Continental philosophy there's actually a very important concept basically it's the idea that if you want to understand a text a book anything you've got to, at the same time you're building an idea of what the whole book

or album or movies about, you're doing that by referring to each part as you watch the movie, read the book, each new chapter, each paragraph.

You're building an idea about what the overall message of the book is.

But at the same time as you interpret each new part of the book or movie, you're also bearing in mind your idea of what the whole

is about.

So you're using the whole to interpret parts, but you're using parts to interpret the whole. Now I'm going to give you some explanations of this because it's a little

bit hard to grasp at first unless you're given some examples.

So when I first watched The Sopranos,

trying to work with stuff that people will be familiar with. The first episode I turned on, I had no clue, I heard it was good, and there was Tony Soprano played by James Gandolfini picking up his newspaper while looking around,

as if he was expecting to get shot.

And I thought, oh, okay, this is going to be a kind of updating of the Godfather. But then shortly afterwards there was a scene where Tony

Soprano was in therapy. This is no longer at all like the godfather.

There, here's a guy sort of moaning in therapy about, you know, how he can't trust anybody and how difficult it is to be a mob boss and I thought oh this is a parody

a mafia show but then there was all these really deeply felt scenes between James Galen-Dofini and Edo Falco, the husband and wife.

And I thought, oh, so this is a Godfather-like semi-parity comedy with family drama and so as each part

unfolded you see I had to adapt my idea of what the entire show was about so it could make sense of and could contain each new part.

You following me?

So I'll give you another example. I first heard about David Foster Wallace's book

Infinite Chest I looked at the cover and the title and I thought oh this is a satire of American life,

Allah John does passos.

But then as I read parts, more parts,

my idea of the whole kept changing like it became there was a stuff about

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