This Silence Which Is Not One: Towards a Microphysics of Rhetoric (original) (raw)
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The idea of dialogue occupies arguably the most central position in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer 1960/1989). Dialogue is here not understood merely as the conversation between two subjects about something of common interest in a shared medium of understanding, but rather as the foundational phenomenon within which objects and themes, subjects and perspectives, and common interest and shared understanding are grounded. The foundational character of dialogue derives from the fact that all experience is understood to be linguistically mediated, while language as a medium exists in its true and essential form as dialogue. The strongest support for this approach comes from a phenomenological perspective on understanding, i.e. on what really happens when we understand something, when we make sense of something by interpreting it. Bringing together the encompassing and foundational role of dialogue with its concrete origin in the act of interpretation will yield, as I will show, a postmetaphysical concept of understanding as dialogue. Gadamer’s own philosophical-hermeneutic conception of dialogue both suggests and yet misses its full articulation, as our analysis of the idea of dialogue in philosophical hermeneutics, the question of the metaphysical grounds of understanding in language, and the issue of the epistemological significance of dialogue will show.
The Primary Silence of the Past and the Weakness of Philosophy
There is little doubt that the concept of an "immemorial past" has become increasingly well recognized in contemporary philosophy, particularly in the wake of Levinas, Derrida, and Deleuze and a revived interest in Bergson. 1 It is also clear that Merleau-Ponty finds himself uncomfortably in the midst of this cluster of thinkers: uncomfortable because his thought evinces a degree of ambivalence with regard to the immemorial past. For example, as Alia Al-Saji has suggested, Phenomenology of Perception's "emphasis on the field of presence of the lived body and on the primacy of perception, understood as givenness in the flesh," "seems to preclude such a concept of pastness irreducible to the present" (Al-Saji 42). Nonetheless, in spite of this otherwise seemingly transparent commitment to the primacy of the present in the earlier text, there is also the following well-known but curious remark: "… [R]eflection does not itself grasp its full sense unless it refers to the unreflective fund of experience which it presupposes, from which it profits, and which constitutes for it a kind of original past, a past which has never been a present" . Phenomenology of Perception therefore seems to maintain a tension between Merleau-Ponty's commitment to Husserlian phenomenology and its apparent emphasis on the ontological primacy of the present, on one hand, and this curious and perhaps contradictory reference to the immemorial past on the other.
On the Postmodernity of the Philosophical Discourse
2014
The exposition tries to capture the nature of the relationship between the sphere of reality and the sphere of discourse engaged in a dynamics of construction where Reality becomes Logos and Logos becomes Reality. What gives relevance to this relationship is the isomorphism that does not leave room for any dominant position: discourse does not wear out reality and reality does not wear out discourse, but there is a certain amount of indeterminateness and incompleteness on one side, as on the other. The two spheres build up a dynamic universe, where they play a sublime game of seduction and rejection, a game through which experience needs to be articulated and intention needs to find its object.
XVIII: Philosophy of Language and Silence
The Birth of Thought in the Spanish Language, 2017
There are problems with speaking too much, but also problems with being quiet. The advantages of being quiet or controlling our words are described, and the dangers of linguistic contamination and discourse. The virtues of silence and the virtues of words are described. Humans not speaking should be similar to animals. The properties of fluent communication through words are described. Having considered silence and virtues, and also loneliness and bad company, the Castilian philosopher grants a space, as he does to the virtues of silence, to measured expression, a place he is led to by the memory of people who show excessive loquacity: "It is bad to talk too much, but it is worse to be silent; we were not given tongues to be silent, I think. However, we cannot deny the advantage of keeping quiet, indeed it is useful that we exploit it: we should only talk about half of what we hear, as we have one tongue and two ears. He who wishes to talk a lot without great wisdom would do better to remain silent." Santob, who wanted to praise the silent and belittle the loudmouth, says, "if speaking were represented as silver, silence would appear as purified gold. Peace is one among a hundred good elements; of the evils of speech, censure is the least." 1 Santob does not criticise talking sense and being moderate, in accordance with circumstances, with the right level of expression, because that is what the tongue was made for. For him, as for Aristotle and many mediaeval thinkers, the world was made with partial goals which would lead to a final end; according to Christian philosophers, to the glory or manifestation of God; what came out of Him returns to Him. There would be no organs or things because, for illogical reasons or simple causation and error, but-illogical for us-they would have some purpose that is sometimes hard to find but does not stop it existing. The trouble for him is that the fools, or people who have nothing useful to say, talk, wasting words, so language loses its effect, strength and meaning, because attention is divided among many people. Joan Maragall also complained of writers that write when they have nothing important to say, "and his moral sense, stunted by the public vice of speaking, allows him to say it with a certain dignity and pride: I am a workman of intelligence!
Current Issue: Philosophical Investigations/ Volume 13, Issue 28, Autumn 2019, Page 1-325 FULL TEXT
2019
The digital police state: Fichte’s revenge on Hegel/ Slavoj Žižek ............................. Personal or impersonal knowledge? / Susan Haack …………………………...……. Heidegger never got beyond facticity/ Thomas Sheehan ……………...…….……… Our confrontation with tragedy/ Simon Critchley …….…..…………...…......…..… On the permissible use of force in a Kantian dignitarian moral and political setting, or, Seven Kantian Samurai/ Robert Hanna, Otto Paans………...…………… Self-, social-, or neural-determination/ Lawrence Cahoone……....................……… Important aspects of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy that could not be known through Husserl’s own publications during his lifetime/ Iso Kern………………………………………………………..………… Heidegger’s Socrates: “pure thinking” on method, truth, and learning/ James M. Magrini ………………………………………………...………………………..…….. Intuition as a capacity for a priori knowledge/ Henry W. Pickford…………….….. The absence of self: an existential phenomenological view of the Anatman experience/Rudolph Bauer…………………………………………………….…...…. Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and natural man: an existential inquiry into being and rights/ Anthony Asekhauno …………………………....…… Heidegger in Iran: a historical experience report/Bijan Abdolkarimi ………….…. The priority of literature to philosophy in Richard Rorty/Muhammad Asghari..… An argument in defense of voluntary euthanasia/Hossein Atrak………………...… Existential anxiety and time perception: an empirical examination of Heideggerian philosophical concepts towards clinical practice/ Alireza Farnam, Samira Zeynali, Mohammad Ali Nazari, Prinaz Vahid Vahdat, Masumeh Zamanlu ……………………………………………………………………….………………… Plantinga on divine foreknowledge and free will/Abdurrazzaq Hesamifar……..….. Language and philosophy: an analysis of the turn to "subject" in modern philosophy with historical linguistic approach/Ahmad Hosseini ….……….……… Divine foreknowledge and human moral responsibility (in defense of muslim philosophers’ approach)/Tavakkol Kuhi Giglou, Seyed Ebrahim Aghazadeh………………………………………………...…………………..……….. "Autrui" selon Lévinas et Blanchot/ Maryam Mesbahi, Mohammad Hossein Djavari, Allahshokr Assadollahi Tejaragh ………………………………...…….…… Language, gender and subjectivity from Judith Butler’s perspective/ Massoud Yaghoubi-Notash, Vahid Nejad Mohammad, Mahmoud Soufiani……….………...…
A DISCOURSE ON THE MEANING AND IMPLICATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
International Journal of Humanitatis Theoreticus, 2021
This paper which anchors on the meaning and implications of philosophy argues that philosophy has meant several things to several people owing to the influences from background, world views, cultural conceptions and era in which the definer existed. Consequently, these differences and the perceptions of some concepts have made some scholars to undermine the philosophic essence in the conceptions held by some others. Hitherto, some people leverage on the fact that 'ideas rule the world' to demean and dehumanize others whose thought patterns they consider, do not operate at equal levels with theirs. At this, the paper wonders why some philosophic concepts held by some people should be termed ethnophilosophy, if truly background, world view and era influence conceptions and definitions of concepts; and equally enquires what the essential implications of Hermeneutics as a branch of philosophy really means. Nonetheless, the paper finally reinstates that in as much as philosophy does not have a single universal method; and hermeneutics is still valid as an instrumental working of philosophy, in the 'ethno-ness' of a philosophy is a whole philosophy hence the term 'philosophy'. However, in dialoguing this, the paper will employ expository, comparative and hermeneutical approaches to undertake the discourse.
Philosophical Language: the Tool for Controlling the World
My essays have been written to make readers aware of the power of philosophical ideas in their lives and to become aware of their influence on the evolution of western civilization. Most of these key ideas were formulated hundreds of years ago and some over two thousand years ago. It was the invention of writing and the commitment of generations of scholars that have preserved these ideas through many cultures and countries. As they have formed the core of formal education, especially among the elites, they have continued to influence the way most of us think, as they still pervade our cultures. My objective here is to galvanize people, especially scientists and philosophers, to take a fundamental new direction in their basic assumptions about the world (metaphysics) because these shape the questions we ask, the methodologies we use, the observations we value, as well as interpretations of the data on which we evaluate and decide how to act. We desperately need to develop a Science of Mind to balance our out-of-control “Science of Matter”; our individual and social self-confidence need to be restored to pre-scientific levels. Remaining on the Path-of-Tradition (resisting all change) is no longer a viable strategy as we are facing a growing range of catastrophic threats (climate, nuclear-war, etc.); we must look for new inspirations: old ideas (Greek philosophy) and sciences (mathematics and physics) have exhausted their potentials and brought on the crises. The thesis of this essay is that our simplistic view of matter has diverged from the older respect for its organic-like capabilities because the ‘Talkers’ (philosophers) have hijacked normal language to promote their own metaphysical and theological beliefs ever since Ancient Greece, 2500 years ago. This divergence has been driven by religious motivations of the intellectuals who have manned our sacred and secular Temples for millennia. This project has a hidden political agenda that will be exposed in the next essay. I have also grown to appreciate the mysterious but widespread reliance on Intuition rather the step-wise style of thinking called Rationality, which is sometimes useful but too often severely restricted. The logical flaw in Dualism began with the Old Greek theory that mind and matter are two distinct substances since, if it is possible for two things to exist separately, then the Greek logicians insisted they cannot be identical. Tragically, matter (like the brain) was clearly seen as more objective (agreed by everyone, especially when examinable in a cadaver) while mind (mental processes) remained elusively subjective (known only to its own ‘carrier’ – one person: and while alive). The result is a giant dichotomy, with the intellectuals promoting their own talent-skill (thinking) while they became distanced from their own bodies, viewed as simply animalistic necessity.