Reflection 14
WE NEED A NEW LANGUAGE FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
I think that it is fair to say that almost every mainstream philosophical text aims at making statements: “That’s the way things are.” Examples are philosophical theories that attempt to state what knowledge is, or how the mind relates to the body, or what is justice, or how words attain meaning. These theories are composed of statements which seek to state what is true—about the world, about society, about beauty, about moral behavior, etc.
Thus, the discourse of Western philosophy centers on the goal of making statements. It is a discourse that consists of generalizations, arguments, counter-arguments, assumptions, inferences, explanations—and all theses are geared towards determining what is true (or false) about the topic in question.
It seems to me that for us, philosophical practitioners, this should be disconcerting. If we want philo-sophia to be a living practice and a way of life, then are we sure that the project of statement-making is relevant for us? Can we take it for granted that the search for wisdom has much in common with the search for true statements?
This is a crucial question. Because it opens the door to the possibility that the discourse found in traditional philosophy is very different from the discourse which we need in philosophical practice. The two may turn out to be as different from each other as the language of poetry and the language of science, as literature and literary criticism. In fact, it may turn out that the classical philosophical texts—which, after all, are focused on statement-making—are of no relevance for philosophical practice.
And indeed, several considerations suggest that statement-making discourse is not relevant for us:
First, making a statement (in a theory, for example) means offering an objective representation or ‘picture’ of the way things are; which means declaring a bottom line, a conclusion, an end-product. But if philosophical practice is supposedly an ongoing personal exploration in which we constantly grow and develop, then its language should be that of openness and not that of closure, of an ever-developing ‘melody’ and not of final statements. Life, like a melody, does not have a bottom line. If we want philo-sophia to be woven into everyday life, then philosophical ideas should be like notes in a piece of music: always leading to newer notes, never concluding with an end-result. But if so, then how can a final product, such as a theory by Descartes or Kant, be relevant for us?
In short, there seems to be a gap between philo-sophia as a personal process and way of life, and philosophy as a search for intellectual products (theories). If philosophical practice accepts from standard philosophy the role of statement-making, then its job becomes collecting and constructing statements (or theories) about life. This may be an interesting academic endeavor, but its focus is intellectual products and not the process of life.
One might reply that philosophical theories are nevertheless relevant to everyday life, because they can be used to illuminate concrete situations. Thus, a theory about the meaning of death, or about authenticity, or about love, can help us understand ourselves more deeply.
Here, a second consideration comes into the picture: If we expect philo-sophia to make an impact on our self-understanding by making statements, then we must be careful to use only those statements that are true. Obviously, if we want to develop our understanding, we don’t want to apply to ourselves a theory that is false.
However, if the value of a philosophy depends on the truth of its statements, then it is hard to see how any philosophy can be of much use. Because virtually no philosophical theory has ever been proved true, or even proved more likely than all its opponents. For every theory on a given topic, there are conflicting theories, and each of them has its own reasoning, merits, and popularity. How can we decide whether, for example, love is as Sartre analyzes it, or as Fromm analyzes it, or as Ortega y Gasset? To be sure, many philosophers have stubborn convictions, but it is a historical fact that no such conviction has ever been proved against opposing convictions. No argument can force us, by the sheer power of reason, to concede that a given philosophical theory is right. But if so, then what value does a theory have, if its claim—”That’s the way things are!”—cannot be substantiated?
Of course, if philosophizing is only a game of intellectual enjoyment, or a tool for making our counselee feel better (as in philosophical therapy), then truth is not important. But if we take seriously the statements made by a philosophical theory, if we wish to use theories for a better understanding of life, then the question—”How do you know which theory is true?”—becomes crucial.
These two considerations suggest that standard philosophical discourse—as a discourse aimed at making true statements—is not very appropriate for philosophical practice and for the philosophical life.
But the statement-making conception of philosophy raises a third problem for us: It makes inter-personal dialogue very limited, and thus it casts doubt on the possibility of true philosophical companionship.
More specifically, if the point of philosophy is to make true statements, then two philosophers can relate to each other only in two ways: either they agree with each other, or they disagree. If you have one theory about (for example) love, and I have a different theory, then all we can do is argue about who is right. I can attack you with arguments, and you can do the same, but there is no possibility of real togetherness, of joint exploration. The only togetherness which seems possible is when we both happen to agree—but this is an uninteresting kind of togetherness, because it does not allow me to encounter you as a real ‘other’; it does not enable me to go beyond my horizons. To be sure, I can be ‘tolerant’ towards your theories, but tolerance is not enough for companionship. It only means that I forgive your ‘mistaken’ views.
In sum, if we wish philosophical practice to be an open exploration and a way of life, if we want it to involve true dialogue and companionship, then I think we must look for alternative forms of philosophical discourse. We should look for ways of philosophizing that are not focused on making true statements.
This conclusion seems perplexing. How can a philosophical discourse not aim at true statements? What can it possibly aim at—fiction? Imagination?
However, the question is not as baffling as it might seem, if we recall that there are types of discourse that are significant and enlightening—not because of their statement-making. A poem, for example, opens us to beauty, harmony, and to hidden meanings that are otherwise unavailable to us, although its sentences do not express statements about what reality is like. Similarly, a mythology enables the person to take part in the (alleged) supernatural realm—not merely by making statements about the world, as if it was a scientific theory, but through stories, imagery, and ritual. Likewise, a conversation between two lovers is not just a sequence of statements that X loves Y, or that Y has almond-shaped eyes, but mainly a way of opening ourselves to the beloved, and connecting ourselves to the reality of the other person.
In a similar way, I suggest that the discourse of philosophical practice need not be limited to statement-making. Different philosophical ideas need not be viewed as conflicting statements that compete for truth. For example, it is not interesting to regard different conceptions of love—e.g., by Sartre, Ortega y Gasset, and Fromm—as conflicting statements about the reality of love. As statements, they have a more or less equal claim to truth, and there is no reasonable procedure to determine which is the correct one. What is more interesting about them, however, is that they open for us ways of connecting to different aspects of human reality.
What I am suggesting here is that, as philosophical practitioners, we should abandon the traditional form of philosophical discourse, which focuses so obsessively on proving and disproving and declaring—or in short, on making statements. We need to develop a new form of discourse that is more concerned with connecting to human reality than with making statements about it. This would enable, among other things, a true dialogue between different individuals, where inter-personal differences would no longer mean disagreement and argumentation, but a togetherness-though-differences.
I realize that I am suggesting here a fundamental revolution in our conception of what philosophizing is. Traditional philosophy has been modeled around statement-making kinds of discourse, and has focused almost exclusively on one single kind of philosophical understanding: understanding through statements-about. In order to develop a different discourse, based on different forms of understanding, we need tremendous creativity, visionary powers, and courage. And yet, if we wish philosophical practice to be different from statement-making, theory-constructing academic philosophy, then I believe we must embark on this ambitious project.
