Human communication is often wrought
with difficulty, but in case of two philosophers from different
schools the failure to understand is often quite fundamental – it
is no wonder that philosophers have a hard time in explaining how
communication can work, when they can't get it work for themselves.
Often this lack of understanding is caused by nothing else, but
different theoretical presuppositions, and in worst cases, merely by
one using words in a different sense than the other. Usually a third
person sees instantly where the crux of the miscommunication lies,
but to the opponents this is like a blind spot – indeed, they are
even unwilling to consider that the reason for argument might be just
verbal and pedantically remain steadfast in their own way of
speaking.
This philosophical pedantry is an
important topic for a historian of philosophy, because the history of
philosophy is full of bickering caused by verbal issues. Before the
historian decides whether one philosophers was more correct than
another in some question, he must determine whether the two were even
discussing the same problematic. For instance, Kant and Hegel appear
to have a different view on the relationship between thought and
being. Yet, it might well be that both philosophers mean something
different by thinking and being – and if one proved this, he would
have defused one point of contention between the so-called Kantians
and self-ascribed Hegelians.
The philosophical misunderstanding is
more certain, when the words used are misleadingly familiar. Probably
no one has any preconceptions as to what a conversational implicature
is, but the more mundane concept of idealism has been defined in
various manners – Plato was an idealist, because he spoke of
”ideas”, Leibniz was an idealist, because he thought everything
perceives, Kant was an idealist, because on his opinion we do not
experience things in themselves and Hegel was an idealist, because
all philosophers are idealists, which in Hegelian parlance includes
anyone who tries to explain everything from one principle (even a
materialist).
Even the apparently non-philosophical
terms contain hidden ambiguities. When a person familiar with modern
analytic philosophy hears Hegel saying ”Truth is whole”, he
instantly thinks that Hegel is suggesting an alternative to the
traditional correspondence theory of truth – probably some
coherentist theory. But a closer look reveals that when Hegel speaks
of truth (Wahrheit) he is speaking of things like ”true friend”.
”Truth” means for Hegel something close to ”good”. So, the
Hegelian phrase is not meant to describe what makes a belief or a
statement true, but to note that wholes are in some sense better or
more important than mere parts.
A common way of defending one's
pedantry is to shout out loud ”this is not the way to use that
concept!” Of course, to a person acquainted with the modern
theories of truth Hegelian terminology appears strange. But this
analytic philosopher ignores such religious claims as ”God is
truth”, which do not say anything about our beliefs and statements.
Indeed, it is often impossible to determine what is the right way to
use a word – and then we get such non-sensical arguments as Leibniz
and Clarke's discussion how to define the word ”sensorium”.
How then to avoid such pedantry? If you
are faced with a pedant and want to avoid the nuisance altogether –
just accept the terms he uses. You want to use this word instead of
that, allright, anything goes for me. So you define idealism like
this? OK, Hegel wasn't an idealist then.
If you yourself don't want to become a
pedant, a good antidote is to introduce oneself to as many
philosophers and philosophical schools as possible. One is definitely
not enough and not even two: you might learn to translate
phenomenological lingo to Hegelese and back, but you still may have a
blind spot for medievals. Of course, it is not possible to
familiarise oneself with all the possible philosophers, but at least
you will learn to suspend your judgement, when a new philosophical
figure comes up with some seemingly ridiculous statements.
How is one then to engage in a dialogue
with an unfamiliar philosophical terminology? Defining one's concepts
is a necessary first step, but not the complete solution, because all
definitions stop at some ultimate point. After that, the best bet are
concrete examples explicating how concepts are to be used – one
might have difficulty explaining what truth means, but hearing
someone using truth of sentences and another speaking of true friends
would teach us much about the variety of ways to use the word.
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