Metaphysics in Ordinary Language 9780300150469

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Metaphysics in Ordinary Language

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Metaphysics in Ordinary Language

Stanley Rosen

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the Ernst Cassirer Publications Fund. Copyright © 1999 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosen, Stanley, 1929Metaphysics in ordinary language / Stanley Rosen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-07478-6 (alk. paper) i. Philosophy. I. Title. B945.R526M48 1999 191—dcii 98-26477 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 i

To Jebediah

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Contents

Preface, ix Acknowledgments, xiii 1 Suspicion, Deception, and Concealment, i 2 The Lived Present, 15 3 Erotic Ascent, 39 4 The Golden Apple, 62 5 The Problem of Sense Perception in Plato's Philebus, 81 6 Forms, Elements, and Categories, 102 7 Techne and the Origins of Modernity, 112 8 Sad Reason, 126 9 Transcendental Indeterminateness, 144 10 Freedom and Reason, 164 11 Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons, 182

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12 Is There a Sign of Freedom?, 202 13 Philosophy and Ordinary Experience, 218 14 Nothing and Dialectic, 240 15 Kojfcves Paris: A Memoir, 258 Notes, 279 Index, 288

Preface

The essays collected in this book originated for the most part as lectures for a variety of professional occasions. Three have not been previously published and two others are presented here in such radically altered form as to constitute new essays. Of the remainder, all but two have appeared in foreign languages or in publications that are not easily available. I am grateful to Yale University Press for allowing a larger audience to decide on their possible interest. The essays are united not by a common theme but by a common way of philosophizing. The reader will find here studies of abstract problems like that of negation and the relation between perception and judgment, but also discussions of eros, poetry, and freedom. A number of the essays are developments of a point made in previous publications, but some are attempts to break new ground. In some cases the analysis is associated with the interpretation of a particular text. In others, I take my bearings by a general problem. The collection closes with a memoir of my experience in the philosophical world of Paris in 1960-61. In spite of this thematic diversity, I believe that the essays to follow are united in two ways. The first unifying element is my conviction ix

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that philosophy must begin with a careful consideration of ordinary or everyday life as the context within which occur the dislocations and problems that demand extraordinary theoretical and analytical measures. I therefore share the views of many philosophers of our century, with one possible difference. It seems to me that phenomenologists and analysts alike are either too quick to transform ordinary experience into an artifact of technical discourse or too inclined, often because of the influence of modern scientific rationalism, to repudiate what they regard as outmoded ways of reflection. This inclination is conveniently represented as the rejection of metaphysics. In the attempt to position myself within the contemporary discussion, I have taken to using the expression "ordinary language metaphysics" to designate the procedures I favor. The reference to metaphysics is not intended as a sign that I advocate a "reactionary" return to the prescientific dark ages of phantom substances and dancing angels. It is, however, meant to suggest that science is already an interpretation of ordinary experience, and even farther, that it is rooted in a metaphysical foundation. One may honor and even cherish science without falling prey to the full range of scientific ideologies, and especially those which render senseless and nonrational the very celebration of science. This brings me to the second unifying theme of this collection. It has to do with the relation in philosophy between theoretical or conceptual analysis and historical scholarship. In the past twenty years, the earlier tendency to distinguish sharply between scholarship and "original" philosophy has become muted if it has not altogether disappeared. The reason for this shift in fashion is easy to state. It reflects the very deep conviction that we are historical creatures, and so that truth is a historical artifact. As a direct consequence of this conviction, the belief in the possibility of philosophy in any but a purely technical sense, that is, as the production and analysis of artifacts, has steadily weakened. Whereas a generation or two ago it was fashionable for the theoretically inclined to scorn specialists in the history of philosophy as mere scholars, such rejection of history on behalf of technical prowess had the ironical result of intensifying the power of the historical spirit itself. If philosophy in the honorific sense of the term consists in "theory construction" and if "originality" refers to novelty rather than to any sense of a return to the origins or first principles, then obviously enough each new philosophical theory is a finite creature, born to be falsified, as one might put it, and hence tainted with falsehood from the beginning. The origin is from this standpoint the womb of history, and todays philosophical prodigies are tomorrows obstacles to progress.

Preface

A complete analysis of the contemporary belief in—perhaps one should say obsession with—the end of philosophy, which is hardly limited to postmodernists, would require a volume in itself. One would have to consider, for example, the strongest currents in twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics, including such issues as the historicist implications of formalism, of constructivism, and, more generally, of a pure axiomatic approach. And a similar analysis would have to be made of the philosophy of science. When we avert our gaze from history, it has a tendency to stab us in the back. This is obvious in the results of our fascination with technique. Having passed through the valley of positivism, we have emerged onto the plains of nihilism. Twenty years ago, it seemed that all analytically oriented philosophers were studying theories of reference. Today the fashion is without doubt being set by cognitive science. Metaphysicians (as well as their cousins, the postmetaphysicians) live slightly longer generations. Thirty years ago, they were immersed in ontology; today, Being is out (except in the persona of Becoming) and difference is in. If human beings are machines and sameness is a simulacrum of otherness, then the context for cognitive science and postmodernism cannot be supplied by philosophy in its old sense as love of wisdom. And so we turn to history, not in order to discover the truth, but precisely because we no longer believe in truth and are left with nothing but the investigation of how we arrived at the present impasse. This is, of course, a sketch, intended to indicate the most pervasive lineaments of contemporary tendencies that I oppose. More precisely, the view of the relation between theory and history to which I adhere is quite different from the one I have just described. To begin with, I agree that it is necessary to know history in order to avoid being hoodwinked by illusions of our originality. I also accept the Husserlian conception of "desedimentation," or the need to uncover the roots of theoretical problems in the world of everyday life, a process that requires us to strip away the layers of history that have concealed those roots. This last expression is perhaps misleading; the stripping away must be performed with the proper tools and care, not by brute force. To say this in another way, we have to conduct two analyses conjointly, one devoted to everyday life and the other to its historical costume. Everyday life is not itself a historical creature; the term "everyday," like its conceptual partner "ordinary," implies a certain regularity that provides us with a basis for assessing the different interpretations, however "extraordinary," that we give to our speeches and deeds. What is today called hermeneutics, or the act of interpretation, is one manifestation of everyday life that arises in response to the more

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general love of truth, and still more generally, to the love of the good. These forms of love may take on historical postures of various kinds, but they are rooted in human nature. Stated again with maximum brevity, I subscribe to the Socratic thesis that the human being is the philosophical animal, and that everyday life is itself an expression of the love of truth and wisdom that in its fully developed form is nothing other than philosophy. We may decide that we no longer wish to be human beings, but wishing will not make it so. As history itself has demonstrated, it is much easier to become sub- than superhuman. This in turn shows us the limited utility of appeals to natural laws and to oversimple conceptions of nature as a standard. Whereas we are by nature the philosophical animal, we are also naturally disobedient. It is therefore of great importance to study the arguments and protestations of the antiphilosophers. A thorough knowledge of sin is unfortunately a necessary prerequisite to confidence in virtue. It needs to be shown that the affirmation of historicism is itself a distorted version of the love of wisdom. Thus far I could be taken to have spoken of history as a detritus that we need to know in order to discount it. But this is only a part of the picture. We are indeed temporal beings who live in history in the literal sense of that term: We conduct inquiries and we tell tales about what we have discovered. There is no human life, and so no philosophical life, that transpires sub specie aeternitatis. Life, and so too philosophizing, takes place in particular ways; it is conducted at particular times, each with its own prevailing standpoints. The attempt to rank-order these ways and their standpoints is not a denial of our historicity but the very manifestation of its significance. This attempt brings us into contact with our fellow philosophers of the past and makes us accessible to philosophers of the future. We are all engaged in a common venture, and it is this venture that raises us above, but does not detach us entirely from, our historical environment. In short, if we cannot rise, we shall sink. The attempt to rise is easy to caricature as a form of speculative levitation. Those who sink, however, provide their own caricature in the celebration of insignificance, however ironically expressed. The following essays are attempts to strike a happy balance between an excessive lightness of being and the kind of hard-headedness that runs the risk of spiritual sclerosis.

Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge the contribution of my research assistant, Lawrence Horsburgh, to the preparation of the manuscript of this book. I am once more indebted to my colleagues at Boston University, and to the editorial and production staffs of Yale University Press. I want in particular to thank John Silber for his support through the years. The book is dedicated to my grandson, who is just beginning his philosophical career.

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Chapter 1 Suspicion, Deception, and Concealment

—une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle, et a plus forte raison quand il ecrit. [—a belief that is almost instinctive with me is that every powerful man lies when he speaks, and even more so when he writes.] —Stendhal

One of the many things I learned from the late Leo Strauss was the tradition of esoteric writing. This tradition is discussed by representatives of every major philosophical and literary age from the time of the Greeks to the day before yesterday. The issue becomes entirely explicit at the time of the Enlightenment, when it is widely held that, important as the concealment of dangerous views from the wider public may have been in the past, it is now possible for the human race to enter the age of maturity. Accordingly, frankness on theoretical issues is now both possible and desirable. The reader may consult Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 5//