A Question for Anyone With an Answer to Share

Is it necessarily a good thing that analytic philosophy often does away with the idea of studying the work of one philosopher (with the exception of Kant, who is not explicitly analytic anyway) and instead lays the focus purely on "philosophy of x"? When I saw that we were working through Frege's systematisation of language and not just doing "philosophy of language" I felt more inclined and motivated to do it whilst seeing it along with its origins of a man at a time and a place. I feel it enables seeing the philosophy in its proper significance, not seeing it as an ever-present "thing" alongside other things in the world, but as a relation to things grounded in a historic way of being (which in its historicity must be rethought in terms of modes of being which are possible today). What do you think?

On Heidegger: Being and Language

I

“The Is-ness”

A consideration of language will help us to grasp a little about what Heidegger means when he talks about the being (Sein) of beings (Seindes) which is not itself a being (the difference between the two he calls "the ontological difference"). With language there are terms which meaning is determined by the context in which they are uttered. To take an example, the word “root” has many different senses and referents. When we talk of the roots of rock music and the roots of the Cold War we are using the term in the same sense (used to refer to the anterior conditions leading up to the occurrence of some-thing) but the referents are different. When we use the term root to refer to the roots of a plant, we utter the word in a different sense altogether.

It’s easy to imagine how the contexts in which those words are uttered determine their meaning. If you’re reading an old Hendrix interview in which they’re discussing rock music, and “the roots” are referred to, the context in which the word is uttered will make its meaning obvious. And if you’re out chopping down trees for fire wood somewhere, the context in which the same word is uttered will render its meaning. So both the sense and the referent of the word can be determined by its context.

What words like “root” and “can” and “model” have in common is that they are “filled up” by beings. They have a meaning insofar as they have beings to refer to explicitly, and at any given point in history those meanings are taken to refer to a determined selection of beings. This isn’t to say that the meanings of those words are frozen and can never change, though! Rather it simply means that at any given point in history the meanings of those words must be tethered to some being (Seindes) or beings as without some familiar order language could not function at all.

But terms such as “am”, “are”, “is”, “was”, “will be”, “were”, and so on, are not tethered to beings in this way at all. These are terms which refer to the being (Sein) of beings, and not to beings themselves. Magda King writes that the “is” and the “am” cannot be derived from beings themselves, but must already exist in the understanding in order for us to catch sight of the “is” which is within beings. This is a little tricky to see at first, so a few examples will help illustrate King’s point.

The first thing to keep in mind is Heidegger’s insistence that being (Sein) is not a being (Seindes). If being is not itself a being, but rather that against which beings are revealed in their being, then being cannot be a being as there would be no possibility of encountering beings in the first place. Heidegger holds that in order for things to be intelligible they must be encountered against a horizon (or background) through which their qualities may be discovered as meaningful properties. Magda King’s own example is of Aristotle’s understanding of being as substantiality. When the being of beings is understand as substantiality, beings themselves may demonstrate their being (and therefore be understood) in terms of what is “brought forwards” by our a priori* understanding of substantiality. Which means that the being (Seindes) encountered will be in a position to display its being as substance, where its properties of extension, mass, solidity, etc, can make sense (i.e. have meaning).

To give a demonstration by analogy, we cannot build up categories such as mass, extension, solidity, and so on without first determining beings as substance. We cannot “leap ahead” into beings and discover these categories without first understanding their being (Sein) as substance. The categories through which we understand beings in the substantiality are dependent upon a prior grasping of being (Sein) as substance. We must first lay the grounds for enquiry bare before we can engage in any further discovery in the area. The natural sciences, after all, require foundational principles in order for them to conduct their a posteriori investigations on that basis.

To return to the point at hand, terms like those mentioned above cannot be understood by reference to specific beings, but must rather be taken to indicate being (Sein) itself. While the “is-ness” inheres in all beings we can encounter, without first having an understanding of the “is” we cannot hope to discover it in beings just as we cannot hope to derive categories of matter without a previous understanding the first-principles of matter. As the word “is” refers not to any particular being, but rather the being of beings it follows that we must have an understanding of being before we can understand beings at all. As King points out, without terms in the region of “is” and “am” our language would not be able to refer to anything and therefore could not function.

II

A Possible Objection from E-Prime

There is, however, a version of English which does away with any form of the indicative “to be”, which thereby includes in its dismissal terms of the kind mentioned above. Instead of saying “this burger is delicious”, a version of the same utterance in E-Prime could be expressed as “I really like this burger”. In this second part I’ll be discussing whether or not E-Prime provides a concrete counter-example to the ontological significance of the term “is”, as it is supposed by King and by proxy Heidegger himself.

What would perhaps initially stir Heidegger most about the use of E-Prime is the representationalism which is built into it. Without being able to say “is”, we are in a variety of contexts led to say “appears like”. So for example, instead of saying “the rose is red” we would say “the rose appears red”. In “Heidegger’s Realism in Being and Time” Gary Williams unpacks an argument against Kantian representationalism directly from Heidegger which will shed some light on the objection from E-Prime.

To summarise William’s discussion, he notes that Heidegger defines a phenomenon as “that which shows itself to us”. In Heidegger’s words:

“Phenomena are the totality of what lies in the light of day or can be brought to light – what the Greeks sometimes identified simply with [entities]”.

What is also noted is that a being may show itself as something which it is not. Hearing the tap dripping heavily on the stainless steel sink downstairs may resemble someone tapping on the window, or a cluster of stick insects may resemble a collection of snapped twigs. So there is a difference between a phenomenon and a semblance. However, as Williams spells out for us, only on the basis of showing itself as a phenomenon can something resemble anything else. Semblance, therefore, is ontologically dependent on the original showing of the phenomenon.

According to Williams, “there must already be a way for the representation to show itself as a representation of something else. This “something else” is nothing other than the original showing of the phenomenon”. He moves on to point out that the representationalist holds that we can know beings only through our grasping representations of them, that the phenomenon is “appearance” and not the thing in-itself (noumenon). But Heidegger believes he has found a problem with Kant’s formulation, and Williams draws our attention to the clue as to what this is:

“The Kantian must also say that within the phenomenal world of representation, there is another kind of representational activity, wherein something can show itself as something it is not.”

This is to say that the representationalist has to account for semblances of the kind named above, where the thing which is being shown as something else can be - by admission of both parties - accessed, unlike noumenal reality. Williams states that if the representationalist wants to be taken seriously they must thereby provide an account of semblances, and of the phenomenal-noumenal relationship. Towards this notion, Williams quotes directly from Heidegger again:

“Kant uses the term “appearance” in this twofold way. According to him “appearances” are, in the first place, the “objects of empirical intuition”: they are what shows itself in such intuition. But what thus shows itself (the “phenomenon” in the genuine primordial sense) is at the same time an “appearance” as an emanation of something which hides itself in that appearance – an emanation which announces.”

The idea is that behind the phenomenon (that which is presented) there is something which never presents itself, i.e. the noumenon. Yet the presence of the noumenon is nonetheless announced by the appearance of the (Kantian) phenomenon. To build into the phenomenon the notion of appearance begs the question. It assumes representationalism, rather than proving it. Williams this time quotes from William Blattner:

“The worry that phenomena are appearances and hence unsuited for use in ontology rests on the covert assumption of Indirect Representationalism, because only if we are thinking of phenomena as a surrogate for a transcendent reality will we be inclined to exclude phenomenology as a method for ontology. To charge phenomenology with studying appearances, rather than reality, is to load the concept of a phenomenon with representationalist baggage that neither Husserl nor Heidegger accepts.”

It won’t be necessary for our present purposes to tread any further in this direction, as we simply need to note that it is only by first catching sight of the “is” that anything can appear like anything else, and that this is so even if we are in fact representationalists (the purpose of this essay is not to give a verdict either way). The rose must be in order for it to “appear” red - the noumenon must always stand behind the phenomenon if we follow Kant and not Heidegger. E-Prime, therefore, tacitly makes use of the “is” of being and thus cannot stand as a counter-example against the fundamental disclosure of the “is” brought forward into language.

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* A priori in this context does not refer to something which is understood analytically, or something which is understood before any experience at all. Heidegger uses the term to mean the grounds for understanding something.

The Pre-Conditions of Rationality

I

A Vision of the Future Sent from the Past

Plato and his mentor Socrates have greatly influenced the world as it stands now. The very concept of the psyche and of mental health in general derives from their ancient investigations into virtue, and human nature itself. The Republic is a more mature work than the earlier dialogues in terms of an answer as to what virtue and human nature are. We are, they believed, rational beings, and as rational beings we naturally pursue what is good (it’s rational to pursue what is beneficial after all, right?) It is the passions which lead us to ruin, for all their contradiction and blind groping, by their light we experience an inner discord, and are pulled left and right towards different objects of that desire – sometimes yearning in different ways towards the same thing.

The project was, at least in principle, simple. Through use of the elenchus, Socrates would identify inconsistencies in the beliefs of those with whom he held discussions. By discovering contradictions he would identify inconsistent sets of beliefs and thereby learn something: that the things in these sets could not be true simultaneously. By identifying inconsistent beliefs they would reify the status of rationality over the passions – they would find an anchor of truth in amidst the chaos of yearning. In knowing what was right you would never go wrong, as pursuit of the good means you always do what you think or know to be right. Eventually you would have a working conception of the good sufficient for living a virtuous life, free from contradiction.

Plato abhorred the material world, taking his leave from Cratylus who said that as all things are in flux, knowledge of the material world was impossible. From this Plato decided that the only knowledge of any worth was unchanging knowledge, matters of pure intellect. Things such as justice and beauty, perceived as exercises in pure intellect, were set forward as paradigmatic examples of the unchanging Forms as they were not tampered by material effects. In this way Plato set out a conception of mental health which would echo through the millennia. It was through contemplation of these unchanging Forms that one would achieve perfect inner harmony. As the material world was worthless, so too was that part of the psyche which was attached to it: the passions. Rationality was to reign supreme, but was Plato’s vision dangerously misguided?

II

Rationality: the Supreme Principle?

When something is put on such a pedestal it arouses intrigue, especially from enquiring minds who wish to know what it is they’re signing up for when they sit down to listen to a wise man set up his design for life. It would be wise for those of us of a lesser mind than Plato and Socrates to ask what rationality is in the first place – so that’s what I will do. When I investigate my own rational decisions, the first thing I notice is that rationality is not a thing like desire in that it has no content of its own.

Desires are desires for something, and that something is the content of a desire - but rationality is empty. What do I mean by this? When we make a decision, we weigh up alternatives – should I go to class tomorrow or should I stay up late with friends tonight? How do we come to make a decision without a value which is attached to these ends and which rationality weighs up? Rationality cannot itself grant these values, for what would it appeal to in order to decide what end has which value without appeal to other values? And these without appeal to further values? And so on ad infinitum.

So what is it which grants the two ends their values? It is your ultimate aims and how they square with the situation you find yourself in. If you really ought to be in class tomorrow because you have an essay to be in on that topic in a few weeks time, then the value of showing up to class is charged with the necessity to do that essay (which is charged with the overall aim of doing well, which is charged perhaps with some life plan, etc). However, if your friend from home is going away for 12 months and this is the last time you will be able to see them, you will perhaps be urged more to seeing your friend than to going into class.

What we’re dealing with here is nothing other than desire. The need to do an essay and the need to see a friend are both ultimately tied to desires, whether it’s the desire to achieve a good grade, or the desire to spend time with your friend. Rationality itself can only deal with values which are already there - it cannot create values itself, and can only weigh such values up in relation to one another. Is it right to insist, therefore, that rationality ought to be the master of desires, as Plato suggests in the Republic? Is it not a necessary fact that the passions be the master of rationality? Indeed, rationality seems on this understanding to be a derivative form of the passions – ensuring that the passions which square most with one’s aims overcome all other passions. And these aims are themselves derived of the passions. But in what do these aims consist?

III

The Perspectival Condition

As we have seen, rationality itself is empty without values with which to quantify over – values which are themselves grounded in the passions. But what is it which grants values their power in the first place? I suggested that it is the existence of a life aim which is the rule by which passions are valued, and are as such dismissed or granted their ascent. I hold that these aims are the very condition of any intelligibility, as action could not make sense without a something for which those actions aim. To borrow an example from Julie Annas, let’s say our friend Mary buys a tennis racket. By itself this act is meaningless, devoid of significance – it comes to be a significant act (indeed an act at all) by virtue of an overall scheme into which the purchase makes sense. Mary buys the racket to play tennis, she plays tennis to keep fit, she keeps fit because she wants a long healthy life, she wants a long and healthy life because...

These ends could potentially go on forever, and Aristotle realised they have to have an end point somewhere. Everything must be done for the sake of something which, he believed, must be pursued for the sake of nothing else but itself (and so to put a stop to this potentially infinite regress of aims and ends). This won’t be the place to think about responding to this problem, suffice it to say the Aristotelian solution is not the only or even necessarily the most satisfactory solution. What we will do well to take from this, however, is that values are conferred upon desires and actions on the basis of how well they square with some end.

Now we can shed some light on Plato’s yearning towards a non-contradictory understanding of so-called immaterial Forms. The hope of having a body of perfect knowledge which permits of no fluctuation is disturbed when we consider how it is that we come to know things, and how these things are valued. If all ends aim at the good, we must see ideologies like Liberalism and Socialism and in pursuit of the very same thing, yet how is it that they come to conceive of the road to salvation in such different ways?

The aims of one are unintelligible in the context of the other. One places great emphasis on the primacy of individuals, the other on the primacy of society as a whole. The things which they value differ, the rational decisions they work through are quantifying over different values. One asks “is this good for the individual?” while the other asks “is this good for society as a whole?” It is plain that they are like apples and oranges, and that any dialogue between the two positions will have to take place at the most basic level. We must ask why the individual, and why the society?

But when we ask this we find ourselves at a stump. In order to evaluate things one must already have a standard by which to evaluate them. Asking whether a thing is good for the individual, or good for society as a whole is well and good – but how can we evaluate these things from an so-called “objective” perspective? As both ideologies seek for the advancement of separate things the hope of finding any common ground between them is hopelessly misguided. One must already be within a perspective in order to evaluate things – otherwise, without a standard by which to perform an evaluation, rational choice is impossible.

If everything here is in order it would seem that rationality itself requires one to already be in a perspective. One cannot begin outside of a perspective and buy their way in with rationality. A precondition of rational evaluation is to have values to quantify over and these are, as we have seen, perspectival. The hopes of having an objective body of values and the resultant unchanging knowledge of how to live the good life are, perhaps unsurprisingly, fraught with difficulties and, I would suggest, hopelessly misguided.

But what is the nature of these perspectives? My initial thoughts on the matter are that any hopes of having a kind of propositional knowledge regarding the disclosure of perspectives are also misguided. As these perspectives are themselves the condition of such knowledge it may be the case that knowing about them is impossible. How can we have this type of knowledge about something which is the precondition of our having knowledge at all? Before we are thinking subjects we are beings which find ourselves in a world – the perspectives we have are difficult to truly conceptualise because they are themselves the conditions of concepts.

Think, for example, about the concepts of commodity fetishism or the free market. Can these concepts make sense without a perspective? Would an alien be privy to their significance if the alien had no understanding of commerce? Certainly not, but it’s nonetheless true that not only liberals can understand the free market, and not only socialists can understand commodity fetishism. So there is a deeper perspective which both ideologies share, and through which they can understand the world, while not completely understanding why the other one chooses to respond in the way they do to it. What is this perspective? I would suggest that it is our understanding of our own being – the very notion of trade and commerce is intimately linked with our mode of being in the world and makes sense to us on this basis.

Dogs, for example, have no need of trade and commerce and so their mode of being does not reveal household items to them in this manner. They rather evaluate things in terms of comfort and deliciousness (this is not supposed to be a decisive list!) as the world which their mode of being discloses permits the subsequent discovery of such qualities in things.