ABSTRACT
The student of ancient philosophy is in a position at once more fascinating and more frustrating than that of his colleagues who work in less antique disciplines. The exegete of Hume, for instance, has a complete body of text to deal with-and while the writings themselves may prove difficult and opaque, there is little dispute about how the text itself should actually read. Occasionally, a diligent editor may be able to point to differences between various editions of the same text, or between the printed version and the manuscript, in order to restore the precise reading intended by the author which has been obscured by typographical error or lapsus calami-and in even fewer cases, such alterations are philosophically significant (although one such case is noted in Chapter II: n. 25). Sometimes, too, investigators may discover among unpublished fragments, notebooks, and letters indications of where the author’s thought was tending. But by and large their efforts are directed towards the explication of a well-established text written in a relatively accessible language.
