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Φ Unrestricted Philosophy - What is Space? Φ Space, Games, Art and Justice Copyright © 2009 by C. L. Brown –
UnrestrictedPhilosophy.com If X is a common thing or object or facet of an object or even just (a nameable) experience of one’s everyday external world, his “life-world”1, so to speak, then why would anyone bother with the inquiry into what X really is? (Likewise, if the word “X” is a commonly spoken word found in one’s everyday parlance, then why would anyone stop to ask “What does ‘X’ mean?” or “What is the meaning of ‘X’?”) In other words, why would X’s taken-for-grantedness, its self-evidence as it were, ever actually be called into question? The answer is it shouldn’t unless one is interested in nothing more than pure pedantry. For the person who is, a consultation of a dictionary for what are most probably unbeknownst to him historically established meanings of the word “X” is the most pedantic endeavor he can follow in that here only one’s ability to read and orally re-present by means of rote memorization a definiens as presented in a dictionary is what qualifies as his “answering” of the question. Evidently, when we wrote our fourth paper2 we were perhaps unawarely pressing the issue for strict pedantry in that in that paper we did entertain the notion and did give examples of one’s actual consultation of a dictionary in response to the asking of what appeared to be the rather Socratic question “what is space?” (Such a question is one which in its being answered is considered to thus demand an absolute precision, as it were.) Upon inspection, however, would one ever really feel that such-and-such a person who did read and thus does orally re-present by way of rote memorization what is an historically established meaning of a word, say of “X”, as found in a dictionary actually understand what, say, X then really is? Our answer here, if we are honest with ourselves, is no, for there would always be this doubt that lingers — the doubt that true understanding as opposed to rote memorization is still lacking. For example, how would we regard one’s response to the question “what is space?” by way of the retort that “space is an extent set apart or available” or that “space is a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction”, respectively? It is no stretch of the imagination to say here that such mechanistically inclined responses do not impress upon us the notion of one’s truly having grasped the concept of space. With that said, what would then give us reason to believe that a person has acquired, as we say, a true understanding of what space or, in general, X is? Our answer is simple; our answer is Wittgensteinian: the way the person uses the word “X” in the language-games he plays with “X” is what would suffice for us. In other words we are looking for some kind of action as the sign of such understanding and not the cued, verbal re-presentation of what is an historically established, legislated meaning of a word. For example, what we are looking for is the scenario in which person A, for whatever reason or reasons, asks person B in the Socratic manner the question “what is space?” and person B in turn turns not to a dictionary but rather picks out a space, describes it, and says “This and similar instances are called ‘a space’ or ‘spaces.’” What we emphasize here is crucial: person B consults not any kind of dictionary (or any other kind of text, a celebrated philosopher’s treatise included) but rather relies on his knowing that he has in the ordinary language in which he speaks and thinks mastered, as it were, the use of the word “space” in related yet different contexts and as such is thus competent enough to answer the question for person A to as much precision as is needed or demanded by person A as based on the language-games of “space” in which he, i.e. person A, is willing to partake. That this approach or understanding as to what genuinely as opposed to merely pedantically satisfies the “answering” of the intended Socratic question of X “what is X?” holds not only for X as space or, say, a game3 but also as well for more, dare we say, abstract things such as art4 (as works of art) or even liberty or justice5 can be demonstrated. With X as space as opposed to spaces, however, a description of space as such would not really lead one, say person B, to reply afterwards “This and similar instances are called ‘space’” in that it would seem there is only one (given) instance of such said space itself, as it were. This is not really a problem though in that the simpler post-descriptive pronouncement of just “This is called ‘space’” can in spite of this be illustrated to person A by person B by an accompanying gesture or waving of B’s arms to indicate his immediate spatial environment. With such an accompanying gesture, person A can feel satisfied that such action of the part of person B has given him, i.e. person A, as good a reason as he is ever going to have that is suggestive of B’s true understanding of what space is. An understanding of this simpler, as we say, post-descriptive scenario as the genuine means by which we may truly affirm someone as knowing or understanding what in general X is serves to undermine and discredit the otherwise time-honored, instinctive, and even at times considered-to-be hip practice of consulting or “looking up” what X “is”, i.e. what “X” means, in the dictionary. ENDNOTES 1.
This term “life-world” we borrow directly from Alfred Schutz and Thomas
Luckmann’s book The Structures of the Life-World
and use it to denote, in their words, that prescientific
“province of reality which the wide awake and normal adult simply takes for
granted in the attitude of common sense.” See Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann,
The Structures of the Life-World,
trans. Richard M. Zaner and J. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1980), p. 3. 2.
See
“What the Man in the Street Knows 3. The notion of how it is we come to know what a game is as based upon the notion of family-resemblance is probably one of the most celebrated of Wittgenstein’s discoveries given to us in the Philosophical Investigations. It’s not that a definition is what is necessary as being the discovery as to what, if anything, a game really is but rather our ability to discover and relate similarities between and amongst already known instances of games and potential game-candidates, as it were. This Wittgensteinian approach as to what is a game as buttressed by the notion of family-resemblance is nicely summarized by Morris Weitz† in the following remarks (his emphasis): Card games are like board games in some respects but not in others. Not all games are amusing, nor is there always winning or losing in competition. Some games resemble others in some respects — that is all. What we find are no necessary and sufficient properties, only “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing,” such that we can say of games that they form a family with family resemblances and no common trait. If one asks what a game is, we pick out sample games, describe these, and add, “This and similar things are called ‘games’.” This is all we need to say and indeed all any of us knows about games. Knowing what a game is is not knowing some real definition or theory but being able to recognize and explain games and to decide which among imaginary and new examples would or would not be called “games.” †Morris Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” in Aesthetics: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, ed. James O. Young (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 7.
4. Art, for lack of a better description, is something whose word-name “art” in the words of William E. Kennick† “has a complicated variety of uses, what is nowadays called a complex ‘logic’” (p. 320). “Art” unlike “star” or “tree” Kennick adds, “is a word with a long, involved, and interesting history; a complicated concept indeed, but not for the reasons which the aestheticians suppose” (p. 320). The aestheticians of which Kennick speaks are the ones who ask “what is art?” and give in response some type of definition such as “art is expression” (Benedetto Croce) or “art is significant form” (Clive Bell), respectively, only in the end to have such definitional efforts squelched, as it were. “It is the compulsion to reduce the complexity of aesthetic concepts to simplicity, neatness, and order that moves the aesthetician to make his first mistake, to ask ‘What is Art?’ and to expect to find an answer like the answer that can be given to ‘What is helium?’” (p. 322). The art which the aesthetician seeks to define is what one may call art proper, or works of art. It is in what are works of art that art is known or knowable, and it is this discovery which lends itself to the Waismannian notion that in the use of such terminology we come to realize, as it were, what art is. The following selection from Kennick illustrates perfectly in terms of “art” the more hands-on, anti-essentialist, and Waismannian attitude we are championing here towards “space” in terms of our realizing what, say, space is.
[W]e are able to separate those objects which are works of art from those which are not, because we know English; that is, we know how correctly to use the word ‘art’ and to apply the phrase ‘work of art’. To borrow a statement from Dr. Waismann and change it to meet my own needs, “If anyone is able to use the word ‘art’ or the phrase ‘work of art’ correctly, in all sorts of contexts and on the right sort of occasions, he knows ‘what art is’, and no formula in the world can make him wiser”. “Art proper” is simply what is properly called ‘art’. The ‘correctly’ and ‘properly’ here have nothing to do with any ‘common nature’ or ‘common denominator’ of all works of art; they have merely to do with rules that govern the actual and commonly accepted usage of the word ‘art’ (p. 321).
†William E. Kennick, “Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind 267 (1958).
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5. Without a doubt, justice is one of those key concepts and thus “justice” is one of those key words that pervades the intellectual history of Western civilization. Libery and “liberty” are likewise as well, respectively. One need go no further than either recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag (“. . . with liberty and justice for all”) or read of the American Declaration of Independence (“. . . with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”). Clearly, justice and liberty are historically very important concepts; likewise again, “justice” and “liberty” must be historically very important words. So one would think, anyway. That any fairly clear-cut definition of these concepts as extracted from a good dictionary can be readily given to us is one thing; to insist that, say, the most regally penned definiens of “justice” as, say, given in Webster’s is (the signification of) what justice really is is quite another. Justice, like what art is in terms of works of art, can in the Socratic sense be thought to be known in what are “just” acts or “acts of justice.” If such is the case that one does “correctly, in all sorts of contexts and on the right sort of occasions” (Kennick, p. 321) make use of the word “justice”, then he knows “what justice is”, so to speak, and no formulation of justice found in the world can make him wiser. All sorts of contexts and on the right sort of occasions: what sorts of context and occasions is the word and concept “justice” quite often invoked such that we can gain insight by way of such usage into “what it is”? For us, it is primarily the political. In order to shed some light on the political context in which the word “justice” is used whereby one may come away with an understanding of what justice more or less is, let us proceed.
In terms of the political context in which “justice” is invoked and can thus be thought to be known or knowable, it has along such lines long been a point of discussion amongst political philosophers as to the relationship justice has with what can be termed the common good or overall welfare of society. As Gerald Gaus† points out (p. 20) some philosophers, “especially those in the utilitarian tradition, have insisted that ‘justice’ picks out those things that are crucial for advancing the social good; justice is thus always a way to promote the social good or the welfare of society.” Other thinkers, however, have come to conclude the opposite view, namely, that (p. 20) “the demands of justice are constraints on promoting the social good.” From the Socratic viewpoint, when it comes to wanting to pinpoint what exactly justice is, that is, its form, if one will, a theory which would encompass these two opposing views just won’t do: we must either embrace one or the other or attempt to reconcile them in some way. Regardless, however, one certainty in terms of this conundrum is that in the end contradictory remarks about and explicitly in terms of “justice”, because of this divergent conceptualization concerning it, are always going to be uttered by the average person, in fact, by all of us in our everyday, political affairs. For a Socratic at least such speech in general could be said to be symptomatic of diseased thinking about justice. Accordingly then, the remedy for this illness must always be the ongoing, continuous search for what lies at the heart, the essence as it were, of justice. For the Wittgensteinian philosopher, however, the presence of contradictory (political) language of “justice” in one’s everyday affairs is not a sign of some illness, for the task of philosophy is not, contra Socrates, to divine a theoretical remedy to any theoretical question about the “essence” of anything. For a Wittgensteinian, the (newfound) task of philosophy in this case is to explain why our common, everyday language-games of “justice” do appeal to the often contradictory views we do have of and hold about justice. The following remarks from Gaus (p. 20-21) point this out (the author’s emphasis).
For example, a philosopher inspired by Wittgenstein might suggest that the job of individual rights — a crucial element of justice — is to ensure that people will, in a predictable way, be left to enjoy their life, liberty, and property as they see fit, at least within wide limits. People, we thus say, have rights to life, liberty, and property, and these cannot be taken away even if it would advance the welfare of society to, say, deprive some intensely disliked minority of their libery and property. If justice is to perform this job of blocking appeals to social welfare, we must view it as independent of social welfare. How could justice effectively block proposals to advance the social welfare if everyone saw justice as deriving from the social welfare? So, to do its job, the Wittgensteinian might say, we must understand justice as quite independent of the social good, and so give it the standing to effectively block that good. Yet, the same Wittgensteinian may insist, for justice to be widely supported and endorsed, it generally must be consistent with the welfare of society: if justice really made society worse off, people would not be committed to it. Who would support justice if it was believed that it stood in the way of what is good for society? Individual rights thus must be seen as a way to advance the social welfare. To ensure committment to justice, we need to believe that justice is good for society. Thus, for justice to effectively perform its function of securing certain sorts of treatment for individuals, it is useful to say and think contradictory things about it. Once we understand this character of justice — as simultaneously blocking and deriving from the social welfare — we can understand why philosophers have long defended these incompatible theories of justice.
The understanding of why over the millenia philosophers have often held seemingly incompatible if not contradictory ideas concerning justice is thus now made clear. For the Wittgensteinian philosopher, however, one question remains: is there anything left to do with justice? Gaus informs us no there isn’t (p. 21):
But having thus explained our concept of justice, there is nothing left for the Wittgensteinian philosopher to do. It is, our Wittgensteinian philosopher would say, a sign of philosophic confusion to then go on to ask, “Is justice really derivative of social welfare or independent of it?” We have seen how it both is and is not derivative, and why both ways of seeing it are crucial for it to effectively function: that is all there is to say about it. It is not the proper task of philosophers to “fix” our language for us.
This notion of our letting our language, and here our language in particular of “justice”, nonetheless live as such is a classic and recurrent theme of what has become known as Wittgensteinian thought.
†Gerald F. Gaus, Political Concepts and Political Theories (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000).
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