Wittgenstein said that philosophy, also philosophy of mathematics, should leave everything as it is, be descriptive (PI §124). But description can change a lot. Re-description can change our whole perception of what we are dealing with. (And this is a gesture towards the phenomena of aspect.) The kind of description Wittgenstein aims at does not revise, but it does call for, or at least gestures towards, revisions. Now, it doesn’t say what the revisions ought to be. But it places a sort of mirror (description) in front of us, and asks us to take another look at ourselves—re-see ourselves—and decide whether we would like to keep doing business as usual. Often, Wittgenstein thinks, we unreflectively assume a sort of description of what we are doing; often this description is distorted—by our wishes and fantasies: ‘The rate of scientific progress keeps growing exponentially,’ ‘Mathematics discovers the essence of reality,’ ‘Metaphysics and epistemology can be done independently of pragmatics.' The re-description Wittgenstein offers presents us with an opportunity for a sort of Nietzschean revaluations of values; it presents what we have been doing as foreign or insensitive to some degree or another to what we really need: presents the meta-understanding, the philosophical understanding, of our practices as alien to those practices. This too does not by itself suggest a very specific revision, but it almost forces us to reflect and make decisions, to own our practice or disown it—and either way to make it ours.
0 Comments
Looking at etymology is like looking at dreams, or drawings, or slips of the tongue. In all those cases what we look at is something towards which we (are strongly inclined to) accept a commitment, but at the same time the meaning of which we don’t master.
Looking at a dream, for instance, involves saying: ‘It came from you, it is of you. You are committed to it whether you want to be or not. Now own it!’ And similarly with looking at the etymology of a word: This is where the word came from. The etymology is there, like a ghost, haunting the meaning of the word. The word can’t be uttered without summoning the ghost of the etymology. It had better be owned by the user. But this too: Owning a dream, or the etymology of a word, is not a straightforward business. For there is no routine of owning it; there is no on-the-surface mastery. The etymology rather works in the dusky background of the word, the dream too works in the unlit corners of consciousness. Owning them requires creativity and imagination, possibly metaphorical thinking; it requires coming to own, finding a way to own. And it does not always end up in routine ownership, just as owning a metaphor does not need to end up in a literal routine. Philosophy can be thought of both as the queen and the slave of the liberal arts. As their queen, philosophy stands above the arts in a way, asking the broadest, most fundamental, and most abstract questions, and setting our conception of the relations and interrelations between the arts, giving us a sense of the unified nature and goal of human knowledge. As the slave of the arts, philosophy is like a janitor who deals with the leftovers, with what the particular arts and sciences don’t have time to get into. Accordingly, it is the philosopher’s responsibility to ask about the nature of empirical knowledge that the scientist takes for granted, or to capture the nature of beauty in a definition that the poet does not need to bother themselves with. Yet another image of philosophy is as a mother of the liberal arts, separating itself from them over the ages—giving birth first to physics, astronomy and biology, and most recently, in the late 1800s, to psychology.
For myself, I’m not inclined to choose between the different images. Each seems to be useful in its own way. Nevertheless, I believe, the different images do suggest something in common: Philosophy more than the other liberal arts tends to think and rethink its relation to the other arts. Conversations between mathematicians and poets, or between psychologists and physicists, may come and go. But the conversations between philosophy and each of the arts, in contrast, are always ongoing. The “ancient quarrel” between philosophy and poetry, for instance, does not seem to be fading away. And likewise, the implications of developments—both technological and conceptual—in physics and psychology are constant food for philosophy. If philosophy is the mother of the arts, it is a mother that finds it difficult to let go of her children. Philosophy insists on maintaining its conversations with the arts, I believe, as part of its constant need to rethink itself. “What is philosophy?” is a fundamental philosophical question. In contrast, “What is history?” or “What is mathematics?” are not historical or mathematical questions, but rather questions in the philosophy of history and in the philosophy of mathematics (even though they may be of interest to historians and mathematicians). And like philosophy, philosophers too need to rethink their activity. To be a philosopher, on this conception, means to have a question that never quite closes about what one is doing and why. But the fact that we have those ongoing conversations I mentioned above between philosophy and the arts means that asking this question about the nature of philosophy is not something philosophers can do completely by themselves. Like other philosophical questions, this one too, is discussed and answered (and re-thought, and re-answered) in conversation. There is an activity called ‘the history of philosophy,’ or ‘doing history,’ that needs to be distinguished from other activities that may go by that name.
I’m suggesting a distinction between two ways of doing the history of philosophy: as a spectator, and as a conversational partner. There is a continuum between those extremes. I’ll focus on the extremes. (1) The spectator way: a kind of history of philosophy that focuses, or tends to focus, on exegesis and on determining the bottom line of a philosopher’s views; this with some but not much effort to formulate the philosophical problems that lead them to those views, the philosophical difficulties of dealing with those problems, and even their arguments: that is, without much attempt to re-think what the philosopher thought, and get inside the internal debate they had with other views and with themselves, without letting oneself feel the philosophical temptations they were battling, and therefore also without trying to overcome those temptations. This way of doing the history of philosophy may describe the historical process, but typically very little of the thought process, that lead the philosopher to the endorsement of some view. At the end of such historical discussions one may feel that one knows what the philosopher thought, but not so much why. This way of doing the history of philosophy typically involves comparisons of the philosopher’s views with some more or less immediate influences on them, typically comparisons of formulations of the views of the philosopher with formulations of similar or contrasting views by other thinkers that the philosopher read or was in contact with. But this form of doing the history of philosophy will typically not be so much concerned with placing the philosopher’s ideas in a broader historical context. Mention might be made of more distant philosophers, but again, the focus will typically be on specific formulations of views, rather than on re-creating the philosophical difficulties temptations and tendencies the philosopher struggled against. My description here can be used as a mere caricature, but also to capture a form of degeneration that sometimes happens in the work of historians of philosophy (although this may not be taken as a form of degeneration). (2) The conversational partner way: a kind of history of philosophy that focuses first and foremost on understanding and sharing the philosopher’s problems, understanding how those problems arise, and what philosophical temptations they give rise to, perhaps re-formulating and re-generating those problems in a more accessible language (sometimes running the risk of anachronism). Typically, it involves the belief that there is not really knowing what the philosopher thought without knowing why they thought that. Doing the history of philosophy in this way involves active engagement in a process of debating and making up one’s mind about a philosophical issue, and not just about correctly identifying what a philosopher thought. It involves a discussion of the philosopher’s ways of thinking and methods which attempts to reveal how their methods fit the philosophical problems they were engaged with, and it may involve testing those methods, perhaps attempting to bring these methods and ways of thinking to bear on other problems—even problems the philosopher did not deal with explicitly. When commenting on specific points in the philosopher's thought, the conversational-partner historian of philosophy might occasionally engage in the activity of the spectator as described above—mere exegesis, identifying the what without the why, etc.—but when they do, and if this is all they do, this will typically involve a sense of failure, either the philosopher's or the historian's, or a sense that when it comes to that specific point, the philosopher's view is not very important philosophically. Part of the reason for suggesting this distinction is that it might explain why some currentists—philosophers who do not take themselves to do the history of philosophy—deny the importance of the history of philosophy: If the history of philosophy is done in the first way I mentioned, and if in this way the ideas of a philosopher get “trapped” in their time-period, and are not allowed to be re-generated, thought anew, grow beyond their time-period, or be in a conversation with ideas from other time-periods, then it is not a huge surprise that some, or even many, would think it is not very relevant to what they are doing, and so dismiss it. Another part of the reason for this suggestion is that it applies to currentist philosophy as well: Discussions of current ideas may equally be “trapped” in their time-period. It will feel less artificial and trapped, because this time-period is current and the discussions fashionable, but it will not be less problematic. If true, this suggests there is a way of doing current philosophy in a way that is responsive to the history of philosophy (and to its future). Furthermore, I described the first way of doing philosophy, whether the history of philosophy or current philosophy, as trapped in a time period. But I want to go further. This first way of doing philosophy is trapped, but not in a certain conversation. Rather, it avoids a certain philosophical discussion—discussion of philosophical problems and temptations, attempting to make up one’s mind about a philosophical question—and is in this sense not involved in a philosophical conversation at all. In this sense, this way of doing philosophy is trapped out of philosophy. At its worse, it comes down to philosophizing by finding a place for a view on a map of possible views; it gives rise to the sport of identifying new possible positions on the map. It promotes philosophical wackiness. It comes to: ‘You think that, I think this,’ or ‘There are several possible views here…,’ and that’s it; that’s the whole conversation—a conversation of placing views side by side, without identifying any friction between them, without showing the connections, the ways of moving from one to the other, how one view is a response to problems with other views, etc. In the second, historically open, way of doing philosophy, the philosophical conversation is much more robust. So the distinction I am suggesting is also between “historically trapped” ways of doing philosophy (whether trapped in the past or the present), and historically “open” ways. And my claim is that doing the history of philosophy in the second way described above and doing current philosophy in the second way I hypothesized, is really very similar: They involve participating in, or at least openness to, the same conversation. Philosophers who do the history of philosophy and philosophers who do current philosophy in these ways will not think of themselves as doing different things. Three years ago (1/24/2015) I published this, about a cartoon in the The New Yorker in which two camps stand opposite one another, about to start a war, both flying the same banner with the duck-rabbit rabbit on it, but seeing different things. And under the picture, it says: “There can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God.” I had a debate with Oskari Kuusela about this. He thought the cartoon showed how stupid religion is. I had the opposite reaction, and thought it showed how deep it is, or can be. I think my reply to Oskari failed to make something important explicit—something that seemed obvious to me when I first replied, but I think is not obvious. Here is what I want to say: The debate about how we see, even when we recognize we are looking at the same thing, is not a silly debate. Take humans for example. A human being can be seen in different ways. They can be seen as the crown of creation, or as hell (Sartre: "Hell is other people"), or as each a world unto themselves. There are also reductive, demeaning, ways of seeing humans—as food, as mere man-power, as ‘bags of mostly water.’ (This way of looking is reminiscent of Hume’s claim in “On Suicide”: “It would be no crime in me to divert the Nile or Danube from its course, were I able to effect such purposes. Where is then the crime of turning a few ounces of blood from their natural channel?”) But the point is that it is possible to look this way too, to see in this way too. And so the debate about what and how to see can be immensely important. Religion--at least in the best meaning of the term--takes that debate seriously. Oskari’s reaction seems to me to downplay the importance of this debate, almost flattening it. I still stand behind the rest of what I wrote.
Two moods following the election of Trump compete in my mind:
First mood: There is a sense of crazy freedom in the air: It is as if some people on the right found their voice, and now say: ‘We are allowed some Schadenfreude; we won. We can now say anything we like. Begone political correctness; welcome nastiness.’ The emotions were simmering all through the elections: PC morality is arrogant, tyrannical. This got intermingled with partial truths about an oppressive establishment—“rigged system, believe me”—which fail to identify some very real reasons why people got stuck living lives they don’t like (globalization, money in politics…)—and played on the strings of deep-seated anti-monarchical sentiments. There are many tyrannies these days to fight: big Government, big Media, big Hollywood, big Science, PC. If this is not anarchism, it is still an image of anarchism; it is an across-the-board assault: on politics, on human decency, on science, on reason, and on logic: also on the very notions of ‘making a promise,’ “believe me,” or on the notion of ‘saying how things are,’ “I’m telling it like it is.” The situation feels like a huge commotion, and disorder—not (yet?) political perhaps, but of values and reason—in which the kings are the hooligans and the thugs. They are not the majority, they are probably a tiny minority, but everyone else right now is either voiceless beaten or silenced like the liberal left, or confused like the republican establishment that are trying to find a way to fall into line with Trump and avoid his angry vindictive side. Second mood: Yes, there is a bit of Shadenfreude; yes there is a bit of nastiness. It is serious, but it is also expected. There was a fight. It’s over. The adrenaline is still a bit high. It will calm down. The system is strong enough to contain such upsets. Even if tilted a bit, it will regain its balance eventually. Not every disagreement is an assault on morality itself. Not every fight is a fight with the devil. And I’m on the losing side, so it is natural that I feel the need for some solemn soul-searching—trying to make sense of what has happened. Those on the winning side are not part of that conversation. They don’t need solemnity; they need Champaign and paper hats. Their circumstances now don’t call upon them to reflect. So yes, pain and loss tend to put a bubble around us, confine us to ourselves, and shut us from the outside world. So we are currently a bit remote from one another; we need to heal. But that’s not a reason to think we won’t be able to find our way back to talking to one another. The legal system is still in place, the dollar hasn’t lost its value, Florida s still above water. People still can make promises, and they can tell the truth. One must wait the storm out, and in the meantime hold on to what is stable—family, friends, daily routines. [Inside the commotion] – Hanoch Levin There was some kind of disturbance, a fire or some other scare. People were running everywhere, here and there, vigorously shouting, and waiving their hands. It was hard to see why. Suddenly, a woman halted. She looked back, and bellowed at a scrawny man, who was running behind her in his pajamas: “You are worthless!” The man froze for an instant too, not at all surprised—as if this was what he expected—and like an oily, protective layer, he put an abashed smile on his face. The bellower—her body already leaning forward to resume running— lingered and continued to glance backwards for a while longer, until the abashed smile achieved its full width on the face of runner behind her. She then turned from him again, disengaged, and continued to run. The runner in his pajamas now followed her twice as hard, as if wishing to drown the abashed smile that was now fading from his lips inside the general commotion. And indeed there was a kind of euphoria, a kind of elation. And like a thick and foggy cloud of smoke, a general bustle flared up and engulfed it all. In PI §88, Wittgenstein says: “If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"--may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too?”
This, among other things, is a response to Frege's claim that concepts must be fully determined and have a value for every object, and a response to his former self, who thought that "that if anyone utters a sentence and means or understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules" (PI §81). But there are two ways to understand what Wittgenstein is doing in §88. a) He is arguing that some things, concepts and orders included, have fuzzy inexact boundaries instead of exact ones. b) He is urging us to examine our notion of exactness--what exactness comes to in different cases, and what reasons and occasions we have for using notions of exactness. The first kind of reading is the more popular--it is orthodox. Anyone who "knows" something about Wittgenstein "knows" that he said our concepts have fuzzy, inexact, boundaries. This orthodox reading brings with it a host of philosophical temptations: careless relativism for one, but more generally a kind of indifference and slackness: 'we don't have to be exact, we can just call it the way we see it, and that'll be good enough.' But it is not true to Wittgenstein. He writes a little bit later in the same section (§88): "'Inexact' is really a reproach, and 'exact' is praise." And Wittgenstein can hardly be understood to be reproaching our concepts or orders. Similarly, questioning the idea that we operate by definite rules (§81) is not arguing that we operate by indefinite rules. The first reading takes for granted something that Wittgenstein is putting under question. Wittgenstein is not, and he is not taking himself to be, in a position to say that our concepts have no exact boundaries, or what an application of a word that is everywhere [absolutely] bounded by rules would be like, (§84). And that’s because he does not take himself to be clear about the notion of our concept having exact boundaries, or even what it means to proceed by a rule (§82). That is, in order to be able to say "our concepts have inexact instead of exact boundaries," he would have to already know what having exact boundaries mean. That is exactly what his investigation is about. That is, it is not something he takes himself to be in a position to assume. §88 is among other things about investigating the (grammar of the) word "exact." And what Wittgenstein wants to signal is not that we are mistaken about something (that we took our concepts to have one kind of boundaries, whereas they have another), but that we have a fantasy of something—a fantasy of exactness. And he is not saying that exactness is itself a fantasy. Rather, there are fantastic notions of exactness, and realistic notions. To get at the realistic notions, he suggests, we need to look. We will tend to keep reaching for fantastic notions as long as we don't look. And this is exactly what Wittgenstein is doing. In §88 we see Wittgenstein in the process of looking. And as a consequence, he is not there in a position to deny anything--to deny exactness to our concepts. In effect, by remarking that theology is grammar, [Wittgenstein] is reminding us that it is only by listening to what we say about God (what has been said for many generations), and to how what is said about God ties in with what we say and do in innumerable other connections, that we have any chance of understanding what we mean when we speak of God. (Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein, 147-8)
Theology is grammar. Theologians are grammarians. And according to Kerr religion has its ground in religious practices but also in life, in experience. Grammar has friction with life. He has in mind things like wonder at a flower say, or everyday rituals with people we know, or being moved emotionally by sacrifice. Looking at these, we can see religion in an inchoate form. To understand religion, according to this, we need to follow the Wittgenstein of PI §107, and go back to the “rough ground” of our practices and life. But how sturdy is the rough ground here? Compare ‘God’ with other words, ‘red,’ or ‘child,’ or ‘education.’ In many cases, we have a natural sense of—a feel for—what we need words for: what we need those words for. We have a sense of the reality of what we are talking about—that red is darker than yellow, that thirteen year old is still too young for certain things, that before learning modal logic we need to learn propositional calculus. That's the kind of friction grammar has with life. When it comes to 'God,' on the other hand, unless we simply accept the dictates of culture and of religious practices and follow them blindly, what ground is there for answering questions like: “How many hands does God have?” or even "Does God exist?" What is limiting us? What is guiding us? – There is a sense in which in theology we are making commitments in darkness. If theology is indeed grammar as Luther says, then it is grammar with a strange and different kind of friction with life. Religious language can be taken to capture a certain friction we have with life; that's how Kerr thinks of it. But--and this is how it is strange and different--it also captures our failure to handle certain things in life--to fathom our friction with life. (This can be happy failure.) And that is not reflected well at all in what Kerr says. So Wittgenstein says: "Convincing someone of God's existence" is something you might do by means of a certain upbringing, shaping his life in such & such a way. Life can educate you to "believing in God". (CV, 97) But we can also say: Sometimes, what convinces people of the existence of God is rather the refusal of life to take a shape. -- I don't think this is meant to be excluded by what Wittgenstein says in the quotation above. But it can seem to be in tension with what Wittgenstein says, and it will not be the kind of thing that we will tend to notice as a religious attitude if we follow Kerr. We connect God and life—our life. We say God is a "father" and a "legislator." We find certain comparisons more natural than others. We settle on certain pictures of God, and of our relation to him: We look up to see God. We pray with our heads down. These are pictures—pictures that are natural to us. And this reflects a tendency, or a wish, to find a root for God in human life—in us. But how indicative are these pictures of the grammar of “God”? Might it, for instance, only indicate its grammar in our culture? Could we not, for instance, imagine people who always closed their eyes when speaking about God, or for whom praying involved running, or spinning in place? Or for whom God was not a father, but a sea or a mountain, or a rainbow? And there is even a bigger concern: For like a shadow alongside these pictures we use, there is the idea, the worry, that any image or picture we can think of will be false--that any such image will be an image of us, not Him. No such picture can really tell us what God is like. Take again the idea that life can educate us to believe in God. What in life generates, and justifies, talk about God? There are two opposing tendencies here. One is the tendency to connect God to certain things in life, e.g. morality. Morality, which inclines towards absoluteness, makes an appearance in our life. We might accordingly want to say, for instance, that we can see God through the moral law. As opposed to that there is the tendency that comes from the idea that if God is worthy of the name, then He has nothing to do with OUR lives. We may accordingly think of God as the absolute Other, for instance. This is visible in the Gospels’ detachment of life from God; and it is visible also in Kierkegaard’s separation of God from morality. And following this second tendency, grammar in theology is not like other kinds of grammar. In that sense, in theology there is no “rough ground” to go back to (unless this itself is taken to be a patch of rough ground). I am not saying that there is necessarily something wrong with using pictures in talking about God. (That we do use them may be thought of together with the idea of us as fallen; but fallen does not mean evil.) Absent a better alternative, we are stuck with pictures. And this is not in itself a sin (although it can become idolatry). And realizing this gives a sense in which these pictures we use are provisional, and uncertain. They are culturally accepted, and we make do with them. But we also have the nagging sense that they are at a distance from the real grammar of “God,” that they are only placeholders we use until the real grammar is clarified, and that we do not have to be too invested in them (although people often are). In theology words are never quite “at home.” In other words: in one sense, the grammatical investigation in theology always ends up in failure; and that’s a grammatical remark. The failure is of the essence of theology. Only God can really do theology. So Wittgenstein says: Religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has disintegrated. Now do I understand this teaching?--Of course I understand it--I can imagine plenty of things in connexion with it. And haven't pictures of these things been painted? And why should such a picture be only an imperfect rendering of the spoken doctrine? Why should it not do the same service as the words? And it is the service which is the point. (PI p. 178) But, again, we can also say: I understand it alright when they say that the soul can exist without the body; but understanding in this case is not a matter of being satisfied. I know (am committed to) that I need something better than the representations I have. In this sense, the idea of a perfect representation of the doctrine is a riddle. -- Again, I think it is better not to read Wittgenstein as excluding this attitude. Theology, in one sense, is not the study of the grammar of a certain language game; it is rather the search for a language game--the waiting for a language game. At its best, theology is a form of prayer. Pain insults. Watch a toddler scrapping their knee, the expression of shock on their face (adults hide it). First there is a long silence of surprise—a full moment out of time. For a moment the toddler is one with their pain. They are in pain. Their eyes are glazed, turned outside-in. Amazed. Mesmerized. Taken aback. Thrown beyond voice, beyond breath. From the outside it looks as if they are lost. You watch. Your vision is tunneled, but it hits a wall. Pain shoulders the kid into a private shell. Briefly, there is a metaphysical divide between you and them. You are forced to wait. Then their mind starts reemerging. First, a silent hint of wonder on their face at what happened to the fabric of life. Almost intellectual: ‘Is it part of the normal?’ Perhaps you hope for a minute to make them and you believe it is play—cut the edge off, shift things, contextualize, and take their mind off the pain. But mostly this won’t work. Quickly, their eyes take the form of another question: “Why did this happen to me?!” “Why was this permitted?” “Why did the world do that to me?” Affronted by the whole world. And you can see the insult fully formulated even in the eyes of babies who don’t speak yet, newborns even. When the toddler regains their eyesight, they look around—your worried face included. (Not that they notice your worry, or the fact that you’re not breathing.) They don’t know the way back, the way to breathe again. The silence is now frantic. It is going to collapse at any moment. You are not going to be able to find the way back for them. And although the pain may by now be only memory, it is corporeal knowledge. The offense is real. And it quickly surges up and bubbles up inside of them and boils over, audibly shrills itself out—makes a physical appearance in the world. In the very first seconds it is not the voice of a toddler; it is through them, but not of them. It is the voice of pain, of meaninglessness, the voice of something breaking its way out. Since it’s out, life soon takes over, and you start recognizing the toddler’s voice in the sobbing. A few mumbled words perhaps. Their body clinging to yours. Ends meet. The pain becomes mere sensation. The wall between you and them dissolves. They are back.
‘At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be don’t to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.’ - Simone Weil, from “Human Personality” '[…] philosophers often overlook precisely those features of our experience that could make it clear why and in what contexts the privacy of pain is important to us.' 'If we understand the experience of pain only as the having of a pain, we cannot understand how a person can be bewildered, fragmented, set adrift by the onset of pain for which no other experience in life prepared him.' 'We speak of a pain-language adequate to our ordinary needs. But there are occasions that test that language, as well as our understanding.' - Karen Fiser, from “Privacy and Pain” ‘Wednesday is fat’ is for me a dead-end. I confess that I can’t use it. But, and this is what’s important for my current purpose, I can’t even make a secondary use of this expression. For me it is not secondary sense; it is just nonsense.
My general point can be put this way: The expression by itself is not secondary; it is the USE that might be secondary—if only one could use it this way. I think many people are like me in this regard and unlike Wittgenstein. I don’t know how to work with the fat Wednesday lean Tuesday example; Wittgenstein was apparently able to. And I think that this is partly why most people think that secondary uses are linguistic dead-ends. Wittgenstein’s choice of fat Wednesday as his primary example in the discussion about secondary sense does disservice to his discussion. If I’m right, when people read Wittgenstein’s discussion of secondary sense, they tend to miss its point. And that’s because what grabs their attention in this discussion is the dead-end (which they can see) and not the use (which they can’t). They have the expression—“fat Wednesday”—they know it must be a secondary use (because Wittgenstein said so), they realize that they have no idea what to do with it, and they accept that to some people the expression is natural. They think that those people too have no use for the expression—that for them too it is a linguistic dead end—and they think that the only difference between them and those other people is that the latter find the expression natural and they don’t. They end up identifying the secondary-senseness of the example with its dead-endness. They come to think that this is the defining thing about secondary senses in general: that they are linguistic dead ends. But this is not right at all. People just THINK they have an example of secondary use when they mention ‘Wednesday is fat’; but most people actually don’t. An expression is not an example of secondary sense for you if you don’t know how to make a secondary use of the expression. If that’s right, we need another example to work with. One suggestion (also taken from Wittgenstein, so it has that seal of approval) is ‘e is lighter than o’ (BB 139). Here, many people do have the inclination to say that. They will even be able to sort the other vowels from light to dark. That is, they do know how to make a secondary use of that expression, and in this sense it is not a linguistic dead-end for them. (Another example that seems to work for most is the fitting of names to faces. Many people know how to argue about this.) Instead of linguistic dead endness, therefore, I take the defining feature of secondary uses to be that they are detached from the regular technique of using the relevant words, and from the regular array of interests that we express using those words. The use of ‘lighter’ and ‘darker’ in ‘e is lighter than o’ is in a way extracted from the normal pattern of applications, cut off from the typical pool of reasons we have for calling upon these words. Secondary uses are not linguistic dead-ends, they are more like alleyways that run parallel to the main road, shadow it, draw on it, nourish from it, but never quite run into it. I’m grateful to Ed Dain for the discussion I’ve recently had a Facebook debate with Oskari Kuusela about religion. The trigger for the debate was a brilliant cartoon by Paul Noth published in The New Yorker, which Oskari shared. The brilliance of the cartoon—I think—is that it can be taken to show how silly religion is, but at the same time how deep religion is. Oskari’s gut reaction was the former, mine was the latter. His tendency was to say that he is nothing like the people in the cartoon; I was struck by how much I’m like them.
The cartoon thus suggests a question about our ways of finding things meaningful and manners of caring about them. It calls upon us to re-appreciate what we care about—to find the dimension in which we care about things. It suggests that it may take time and will to find things meaningful and deep, it concerns the tendency sometimes to find the deepest things trivial, and thus shows how hard it might be to get someone to appreciate the meaning of things (sometimes to get ourselves to do so). It forces us to think about the nature of importance itself, and about the very nature of meaning. And it taints it all with a worry that the most important things can be invisible, that we might be meaning-blind, and that the most meaningful things can have the aspect of nonsense. I have said very little explicit about religion. I've talked about meaning. But the connection between religion and meaning seems to me a useful connection to make. I would understand, for example, someone who said "God is meaning," or "To see the symbol in a sign (or form in matter, or action in movement...) is to get a glimpse of God." And I would understand someone whose goal in life was to discover as much meaning in his life as they can: their relations, their job, their bodies, their thoughts. So I take all these questions about meaning that I said the cartoon raises to also be questions about religion. Which is more interesting: to suppose that the people in the cartoon see that the flags have the same ambiguous picture on them, or to suppose that they don’t? What must the man be called, who cannot understand the concept 'God,' cannot see how a reasonable man may use this word seriously? Are we to say he suffers from some blindness?
- Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology I, §213 The word ‘problem’ can be meant in two ways. To say of something that it is a problem can mean something negative. But it can also mean that it is something to take an interest in.
When Wittgenstein talks of “the problem of life” (TLP 6.52, and later in 1930, CV 6), or when he talks in 1937 of “the problem you see in life” (CV 37), and again when he talks in 1948 of “the problems of life” (CV 84), it seems he primarily has the first, negative, use of ‘problem’ in mind. The question is whether he also has the second: Does he want to say that life is not something to take an interest in, or that there is some difficulty therein? Unappealing as this might sound, there is a reason for ascribing such a view to Wittgenstein: Talk of taking an interest in life doesn’t seem to mean anything clear—except perhaps in some figurative sense; for life is not another thing in life. Interest in life as a whole is at the very least a very different kind of interest than an interest in things in life, say, a career path, or a family, or a candy. Interest in the whole seems to have no frame of reference—no possible frame. So the idea is that the very notion that we can take an interest in life as a whole if taken too seriously may be taken to show a kind of logical confusion—a kind of problem in the first sense of the term. Another related reason for ascribing that view to Wittgenstein, namely that life is not something to take an interest in, is his idea that the problems of philosophy and the problems of ethics are formally similar—at least in the kind of solution they require: Both kinds of problems according to Wittgenstein—early and late—are not so much to be solved, as dissolved. When solved, they simply disappear as if never existed; and the way to get there is not by way of learning something new, but by clarifying what we already know. So the idea is that there is thus no room for an interest in life, as there is no room for an interest in metaphysics. A problem with that view—the view that life is not something to take an interest in, whether it was Wittgenstein’s or not—is that it doesn’t take note of an important difference between the problems of philosophy and the problems of ethics. Despite the important similarities between them, when it comes to ethics, the fact that the realization that this attitude we take towards life as a whole is very different from other kinds of attitude does not have a tendency to diminish our inclination to take such an attitude--to take an interest in life; and similarly with the realization that this attitude can only be spoken of figuratively. Logical-grammatical clarity here doesn’t obliterate the inclination, or the sense that it is actually important to be interested in life. And in this ethics is different from metaphysics: Unlike metaphysics, ethical running against the boundaries of language (here in the form of taking an intrest in life) has a tendency to retain its respectfulness even after grammatical clarity has been achieved. Metaphysics on the other hand simply vanishes. (I learned this distinction from Cora Diamond’s “Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,” especially p. 165.) Arguably, Wittgenstein expresses such insight when he says, concluding the Lecture on Ethics:
Despite their similarity, therefore, ethical problems are unlike philosophical problems. One question that remains: Would this leave room for saying, with Wittgenstein, that the solution to the problems of life are in their dissolution? Would the idea that we keep wanting to talk of an interest in life even after we have realized it is so very different, logically different qua ‘interest,’ from other kinds of interest, and even after we are clear that there might not be room for it to have the logic, the grammar, of ‘interest’ in the first place—would this idea square with talk of the vanishing of the problems? Can the language of something remaining be reconciled with the language of disappearing? I think so; the dissolution of ethical problems would just not be exactly what it is for philosophical problems. My suggestion then is this: in solving philosophical problems we typically give up on an imagined point of view. The (dis)solution is achieved by a return to the ordinary. So far the suggestion is in line with the alternative view discussed above. However, in contrast to that view above, the suggestion I’m making now is that in (dis)solving moral problems we don’t simply return to the ordinary. The inclination to take that attitude towards the whole from the point of view of eternity remains; but it changes. The (dis)solution is achieved by a change of attitude, rather than by the disappearance of the illusion of an attitude. So, for example, an unhappy attitude may give way to a happy attitude—one attitude to life as a whole which sees life as something broken and wretched is thereby replaced by another loving attitude (all the while understanding itself as an attitude to life as a whole, and accepting the logical strangeness involved). It is still an attitude towards life as a whole—it is still a kind of running against the boundaries of language. But from this new perspective, which logically speaking is still very strange qua perspective, the problems that come with unhappiness disappear. I’m inclined to think of it this way: the dissolution of the problems of philosophy is formally similar to the dissolution of the problems of ethics, not because they are the same kinds of problems, but because, or to the extent that, the former is a metaphor for the latter. All too often a student in class would struggle to say something and then say: “It was very clear in my mind before I tried to say it.”
I’m torn between two reactions: On the one hand I want to say: ‘If you can’t put it clearly in words, you only have the illusion of having it clearly in your mind.” But on the other hand I want to say: ‘You are right! – This is exactly what it is like to do philosophy: to struggle to say what seems impossible to say. In philosophy there is no saying things as a matter-of-course.’ (The hardness to say certain things as part of their grammar.) - By taking the text to highlight a feature in (an already familiar) reality, and have an application to it—a moral. The relevant features of reality will be taken to be recognizable independently from the text. The text will be taken to have a definite meaning, perhaps one that is yet to be fully uncovered.
- By testing how well concepts from (what we take to be) our reality are fit to capture what’s in the text. Like testing tools by working with them. The very meaningfulness of the text will thus be questioned (for the concepts might not fit), but also the very effectiveness of our concepts, and thus our notion of reality (since what notion do we have of it apart from our concepts?). It'll open more questions than it will answer. Take Kafka’s “Report for an Academy,” for example. We can ask: Is this an allegory—say for colonialism? – Kafka’s story is thus treated in the first way. It draws attention to the reality of colonialism, and redescribes it in such a way as to make us more attentive to what is involved. On the other hand, we may ask: What notions do we have in our language to capture the distance between what the monkey was and what he has become? Is the Monkey’s ordeal like the ordeal of a teenager whose parents got divorced? Or like that of going through a forced sex-change operation? Or like trying to explain what it is like suffering clinical depression? Or then again, is it like the ordeal of getting kidnapped from one’s homeland and being slaved elsewhere? Do we have ready-made language for describing what happens to him? And what does that say about our concepts’ capacity to deal with distances--mental, spiritual--in our reality? To DO the history of philosophy means to take the great philosophers (it’s your choice who they might be) and interpret them—but in a special sense of interpret. It involves trusting them: trusting that their view coheres, that it may cohere beyond what you can at the moment realize or even imagine, and that when you finally realize the coherence in their position you will have learnt something new: you will have seen a different way to think; you will have studied the history of philosophy.
As opposed to that there is the practice of accepting a contemporary framework for a matter at hand—a map of possible views—and trying to place a philosopher on it. This is another idea of what interpreting a philosopher might be. But arguably that doesn’t give the philosopher a chance to teach a different framework—to be great. And this may lead to the notion that there really aren’t any great philosophers (except perhaps in the sense that some have better reputation), and that the history of philosophy is redundant. I’ve been thinking about this, having read the beginning of Richard Moran’s and Martin Stone’s “Anscombe on Expression of Intention: An Exegesis.” They find what they present as a problem for readers of Anscombe. They say those readers don’t have a reading of Anscombe that makes her view plausible (p. 42-3). But saying there is such a problem for those readers fails to acknowledge how disparaging these readers are towards the practice of the history of philosophy: As Moran and Stone realize, these readers are already reading Anscombe without Thomas or Wittgenstein. And this already indicates their unwillingness to DO history of philosophy. – But if so, then these readers are not going to start with Anscombe. Having discovered the implausibility, their response is likely to simply be: “She’s confused here.” They are not going to take her as a philosopher to interpret—interpret in the sense of trusting her, and working to show how her views cohere. And if that seems as if they are unwilling to learn from Anscombe—to really learn—then that’s right. They are probably unwilling. I’m not sure this is a criticism of Moran and Stone. I’m not sure what can possibly be done to get philosophers to DO the history of philosophy—to engage in an activity they don’t seem to see. In the previous post I described a philosophical movement, which proceeds not by answering questions but rather by asking questions about one’s philosophical questions—by moving backwards. (Is it just one kind or genre of philosophy?) I want now to discuss some of the details of that movement. Specifically, I want to describe two stages in that backward movement.
Let me begin by asking: supposing that we are willing to move backward, what question should we ask about our philosophical questions? What would be useful, helpful? One sort of questions that might be helpful to ask are questions that would help us to clarify the terms of the original question. I believe that in many cases, philosophical questions originate in unclarity about criteria (I mean what Stanley Cavell calls criteria). That is, roughly, when a philosopher is asking about X, e.g. about the possibility of rule following, all too often, the reason they have that question in the first place is at least partly because they are not clear about the terms of the original question: e.g. what following a rule is (or what comes to the same thing, what rules are). So in philosophy we often find ourselves in the strange but typical (typical for philosophy) situation of asking about X without being clear what X is, and without realizing that we aren’t clear. – A movement backward is called for: questions that would clarify the terms of our original question. This can be applied to many philosophical discussions. For instance, suppose we are asking about the possibility of altruism. In dealing with this question, the philosophy of moving backward would ask for example: But what is altruism in the first place? What would altruism entail? And what would selfishness entail? How does one know what is in their interest? How does one distinguish between what is in their interest and what is in others’ interest? Is the distinction always clear? Does it always exist even? Can we have interest in complete abstraction from others having interests? In what ways do our interests connect with others’ interest? If a mother protects her son, for example, is she doing it for herself, or for the son? Must there be an either-or here? And is it right to say alternatively that it is both? Or perhaps they are rather like the hand and the mouth, regarding which it would be strange to ask: “When the hand feeds the mouth, does it do it for itself, or for the sake of the mouth?” In this case, we should rather talk of an undividable mother-son interest unit—atom—without notionally separating the interest of the mother from those of the son. Would that be a more adequate description of things? – Questions like these would not answer the original question; they would presumably only help to clarify what we are asking about. They serve as it were a preparatory role: they lay the ground or make sure the ground is laid, for the original question. Without answering them, we don’t quite yet have—are not quite in possession of—our original question. At the same time, answering them might very well change our original question, or even undermine it. As Cavell says, “A formidable criticism of [any serious philosophy] will have to discover and alter its understanding of itself” (CR, 38). Now, in the previous post, I gave an example of backwards moving philosophy from Wittgenstein: “How can one follow a rule?” That is what I should like to ask. But how does it come about that I want to ask that, when after all I find no kind of difficulty in following a rule? (Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics VI §38) Wittgenstein here is not asking a question of the backward-moving type I suggested we should ask. Or at least he doesn’t seem to be asking that sort of question. He is not obviously asking about criteria. – Am I being unfaithful to Wittgenstein, then? Or rather, is there more here to learn from Wittgenstein? I don’t think what I’ve been suggesting is not Wittgensteinian (that is, learnt from Wittgenstein). But I think there is more to learn from him here. Specifically, I think he is going a step beyond what I’ve been suggesting so far, moving further back. That is, I think what I’ve been suggesting so far regarding that unclarity about the criteria is compacted in what he is saying. But as usual with Wittgenstein, there is more that is compacted in what he is saying. This is what I want to suggest: The question Wittgenstein asks gives us a sense what it would take to answer the sort of questions I proposed we should ask—the questions about the original question. It is in this sense that his is moving further back. So—to take stock—there is (1) the original question; and then there are (2) those questions I mentioned about the question—questions that ask for clarification of the terms of the original question. But now there is (3) a third layer and a further question: ‘What would it take to answer those criteria-questions—to clarify the terms of the original question?’ and I think this is where Wittgenstein’s question lies. That is, he is tentatively suggesting—offering as something he realizes he has been taking for granted, but is now willing to question—that the terms of the original question are clear in the life with those terms; and that presumably if we have a question that requires clarifying those terms, then this is where we should go back. So, I propose, Wittgenstein is saying something like this: ‘But how is it even possible that I should have this question? If I have this question, this indicates the possibility that I’m unclear about the terms of the question. But how can I be unclear about those terms when in my life with those terms I have no unclarity? Is it that I am now in need for a different sort of clarity—a clarity that is not “in-life” clarity? What would that other sort of clarity be like? ’ Putting us at this distance from our original question does not simply return us to our original question; but in a way it does bring us full circle: It prompts us to attempt to recast our question, but this time in full view of the philosophical stance from which we ask it. It keeps us sensitive, with an ear to the kind of clarity we seek. Lest we end up without noticing with an answer, but of the wrong type. And to a large extent this was indeed the purpose of all this backward moving: to allow us to see where and with what needs we are asking, to allow for a philosophy that recognizes itself for what it is. In philosophy, one often moves backwards. That is, instead of answering questions, one is asking questions about the original questions—e.g. about their origins. Like this:
“How can one follow a rule?” That is what I should like to ask. But how does it come about that I want to ask that, when after all I find no kind of difficulty in following a rule? (Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics VI §38) Why is that? – I think it is because philosophical problems are not like other problems; that is, in philosophy we often cannot trust that we know the source of our own difficulty. The philosophical question phrase, e.g. “How can one follow a rule?” typically has no clear context, i.e. motivation. To understand it better, to understand ourselves better, we need to situate our question. We need to recover the source of the disquiet—e.g. our expectations. (This is a kind of context principle, I guess.) Although it will typically not be apparent to us that we need to do that. And saying: “What’s the problem? I just want to know how one can follow rules. Is that too much to ask?” involves a kind of evasion of philosophy. And what will happen to our questions when we move backwards? – We may find that they change, or that they take new aspects, or even dissolve (like shapes when moved from one background to another). What will happen is unexpected. And this is because our heads are turned in the other direction—not in the direction of the source of our disquiet. We don’t see where we are moving when we move backwards. It strikes me that it is typical for things to be hidden in philosophy in this way. Does this stand in contrast to their being hidden by being right under our nose? Last month I was asked to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at a local Quaker meeting. For what its worth, this is a version what I read:
What I’m about to share is not so much a personal journey, but some thoughts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I come from Israel, born and raised there, and lived there until I was about 28, when together with my wife, Dafi, I went to Oxford to do a PhD in philosophy. I later got a position as a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, where I spent a year, and then taught at Auburn University in Alabama for four years, before I came to Lexington two years ago to teach philosophy for VMI. I feel very much Israeli—I live in Hebrew, listen to Israeli radio, and watch Israeli TV. But historically speaking, Israel is a very recent thing. Israel became an independents country only after WW2, in 1948. And even though it may feel to me as if Israel was always there, my ancestors all come from different places. Only one of my grandparents was actually born in the territory that is today called “Israel”—that’s my father’s father. My mother’s father immigrated alone to what then was Palestine right before WW2. He lost his entire family to the Nazis. His wife, my mother’s mother, was captured in France, and was about to be sent to Auschwitz as a Jew, but because she happened to be a British citizen, they managed to exchange her at the last moment for some German Templars who were captured by the British forces in Palestine, and saved her life. My father’s mother immigrated to Palestine when she was a toddler in the 20’s from Persia, today Iran. They made most of the way on the backs of donkeys.
So I have little to say that is about the facts—little of substance. What I think I can do, for what it’s worth, is to draw attention to the importance of what the two people tell themselves—even as these stories are contaminated by ideologies and fear. These stories, contaminated as they are I think, are important—because they tell us how the imagination of the people is shaped. It tells us, that is, not what the facts are, but what people tend to make of the facts. And that too is important. Rosenzweig:
[…] God’s image in us is only individual traits, only momentary actualities. That’s how the anthropomorphisms of the Bible are. God has a nose, eyes, ears, everything one wants, He cries, pleads, repents, anything one wants, but always only from instance to instance, always only when something in man is to be created in God’s image. He never has two attributes at the same time—that would already be form. Always only one after the other, always only “attributes of action” (Qualities are simultaneous, actions one after the other). - “The Science of God” […] in each case God dispatches none of his messengers with more than one message. - “A Note on Anthropomorphisms” Wittgenstein: I should like to say that what dawns here lasts only as long as I am occupied with the object in a particular way . . . Ask yourself ‘For how long am I struck by a thing?’ – For how long do I find it new. - Philosophical Investigations The likeness makes a striking impression on me; then the impression fades . . . It only struck me for a few minutes, and then no longer did. - Philosophical Investigations It is as if the aspect were something that only dawns, but does not remain; and yet this must be a conceptual remark, not a psychological one. - Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology Coetzee […] and while I do think—or do have intimations—that there is something 'beyond' the self or "larger than" the self, I don't know that one can actually get there or stay there for long. The Wordsworthian term 'intimations' seems to me about as far as one can go: for an instant the veil opens and one has a flash of insight: then it closes again. - ““Nevertheless, My Sympathies Are with the Karamazovs”” A deliberate or anxiously surreptitious attempt to persuade usually removes a work to a more superficial level.
In general I am reluctant to say that the deep structure of any good literary work could be a philosophical one. I think this is not just a verbal point. The unconscious mind is not a philosopher. For better or worse art goes deeper than philosophy. - Murdoch, “Literature and Philosophy,” 17, 19 If only you do not try to utter what is unutterable, then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in what has been uttered. - Wittgenstein, in a letter to Paul Engelmann, September 4, 1917 (I hesitate to put those quotations alongside each other. They can be taken to say similar things. But there is a lot of room for different ideas here that only sound similar--for agreement under the guise of disagreement, and (more often) for disagreement under the guise of agreement. There is a cloud of unclarity here for me.) A deep motive for making literature or art of any sort is the desire to defeat the formlessness of the world and cheer oneself up by constructing forms out of what might otherwise seem a mass of senseless rubble. [...] Philosophy [...] too is an eliciting of form from muddle.
- Iris Murdoch, “Literature and Philosophy,” 7 And I know what the look means because I feel it myself—recognition. The pleasure of recognition, of a bit of rescue-work, so to speak, rescuing the formless into form. Another bit of chaos rescued and “named.” Do you know how you smile when I “name” something? It’s as if you’d just saved someone from drowning. And I know the feeling. It’s joy. - Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook, 440 I recently finished a book by Wendell Berry--The Memory of Old Jack. A friend of mine lent it to me, and said: "Read this, and you'll know me."
Turns out Berry writes essays too. This essay is ripe with many things. Here is one: The sense of the verb “to imagine” contains the full richness of the verb “to see.” To imagine is to see most clearly, familiarly, and understandingly with the eyes, but also to see inwardly, with “the mind’s eye.” It is to see, not passively, but with a force of vision and even with visionary force. To take it seriously we must give up at once any notion that imagination is disconnected from reality or truth or knowledge. It has nothing to do either with clever imitation of appearances or with “dreaming up.” It does not depend upon one’s attitude or point of view, but grasps securely the qualities of things seen or envisioned. I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy. |
See my
Academia.edu page Previous Notes Excluded Middle Moral Clarification The Will in the Tractatus Morality and Creation Moral Skepticism Understanding language and understanding music - The unity of a sentence, and the unity of a salad In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense (2) Another way of using nonsense Ethics as an Aspect of Philosophy - In what sense is there an ethical point to the Tractatus Interpretation as finding a way to say what the writer does - the Tractatus for example In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense Art is a matter of use - two claims, and a thought about the relation to ethics Both Aspects at the Same Time - in connection with Wittgenstein's early views on ethics Thinking and Willing Subjects in the Tractatus Two notions of "Family Resemblance" and a relation to Aspect-Perception The experience of thinking The Figurative and the Literal: two kinds of picturing: making reality thinkable What’s the Point of Figurative Language? ‘Juliet is the sun’ again – What kind of metaphor is it? Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Irresoluteness Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Examples Wrestling with Nonsense—A Protest: Absolute Senses, Secondary Senses, Gulfs between People, Difficulties of Reality, and Philosophy. What’s so bad about pain? Between Romantics and Anatomy: Religion and Pornography in Hanoch Levin The transcendence of ethics – two views Pain as form of behavior and pain as private object Archives
November 2019
-
Blogroll Kelly Jolley - Quantum Est In Rebus Inane Duncan Richter - Language Goes on Holiday Matt Pianalto - Problems of Life Ben Pierce - Expensive Coffee Lars Hertzberg - Language is things we do Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Talk about the Occupied Territories Hans Sluga Blog Mists on the Riverss - Ed Mooney Tags
All
|