Fragments

There is a wonderful passage in Glenn Most's article on collecting philosophical fragments[1] which I think is worth sharing. It was pointed out to me by a graduate student earlier in the year, but I've just got hold of a copy of the volume and found it again.

[T]here is a seduction to working on fragments which is often neglected in scholarly discussions of the subject but which nevertheless seems to exercize a powerful subliminal fascination, especially upon scholars. Closed, finished texts can sometimes seem to rebuff us. They are already perfect: what can we add to them besides our own misunderstandings? But a text upon which time and fortune have unleashed all their destructive fury can present itself to us in the form of fragments: wounded, incomplete, crying out for out help if it is to speak once more its words which have almost been silenced. Curiosity, and even a kind of piety, urge that we gather such relics; but so too does a deeper, more mysterious urge, which makes us want to render less incomplete the many imperfections of our own experience and to redeem to some degree the dominion that chance and disappointment have over our own lives. Perhaps, if we can succeed in rescuing the broken fragments of some long dead Greek philosopher, then might not the shattered hopes of our own existence somehow be restored? (Most 1998, p.14)

Does this ring true for anyone?

[1] G. W. Most, 'À la recherche du texte perdu: on collecting philosophical fragments', in W. Burkert, L. Gemelli Marciano, E. Matelli and L. Orelli (eds.) Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer texter der Antike / Le raccolte dei frammenti di filosofi antichi (Aporemata 3), Göttingen, 1998, 1-15.