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Active Sense?

I previously noted a weakness in the otherwise exemplary use that Robert Pippin makes of Aristotle in his groundbreaking reading of Hegel. Pippin wants to emphasize the radical novelty of Kant’s claims about the active role of human intellect in the formation of what we take as reality. This drives him to make the seriously wrong claim that Aristotle views intellect as purely passive, or receptive of pre-given forms. This is a complicated subject, but I think the beginning of a reasonable interpretation is to recognize that our ability to think is neither purely passive (merely receiving the given), nor purely active in the sense of having no objective dependencies, or in the sense of arbitrary choice.

Aristotle suggests a kind of analogy between sense perception and intellect. His account of sense is oriented toward explaining the relative objectivity of ordinary sense perception. But context is all-important here. If Aristotle bends the stick rather far in the direction of realism, this needs to be understood as a counterbalancing response to Plato’s sometimes extreme distrust of the deliverances of sense.

Pattin says that for Aristotle, it is necessary to posit an agent intellect because sensible intelligibles do not exist in act outside the soul. Any existence of sensible intelligibles outside the soul is only potential.

There was a major debate among the Latin scholastics about the passivity or activity of sense. One view does argue that there is no such thing as an active component in human sense perception, that it is entirely passive. But the other view sharply objects to this. Pour l’histoire du sens agent by A. Pattin (1988) collects many of the Latin sources for this dispute. I am not so bold as to offer my own translations from the Latin, as I occasionally do with French. But I wanted to at least briefly skim the surface of this extensive debate on the existence of active sense.

Pattin notes that Albert the Great already catalogued many views concerning the causal role of the sensible object in relation to the human sensitive faculty. Some authors assigned the active role in visual perception to light. For others though, including Augustine, it is the activity of the soul, in reaction to the experience of the sensible object, that forms the cognitive content of sensation “from its own substance”. Pattin says that for Augustine, it is absolutely impossible for the spiritual soul to be passive in relation to sensible realities, because the inferior cannot in any way act on the superior. I would note that in this Augustine follows Plotinus.

Pattin says that Aquinas accepts a non-Augustinian view of sense perception as categorically passive. For him sensibles are found in act outside the soul. But he argues against giving much weight to the analogy between sensation and intellect, because he wants at the same time to defend the existence of an active intellect within the human soul. In itself, the issue of active sense is not very important for him.

This understanding of the significance of positions for and against the analogy between intellect and sense is very far from the way Pippin presents it. For both Aquinas and Pippin, the analogy is an argument from a claimed passivity of sense to the passivity of intellect. For Aquinas, the truth is that sensation is passive while thought is not. But for a number of important medieval and Renaissance thinkers, both our sense perception and our thought have an active component, and the analogy supports this.

There was a particularly influential debate on this subject between Bartholomew of Bruges (ca.1286-1356) and John of Jandun (ca. 1285-1328). Bartholomew is believed to have written three treatises against the notion of active sense, of which one survives. John on the other hand defends the analogy of sense and intellect, and uses it to argue from the existence of active intellect to the existence of active sense. An intermediate position is argued by John Buridan (ca. 1301-1360), who was also an important participant in the debates about nominalism and realism. John of Jandun’s position was defended by numerous Italian Aristotelians — including Taddeo de Parma, Mathieu de Gubio, Gaetan de Thienne, and Agostino Nifo, who like John of Jandun have been labeled as Latin “Averroists”. It was discussed by other very non-Thomistic Aristotelians like Pietro Pomponazzi and Jacobo Zabarella. The intermediate position of Buridan was meanwhile taken up by his students, like Nicolas Oresme and Marsilius of Inghen.

Lovers’ Quarrels

Ever since reading Habermas on ideal speech situations — and rereading Gadamer on the mutuality implicit in the practices of Socratic dialogue — I’ve been asking myself about the case when people who love one another have some dispute. Habermas notes that the more substantial forms of communication he is interested in are fundamentally directed toward conflict resolution of some kind.

Nussbaum points out that love for Aristotle signifies “mutual affection, mutual well-wishing, mutual benefiting for the other’s own sake, and mutual awareness of all this” (The Therapy of Desire, p. 90). This fourfold mutuality seems like it meets Habermas’s criteria for an ideal speech situation, as well as Gadamer’s criteria for dialogue and Hegel’s criteria for mutual recognition. (At one point early in Hegel’s career, love explicitly played the ethical role that mutual recognition came to play later on.) This is of course a question about an ideal, not something presumed to be true always.

My initial idea was to say that dialogue between loved ones should ideally always represent what is called a “safe space”. But I came to realize that the safety I was looking for was not at all the same as what people commonly seem to mean when speaking of a safe space.

I’m looking for a safety grounded in the mutuality of dialogue, where it is safe to say things that otherwise might be risky — safe because there is mutual trust and a presumption of mutual good will. On the other hand, the popular meaning of safe space seems to be a context in which someone will get only affirmative feedback. This seems to leave no room for the possibility of a loving challenge of one we love on some matter of detail.

I’m looking instead for a kind of safety to raise doubts with someone we love. The idea is that where there is love between two people, it should always be possible for one to raise a doubt about something said or done or proposed, without it being interpreted as a personal attack on the other.

Micro-Teleology

Nussbaum’s account of Aristotle’s views on emotion also nicely illustrates the role of “that for the sake of which” in determining the behavior of living beings for Aristotle, for instance when she says that the dog who goes across the room to get a piece of meat is not “propelled from behind” to do so by instinct or whatever, but rather is attracted because it apprehends something as potential food, as distinct from non-food.

A Few Conclusions on Emotion

Emotion is not just a “raw feel”. It is intimately tied up with the way we understand meaning in life situations. More specifically, it closely tracks the kind of preconscious judgment that Kant associates with what he calls the figurative synthesis of imagination, which for him governs our apparently spontaneous beliefs and “immediate” apprehensions of things. Nussbaum’s work on Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers shows what a long prehistory this notion — which is so unlike the most common modern views of either consciousness or emotion — actually has.

The apprehension of meaning has a broader scope than “consciousness”. Large parts of it are preconscious. Our preconscious apprehensions explain why things just seem to be in the particular ways they seem to us, and not in some other ways.

It seems to me that the Aristotelian perspective on emotion that Nussbaum brings out provides important insight into the controversy about the so-called cognitivism of Habermas in his view of what he calls ideal speech situations. The term “cognitivism” has a narrow sound to it that I don’t like. Based on Nussbaum’s work, I want to say that if Habermas is a “cognitivist”, then so are all the Greek philosophers. The way that she explains the shared perspective of the Greek philosophers on emotion — as deeply and intrinsically involved with the apprehension of meaning in life situations — puts this in a much better light. To me this seems vastly better than arguments that effectively make emotion into a kind of brute force that is completely irrational, and can only be understood in causal terms.

This could perhaps provide a new underpinning for the notion of “emotional intelligence”. Emotional intelligence would be grounded in the character and agility of our preconscious apprehensions of meaning, especially in interactions with others.

Emotion and Belief

“The Hellenistic thinkers see the goal of philosophy as a transformation of the inner world of belief and desire through the use of rational argument. And within the inner world they focus above all on the emotions — on anger, fear, grief, love, pity, gratitude, and their many relatives and subspecies. In Aristotle’s ethical thought we see, on the one hand, a view about the nature of the emotions that adumbrates many ingredients of the more fully developed Hellenistic views. Emotions are not blind animal forces, but intelligent and discriminating parts of the personality, closely related to beliefs of a certain sort, and therefore responsive to cognitive modification. On the other hand, we find a normative view about the role of the emotions inside the good human life that is sharply opposed to all the Hellenistic views, since it calls for cultivation of many emotions as valuable and necessary parts of virtuous agency” (Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, p. 78).

“Why, then, does Aristotle adopt an analysis of emotion that resembles that of the Hellenistic thinkers, while at the same time advancing a very different normative view of their role?” (p. 79).

That is, Aristotle gives emotions a positive role in virtue, but his Hellenistic critics advocated both the possibility and the rightness of separating oneself from all emotion, root and branch.

“According to some influential modern views that have left a deep mark on popular stereotypes, emotions like grief, anger, and fear come from an animal irrational side of the personality that is to be sharply distinguished from its capacity for reasoning and for forming beliefs. Emotions are simply bodily reactions, whereas reasoning involves complex intentionality — directedness toward an object, a discriminating view of the object. Emotions are unlearned or innate, whereas beliefs are learned in society. Emotions are impervious to teaching and argument, beliefs can be modified by teaching” (ibid).

“This, however, was not the view of the emotions held by any major ancient Greek thinker. If we schematically lay out the common ground of their agreement, we will be in a better position to appreciate Aristotle’s specific analyses :

“1. Emotions are forms of intentional awareness: that is (since no ancient term corresponds precisely to these terms), they are forms of awareness directed at or about an object, in which the object figures as it is seen from the creature’s point of view. Anger, for example, is not, or not simply, a bodily reaction (such as a boiling of the blood). To give an adequate account of it, one must mention the object to which it is directed, what it is about and for. And when we do this, we characterize the object as it is seen by the person experiencing the emotion, whether that view is correct or not: my anger depends upon the way I view you and what you have done, not on the way you really are or what you really have done.
“2. Emotions have a very intimate relationship to beliefs, and can be modified by a modification of belief. My anger, for example, requires a belief that I have been deliberately wronged by someone in a more than trivial way. Should I decide that this belief was false (that the alleged wrong did not in fact take place, or was not in fact a wrong, or was not done by the person in question, or was not done deliberately) my anger will be removed, or shift its target….
“3. All this being so, emotions may appropriately be assessed as rational or irrational, and also (independently) as true or false, depending on the character of the beliefs that are their basis or ground. Thus, rather than having a simple dichotomy between the emotional and the (normatively) rational, we have a situation in which all emotions are to some degree ‘rational’ in a descriptive sense — all are to some degree cognitive and based upon belief — and they may then be assessed, as beliefs are assessed, for their normative status” (p. 80).

“Even the bodily appetites — hunger, thirst, sexual desire — are seen by Aristotle as forms of intentional awareness, containing a view of their object. For he consistently describes appetite as for, directed at, ‘the apparent good’. Appetite is one form of orexis, a ‘reaching out for’ an object; and all the forms of orexis see their object in a certain way, supplying the active animal with a ‘premise of the good’. In other words, when a dog goes across the room to get some meat, its behavior is explained not by some hydraulic mechanism of desire driving it from behind, but as a response to the way it sees the object. Aristotle also holds that appetite — unlike, for example, the animal’s digestive system — is responsive to reasoning and instruction. He is talking about human appetite here, but he recognizes much continuity between humans and other animals, with respect to the capacity for acting from a (modifiable) view of the good” (p. 81).

“Where specifically human appetite is concerned, the case for intentionality and cognitive responsiveness is clearer still. Aristotle’s account of the virtue of moderation, which is concerned with the proper management of the bodily appetites (the appetites, he frequently says, that humans share with other animals), shows that he believes suppression is not the only way to make appetite behave well. Indeed, suppression could produce at best self-control, and not virtue. The virtue requires psychological balance (sumphonein), so that the person does not characteristically long for the wrong food and drink, at the wrong time, in the wrong amount. But this is achieved by an intelligent process of moral education, which teaches the child to make appropriate distinctions, to take appropriate objects. The object of well-educated appetite, he holds, is the ‘fine’ [or beautiful, or morally noble] (kalon)” (ibid).

“[A] loud noise, or the appearance of enemy troops, may produce a startling effect, even on a brave person. The person’s heart may leap from fright or startling, without its being the case that the person is really afraid…. If the person is only startled and not afraid, it is clear that he will not run away: as the De Motu argues, only a part of the body will be moved, and not the entire body. The De Motu analysis suggests that we see in such cases the effect of phantasia, or ‘appearing’, without any concomitant orexis, reaching out, or desire. (Emotion is a subclass of orexis.) The question must now be, What would have to be added to this being startled, in order to turn it into real fear?

(Nussbaum’s translation and commentary Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium inspired my early brief note The Animal’s Leg Joint. That book of hers also contains a very down-to-earth elaboration of Aristotle’s notion of unmoved moving, using biological rather than astronomical examples.)

“The example resembles another one used by Aristotle in the sphere of perception, where he distinguishes simple phantasia, appearing, from belief or judgment. The sun, he says, appears a foot wide: it has that look. But at the same time, we believe that it is larger than the inhabited world” (p. 83).

Here she translates phantasia as appearance. Often it is rendered as “imagination”. When I write about imagination in Aristotle, it is phantasia. This is an important term for Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics as well, for whom it stands in between sensation and thought. For the Stoics, phantasia is a fundamental mode of presentation or representation in the soul that is also the object of a physical and physiological theory of image transmission that supports a kind of epistemological realism.

“Here it is clear that the something that needs to be added, in order to turn the mere appearing into the usual sort of basis for human action, would be an element of conviction or acceptance. It is in this that mere phantasia differs from belief. Although the contrast between phantasia and belief in Aristotle is sometimes depicted as one between non-propositional and propositional cognitive attitudes, it is clear that this cannot be quite the right story for our case. For the phantasia of the sun as a foot wide involves, at the very least, combination or predication. It is a little hard to see where to draw the line between this and the ‘propositional.’ The real difference between phantasia and belief here seems to be just the difference that the Stoics will bring forward as the difference between phantasia and belief: in the former case, the sun strikes me as being a foot wide, but I don’t commit myself to that, I don’t accept or assent to it. In the latter case, I have a conviction, a view as to how things really are” (p. 84).

“Further pursuit of the question shows clearly, however, that no technical distinction between phantasia and believing is at issue in any of these analyses of emotion: phantasia is used, in the rare cases where it is used, simply as the verbal noun of phainesthai, ‘appear’. The passage contains no suggestion that phantasia is being distinguished from doxa, belief. And indeed Aristotle feels free to use belief-words such as dokein and oiesthai in connection with his analyses of emotions” (p. 85).

She turns to a discussion of particular emotions.

“In short: fear, as described in this chapter, is a peculiarly human experience with a rich intentional awareness of its object, resting on beliefs and judgments of many sorts, both general and concrete” (p. 86).

“[T]he distress and pain are not independent of the judgment, but result from it. Thus if the judgment changed, we could expect the feeling itself to change — as Aristotle himself insists, when he speaks of the conditions under which fear will be removed” (ibid).

“In short, these emotions have a rich cognitive structure. It is clear that they are not mindless surges of affect, but discerning ways of viewing objects; and beliefs of various types are their necessary conditions. But we can now say more. For we can see by looking at Aristotle’s accounts that the beliefs must be regarded as constituent parts of what the emotion is. Fear and pity are both painful emotions. Nowhere in his analyses does Aristotle even attempt to individuate emotions by describing different varieties of painful or (as the case may be) pleasant feeling. Emotions, instead, are individuated by reference to their characteristic beliefs. We cannot describe the pain that is peculiar to fear, or say how fear differs from grief or pity, without saying that it is pain at the thought of a certain sort of future event that is believed to be impending. But if the beliefs are an essential part of the definition of the emotion, then we have to say that their role is not merely that of external necessary condition. They must be seen as constituent parts of the emotion itself” (p. 88).

“And we can go further. It is not as if the emotion has (in each case) two separate constituents, each necessary for the full emotion, but each available independently of the other. For Aristotle makes it clear that the feeling of pain or pleasure itself depends on the belief-component, and will be removed by its removal. He uses two Greek prepositions, ek and epi, to describe the intimate relationship between belief and feeling: there is both a causal relationship (fear is pain and disturbance ‘out of’ — ek — the thought of impending evils), and also a relationship of intentionality or aboutness: pity is defined as ‘painful feeling directed at [epi] the appearance that someone is suffering . . .’ ). In fact, both relationships are present in both cases” (ibid).

“Anger is especially complex: for it has both a pleasant and a painful feeling component, these being associated with different, though closely related, sets of beliefs. It requires, on the one hand, the belief that one (or someone dear to one) has been slighted or wronged or insulted in some serious way, through someone else’s voluntary action; this, Aristotle insists, is a painful experience. (Once again, the pain is not a separate item directly caused by the world itself; it is caused by the belief that one has been slighted. If the belief is false, one will still feel that pain; and if one has been slighted without knowing it, one will not have it.) Once again, these beliefs are necessary constituents in the emotion. Aristotle makes it clear that if the angry person should discover that the alleged slight did not take place at all, or that it was not deliberately performed, or that it was not performed by the person one thought, anger can be expected to go away. So too, if one judges that the item damaged by another is trivial rather than serious (peri mikron). But Aristotle holds that anger requires, as well, a wish for retaliation, the thought that it would be good for some punishment to come to the person who did the wrong — and the thought of this righting of the balance is pleasant” (pp. 89-90, Becker-number citations omitted).

“The subject of love is a highly complex one in Aristotle’s thought…. The general rubric under which Aristotle analyzes love is that of philia, which, strictly speaking, is not an emotion at all, but a relationship with emotional components…. The relation itself requires mutual affection, mutual well-wishing, mutual benefiting for the other’s own sake, and mutual awareness of all this…. Both in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics, the cognitive content of philia‘s emotions is made overwhelmingly clear” (p. 90).

“On further inspection, the beliefs involved in the central cases of emotion have one general feature in common, as Socrates and Plato already observed. All, that is, involve the ascription of significant worth to items in the world outside of the agent, items that he or she does not fully control. Love, most obviously, is a profound attachment to another separate life, which must remain as a separate center of movement and choice, not being engulfed or fused, in order for the relationship of love to be possible at all. And in the loves Aristotle values most highly, the participants view one another as good characters, therefore as fully independent choosers of the good; if one controlled the other, even to the extent that a parent does a child, the love would apparently be less good as love” (p. 91).

“Loves of a more than casual sort require a belief in one’s own lack of self-sufficiency with respect to some of the most important things in life” (ibid).

“In pity and fear, we acknowledge our vulnerability before the circumstances of life; we have those emotions, he makes plain, only if we really do think that life can do something to us, and that this something matters. Anger is closely related: for in anger we acknowledge our vulnerability before the actions of other people. Again, if we judge that the slight is trivial, we do not become angry” (ibid).

“Unlike the Socrates of the Republic, Aristotle does not believe that the good person, the person of practical wisdom, is ‘sufficient unto himself’ for eudaimonia, and therefore impervious to grief and fear. According to him, it is right to grieve at the death of a friend, since that is an acknowledgment of the importance of the tie and the person” (p. 93).

“A courageous person will indeed feel fear and pain at the prospect of death, on account of the value that he rightly attaches to his own life” (ibid). “A person who is completely without fear does not strike Aristotle as virtuous (which would imply the possession of practical reason) but, rather, as unbalanced” (p. 94).

“In short, there are things in the world that it is right to care about: friends, family, one’s own life and health, the worldly conditions of virtuous action. These can sometimes be damaged by events not under one’s own control. For these reasons it is right to have some fear. The good person, rather than being a fearless person, is one who will have appropriate rather than inappropriate fears — and not be deterred by them from doing what is required and noble” (ibid).

“Anger is treated in a similar fashion. On the one hand, Aristotle clearly believes that many people get angry too much and for insufficient reasons. His choice of the name ‘mildness’ (praotes) for the appropriate virtuous disposition in this area reflects his conscious decision to pitch things rather toward the unangry than toward the angry end of the spectrum…. If anything, he errs in the direction of the deficiency ‘for the mild person is not given to revenge, but is inclined to be forgiving [sungnomonikos]’…. Reason, however, does tell this person that there are some very good reasons for getting angry, in connection with damages to things that it is really worth caring about…. [A]ssuming one has made deep commitments to people and things that can be damaged by another, not to defend those commitments is to lose one’s own integrity. Anger is said to be a necessary motivation for defending things that are beloved…. It is this conceptual connection between anger and the acknowledgment of importance that explains why Aristotle holds it to be necessary for defensive action — not because it plays some mindless hydraulic role…. The mild person is not especially given to revenge, as Aristotle has said. But in the case of the deepest commitments, not to take some action seems to show a lack of ‘perception’ ; and if one has those practical perceptions, then one seems bound to be angry. Anger, in these cases, is a recognition of the truth” (pp. 94-95).

“Emotions, in Aristotle’s view, are not always correct, any more than beliefs or actions are always correct. They need to be educated, and brought into harmony with a correct view of the good human life. But, so educated, they are not just essential as forces motivating to virtuous action, they are also, as I have suggested, recognitions of truth and value. And as such they are not just instruments of virtue, they are constituent parts of virtuous agency” (p. 96).

“All of this is a part of the equipment of the person of practical wisdom, part of what practical rationality is. Rationality recognizes truth; the recognition of some ethical truths is impossible without emotion; indeed, certain emotions centrally involve such recognitions” (ibid).

“This ethical theory is critical of much that Aristotle’s society teaches. People often value too many of these external things, or value them too highly, or not enough. Thus they have too much emotion in connection with money, possessions, and reputation, some times not enough in connection with the things that are truly worthwhile” (ibid).

“While depending on belief and judgment, the emotions may depend upon a type of belief and judgment that is less accessible to dialectical scrutiny than are most of the person’s other beliefs” (p. 99).

“Aristotle’s students pursue not just their own eudaimonia but that of others: for they think about the design of political institutions, starting from the idea that the best political arrangement is the one ‘in accordance with which anyone whatsoever might do best and live a flourishing life'” (p. 100).

“In short: the apparent conservatism of Aristotle’s dialectical education of Nikidion [Nussbaum’s imaginary character] is only apparent. Radical change is excluded from the part of his educational scheme that deals with her as an individual. But that is not all that philosophy does. The individuals who do come to share in it partake in a task that is both radical and far-reaching: the design of a society in which money will not be valued as an end, in which honor will not be valued as an end, in which war and empire will not be valued as ends — a society in which the functioning of human individuals in accordance with their own choice and practical reason will be the ultimate end of institutions and choices” (ibid).

We still have along way to go toward that noble goal.

Conclusion of this series: A Few Conclusions on Emotion

Living Well and Equity

“[A]n analogy between logos and medical treatment is extremely old and deep in ancient Greek talk about the personality and its difficulties. From Homer on we encounter, frequently and prominently, the idea that logos is to illnesses of the soul as medical treatment is to illnesses of the body. We also find the claim that logos is a powerful and perhaps even a sufficient remedy for these illnesses; frequently it is portrayed as the only available remedy. The diseases in question are frequently diseases of inappropriate or misinformed emotion” (Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, p. 49).

“Philosophy’s claim, later on, to be ‘the art of life’ is a defiant and highly contentious claim. It is, in effect, the claim that it can do more for the suffering pupil than other available sources of logos, healing the suffering soul in a way that goes beyond the other popular arts and pseudo-arts. Above all, philosophy opposes itself here to superstition and popular religion” (p. 50).

“It seems to have been Democritus, however, who first really developed the analogy at length in a clearly philosophical context. ‘Medicine’, he wrote, ‘heals the sicknesses of bodies; but wisdom [sophia] rids the soul of its sufferings [pathe]'” (p. 51).

Nussbaum uses the literary device of imagining how an intelligent Greek woman might have experienced both Aristotle’s ethical teaching and that of the Hellenistic schools. To hear Aristotle’s lectures, she has to disguise herself as a man. Classical Athenian culture did not expect women to be involved in philosophy or politics.

The Aristotle I am interested in is the one who emphasizes mutuality and reciprocity, and therefore could not be reasonably interpreted as an “elitist”, a term that Nussbaum applies a couple of times.

Aristotle develops principles of mutuality from which it could be concluded that social inequality in general is wrong, but does not explicitly draw the conclusion. There are a few passing remarks that I find embarrassing, but in reading a historical philosopher, we should not blame the philosopher for incomplete emancipation from the preconceptions of her culture. Such remarks are made in passing in the philosopher’s capacity as a lay person, not in her capacity as a philosopher.

Plato on the other hand was an early advocate of equality of the sexes. Nussbaum suggests that the status of Plato’s aristocratic family enabled him to depart further from what was generally accepted in the culture.

“We should also bear in mind, however, that to include women in ethical/political instruction at Athens would have been a most unconventional step, bringing the practitioner public ridicule and criticism (as we know it did in the case of Epicurus). Aristotle, as a resident alien at Athens, without any civic, religious, or property rights, twice forced into exile by political opponents suspicious of his Macedonian connections, was not in a position to make surprising gestures — whereas Plato’s wealthy aristocratic family protected him from abuse” (p. 54).

She quotes from Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics: “[E]veryone has something of his own to contribute to the truth … and it is from these that we go on to give a sort of demonstration about these things” (p. 58).

This is but one of many passages that evince a concern for all people.

And again, “We aim not to know what courage is but to be courageous, not to know what justice is but to be just, just as we aim to be healthy rather than to know what health is, and to be in a good condition rather than to know what good condition is” (p. 59).

Aristotle is often characterized one-sidedly as an intellectualist who values theory over practice. Here we see the other side. Being good is more important than knowing the good, even though he highly values knowledge. This also has an anti-elitist character.

Philosophical study should make us better at making choices in life. As Nussbaum summarizes, “If [ethics] makes human lives no better, it will be deservedly ignored” (p. 59).

“Aristotle does not mourn the absence of [standards independent of experience]: for the boundaries of experience are also, he holds, the boundaries of discourse and thought. The search for truth is the search for the most accurate account of the world, as we do (and shall) experience it. But this is unqualifiedly a search for truth; and no apologies need be made for using that word” (p. 61).

Here Aristotle anticipates Kant and Hegel.

“Nothing like a view of original sin plays any role in [Aristotle’s] thinking. He rejects the view that the good life is primarily a matter of luck or innate talent — and rejects these views as false ethical views — not on the grounds that some independent cosmic evidence refutes them, but on the grounds that such a view would ‘strike too false a note’, be too out of line with people’s aims and hopes” (ibid).

The status of humans with respect to the good is neither innate nor arbitrarily established.

“But human desires constrain ethical truth in a much more exacting way. For it turns out that the true account of the good human life must describe a life that contains ends that human beings choose for their own sake (as well as the willing choice of the ends); and it must, apparently, be inclusive of all such ends, lacking in nothing which, being added, would make the life in question better or more complete. This famous and much discussed requirement leads Aristotle, among other things, to rule out accounts that narrow the good life to that which can be completely controlled by the individual’s own agency” (p. 63).

This is the way that is neither innate nor arbitrary.

“When Aristotle’s method asks about desire and permits itself to be constrained by what people want and choose, it does not simply record the status quo, or commit itself in any simple way to preserving ordinary beliefs. Aristotle is not the ordinary-belief philosopher of our first chapter, because he refuses any simple majoritarian principle for sorting appearances, insisting on a deeper and more critical scrutiny. Appearances about ethics contain contradictions and ambiguities. The job of inquiry is to listen to every pupil’s contribution, along with previous theories and information about other societies — but not to stop there” (p. 64).

Once again, inquiry into the good is conceived as maximally inclusive.

“The accounts of the good that emerge in the existing works are, as we might by now expect, far from being uncritical records of ordinary belief. They are, in fact, extremely critical of many of the popular views they record: critical, for example, of the views allegedly held by most people about the importance of money, about bodily pleasure, about status and reputation, about anger and revenge” (pp. 64-65).

Inclusiveness does not mean equally accepting every detail of the status quo — quite the opposite.

“Not all people are able or willing to perform such a sorting; but the resulting account will nonetheless be true for them, as well as for those who do participate” (p. 65).

For them too, the results of ethical deliberation will be true in the sense of importantly valid, because the practical principles it seeks to elicit are inherently shareable, even when they are not straightforwardly available.

“For this procedure does claim to arrive at truth, despite the medical nature of its operations. Some reasons for this should already be evident. It insists on a rigorous scrutiny of appearances and on the fundamental role of consistency. It claims correspondence, too, with the deepest human beliefs and desires. And one further point should now be stressed. Results in ethics must be consistent, not just internally, but also with everything else held to be true: with the best accounts, then, of the universe, the soul, substance, and so forth. Exactly how far this will constrain the ethical account can be seen only concretely; and Aristotle never states that where there is a prima facie tension, ethical intuitions must yield to metaphysical or psychological appearances. But his demand for overall consistency helps to justify his use of the word ‘true’ in the ethical case, encouraging the idea that we are not just looking into ourselves, but also coming to grips with the world as a whole, as we experience it” (ibid).

This is really important. What is right must be consistent with the whole of what is true. But our judgment of what is true in a concrete sense also depends on many value judgments. Ethical judgment depends on the whole of our interpretation of things. But interpretation is by no means merely subjective. That it not be merely subjective is not a fact but a moral imperative. This is the “virtuous circle” of hermeneutics.

“Most of the sciences, as Aristotle understands them, deal with what is so always or for the most part. Their principles will therefore often be highly general. Medicine, however, on account of its practical commitment, must strive for a fully adequate perception of the particular cases before it” (ibid).

“Medical treatment, the conjunction of the two passages implies, is a form of bia [force], of external causal intervention. Argument is something else, something apparently gentler, more self-governed, more mutual” (ibid).

“[A doctor] must be flexible and attentive; if he simply insisted on going by the book, his treatment would be crude and medically irresponsible. The same, Aristotle argues, is true in ethical reasoning. General principles are authoritative only insofar as they are correct; but they are correct only insofar as they do not err with respect to the particulars” (p. 66).

“It is not only change over time that concerns Aristotle here; it is also the context-sensitivity of good ethical choice…. A rule, like a joke manual (like a medical textbook) would do both too little and too much…. In the context of love and friendship, it is possible that Aristotle may recognize particularity in a yet stronger sense, recognizing that some valuable forms of ethical attention and care are not even in principle universalizable” (p. 67). She mentions the love of a particular child or friend.

“In all these ways, general principles, if seen as normative for correct practical judgment, prove insufficient. Nor, for related reasons, is there any general algorithm that will suffice to generate, in each case, the virtuous choice” (p. 68).

“Aristotle has used the medical analogy to depict a philosophical approach to ethics that is practical, fruitfully related to human hopes and beliefs, responsive to the complexities of cases. But his conception of practical philosophy makes him turn away from the analogy at a crucial point, so that he rejects a group of ‘medical’ traits of philosophy that the Hellenistic schools will in many cases defend” (p. 69).

In the Eudemian Ethics, “Aristotle gives his reasons for excluding children and insane people from the range of those whose ethical opinions will be surveyed. He says that such people have many beliefs that no sane person would consider seriously. Then he adds what appears to be an argument for omitting the holders of these opinions from the philosophical process in which teacher and pupil are now engaged: ‘They are in need not of arguments, but, in the former case, of time to grow up, and, in the latter case, of either political or medical chastisement — for the administering of drugs is a form of chastisement no less than beating is’. Here Aristotle speaks of medical treatment as a causal technique for the manipulation of behavior; he links it with beating and sharply dissociates it from the giving and receiving of arguments among reasonable people. Similarly, in [Nicomachean Ethics] X.9, he speaks of irrational people whose condition yields not to argument but only to ‘force’ (bia)” (ibid).

“In Nicomachean Ethics VI.13 , Aristotle confronts an opponent who charges that the intellectual element in ethics is useless…. Aristotle does not dispute the opponent’s point about medicine; he implicitly grants that medicine has an intellectual asymmetry about it. Its practical benefits require that the doctor should know, but not that the patient should know; its logoi are authoritative and one-sided. He does, however, go on to dispute the claim vigorously for ethics, arguing that study and the application of intellect have a practical value for everyone in this area. Ethics appears to be less one-sided, more ‘democratic’, than medicine is: the benefits of its logoi require each person’s active intellectual engagement. (We now notice that even the positive use of the medical analogy … was strained: for it compared what each person ought to do in ethics with what the good doctor does in medicine.) This observation fits well with the contrast, in the Eudemian Ethics passage, between force and argument: ethical logoi are unlike medical treatment, in that they involve a reciprocal discourse in which the pupil is not ordered around by an authority figure, or manipulated by coercive tactics, but is intellectually active for herself” (pp. 69-70).

“Aristotle repeatedly claims … that the proper recipient of ethical arguments and lectures must already be a person of a certain maturity, who has been well brought up and who has both some experience and some passional balance…. Balance is necessary because disorderly people are ill-equipped for the give and take of rational argument, and they will ‘listen badly'” (p. 70).

“The real question seems to be why Aristotle opts for the sort of discourse that is gentle, complicated, reciprocal, and quite unlike force and drug treatment” (p. 71).

“In Nicomachean Ethics VI, he answers the opponent who claimed that intellectual grasp is useless by insisting, in fact, on the great practical value of clarity. We do not pursue our own health by studying medicine, he grants: but we do go after ethical and political goodness by pursuing the intellectual study of ethics because through the intellectual scrutiny of our ends we get a clearer vision of what pertains to the end, that is, of the constituents of the good human life and how they stand to one another” (ibid).

“The task demanded of logoi, being one of clarification and articulation, requires clarity and articulateness in the logoi themselves” (ibid).

“To live well, we must have our lives ordered toward some end of our choice. But then, ‘it is most especially important first to demarcate within oneself [diorisasthai en hautoi], neither hastily nor carelessly, in which of the things within our power living well consists’. This careful clarification is contrasted with the ‘random talk’ (eikei legein) in which most people usually indulge on matters ethical. Then, in a most important passage, Aristotle tells us that this enterprise, and its related goal of communal attunement, are best served by a cooperative critical discourse that insists on the philosophical virtues of orderliness, deliberateness, and clarity” (p. 72, citations by Becker numbers omitted).

She quotes Nicomachean Ethics again: “For from what is said truly but not clearly, as we advance, we will also get clarity, always moving from what is usually said in a jumbled fashion [sunkechumenos] to a more perspicuous view. There is a difference in every inquiry between arguments that are said in a philosophical way and those that are not. Hence we must not think that it is superfluous for the political person to engage in the sort of reflection that makes perspicuous not only the ‘that’ but also the ‘why’: for this is the contribution of the philosopher in each area” (ibid).

“The goals of personal clarification and communal agreement require a progress beyond the hasty and confused modes of ordinary discourse, toward greater coherence and perspicuity. But this, in turn, requires the sort of argument that sorts things out and clarifies, that leads people to shift their alleged ground by pointing to inconsistencies in their system of beliefs and, in the process, makes evident not only the fact of our commitments, but also their ‘why’, that is, how they contribute to one another and to the good life in general. Aristotle tells us unabashedly that to give this sort of logos is the business of the professional philosopher, and that this is why the philosopher is a useful person to have around and to emulate” (p. 73).

“Clarity, deliberateness, and logical consistency are not enough: arguments must also be medical in the good way, rooted in the particulars and attentive to them. But we should not let the empty glibness of some philosophers give ethical philosophy a bad name” (ibid).

She returns to the reasons for Aristotle’s ultimate rejection of the medical analogy — its focus on isolated individuals; the instrumental character of its procedures; the fact that it treats philosophical argument as purely instrumental; the asymmetry of roles it presupposes; and the fact that it discourages sympathetic exploration of alternatives.

The student of ethics “is to emulate the philosopher, entering actively into the give and take of criticism, being not subservient but independent, not worshipful but critical” (p. 74).

“When [Aristotle] begins his devastating criticism of Plato, he says that it may be difficult to criticize the views of those who are dear to us: but we must put the truth first, all the more since we are philosophers” (p. 75).

“Respectful dialectical scrutiny is a fundamental part of Aristotelianism. What we are after is to find out more clearly what we share or can share. And this requires a patient and non-hasty working through of the available accounts of the subject, accounts, as Aristotle says, of both ‘the many’ and ‘the wise’. Aristotle’s position is that each person has something to contribute to the ethical truth. As he remarks of some of the alternatives he is examining, ‘Some of these things have been said by many people over a long period of time, others by a few distinguished people. It is reasonable to suppose that none of them has missed the mark totally, but each has gotten something, or even a lot of things, right'” (ibid).

“[T]hey will usually be somewhat tentative and respectful of other possibilities. Insofar as they have done their historical and experiential work, they will be somewhat confident — they will not expect to be overthrown completely — but they leave open the possibility of revision and correction” (p. 76).

“Aristotle seems to be committed to something still stronger: that each questioned person’s beliefs contain at least some truth” (p. 77).

Next in this series: Emotion and Belief

Therapy of Desire

Is philosophy a kind of therapy? Martha Nussbaum’s excellent The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (1994) impressed me greatly when it first came out. Looking at it again 30 years later, this ethical “therapy” turns out to follow a different paradigm from the emphasis on mutuality in dialogue that I have been addressing from various angles recently. The discussion has many interesting twists and turns.

What is philosophy for, anyway?

Nussbaum says “The idea of a practical and compassionate philosophy — a philosophy that exists for the sake of human beings, in order to address their deepest needs, confront their most urgent perplexities, and bring them from misery to some greater measure of flourishing — this idea makes the study of Hellenistic ethics riveting for a philosopher who wonders what philosophy has to do with the world” (p. 3).

Her main point in this early work is to exhibit the sophistication of Epicurean, Stoic, and Skeptical understandings of emotion. She highlights their practical commitment and “combination of logic with compassion” (p. 9). An important part of her argument, though, is that these later figures further developed themes that Aristotle already raised. I’m currently expecting to cover her first three chapters, where Aristotle plays a larger role. This post focuses on the introduction and first chapter.

“In order to get a purchase on this complex issue, I shall begin this book with Aristotle. For Aristotle sketched an account of the emotions and desires that is very close to the more elaborate accounts we find in the Hellenistic philosophers. And yet he did not defend a norm of detachment from the mutable good things of this world. His best human life is a life rich in attachments to people and things outside the self — friendships, family loves, political ties, ties of certain sorts to possessions and property. Thus it is a life rich in possibilities for emotions such as love, grief, fear, and even anger; the study of these connections will shed light, by contrast, on the Hellenistic conceptions” (pp. 41-42).

Aristotle’s positive valuation of various forms of emotion stands in opposition to these later philosophers.

The Hellenistic period is usually said to extend from Alexander the Great up to Roman times. Increased long-distance trade brought many cultures into closer contact with one another. Religions became detached from local traditional communities, with many coexisting side by side. The new philosophies that emerged in these times were simpler than those of Plato and Aristotle and more dogmatically presented, but still quite sophisticated and interesting. It is largely through them that philosophy for a while gained an unprecedented place in mainstream culture. Meanwhile, Aristotle’s uncirculated manuscripts were left to decay in the attic of a relative who had greedily claimed them. The great rise in Aristotle’s influence began only later, after a third or so of his uncirculated works were recovered and edited. (See Fortunes of Aristotle.)

“The major Hellenistic schools are all highly critical of society as they find it; and all are concerned to bring the necessary conditions of the good human life to those whom society has caused to suffer. They are, moreover, far more inclusive and less elitist in their practice of philosophy than was Aristotle, far more concerned to show that their strategies can offer something to each and every human being, regardless of class or status or gender. On the other hand, the way they do this has little to do, on the whole, with political, institutional, or material change. Instead of arranging to bring the good things of this world to each and every human being, they focus on changes of belief and desire that make their pupil less dependent on the good things of this world. They do not so much show ways of removing injustice as teach the pupil to be indifferent to the injustice she suffers” (p. 10).

I hold that a consistent application of Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian philosophical values rules out any kind of elitism, by grounding everyday values in mutuality and reason.

“Aristotelianism sets exacting worldly conditions for the good life, making virtuous activity dependent in many ways upon material and educational conditions that are beyond the individual’s control. But Aristotle then assigns to politics the task of bringing those conditions to people: the good political arrangement is the one ‘in accordance with which each and every one might do well and lead a flourishing life'” (ibid).

Several important points about Aristotle are expressed in condensed terms here. Virtuous activity depends in part on conditions the individual does not control. Good politics should benefit all, not only some. He favors engagement rather than withdrawal, and he favors refining our emotional sensitivities rather than casting them aside or suppressing them.

On the other hand, “Epicurus urged a complete withdrawal from the life of the city, Skeptics an uncritical obedience to forces of existing convention. Even among the Stoics, whose commitment to the intrinsic value of justice is plain, we hear less about how to alter the political fact of slavery than about how to be truly free within, even though one may be (politically) a slave; less about strategies for the removal of hunger and thirst than about the unimportance of these bodily goods in a wise life; less about how to modify existing class structures and the economic relations that (as Aristotle argued) explain them, than about the wise person’s indifference to such worldly distinctions. In all three schools, the truly good and virtuous person is held to be radically independent of material and economic factors: achieving one’s full humanity requires only inner change…. I shall conclude that this criticism has some merit” (p. 11).

But there is also substantial common ground.

“[B]oth Aristotle and the Hellenistic thinkers insist that human flourishing cannot be achieved unless desire and thought, as they are usually constructed within society, are considerably transformed. (Both hold, for example, that most people learn to value money and status far too highly, and that this corrupts both personal and social relations.)” (ibid).

Here we come to the center of her reading, which is that for the Hellenistic philosophers, philosophy is a kind of therapy of the soul. (I note in passing the unanimity with which the philosophers denounce the overvaluation of money and status.)

“Epicurus wrote, ‘Empty is that philosopher’s argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sicknesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul.’ The ancient Skeptical teacher, too, portrays himself as a healer of the soul. Being a lover of humanity, the Skeptic wishes to heal by argument, insofar as possible, the arrogant empty beliefs and the rashness of dogmatic people” (p. 13).

“Or as Cicero, speaking on behalf of the Stoa, more succinctly puts it: ‘There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy, whose aid need not be sought, as in bodily diseases, from outside ourselves. We must endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of doctoring ourselves’. Philosophy heals human diseases, diseases produced by false beliefs” (p. 14).

“All three schools, in short, could accept the Epicurean definition of philosophy: ‘Philosophy is an activity that secures the flourishing [eudaimon] life by arguments and reasonings.’ And all can agree that a precise, logically rigorous argument that is not well suited to the needs of its hearers, an argument that is simply and entirely academic and unable to engage its audience in a practical way, is to that extent a defective philosophical argument” (p. 15).

She contrasts all this with Augustine, for whom “God has set up certain ethical standards; it is our job to do what God wants. But we may or may not be endowed with the capability of seeing, or wanting, what God wants. Truth and God’s grace are out there; but the ability to see ethical truth or to reach for grace is not something we can control. There is, therefore, no reliable method by which we can construct an ethical norm from the scrutiny of our deepest needs and responses and desires” (p. 18).

“For both Platonists and these Christians, digging more deeply into ourselves is not the right way to proceed in ethical inquiry” (p. 19).

Here we reach a matter of deep ambivalence, and correspondingly great interest. Nussbaum will argue that on this particular point, Aristotle is closer to the “therapeutic” attitude of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics than to the heaven-centered, more objectivist views of ethics that she attributes to Plato and Augustine. I broadly agree.

Referring to mytho-poetic imagery in Plato’s Phaedrus, she says “We do not inquire into the human good by standing on the rim of heaven; and if we did, we would not find the right thing. Human ways of life, and the hopes, pleasures, and pains that are a part of these, cannot be left out of the inquiry without making it pointless and incoherent. We do not in fact look ‘out there’ for ethical truth; it is in and of our human lives. More than this, it is something to and for human lives” (pp. 20-21).

For Aristotle, the Good is always concrete and situationally attuned.

“The medical conception of ethical inquiry opposes itself, as well, to another conception of ethics that stands, so to speak, at the opposite end of the spectrum from Platonism. This is the idea that ethical inquiry and teaching are simply the recording of traditional social belief and have no legitimate goal beyond this” (p. 24).

As Nussbaum points out, none of the Greek philosophers defends this kind of traditionalist view of ethics. The Hellenistic philosophers in particular see much that is wrong with the social world.

“For according to the Hellenistic philosophers, society is not in order as it is; and, as the source of most of their pupils’ beliefs and even of their emotional repertory, it has infected them with its sicknesses. The upbringing of young people is held to be deformed in various ways by false views about what matters: by excessive emphasis, for example, on money, competition, and status” (p. 26).

This is quite a far cry from the divine right of kings, the invisble hand, and other providential underwriting of the status quo that was claimed in early modern times. The Hellenistic philosophers dwelt more extensively than their avid readers in the Enlightenment on what modern people might call alienation.

Nussbaum next turns to address the limits of the therapeutic paradigm.

“All this suggests that the medical kind of ethics may be inclined — like medicine itself, but even more so — to adopt an asymmetrical model of the relationship between teacher and pupil, doctor and patient” (p. 27).

As she points out, at the heart of the therapeutic paradigm is an asymmetrical social relation. This stands in implicit conflict with the ideal of mutual and reciprocal relations in Aristotle’s ethics.

“Hellenistic ethics combines immersion with critical distance in something like this way — insisting on the rigorous scrutiny of belief and desire, while insisting, too, that it is to real people and their beliefs and desires that ethics must ultimately be responsible” (p. 28).

“In the course of developing their medical norms of health, the Hellenistic philosophers appeal to ‘nature’ and the ‘natural’. These slippery notions had better be scrutinized, since misunderstanding them could cause serious misunderstanding of the entire medical approach” (p. 29).

“The ancient appeals to nature that we shall be considering do not … pretend to derive value-norms from a value-free account of the ‘scientific’ underpinnings of human life. Ancient accounts of ‘nature’, especially of ‘human nature’, are value-laden accounts…. Norms follow from an account of ‘nature’ because the account is frankly normative to begin with” (p. 30).

The therapeutic paradigm’s appeals to nature ought therefore to be sharply distinguished from what 20th century philosophers called ethical naturalism. Even the account of nature is frankly normative from the outset.

“A good introduction to the Hellenistic appeals to nature, which clearly reveals both the normative and the anti-conventional thrust of these appeals, is in the famous lines of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself concerning the animal kingdom” (p. 31).

“What the animals show Whitman is not a value-free realm of life; nor does he learn from them to glorify that which exists without effort or teaching. What he sees is that certain practices that (already) appear to him to impede human flourishing — practices connected with religious fear and guilt, with economic obsession and accumulation, with status and power — need not exist. Moreover, when they do not exist, certain deformations of life — sleepless fear, groveling subservience, anxiety, dissatisfaction — do not exist either. The ‘tokens of myself’ that the animals show Whitman are possibilities for self-respect, self-expression, and social equality that are frequently obscured by the realities of human social life. So too, I shall argue, in Hellenistic appeals to the nature of the child, the nature of the animal: the purpose is to construct a radical norm of true human flourishing. This norm is not value-free or ‘scientific’: it is justified by appeal to deep human desires and judgments, and it is value-laden; but it is highly critical of ordinary belief, and sees many of our ordinary beliefs as impediments to flourishing” (p. 32).

“The medical conception seeks to combine the critical power of Platonism with the worldly immersion of ordinary-belief philosophy. And it adds something further of its own: a commitment to action” (pp. 32-33).

“Philosophy understood along medical lines deals with both beliefs and emotions or passions. One reason why the tension described earlier seems to arise is that philosophy is asked not simply to deal with the patient’s invalid inferences and false premises, but to grapple, as well, with her irrational fears and anxieties, her excessive loves and crippling angers” (p. 37).

“Both Aristotle and the Hellenistic schools hold, furthermore, that many, if not all, of the passions rest upon beliefs that do not spring up naturally (if any beliefs do this), but are formed by society” (p. 38).

“All the schools dedicate themselves to the searching critique of prevailing cognitive authority, and to the amelioration of human life as a result” (p. 40).

But in contrast to Aristotle, “These philosophers do not simply analyze the emotions, they also urge, for the most part, their removal from human life” (p. 41). This idea of aiming to cast off all emotion I vehemently reject. Nussbaum too finds it troubling.

“Aristotle accepts and develops at length the idea that ethical philosophy should resemble medicine in its dedication to the practical goal of ameliorating human lives. And he develops, in some detail, aspects of the analogy between the philosopher’s and the doctor’s tasks. And yet Aristotle also criticizes the medical analogy at certain points, arguing that there are some very important ways in which ethical philosophy should not be like medicine” (p. 42).

She lists three points common to Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers.

“1. Arguments have a practical goal: they are directed at making the pupil better, and can be assessed for their contribution to this end. (This, as I said, does not entail that the value of argument must be merely instrumental.)
“2. They are what we might call value-relative: that is, at some level they respond to deep wishes or needs of the patient and, again, are to be assessed in accordance with their success in doing this.
“3. They are responsive to the particular case: just as a good doctor heals case by case, so good medical argument responds to the pupil’s concrete situation and needs” (p. 46).

Then she lists five more characteristics that apply to the Hellenistic philosophers but not to Aristotle.

“4. Medical arguments, like bodily medical treatments, are directed at the health of the individual as such, not at communities or at the individual as member of a community.
“5. In medical argument, the use of practical reason is instrumental. Just as the doctor’s technique is no intrinsic part of what the goal, health, is, so too the philosopher’s reasoning is no intrinsic part of what the good human life itself is.
“6. The standard virtues of argument — such as consistency, definitional clarity, avoidance of ambiguity — have, in medical argument, a purely instrumental value. As with the procedures of the medical art, they are no intrinsic part of the goal.
“7. In medical argument, as in medicine, there is a marked asymmetry of roles: doctor and patient, expert authority and obedient recipient of authority.
“8. In medical argument, the teacher discourages the sympathetic dialectical scrutiny of alternative views. Just as a doctor does not urge the patient to experiment with alternative medications, so the teacher does not encourage cognitive pluralism” (ibid).

Next in this series: Living Well and Equity

What Is Essential?

Distinguishing the essential from the nonessential is one of the most fundamental kinds of interpretive judgment. It has to do with what we treat as important, which provides the justifying frame for all our more particular values.

Just what is essential is often regarded as necessary and as somehow pre-given. I think rather that judgments of essentiality are relative to the complete context in which they occur, and are always provisional based on our current understanding. They guide our interpretation of what is right and what is true. But on all concrete matters, the last word is never said.

Determinations of what is essential are neither crudely objective nor crudely subjective. They are not simply given to us, and neither are they subordinate to our arbitrary will (if indeed there were such a thing). They have to do with how things are interrelated.

I identify the essential with “meaning” or ethical substance, as contrasted with mere logistics. Logistics have to do with the arrangement of accidents.

We cannot live on essence alone. Some involvement with worldly logistical details is unavoidable, and whatever we do ought to be done well in a comprehensive sense. There is even a deep lesson from Hegel that from what begins as accidental, something essential may emerge.

Gadamer on Socratic Questioning

“Socratic conversation [has] the single goal of achieving an authentic shared process of speech…. Part of the meaning of genuine substantive explication is that it can continually justify and clarify itself…. A sophistic logos fails to meet this requirement because one did not acquire it with a view to the facts of the matter but rather with a view to its effectiveness in impressing the people around one” (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics (German ed. 1931), p. 56).

Since Habermas cites Gadamer as an influence, Gadamer’s work may well be the primary source for Habermas’ striking remark “Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech”. In any case, it provides a good explication. I find this particularly valuable, because although Habermas and Brandom neglect Plato and Aristotle, Gadamer himself treats them as not merely of antiquarian interest, but as having central contemporary relevance. (In the introduction to his Tales of the Mighty Dead (2002), Brandom too cites Gadamer’s hermeneutics as representative of one of two major ways of reading philosophical texts, neither of which he intends to follow strictly.)

“Precisely because the sophist’s logos, with its agonistic goals, does not make explicit or stick to the sense in which it is intended in each case, it falls prey itself to these ambiguities when someone else uses them against it. Socrates, on the other hand, keeps his eye on the subject matter even in these circumstances” (p. 57, emphasis added).

Real dialogue is not a social negotiation between individuals confronting one another. It holds fast to the shareable subject matter under discussion. Not our “immediate” egos but the rich and variegated terrain of open-ended meaning that we jointly inhabit is at issue here. What matters is not the competitive question of who is right, but the open-ended, shared exploration of what follows from what.

(Brandom’s first major work is called Making It Explicit. Sophistical sleight of hand — be it in politics, religion, or everyday life — depends on an opposite strategy of keeping it obscure what really or properly follows from what, in order to keep things safe for arbitrary “truths” plucked out of thin air. Although Making It Explicit does not directly address the topic of sophistry, that book of linguistic philosophy is a very substantial and original development of something like the positive side of Gadamer’s argument here, which folds in additional perspectives not addressed by Gadamer. Brandom also points out that Habermas’ work articulating what constitutes an “ideal speech situation” provides a detailed and interesting explication of Hegel’s central ethical notion of mutual recognition.)

Gadamer goes on, “Socrates’ logical traps are not meant to be the manipulations of a virtuoso technician which are simply applied where they promise success; instead, they are living forms of a process of seeking shared understanding” (p. 58). “[R]efutation in the Socratic style is positive: not a process of reducing the other person to silence so as, tacitly, to make oneself out as the knower, in contrast to him, but a process of arriving at a shared inquiry” (p. 59).

“The good, then, is knowledge’s object; that is, it is the unitary focal point to which everything must be related and in relation to which human existence in particular understands itself in a unified way. The general character of the good is that it is that for the sake of which something is, and thus, in particular, that for the sake of which man himself is. It is in the light of it that human beings understand themselves in their action” (ibid).

Here Gadamer brings out into the clear the central role of what Aristotle calls that for the sake of which — the telos or “final cause” — which extends all the way from the understanding of living beings in nature to the highest first philosophy. To ask after that for the sake of which is precisely to step back from what is immediately present. This is the beginning of wisdom.

“Just that, then, which presents itself unambiguously as good, in its immediate presentness, should and must be ‘measured’, if it is supposed to be ‘the good’, in relation to something that is not contained in its immediate attractiveness itself. So it certainly cannot be the immediate attractiveness that constitutes the goodness” (p. 61).

“Thus it is no more the case that the immediate experience of well-being is an indubitable testimonial of its goodness than that any behavior that is regarded as virtuous is so automatically, without being justified by reference to the good itself. Thus the demand for an art of measuring pleasures — which alone could justify the claim of pleasure to be the good — succeeds, despite the impossibility of such an art, in making clear what the good is sought as. Dasein understands itself in relation to what it is ‘for the sake of’, not on the basis of how it feels at any present moment but on the basis of its highest and constant potential” (pp. 61-62).

Real understanding is precisely a movement beyond what is immediate. Gadamer is still partly under the spell of Heidegger, and refers to Heideggerian Dasein, but this plays no real role in the argument. I would refer more simply to “our” understanding of ourselves.

“The methodological point of the imagined art of measurement, then, is to show that an understanding of Dasein must understand present things in terms of non-present ones and can grant them goodness only in such a relation. Thus this Socratic course of argumentation allows us to see what the good must (in any case) be sought as: namely, the central thing on the basis of which human being understands itself. So the positive point of Socratic refutation consists not only in achieving a positive perplexity but also — by the same token — in explaining what knowledge really is and what alone should be recognized as knowledge. It is only in the concept of the good that all knowledge is grounded; and it is only on the basis of the concept of the good that knowledge can be justified” (p. 63).

Again, for Dasein I would just say “ourselves”.

Here he again brings out the central role of the good in the constitution of what we call knowledge and truth. He points out that in order to make distinctions at all, we must have some preliminary idea of the good, even if we cannot articulate it.

“Insofar as the search for grounding that gives an accounting is a shared search and has the character of a testing, it operates, fundamentally, not by one person’s making an assertion and awaiting confirmation or contradiction by the other person, but by both of them testing the logos to see whether it is refutable and by both of them agreeing in regard to its eventual refutation or confirmation. All testing sets up the proposition to be tested not as something for one person to defend, as belonging to him or her, and for the other person to attack, as belonging to the other, but as something ‘in the middle’. And the understanding that emerges is not primarily an understanding resulting from agreement with others but an understanding with oneself. Only people who have reached an understanding with themselves can be in agreement with others” (p. 64).

Brandom on Habermas

“Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech” (Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, p. 280).

I’m reviving a draft that earlier I put aside, in favor of first saying something about Habermas based on his own writings.

Habermas contrasts what he calls communicative reason with the instrumental reason that is oriented toward utility. Communicative reason aims at consensus on meanings and validity claims. Brandom recounts that when he was a brand-new assistant professor, his senior colleague Richard Rorty was more excited by Habermas’s early work Knowledge and Human Interests than by the publication of Rorty’s own Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Habermas preceded Brandom in combining influences from German Idealism, American pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. He was one of the first to bridge the gap between Continental and analytic philosophy. Like Dewey, Rorty, and Brandom, he is a strong defender of modernity, which he understands in terms of Enlightenment values of reason, freedom, and equality. He has also been very involved with questions of democratic politics. His work emphasizes what Aristotle would call our status as talking animals, and the discursive character of reason. He combines a Kantian concern for ethical universality, rules, and deontology or moral necessity, with strong concern for intersubjectivity and the possible sharing of meaning.

Unlike Brandom, Habermas aims for what he calls a “formal” pragmatics and semantics, and his ethics seem to have a somewhat formal character as well.

For Habermas, there are three equally primordial kinds of meaning-critical validity: propositional truth, normative rightness, and sincerity of expression. He gives a specialized sense to “illocutionary” speech acts, as closely aligned with his idea of communicative reason. Speakers make validity claims in order to reach understanding. In making assertions, we implicitly guarantee that we can provide good reasons for them, and allow that hearers are free to either accept or reject what we said. This aspect is very close to Brandom.

Unlike Brandom, Habermas seems to have no idea of explaining propositional truth in terms of normativity. More conventionally, he treats truth and normativity as parallel concerns. This seems to go along with his more formal emphasis.

Habermas has an old-fashioned, stereotypical view of Hegel. In his recent Also a History of Philosophy, in passing he literally refers to Hegel as reviving the One of Plotinus. But Brandom credits Habermas as having first given him eyes to see the highly original ideas that he now sees in Hegel.

Brandom sees Habermas as applying detailed linguistic analysis from analytic philosophy to questions of social criticism: “A central pillar of [Habermas’s edifice] is his transposition of the issue raised by the unmaskers of ideology into a thoroughly linguistic key” (Brandom, “Towards Reconciling Two Heroes: Habermas and Hegel”, p. 32, emphasis in original).

“The appraisal and legitimation of social practices and institutions has become in the modern era a wholly discursive affair. That entails that unmasking an ideology is a metadiscursive matter of diagnosing systematic distortions in discursive structures: deformations of communicative action. These will have, to be sure, broadly pragmatic as well as narrowly semantic manifestations. But it is principally to the language we speak, the concepts we use, and the social-practical context in which we do so that we must look to understand distinctively modern forms of unfreedom, as well as for the tools to combat them” (ibid).

“If understanding the relations between reason and ideology is one of the principal philosophical tasks of our age, then there is indeed a case to be made for a suitably broadened (especially along the pragmatic dimension) philosophy of language as ‘first philosophy'” (ibid).

“Kant had the idea (and Hegel follows him down this path) that a post-theological conception of distinctively moral reasons could be built out of the idea that (to put the point in [Brandom’s] terms rather than [Kant’s]) certain principles of conduct make explicit, in the form of rules, normative commitments that are implicit in our engaging in discursive practices at all — simply in our talking and thinking, judging and acting intentionally” (p. 33).

It seems reasonable to apply the term “post-theological” to Brandom’s account of normativity. I think that for Kant though, it is better to speak simply of morality and ethics as having a basis that is independent from theology.

What Habermas calls universal pragmatics seems to refer to the elaboration of these meta-level commitments that are implicit in engaging in discursive practices at all. These include principles like the responsibility to be able to explain why we assert what we do, if we are asked; that the better argument should not be overruled; that everyone potentially affected by something should have a voice with regard to it; and so on. Similar principles were earlier articulated by Gadamer in his work on the ethical significance of Platonic dialogue. Brandom acknowledges a major debt to Habermas, and in Tales of the Mighty Dead he references Gadamer as the 20th-century standard-bearer for hermeneutics.

“One of the central ideas that binds the various German Idealists together is that the implicit structural pragmatic commitments that form the necessary background against which any semantically significant ground-level commitments (whether cognitive or practical) can be undertaken form in principle the basis for a philosophical ethics and a corresponding politics. It has been one of Habermas’s tasks in our own time to transpose that thought into a linguistic key, and to develop it in the light of the results of philosophy’s more than century-long fascination with language. This is his discourse ethics, and his idea for founding political theory on an account of the nature of communicative action” (ibid, emphasis in original).

Brandom and Habermas both stand out from the mainstream in arguing that pragmatics or language use takes precedence over semantics. But where Habermas calls for formal pragmatics and formal (verificationist rather than model-theoretic) semantics, Brandom develops a normative pragmatics and a material-inferential semantics.

“The route that Habermas establishes from a theory of communicative action in general to political theory turns on the assertion within that base theory of a necessary and essential connection between discursive meaningfulness and the making of validity claims that must under various circumstances be redeemed, vindicated, or justified in order to achieve their effect. The distinctive kind of authority speech acts claim comes with a correlative justificatory responsibility. The idea is that the notion of ‘meaning’ that is a principal topic of semantics cannot be understood apart from practices of justifying, of asking for and offering justifications or reasons, which are a principal topic of pragmatics” (p. 35, emphasis in original).

“Habermas has shown how much can be done with these two ideas: Thinking of discursive practice in terms of a distinctive kind of normative practical significance characteristic of speech acts as such, and thinking of semantics methodologically as a kind of explanatory auxiliary in the service of an account of the proprieties of the use of linguistic expressions, which is pragmatics” (ibid).

These are two ideas of Habermas that Brandom strongly endorses. Brandom turns to his own theses about Kant and Hegel, which put normativity and ethical inquiry at the root of an account of knowledge and truth.

“Kant’s deepest and most original idea is that what distinguishes judging and intentional doing from the activities of non-sapient creatures is not that they involve some special sort of mental processes, but that they are things knowers and agents are in a distinctive way responsible for. Judging and acting involve commitments. They are endorsements, exercises of authority. ‘Responsibility’, ‘commitment’, ‘endorsement’, ‘authority’—these are all normative notions. Judgments and actions make knowers and agents liable to characteristic kinds of normative assessment. Kant’s most basic idea is that minded creatures are to be distinguished from un-minded ones not by a matter-of-fact ontological distinction (the presence of mind-stuff), but by a normative deontological one. This is his normative characterization of the mental” (pp. 35-36).

Perhaps Kant’s greatest lesson is this questioning of naive notions of self, “subject”, and consciousness. This stands in sharp contrast to the one-sided readings of Kant as making “the” turn to “the” subject. This vital point has been obscured by the neo-Kantian and other commentators who aimed to make Kant as compatible as possible with empiricism and early 20th-century philosophy of science.

I am broadly sympathetic to Macintyre’s critique of deontology and rule-based ethics, but I think Hegel already showed the way out of this, and did it in a better way. This issue should be approached in terms of something like Robert Pippin’s highlighting of the simultaneous Aristotelian and Kantian elements in Hegel, rather than in terms of the theistically modified medieval Aristotelianism that Macintyre advocates.

Brandom summarizes, “Our freedom for Kant consists in our authority to make ourselves responsible for judgments and actions (thinkings and doings). This is a normative characterization of freedom” (p. 36).

One of Brandom’s most valuable contributions has been the explanation of Kantian freedom in a way that is not only not voluntaristic, but also does not attach freedom ontologically to “the” subject. Brandom is at one with Habermas and Gadamer in distinguishing what I call ethical reason from modern-style causal explanation.

Reason arises “freely” in a normative and reflective interpretive context. It is not caused to conclude as it does by any physical cause. Neither does it trace to a supernatural cause.

“Rationality in this sense does not consist in knowers and agents generally, or even often, having good reasons for what they believe and do. It consists rather just in being in the space of reasons, in the sense that knowers and agents count as such insofar as they exercise their normative authority to bind themselves by norms, undertake discursive commitments and responsibilities, and so make themselves liable to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. In particular, they are liable to assessment as to the goodness of their reasons for exercising their authority as they do, for taking on those specific commitments and responsibilities. Whatever the actual causal antecedents of their judgings and intentional doings, Kantian knowers and agents are obliged (committed) to have reasons for their judgments and actions” (ibid).

Brandom stresses Hegel’s ideal of the symmetry of authority and responsibility.

“Hegel takes it that normative statuses such as authority and responsibility (what show up in the Phenomenology as ‘independence’ and ‘dependence’) are socially instituted statuses. The attitudes and practices that institute them are recognitive attitudes and practices: taking or treating each other in practice as authoritative and responsible. Further, authority and responsibility are co-ordinate statuses. Authority and responsibility come together. (There is no independence that does not incorporate a moment of dependence — essentially, and not just accidentally.) For the context in which such statuses are non-defectively instituted is one of reciprocal or mutual recognition. Each attempted exercise of authority is at the same time implicitly a petitioning for recognition of it as valid, legitimate, or warranted, as one the author is entitled to. And that is to say that attempting to exercise authority is always also making oneself responsible to those one recognizes as authorized (entitled, perhaps obliged) to validate it by recognizing it in turn” (pp. 36-37).

“Correspondingly, an attempt to make oneself responsible, even in judgment and intentional action, is authorizing others to hold one responsible. Hegel’s fundamental idea [is] that self-conscious individual subjects and their communities (“social substance”) are alike synthesized by reciprocal recognition. This is Hegel’s way of making sense of the connection between meaningful speech acts and validity claims, between discursive authority and discursive responsibility that is at the center of Habermas’s account of communicative action and discursive practice. Seen the other way around, Habermas’s theory of communicative action is his account of the practices Hegel talks about under the heading of ‘reciprocal recognition’” (p. 37, emphasis added).

Once again, the very act of making an assertion at all already authorizes others to question it, and to hold us responsible for it. This point is common to Brandom, Habermas, and Gadamer.

“Hegelian Geist [spirit] is the normative realm of all our normatively articulated performances, practices, and institutions, and everything that makes them possible and that they make possible” (ibid). “It is socially instituted by reciprocal recognition… That normative discursive realm in which we live, and move, and have our being is itself instituted by recognitive relations that are constitutively mutual, reciprocal, and symmetric” (ibid).

Hegel’s Geist is ethical and cultural, not metaphysical or mystical.

“In particular cases, asymmetric recognitive relations are intelligible” (ibid). “But these are in principle derivative cases, parasitic on the universal normative medium of discursive practices” (ibid).

“Denizens of this realm, the speakers and agents who are the only candidates for exhibiting more specialized, derivative, institutional normative statuses, are, once again, rational in the normative sense of exercising rational authority and taking on rational responsibility — being permanently liable to distinctive kinds of assessment and appraisal — rather than in the descriptive sense that addresses how good they are at doing what they are responsible for doing or vindicating the sorts of authority they claim” (ibid).

Brandom expresses his debt to Habermas.

“When it is described in these terms, I hope it is clear that Habermas is the foremost contemporary theorist of Hegelian Geist, the one who has taught us the most about its fine structure, the theorist who has best found an idiom for making explicit the commitments that are implicit in our being discursive normative creatures” (ibid).

Habermas himself seems to take the Young Hegelians’ hostile caricatures of Hegel as the last word on the subject. The 19th-century Right and Left Hegelians give opposite values to what are in fact broadly similar misunderstandings of Hegel.

“One issue arises from what I take to be a misreading of Hegel that is evident in some recent German interpretations that understand Hegelian Geist as a kind of divine mind, a social subject that is self-conscious in something like a Cartesian sense. It is a development of the right-wing Hegelian picture of the Absolute as a kind of super-individual thinker (an interpretation propounded already by Hegel’s student Gabler). This reading was very influential for the British Idealist admirers of Hegel, and remains part of the popular conception of Hegel’s thought among non-philosophers. Some of Henrich’s students (Kramer, Düsing) seem to have drawn the conclusion from his brilliant reading of Fichte that Hegel must take as a central theme the self-reflective structure of individual self-consciousness. But one of Hegel’s decisive insights is expressed in his non-mentalistic, indeed non-psychological, normative conception of self-consciousness as a social achievement that takes place largely outside the skull of the particular organism who becomes a self-conscious individual by entering into recognitive relations with others whose practical attitudes are equally essential to the institution of that status. (Already in the 1920’s the neo-Kantian Hartmann had emphasized that ‘The founding intuition of German Idealism is: “The Absolute is reason. It is not consciousness”‘. ) This Hegel is Habermasian; the Hegel who is a ‘philosopher of consciousness’ in the sense of Fichte’s or Schelling’s ‘absolute subjectivity’ is not” (p. 38).

This is a really key point that is still often lost sight of today: “reason, not consciousness”.

“Hegel does think that there can be a fully adequate, final set of logical, metasemantic, metaphysical concepts — the organ of a distinctive kind of philosophical self-consciousness that permits us to say and think what it is we are doing when we say or think anything about ourselves and our world. But he does not think that bringing those concept-determining activities and structures out into the daylight of explicitness — achieving the alarmingly titled state of “Absolute Knowing” that both the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic aim to produce — settles what ground-level concepts we ought to have, or the conceptual commitments, theoretical and practical, that we ought to adopt. Inquiry and deliberation must go on as before, with the sole difference that now we know what it is we are doing when we inquire and deliberate” (ibid, emphasis added).

Inquiry and deliberation must go on as before. There is no magic, no sleight of hand.

“All that [Hegel] thinks the system of logical concepts he has uncovered and expounded does for us is let us continue to do out in the open, in the full light of self-conscious explicitness that lets us say what we are doing, what we have been doing all along without being able to say what was implicit in those doings” (p. 39).

“There is no thought that any particular development is necessary in the alethic [truth-oriented] sense of being inevitable or unavoidable, or even predictable. It is rather that once it has occurred, we can retrospectively exhibit it as proper, as a development that ought to have occurred, because it is the correct application and determination of a conceptual norm that we can now see, from our present vantage-point, as having been all along part of what we were implicitly committed to by prior decisions” (p. 40, emphasis in original).

Consider the trajectory of a life, or the evaluation of its Aristotelian “happiness”.

“That is what distinguishes the normative notion of ‘freedom’ Kant introduces from the elusive alethic notion Hume worried about” (ibid).

That is to say, contrary to a few confusing remarks by Kant, the freedom relevant to ethics is not to be understood in terms of a special kind of causality.

“Commitment to the sort of retrospective rational reconstruction that finds norms governing contingent applications of concepts (the process of reason) turns out to be implicit in engaging in discursive practices at all because it is only in the context of discerning such expressively progressive traditions that concepts are intelligible as having determinate contents at all. Coming to realize this, and so explicitly to acknowledge the commitment to being an agent of reason’s march through history, is achieving the distinctive sort of self-consciousness Hegel calls ‘Absolute knowing'” (ibid, emphasis in original).

We are the agents of reason in history. This has nothing to do with infallibility, but rather with our status as participants in dialogue.

“Of course, no retrospective story one tells can succeed in rationalizing all of the actual contingent applications of determinate concepts that it inherits. (That is what in the final form of reciprocal recognition, we must confess, and trust that subsequent judges/concept-appliers can forgive us for, by finding the line we drew between what could and what could not be rationalized as itself the valid expression of a prior norm.) And no such story is final, because the norms it discerns must inevitably, when correctly applied, lead to incompatible commitments, which can only be reconciled by attributing different contents to the concepts” (ibid).

Brandom argues for the very strong position that no historically achieved concrete truth is permanently stable. This has a liberating potential. It means that every received truth and every authority must be subject to questioning.

“It is open to us to repackage those kinds of authority and responsibility in accord with the best lessons we can draw from the history and tradition we are able to discern. This is an instance of the fundamental Hegelian lesson about the ultimately social character of normative statuses, which are understood as instituted by recognitive practices and articulated by recognitive relations. This insight marks a fundamental advance over Kant’s understanding of the normativity he rightly saw as constitutive of our sapience. And it is an insight as fundamental to Habermas’s thought as it is to Hegel’s” (p. 41).