«Comment ne pas être charitable dans l’interprétation»
The first part of this paper expresses some reservations about certain ways in which the principle of charity has been employed. Some deflationary remarks criticize the application of some pet western ideas to the analysis of other cultures, namely mentalities, metaphors, mythology. I turn next to suggest that, contrary to the claim of the defenders of the principle of charity, intelligibility cannot be a universal assumption considering the various roles that deception and the cultivation of unintelligibility...