From Philosophy to Philosophy and Back Again

By Logan Zelk

 Premise:  If we asked someone the question, “What is it to philosophize?” our interlocutor would answer (unwittingly) in their own familiar manner. 

 For instance:

 — — Someone trained in the classical style of philosophizing would answer – classically. That is, like a clerk at a foreign bank, they would exchange the base question for questions of a different, ancient currency – conveyed perhaps in a Greek or Latin accent. Only thereby, as some philosophers like to say, would the question have “purchase.”

 — — Perhaps such a person might respond after the style of Socrates, by dissecting philosophy’s definition. Or by the anecdotal use of words: “When people say this, they typically mean this set of references and referents, this denotation and that connotation, formally or informally,” etc.

 Meanwhile, if we asked ourselves once again the question, “What is it to do philosophy?” – but this time, to someone oriented in a more modern discipline –  they will answer the question in a modern manner.

 For instance:

 — — A Romantic might convey philosophy as an exercise of intellect configured with will and passion, such as to aim one’s self towards the infinite, by which one comprehends the paradox of subjective existence as a finitude located within the cosmic whole.

 — — By contrast, a Pragmatist philosopher might consider philosophy to be mastering the tool set by which one evaluates values, choices, options; honing one’s use of reason in the service of practical ends.

 — — A Positivist (or even a scientist) might deny there’s any such thing as philosophy beyond the philosophy of science.

 — — Kantians would say it’s putting Reason against its own sword, critiquing Critique and analyzing Analysis, with one blasphemous stroke, in order to study its supposed metaphysical innards.

 Recapitulation

 Being philosophers, then, all these eminent figures would exchange your question for one of theirs, initiating a process of questions within their own discipline, in their own manner. They’d break the initial question, “What is it to philosophize?” into further sets of idiosyncratic questions, which would always already reflect its authors’ own philosophical nature – that is, the ways they already use their own language.

 For instance:

 — — A Romantic would ask you to recollect an experience of the Sublime, in a work of art or an encounter with Nature, and from the memory’s mood, progress from there.

 – — A Pragmatic philosopher would retort by asking “What are the most optimal answers to this question for me to believe?” or “What is the most optimal idea of philosophizing I can construct for myself?”

 And so on.

 Each will demonstrate their answer through the manner of its procedure, because philosophy is an activity, of which to philosophize is its infinitive form.^[1] And it’s an activity of language.

 Resolution

 So then what is our own answer to that question?  What inferences might we draw from these observations? We might ask the philosopher Martin Heidegger, from the pages of  his book What is Called Thinking?  In an elaboration upon Parmenides’ poem on Being, Heidegger makes a distinction between two Ancient Greek words, both having to do with language:

 Logos, and legein.

 — — Logos we might understand or define as a finished statement, the intended message and meaning imparted by an assembly of words chosen and arranged in a constructed order; a complete sentence, an act of speech, a proposition. Another way of defining logos might be: language in action, in use, put to work.

 — — Legein, on the other hand, is what undergirds the logos, its conditions of possibility.

 — — The word Legein itself derives from an Indo-European particle meaning “to gather”. We might understand legein in terms of all that gathers behind an act of speech or writing. Semantics and Grammar both are aspects of legein. Jointly, they make logos itself possible. They are like necessary rules, axioms, designations and agreements that prepare the ways they already use their own language -- in speech acts, communication, dialectic, and instruction.

 — — In somewhat the same way that Peano axioms provide the ground for arithmetic, legein encompasses the ground for logic, as a kind of evaluation and verification of logos as possibly valid or sound.

 — — And so when we ask “What is it to philosophize?” should we not be asking for philosophy to show itself, as just such an evaluation and verification of its chosen subject matter?

 Here though arises a challenge.

 — — As Kurt Godel has demonstrated, no axioms can prove themselves by virtue of the systems they propagate.

— — This means that logos cannot prove its own truthfulness, accuracy, validity, or soundness logically; logic cannot scrutinize itself, as if to suffice for mere faith when it comes to believing its own premises. Rather, such an operation would have to rest with legein.

 Delineation

 This line of thinking reaches the following conclusions:

 A.

— — If Understanding is facilitated through Language, then if Understanding is to understand itself, it must also understand the nature of its own assigned Language.

 — — Logic then is not the end-all be-all of language, but only the examination of how far our language can take us -- to the liminal boundary where (we imagine) legein crosses over into logos.

 B.  

 — — We observe this precisely in the manner philosophers might respond to the question “What is it to philosophize?”

 — — If we delve where we should, we will be lurking somewhere behind the scene, at the root of those responses, where whatever it is that words happen to be gathered by -- what grounds their construction of meaning.  What lexicon, what bank of terms and words, and, stylistically, what syntax do they employ?

— — We are forced to employ indirect methods. We might survey the tenor and tone of our reply to the question, after the fact. Perhaps we imagine which connotations might carry a pattern. Or: what gets revealed in our body language? Any nervous tics or stock verbiage recur? What if anything might serve the role of axioms or  metaphysical suppositions? What might be the psychology of this person, their class, their behavior, their values?

 — — But where will this get us? Does it not land us back in that same crucible – back into the logic of scientific inquiry? All these guesses sound like the stuff of social science – the purview of linguists or behaviorists.  In other words, back again to the use of language we presuppose already, but have not fully understood.

C.

— — See? The very question “What is it to philosophize?” is clever in that it prompts us to project the structure of our own assumptions and subsequent manner of thinking within the medium of language, the framing of our literal, constructed response, our finished propositions. For that reason, the very interpretation of the question itself beckons its own incidence of philosophizing: to ask about philosophizing is to philosophize, already.

 — — We have not answered the question.  Yet we’ve been proceeding as if we had.  Once asked about the meaning of philosophizing, we’re just doing all this all over again.

— — So perhaps now we are beginning to see that insofar as Understanding must endeavor to understand itself, so too Questioning must question itself, must question what it is to Question, in order to expose its own horizon in its entirety.

 — — And that’s a problem. Let’s see why…

D.

— — Philosophy, or so it seems, is a fancy term for the art and skill of questioning -- is questioning in itself, nothing less, nothing more. So it seemed to Socrates, who never much wanted to say what he knew. 

 — — And so began philosophy, and it was the luxury of thinkers in Antiquity to have lived at the beginning of History, and not in media res, a few millennia in the thick of it. (As indeed we are). They possessed no means for seeing themselves as philosophers partaking in a practice called “philosophy.”

— — As versatile as the ancient Greek literary arts were, their language was still in its generative infancy, limited to the few, and mostly employed for functional purposes. The ancients were not privileged to be holding a record so vast as ours today. Or better: they were not burdened by such knowledge (as indeed we are).

— — The Greeks had no earthly clue that their significance would endure for thousands of years (how could they?); or even how much can happen within a century, a decade, a year. And how would a Greek be able to appreciate properly what an astounding miracle it would be, that their example has persevered this long?

— — So too the data necessary for perceiving a language as a historical, organic, evolutionary, dynamic entity had yet to exist. The Socratic tradition did not develop a sense for the liminal. And if the Truth does lie in that domain, then all their struggles to capture the Truth were secretly doomed from the start.

 E.

— — With this in mind, let us again ask ourselves: Why do we philosophize, if philosophical Questioning must so earnestly question itself, must question what it is to Question, in order to expose its own horizon in its entirety?

— — Any present-day philosopher, having read this far, must feel a sliding chill down their neck. For where is the limit of our questioning? And yet we keep asking.

— — If any philosopher of yore were resurrected today to see the outcome of history, would they not suffer a spell of despair? At all the books they did not have the opportunity to read, the works to absorb, the arguments to peruse, the ideas to accumulate, alas! No, they would feel just as Hegel describes the everyman in relation to Spirit: a puppet of the passions, a collateral existence perpetually at the mercy of the great wheel of History, and one more blood sacrifice at the altar of Reason. A stepping stone for a stepping stone.

 — — “Philosophers,” in the most honorific sense, are stalkers – no, they are slaves – of Truth. They dedicate their lives to its exposure.  But how many examples of existential embarrassment are required before they begin to Understand understanding in itself and never have to risk ourselves again? How many more of us will have to suffer the tarnishing of our legacies, reduced to fools in the eyes of our peers and progenitors?

 — — Can there actually be a truth about questioning, one that can understand the questioning of questioning itself? There is no end to the questioning. Continuing is irrational. Why do we?

— — Just how much regard does this Lady Truth have for the cretins who obsess over attaining her  – that succubus, that demon seductress who saps our strength the more we strive after her allure, even with such slender for hopes for success.?

F.  

 — — And here, in a way, we do reach the end.  For here we might notice the shard of contradiction in the heart of philosophy, which raises our doubts to a high pitch.

 — — Philosophy aspires towards Truth. It wishes to understand itself, for, as they say, the unexamined life is not worth living.

— — But the trouble with philosophy – the “love of wisdom” – is that it stands in its own way. The role it plays within the whole of Truth, insofar as it pursues the latter, becomes oblique to itself.  A gap emerges in the Understanding, which it fails to recognize as its own recapitulated shadow, cast upon the whole of Truth.

G.
 

— — Either our stance towards the Truth will mirror our stance towards Life, or our stance towards Life will resemble our stance towards Truth. One way or the other, we will live in the contradiction between Truth and Life, lying and remaining unfulfilled.

 — — It is to this relation between Truth and Life, and our being entangled in the middle, that philosophizing tends, and from it, arises. Both are absurd objects, unworthy of our love and devotion by Reason’s standards. Life is callous and cares nothing for individuals, while Truth commandeers them as pawns for her machinations, using their blood to grease the wheels.

 — — From this point of view, it’s hard not to see that the role of any single particular questioner is expendable – yet the role of the questioner itself is anything but.

 EPILOGUE

 “We would reflect on language itself, and on language only. Language itself is – language, and nothing else besides. ‘Language’ itself is language. The understanding that is schooled in logic, thinking of everything in terms of calculation and hence usually overbearing, calls this proposition an empty tautology. Merely to say the identical thing twice – language is language – how is that supposed to get us anywhere? But we do not want to get anywhere. We would like only, for once, to get to just where we are already.

 “This is why we ponder the question, ‘What about language itself?’ This is why we ask, ‘In what way does language occur as language?’ We answer: Language speaks. Is this, seriously, an answer? Presumably – that is, when it becomes clear what speaking is.

 “To reflect on language thus demands that we enter into the speaking of language in order to take up our stay with language, i.e., within its speaking, not within our own. Only in that way do we arrive at the region within which it may happen – or also fail to happen – that language will call to us from there and grant us its nature. We leave the speaking to language. We do not wish to ground language in something else that is not language itself, nor do we wish to explain other things by means of language.

 “On the tenth of August, 1784, Hamann wrote to Herder:

 If I were as eloquent as Demosthenes I would yet have to do nothing more than repeat a single word three times: reason is language, logos. I gnaw at this marrow-bone and will gnaw myself to death over it. There still remains a darkness, always, over this depth for me; I am still waiting for an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.

“For Hamann, this abyss consists in the fact that reason is language. Hamann returns to language to say what Reason is. HIs glance, aimed at reason, falls into the depths of an abyss. Does this abyss consist only in the fact that reason resides in language, or is language itself the abyss? [...]

 “The sentence, ‘Language is language,’ leaves us to hover over an abyss as long as we endure what it says.”

                                                                                    – Martin Heidegger, Language

Logan Zelk, formerly of New York City, is a man of many words that cannot be condensed in a reasonable space. So, for reasons as unclear as Heidegger, he has instructed your editor to either include a mammoth and mouthy self-description that would be subverted by its own style, or else leave the description blank. But if it were left entirely blank, there would no indication of the fact that he will be heartily missed.  

^[1] We might match form to manner, if form is for static things, objects, and manner for things in motion, processes.