Talk:Hypomnema

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[edit] Foucaultian Thinking

One of the key points a reader should undestand about the hypomnemata is its connection to developing a personal identity based on conscious "note taking". Not only did this revelation occur to the philosophers of yesteryear, but also to the vast range of common persons, including poets and financial accountants. It is a certain consciousness of the self which greek society cultivated in the practice of writing personal accounts, which could be as mundane as a shopping list or as profound as a scholarly bibliography. In pre-christian society, this manner of logos creation is tantamount to building a spiritual identity which does not require belief in a divine being. In this way of directly scripting one's logos, the hypomnemata can be viewed as both a highly spiritual practice (as in theological studies) and also as a technological trend which manipulates social paradigms (as in the current blog explosion). The relationship between hypomnemata and the philosophical concept of logos is a very important link to maintain, without it the concept of logos looses much of its dimensionality, namely its less glamourous secular relevance. If someone has issue with maintaining this link, please discuss your issue here before you begin deleting other people's thoughtful contributions.

  • [Source unknown]

I only wish that the unknowable author of the post above could cite one household shopping list as an example of what he was saying. Even if one were found, is there not an excellent chance that it was used as a form of instruction for a slave or as a message to a vendor? As for financial accounts, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians had them, so what makes the Greek use of them so special? Finally, philosophers, poets, and clerks or accountants cannot be taken as representative "common people", without some sense of the occupational distribution of population. I don't think we even have a good idea of the relative numbers of slaves and freemen or farmers and town-folk. DCDuring 22:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this just Foucault's opinion watered down ?

This seems to be nothing more than what Foucault wrote. Is there not more definitive work by archaeologists ? What about direct citations of Plato or others of his school ? What about earlier uses of the words involved ? What about the physical form of hypomnemata ? What about examples of hypomnemata ? Is this really the use to which these objects were first put ? Weren't they used predominantly for more mundane things like business record-keeping or reminders of social commitments or events ? The discussion of "self" concept presented here seems to be just am unsubstantiated, second-hand report of one distinguished Frenchman's opinion. DCDuring 17:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Hypomnemata" used in many senses

The base word just seems to mean "notes" or "notebook". In my amateur web researches on "hypomnemata", it is clear that the term is used in at least three senses: 1. commentaries on specific individual works of literature (from Classical to late Renaissance times), 2. roughly synonymously with "commonplace book", and 3. official memoranda, records of official acts and certifications (Medieval Eastern and Western Christianity). The parallel to the English word "Notes" is very suggestive, isn't it ?

DCDuring 00:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Even Foucault doesn't make all these claims

I have read the passages in Foucault's "The Hermeneutics of the Self" that refer to "hypomnena". He does not say that hypomnema are notebooks or that they are revolutionary.

I have gotten an unpublished paper subtitled "A papyrological and literary study of the the words 'hypomnema' and 'hypomnemata'". The term(s) seem have misled some scholars. The paper provides no support for the points made in this article.

Nowhere do I see any reference to these notebooks as being revolutionary. It is unclear even in what form people would have recorded their notes. DCDuring 20:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DELETE THIS ARTICLE

I see no value to including such a tendentious article, that does not seem to have much interest from its authors. DCDuring 20:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

We should figure out what parts of it are verifiable and what parts are wishful before we delete it completely, maybe merging in into another article. It looks like the user Pretzelworld wrote most of it, though, and they haven't edited for over a year. Dreamyshade 20:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

What about the unpublished paper that I found? It hasn't been peer-reviewed, though it looks pretty good to me. I suppose I could piggy-back on (steal ?) the sources cited in the paper. Unfortunately, my research is limited to the two sources (Foucault and unpublished). DCDuring 20:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I tried Saravsk who has little apparent interest, but at least responded to my comment on his user page. Other than the definition of the words, I am not sure that anything in it is verifiable. It goes against what research I have found and goes beyond the conjectures and statements of Foucault, which, though interesting, are often not of a standard for an encyclopedia. Maybe we should amend it to a stub-length piece pending the return of Pretzelworld. How long are old versions kept normally? DCDuring 22:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Having reinspected the definition, I think that is wrong, too. DCDuring 23:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh, that's too bad - it's an interesting article, but seems like it was just wishful thinking. Thanks for trying to look this stuff up! I'll propose it for deletion. It looks like there are backlinks from Platonic idealism, Stoicism, Logos, and Symmachus the Ebionite (among others), but they're mostly junky...we should probably take a look at cleaning them up. Dreamyshade 03:27, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

DGG is an Wikipedia administrator who subscribes to the inclusionist philosophy. He doesn't want to delete this article, claiming Foucault to be an adequate reference, based on his fame. I could go along with him if we cut this down to a stub. I'll try to find a source for an accurate definition of hypomnema. The discussion about revolutionary technology is what is unsupportable. It goes beyond what I've read from Foucault, but maybe "The Hermeneutics of the Self", published from notes of lecture given after "The Care of the Self" was published, lacks something. I've ordered a copy of "Care" from the local library. BTW, DGG's comment only appears in history and is not otherwise visible to me. It also appears beyond my powers to challenge in a public dialogue with DGG. What is the forum for such a discussion? DCDuring 11:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You could ask him about this - or ask him to help with the article! - on his talk page (User_talk:DGG), but that's just what happens in a proposed deletion - if somebody objects, then we keep it. I'll take a stab at cutting this down to what might be verifiable. Dreamyshade 03:39, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I can see that it would be easy to manipulate the Wikipedia process to prevent deletion of propaganda and self-indulgent and self-serving material. Insert whatever is required or eliminate the most highly objectionable material to minimally address the policy concerns. Voila!!! DCDuring 11:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

There are mechanisms to mitigate that kind of thing, such as Wikipedia:Peer review. Actually, I could go on and on about the corruption and badness of Wikipedia, but there are articles to edit... Dreamyshade 16:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean Up This Article

You have cut the Gordian knot and simplified the article. It is my understanding that the use of the 'h' word ("h.") seems to have changed over time or had more than one sense or application. It was used to refer to inscriptions, awards, monuments, and ceremonies that were 'in memory' of someone or some event. Something like 'memorial'. Plato and other Classical refer to it as something like a student's lecture notes. It could also be something like a moral/philosophical journal or 'commonplace book'. It came to refer to scholarly commentaries on individual works, as you say. That is why one of the journals of classical studies is called 'Hypomnenata'. [Do we need disambiguation?] But this is itself a practice that a poor student (meaning, in Classical times, any student not rather affluent) would have to do to avoid having to purchase all of the writings he might want to be able to refer to. The cost of having a copy of written material made would not have been small. One of the troubles with Foucault and Derrida, who also has written about h., is that they don't seem to have any sense of the importance of mundane economics.

Eventually, many forms and types of documents were referred to as h. There is a Greek etymological dictionary (in German) by Hjalmar Frist [sp?] that may be a definitive source for this change in meaning or multiple meaings. I will find out if the NYPL has a copy. Then, the next time I have a chance, I will take a look at it and try to get matters resolved. All this because I had hoped that h. was used for keeping to do lists. DCDuring 11:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, this has turned out to be a perhaps under-researched topic, especially since lots of people are interested in note-keeping and memory right now (woo, ancient Greek moleskines!). When I get back to college in a month, I'll go to the library and maybe even pester some professors to find out more. Dreamyshade 16:12, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, the Greeks used pottery shards as writing material sometimes (as well as waxed tablets, boards, bone). These shards (and the bone) were referred to as "ostraka". (See Ostracism.) Apparently they were used for tax receipts, maps (ad hoc maps?), for writing-practice scratch(!!!) "paper". Because they are durable, they might turn out to be the medium for the earliest to do list we are likely to discover. Similar use of the shards is likely in any literate society that has cheap, unglazed pottery and few alternative kinds of "permanent" writing material. DCDuring 17:56, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

In the excerpt of the interview, Foucault refers to hupomnemata as "notebooks", though he elsewhere seems to know better. The codex (precursor to our form of book) was not in use at the time of Plato. It was used not too long thereafter, but its first recorded use was by Martial in the first century AD. I am not sure what writing material would have been generally available. Perhaps, a wax tablet from which thoughts and quotations could be transcribed onto a more permanent papyrus or parchment scroll. I don't propose to put my not fully supported research into this article, but I don't understand how Foucault can be cited as an authority on any matter other than himself. DCDuring 20:52, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Better but a Bit Confused

We've gotten rid of what was wrong, but now there isn't much point to the article. It's better this way than all the blogs citing the earlier stuff which was an exaggerated dramatization of what Foucault said, which itself is not fact. DCDuring 21:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's useful if only for that, and there's probably more we could add to it in the future... Dreamyshade 04:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)