PALMQUIST.tree.16. Analytic Philosophy

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known as "linguistic analysis". The same way of philosophizing also goes by

such names as "analytic philosophy", "linguistic philosophy", or "philosophy

of language", depending on the preference of the philosopher in question.

But in general we can characterize this approach as one that regards the

analysis of language as the philosopher's f undamental task. The precise

way language ought to be analyzed, the exact definition of what analysis is,and even the proper delimitation ofwhat counts as language, are all issues

of open debate among members of this school. But amidst all their

differences, linguistic analysts are united by their common belief that

philosophical issues must be approached, first and foremost (if not

exclusively) f rom the point of view of their roots in human language. Some

believe that in upholding this belief they are the true heirs of Kant's great

limitation of human knowledge-to the extent that the notion of a

"transcendental turn" in philosophizing is thought by many philosophers

today to be identical to a "linguistic turn".

The roots of linguistic analysis are planted in ground prepared by a

mathematician named Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Frege instituted a

revolution in (analytic) logic, the implications ofwhich are still in the

process of being worked out by contemporary philosophers. He regarded

logic as virtually reducible to mathematics, and believed proof s should

always be exhibited in the form of clearly expressed, deductive steps. More

importantly, he believed logic could perform tasks far beyond anything

envisioned by Aristotle, provided logicians could develop ways of

expressing linguistic meaning entirely in terms of logical symbols. One of

his most influential ideas was to distinguish between the "sense" of a

proposition and its "reference", arguing that a proposition has "meaning"

only if it has both a sense and a reference. (This idea bears a striking

resemblance, incidentally, to Kant's claim that knowledge arises only out of

the synthesis of concepts and intuitions.) Frege also developed a new

notation enabling "quantifiers" (words such as "all", "some", etc.) to be

expressed in terms of symbols.He hoped philosophers could use thisnotation to perfect the logical form of their arguments, thus making it

possible to come far closer than ever before to the ideal of making

philosophy into a rigorous science.

One of the first philosophers to recognize the profound importance of

D1 — staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk https://www.readability.com/articles/16s7y

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Frege's new discoveries in logic was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)-probably

the best knownEnglish philosopher in this century. Russell, together with

A.N. Whitehead, applied many of Frege's insights inwriting what must be

one of the most important, yet least read, philosophy books written during

the twentieth century, P rincipia Mathematica. Russell developed many

interesting and influential ideas on a vast array of subjects during his longcareer. Unfortunately, on a number of occasions he changed his views,

arguing in one text against a position he himself had defended in previous

writings. Since he never developed a single, consistent system of

philosophy, it would be too difficult to examine his vast array of ideas here.

However, the case is quite different for a younger contemporary of

Russell's, who began his career in philosophy as one of Russell's students.

After studying engineering for several years in Manchester, this German-

speaking philosopher sent an essay to Russell in Cambridge, telling him he

wanted to study philosophy under Russell's guidance-either that, or he

would pursue f urther studies in the field of aeronautics. Fortunately for the

philosophical world, Russell invited this young man to become his student

in Cambridge.

If Frege can be viewed as the "father" of linguistic analysis, then its greatest

"son"was, undoubtedly, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).Not long after

coming to Cambridge, Wittgenstein launched out on his own, to become one

of this century's two or three most influential philosophers. The bulk of his

influence came through his lectures and tutorials, and through the students

and other philosophers who shared in these discussions with him. For

Wittgenstein himself published only one book during his lifetime, written

while he was still a young man. When he died, however, he left the

manuscript for a second book, eventually published two years after his

death. Each of these books laid the foundation for a major new version of

linguistic analysis. For the remainder of today's lecture, let's take a look at

these two trends in turn.

Wittgenstein's book, T ractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), came to be

treated as a manifesto for one of the earliest versions of linguistic analysis:

"logical positivism". It begins by defining the limits of the linguisticworld

in terms of the following set of foundational propositions:


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1The world is all that is the case.

1.1The world is the totality of facts, not things.

1.11The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.

1.12For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever

is not the case.

1.13The facts in logical space are theworld.

1.2The world divides into facts.

1.21Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains

the same.

Throughout the book Wittgenstein follows the same rigorous, mathemat-

ical form used in this introductory passage, numbering each successive

paragraph in hierarchical order. This logical form reflects the overall aim of

the book: to construct a set of analytic propositions that can be used as a

f ramework for understanding all "facts" (i.e., meaningf ul propositions)

about the world. The analytic focus of Wittgenstein's concern is evident

when, for example, he states that each of these facts "can be the case" (+) "or

not the case" (-).

After setting up a fixed boundary line between what counts as "the world"

andwhat does not-i.e., between "facts" and "things"-Wittgenstein weaves

an intricate web of logical propositions in sections 2-6 of his book. These

propositions are supposed to establish a philosophical f ramework for

understanding any legitimate fact that the "world" (i.e., the set of all

meaningf ul propositions) presents to us.He then concludes with a passage

that is worth quoting at length:

6.522There are, indeed, things that cannot be put intowords. They make

themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

6.53The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say

nothing exceptwhat can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science-i.e.

something that has nothing to do with philosophy-and then,whenever


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someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him

that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.

Although it would not be satisfying to the other person-hewould not have

the feeling thatwe were teaching him philosophy-this methodwould be the

only strictly correct one.

6.54My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who

understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical,when he has

used them-as steps-to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw

away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these

propositions, and then he will see theworld aright.

7What we cannot speak aboutwe must pass over in silence.

Analytic philosophers have debated long and hard over the properinterpretation of the enigmas in this surprise ending to Wittgenstein's

T ractatus. But if we keep in mind the distinction between analytic and

synthetic logic, then the meaning of these claims can be seen quite clearly.

Relating the distinction between "facts" and "things" to the distinction

between analytic and synthetic logic, especially as depicted in Figure IV.6,

suggests the following way of picturing the main structure of

Wittgenstein's argument in the above passage:

Figure VI.1: Wittgenstein's "Ladder"

Wittgenstein's viewwas that any philosophy based solely on the rigorous


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foundations of analytic logic must limit its scope of inquiry to questions

arising within the resulting "world of facts", even though this requires us to

treat many traditional philosophical questions as if they do not exist.He

quite rightly recognized that this metaphysical realm (i.e., the realm of

"things" outside of analytic logic) is a mystical realm. For synthetic logic has

always been a favorite tool of mystics. However, because of his firm belief inthe universal and exclusive validity of analytic logic, Wittgenstein was

forced to conclude that the proper response to this mystical realm is to

remain silent. If he was correctwhen he said talking about such "things" is

not a proper part of the philosopher's task, then much of the philosophy I

am teaching you in this course is not actually philosophy at all, but merely

disguised nonsense.

As we shalldiscover in Part Four, silence is actually a very proper way of

responding to a mystical experience.Nevertheless, as word-using animals,we humans inevitably try to describe such experiences inwords.

Wittgenstein was describing this attemptwhen he referred to those who

use analytic propositions as a "ladder" in hopes of climbing beyond facts to

a direct apprehension of things.He was quite right if he meant to say that in

such cases analytic logic turns out to be "nonsensical"; as such, his advice,

that such a person should "throw away the ladder after he has climbed up

it", is quite appropriate. He was also entirely correct to insist thatwe must

"transcend these propositions" in order to "see theworld aright", for

mystics are interested far more in changing the waywe see the world than

in changing thewaywe describe it. What Wittgenstein failed to take into

consideration, however, is that this realm of vision might have its own kind

of logic, whereby words thatwould otherwise be nonsense can make sense

after all: propositions using synthetic logic make sense because they shock

us into seeing the world in a newway!

Unfortunately, the philosophers who first followed Wittgenstein's lead

wer

e not inter

es

ted

in explor

ing the implications

of his

enigmaticreferences to "things" that somehow "manifest themselves". Rather, they

were intrigued by his idea of constructing an analytic foundation that

would enable philosophy to become, for the first time, truly scientific. The

most influential of his followers was A.J. Ayer (1910-1989),who, at the age

of 26, wrote the book, Language, T ruth, and Logic, popularizing a positivist


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interpretation of Wittgenstein's ideas. Far f rom leaving open a space for

silent appreciation of "mystical things", Ayer argued that the nonsensical

character of mystical experiences, together with all metaphysical ideas,

should lead us to discard them as utterly useless. Thus, near the beginning

of the first chapter, called "The Elimination of Metaphysics", he writes:

For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a "reality"

transcending the limits of all possible sense-perception can possibly have

any literal significance; f romwhich it must follow that the labours of those

who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the

production of nonsense. ( LTL 34)

The knife Ayer used to cut away all such illusions came in the form of what

he called the "verification" principle.He described this principle in the

form of a questionwe are supposed to ask about any proposition putforward as a possible "fact" about the world: "Would any observations be

relevant to the determination of its truth or falsehood?" ( LTL 38). If the

answer is "no", reasoned Ayer, then there is noway to verify the truth or

falsity of the proposition in question; and in any such situation, the

proposition must be literally meaningless. So, if I were trying to defend the

truth of a proposition such as "God exists", Ayer would require me to

describe some potential empirical situation that would cause me to give up

my belief in God. For example, if I said I would give up my belief in God if my

mother were to die a tragic death, then he would admit that my belief has

some meaningf ul content; but it is now primarily a belief about my mother,

not a belief about God. A person who claimed to have an unshakable faith

would simply be regarded as believing utter nonsense. Ayer argues along

these lines in the remainder of his book, employing the knife of verification

to carve away most of what have traditionally been regarded as the most

important areas of philosophical inquiry. Not only metaphysical

propositions as such, but also most of the nearest and dearest propositions

of mor

al,r

eligious

, and

aes

thetic valu

e ar

e als

o explained

aw

ay as

, at bes

t, amere expression of a person's emotional state (and hence, as irrational).

However, there is a serious problem with Ayer's program, as with any such

attempt to establish on logical grounds a set of so-called "positive" limits to

philosophical inquiry. The problem is that the very principle this whole


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school of thought is based on cannot pass the test of verification. In other

words, if Ayer were here today andwe asked him to point to some

observation-any observation-that would count as evidence against the

principle of verification, hewould be unable to do so! Why? Because this

principle is not merely a "logical tool", as Ayer thought; it is itself a

metaphysical belief every bit as much as those he tried to discard asnonsense. This means either the principle is true, in which case the

principle itself is meaningless, or else the principle is false, in which case

the very foundation of logical positivism falls to pieces. We can express the

self-contradictory character of the verification principle in a more rigorous

form as follows (assuming "VP" stands for "verification principle" and "-v"

stands for "a proposition not verifiable by some observation"):

All -v's a re meaningless. (= VP)

VP is a -v.

\VP (if true) is meaningless.

The form of this argument should look familiar to you; it is the infamous

problem of "self-reference", exposed as a fallacy in Lecture 10.

Although logical positivism did experience a period of hopef ul support

among many philosophers, mainly during the 1930s and 1940s, it was notlong before the self-contradictory nature of its basic claims became

undeniably evident. Indeed, it became so evident that Ayer himself

eventually stopped trying to defend such an extreme, positivist position.

The lessonwe can learn f rom the relatively brief life of this philosophical

experiment is that presuppositions of some sort are essential for any

philosophical endeavor, and that such presuppositions, like the mythswe

encountered in Part One, always transcend the realm of the knowledge they

serve to define. Such a transcendent principle generally must be accepted

on faith, since it cannot be proved f rom within the system it supports; yet

without it, there would be no boundary line in the system, and hence no

knowledge at all. In other words, logical positivism may have succeeded, in

a sense, in making philosophy into a science; but the price it had to paywas

to affirm the basic incoherence that plagues so much of modern science: the

belief that knowledge can be gainedwithout being rooted in some


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underlying myth. Once we recognize the f utility of such a belief,we can see

that Wittgenstein's "things" are just as important as his "facts": without the

former we could not even s peak about the latter!

One of the most interesting contrasts in the history of twentieth-century

philosophy was between the first and second of Wittgenstein's two greatbooks.No sooner had he developed the f ramework for a positivist

philosophy than he began working toward quite a different way of

conceiving the philosophical task.He set out his new views in Philosophical

I nvestigations (1953), a posthumously published book that has come to be

treated as a manifesto for another version of linguistic analysis, called

"ordinary language philosophy". The different character of these two books

is evident even in their titles: whereas his T ractatus is rigorously logical

and utterly analytic, Wittgenstein's I nvestigations is written in a much

looser, more synthetic, style-notunlike a detective story. Thefoundation-stone of ordinary language philosophy (replacing logical

positivism's verification principle) is the principle that the meaning of a

word or proposition is determined by its use. Armedwith this principle,

analytic philosophers turned their attention to the task of examining the

waywords are used in ordinary language, in the belief that all metaphysical

problems can ultimately be traced back to a misuse of some of the key

words involved.

In addition to the principle of use determining meaning, Wittgenstein

suggested a number of other guidelines for how ordinary language ought to

be investigated by philosophers. Two of these should be mentioned here

before we conclude our discussion of linguistic analysis. The first is that

words get their meaning by participating in a particular "language-game".

Just as different games have different rules, yet all can be called "games", so

also different ways of using language have different rules, yet meaning can

arise within all of them. This means that science, the only admissible realm

of know

led

ge for

the logical pos

itivis

t, is

now r

egard

ed

as

jus

t one of manypossible language-games. The words we use in non-scientific contexts, such

as in moral reasoning, in forming aesthetic judgments, and even in

constructing systems of religious belief, can be regarded as having

legitimate meanings after all. In each case, though,we cannot understand

such meanings f rom the outside, but must participate in the game in order


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to appreciate what is going on. For this reason, understanding the concept

of a "game" is crucial for ordinary language philosophers. Indeed, while I

was studying in Oxford, I once attended a series of lectures by a philosopher

who had been one of Wittgenstein's students. Believe it or not, he spent the

entire term discussing with us the question "What is a game?"-yet we never

came up with a set of defining principles that could apply to all games!

Another guideline introduced by Wittgenstein was again based on an

analogy-namely, that groups of wordssometimes bear "family

relationships" to each other and to other groups ofwords. By tracing these

relationships and becoming aware of the intricate patterns exhibited in

ordinary language, he believed philosophers could avoid repeating many of

the mistakes committed by past philosophers. To try to use aword as if it

were a member of a family it is not related to in ordinary language is to

break the rules of language-games; so it is nowonder seemingly irresolvableproblems arise as a result. Using these and other guidelines, Wittgenstein

detected numerous errors in the way philosophers tend to treat words.

Although such detective work sometimes ends with conclusions not unlike

those of the logical cogitations of T ractatus (e.g., that philosophical

problems are due to a misuse of language), its open and flexible tone is a far

cry f rom the rigidity of the work of his youth.

If logical positivism tried to make philosophy into a science, ordinary

language philosophy tried to make it into an art. In this way linguistic

analysis in some of its forms has actually come to appreciate more f ully the

importance of synthesis-though still treating analysis, of course, as having

priority. This emphasis on analysis has had the benefit of calling to the

attention of philosophers the importance of clarifying language. One of the

most serious problems with this whole movement, however, is that in many

cases analytic philosophers who claim to be saying "we are just trying to

help clarify what you are already doingwhen you use language", are actually

implying another

, qu

ited

iffer

ent claim as w

ell. Some analytic philos

ophers

do philosophy with the attitude that, in fact, "we knowwhat was wrongwith

the whole tradition, andwe don't need it any more!" And this, of course, is

always a dangerous thing to say, since philosophical traditions constitute

the very soil f romwhich the metaphysical roots of our philosophical tree

draw their nourishment.


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17.Synthetic Philosophy:

Existentialism and God Talk

An over-emphasis on analytic logic in philosophy often gives rise, as we

haves

een, to a pos

ition that ignor

es

all myth in the qu

es

t for

as

cientificsystem. The extent to which philosophers allow mythicalways of thinking

to play a legitimate role in their philosophizing is likely to be directly

proportional to the extent to which they recognize some form of synthetic

logic as the legitimate complement of analytic logic. As I mentioned in

Lecture 16, today's focuswill be on existentialism, a school of philosophy

whose proponents tend to emphasize synthetic logic more than analytic

logic. This movement exercised a dominant influence in so-called

"Continental" (i.e., non-EnglishEuropean) philosophy, especiallyduring

the first half of the twentieth century. Actually, much of the fourth part of this course will dealwith issues raised primarily by existentialist

philosophers in their attempts to apply philosophical thinking to improve

our understanding of concrete, human experiences. So todaywe can limit

our attention to an issue related more directly to logic-namely, the problem

of how religious language, and "God talk" in particular, gets its meaning. (Of

course, analytic philosophers have also devoted much attention to this

issue; butwe will focus here on the way existentialists tend to dealwith it.)

This topic serves as an appropriate contrast to linguistic analysis because

language about God, far f rom excluding myth, is regarded by some as the

"language of myth".

Religious language at its best, like myth, often uses synthetic logic to help

us cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. In other words, it is

essentially an attempt to speak about the unspeakable. In most religions,

this "unspeakable reality" is referred to as "God"-hence the phrase "God

talk". But many philosophers prefer to use less presumptuous terms; a good

example of such usage is "Being". Long before existentialism came into its

own as a distinct philosophical movement, many philosophers and

theologians adopted the convention of distinguishing between humans (and

all other things that exist in our ordinary world), as "beings", and the

ultimate reality that underlies all existence, as "Being". John Macquarrie, a

contemporary existentialist theologian who was strongly influenced by


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Heidegger's existentialist philosophy, describes this distinction in his book,

P rinciples of Christian Theology ( PCT 138):

... there could be no beings without the Being that lets them be; but Being is

present and manifest in the beings, and apart f rom the beings, Being would

become indistinguishable f rom nothing.Hence Being and the beings,though neither can be assimilated to the other, cannot be separated f rom

each other either.

This distinction between Being and beings serves as the primary

starting-point for many existentialists, though philosophers who are not so

theologically-minded often prefer to start f rom the even more basic

distinction between Being (and /or beings) and nothing.

The primary existentialist distinction (inwhichever versionwe take it)corresponds in its basic form to Kant's distinction between the realms of

possible knowledge and necessary ignorance. Although the two distinctions

are not identical, and so are often applied in vastly different ways,we can

picture this existential distinction by using the same, circular map in the

now familiar way (cf. Figures III.5 and VI.2). One advantage of using the

same root word to refer to both levels of reality is that


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this suggests that-as anyonewho hasever had a religious experiencewilltestify-Beingreveals itself in beings.But this raises a problem: given theradicaldifference between beingsand Being, how can we ever speakmeaningf ully about this Being thatmanifests itself in beings yettranscends them all? This is thecentral problem of reli-

Figure VI.2: The Primary Existential Distinction

gious language; and there have traditionally been two ways of solving it.

The first kind of solution can be called the "way of negation". Those who

take this approach insist that any words used to describe Being must be

literally true-i.e., true in the same way they would be if we applied the same

words to beings. The result is that this way of approaching language about

God gives rise either to extremely austere descriptions of ultimate reality,or to no description at all. We have already come across several typical

representatives of this approach. The long passage quoted in Lecture 12

f rom Pseudo-Dionysius is one of the earliest and best examples. As we saw,

his propositions are limiting to the point of being virtually empty if we

interpret them solely in terms of analytic logic, though they can point to

deeper meanings ifwe interpret them in terms of synthetic logic. Kant's

theory of knowledge, outlined in Lecture 8, is also f requently interpreted as

implying a strict limitation of language to the realm of beings. And, of

course, Wittgenstein's T ractatus ends with an explicit recommendation

that we remain silent when it comes to the "mystical things" that "manifest

themselves" to us, beyond the "world of facts".

The second approach to explaining howwords can be used to construct

meaningf ul expressions concerning some ultimate "Being" has been called


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the "way of affirmation". Interestingly, each of the above-mentioned

philosophers proposed, at some point, not only a negative "way", but also a

complementary affirmative "way"-evidence suggesting they all deserve to

be called "good" philosophers. Wittgenstein's I nvestigations can be

regarded as his attempt to forge an affirmative way. Kant's moral

philosophy, to be examined in Lecture 22, was purposef ully constructed asan affirmative complement to the negative restrictions established by his

epistemology. And Pseudo-Dionysius himselfwas actually the philosopher

who first named these two "ways"; his elaboration of an affirmative way is,

in fact, surprisingly rich, given the extreme austerity of his negative

theology.

Philosophers and theologians who employ theway of affirmation often

develop such an approach by utilizingwhat is called the "analogy of being".

This analogy states, quite simply, that in certain cases "Being" is to "beings"as "being x" is to "being y". Or we can express the same idea in the form of a

mathematical equation, as follows:

This analogy does not imply that every relationship

between two beings is somehow similar to the

relationship between Being and all beings, but only

that in certain instances such a similarity comes to our minds as an

appropriate way of usingwords to explain our experience of Being. For

example, Jesus experienced the relation of Being to beings in a way that

reminded him of the relation between a father and a son, so he taught his

followers to pray to their "heavenly father". The analogy here is:

where "father" refers, of course, to the ideal of perfect

fatherhood.

The analogy of being enables us to resolve an interesting paradox that arises

f rom the primary existential distinction between Being and beings. Paul

Tillich (1886-1971), a German existentialist who lived most of his life in the

USA, has argued that if we regard God as "being-itself" or the "ground of

being"-i.e., if we think of God as Being rather than as one of the "beings"

existing around us-then it is really not appropriate to say God "exists" at all!

One of my teachers once said such claims indicate that Tillichwas really an

atheist. Such an interpretation, however, completely misses the point of


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Tillich's position. A better interpretation suggests itself once we recognize

that existentialists of all types are fond of pointing out that the word "exist"

originates f rom the Latin words ex ("out") and sistere ("to stand"); so this

means, as theologically-minded existentialists are quick to add, that in

order for a being to exist, it must stand out f rom the Being it is rooted in.

We will look more closely at some of Tillich's ideas in Part Four of this

course; but for now itwill suffice merely to point out that,when Tillich

insists we should not, strictly speaking, say "God exists", since God simply

is the Being f rom which existing beings stand out, he is adopting the

"negative way". If we look at the same problem f rom the more "affirmative"

point of view of the analogy of being, then we can say that God's mode of

existence (or perhaps we can say God's reality) is to our human mode of

existence (or reality) as the mountain-tops are to the valleys below, or as

the sun is to the moon, or as any other higher or primary power we knowabout is to its corresponding lower or derivative power. Such comparisons

do not give us knowledge of God, but they do give us a way of using words to

express our belief about how our experience of God can best be described. In

other words, the distinction between Being and beings does not imply that

God is not real, but that God's reality is of a f undamentally different kind

than that of any other beings we know about. Whereas Tillich would say

that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say either "God exists" or "God

does not exist", I would add that, f rom the more flexible point of view of

synthetic logic,we are better off saying both of these propositions are true

and meaningf ul, each in its ownway. For God is not merely the greatest of

all existing beings: we beings have existence; God is existence -or, as

Macquarrie puts it, God "lets-be" ( PCT 141). This is surely the main point of

Tillich's claim that God does not literally "exist".

The analogy of being, like virtually any metaphorical use of language,

derives its meaning f rom synthetic logic. For whenever we use a known

relation

ship to

des

cr

ibe anunknown r

elations

hip,w

e ar

edr

aw

ing anequivalence between two opposites in a way that analytic logic can never

ustify. If we try to understand the proposition "God is my father" solely in

terms of analytic logic, we will be forced to conclude that the proposition is

nonsensical. For a "father" is a male individualwho helps produce a child by

having sexual relations with a female individual. If Godwere merely a


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"great being", then this might be possible; and some religious people who

view God in this way do not find it difficult to think of God as (for example)

awise old manwho (in some supernatural way) had sexwith the Virgin

Mary to produce the baby Jesus. But if God transcends the limited realm of

beings, then such a conception of God as a father, interpretedwith analytic

rigidity, is absurd.Nevertheless, if we accept synthetic logic as a legitimatetool for constructing meaningf ul propositions, thenwe can recognize that

the notion of the fatherhood of God is intended not as a literal description of

God, but as away of shockingus into gaining deeper insight with respect to

our experience of God. Christians nowadays tend to forget what a shock it

must have been for the Jewswho first heard Jesus exclaim "God is our

ather! " Today some people try to shock traditional Christians in the same

way by exclaiming "God is our mother! " Such a suggestion is likely to offend

those who accept analytic logic alone: for how could God be both our father

and our mother? Yet synthetic logic shows how both claims could be true in

their own way, each fostering legitimate insights into the nature of Being.

Macquarrie (who was, by theway, my supervisor at Oxford) has provided a

helpf ul discussion of the meaningf ulness of religious language in general

and God talk in particular in his book, P rinciples of Christian Theology.He

argues that God talk does not merely express some abstract analogy, but

arises out of a person's existential res ponse to some kind of concrete

experience of being-itself ( PCT 139). For example, if a person has an

experience of feeling humbled and struck down by reverent awe, as if in the

presence of some greater or higher power that is infinitely beyond any

previously experienced power, then, Macquarrie assures us, that person is

expressing a meaningf ul proposition whenever he or she refers to the

mysterious source of this experience (i.e., God) as "Most High", or as the

"Highest Being". Even for people who no longer believe God lives in a place

that is literally "high up in the sky", this metaphor of "highness" can

appropriately express the res ponse they have had (namely, a sense of

lowness) when in the presence of God.

Such God talk is often regarded not as referring merely to an individual's

private experience of Being, but as doctrine that ought to be affirmed by

everyone. This dogmatic use of religious language can also have a legitimate

meaning, provided the language reflects an existential response to a shared


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experience of the disclosure of Being in a given religious community. In a

passage affirming Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Macquarrie reminds us

that the meaning of a doctrine or dogma is ultimately determined by its use

in a religious community ( PCT 124-125). If the words used to express a

dogma are no longer relevant to the kind of existential response to Being

experienced by the members of a given religious community, then thedogma has lost its meaning, and ought to be discarded or expressed in a

f resh form. In other words, religious believers should view their belief s not

as containing fixed, analytic meanings, equally meaningf ul in all times and

all places, but as expressions of flexible, synthetic meaning, directly related

to the ever-new and ever-changing realities of life.

Macquarrie also notes that God talk has its historical roots in the language

of myths ( PCT 130-134). He describes the view of some existentialists, that

myth is a form of narrative attempting to answer a basically subjectivequestion, "Who am I?", in an objectified form. But he warns that myths also

have a properly objective aspect (134): "The myth talks indeed of our human

existence, but it talks of this existence in relation to Being, in so far as Being

has disclosed itself." In other words, the experience is an experience of

something objective, even though the knowledge it reveals is primarily about

the situation of the person having the experience. Although todaywe "live

in a post-mythical age" (132), understanding the nature of mythological

language is important because of its close relationship to religious

language: both types of language depend heavily on the use of symbols.

In Part Four of this course,we will consider in some detail how certain

symbols f unction in such away as to enable us to cope with our ignorance of

ultimate reality. So it will be helpf ul here to give a brief, preliminary

account of how symbols f unction in religious language. A symbol, according

to Macquarrie, is anything in the realm of beings that discloses and thereby

points our attention toward the realm of Being. He calls attention to the

synthetic cha

racte

r of

symbol

s when he note

s that they inevitably involve"paradox" ( PCT 145): "Just because symbols are symbols, that is to say, they

both stand for what they symbolize and yet fall short of it, they must be at

once affirmed and denied." Macquarrie also alludes on several occasions

(e.g., 135-136) to the definition of symbols suggested by Tillich. As we shall

see in Lecture 31, Tillich defines a symbol as a sign that participates in the


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reality to which it points. In other words, the symbol in once sense is the

reality itself (A), even though in another sense, as a merely empirical object,

it is not the reality (-A). Accordingly, some writers refer to the law of

contradiction as the law of "participation", governing situations where "A

articipates in -A."

The difference between mythological language and religious language is

that a mythological understanding remains unaware of the symbolic nature

of its words, whereas a genuinely religious understanding recognizes a

symbol as a symbol. Macquarrie compares the former to the activity of

dreaming and the latter to the activity of inter preting a dream ( PCT 134).

He then goes on to discuss a number of important characteristics of

symbols. He observes, for instance, that symbols normally operate only

"within a more or less restricted group of people" (136). As a result, there

are probably "no private symbols", as well as no "universal symbols", sincethe same object often has different symbolic meanings in different cultures.

Furthermore, Macquarrie claims that, "although Being is present and

therefore potentially manifest in every particular being, some manifest it

more f ully than others" (143). That is, there is a "range of participation in

Being", f rom impersonal objects that tend to participate less, to personal

beings that participate more. The reason personal symbols are so common

in religious language, then, is that they have "thewidest range of

participation in Being and so [are] best able to symbolize it." We know this

is true because personal beings "not only are, but let-be" (144). For human

beings in particular do not just exist, like the rocks; they also create. And

this is one of the primary characteristics of the religious conception of the

role of being-itself.

Before concluding this lecture, I should remind you that synthetic

philosophies, such as existentialism, are sometimes presented in a form

that is just as exclusive and one-sided as analytic philosophy typically is. In

reality, both of the

ses

chools

of thou

ght makeus

e of both analytic and

synthetic logic: just as linguistic analysis has its logical positivists and its

ordinary language philosophers, so also existentialism has its proponents of

the negative and the affirmative "ways".Nevertheless, while analytic

philosophers tend to over-emphasize analytic logic, existentialists tend to

over-emphasize synthetic logic. The latter sometimes results in an


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approach that says, as itwere, "Only the subjective experience really

matters; the philosophical tradition, to the extent that it ignores this

experience, can be discarded." But as I mentioned at the end of Lecture 16,

the tradition is the soil that feeds that very experience, and cannot be

discardedwithout rendering the experience itself inexplicable.

18. Hermeneutic Philosophy:

Insight and the Return to Myth

In ancient Greek mythology one character f requently appears who stands

out among the others as more symbolicallysignificant than any other in

helping us understand the nature and purpose of logic. Hermes was the

illegitimate son of tryst between Zeus and Maia, the eldest of the so-called

"Pleiades" (the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione). Maia gave birth tohim while hiding in a cave; but after growing almost immediately to the size

of a small child, he snuck away at night, stole fifty of Apollo's cattle, and hid

them in another cave. To conf use any pursuers, he covered their hoof s with

shoes carved so that the tracks appeared to be going in the opposite

direction. In the cave he invented fire, then cut two cows into twelve pieces,

sacrificing each to one of the gods. Using a tortoise shell and skin f rom the

two cows, he made the first lyre. When Apollo finally found the hiding-

place, he was so enthralled by the sound of Hermes' lute that he gave him

the entire herd in exchange for the instrument, and the two became bestf riends. To soothe himselfwith musicwhile tending his cattle,Hermes

made the first shepherd's pipe and began to learn the forbidden art of

divination. Zeus eventually became so impressedwith Hermes' divination

skills that he appointed him messenger of the immortal gods-one of his

chief duties being to give dreams to mortals.

Unlike most Greek gods, whowere regarded as governing only one or two

aspects of life, Hermes was associatedwith awide variety of attributes.

Because of his initial act, he became the god of thieves and the trickster god,

with cunning being one of his chief characteristics. But he was also honored

as the god of musicians, shepherds, traders, and craftsmen, as well as the

god of love-making and magic (especially spells to be used in attracting

one's beloved). Of all his traits, the ones that defined his role among the

gods more than any other was his job as the messenger. (Interestingly, the


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Greek term for "angel" also literally means "messenger of God".) As one of

the few gods who was allowed to travel f reely between the human and

divine realms,Hermes can be regarded as the god of boundaries-a title

whose suitability is evident in Figure VI.3.

The third major school of philosophy in the twentieth century draws itsname, with good reason, f rom this mythical character. Just as


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Hermes' job was to reveal hidden messages f romthe gods to humans, so also hermeneuticphilosophy seeks to understand the most basicissue in a general study of logic or the philosophyof language: how understanding itself takes place

whenever we inter pret spoken or writtenmessages. As such,we can regard Hermes as asymbolic representation of the philosopher,whose primary task (once we recognize that, ashuman beings,we are ignorant of ultimatereality) is to interpret the meaning ofwords.

Figure VI.3: Hermes as

Messenger of the Gods

Hermeneutic philosophy has deep roots inwestern culture. Indeed,

Aristotle himself wrote a book entitled Peri H ermeneias (On I nter preta-

tion), though it deals more with basic questions of logic than with the issues

we now associate with hermeneutics. For Augustine, Aquinas, and the

Scholastics, hermeneutics was a significant issue primarily (if not solely) as

it related to how the Bible ought to be interpreted. The firstwork that

attempted to lay out objectively applicable principles of interpretation as

suchwas I ntroduction to the Correct I nter pretation of Reasonable

Discourses and Books (1742), by Johann Chladenius (1710-1759). Defining

hermeneutics as the art of attaining a complete understanding of

utterances (whether spoken or written), he proposed three basic principles

that must always be followed: (1) the reader must grasp the author's style or

"genre"; (2) the unchangeable rules of Aristotelian logic should beused tograsp the meaning of each sentence; and (3) the author's "perspective" or

"point of view" must be kept in mind, especiallywhen comparing different

accounts of the same event or idea.

During the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, her-


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meneutics gradually developed into a standard area of academic study,

especially for theologians, because of its significance for assisting in

biblical interpretation. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) taught her-

meneutics as a specificuniversity subject, introducing many new insights

and distinctions that are still considered important today. One of his most

influential theories is that our ability to understand a text is restricted bythe "hermeneutic circle". This refers to the reciprocal relationship that

holds between the parts of a text (e.g., the meaning of eachword, phrase,

etc., considered in light of the original language and its grammar) and the

entire text considered as a meaningf ul whole (often requiring, e.g., an

understanding of the author's cultural and psychological background). The

paradox is thatwe must understand the parts in order to grasp thewhole;

yet we cannot hope to understand the parts without understanding the

whole. In practice, this means the interpreter's task is never finished: the

morewe understand the parts, the more accurate will be our idea of


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thewhole, and vice versa. I think this never-ending "circle" is even more appropriatelyregarded as a s piral, with our understanding of the text growing ever wider andwider, with each

parts-whole revolution. As suggested by FigureVI.4, this gives us one way of understanding howhermeneutics combines synthesis and analysis:synthesis is the process of combining the parts tomake awhole; analysis is the reciprocal processof dividing the whole into its parts.

Many scholars with varying de-

Figure VI.4: TheHermeneutic Spiral

grees of interest in philosophy, such as William Dilthey (1833-1911),

contributed f urther insights to our understanding of hermeneutics; but our

main focus this week is on the twentieth century. Such a focus is actually

quite appropriate, because hermeneutic philosophy only really came intoits own as away of doing philosophy (as opposed to a set of principles for

biblical interpretation) through the work of one of the century's most

distinguished philosophers. Let us therefore discuss his ideas in more

detail,with a view toward gaining a f urther understanding of how they

constitute a synthesis of analytic philosophy and existentialism, thereby

representing what may well be the closest thing to "good" philosophy in the

twentieth century.

Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-) was formatively influenced by thephilosophies of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger

(1889-1976).Husserl developed a philosophical method called "phenom-

enology", involving a process called "transcendental epoche",whereby the

philosopher attempts to reduce phenomena to their most essential

characteristics by "bracketing out" anything that is nonessential. Focusing


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on s peech acts,Husserl tried to explain howwords point beyond themselves

to an objective reality.Heidegger, a student ofHusserl's, used his teacher's

ideas as a springboard for a new philosophy that regarded hermeneutics as

the core philosophical task. In his highly influential book, Being and Time

(1927), Heidegger argued that "Dasein" (a term meaning "being-there", but

used as the name for the essential core of human nature) has "ontologicalpriority" over all other beings, because humanity has an in-built "openness"

toward (or "pre-understanding" of) Being. The problem,Heidegger pointed

out, is that through a process of "closure",we "forget" our intimate

connectionwith Being. And as long as Being remains hidden f rom our view,

we are "alienated" f rom our deepest roots. Such closure happens because

most of our speech (i.e.,word usage) stems f rom an "inauthentic" relation to

Being. The philosopher's task, then, is to overcome this problem through a

process of "self-realization" that requires us to recognize, first and

foremost, howwe are limited by our temporal nature. Unfortunately,

Heidegger never wrote the second volume of this book, wherein he had

claimed hewas going to interpret Being as such.

Gadamer, a student of Heidegger's, was a late bloomer. Like Kant, he was

near the age of retirement when he wrote his magnum opus., T ruth and

Method (1960). This book, sometimes called the "Bible" of modern German

hermeneutic philosophy, assesses the historical contrast between the

Enlightenment and Romantic periods in philosophy. The former

philosophers held the naive view that reason can solve all human problems,

providedwe learn to discard all presuppositions and view theworld f rom

the objective standpoint of universal truth. The latter rejected this

"prejudice against prejudice" (TM 240), replacing it with a prejudice for

tradition, and along with it, a new respect for myth. Thus the Romantics

viewed theworld f rom the subjective standpoint of individual truth.

Gadamer argued that by simply saying "no" to the opposing standpoint, this

movement committed the same basic mistake as theEnlightenment:

philosophers in both traditions tended to remain unaware of theirprejudices.Hermeneutic philosophy goes beyond both movements by

claiming that having some prejudices is inevitable. A pre-judgment is bad,

Gadamer claims, only when it results f rom an over-hasty look at the

evidence. A prejudice based on trust in a legitimate authority is not only

not bad, but is a necessary step in gaining any genuine knowledge. The key


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is to recognize that "authority" comes not f rom a person's position, but f rom

a person's knowledge. People obey others willingly not when through

political force, but through a f ree recognition that the person knowswhat he

or she is talking about. Gadamer agrees that the tradition is the most

f requently reliable source of such authority; but when it conveys genuine

knowledge,we should be able to support it with reason as well. Again likeKant, hewarns that reason (i.e., logic) alone cannot always be trusted to

lead us to the truth.

The paradox of the Romantic period is that,while it awakened humanity's

historical consciousness, it failed to recognize that our finitude, as beings

in time, limits our ability to understand our own history accurately. This at

the core of the "hermeneutic problem" (TM 245): "history does not belong to

us, but we belong to it." Because the interpreter is in history, the process of

interpreting any text's meaning is a never-ending task. Understandingrequires us first to overcome the "strangeness" of the text or object under

consideration, andwe do this by transforming it into something more

familiar, something we already understand. This is why prejudice is an

inevitable part of the process of understanding, andwhy becoming aware of

our prejudices is so important to the task of interpreting texts-or any aspect

of our experience, for that matter. An awareness that the interpreter exists

within the same historical continuum as whatever is being interpreted is

what Gadamer called the "principle of effective history" (267).

One of Gadamer's central arguments in T ruth and Methodwas that the

scientist's "naive faith in scientific method" (268) "leads one to deny one's

own historicality." Actually, any attempt to gain truth must be based on

some method; andwhatever methodwe choose is paradoxically bound to

limit our view of what is true. This is because, as I have stressed at various

points throughout this course, we can recognize something as true only

when we view it f rom some pers pective. (I shall examine this theme in more

detail in Lect

ure2

4.) Bu

t thescientific

method

is

par

ticu

lar

lyd

anger

ous

inthis regard, because its most vocal proponents tend to treat it as the one and

only method of attaining truth; yet by remaining ignorant of their own

prejudices (or "myths", as we called them in Part One), such claims end up

hiding as much truth as they reveal-if not more. By contrast, a philosophical

appreciation for the principle of effective history gives us a "consciousness


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of the hermeneutical situation" (268).

A "situation", according to Gadamer (TM 269), is "a standpoint that limits

the possibility of vision." The limits of our situation is called our

"horizon"-a term Gadamer borrowed f romHeidegger. The importance of

becoming aware of our own personal horizon is that it gives us a sense of ers pective regarding everything we can see f rom our particular standpoint.

Without such an awareness, a person tends to care only about what happens

to be nearest at the moment.Hermeneutic philosophy solves this problem

by providing a sense of historical consciousness-"the horizon of the past"

(271)-that enables us to broaden our horizon until it includes within it the

situation of the other person (the one whose words we are interpreting).

This f usion of horizons happens whenever we interpret another person's

words.

In what sense can we say that hermeneutic philosophy, as expressed in its

most complete and systematic form by Gadamer, actually synthesizes the

earlier movements of linguistic analysis and existentialism? One of many

ways of defending such a claim would be to consider how each movement

tends to view the task of doing philosophy. Whereas linguistic philosophers

see themselves as (ideally) scientific analyzers of objective language forms,

existentialists see themselves as prophets calling humanity to a new

appreciation of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of human experience. By

regarding philosophy as essentially a conversation to be inter preted,

Gadamer combines both the analytic bias of Wittgenstein and the synthetic

bias of Heidegger (as interpreted by avowed existentialists such as

Macquarrie): philosophy is and must be both an attempt to analyze and

understand linguistic forms of expression and an attempt to synthesize and

experience the meaningf ul push and pull of such forms as they evolve in

historically-mediated communities. Indeed, the key lesson hermeneutic

philosophy teaches us as we enter the twenty-first century is essentially the

same a

s the le

sson

we lea

rne

d in Lect

ure10 w

henw

ed

is

cuss

ed

the pr

oblemof self-reference: that truth can be "grasped" only to the extentwe are

willing to recognize and acknowledge our myths.

One way of emphasizing the importance of making room for our own

prejudices is to distinguish between "exegesis" (reading the meaning out of


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a text) and "eisegesis" (reading your own meaning into a text). Most

scholars nowadays still regard the former as the only valid approach to

interpretation. But Gadamer's philosophy demonstrates that analytically

picking apart the meaning of a text (exegesis) and synthetically adding our

own insight to the text's possible meanings (eisegesis) are both necessary

aspects of the hermeneutic process. A rare example of a scholar who did notshare the bias against eisegesis is Kant,who argued that all biblical

interpretation that takes place in the context of a religion ought to be given

a moral interpretation, even if that is not part of the text's literal meaning-

provided it does not contradict that meaning. We shall talk more about

Kant's view of religion in Week XI. The point here is that,without some

measure of eisegesis, our understanding will be void of insight and so also,

void of any deep meaning. Before concluding today's lecture, let us

therefore explore in more detail the nature of insight in relation to the

distinction between analytic and synthetic logic.

As we conclude this second stage in our exploration of the tree of

philosophy, I want to be sure the trunk of the tree, logic, has given you some

new insights about howwe understandwords. In particular, I hope you now

see how important it is to recognize the complementary relationship

between analysis and synthesis in all their forms. Recall the comparison

made in Lecture 12 between this distinction and the sight-insight

distinction: whereas analytic logic often provides the best way to describe

the sur face of whatwe see and experience, synthetic logic takes us beneath

the surface, into the depths of new ideas. But new ideas cannot stand on

their own. If we have an insight and then just leave it alone, itwill produce

no f ruit. The synthetic discovery of a new insight must therefore always be

followed by an analytic criticism; and the latter can


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be done properly only by someonewho isthoroughly immersed in the tradition. With a fewslight alterations to Figure IV.6,we can picture thisway of describing the complementary relationshipbetween analysis and synthesis, sight and insight,

criticism and discovery, as shown in Figure VI.5.Keeping this map in mind during the third part of this course may prove to be quite helpf ul in guidingour reflections concerning the nature of wisdom.In preparation for our next session,whenwe shalldiscuss the question "What iswisdom?", I wouldlike each of you to

Figure VI.5: Analysis and Synthesis asComplementary Functions

read the short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Although the word "wisdom" never appears in that story, I want you to

search as you read it for any clues it might hold as to the nature of wisdom.

Bach is not a philosopher, so his books are not ordinarily assigned as

required reading for philosophy classes; but he is a manwho writes with

insight, andwhose writing can often fire the embers of insight in his

readers. My hope, therefore, is that discussing his popular story of a bird

who searches for wisdomwill provide us with insights that can serve as an

appropriate introduction to Part Three.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1.A. Why do mathematical and natural truths so often correspond?

B. Is the meaning of a word or proposition any different f rom its use?


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2.A. What f unction, if any, does synthesis have in linguistic analysis?

B. Could there ever be a language that was entirely analytic?

3.A. Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

B. Is there a middle way between the ways of negation and affirmation?

4.A. Couldwe ever say anything literally true about God?

B. Is exegesis or eisegesis more important for good interpretation?

R ECOMMENDEDR EADINGS

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, T ractatus Logico-Philosophicus2, tr. D.F. Pears and

B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974[1961]), §§1, 6.1-3,

and 7.

2. Alf red Jules Ayer, Language, T ruth and Logic2, Ch. One, "The Elimination

of Metaphysics" ( LTL 33-45).

3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical I nvestigations2, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968[1953]), §§1-25.

4. Bertrand Russell, The P roblems of Philosophy (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1997[1912]), Ch.15, "The Value of Philosophy", pp.153-161.

5. John Macquarrie, P rinciples of Christian Theology, Chapter 6, "The

Language of Theology", ( PCT 123-148).

6. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1951), especially Part II, "Being and God", pp.163-289.

7. "Hermes" (http://web.uvic.ca/grs /bowman/myth/gods /hermes_t.html),maintained by Laurel Bowman.

8. Hans Georg Gadamer, T ruth and Method2, Second Part, §II.1, "The

Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of

Hermeneutical Principle" (TM 235-274).


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