Month: June 2011

Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, hrsg. v. Medem (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1991), S. 213 (14. I. 49):

     Das Feindschaftpotential des Denkens ist unendlich. Denn man kann
     nicht anders als in Gegensätzen denken. Le combat spirituel est
     plus brutal que la bataille des hommes.

     The enmity potential of thought is infinite. For one cannot think
     otherwise than in oppositions. Spiritual combat is more brutal than
     a battle of men. (tr. MavPhil)

There is something to this unrepentant Nazi's onesided observation.  Philosophy in particular sometimes bears the aspect of a blood sport. But thinking is just as much about the reconciliation of oppositions as it is about their  sharpening. A good thinker is rigorous, precise, clear, disciplined. These are virtues martial and manly. But there are also the womanly virtues, in particular, those of the midwife. Socratic maieutic is as  important as ramming a precisely formulated thesis down someone's throat or impaling him on the horns of a dilemma. The Cusanean coincidentia oppositorum belongs as much to thought as the oppositio  oppositorum.

There is more to philosophy than the Butlerian "A thing is what it is and not some  other thing." There is also the Heraclitean "The way up and the way down are the same."  To take either as one's motto would be to philosophize onesidedly.  Sometimes a thing is what it is in virtue of not being what it is not, its not being its Other being constitutive of what it is.  That is indeed the case with the way up and the way down. Each is what it is by not being what it is not as non-independent moments of a whole which is their unity.

There is no philosophy without analysis and distinction, but there is also no philosophy without a concern for unity and wholeness. Discursive reason is diremptive but is also somehow aware of this fact and so seeks its Other, the reason that reconciles and harmonizes.

Every judgment, after all, is both an analysis and a synthesis.  To judge that a is F is to separate a subject and a predicate while combining them.  This holds for both what we in the trade call analytic and synthetic judgments.  There is a clear sense in which the analytic Every cygnet is a swan is synthetic and the synthetic  Some cygnets have broken wings is analytic.  

The ability to listen and lay oneself open are as important in a philosopher as the ability to probe, penetrate, and dissect. When the manly and martial squeezes out the feminine and receptive, then philosophy can degenerate into a blood sport.

You know, your inquiry into burden-of-proof (BOP) has put the idea in my mind that we could, if we wanted, institute something like a “court of philosophy”.  Bear with me for paragraph—I don’t mean what follows as parody.
 

It would work like a civil action in which a claimant appears before a judge and files his motion: “I believe the following version of the Ontological Argument is sound and I will prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.” The judge examines the claimant's motion and informs him precisely what his BOP will be at trial with respect to each of the key premises of the argument. If the claimant agrees, the judge accepts the case. At this point the claimant must deposit a hefty bond with the court. It will be returned with interest if he carries his motion at trial but otherwise forfeited. The judge appoints a prosecutor/opponent who will argue against the claimant. A trial date is set and a jury of unbiased academics (philos?) seated.  At trial the claimant set out his thesis as the opening statement and the prosecutor attacks it. The claimant gets to respond. The prosecutor gets his redirect. Expert witnesses may even be called on technical points like modal logic. The judge decides when the back and forth has continued long enough and then charges the jury. “You will decide whether the claimant has proven his thesis beyond a reasonable doubt.”  The jury deliberates and reaches a verdict. “We the jury find that the claimant has not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the Ontological Argument is sound.”

OK, I think we could do something like this. We could structure a philosophical debate like a civil action at law with clear assigned BOPs and a clear winner and loser. The question is, have we compromised anything essential or important about philosophical debate by imposing this kind of structure? Wouldn’t it be interesting to try this format and see what we get?  Accumulated “case” law from these trials might be highly instructive. For example, suppose a dozen people have tried to sustain the Ontological Argument and all have failed at trial.

You have been arguing in several posts that BOP doesn’t belong in philosophical debate as we know it. I agree, but the question I’m now asking you is whether we could do philosophy in the style of a civil action? And if we could, wouldn’t it be useful to try?

One important difference is that the dialectical situation in the court room is practical whereas the dialectical situation in the stoa or seminar room is theoretical.   By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly rational discussion occurs among two or more competent and sincere interlocutors who share the goal of arriving as best they can at the truth about some matter, or of resolving some question in dispute. Legal and philosophical proceedings are both dialectical in this sense, but in the legal context the issue in dispute must be decided and in a timely manner, whereas in the philosophical context there is no need for a decision — a 'verdict' if you will — and also virtually no prospect of one. 

One way decisions are arrived at in the law is via presumptions.  Suppose Peter has one child, Paul, and no wife.  One day Peter vanishes and is not heard from by anyone for years. He leaves behind his house and various other assets.  Paul decides that he should inherit the assets.  But he cannot inherit his father's estate until the man is dead.  There is a question of fact here, the question whether Peter is dead or alive.  But there is no conclusive evidence either way.  The law deals with this via the presumption that a person who, without reasonable explanation, has not been heard from for at least seven years is dead.  Given this presumption, all that Paul or his attorney has to show is that he is Peter's only living heir and that the father has been incommunicado for seven years or more.  One can see from this example that the presumption makes possible the decision, and that without it no definite decision could be arrived at.

In philosophy, however, everything either is or can be called into question.  This is the glory of philosophy — but also its misery.  And so there is no room for presumptions and BOP-assignments in philosophy.  There is no room for judicial fiat of any kind.  One cannot just lay it down that, e.g., an ontology that posits n categories of entity is to be preferred to one that posits n + 1 categories.  In a court of law neither the law itself nor the procedural rules are on trial; but in philosophy, everything is 'on trial' including the most basic principles of logic. And so it comes as no surprise that nothing is ever decided in philosophy: no question is definitely answered, and no problem solved, to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.

And so I suggest that a court of philosophy would not be a court of philosophy.  For what would go on in that court would not be philosophy, but rather a sort of dogmatically  constrained quasi-philosophy.  One would get answers all right, but only because various arbitrary decisions had been made, decisions that would be philosophically questionable.