The Ancients had Pyrrhonism, or radical skepticism, andnthe Essais of Montaigne once argued that disagreementsnabout God or the gods, down the ages, left the believer withnnothing to rely on but an act of faith:nNow trust to your philosophy; after hearing thatnracket from so many philosophical’ minds, boast thatnyou have found the bean in the cake (11.12).nAnyone on Twelfth Night who, when the cake was cut andnhanded out, found the bean in his slice became King of thenBean; and Montaigne here, in “The Apology for RaimondnSebond,” implies that the claim to know is as idle as anreveler’s paper hat at a party. His title is empty, he implies,nand the joke is on him.nSo weightlessness has been here before; and over thencenturies the world of letters, like philosophy, hasnknown, abandoned, and readopted radical doubt and thendenial of the obvious.nThe larger effects of that mood are to be considered. Onenchief effect of weightlessness, and in all probability its chiefnmotive, is to make life more comfortable. Skepticism onlynpretends to be subversive and defiant; in truth it is cozy.n”Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable” SusannSontag acutely remarked years ago in Against Interpretationn(1966), contrasting it with “transparence,” which is thenhighest value in art. “In place of hermeneutics we need annerotics of art,” she concluded, aptly quoting a letter of OscarnWilde: “Only shallow people … do not judge by appear-nThe prestige of the nonliteralnhas led to some odd results, not leastnin higher education.nances.” The erotic analogy is striking, and it is certain thatnone can fall in love with great art at first sight. The lover, innthat case, like lovers elsewhere, might reasonably be impatientnat insistent demands to tell what he knows, since talk isnonly incidental to affection. It is the essence, by contrast, ofnwhat poets and critics do, and that is the dilemma out ofnwhich modern weightlessness is born. The skeptic-critic isnnot like a lover and cannot be silent. He is right to sense thatnwhat he has to say is a modest affair and riever the wholenstory, wrong to assume that it needs to be the whole story.nHe is baffled, for instance, by the realization that there is nonOne Correct Interpretation of a work of literature, andnbewildered by the discovery that, as George Orwell once putnit, there is no argument by which one can defend a poem.nLike Montaigne on God and the gods, he is alternatelyndazzled and puzzled by the diversity of intelligent viewsnbefore his eyes; and, like him, fearful of the charge ofnarrogance, or seeming arrogance — of appearing to sit at ancritical tea party wearing a paper hat and calling himself thenKing of the Bean. He wants, in any case, and as anyonenwould, to be king for more than a night.nIn recent years kingship has lain with the skeptics, andnthat grand old game of more-skeptical-than-thou that begannin Paris in the late 1950’s and moved to Yale and elsewhere an18/CHRONICLESnnndozen years later, now looks exhausted and unamusing. Itnlacks an audience, and leaves crihcal theorists talking to onenanother at international conferences and not always listening.nHence the new mood abroad in literary study, whichnwould like to find itself again. There is now a call for a surenfooting and a guide to lead the way. If that call is resolutenand sincere, then I suggest it can best be answered bynlistening first to what philosophers in this century have said.nThe 19th century is a long time ago. Marx and Nietzschenare not an avant-garde but prophets who looked old-hat tonour grandparents, and what Karl Popper and LudwignWittgenstein have to tell us, especially in their later writings,ncould make a lot of recent critical skepticism look tired andnoutmoded. In The Certainty of Literature (1989), in annargument that acknowledged its debt to Wittgenstein’snposthumous book On Certainty (1969), I offered reasonsnfor believing that literary judgments are as objective as anynjudgments that mankind ever makes, including those innmathematics and the natural sciences. That is an argumentnthat will continue. But the search for a sure footing is onenthat will need to be pursued with some discrimination andncare.nThe dangers are familiar. If the search turns into andemand, yet again, for a theoretical basis to literary studies,nthen it may need to be said again that there is no such basisnand can be none, since any theory that claimed to be thatnwould itself need a theoretical basis or represent a fatalncontradiction to itself If all claims to knowledge need agreednfoundations, after all, then so does that claim, and so wouldnthe claim that next offered itself: and the next, and the next.nTheory is not a sure footing but a wandering across darknmarshlands after a will-o’-the-wisp. Nor is the demand fornexactitude a hopeful one, since many truths are indeterminatenin their nature and none the less truths, like the limits ofna desert or the difference between night and day. Nor isntruth always a statement or proposition, still less an agreednproposition, since there is no certain presumption that allnknowledge can be told; and counter-instances like the tastenof coffee show that much one certainly knows cannot benspoken of or defined. Nor should one tolerate the demandnfor completeness, since the whole of everything, as HenrynJames once said, is never told.nAll that, if duly pondered, might diminish and assuage anterror of the obvious, and the modern critic may yet outlivenhis fear of literature, much as the Ancients outlived Plato’snattack on art. But it must be concluded that the terror of thenobvious, in the end, is not wholly irrational. Great art reallynis alarming. It can frighten, subvert, and appall. If thenmodern critic, by overinterpretation, has striven to render itnmanageable and conformable, he has at least paid a reluctantntribute to something that is there, and responded, innunheroic fashion, with some due sense of awe. He is like anman trying not to look at the sun: not because he doubts thatnit is there, in the end, but because he knows that it is and isnafraid of what it might do. Great art can blind. “Mysteriesnare like the sun,” said Donne in his third satire, “dazzling,nyet plain to all eyes.” The obvious can maim and hurt; andnthe modern skeptic, like Plato, has paid it the greatest of allncompliments by refusing to look. The next question is to asknwhat happens when he forgets his terror and turns his face tonthe sun. <§>n