Transcendentalese: Robert Sokolowski on the language of philosophy

Summary:

Transcendentalese is the common yet uncommon language of the philosophical attitude. In every age there is recurring terminology that forms a basis for philosophical discourse. Some are ordinary words troped of their spatio-temporal reference, applied to the world or human condition as such. Others emerge as neologisms where ordinary language falls short, often better left untranslated. Together these constitute a vocabulary that aims to articulate the whole of reality.

"None of our thinking is without an element of recapitulation."

The history of philosophy, the conversation among philosophers throughout history, is condemned to be misunderstood. If the purpose of philosophical language is to clarify and disclose, without having to demonstrate or “prove,” we might expect from philosophy something other than what it is, or has become. Major works, those of historical significance, are notorious for being lengthy and dense, too intimidating or arduous for the undergraduate or ambitious reader in search of wisdom. Instead we are inclined to read excerpts, turn to introductory studies, or rely on the secondary literature as substitutes for the primary text. If we don’t find something “useful” in the first 100 pages (or less), we might abandon it altogether.

Perhaps this is why philosophy has struggled to find a place in the modern university. Its nature, method and object of inquiry ought to reach beyond the humanities and precede the sciences, but all too often it takes the latter for its pattern. While the sciences remain fixed or limited in scope, pertaining to some divisible segment of visible reality, or what philosophers like Josef Pieper have called “the environment," philosophy itself is oriented to “the world” — the whole of reality, the metaphysical — leaving room for the possibility of the indivisible and even the “spiritual.” At the highest level, we can make an irreducible distinction between the world of being (ontology) and the world of value (axiology). 

"Is philosophy itself not just one voice within the human conversation? It reflects on the whole, but does not this reflection put it somehow outside the whole? Or does it become just one part within the whole? This conundrum cannot be avoided. It is the perpetual burden (or amusement) of philosophers, and it explains why philosophy will inevitably be misunderstood as being psychology, ideology, rhetoric, poetry, or science."

Yet we find in the university curriculum that the discipline of philosophy is no different from the sciences; "the whole" is, as it were, further splintered – logic, epistemology, theology, ethics, politics, anthropology, aesthetics. But underneath the umbrella of ontology or axiology, each "branch" makes thematic a proper object that transcends "the environment" in a particular way: Knowledge, Truth, Reason, Existence, Goodness, Evil, Freedom, Justice, Virtue, Passion, Soul, Beauty, Love, Happiness. These are the perennial, inexhaustible objects of philosophical inquiry, what Dietrich von Hildebrand has called the “philosophical a priori” – distinct from other, widely accepted a priori knowledge, such as mathematical and logical truths, that do not share the same character of depth. 

In every age, the philosophical a priori take root in the human conversation, or Dialectic, as the seeds of Intuition and fruit of Contemplation (philosophy also takes its own method as an object of study). If the scientist stands at a distance from “the environment” to verify a proposition, with an attitude of indifference, the philosopher makes a priori, existential contact with “the world” but approaches with reverence. This is the difference, or what we might call the dialectical relationship between the “distance” of propositional reflection, and the “closeness” of philosophical reflection.

Perhaps the primary or most direct path to the world of the philosophical a priori is via the phenomenological reduction – the epoche. Although a twentieth century development, the epoche borrows from ancient skepticism the sense of  “suspending judgment” or "withholding assent,” and from ancient stoicism a “pausing to consider.” Edmund Husserl, the father of twentieth century phenomenology, modifies this sense as the foundation for his method, a “bracketing” of the natural attitude and its general acceptance of the continuous flow of experience, and a penetration of the “intelligibility” of the thing given in unbiased consciousness. In the discrete moment(s) of the epoche, we take a more radical distance from “the environment” than we do in propositional reflection; we look at the conversation taking place, but do not participate in it; we consider the language of the natural attitude but modify it to articulate and contemplate the contents of “the world”; and this becomes the common yet uncommon language of the philosophical attitude, what has been called “transcendentalese.” 

Here I have already been closely following Robert Sokolowski, who discusses the nature of philosophical language at length in his book Phenomenology of the Human Person:

"Philosophy has to make use of words that have their natural place within the human conversation. It has to trope the meaning of those words and to make them work within the language of the philosophical attitude. As Thomas Prufer says, philosophy must use the terminology of the sciences and the human conversation "by using it to say something strictly beyond what it means."

Sokolowski gives us examples of how basic words, prepositions in particular, get “tricky” in transcendentalese – words like in, to, for, here and now. In the context of “the world” these lose their primary point of spatial-temporal reference. Thus we can say that truth is “in” the intellect; action is “for the sake” of an “end”; and “super-actual” content is “always present” in our subjectivity. The neologisms we find in the continental / phenomenological tradition reflect this shift in meaning at the highest level. Thus we find in the ontology of Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre formulations of being-in-itself as distinct from being-for-itself, being-there or being-in-the-world. Likewise, in the value-ontology of Scheler, the concept of being-in-an-act; and in the axiology of von Hildebrand, the important-in-itself versus the important-for-me.

When we speak in such highly-formalized terms, Sokolowski tells us, a sort of “logical hyperspace” is manifest in the human conversation, and the modified syntax we use discloses something new about the level of rationality that is achieved. This further highlights his emphasis on the public character of intelligibility in both propositional reflection, and (against Derrida’s phenomenology of deconstruction) the ultimate context and stability of meaning in philosophical reflection as oriented to, yet somehow outside of, the whole.

In parallel, the drama and meaning of human existence is also played out on the stage of  contemporary continental philosophy in a far less “technical” way. Inspired by the humanities, Goethe in particular, the language of transcendentalese appropriates aspects of being-in-the-world as reflective of the whole human condition: Kierkegaard’s Anxiety, Nietzsche and Scheler’s Ressentiment, Sartre's Nausea, Camus’ Absurd. These existential preludes and consequences of phenomenology are more often disclosed in theater, fiction or poetry, such that the modification of language aligns the philosopher more closely with the artist than it does the scientist. 

When we borrow the language of the natural attitude without troping its meaning, and attempt to articulate something beyond “the environment,” the distance we take cannot be bridged. The skepticism of modern philosophy is a well-known consequence: starting with Descartes, we attempt to validate rather than disclose Existence, but without the existential “closeness” of the philosophical attitude, there is no way to get from the world of being (“is”) to the world of value (“ought”). The academic discipline of philosophy, more so than any other, is subject to the same grave mistake; with the emphasis on being “intellectually rigorous,” so as to find someone else’s research problematic, for example, the dialogue among scholars rarely leaves the propositional attitude. This is what philosophy has become, and the reason why it continues to be misunderstood. 

Perhaps this can be avoided if we go back to the vocabulary of the ancients, and reconsider how it has been adopted and modified in the language of the thinkers that follow: alethia, amnemesis, logos, eidos, ordo amoris, entelechy, noema, episteme, apatheia, eudamonia, privatio boni, actus essendi, epoche, habitus, passio. These early articulations of the philosophical a priori recur in a particular way throughout the history of philosophy, and constitute much of the transcendentalese we find in the phenomenological tradition.

"The resources provided by phenomenology allow us to transcend the difference between ancients and moderns. They offer a way to pursue philosophy as such, without being forced to be contemporary only at the price of turning away from the ancients. They permit us to read classical writings not just as historical phenomena but as material for recapitulation."

As both an esteemed professor of philosophy and a highly original philosopher, Sokolowski humbly reminds us that “none of our thinking is without an element of recapitulation.” Thus we take his as the pattern for our approach.

"To recapitulate is to repeat, but also to select, summarize, and to put in hierarchic order, with the more important distinguished from the less. We place the old material in new chapters or headings, capitula. When something is said to be recapitulated, it is obvious that it has been abridged, rearranged, and inevitably slanted. By contrast, when something is said to be interpreted, we might doubt that the thing has survived the interpretation. We might suspect that it has gotten lost in translation and dissolved into perspectives. A text could not be lost in recapitulation, but it is obviously not simply repeated."

In Transcendentalese, I wish to share a few thoughts of my own, but mostly recapitulate the thoughts of great thinkers in their own words. I will return to Phenomenology of the Human Person as a guide, specifically for its analysis of classical philosophical language, with particular attention to recurring themes that put Ancients and Moderns in conversation. This unfolds, as it were, within the phenomenological reduction, enabling us to both “close the gap” and “transcend the differences” between them. Thus this endeavor is less about engaging in what Sokolowski has called the “game of truth,” and more about engaging with the world of being and the world of value.  

The history of philosophy need not be intimidating. I suggest that it can be introduced and adequately surveyed in so-called “lesser works” – not less important, simply less far-reaching. These are shorter, yes, but more focused, often essays or collections of lecture notes; sometimes a preface or prolegomena to a major work, sometimes a summary. Although no less dense, 100 pages (50k words) or less simply “feels” more within our reach. Without imposing, it finds a place in a bag or on a bedside table; it requires only one hand to be held, leaving room for a pen in the other; and it takes perhaps no more than two or three consecutive sittings to become well-acquainted. A lesser work, even if no less challenging, is less about reading and more about thinking. And philosophy is about thinking.

References

Sokolowski, Robert, Phenomenology of the Human Person (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 73, 78-79n10, 221-222, 73.

Pieper, Josef, "The Philosophical Act" in Leisure, The Basis of Culture. (South Bend: St.

Augustine's Press, 1998), cf. chapter II.

Von Hildebrand, Dietrich, What is Philosophy? (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1960), cf. chapter IV, sec. 5.