Titbits Are Go!
Hypertext in the Age of Enlightenment
Philosophy Between the Lines by political scientist Arthur M. Melzer is an important book. The great philosophers from antiquity through the Enlightenment, Melzer argues, practiced esoteric writing, hiding what they really thought from repressive religious and political institutions, but dropping hints, so that when reading them, we must take care not to take their words at surface value. French philosophe Denis Diderot, for example, used cross-references when writing and editing the Encyclopédie, to point readers to other articles that would cast the first in a new light, clarifying some point, not explicitly, but upon reflection.¹ Today, we have the capability to do that more than ever through online links, but no one bothers to hide anything. With everything exposed to the harsh light of public scrutiny from the start, the art of creative cross-referencing remains lost. We live in a more permissive time that allows us to be more open, but we also live in perilously fast times, so we don’t imagine anyone but the most faithful of readers will read to the end of a single paragraph, much less follow a link and connect the dots. That would take too much thought, too much effort and, shudder to think, too much time.
[1] A practice also mentioned in Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S. Curran.
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