Hermeneutic Calvinball versus modest digital humanities in philosophical interpretation

The paper argues that philosophical interpretation often resembles “Calvinball,” with shifting, unstated rules that make adjudicating interpretations difficult. As a modest corrective, it proposes digital humanities methods to: (1) set default expectations about the relative importance of concepts in a philosopher’s corpus, (2) periodize works and track conceptual trends across a career, and (3) establish which conceptual connections are textually grounded. A case study on Nietzsche demonstrates these benefits, showing that shame is far more central in Nietzsche’s writings than resentment and mapping its conceptual associations. The approach aims to expose cherry-picking, guide close reading, and improve replicability in the history of philosophy.

Mark Alfano