ABSTRACT
A convenient and useful way to conceive a philosophical classic is to think of it as a text of philosophy that has become established in the canon of texts that are read and reread because of their philosophical value. The same is true of the interpretation of the philosophical classics. An interpretation that provides an understanding of what an audience understood, makes explicit a meaning independent of the author's meaning or includes in it implications of which the author was unaware would all constitute interpretive abuses. The study of the interpretation of the classics, then, has an important role to play in doing philosophy, for it opens the way to self-knowledge and this is, as Socrates knew only too well, the beginning of all wisdom. Each person, each philosophical tradition and each age views the classics from a unique historical vantage point.
