L’épistémologie de Jean Bollack ou Bollack contre Bollack

Jean Bollack’s philologische Wissenschaft aims to reach the “good lesson” of a text and to get the “original intent” of its author, in the true sense of these expressions. It is based on three main elements: the identification of biases that would lead to an incorrect interpretation; the syntactic analysis of the text and the discussion of the points of view of other scholars (i.e. a dialectical criticism). Bollack – despite his accuracy – does not question his own assumptions: 1) that the sense of a text is in the manuscripts we possess (or – in any case – it is recoverable through them); 2) the idea that the great texts are more insightful than others; and 3) the notion of originality of the authors compared to the tradition. Furthermore, Jean Bollack does not always refute the opinions of other scholars; sometimes he simply refuses to acknowledge them. Finally, he makes a constant recourse to a rhetoric of scientific progress, scientific approach etc.