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The Role of the
Concept of Philosophy
in Philosophy
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
POSSIBLE PLAN
REFORMULATING THE QUESTION
NECESSITY OF THE CONCEPT
CONFLICT
RELATIVISM
Eclecticism
Scepticism
Recognition of Other Philosophies
REFLEXIVE
Deeper Reflection
Self-Defining
INTERNAL DIALECTIC OF A PHILOSOPHY
Theory
Exposition
Project
The word ‘Philosophy’
The Subject-Matter of Philosophy
The Goal of Philosophy
UNIVERSALITY AND PARTICULARITY OF PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
This web page is a miscellaneous collection of notes from very diverse sources which have been gravitating toward the issue of defining Philosophy. I include a possible plan which I constructed at one point as a way of welding the material into a more unified mass, but it involved too much forcing and excluding. You may find relics of other ideas for unifying the material left in. You will also find lots of cryptic references, usually references to some books I have read. I hesitate about putting something in this chaotic state on the web site, but there are some important insights that perhaps I should be sharing even though I have not found a proper way to express them yet.
POSSIBLE PLAN
Re-Formulating the Question
Defining Philosophy is very difficult.
Philosophy is self-defining, although the concept of Philosophy is not restricted to philosophic contexts.
This article is an experiment in Philosophy, narrowing the question of the concept of Philosophy to the philosophic context.
Universal Philosophy/ particular philosophy
The "self" is the philosophic work.
An other philosophy is distinguished from one's own philosophy, and therefore Philosophy is distinguished from a particular philosophy. A particular philosophy then, must distinguish itself from Philosophy if it is to argue that it is Philosophy.
Seized through the concept
‘Concept’ is not the same as ‘word’, though closely linked.
Different philosophies must assume they have the same concept of Philosophy, despite their different conceptions of it.
Conclusions
A philosophy does not have to have an explicit concept of Philosophy to be a philosophy, but in order for us to justify describing it as a philosophy we must suppose that it has an implicit one – i.e. that the philosophy is able to develop an explicit one.
Even where a philosophy has a conception of Philosophy – i.e. an explanation of the concept of Philosophy – it may be lacking the distinction between Philosophy and itself, and it will need to develop so as to overcome this deficiency in order to argue for its own conception of Philosophy.
REFORMULATING THE QUESTION
The concept of Philosophy is notoriously difficult to explain. Nearly every philosopher has tried to explain the concept of Philosophy, and while some of these explanations have had the glory of being widely accepted for a time, none so far proposed has proved adequate. I will not bother to give a historical survey here to show this. The reader may disagree, convinced already by some particular explanation of the concept, and so seeing no problem still to be resolved, but this should not prevent the reader from considering the possibility of such a problem hypothetically. In this article I shall presuppose that there is such a problem, and on that basis try to show here why it is a necessary problem, at least within Philosophy, and not just a historical accident. (Such a demonstration will, paradoxically, have to rely on a shared understanding of the concept of Philosophy.)
In some cases of this sort, a repeated failure to agree, to reach any satisfying answer or even to make any discernible progress towards one, has turned out to mean that people have been asking the wrong question. In this instance one might argue that the sustained inability to clarify what the word ‘Philosophy’ signifies, suggests that the concept ought to be dropped, that it is a concept without any genuine explanatory role. The phenomena that we call philosophic undoubtedly exist, at least in the Ancient Greek sense of 'phainomena', i.e. the writings, discussions, and debates. Yet it does not follow that their classification as philosophic constitutes Philosophy as some distinct entity, as anything more than a convenient classification of a number of disparate activities or loosely related phainomena. In other words, according to this view of what Philosophy is, the concept of Philosophy is a purely nominal one.
Since people may, and indeed some people do, regard the concept of Philosophy as a nominal one, I need to offer some justification for not arguing against such a position at this point before proceeding with the question of defining Philosophy. A common way of regarding Philosophy which effectively treats it as being a merely nominal concept is to regard Philosophy as consisting of all the enquiries which have yet to be systematized into sciences. According to this view, Philosophy is a sort of pre-scientific stage in any enquiry. Anything discussed in Philosophy today will one day be the subject-matter of some new science to-morrow, if there is any truth to be found in it. There may always have to be some subject-matter which is not yet treated by any existing science, and so still confined to Philosophy, but the range of such subject-matter will always be diminishing as new sciences form and others extend their boundaries. This view effectively makes historical claims about the development of Philosophy and of the sciences which can be refuted by appealing to the historical facts, but in this article I am confining myself to the context of Philosophy, and so I will not be presenting such historical arguments here.
(Note that the remainder definition of Philosophy – Philosophy as anything left over after taking out the sciences, religion, politics, etc. – is effectively a nominal one, if the definition is not elaborated to include any positive characteristics.)
Notice that, even to claim that I am confining myself to the context of Philosophy in this article, I am assuming that the concept of Philosophy is not nominal. Indeed, the very question about defining Philosophy assumes that the concept of Philosophy is not a nominal one, at least in so far as there is a matter of dispute.
Rather than hoping to succeed with some tour de force where others have had but partial success, let us learn from the limitations of their efforts. The situation until now suggests that an advance might be made by a quite new orientation, by considering more cautiously and comprehensively the quality of the special difficulties that pertain, by asking new kinds of question and looking for different sorts of result.
The most dramatic advances have often come when people have asked for less – that is the value of the specialized sciences. By holding in suspense wide ranging questions that were proving recalcitrant, and formulating more restricted ones more amenable to the evidence at hand, scientists have sometimes been able to make a large number of small but firm advances, and in so doing find that they have turned the flank of the major obstacle that had barred their way.
Thus, in this article, we shall not directly consider how to define Philosophy, and turn our attention instead to what purpose such defining might serve. Let us not consider the various accounts of the concept of Philosophy in themselves, but consider rather what purpose such accounts might serve – what is one trying to achieve by defining the concept? What effect are the purported definitions intended to have? In asking this new question we shall assume that, not only is the concept of Philosophy not nominal, but that defining Philosophy does indeed serve some purpose, that the accounts do indeed have some effect.
I shall narrow the question further, by only asking about the purpose of defining Philosophy within Philosophy. I am not excluding the possibility of Philosophy being defined in a non-philosophic context, and thereby serving non-philosophic purposes, although I may later go on to argue that the activity of defining Philosophy within a non-philosophic context itself draws a discussion into Philosophy.
Most attempts to define Philosophy (to explain the concept of Philosophy) presuppose that Philosophy is being done in the very making of the attempt, and such reflexivity raises a number of difficulties which I wish to discuss on this web page. There are contexts outside Philosophy where it is necessary to define Philosophy to some degree – Christian theology and university administration are two important examples. However, in such contexts there is rarely a claim to explain the concept exhaustively, usually leaving most of the defining to Philosophy itself, indeed usually close to defining Philosophy as self-defining.
For a definition of Philosophy to serve a purpose within Philosophy, it must have an effect within Philosophy. What sort of effects can there be? Clearly a definition will affect discussions recognized to be philosophic since the definition must affect how such a discussion is treated or participated in. A claim made within a discussion that the discussion is philosophic will clearly be affected by what Philosophy is taken to be, and this will affect the discussion itself, even for some one who rejects the claim.
We shall further assume that in reading and writing this article we are engaged in doing Philosophy. If we can make progress on this narrower question and with all these assumptions, then we may be in a better position to consider broadening the question and reducing the number of assumptions made.
In general, the word ‘definition’ has two meanings, although in practice it is nearly always clear which is meant. For the first meaning, to define something is to state various bounds or limits to it so that we can pick it out from among other things. In other words, it is to give criteria whereby one can judge whether something is it (the thing being defined) or belongs to it in a relevant way, e.g. in the case of defining a concept, whether something may have that concept applied to it. For the second meaning, to define something is to explain what it is, to put what it is into words. Thus, the definition of a human being to be a featherless biped would be quite wrong with ‘definition’ taken in this second sense while being at least partly true when taken in the first sense. These two meanings could be called ‘outer definition’ and ‘inner definition’, but for defining Philosophy within Philosophy they are the same. However, I shall not bother to argue that here, so, if you doubt it, just take ‘definition’ to have the first meaning while following this discussion.
(Until I have argued that for defining Philosophy within Philosophy the outer and inner definitions are the same, I should really take the trouble to make it clear which is being meant. The reader is warned that the cogency of some arguments which follow might be undermined without the assumption of this equivalence.)
In the case of defining Philosophy, there are three aspects to consider: its subject-matter; its logoi – terms, propositions, pieces of writing and other utterances considered philosophic; and its method. But in limiting (or explaining) any of these three aspects we are making claims about Philosophy which may be disputed within Philosophy itself. A claim about Philosophy, whether about its primary subject-matter, or what works are philosophic, or what method or kind of enterprise is philosophic, or about any combination of such aspects, may be valid, but it cannot be used to define Philosophy while the claim itself is being disputed. So how can Philosophy be defined without prescribing the definition in advance of debate on it? It would seem that, within Philosophy, a definition of Philosophy can only serve to silence an opponent, or give an excuse to ignore the opponent. This is the reason why defining Philosophy proves to be so intractable.
An explanation of the concept of Philosophy must not only give it a classificatory and informative character, but also explain how status and authority are ascribed and communicated by the use of it. Given the context of Philosophy, applying the concept of Philosophy to some thing, qualifying something as philosophic, thereby ascribes status and authority. (We have here, perhaps, degrees of being philosophic.)
Accounts of the concept can only have two kinds of implication: they help to determine whether given statements or given ways of arguing should be classified as philosophic (not absolutely, but according to philosophic context); they give direction to the philosophies endorsing the accounts, setting out their goals, etc. (the philosophic equivalent of ‘Know Thyself’). [subject-matter, statements/arguments, goal/direction.]
As regards the first implication, since accounts of the concept of Philosophy can conflict, they cannot be being put forward as arbitrary definitions, but each must be being put forward as an account of the same concept. In trying to argue for a particular account, the possibility of the account being different is entertained, and hence the necessity for distinguishing between Philosophy in general and particular philosophies, at least for the purposes of argument. (It does not follow that there has to be more than one particular philosophy at any particular moment.)
As regards the second implication, a philosophic account of the concept of Philosophy cannot be just some abstraction of philosophizing activity in general but must also include the fact that the account itself is philosophic. (Consequence: a conception of Philosophy cannot emerge from abstracting such features as all philosophic works have in common.) Differences between philosophies have a bearing on the concept of Philosophy itself. There is no a priori reason for holding that philosophies have identical roles within Philosophy, indeed explaining the nature of Philosophy in different ways entails that their roles differ. Different accounts result in different ways of doing Philosophy even if there is no disagreement in practice about what they recognize as being philosophies. To understand a concept, to grasp the meaning of the words which express it, is always at least to learn what the rules are which govern the use of such words and so to grasp the role of the concept in language and Philosophy. (The role of the concept of Philosophy in a philosophy is the obverse of the role of a philosophy in Philosophy.)
The concept of Philosophy does not stand in a unique relation to what it is a concept of. The variety of philosophies is necessary to provide the link between the concept of Philosophy and (the reality of) Philosophy. The concept of Philosophy is no more than the unity in diversity of philosophies. If the diversity of philosophies were abstracted, what would remain would not be some pure concept of Philosophy. Nothing would remain.
Philosophy, present in all philosophies, is not, however, equally present in every philosophy. Ways of doing Philosophy may conflict. In any conception of Philosophy, the concept must be seen both as preserving the differences and as the resolution of the conflict. Mutually conflicting ways of expounding must be comprehended as performing different functions within Philosophy, i.e. as making different kinds of contribution to Philosophy.
For a philosophy to discuss its own particular role within Philosophy requires the distinction between Philosophy and its own philosophy – its own philosophy is that role, mediating between Philosophy and the work.
In recognizing works other than its own as also philosophic, a philosophy cannot simply be applying certain criteria it has acquired from elsewhere, because it must also be seeking to reconcile the use of the concept of Philosophy in those works with its own use of the concept. Every philosophy, in being acknowledged as such, must be held to possess the concept of Philosophy, whatever its particular explanation of the concept. Hence philosophic works are bound together by the reference to Philosophy as a whole, a reference embracing all other philosophic works and to be tested by investigation of all those other works. The reality of Philosophy is thus to be seized through its concept.
To explain the concept of Philosophy in a philosophy can never be a question of explaining something as simply given, but as related to the words being uttered, indeed to the particular utterance itself. Using the concept of Philosophy in Philosophy is not simply a matter of ascribing a name to an activity, for the use must itself be taken to be part of Philosophy – the use necessarily presupposes that Philosophy is being done in that use.
Every discussion in Philosophy explaining the concept of Philosophy is a discussion explaining about the enterprise to which it is a contribution. The subject-matter, Philosophy, is distinguishable from the activity of discussing it, the particular philosophy, at least in respect of the relation set up by the discursive activity itself. And yet the subject-matter cannot be so wholly other as to be inaccessible through words; in that case there would be no relation, no genuine discussion of the concept of Philosophy. But that can only be so if discussing the concept of Philosophy is, by the very nature of Philosophy, doing Philosophy. The discussion itself, as utterance or written work, thus mediates between the concept of Philosophy and the particular philosophy, at once relating them and keeping them apart.
[Historian of Philosophy, university administrator, and the systematic theologian are all examples where Philosophy has to be defined externally.
The serious historian of Philosophy may offer descriptions meticulously accurate as to detail, and he may offer some account of the concept of Philosophy he or she has employed in the selection and treatment of the historical material, but that account must be subordinate to his or her purposes as a historian and to the particular results which emerge from historical research.]
Philosophy is not to be conceived only as something lying before us, but as the context of the discourse in which we are conceiving it, the context in which we feel the need to refer to Philosophy. Moreover, Philosophy is not simply the background or framework in which the concept of Philosophy is being explained, but the activity of explaining is itself Philosophy, and our very reference to Philosophy confirms Philosophy as an activity. (The explanation of the nature of Philosophy relates a philosophy to Philosophy in general.)
No particular significance attaches to the definition of ‘Dictionary’ in a dictionary, for a poor definition of it would not necessarily be a significant flaw in the dictionary as a whole. However, the conception or definition of Philosophy within a philosophy achieves importance because not only is it taken to be the context within which it is being explained or defined, but the conception or definition must use the fact of being philosophic. (The definition of ‘Dictionary’ would not make use of the fact of being in a dictionary. At best it might mention itself as an example of a dictionary entry, but it would not be a special example.)
Any account of the concept of Philosophy particularizes the philosophic position from which it is given. For what a philosophy has to say about the concept illumines the general orientation of that philosophy. If we can explain how a philosophy must necessarily relate to Philosophy in general we shall have indirectly developed an explanation of the concept of Philosophy. Thus, in devoting ourselves entirely to the relationship between any philosophy and Philosophy we will not in fact have abandoned the original question of defining Philosophy.
Each conception of Philosophy constitutes a philosophy in its entirety – i.e. it can act as the organizing principle which the whole philosophy revolves around. (It is the internal principle of development for the philosophy.)
Every philosophy must not only regard itself as a philosophy, but as Philosophy, the essence of all philosophy, and its definitory work, if it has one, as the archetype for all philosophies (as the model which determines use of the concept of Philosophy). Each philosophy holds itself to be Philosophy – it is Philosophy as Philosophy appears in particular works. Each philosophy is Philosophy as embodied (en-text-ed – inverbated?) in a particular context. Each philosophy is not only a part of Philosophy as a whole, each contributing its distinctive conception of truth and rationality, but also each philosophy is, for itself, nothing less than Philosophy as a whole.
NECESSITY OF THE CONCEPT
It might be argued that the concept of Philosophy is not essential to Philosophy, that Philosophy can be done without distinguishing it from religion, politics or the sciences. It might be argued that use of the concept of Philosophy can become a distraction from exposition. The concern in Philosophy is with the truth and not with whether one’s attempts to put it into words satisfy some given conception of Philosophy. A philosophic work must be primarily concerned with explaining everything, and not directly with the concept of Philosophy or with other works and philosophies. A philosophic work can only be an exposition if it is written honestly, if it is an attempt to present things "as they are" with limpid sincerity, without passing the buck. There should be no playing games with the reader in the sense of deliberately disguising the position being put forward. Nor must the work be arbitrarily exempted from the criticisms made in it of others. Its philosophy should be a channel through which the words become clear, but not a substitute for such clarification. The concept of Philosophy should not be allowed to get in the way.
But this argument is only persuasive where the reflexive nature of Philosophy is lost sight of, where doing Philosophy and discussing the concept of Philosophy are treated as separate activities. To do Philosophy without alluding to the fact is to hold back part of the truth, or at least to be forgetful – it can only be honesty and sincerity in a negative sense. Further, refusing to articulate the kind of criticism one is not open to is to indulge in the illusion of openness at the expense of foregoing the reality of openness.
A philosophic work is disoriented if it fails to discuss the concept of Philosophy, or at least refer in some way to such discussion elsewhere to which it may be considered attached. A philosophy without discussion of the concept of Philosophy is only implicitly philosophy and not yet a philosophy in the full sense. A philosophy can only be a philosophy in so far as it can be comprehended as including a discussion of the concept of Philosophy.
In defining Philosophy, can one include as philosophic that which explicitly denies being philosophic? Can one exclude from Philosophy that which is generally classed as philosophic – e.g. the works of Kierkegaard or Bergson on the grounds of failing to endorse rationality?
CONFLICT
Each philosophy tries to provide rational justification for its theses in its own terms, employing the concepts and standards by which it defines itself, but there is no set of independent standards of rational justification by appeal to which the issues dividing philosophies can be decided.
Although certain problems are shared by many philosophies, success in dealing with such problems does not provide a neutral standard in terms of which their respective achievements can be measured. The way a problem arises, and not just the degree of importance given to it, varies from philosophy to philosophy, and so do the effects of failing to arrive at a solution. Moreover, what counts as a satisfactory solution and the standards by reference to which solutions are to be evaluated also differ from philosophy to philosophy. This applies to discussion of the concept of Philosophy too.
Each philosophy has internal to itself its own view of what rational superiority consists in, and the adherents of each will judge accordingly.
Given that each philosophy will expound its theory in terms of its own idiosyncratic concepts, and given that no correction of its theory from an external standpoint is possible, it may appear that each philosophy must expound its own theory in a way which is liable to preclude translation from one philosophy to another. So it may appear that communication between philosophies cannot be adequate enough for each to understand the other.
RELATIVISM
Relativism sets out to show that everything taken to be absolute is relative. This is the truth of relativism. The error of relativism is to presuppose that the same thing cannot be both relative and absolute, and hence excluding the possibility of anything being absolute, since being removed from (absolved from) a relationship with something is itself a relating to it on another level of discourse. Indeed the converse is also true: everything taken to be relative is absolute. When considered abstractly, relative and absolute, as opposites, appear mutually exclusive, but this is just an illusion that the abstraction itself fosters. When we specify how something is relative to something else, we are still making a claim that something is true, and ‘true’ means ‘absolutely true’ – the word ‘absolutely’ simply gives emphasis, rather like ‘p is true’ only gives emphasis to the proposition p.
Since, in discussion of the concept of Philosophy, the discussion itself is a participation in Philosophy, there is in such a discussion a tension between what it does and what it purports to do by way of saying what constitutes an enterprise as being a philosophy. But unless this connection is made explicit, the tension dissipates, and the discussion easily loses its way and ends in relativism.
Doing Philosophy, apart from any attempt to examine the relation to the concept of Philosophy assumed, either dissolves its particularity and thus becomes totally bland, or else withdraws from serious debate. Discussing another philosophy while failing to relate to Philosophy as a whole, which must be kept distinct from that philosophy, leads to its fossilization and to mere scholarly re-statements of it. Any discussion of the concept of Philosophy must preserve the tension in its relationship with Philosophy: it must maintain the distinction between Philosophy and its own philosophy (what Philosophy appears to be for it); and yet it cannot hold these to be different. We can enter into a particular discussion of the concept of Philosophy only if, while immersing ourselves in that discussion so that its philosophy becomes Philosophy for us, we see this identification as still being made and the identity not just implicit, not just taken for granted.
Discussing a philosophy without doing Philosophy, is mere parrot play, for such discussion of a philosophy remains outside the relationship between its works and the concept of Philosophy. Discussing the concept of Philosophy, on its part, without alluding to the fact that the discussion is itself philosophic, remains abstract.
It is through a philosophic work that a particular philosophy becomes identified with Philosophy as a whole, and it is through a philosophic work that the concept of Philosophy acquires an application. Given a philosophic work, Philosophy as a whole can always be distinguished from the particular philosophy of that work, while for that work Philosophy as a whole is its own philosophy.
For the relativist, in so far as philosophies are distinct from each other, there can be no rational debate between them, for no issue can be rationally decidable between them. Each philosophy has its view of what rationality consists in, and the adherents of each will judge accordingly. A variety of philosophies compete for our allegiance in respect of conceptions of rationality, and hence relativists conclude that we can have no reason to decide in favour of one rather than another.
Given that each philosophy will expound its theory in terms of its own idiosyncratic concepts, and given that no correction of its theory from an external standpoint is possible, it may appear that each philosophy must expound its own theory in a way that is liable to preclude translation from one philosophy to another. So it may appear that communication between philosophies cannot be adequate for any meaningful exchange of ideas.
Philosophic relativism takes two forms: eclecticism and scepticism.
From the fact that being rational is always relative to the standards of some particular philosophy, the eclectic concludes that nothing can be rational as such – that there can be no rationality as such, no Philosophy in general. The sceptic holds onto the belief in rationality as such, and hence concludes that there can be nothing rational, no particular philosophy can be a valid philosophy.
To maintain relativism one must either articulate a standpoint in the process of maintaining it and deceive oneself into supposing that this as yet implicit standpoint is outside all particular philosophies (scepticism) or else refuse to engage in debate (eclecticism).
The eclectic claims that all philosophies are true, and hence has no interest in resolving contradictions; the sceptic claims that all philosophies are false, and hence is unable to accept any explanation. For both there is a uniform treatment of all philosophies, and no reflection of the particular philosophizing activity on itself.
The sceptic claims that philosophies are mutually exclusive and incompatible ways of understanding things, the eclectic claims that they are providing different, complementary ways of understanding it. The eclectic claims to do Philosophy, but does not. The sceptic claims not to have a philosophy, but does.
The relativist fails to envisage that a philosophy may be transformed in the light of its own standards of rationality. One philosophic account of rational justification can defeat another, in the light of the new works they lead to. I concede that at some particular time there may be several philosophies developing and flourishing without being in any situation which they are not able to cope with out of their own resources. At this time not one of the philosophies is encountering its rivals in such a way as to refute them, nor does any one of them discredit itself by its inability to resolve its own crises. But it does not follow that the philosophies are equally true or equally false. Who could be in a position to make such a claim? For the person who is to do so must either be an eclectic claiming to be participating in one of the philosophies, owning allegiance to its standards of enquiry and justification and employing them in his or her reasoning (at least at any particular moment under consideration), or be a sceptic claiming to be outside all philosophies. The eclectic, in the absence of crisis within his or her philosophy, could have no good reason for putting his or her allegiance to it in question and every reason for continuing in that allegiance. The sceptic who is outside all philosophies is outside Philosophy, a condition from which it is impossible to justify the claim.
The important thing is not to argue against relativism as if it were a rival philosophy, but to counteract the destructive aspects of the tendency towards relativism. A form of relativism should be treated, not as an independent philosophy, but as a reaction to particular philosophies, a spur to further development within any particular philosophy. Rather than expose the contradiction in relativism by articulating for relativism its thesis, which endeavour is liable to build up a straw man, one should concentrate on trying to recognize the relativistic tendency in one’s philosophy and resolve the contradiction through that philosophy’s own self-criticism.
Eclecticism
For the eclectic, since there are many philosophies, each with its own kind of rational justification internal to it, therefore no philosophy can offer those outside it reasons for excluding the theses of its rivals. Yet if this is so, no philosophy is entitled to arrogate to itself an exclusive title; no philosophy can deny legitimacy to its rivals. What seemed to require philosophies to exclude each other and to deny each other legitimacy was belief in the logical incompatibility of the theses asserted and denied within them, a belief which embodied a recognition that if the theses of one philosophy were true, then in each of the other philosophies some theses were false.
The eclectic has no means of rational evaluation and hence can make no relevant contribution to philosophic debate, including the contribution that every philosophy is equally right.
The eclectic distorts the conception of Philosophy which each philosophic work has because it must ignore differences in conceptions of Philosophy (hence the eclectic might not make a distinction between concept and conceptions). The eclectic cannot fully participate in any particular philosophy however much he or she purports to do, or even genuinely intends to do. The eclectic fails to recognize how integral the conception of Philosophy is to any philosophy. This leads the eclectic to suppose that one could temporarily adopt the standpoint of one philosophy and then exchange it for another, as one might wear first one costume and then another, or as one might act one part in one scene of a play and then a different part in a different scene (or even do a quick change in the middle of one scene). But genuinely to adopt the standpoint of a philosophy thereby commits one to its view of what Philosophy is and, in so committing one, prohibits one from adopting any rival standpoint. (There is no audience – all are players). Hence the eclectic could indeed pretend to assume the standpoint of a particular philosophy; he or she could not in fact do so and still be an eclectic. The multiplicity of philosophies does not afford a multiplicity of standpoints on which we can stand simultaneously, but only a multiplicity of antagonistic commitments.
The eclectic regards himself or herself as committed, but only to acting a succession of temporary parts. The eclectic is, by taking the stance of an eclectic, excluded from the possession of any conception of Philosophy, including the conception which defines eclecticism itself. Hence the eclectic’s stance is not so much a conclusion about Philosophy as an exclusion from it and thereby from rational debate.
How can some one espousing the eclectic principle come to abandon it, and hence get more deeply involved in Philosophy? The person can only come to do so by putting aside for a moment the claim to be eclectic and reflecting on and articulating more clearly his or her own particular position within Philosophy. Thus the person comes to have a philosophy which has an image of itself as a philosophy, without recourse to characterizing itself as an eclectic philosophy. This philosophy does not have to be well worked out; it does not have to take sides on particular issues, it only has to have an honest image of itself. A concrete self-image, even a confused one, banishes the abstraction of eclecticism.
The eclectic composes a doctrine by assembling statements from various philosophies. The inner variety of an eclectic philosophy is due, not to an excess of explorative spirit, but to a sensitive docility in appropriating the thoughts of others. Such a philosophy sees that the fragments of truth belong to it; it assumes that they can be made to fit each other; it overlooks the need to transform them so that they do fit each other.
Victor Cousin (1792-1867: French philosopher and educator) deserves a special place, because in him eclecticism became a consciously avowed principle. "Each system expresses an order of phenomena and ideas which is in truth very real, but which is not alone in consciousness … whence it follows that each system is not false but incomplete, and that in re-uniting all incomplete systems we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness." (Reference for quote from Cousin’s works?) Cousin is right about each system being incomplete, but wrong in supposing that any coherent system, let alone a complete one, can arise from the mere juxtaposition of texts from rival systems. The effort of debate cannot be skipped.
Eclecticism is not a preliminary stage of philosophic construction, but a false philosophy (a philosophy that does not know itself as a philosophy). The positive element in it is that it endorses the virtue of toleration, which modifies all our tendencies to partisanship with the caution – "Your opponent is worth listening to; there is some good reason for the way he or she thinks!"
No philosophic work can safely ignore the history of Philosophy, or decline the liberty of taking from whatever source what it finds true. The eclectic is right to keep alert for further portions of his or her ever unfinished collection of truths. Also, it does not lie within one’s will to reject a proposition one believes true merely on the ground that one does not at the time see its connection with other beliefs.
Divergent lines of thought go out from every great work of Philosophy. The stimulating and fertilizing force of such works often outruns its logical consecutiveness. The truth has to be asserted before it can be properly expressed, before it can appear perfectly coherent; truth is consistent with itself, but the discovery of its manner of hanging-together may have to wait. A philosophic work which limited what it had to say to what it could then and there put into order, must fail to be written. The existence of a degree of incoherence or disorder in a philosophy does not at once condemn it.
(I hope that the reader does not condemn this web page on account of the incoherence and disorder to be found on it.)
Eclectic philosophies – composite, holding a mixture of views in which each is mitigated by some ingredient from another. These composite philosophies may include more insights than the sources of their components, but they are (1) not so clearly articulated; (2) not so consistent; (3) not so valuable in finding our bearings. To make progress, we would be better off working with pure colours than with mixtures.
The eclectic does not seek the single explanation underlying various doctrinal fragments, but presumes to find it without a struggle, just by putting those doctrines side by side. The eclectic is not wrong to try to interpret or elucidate foreign and unfamiliar concepts in the light of familiar ones, by placing concepts from one philosophy into the mould of another, for all true explanations must agree; but the eclectic fails to give sufficient weight to the implicitness of that unity of explanations – to the transforming role of interpretation in making it explicit.
To understand a philosophy is not a mere matter of echoing its statements, it is a matter of engaging in its dialectic, and hence contributing to its development.
Eclecticism takes the easy route to universal openness by means of platitudes and uniform treatment of everything. The eclectic principle can be adopted only if one believes that all (philosophically) important truth about the world has already been proposed, so that the task remaining for Philosophy can only be one of judicious selection and adjustment.
But Eclecticism cannot be a satisfactory resting place for thought. Reality must be consistent with itself; inconsistency is a subjective condition, not an objective fact. If there is no overt consistency among our beliefs, there must be a latent consistency among such of them as are true; and we are bound to find it. Rationality requires that we seek to grasp that latent agreement among our scattered insights as a principle giving unity to the whole.
Eclecticism does not ask whether a particular statement is true, rather it asks, "From within what philosophy is the assertion being made?" It puts this question without taking account of the fact that if the specification of the philosophy is so important in considering an assertion, the same must apply in every case; and hence when the eclectic asserts something the same question must be asked about the eclectic's own assertion. To stick with the eclectic principle, the eclectic must answer that the assertion belongs to such and such philosophy among the source philosophies. But this gives the particular source philosophy preference over others in the particular subject-matter of the assertion – at least if there is any disagreement – and the preference cannot have a basis in any of the source philosophies while they remain opposed to one another. The preference is indeed a mark of the eclectic philosophy as something distinct from all the source philosophies, but it can never be named in answer to the question for any particular assertion (i.e. in answer to the question, "From within what philosophy …?") without renouncing its pretension to be eclectic.
There is thus but one way to be adequately hospitable without being eclectic: by discovering the single principle which shows how the various parts of truth belong together. The philosophic theory of a work is not the set of insights affirmed in it: it is the principle by which they are shown to hang together.
Eclecticism and scepticism are two sides of the same position, rather than the contrasting positions they appear to be. The eclectic who takes something from all sides of a dispute must discount every side; for whatever opinion he or she considers with favour it will have something in common with its opponent also or its possible future critic. The eclectic, when faced with conflict, is too wise to lend himself or herself whole-heartedly to anything. Thus universal hospitality is but the affirmative form of universal doubt.
Scepticism
For the sceptic, Philosophy is composed exclusively of a number of rival, incompatible philosophies, each philosophy having an inadequately explained, overall view of Philosophy, being unable to justify its claims over against those of its rivals except to those who already accept those claims.
The sceptic regards himself or herself as an outsider, as uncommitted. The sceptic finds himself or herself alien to every philosophy because he or she judges them all by standards of rational justification which no philosophy could satisfy. For the sceptic, nothing is proved, since nothing can overcome doubts about it.
The sceptic hangs onto the notion of rationality as such, the concept of Philosophy in general, by rejecting the rationality of every particular philosophy. The sceptic can accept no argument, including any argument that no philosophy can vindicate itself.
There is no philosophy within which a sceptic is able to be at home, and the assumption of beliefs not actually held cannot be for the purpose of investigating the rationality of that philosophy, for it has already been concluded that all kinds of rationality fail. A sceptic therefore views the various philosophies as falsifying masquerades, and cannot understand the commitment to any philosophy except as an act which is arbitrary in that it must lack sufficient supporting reasons. So beliefs, assertions, and the use of particular ways of reasoning and debating will appear to the sceptic as disguises assumed by arbitrary will to further some quite different, possibly unconscious, purpose.
How could a sceptic as a result of an encounter with some particular philosophy come to participate in that philosophy? The true sceptic could not, but there can be no true sceptic. Anyone claiming to be a sceptic might change their mind if they can be persuaded to recognize that they are not sceptics, that they were only able to doubt on the basis of beliefs they were failing to recognize or articulate when declaring themselves sceptics.
[Scepticism, like eclecticism, lacks self-knowledge as a philosophy.]
Scepticism is the belief that universal doubt is attainable, that one can reach the point where no knowledge is held as certain. (The diversity of incompatible philosophies is held to be insuperable and inevitable.) In being articulated, scepticism makes a quite illogical exception in favour of itself. In effect, scepticism consists in arguing that there is no such thing as a valid argument, or at least in declaring it to be certain that nothing is certain because every argument is dubious; one might just as well say that language does not exist, or write that there is no such thing as writing. The assertion nullifies itself if it is true, and by nullifying itself logically proves thereby that it is false; its absurdity lies in the implicit claim to be unique in escaping, as if by enchantment, from a doubt that is declared to be universal.
The axiom of scepticism is that one can never achieve any knowledge; if such be the case, then this statement itself conveys no knowledge; it falls under its own verdict. The sceptic clearly claims to achieve some kind of knowledge, and not merely to express an opinion; the proof of this lies in the fact that the sceptic is able to conceive both of having an opinion and of the opinion being true. For if we were totally enclosed in our own opinions, that notion of having a mere opinion would not even be conceivable.
While those errors tending to deny the possibility of knowledge destroy themselves by postulating a thesis which is disproved by the very existence of the postulate itself, the fact that errors exist does not in itself amount to a proof that every assertion suffers from an inevitable fallibility, for error does not derive from language as such. On the contrary, error is a privative phenomenon in which the argument and discussion lose their way or dry up, without however being able to render all possible further discussion necessarily useless. (Change of topic, suitable time delay, change in, or of, participants.)
Every language may have its limits, but no limits can be set to language as such, for in what language could they be set? How can universal doubt escape itself? This capacity for objectivity and absoluteness is an anticipated and existential refutation of all the ideologies of doubt: if we are able to doubt, this is because certitude exists; likewise the very notion of illusion proves that we have access to reality.
In discussing specific philosophic works one must make explicit the particular philosophic standpoint one is assuming (at least as much as is relevant). Failure to be explicit about one’s own standpoint will not help one to be more open to other standpoints – quite the reverse. By ‘make explicit’ I do not mean sticking labels on oneself, e.g. ‘empiricist’, or endorsing particular works or philosophers, but exposing whatever one’s standpoint happens to be. In other words, I am not just ruling out a pretence of neutrality, but I am also insisting on an intellectually honest self-reflection.
People, rightly sickened by both blind scepticism and dissolvent eclecticism, can become increasingly rigid in their exclusivism – an exclusivism which is equally destructive of serious philosophic debate. One should not try to defend one philosophy against all others by declaring the rest not worthy of consideration. Even if the diversity is due to the erring of philosophic thought, this does not mean that the line between truth and error cannot cut across all the distinctions between philosophies. Indeed, such a rigid exclusivism, alongside scepticism and eclecticism, provides an example of three positions, each of which is so right about what is wrong with the other two that it does not recognize what is wrong with itself.
Recognition of Other Philosophies
Each philosophy, to make rational progress, must find a way to recognize other philosophies as being meaningful and therefore true, without losing its own hold on truth. While confronting and opposing other philosophies, a philosophy must somehow include them in itself – being itself Philosophy – and, moreover, come to recognize itself as doing so. For one philosophy to recognize another as a philosophy, it must find itself working in the other.
In every work discussing the concept of Philosophy, the distinction and unity between its philosophy and Philosophy must be made explicit and justified without destroying or dissipating what meaning the work can have for us. If we fail to do this, then we cannot immerse ourselves in it without getting lost in it. (It is like the thread which Ariadne gave to Theseus to explore the Labyrinth.)
Every philosophy must take itself to be Philosophy, while at the same time maintaining the distinction between itself and Philosophy. Thus we can sympathetically immerse ourselves in the philosophy, which is necessary to understand it, by taking it to have the same concept of Philosophy which we have, while being able to evaluate it critically, which is necessary for freedom of debate, by using the distinction between the philosophy (and our philosophy) and Philosophy.
A conception of Philosophy must encompass the freedom of philosophies to have different conceptions of Philosophy. And yet a complete conception of Philosophy would seem to leave no room for any philosophic work to add to it – i.e. does not leave any room for development of the conception.
The way to reconcile different conceptions of Philosophy is for each of the philosophies concerned to follow through the consequences for its conception of Philosophy of recognizing the others as philosophies. If there is more than one philosophy, then they must have a common concept of Philosophy for mutual recognition as philosophies, however divergent their conceptions of Philosophy may be. The more that one philosophy can recognize other conceptions of Philosophy as true conceptions of the same concept, the more other philosophies have become present to it, and the more its own conception is already justified. Its own conception of Philosophy must stand in need of being completed, since the other philosophies must contribute more than mere corroborations of what it has already articulated.
A philosophy must both acknowledge the distinction between Philosophy and itself which keeps the debate open and leaves the finite works perpetually subject to revision – and yet argue for taking its conception of Philosophy to be the fullness of Philosophy, or at least have the promise of fullness.
Any attempt to explain the concept of Philosophy engages in the task of comprehending all philosophies. A philosophic work can neither fail to explain the concept of Philosophy, nor succeed. It cannot fail: this would retroactively destroy both the concept of Philosophy and the possibility of comprehending other philosophies. It cannot succeed: success would dissipate the other conceptions of Philosophy so that they contribute nothing more than corroboration.
Philosophy is the context of every philosophic work, every philosophic utterance. It is not the whole context, in the sense that it does not include, e.g., the physical details of production and reception. It is the context with regard to how it is related to previous works and discussions, and how it should evoke later works. Philosophy is the tradition within which the philosophic work should be placed for it to say what it intends to say.
The concept of Philosophy is that whereby a philosophic work is related to other philosophic works. Hence a philosophy must use the concept of Philosophy if its own particular works are to relate to other works, if we are to understand what it says as it intends to be said.
(The lack of such use is not, however, intended as some kind of criterion for dismissing some text from philosophic consideration, but only an indication that it is not yet in a fully philosophic form.)
REFLEXIVE
The present web page is intended to be philosophic, and its philosophic quality is to be presupposed. The question with which we are dealing is therefore a question about the purpose of making explicit the nature of the enterprise to which it is a contribution.
The present web page is an experiment in Philosophy, and it is to be presupposed that it is a contribution to Philosophy. The object of its investigation is the role of the concept of Philosophy in Philosophy. The datum obtained in the experiment is to be the web page itself, as an example of a philosophic contribution. The concept of Philosophy has a role in the discussion on this web page, and for the experiment the web page itself is the immediate locus of Philosophy. You may decide that this web page is not very philosophic, but any aspect of Philosophy lacking – and I am sure that there are plenty of aspects lacking – must thereby be lacking in the datum obtained in the experiment. I might refer to Philosophy done elsewhere, but only in so far as it is made present on this web page can it truly count as part of the datum obtained in the experiment being done.
Deeper Reflection
This web page is itself a somewhat eclectic collection of notes on the concept of Philosophy. As such, this web page "cannot be a satisfactory resting place for thought." In so far as it continues to have an eclectic character, it must be considered to be in the form of a rough draft. Each part has not only to be elaborated and clarified, but also to be brought closer in jargon with other parts, which sometimes involves introducing distinctions and sometimes involves dissolving distinctions; sometimes widening reference and sometimes narrowing reference; sometimes bringing material from elsewhere and sometimes taking material out which is found, not only to be difficult to integrate into rest of this web page, but also actually to fit even less well as I try to develop it further. Once there is significant overlap, a repetition between two parts, then a merger can take place. Thus what counts as a single part is variable and does not necessarily correspond to clear divisions in the text, and might not even be a full sentence. Even after being merged, some passages may need further work on them in order to improve their coherence and to prevent insights dissolving in confusion. Parts can be related in all sorts of ways. This note itself has been spun out of a reflection on the preceding discussion of eclecticism, and changes in each are likely to affect the other, in significance if not in actual wording. At some points in this web page there are even headings to indicate passages that are no longer there in order to preserve the wider structure from which they have been removed. I will eventually remove these placeholders, once these wider structures have been suitably transformed and articulated.
Self-Defining
It is because Philosophy is self-defining that a conception of Philosophy cannot emerge from abstracting such features as all philosophic works have in common. The unity among all philosophies exists in the conflicts between them, and not despite the conflicts. It is the unity of a common enterprise – Philosophy.
Being self-defining does not exclude being defined from outside, by academic institutions for instance, or from within christian theology. These external definitions can include the self-defining characteristic in their definitions. To do so does, however, mean that such definitions are never complete, any more than they can ever be complete within Philosophy.
Philosophy is not a reality separate from philosophic works, for it is an activity which only exists through its works, the words it produces. It requires the particular works for its self-regeneration.
INTERNAL DIALECTIC OF A PHILOSOPHY
There are three moments of a philosophy: theory; exposition; and project.
Theory
Doctrines, theses put forward, beliefs, principles, conceptual scheme, system.
A philosophy is constituted by its affirmation of certain doctrines and certain standards of rationality as central to its own explaining of things in general. Among its doctrines are a conception of Philosophy, implicit, e.g. in its norms for arguing and justifying beliefs.
The meaning people find in the philosophy. (What Being is for the philosophy.)
The theory is not observable from outside the philosophy, and not to be confined within any limits.
Exposition
Arguments, canon of texts. A historical tradition as texts that are handed down.
From the outside, the exposition is seen (words determine doctrine); from the inside, the theory is seen (doctrine determines words).
The doctrines of a philosophy, the standards of rationality which it upholds, must apply to its own words and utterances, the articulation of, and arguments for, those standards. An assertion in speech or writing, is being treated as an indirect statement which, as something uttered, is distinguished from what the assertion is about. A philosophic explanation is true insofar as the expectations which it raises within the philosophy are fulfilled. Falsity is recognized retrospectively as discrepancy between the assertion and the standard of rationality asserted. For statements may fail to satisfy the standards of rationality which they state. So whether a philosophy meets its own standards of rationality becomes a feature of a developing conception of Philosophy.
So, in a philosophy, an inadequacy can be identified by testing its statements and arguments against its own standards of rationality. To claim truth for an assertion entails the claim that the assertion will survive all such self-criticism, no matter how it is transformed as it gets put into a wider context, and no matter what developments in rational enquiry may occur. The test for truth, therefore, is always to summon up as many insights, and as strong objections, as possible; what can be justifiably claimed as true is what has coped with the insights and withstood the raising of objections.
Truth ––> Works. The truth must be prior to the works which manifest it, being logically prior to its manifestation (expression). The works are only written to express the truth already glimpsed. The truth inspires the works to be written. If one endeavours to communicate/express the truth, then one’s words are never predictable. If they were "pre-dictable", then they could have been said before, they would be not be communicating anything. No work could ever mean anything that was utterly unrelated to what the reader/writer already grasped of the truth.
Works ––> Truth. The truth is given content through being expressed. The truth cannot be grasped until words are heard or read. The works must be written before we can be said to have grasped the truth. The reader must find the works meaningful before his or her own grasp of the truth can come to be expressed in the works, and certainly before the reader can contribute to the further development of those works. Even the writer of a work cannot be said to have grasped the truth expressed in the work except in virtue of the fact of having written the work. (We can say that the writer grasped the truth before he or she wrote it down, but our saying it depends for its truth upon the supposition that the writer would, or at least could, later write it down.)
The defining texts may receive several incompatible interpretations, none of which can exclude the others. Incoherence in the system of beliefs may become evident. Confrontation by new situations, engendering new questions, may reveal a lack of resources for offering or for justifying answers to these new questions. New ideas may open up new possibilities and require more than the existing means of evaluation are able to provide.
A philosophy has to presuppose that knowledge of itself is captured for it in its works. For a philosophy, if it is to flourish, has to be embodied in a set of texts which function as its authoritative point of departure and which remain as essential points of reference for enquiry, argument, and debate within that philosophy. Those texts are treated both as having a fixed meaning embodied in them and also as always open to being re-read, so that a philosophy is to some degree a tradition of critical reinterpretation in which the same texts are put to the question, and to successively different sets of questions, as the philosophy unfolds.
The preceding paragraph may appear contradictory. The contradiction is resolved by bearing in mind that set of the texts in which the philosophy is embodied includes not only the texts that are already written, but texts that are yet to be written as the philosophy unfolds. Thus the fixed meaning that is said to be embodied in the set, the one theory expounded through the whole set, is never in fact fixed in the sense of being some particular content fully present to us, fully before our gaze. The set is still the point of departure for the philosophy, but in the peculiar sense that participants must anticipate the whole set of texts being written as the starting point of their discussions. The point of departure is therefore also the point of arrival, the goal of the philosophy.
Thus at any particular stage in the development of a philosophy the beliefs which characterize that stage carry with them a history in which the successive rational justifications of beliefs are embodied, and the language in which they are expressed is itself inseparable from a history of linguistic and conceptual transformations. Thus the concept of Philosophy is inseparable in meaning and use from reference to specific philosophic texts, such as to Plato’s Republic or to Descartes’ Meditations.
We do not understand a theory except through its exposition. If something is a philosophic exposition, then it cannot be fully understood except as such; just as a philosophic work cannot be faithfully interpreted if its conception of Philosophy is ignored. Philosophic claims do not refer to a metaphysical realm except through the development in meaning of the words used. We only have access to a metaphysical realm through what is said about it. A philosophic issue can only be discussed with reference to the discussion itself.
No philosophic theory is accessible (intelligible) except through the words which communicate it – there are no enduring entities as tangible points of reference outside the words themselves (unlike in any of the sciences). The words, it is true, only have meaning through their context, but a philosophic exposition must treat that context as merely a jumping off point whereby its theory can be grasped by the reader. However, its theory can never become immediate except in terms of its immediate applicability to the development of its exposition – i.e. in terms of involving a person in the project of expounding it. The theory can be immediate for the reader in the sense of the exposition being transparent, but only if one also sees its immediate applicability to the development of the text. (The text itself is the object of the immediate experience for the reader.)
Since a theory can only be referred to through its exposition, it follows that a theory can only refer to itself through reference to its exposition (i.e. the exposition can only contain a reference to its theory through containing a reference to itself).
Project
Translation, evaluation, debate, jargon.
Inadequacies and limitations are being remedied by a set of new formulations and evaluations.
The whole conceptual scheme of a philosophy requires a justification which is simultaneously dialectical and historical. Its explanations are justified insofar as they have, by surviving the process of dialectical questioning, vindicated their superiority over their predecessors to those same predecessors.
To make progress a philosophy must produce a new work. The composition of the new work must meet three requirements. First, the new work must solve problems, and render systematic and coherent what was not. Second, it must also provide an explanation of what renders the old works, before they are reinterpreted, sterile (unable to assimilate new ideas) or incoherent (unable to settle conflicts over key issues) or both. And third, these first two tasks must be carried out in a way which exhibits some fundamental continuity of the new conceptual scheme with the old, so that the new is prefigured in the old, and the old fulfilled in the new. This continuity enables the solutions to problems solved in the old to be brought forward into the new.
In order to describe the philosophy of one work as going on to produce another work, there must not only be some kind of continuity, a core of belief which constitutes allegiance to the philosophy, but also the changes must be according to a set of principles laid down in the works themselves.
The success of the new work enables the old works to appear pregnant with new meaning. This interpretation of the old works provides not only a way of identifying the continuities in virtue of which that philosophy has survived and flourished as one philosophy, but also of identifying more accurately that structure of justification which underpins whatever claims to truth are made within it, claims which are not qualified by any references to time or context.
The doctrines of the new work must escape the limitations of the doctrines of the old works, and so the doctrines must not be founded on earlier positions, even though developed out of them. The justification of the new doctrines must lie precisely in their ability to achieve what could not be achieved previously.
A philosophic work may fail to be vindicated by the standards of justification affirmed in it. Take a crude example: A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic. This sets up a theory of meaning which it calls the verification principle, according to which, the statement of the verification principle must be declared meaningless. The theory cannot recognize the possibility of its own exposition. The philosophy, Logical Positivism, is suicidal and cannot develop. However, a philosophic work’s failure to be vindicated by its own standards of justification is rarely total as in that example. So long as there is a falling short of its own standards of justification, yet a recognition of the possibility of those standards being met, a sequel is possible. The failure is then a negative moment in an internal dialectic.
In interpreting a philosophic work in the light of another, one must not aim for a result which simply supersedes the first work: the interpretation must find its justification in the first work.
When one philosophy interprets the doctrines of another philosophy, its adherents may discover concepts and kinds of explanation new to it, enabling a cogent and illuminating explanation of why their own philosophy had been unable to solve its problems or restore its coherence. The standards by which they judge this explanation to be cogent and illuminating are the very same standards by which they have found their own attempted solutions and coherence wanting. Thus this new explanation satisfies two of the three requirements for an adequate response to self-criticism within a philosophy (see above) – insofar as it both explains why, given the methods of that philosophy, the crisis had to happen as it did and does not itself suffer from the same defects (the same incoherence or lack of resources), which it recognizes it had.
As regards the third requirement, no matter how much the criticized philosophy has been transformed so as to be assimilated into the other, there must still be continuity in the sense of self-transformation (transformation according to its own internal dialectic).
A philosophy is misunderstood if it is construed simply as asserting a set of facts which are true or false; it is rather the case that insights, hopes and fears are being expressed, though perhaps in profoundly misleading forms. A philosophy can survive, even though we do not know what to make of it, because it expresses things which we cannot yet express any other way. We have to remove the mask of distortion. But to do so will be to expose a set of misunderstood truths, truths not properly grasped. A philosophy needs to be translated into other terms and not simply rejected. This task is not a purely mechanical one; it is rather to transform a whole way of looking at things so that people need no longer be imprisoned in the original form of expression. When the hopes people had in the old philosophy are embodied in the new they will no longer need to refer back to what may now appear obscure terminology or imagery. (Or they may see the old jargon with deeper layers of meaning.)
philosophy ––> work. A philosophy produces the works – it is the activity of producing the work. It provides the context which gives meaning, and that leads to the work being written. Although it may be changed by its own works, it is itself a continuity between before and after the writing of the works.
work ––> philosophy. A philosophy is a particular philosophy only through its works, it is the activity of writing those works. (It only continues to exist in so far as those works are still being completed, still needing refinement, elaboration, popularization, etc..)
The power and vitality of a work are given to it through the relation of its subject-matter to it. Its particular philosophy consists in people discovering new life and possibilities through it, in its theory. The vitality of a work, its self-regenerating ability – is its philosophy.
A philosophy can uncover the latent power in a work, can awaken a dormant philosophy to life. By breathing life into an alien work, it can give that work a greater vitality than it ever had before. And even as the inspirer finds itself opposed, the recognition enhances its own life. On the other hand, any philosophic insight, when taken too much for granted, tends to lose its vitality and suggestive power for innovation.
A philosophy should constantly seek a new beginning in the sense that it should seek to re-expound its theory. A philosophy can neither assume its present texts to be the last word, firm and unalterable, nor begin without any exposition, and this fact implies the need to explore and test all past philosophies for their present possibility of vitality. The struggle for a new exposition in order, not only to remove dead wood, but also to discover whether apparently lifeless philosophies can once again yield life to a philosophic explorer – this struggle is Philosophy.
No philosophy, when revived, possesses life again exactly as it did in its original form. Insights cannot be expressed in exactly the same way, and the new terms which are used should reflect not only the changing context but also the internal development of the philosophy. It is necessary to rewrite a text in the process of appropriating it, or at least add a new twist to its meaning, bringing hidden depths to the surface, and sometimes making a change of emphasis. In interpreting a philosophy, the original philosophy must not simply be mimicked, but regenerated – a true interpretation must be seen as brought about by itself.
A philosophy can only be comprehended through its own self-comprehension; the transformation of its works is the process through which it is to be comprehended, but this transfiguration must be faithful to the philosophy. One philosophy can comprehend another only by immersing itself in the other’s works. No solution, or even adequate comprehension, of the central issues of any philosophy can be achieved by a thought which, rather than immersing itself in that philosophy, tries to spare itself such labour by means of some abstract a priori argument. We can argue that philosophies will necessarily be reconciled, but the particular nature of the reconciliation cannot be dictated in advance.
There are three moments in one philosophy’s comprehension of another. (1) Philosophies confront one another. (2) This confrontation shows that each recognizes the other as being a philosophy, that Philosophy is the same concept for them both, and hence they are implicitly the same enterprise. There can be no struggle where there is no common point of contact, no competition where there is no prize competed for. If reconciliation between philosophies cannot be presupposed, then there can be no philosophic debate and no use for the concept of Philosophy, or at least no philosophic use. (3) The other philosophy is recognized explicitly as in the process of being reconciled. In making the process explicit, the distinction between the two philosophies is maintained, for the distinction only disappears in so far as the process is already completed.
A philosophy develops through elaborating its explanations and refining its arguments and through debate and conflict with rival philosophies. The last task requires some mastery of the jargon of the rival philosophy in question as a second language, and that in turn requires a work of the imagination whereby one is able to place oneself imaginatively within the rival philosophy, so as to conceive all things as they are conceived in it.
To possess the concepts of a philosophy in this secondary form differs from possessing the concepts which are genuinely one's own. For where one cannot accept that a particular concept has application because one's own conceptual scheme precludes its having application, one is only able to deploy it in the way in which an actor speaking his or her part may say things which the actor does not believe but the character being played does. We possess such concepts without being able to employ them in the first person, except as dramatic impersonators, speaking in a voice which is not our own. But this does not mean that we cannot understand what it is to participate in another philosophy.
Each of the three moments of a philosophy, theory, exposition, and project, constitute the whole philosophy.
Each philosophic theory requires as its counterpart some particular conception of Philosophy and vice versa. The theory and the conception of rationality (of Philosophy) each constitute a philosophy in its entirety, yet are distinct aspects of a philosophy. The theory, insofar as it makes claims upon our rational allegiance as goal of all reasoning, draws us into a philosophy which is at the same time Philosophy as embodied in a particular set of texts.
Truth requires that the distinction between exposition and theory must be both maintained and yet overcome in the philosophy. They must be distinct because, if a work is to communicate something, that something must be other than itself. And while a theory is not grasped unless it can be supposed that it will be put into one’s own words, grasping the theory is a different kind of action, in some sense preceding the composition of an exposition (anticipating the exposition).
There is a tendency to approach an alien philosophy by throwing a conceptual boundary around one’s interpretation, thus imposing on the philosophy a limit which one has brought from elsewhere (from one’s own philosophy). Yet the value of a philosophy lies in transcending all limits to explanation. One should recognize that there is always and in principle more in a philosophic work than has so far been seen. (This is also true of a philosophy’s self-understanding, so that it must always be developing.)
If one rejects the neatness of a theory because it presupposes some definite upper limit to what can be intelligible, one rejects it also because the neatness presupposes a finality contrary to any historical sense.
One philosophy cannot comprehend another if it presumes to have expressed in advance any insight which the other may have, such presumption would render the attempt to comprehend the other as unnecessary. One philosophy must bring to its attempt to comprehend the other the conviction about its own validity; but it will fail to comprehend the other if it supposes that claims made by the other philosophy which contradict its own are simply to be dismissed. The contradiction must be shown to arise from a misunderstanding. Each philosophy must learn to speak the other's languages, to see how its own insights can be expressed by the other. All too easily one philosophy can get the wrong end of the stick about another, even while paying great attention to the detail of the other’s texts.
Even as philosophies are forced to confront each other over the concept of Philosophy, the concept also reconciles them. The philosophies manifested in different works are not separate; they have different roles in the One Philosophy, and are already united implicitly. And in recognizing the One Philosophy implicit in these different philosophies we make it explicit. We can unite philosophies with each other, and indeed, with Philosophy. We do not flee from, but stay with, genuine philosophic debate. The comprehended philosophies are not destroyed by it but rather revived.
Philosophic works, as separate works, are external to one another, but, as philosophic, they are internally related to one another.
Philosophy seeks to do justice to all philosophies which no finite work can mete out to them. But what if it were possible for there to be an infinitely long philosophic work? It might be possible for such a work to do such justice, and yet survive the philosophic activity of doing it.
There may be some temptation to dissipate conflict and chance into mere unreality, on the authority of a theory which, its truth presupposed from the start, does not expose itself to criticism or newfound insights. If a philosophy keeps to itself, ignoring criticism, or dismissing it for not having the right form, in order to save what insights it has, it would not free itself of error, or comprehend every insight. It can only come to explain everything by being open to everything.
Co-existence is not the final truth of philosophic diversity, but only an immediate necessity.
Each philosophy, in so far as it is active, informs the conceptual framework (Philosophy) within which all others must advance their claims, so that its influence extends far beyond the effects of its explicit advocacy. The contingency of a philosophy, the fact that it is only to be appropriated by a relation to its particular history (sequence of texts), does not entail that its history cannot extend to and even flourish in environments not only different from but even hostile to those in which the philosophy was originally at home.
If a philosophy remains within its own closed circle it will have no access to the insights of other philosophies, and indeed have no means of coming to understand its role within Philosophy. But if it takes up those insights too readily it risks becoming confused, losing its way.
The word ‘Philosophy’
The concept of Philosophy must be the same concept in every philosophy, however different the conceptions of Philosophy, i.e. however different the accounts of it. The same thing is being named Philosophy, once we have removed easily isolable deviations such as the term ‘Natural Philosophy’. (By ‘easily isolable’ I do not mean that problems in what was called Natural Philosophy are easily disentangled from philosophic discussions, nor that the characterization of the difference between Natural Philosophy and First Philosophy is easy. But despite the common word ‘Philosophy’ in the two labels, a clear distinction between Natural Philosophy and First Philosophy was always intended.)
Agreement that they are using the same concept of Philosophy is the basis of any dialogue between philosophies.
Nearly all philosophies will actually use the word ‘Philosophy’ to name the activity being engaged in. Sometimes it has to be qualified by ‘first’ to correspond with our usage, where ‘natural philosophy’ is still used to cover Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, etc..
It is equivalent to the concept of metaphysics and to the concept of epistemology, except in so far as these concepts are differentiated (not to be confused with the distinction between explanation and argument). In the Presocratic philosophies one may have to look for the word ‘sophia’ rather than just ‘philosophia’, but the continuity is readily apparent.
With few exceptions, the concept of Philosophy is literally identified with the word ‘Philosophy’ throughout the history of Philosophy. Thus we can say that the concept of Philosophy is very explicitly used in nearly all philosophies.
(Could a work query being a philosophic work, and still be a philosophic work?)
(What of Aristotle’s inclusion of Mathematics under Philosophy?)
The Subject-Matter of Philosophy
If Philosophy is a single enquiry it must be possible to regard it as having a single question. If Philosophy is a single search for some kind of explanation, then it must be possible to regard it as having a single subject-matter – all its explanations are philosophic in so far as they are about some one particular thing (where "thing" is to be understood very generally, and often indeed regarded as a kind or class of thing). But this common issue, this common subject-matter, is not something immediately apparent in every philosophy as being the common subject-matter.
There is not agreement on what the subject-matter is as there is with the concept of Philosophy. Whatever we call the subject-matter may appear disguised as something else in other philosophies and we have to find a way to "translate" by trial and error.
Philosophy cannot be defined by specifying its subject-matter. Indeed the subject-matter of Philosophy is nothing in particular and everything in general. But general and specific are relative terms, terms of degree. Generalizations must end up with something specific if they are to end up with anything. ‘Everything’ does not name a subject-matter, but rather characterizes the process of enquiry – there is nothing lying outside it, or at least that will always lie outside it. (Note: stronger than ‘enquiry without limit’.)
The subject-matter of Philosophy appears to change in the course of history. Problem about using different words for the subject-matter and about recognizing that the subject-matter is the same or different.
Even when two philosophies come to recognize one another’s subject-matter it does not necessarily follow that either claim about what the subject-matter of Philosophy is has to be abandoned. The choice between the two claims may turn out to be nothing more than an arbitrary choice between two ways of arranging all the same material – arbitrary in that it has no practical effect on further development. Within the one philosophy (two philosophies fully reconciled) it is possible to have more than one way of characterizing the subject-matter of Philosophy, although in general one will be favoured exclusively so as to avoid redundancy or confusion.
The Goal of Philosophy
A work can be understood philosophically only insofar as it serves the reader, as expressing insights by which the reader is oriented towards explaining everything. Philosophy is a logical bonding of ideas geared toward explaining everything.
The natural drive of reason is toward a comprehensive theory, with part related to part and each to the whole, toward a systematic body of knowledge and speculation – to "see" (theorein – to contemplate) reality as a whole and to make sense of its different elements.
There is also a natural drive toward freedom, letting be, not forcing unity.
All explanation is the manifesting, the appearing, of the one Being (the explanation of everything). Philosophy is the discipline in which this can come true. But we must go further than this. Firstly, every true statement has a part to play in the exposition of Being. Secondly, such implicit exposition is obtained in a work, not in detachment from other works and other human activities, but as part of an enterprise – Philosophy. Thirdly, to recognize the work as implicit exposition requires that the exposition is made explicit, which means transfiguring the original work.
If Being is necessarily presupposed, then it must be found in a philosophy, but we do not necessarily have to identify it with cognate forms of the word ‘being’ or other words which are easily construed as synonyms. We will find Being both as something discussed and as something being expounded at the same time. Thus our re-statements of a philosophy’s statements will intensify the internal dialectic in the original statements, and so the conception of Philosophy is also transformed.
The first truth brought to light by such re-statements is a unity in all types of explanation (Being-us relations) despite all the conflict between them. Being is a single theory of everything. Being is immanent in every explanation and cannot be separated from any explanation. Being is implicit in any true explanation and any discussion of Being should recognize this implicitness in the discussion itself – the discussion must be part of a self-explanation of Being.
Hence any explanation, in grasping Being, cannot remain apart from any other explanation. The truth of a philosophy (the immanence of Being in its works) is that which draws us into it to complete its works.
Being, expounded implicitly in all explanations, is not, however, expounded in the same way and as well in every explanation. Explanations can conflict. We must preserve the different aspects of Being (truth) in each but transform the conflict in ways of expounding into the performance of different functions within the same exposition, different modalities of Being.
Being is not in general explicitly acknowledged to be the subject-matter of Philosophy. Indeed, the claim that it is runs counter to the belief that Philosophy can be divided into distinct branches of study. Some philosophies may appear to recognize Being as the subject-matter of Philosophy, while in fact using the word ‘Being’ in a different sense, and not be differing only in their conceptions (their explanations of the concept) of Being. We cannot always take the word ‘Being’, or even cognates like ‘is’, as used in a philosophy as it is – the word may have to be changed to denote a different concept is being used. (Note: this may be seen as a reason underlying Plato’s distinction between ‘on’ and ‘ontos on’.) Moreover, whatever is considered the primary subject-matter must be interpreted to be Being. Thus various words or phrases used to refer to the primary subject-matter – ‘God’, ‘Reality’, ‘Mind’, ‘Experience’, etc. may be taken to stand for Being. Not only may Being then be found to have several different terms for it in the same philosophy, but those terms should not necessarily be taken as substitutable for one another; they may have to be taken as different hypostases or modes or moments of Being.
For every philosophic work, while it is true that it is in some sense one with Being, as finite it is also distinct from Being. Hence we have to go beyond it.
This necessity to transcend a philosophic work must be suggested in the work itself.
The absolute Being cannot be mediated to us by a finite work alone. For there must always be an opposition between Being and any particular limited articulation of it. This opposition is resolved when the particular articulation passes away, loses its meaning. But this loss of meaning also signifies the communication of itself to others. The locus of meaning shifts from the particular work to the general debate.
To be expounded fully, Being has to lose its role as something already expounded, and cancel its inherence in works already written (idiosyncrasies of style, quirks of history etc.) and become something still being expounded in ever new contexts.
All philosophies live their unity with the Being implicitly (implicitly take up the absolute standpoint in their works) but by that very token not fully. (‘implicitly’ := ‘without expressing it’. abstract unity only.) For the fullness of unity with Being entails expounding it clearly as its theory, not just discussing it, i.e. not just as its subject-matter, and in doing so having to recognize the fact. The nature of Being is to be self-explanatory.
The relevance of discussing a theory of everything is sometimes that of unmasking idols. There are times when one can be so dominated by a particular way of looking at things that the greatest need is that one simply identify a point where one can say a clear no in the name of one’s loyalty to a wider vision (to hold on to insights one already has). We have no right to say that those who refuse to engage in any particular philosophy should be obliged intellectually or morally to give any reasons for refusing. They need not even articulate their refusal.
Some people identify philosophies with unnecessary doubt or scepticism, and therefore also with childish games and intellectual cowardice; let them prove first that philosophic doubts are really ill-founded, and then they can claim to have understood the meaning and value of Philosophy. To begin with, it is not lowering for a work to distinguish itself from the Absolute: neither from the Absolute standpoint nor from the standpoint of the work itself is this true. Furthermore, it is important to consider what aspect of the work falls short of the Absolute: plainly it is not its transcendent truth, the immanence of Being, that is downgraded. It is, rather, a question here of its relative being – acknowledging its own ontological dependence in relation to Being from which it is derived and which it manifests in its own way; this acknowledgement will accidentally seem self-defeating, but this serves to make the work more effectively open to criticism, so long as the tension is maintained between what the work is and what it might be – still trying to revise it.
Limited and debateable as philosophic works may be, they yet remain "proof by contraries" of the absolute Being and the importance of discussing it in Philosophy. Not to admit that which exceeds it, and not to wish to exceed itself: that is what will kill any philosophy. The correct attitude is: not to explain except in reference to that which exceeds every explanation, and not to be written but for the sake of being exceeded; to seek truth where this is to be found, and not on the plane of the individual finite work and petty criticism. In order to be true, a work must first recognize its own contingency on the level where it cannot help being contingent; the assertion of truth, on the one hand, and the discussion of Being, on the other, requires a certain abnegation, an abnegation which allows the work to be fully faithful to its purpose.
(Proof by contraries – from Aristotle?)
The movement back and forth in philosophic writings between the point of view of proximity and that of distance, or between obviousness and perplexity, all and nothing – this chain of paradoxes and indefinitely multipliable nuances stems above all from the confrontation of the individual work as such with the Absolute Being as such. This confrontation obliges us in every case to combine extremes. In Philosophy the extremes may appear as if separate and independent of each other, but the claims and counter-claims that appear to clash in debate are like signposts which point to an unexpressed centre. The finite works, since they are not and cannot be Being, are obliged to play the role of contingency. There are some philosophic works which are privileged to have already been given a permanent place in the canon of philosophic literature, but this only shows that though the significance of any finite work is nothing without philosophic luck, this does not exclude it from being given immortal significance.
What is the difference between Being and the concept of Being? Being cannot be fully grasped, except in anticipation. The concept of Being is only fully grasped when there is at once total recognition of the otherness of Being – that distance between Being and words which makes Being absolute and leaves finite works perpetually subject to revision – and yet a total presence of Being, a total manifestation in the words. Discussion of Being, then, inserts its way into two aspects of every explanation, prising them apart. Any explanation whatever has its own contribution to make to the discussion of Being, since Being is implicit in it in a way peculiar to that explanation.
UNIVERSALITY AND PARTICULARITY OF PHILOSOPHY
It is the same Universal Philosophy in every particular philosophy, not by being a common element, nor something divided and distributed among them, but by contributing to a common task. (Internal and external are one.) In any philosophic issue, only by ascertaining all the co-ordinates (the variety possible in Philosophy) can we hope to arrive at a solution.
Use of the concept of Philosophy does not in itself prove anything. But use of the concept can have a de facto effectiveness, even when the nature of Philosophy is not discussed. The question that arises is not one of knowing whether it is logical to accept a truth because of being in accord with what is required by Philosophy: what matters is that the concept of Philosophy has the gift of actualizing a liberating and quasi-existential intuition in support of the truth; in short, through use of the concept the truth makes itself tangible to the reader and unveils dimensions which reason cannot grasp any other way: in this sense the concept is necessary.
The concept of Philosophy may appear to be a device for pre-empting debate by reformulating debates as disagreements about the nature of Philosophy, so that Philosophy appears to be two different things going under the same name. Thus the debates cease to be rational, except where there is still sufficient agreement (and therefore less to debate). So other philosophies appear as pseudo-philosophies to be used to illustrate what Philosophy is by contrast. From this viewpoint there appears to be no room in Philosophy for criticism of any conception of Philosophy, that is, for putting any definition of Philosophy in question.
Exchange of Ideas
Philosophy is not historical scholarship (ascertaining what was meant by something in some work), an activity which holds itself apart from philosophizing, an activity which does not itself grapple with the philosophic issues in those works. Historiology is a specialized science distinct from Philosophy. In Historiology, the scientific framework is affected by the results obtained, as in any science, but not in the direct way that Philosophy is affected by the study of philosophic works. In Philosophy the works we are studying question the very assumptions we are making in studying them, usually simply by following alien trains of thought we have never even considered. To remove all vestiges of the original context (such as special jargon) can uproot insights from linguistic expressions for finding authentic being and identity as insights – alienation from Philosophy. (The philosophic import of the original text may be inexhaustible, so that the original context remains necessary for fullest insight.)
Whenever an account of something is transferred from one context to another, hidden assumptions are likely to be exposed. It is like transferring a plant from one pot to another – one could do a lot of damage if one tries to remove all the earth from the roots before putting the plant into the new pot and covering the roots with fresh earth. Indeed the roots themselves may be understood as the hidden assumptions whose existence we only become aware of when we try to make the transfer, and which we cannot see much of directly even during the transfer because of the earth that comes with them. It does not matter whether the transference is to or from a philosophic context, something more than the explicit account itself has to be transferred into the new context. Thus our philosophic assumptions are questioned when transferred to a non-philosophic context, where Philosophy is to serve some extrinsic purpose, where Philosophy does not provide the final reward or satisfaction. To remove all vestiges of non-philosophic elements can uproot insights from linguistic expressions for finding authentic being and identity as philosophic insights. In the pot plant analogy, a cutting may grow into a flourishing plant in the new pot, but only by generating new roots to replace the ones left in the other pot.
By raising doubts about the relevance of Philosophy, non-philosophic contexts question the basis of Philosophy.
Challenge of particularity
In grappling with other philosophies, each philosophy is forced to focus on the problem of its own particularity. The universality and comprehensiveness of each philosophy is questioned by the mere existence of other philosophies, in their being still other, for they challenge its assumption that it is Philosophy, that it is what in them constitutes them as being philosophies. The central works of each philosophy have to change, but Philosophy can still be regarded as a distinct whole in which each philosophy can acquire a unique role in manifesting the Universal Philosophy in which each particular philosophy is in a dialogue with others.
Philosophic works are not to be written in only one language, or only one way; every language and every kind of discourse or style is worthy of being philosophized in. Philosophy is not just a universal manifested in all the diverse philosophies. Philosophy is a concrete universal, a discipline, a science (though systematized in a peculiar way), not just a classification of works and issues.
The goal of Philosophy is a comprehensive explanation which unites all insights, however articulated, in which it is possible to see insights now neglected (those on the periphery, badly articulated). Philosophy needs to recognize strange ideas and insights and ways of talking, i.e. to interrupt the flood of ideas and the closed character of systematic argumentation with these neglected insights and strange ways of talking.
Only so is it possible for Philosophy to encompass every insight. The contents of a comprehensive explanation are not entirely pre-given but are to be worked towards. Comprehensiveness is thus a promise which will be manifested through the development of Philosophy.
Other philosophies force a reconsideration of the claims or the methodology of a philosophy. Similarly they allow suppressed or badly articulated insights to be seen and in this way help correct many errors.
The recognition of philosophic luck relativizes the status of philosophic works and reveals the need for, and provokes the writing of, a new work that crosses frontiers. In such a new work the philosophic identity must be put at the service of the neglected insights. But this relativizing cannot take place without absolutizing the concretion of Philosophy taking place. (The above characterization of Philosophy is insufficient – the class of neglected insights is like the statistics for undetected crime.)
Relation to Being
Philosophy reaches out beyond itself so as to recognize the contingency (relativity) of its works and to reconsider their relevance to Being.
Because all philosophic works are written and continue to have meaning within a contingent, active general environment, a philosophy centred on a single work may seem incredible.
The goal of absoluteness does not rob Philosophy of its diversity and freedom, but rather puts all its manifestations into perspective. It is only from the perspective of our own utterances that we can recognize the transcendence of Being, and thus see the frailty of our own philosophy. Absoluteness has a function within Philosophy, but it is not a possession of any philosophic work as an isolated finite work, nor is it to be found in exclusiveness. A philosophic work must be relative (express relative judgements) and in recognizing its relativity be able to undergo self-transformation alongside others impossible in a rigid, know-it-all stand. The manifestation of philosophic unity is a goal, not something already fully worked out, and thereby serves to limit and relativize all utterances and all finite works of Philosophy (and philosophies), by placing them in their context and pointing to their provisionality: Being (the absolute) is the goal of reason, characterized by a boundless and other-worldliness that transcend words (as already uttered).
In recognizing its own relativity, a work is able to discuss Being as giving to the work, as something out in front which becomes a constant corrective for the work’s own constructions, dissolving all attempts to isolate and fix (absolutize) that which is given. Every philosophy, however profound and however rational, is nothing more than a situationally informed striving toward a goal, a goal that is not yet completely realized (except as anticipated). The truth a philosophy has is becoming, always in process of approximating, something that can never be fully emptied into words. The truth lies in the goal, not the starting point. This view of Being as out in front, as present only in the final consummation, means that all finite expositions lie only in the direction of Being.
(Every philosophy is a manifestation of Philosophy. Every finite philosophic work is a partial manifestation of Being. Being is a goal rather than an instrument to wield in philosophic debate.)
The absolute is with Being: all true finite statements are relative. We live within approximate values. Language is approximate.
This recognition of absoluteness implies that there are, and will continue to be, more than one philosophy. Each philosophy expresses a relation to Being, which can never be wholly identified with any finite work.
Each philosophy interacts with all other philosophies, so that they are a part of it as it is part of them; but it does not replace them: it is being transfigured by them in being taken up by them, just as they are being transfigured by it.
Philosophy is directed to the historical existence of its works, and its works provide the seeds of its further development. Philosophy, in a non-exclusive sense, explains only itself and explains only its own being, and therefore, only its own development. (Philosophy is given direction by Being and by its own works – a dialectic between them.)
The diversity in which Philosophy must necessarily come to be done is not to be united by any easy sectarian temptation to absolutize a particular form to the exclusion of others, but is given direction by its focus on something unconditional which can never be exclusively identified with a single work.
An absolute philosophic work, a knowledge of Being that exhausts its essence and idea, an explanation of everything, need not be withdrawn from all change and enrichment.
The recognition of the limitation of all perspectives poses no threat to philosophic absoluteness, but rather allows it to survive unscathed even after we grasp it.
Philosophy seeks to expound a theory of everything. Such an exposition is only possible by overcoming differences in philosophies through faithfulness of each philosophy to itself in producing new works to regenerate itself, to re-found itself.
In the chaos of ideas (of clashing philosophies), we can establish a single subject-matter to serve as a unifying factor among all philosophic works, past and future. The different subject-matter regarded as primary in different philosophies can function as the given within which the common subject-matter can be discerned.
Each philosophy seeks to make explicit what is, implicitly, in its nature: Philosophy. To be Philosophy it must encompass all other philosophies within itself, not as some common factor in each, but as the mutual interaction through which they become differentiated.
In the chaos of ideas about the nature of Philosophy, the concept of Philosophy itself must serve as a unifying factor among all philosophies. The different philosophies thus function together as the given from which the new conception can be fashioned.
Theory of everything
In Philosophy, the true is distinguished from the false, the meaningful from the nonsensical, in the process of integrating assertions and insights which on their own plane are exclusive, into a higher unity. (Not a unity which is immediately manifested, the belief which characterizes eclecticism.) Through clinging to one philosophy, and not despite doing so, one should be open to other philosophies.
When every philosophy, as a special and separate entity, has learnt to confirm every other philosophy as the complement to itself within the framework of Philosophy – only then will there be an integration of insights into a higher unity. A higher unity is reached not at the expense of others, but for the best interests of all.
There must be no exclusive identification of some works or class of works with the absolute (thus no works are discarded on purely formal grounds), since identifying what is absolute serves to limit the claims of every philosophy. The integration requires a mutual recognition of the particularity of every work, each work being as a staging post on the road to the philosophy of the not-yet. Genuine philosophic debate is the exchange of ideas rather than the attempt to silence opposition.
In their struggles with each other, philosophies can set about re-defining themselves over and against each other. The problem with such a re-definition is that it may dissuade people from reading the other's works, or even prevent them from being able to understand the other's works when attempting to read it, and so the judgement on the other philosophy fails to be seriously questioned. The very existence of the other philosophy may be used as illustration of something to avoid.
If a philosophy is to respond to the expectations of another philosophy it cannot simply echo the other, nor simply invert the other, or otherwise transfigure it in a simple deterministic way. All philosophic questions are loaded, but they must allow for the possibility of unforeseen kinds of responses. A philosophy must work out new concepts and set afoot a new synthesis. Only by emphasizing the uniqueness of a philosophic work can the universal aspects of its philosophy be recognized, not in any empty, inevitably self-centred universalism (Cartesian ego), but through an integration of uniqueness into a higher unity – a mutual recognition and exchange of ideas.
For absoluteness, transcending every context, a philosophy must enter into dialogue with all other philosophies, plunging into the sea of criticism (the ocean of tea in ‘A Storm in a Tea-Cup’), and so enabling it to be present there and to emerge, reconstructed, in a new work. True absoluteness implies criticism, tolerance, and openness.
Philosophy does not develop by dissolving the uniqueness of each philosophic work in some eclectic mixture which would enfeeble what each work has to offer, but in the self-ironic and critical openness of all works toward one another. A philosophy must be able to subject its own works, and its own presuppositions, to criticism, but always with a constructive end in sight. Through testing itself it is able to test the claims of other philosophies, and vice versa.
Self-criticism of a philosophy comes about not just as a result of critiques by other philosophies, nor from a univeralization of the neglected insights, but from the very character of its subject-matter and it is thus integral to Philosophy. Its constructive hope is that through the tension of mutual encounter all philosophies will move toward their goal. The emphasis on encounter and exchange means that the future is not merely a break with everything that has gone before, but rather change through interchange is the end of Philosophy. Philosophic conflicts are thus not settled but transformed into internal dialectic by each side becoming self-critical as a philosophic tradition and hence becoming more open to one another. For a philosophy which takes seriously the implications of the relativism of its own specific works, absoluteness functions as a goal, as signifying that most universal context for words unfettered by all relative and finite claims on absoluteness.
For a philosophy to remain a potent force it must fight against exclusive absolutism; it must counteract any tendency to claim to know or to be in possession of exclusive absoluteness, an absoluteness excluding, or rendering redundant, any contribution by other philosophies.
On the other hand, if it is not to dissolve in confusion, a philosophy must set up temporary barriers to protect its insights until they can be expressed better.
A philosophic work must aim to have a philosophy specific to its context which is at the same time the universal ideal of Philosophy shared with all other philosophies.
To achieve its goal, Philosophy must become more philosophic, more true to itself.
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