint. And who knows how many people more capable than I had read him without finding anything interesting. But I learned from that episode that if I wanted to do research, as a matter of principle I should not exclude any source. This is what I call academic humility. Maybe this is hypocritical because it actually requires pride rather than humility, but do not linger on moral questions: whether pride or humility, practice it.
5 WRITING THE THESIS
5.1 The Audience
To whom do you speak when you write your thesis? To your advisor? To all the students or scholars who will have the chance to consult the work in the future? To the general public of nonspecialists? Should you conceive the thesis as a book that will find its way into the hands of thousands of readers, or as a learned report to an academic institution? These are important questions because they concern first and foremost the expository form that you will give to your work, but they also concern the level of internal clarity that
