ON THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY VI

 

 

                                                           VI

 

INTEGRATING THE CRITERIAL CONFIGURATIONS

 

 

The goal of this chapter is to consolidate the findings of our inquiry into an integrated descriptivist account of philosophy’s nature. Proceeding from the initial hypothesis that philosophy arises from three fundamental poles of cultural activity, the approach yields a clearer and more exact grasp of the criterial configurations that orient the recognition of philosophical discourse and thought.

 

1. PHILOSOPHY AS A DERIVATIVE CULTURAL ACTIVITY

By a cultural practice, I understand a recurrent ensemble of social activities that operate predominantly at affective–cognitive levels. Although not directly directed toward the satisfaction of life’s practical necessities, such activities are sustained against the backdrop of collective interests that shape our forms of life. In this context, it becomes evident that philosophy shares salient features with three fundamental cultural practices, namely:

 

                                            a)   SCIENCE,

                                            b)   RELIGION,

                                            c)   ART.

 

I regard these practices as the most fundamental by virtue of their relevance and their originary character within the context of human life in society. Other cultural practices, whether playful, such as sports and social games; quotidian, such as modes of dress and gastronomy; or traditional, such as popular festivals and rites of passage... occupy a secondary position, for they arise from combinations with elements not properly defined as cultural, such as, respectively, entertainment, labor, nourishment, and social organization.

   In acknowledging the fundamental character of these three cultural practices, science, religion, and art, an inevitable question emerges: might philosophy constitute a fourth fundamental cultural activity, situated at the same level as science, religion, and art, though distinct from them? Philosophers of the past sought to confer upon philosophy an autonomous status, and at times even one superior to that of the other practices. Yet such attempts have never proved entirely persuasive. To accept this proposition would be to fall into what Timothy Williamson has aptly termed exceptionalism.

   The foregoing reflections on the proto‑scientific character of philosophy, its religious inheritance, and the aesthetic dimensions of its discourse lead to a clear conclusion: it is not appropriate to ascribe to philosophy the status of an autonomous cultural practice. We are compelled to acknowledge only three fundamental forms of cultural activity. Philosophy, in the final analysis, presents itself as a derivative practice, both in its motivations and in the semantic material it mobilizes as well as in the methodological procedures it employs.

   The place of philosophy in relation to the more fundamental cultural practices may be compared, to some extent, with that of opera among the essential forms of art. Opera is a genre that unites music, drama, and poetry. In a similar vein, philosophy may be conceived as a cultural practice that articulates elements drawn from science, religion, and art. Just as poetry is not strictly indispensable to opera (in contrast to music and dramatic script), so too the external artistic component is not strictly necessary to the constitution of philosophy. Indeed, as we have already observed, the external artistic element is scarcely present in medieval Thomism or in the presente academic philosophy.

   As with any analogy, the comparison with opera has its limits. Although music, plot, and poetry combine to produce a more powerful effect, these elements may be readily dissociated within the operatic context. One may, for instance, enjoy an aria in a piano transcription; consider, for example, Liszt’s splendid paraphrase of Rigoletto. Likewise, one may read and admire great poetic stanzas such as E lucevan le stelle without knowing the music, or peruse the synopsis of a plot, as in the comic opera L’elisir d’amore, understand it, though remaining wholly unmoved.

   The same, however, does not apply with equal ease to philosophy. Philosophy does not present itself as a mere collage of elements aimed at approaching scientific truth (including our modest common sense of which science is but an extension), together with the expression of the mystical‑religious ambition to comprehend the whole, occasionally harmonized by aesthetic means. Nor does it present itself as a perfect and original combination of the components of those cultural practices, as though it were a wholly new chemical compound formed from distinct molecules.

   Even so, as I have already noted, it is entirely possible to rewrite the message of Plato’s cave myth, abstracting it from any external artistic elements. In a similar fashion, analytic philosophers may isolate the structural skeleton of Hegel’s philosophy, disregarding the immense suggestive weight of its content. Yet it does not seem possible to dissociate the truth‑bearing element from its scope. Perhaps here the analogy with an amalgam affords us a more precise comparison.

   In a chemical amalgam, the elements are neither casually intermixed nor combined to form an entirely new compound. Rather, they are fused in such a way that the macroscopic properties of the whole are significantly transformed. Silver amalgam, for instance, results from the fusion of specific proportions of mercury, silver, tin, copper, and, on occasion, zinc, which crystallizes into a cohesive, resilient structure.

   Something analogous may be suggested with respect to many philosophical theories: they appear to gather diverse elements, articulating them so as to constitute a coherent and intellectually fertile whole, capable of generating interpretive reactions and reflections of notable interest. Yet they remain derivative cultural works, for from this unification no intrinsically original elements emerge. Originality resides, rather, in the combination of the elements and in the effects that such a synthesis is able to produce.  

 

2. AN INTEGRATED EXPLANATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL ACTIVITY

Seeking to replace the foregoing analogies with a more literal formulation, I propose that philosophy be understood as a derivative species of cultural activity: derivative both in its motivations, in the semantic material it mobilizes, and in the methodological procedures it employs.

   With respect to its motivations, philosophy discloses a threefold derivation:

 

(A)     From motivations constituted by the inquisitive curiosity associated with scientific forms of investigation, that is, from the desire to acquire legitimate consensual knowledge, validated by its effective capacity to comprehend, explain, and even to predict and manipulate reality;

(B)      From motivations originally religious, which inevitably include some irrational degree of faith as ungrounded belief. It begins with the impulse to integrate our experiences and to provide a comprehensive understanding of the world and of the human condition. This disposition manifested itself clearly in Plato, through the appeal to a transcendent reality situated beyond ordinary experience, capable of organizing and orienting our access to the world. It is likewise present in the great philosophical systems of the tradition, appearing in a more subtle and veiled, yet still discernible, manner in Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as the search for a panoramic representation of the way we see the world, that is, for an integrative understanding of what we already know;[1]

(C)      From art, in its aspiration toward motivational effects of a “cathartic” nature: the moralizing ingredient that elevates the spirit and refines our sensibility, even though such effects may also serve other motivations.

 

With regard to semantic-conceptual material, that is, the primary data to be considered, this does not originate strictly from philosophy either, for the following reasons:

(A)    Part of this material corresponds to the data of our natural world, physical, mental, or even formal, accessible through ordinary experience, when not derived from scientific information. As discussed in Chapter IV, in the case of naturalistic concepts of entities-principles [–A+B], such data may, in fact, constitute all the relevant elements to be considered.

(B)    In the case of hybrid metaphysical concepts [+A+B], it is observed that philosophy may draw upon theomorphic properties (such as transcendence and hyper‑mentality, among others) originally ascribed to spiritually revered beings. Treated as “personalized abstractions,” these properties come to function as elementary data or as indicators thereof. From our standpoint (entirely agnostic), theomorphic semantic material is nothing more than a modification of material extracted from ordinary or even scientific experience, whether physical, mental, or formal, incorporated into the semantic constitution of hybrid metaphysical concepts, even though this movement is often denied.

(C)    The external suggestive semantic material is composed of diverse combined literary resources, which operate as methodological elements of an aestheticizing nature. These constructions further depend upon an internal metaphorical/hypostatizing component, traditionally formed by the entities-principles that appear essential to traditional philosophical reflection and that lie at the origin of its inevitable aporias.

 

Let us now turn to methodological procedures and devices, which are not originally philosophical either:

 

(A)   Broadly speaking, philosophical procedures do not differ essentially from ordinary reflective procedures, nor from the methods employed in the formal or empirical sciences. The geometric method adopted by rationalist philosophers such as Descartes and Spinoza reflected an apriorist approach imported from the axiomatic procedures of mathematics. By contrast, the historical method of the empiricists, Locke and Hume, for example, relied heavily upon introspection and the collection of empirical data concerning the world and human behavior. This opposition persists to the present day, as may be observed, for instance, in the comparison between Saul Kripke’s formalist bias and John Searle’s empiricist tendency in theories of reference. Although applied in a more or less conjectural manner, these methods share the same origins from scientific procedures. Contemporary analytical instruments, such as formal methods or pragmatic theories, are likewise not the exclusive property of philosophy.

(B)    As discussed in Chapter IV, philosophical reasoning frequently rests upon the assumption of metaphysical principles derived from our supposed mysticist dispositions. Such principles may be represented by three types of concepts: the incoherent metaphysical concept (i.e., [+A+B]); the nonsensical concept (i.e., [–A–B]); and the merely indeterminate naturalistic concept (i.e., [–A+B]). The first two preserve, respectively, traits of the insufficiently coherent or unknowable supernatural beings of the religious tradition. In general, concepts of the [+A+B] and [–A–B] type predominate in transcendent metaphysics and rationalism, whereas those of the [–A+B] type prove more compatible with naturalismo, empiricismo, and science.

(C)    The internal expression of disinterested creative imagination, applied to the conceptual domain, manifests itself in general through original elaborations of thought, examples, analogies, metaphors, or challenging thought experiments (dubbed by Daniel Dennett intuition pumps[2]), a recurrent feature of what may be termed “cognitive aesthetics.” Here, once again, philosophy appears as the “art of reason,” employing concepts, judgments, and arguments for expressive purposes, capable of unfolding into cognitive resonances.

 

Now we can summarise the main properties belonging to the centre of gravity of philosophical discourse in three columns:

 

 

 

 

FILOSO-         MOTIVATION         SEMANTIC         PROCEDURES

PHY                                                   MATERIAL

                                                           (DATA)

 

SCIENCE       The inquisitive           Data obtained       Use of hypotheses

                        curiosity directed      from ordinary        and argumentative

                        toward knowledge    and scientific         reasoning

                        of the real world        experience,

                                                           whether formal

                                                           or empirical.

 

RELIGION     The Search for       Theomorphic traits     Reliance upon belief             

                        comprehensive       (hyper-mentality         in transcendent

                        conceptions that      hiper-physicality        principles

                        order the world       mind-body idio-

                        and human life        syncrasy) as

                        in a deep level         admited principles

 

ART                Pursuit of a               Symbolic elements        Application of              

                        “cathartic”                charged with                  metaphorical-

                        harmonizing             sugestive power             hipostasied

                        experience                                                       resources

 

These three columns show beyond doubt that philosophy, far from being a self-contained cultural activity, operates by appropriating elements from other domains of human culture. We can now interpret the three levels of each column as expressions of the three possible dimensions of philosophical inquiry:

 

 

(i)                    A scientificizing, truth‑oriented, or scientifically directed dimension, composed of conjectures that seek to anticipate the consensual knowledge of science;

(ii)                 A mysticizing, expansionist, or holistically oriented dimension, encompassing speculations and unfounded metaphysical principles, often problematic from a cognitive standpoint and generally admitted as matters of faith as groundless belief;

(iii)          An aestheticizing or aesthetically oriented dimension, which creatively manipulates the medium of philosophical discourse so as to externally suggest possibilities and enhance its expressive efficacy, while internally stimulating the metaphorical or hypostatizing production of principles (from the “being” of Parmenides to the “Being” of Heidegger, passing through Wittgenstein’s “unsayable”).

(iii)

Considering these dimensions makes the conceptual thread underlying the identification of philosophical discourse from a descriptive metaphilosophical perspective more explicit. To make things as clear as possible, let us review the three dimensions once again, now in greater detail:

 

(i) Scientificizing or Truth-Oriented Dimension:

This first dimension originated in the Occident among the Pre-Socratics from the idea of science. It is motivated by scientific curiosity, rational, realistic, and operative, directed toward the attainment of effective results. Constitutively oriented toward scientific truth, it is characterized by a cognitive, heuristic, and veritative focus. It is grounded primarily in generalizations that, at times, achieve relative consensus, followed by arguments intended to demonstrate their possible implications and to reinforce their plausibility through consistency with the results obtained (e.g., Cartesian cogito).

   This task is always carried out under the assumption, whether present or imagined, of a critical community of ideas, whose mediating function is essential in the pursuit of authentic consensus, effectively attainable only through science. It is precisely due to the inherent limitations of this dimension that philosophy is negatively distinguished from science: by failing to meet the conditions of shared basic presuppositions, consensual evaluation of truth, and progress understood as the accumulation of beliefs admitted as true by its critical community (see Chapter III). This first dimension is, par excellence, argumentative and investigative, relying on constative statements. The two subsequent dimensions, however, cease to be essentially cognitive and instead rely more heavily on the performative function of statements.

 

(ii) Mysticying, Expansionist, or Holistically Oriented Dimension:

The initial motivational impulse of this dimension of philosophical inquiry lies in speculative curiosity aimed at broadening the reflective horizon without compromising depth, often accompanied by a desire for transcendence or faith as belief without ground. It is an approach that frequently incorporates non-rational and non-cognitive elements. Such elements affect philosophical speculation, particularly that which appeals to metaphysical entities-principles of a hybrid or elusive nature, though they also, to some extent, influence investigations of a naturalistic character.

   Drawing on a Wittgensteinian metaphor, this expansive dimension would not concern what can be said, but rather what can only be shown. Being cognitively elusive, metaphysical principles become susceptible to indirect demonstration, albeit in fact with the aid of articulated language. At its foundations, this dimension is exhortative and, in this sense, more oriented toward a performative function than toward verisimilitude.

 

(iii) Aestheticizing or Aesthetically Oriented Dimension:

This dimension incorporates external aesthetic elements that enrich the articulated content, suggesting cognitive possibilities through imaginative and literary means. Internally, it is structured around a metaphorical conceptuality, composed of principle-entities insufficiently explained and of their inevitable aporias. This internal metaphorical/hypostatizing element often links dimension (III) to dimension (II), since principles are what most foster holistic orientation. The aesthetically oriented dimension possesses an expressive foundation that confers upon it a predominantly performative character.

 

3. THE METAPHILOSOPHICAL TRIANGLE

My argument in favor of a criterial configuration corresponding to the truth-oriented dimension was already presented in Chapter III. The arguments supporting the criterial configurations for the other two dimensions – the mystifying and the aestheticizing – were presented in Chapters IV and V, respectively. The question that now arises is: how can we organize these configurations so as to help us identify what most truly counts as philosophy in the historically central sense of the word, the sense bequeathed to us by tradition? And to what are we led when we vary the weight of each criterial configuration in relation to the others?

   My hypothesis is that, for something to be characterized as philosophy in the traditional sense, it is necessary that there be, at least to some degree, the presence of criterial configurations that are scientizing, mysticizing (in the sense of seeking breadth, depth, elevation, and orientation, moved, it seems, by faith in a broad sense of the word), and aestheticizing, even though the predominance of each of these configurations may vary significantly depending on the type of philosophy or the philosopher under consideration. I wish to argue in favor of this claim.

   Consider the case of criterial configurations, which constitute the scientificizing or truth-oriented dimension. Their presence can be regarded as a necessary condition for something to be called ‘philosophy’ in the traditional sense of the word, or indeed in any legitimate sense. (Postmodern philosophers have gone so far as to deny the very claim to truth; yet, insofar as they seek to persuade us of something, they at least wish to persuade us that it is true that truth does not exist.[3])

   Could the mere presence of the criterial truth-oriented dimension suffice to constitute philosophy, as the Vienna Circle's positivists desired[4]? The answer is negative. Here is why: scientific curiosity is not to be confused with speculative curiosity. The latter, driven by what Freud called the primary process, grants special rights to the imagination. Scientific curiosity, which would be responsible for the scientificyzing or truth-oriented dimension, when taken in isolation from the others, does not lead to the kind of conjectural, wide-ranging, and highly consensus-indifferent enterprise that characterizes philosophy in its fullest sense.

   If this is so, then the criterial elements constitutive of the ampliative dimension also prove indispensable to any proper form of philosophical inquiry. Even within the scope of naturalistic philosophies, such as Democritus’ atomism and Hume’s skepticism, which we might represent by a formula of the type [–A+B], there remains an inevitable affiliation with the very impulses that, under different circumstances, gave rise to the mystical-religious imaginary from which philosophy itself originated.

   Within the aesthetically oriented dimension, our reflections on the role of art in philosophy lead to the hypothesis that the artistic element constitutive of what have been called internal similarities, when transposed into the domain of the intellect, proves to be indispensable. Philosophical creativity, at the conceptual level, and the principle-entities through which it manifests itself, only become theoretical structures capable of communicating something significant if they are semantically suggestive, generally polysemic, open to a variety of interpretations. Even philosophers such as Gottlob Frege, whose writings appear to lack any artistic dimension, nonetheless possess key concepts and formulations endowed with a certain evocative semantic charge. The very fact that they require interpretation is already proof of this.

   Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the presence of some mysticizing-aestheticizing element in any philosophical construction should not make us indulgent toward an exclusive reduction to the external artistic-rhetorical element when dissociated from the essential internal aestheticizing element. Such an imbalance occurs when we are confronted with mere uncommitted simulations of a consistent philosophical argument within an essentially rhetorical discourse. A paradigmatic example is much of Jacques Derrida’s work, even if it is legitim to acknowledge that he was correct in affirming that his deepest and most ancient dream was to leave a trace in the history of French letters.[5]

   The variations in the importance of each dimension may be illustrated by means of the metaphilosophical triangle proposed in the introduction to this book, whose vertices represent the fundamental cultural activities, while the different philosophies are situated within its interior:

 

                                                 CIÊNCIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                            FILOSOFIAS

 

 

 

 

RELIGIÃO                                                                            ARTE

 

Philosophy encompasses everything that lies within the metaphilosophical triangle. The arrows indicate that the relations among the dimensions are historically dynamic. Over time, religious explanations gradually gave way to philosophical ones, supported by mystical and aesthetic resources that were slowly rendered less operative. The residual religious elements of philosophy were progressively replaced by unified philosophical forms of inquiry that, as they approached the consensual model of science, subdivided into domains such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, etc., even if interconnected.

   As the figure illustrates, philosophical activity and discourse are deeply bound to aesthetic expression, whether externally through literary devices or internally through the creative activity that appeals to metaphorical or hypostatized concepts, the latter open to polysemy in the production of entities-principles that demand interpretive work. Yet as philosophical inquiry draws closer to the consensual discourse of science, artistic expression tends to lose its force, supplanted by more direct and precise modes of presentation. This is, of course, merely a tendential process, accompanied by partial and at times profound regressions.

   The almost imperceptible process of philosophy’s transformation, in its movement toward greater proximity with scientific thought, leaves traces in the history of the discipline that serve as indisputable evidence. No one writes philosophy in poetic form anymore, as did Parmenides or Lucretius. The dialogical form, which once fulfilled an aesthetic function, had already lost its importance well before David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), whose principal purpose was to disguise his atheism. The advent of analytic philosophy rendered philosophical discourse even less receptive to the artistic element.

   It is true that, in opposition to this tendency, critics might invoke names such as Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and even Wittgenstein, though only the latter has been active within the last eighty years. Yet the first two philosophers practiced a philosophy of life and existence, a mutable object that easily eludes capture by any form of scientific objectivity. Walter Benjamin, whom Theodor Adorno regarded as a weak theorist, was above all a man of letters of incomparable style, with a strong philosophical inclination. By contrast, Jürgen Habermas, of the same Frankfurt School as expressionist thinkers such as Benjamin and Adorno, went further by adhering to rigorous systematic argument, even at the cost of inevitable obscurity.

   Wittgenstein was an exceptional case: a paradigm-shifting philosopher and, together with Frege and Russell, one of the founders of analytic philosophy. It is true that, with ambitions of mysticizing scope and the acceptance of aestheticizing elements intrinsic to his philosophy, it was understandable that he opposed the anti-aestheticizing and anti-metaphysical movement of the Viennese positivists, which he regarded as an expression of the decline of high culture and a scientistic perversion – degraded no less than its reactive opposite, irrationalism, with its covertly mystical strand (e.g., Martin Heidegger) or, later, with what would become a covertly nihilistic strand (e.g., Michel Foucault et caterva).

   Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s procedure came at a cost: his metaphors and examples are, in general, profound and well-directed, but, as has been observed, he typically interrupted his vague argumentative fragments before developing them sufficiently.[6] The results were more akin to recommendations and argumentative gestures. For this reason, I insist: what Wittgenstein’s example, and that of others who maintain a mysticizing and aestheticizing discourse, reveals, is that much of philosophy may still be far from becoming science even in the weaker sense of legitimate consensual knowledge that we have been considering.

   Be that as it may, when we turn to the historically central domains of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics – the artistic and religious elements tend to lose strength as these domains draw closer to a terrain of consensus. Yet this occurs gradually and oscillatingly. In Wittgenstein’s case, through a justified regression against the premature specialization that characterizes positivist scientism. However, it was not Wittgenstein but the positivist scientism that eventually invaded American territory and, covertly, spread until it became almost the proper style of present-day analytic philosophy.[7]

   But in that case, how can one sustain the thesis that philosophy, at its historical center of gravity, might be completely replaced by scientific forms? I believe it can, although such a claim is impossible to demonstrate. Beyond this, we have the case of philosophies that concern temporal processes destined to extend into the future, requiring that their theoretical developments remain open; we also have the ever-emerging new secondary applied forms of philosophy; further, there is the case of higher-order philosophies that follow upon the formation of each new particular science; and finally, the question of the very finitude of possible knowledge remains unresolved.

 

4. JUSTIFICATORY EXAMPLES

I now intend to present some confirmatory examples of what has already been suggested, since in philosophy repetition may be salutary.

   As we have seen, philosophy draws from religious cultural practice its mysticizing motivation of breadth, depth, elevation, and faith. The “wonder” (θαῦμα), from which, according to Aristotle, philosophy is born, is linked to this very source. The ambition for breadth carries an integrative component, perceptible in the impulse to direct conjectures toward the greatest possible amplitude: toward the cognitively unattainable totality of reality. And an irrational degree of “faith” is clearly required, particularly in philosophies close to the religious vertex of the metaphilosophical triangle, as we can see in the works of Hegel, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, but also in non-religious philosophies, if we consider ‘faith’ in the broader sense of any form of ungrounded belief.

   Thus, the same motivation that in more mundane circumstances leads to religion, can be found in phrases such as:

 

An ultimate explanation of the universe and of the place that man occupies within it (Aquinas)

Why is there being rather than nothing? (Heidegger/Leibniz)

Where do we come from, who are we, where are we going? (Gauguin)

We are the consciousness of the universe that thinks itself within us. (Carl Sagan)

The ideas come from God. (Einstein)

I want to think of heaven / And not give my heart to the world / For whether I go or stand, / The question lies within my mind: / Man, oh man, where are you going?[8] (Bach)

Beyond the work of the artist, there seems to be another, that of capturing the world sub specie aeterni, as the path of thought which, as it were, soars above the world, leaving it as it is – seen from above, from its flight. (Wittgenstein)

 

 

These questions have been posed at ever higher levels of sublimation and do not appear to require anything resembling established religions. Even if, in considering the Heidegger/Leibniz formulation, one concludes negatively that it must be being and not nothing – because “if it were nothing, no one would be here to ask the question” (Stephen Hawking) – the interlocutor nonetheless reveals a philosophical concern of equal breadth, directed toward refuting the meaningfulness of the question. Einstein’s statement pertains to intellectual integrity; Bach’s to what Bertrand Russell called “love of humanity”; and Wittgenstein’s, more properly, to the element of comprehensiveness in philosophy, which he conceived in terms of perspicuous or panoramic representation (übersichtliche Darstellung).

   From artistic practice we have already seen that the philosopher draws the creative and inevitably metaphorical or hypostatized character of concepts that internally designate the principles grounding his discourse (such as being, idea, thing-in-itself, absolute, the unsayable, and even the concept of thought in Frege…), whose construction is often allied with the same intentions of breadth, depth, elevation, and orientation that we had previously encountered in religion, but which tend to resonate within philosophy.

   In addition, there are matters of style: the external use of metaphors, allegories, and aphorisms, of rhetorical performances, and even the very aestheticizing structure of discourse, as can be observed in Plato, in Spinoza, and in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. These elements not only adorn thought but also shape it, revealing an aesthetic dimension that intertwines with the philosophical quest for the sense of totality. Consider now the following aphoristic sentences:

 

From the strife of opposites is born the most beautiful harmony.  (Heraclitus)

Time is the moving image of eternity. (Plato)

Anguish is the fundamental disposition that places us before nothingness. (Heidegger)

Every beloved object is the center of a Paradise. (Novalis)

Pride is the death of the spirit. (Wittgenstein)

 

Through these means, the philosopher resorts to aesthetic resources as vehicles that induce reflection. Language, in this context, is not confined to an explanatory function: it becomes the poetic expression of thought, revealing style as a constitutive part of philosophy. Metaphors, images, and rhythms do not merely embellish discourse—they structure it, expanding its capacity to suggest, provoke, and illuminate.

   Finally, it is from scientific practice that the philosopher derives his truth-seeking aim: the intention of approaching truth by employing methodological, formal, or empirical resources, generally borrowed from the sciences. Moreover, it is essential that the philosopher remain aware of the consequences of the current scientific image of the world, which must be interpreted as an extension of the manifest image, insofar as it is understood as an extension of modest (Moorean) common sense, without which science itself could not even be comprehended, and which is equally indispensable for the philosopher to keep his feet grounded upon the terrain of the plausible.

     Consider now statements such as the following:

 

The world is made up of atoms and empty space. (Democritus)

Nothing can be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. (Aristotle)

When I think that I exist, I cannot be wrong. (Descartes)

Induction is only possible under the assumption of some kind of uniformity in the universe. (Hume)

Moral action is that which promotes the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people. (Bentham)

The facts in logical space are the world. (Wittgenstein)

 

Through these sentences, we perceive the philosopher engaged in grounding his discourse in truths about the world, bringing philosophy closer to the shared knowledge of science.

   When we consider the philosophy of the Pre-Socratics, all three dimensions – scientificist, mysticist, and aestheticist – are strongly present. The aesthetic component is evident in Heraclitus's aphorisms and in Parmenides's poem. Heraclitus wrote in an oracular tone, while Parmenides’ poem is presented by a goddess who, pointing to the unfathomable virtues of Being, reveals the all-encompassing derivation from the mystical-religious element. Heraclitus, attentive to the constant mutability of the sensible world, sought wisdom in the logos, in the hidden laws of reason that govern the cosmos. Parmenides, in turn, made the knowledge of being his object, understood by the ancients as the immutable foundation of truth. Both, although often regarded as opposites, prove themselves, if this interpretation is correct, to be closer than one might at first suppose. In both, it becomes evident the impulse directed toward comprehending the true nature of things, the search for authentic consensus, the mark of a scientific attitude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] A, Philosophische Untersuchungen, I, §122. The passage has already been discussed in Chapter II. It is central, for it elucidates the role of the interweaving of theoretical concepts such as ‘use,’ ‘language‑game,’ ‘grammar,’ and ‘form of life’ that permeate the later Wittgenstein's philosophy. As already noted, kindred ideas had already been anticipated, for example, by C. D. Broad, who, in 1923, in Chapter 1 of Scientific Thought, advocated a synoptic analysis designed to clarify our central concepts and their relations, as a means of forestalling a distorted understanding of reality born of our “wishful thinking.” Yet Wittgenstein was unique in exemplifying what he termed a panoramic representation of the “grammar” of the concept of meaning through his later philosophy. See also Claudio Costa, Philosophical Semantics, chap. III.

[2] Intuition pumps are thought experiments designed to provoke or manipulate philosophical intuitions. They can be both constructive and misleading. Dennett suggested that, in order to determine whether they are mere conceptual magic tricks, we must first dismantle them. See Daniel Dennett: Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, cap. 1.

[3] Examples of this present form of sophistry include French postmodern philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida—not to mention the American Richard Rorty, whose success derived from devising a path to render philosophy an easy affair. If their claim was that truth is always a socially relative construction, such a position is highly questionable. But if they merely intended to assert that we are incapable of attaining absolute, objective, and universal truths, then they were simply reiterating what most philosophers, from C. S. Peirce to Karl Popper, have regarded as a commonplace. My own view on the matter coincides with that of Noam Chomsky: it is an obscurantist, elitist, and intellectually vacuous movement.

[4] See the well-known Positivist Manifesto, from Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn e Otto Neurath, intitulado The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle (1929).

[5] Benoît Petters, Derrida, p. 647. Anthony Kenny’s judgment on this rhetorical make‑believe of genuine philosophical labor is spot‑on: ‘It is not surprising that his fame has been less in departments of philosophy than in departments of literature, whose members have had less practice in distinguishing genuine philosophy from counterfeit philosophy.” A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. IV, p. 96.

 

[6] Ver A. C. Grayling: Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction.

[7] In 1929, members of the Vienna Circle – seeking to replace metaphysics with science – visited Wittgenstein to have him explain the Tractatus, a task he undertook somewhat reluctantly. On one occasion, to the consternation of his visitors, he defended a metaphysician (supposedly Schopenhauer) whom he had read with pleasure. On another, he received them seated with his back turned, reading aloud the extraordinary lyric poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. He even arranged with Moritz Schlick to dictate a book to one of the Circle’s members, Friedrich Waismann, in which he would present a systematic exposition of his new philosophy. The process proved exhausting, as he would respond to Waismann’s objections with remarks such as “That is not important” and “You have understood nothing,” while demanding that everything be continually rewritten. With Schlick’s death in 1936, Wittgenstein felt released from this obligation, breaking definitively with Waismann and the Circle. In The Blue Book (1933–1934), dictated to his students at Cambridge, he concisely set forth what I think to be his critique of the positivist scientism cultivated by the Circle’s members: “Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask questions in the way scientists do. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and it leaves the philosopher in complete darkness” (p. 18).

 

 

[8] “Ich will an den Himmel denken / Und der Welt mein Herz nicht schenken / Denn ich gehe oder stehe, / So liegt mir die Frag im Sinn: / Mensch, ach Mensch, wo gehst du hin?"