Volume 1 - March 2011
VALUE BEYOND DETERMINATION
René Le Senne’s Account of Obstacle as Mediation towards the Absolute
FR. LORENZ MOISES J. FESTIN, PH.D.
ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
AYON KAY BENITO XVI
FR. MAXELL LOWELL C. ARANILLA, PH.D.
THE FAMILIENÄHNLICHKEITEN
OF CONCEPTS
Rethinking the Problem of Universals through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
MARVIN M. CRUZ
LOVE AS DUTY
A Kierkegaardian Response to the Kantian Critique of the Divine Commandment
JEROME C. JAIME
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
on Nihilism
JOHN ZERNAN B. LUNA
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
OF THE NATURE OF DESIRE
DANIEL A. DOMINGUEZ
Semantics and the
Transformational Generative Grammar
An Interconnection
BRYAN JOSEPH V. RODRIGUEZ
STAFF
MARVIN M. CRUZ
JOHN ZERNAN B. LUNA
FRANCIS ROI A. MADARANG
BRYAN JOSEPH V. RODRIGUEZ
Editors
FR. LORENZ MOISES J. FESTIN, PH.D.
Moderator
Philippine Copyright © 2011 by San Carlos Seminary
ISSN 2094-9448
THEORIA, translated as contemplative activity or study, is what Aristotle
identifies as the highest operation of man’s intellectual faculty that
constitutes the highest form of life. THEORIA is the official journal of the San
Carlos Seminary Philosophy Department which aims to gather articles from
students, graduates and professors.
San Carlos Seminary reserves the rights to all the articles. Mass reproduction
and photocopy is highly discouraged without explicit permission from the
Editor.
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VALUE BEYOND
DETERMINATION
René Le Senne’s Account of
Obstacle as Mediation towards the Absolute
FR. LORENZ MOISES J. FESTIN, PH.D.
Atheism today may have the advantage of putting up a robust
argument in view of the schematization of the current world order.
The success of scientific research and the boost technology receives
from it towards an unremitting progress have radically altered the
way we live. Wittingly or unwittingly, we have redefined our way of
life according to the ever changing state of experimental discipline.
With science and technology providing the basic paradigm for
human thought, the prevailing proclivity is to disregard anything that
cannot be subjected to the rigors of scientific method, consequently
eliminating religion and divinity from the list of problems worth
addressing in any research or intelligent discussion. Religion and the
problem of God have been reduced to cultural realities pertinent to
sociology. Because they hardly meet the scientific standard, they are
viewed as irrational residues of human thinking.
And yet, on the other hand, we cannot also discount the fact that religion
very much forms part of the framework of both individual and social
life. Billions of people continue to commit what could be regarded as
“unscientific” and “irrational” practice of belief and worship. Could
this be because they have failed to appreciate the upshot of scientific
explorations? Or is this due to the fact that much of humanity has yet
to taste the benefits modern technology has generated?
It’s true, atheism tends to flourish more in developed countries than
in underdeveloped ones. This may suggest that religion and the belief
it promotes are nothing but projections of a frustrated consciousness.
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Value Beyond Determination
People find themselves helpless and so they turn to something else
beyond this world.
But why would they have to turn to the beyond? Are they totally
clueless as to what science has achieved even if they are hardly
beneficiaries thereof?
Majority of people today may barely have any access to the latest
gadgets available in the market. But they are no strangers as to what
these could do. The ubiquity of mass media and the efficiency of
information technology not only have propelled people’s insatiable
craving for the latest in technology but also have kept them updated
about the latest in news and information. So why do people still turn
to the beyond? Can they not see that the solution is already in the here
and now?
That’s precisely what puzzles us today. While the efficacy of science
has lent credence to atheistic attitude, much of humanity has remained
tied to its religious legacy. In this paper then, I wish to account for
this paradox of belief and unbelief, of religion and irreligion, of theism
and atheism in the face of what seems to be the irrepressible success
of scientific explorations, driven and powered by a mathematical and
mechanistic mental framework. For this purpose, I shall be putting
forward the ideas of French philosopher René Le Senne, whose
estimation of religion and belief seems to well account for such a
paradox.
1. Le Senne’s Basic Argument
René Le Senne belongs to the Cartesian tradition that emphasizes the
centrality of experience. Here Descartes’ Cogito is to be understood not
so much as the mere act of thought as the experience itself of the activity
of thinking. By focusing on human experience, Le Senne is able to
stress both the richness and irreducibility of experience. The richness
of experience is inexhaustible in that it cannot be fully encompassed
within the categories of human thought. Human thinking itself is an
experience, or more accurately a mere part thereof. To contain it in
human thought is to do injustice to its boundless wealth. It would be
similar to fitting the infinite into the finite.
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Experience is irreducible. It cannot be condensed into a concept or
thought. It goes beyond human thinking. And for that, one must
acknowledge two possibilities in approaching human experience,
both of which are important: one is characterized by fixedness in that
experience is understood according to the terms and distinctions of
human thinking; the other is marked by openness in that there is an
acknowledgment that one’s take on the experience is not sufficient
and encompassing.
The interplay of these two possibilities is quite paradigmatic all
throughout Le Senne’s treatment of human experience. Here one
encounters the contrast and complementariness he establishes
between pairs, particularly between determination and existence,
between obstacle and value, between self and God.
In the following, we shall take into consideration each of these pairs. It
is hoped that with such an account, we can make sense of the paradox
we mentioned a while ago.
2. Determination and Existence
René Le Senne sees experience as embodying both determination and
existence. By determination is understood the specificity and rigidity
of the contents of experience. Here a certain necessity is encountered
in that reality appears to be something inflexible and unbending,
before which one can only respond in conformity and subjection.
Determination appears to work to the advantage of scientific discipline.
On account of the fixedness of entities, scientific research can discern
patterns that characterize the order of things in reality. With this,
science is given the opportunity to develop its technology, allowing it
to exploit the possibilities determination offers it. Bacon’s declaration
may well give expression to the essence of such a determination,
namely, that in order to be able to command nature, one must obey it
first. “For nature is only subdued by submission.”1
The pattern which science discovers in the determination of
experience is usually expressed in the rigidity of quantitative formulas.
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Value Beyond Determination
This brings about the mathematization of the contents of experience,
whereby everything has to be quantified in order for them to fit the
mathematical schema employed to interpret experience. This process
however can be restrictive. For this would marginalize elements of
experience which are unquantifiable, such that the result it generates
would not quite reflect the wealth that originally describes experience.
Surely, scientific procedure involves the process of transcending
the given not only by devising formulas that would give a simplified
expression to the contents of experience but also by exploiting
the advantages that determination occasions. However, the said
enterprise remains in the realm of determination. While science
makes the determination of things work for the advantage of human
society, it also reinforces the mistaken impression that determination
is all there is to experience.
The schematization of experience is not an original invention of
scientific discipline. For quite a significant period of time in the
history of the western thought, something similar was taking place in
philosophy, namely the rationalization of experience. From the time
Parmenides asserted that being and thinkability are the same – to
gar auto noein estin te kai einai2 – human experience has always been
understood according to the categories of reason
Descartes’ philosophy is essentially a critique of the restrictive effect
of philosophical schematization. And if this critique could be said of a
philosophy that resorts to rationalization, how much more applicable
would this be to a more restrictive sort of schematization such as
mathematization?
This is exactly the point of René Le Senne. While science can aid
us in making sense of our experience, it nonetheless leaves out a
significant part of its original content, which seems to effectively limit
the sphere of truth and human knowledge to what can be quantified
and subjected to experiment. “Scientific experience is highly artificial
in the conditions which it presupposes and in the goal it proposes.
Experience reduced to scientific experience is harshly mutilated
experience.”3
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The restrictive effect of science however can be remedied by turning to
the other aspect of experience, namely existence. Le Senne understands
existence as that component of experience which pushes us past the
determination of reality. Encountering the determinedness of things
makes us direct our gaze to the beyond. It enables us to reach further
than the limits set by our definition of reality. In other words, the
existence component of experience breaches the closed character of
our thoughts, leaving it open-ended and gaping as to allow for further
modification and unrestricted enrichment.
The transcendence that existence brings about, however, is not
purely on the level of progress. As pointed out, science makes use
of the fixedness of things to improve the lot of people. This it does
by coming up with a systematic scheme of reality. But this in itself is
restrictive. It leaves the human spirit locked up within the stricture of
a systematized pattern.
Existence presses further than progress. It propels beyond what can
be predicted and expected. It provokes a longing and anticipation
directed towards what is still undefined and undetermined. Existence
thus consists in the aperture of the human spirit to what rises above it.
Le Senne recognizes such an unrestrained movement of the human
spirit in the reality of religion. Unlike science which treats experience
by schematizing it according to its quantitative system, religion
approaches experience in such a way that it takes into account the
inexhaustibility and pervasiveness of experience, leading it to turn
ultimately to God.4
Surely science may swank about the containment it enjoys over its
subject matter. But it has ignored experience for the most part. For
even the schematization it creates is an instance of experience itself.
This only goes to show that experience is inescapable. It is prior to
everything. It serves as the constant precondition of every activity,
including what science does. And that’s exactly one basic argument
of Cartesianism. “Thus it is especially expedient,” Le Senne argues,
“to turn away from the partialness of a scientific empiricism, which
subordinates respect for experience to its demands for schematization
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Value Beyond Determination
and measurement. Such a partialness ends up by restricting experience
to that which can be found in laboratories by means of some apparatus
and which is expressed in a mathematical formalism.”5
3. Obstacle and Value
The interplay between determination and existence leads to a more
particular contrast between obstacle and value. The encounter
of determination in experience brings one face to face with the
determinedness of reality as an obstacle.
Obstacle constitutes a challenge to the spontaneity of the human spirit.
It brings into question the actuality of freedom. It oppresses human
consciousness, in such a way that one experiences it as an external
imposition, constraining one to submit to its necessity.
And yet such an encounter with obstacle can be directed towards the
prospect of infinity. That is because the very limitation which obstacle
presents and represents evokes the ideal of limitlessness. Here one is
led to turn towards the reality of value which embodies the very ideal
that obstacle lacks and appears to negate. “Value,” Le Senne argues,
“is atmospheric. Either gently or violently, it introduces the infinite
into the depths of souls. Value is sufficient and goes beyond all the
negativity in determination.”6
The contrast between obstacle and value nonetheless must not be
taken as consisting in mutual cancellation. For obstacle and value
constitute a partnership that flourishes in an interplay. To cancel one
readily leads to the nullification of the other. To uphold obstacle to the
neglect of value is to lock oneself up within the confines of inevitability
and fixedness, while to simply emphasize value without due regard
for obstacle amounts to vagueness and imprecision.
Values need to be expressed. However, the very attempt at articulation
already requires determination, thus constraining value to fit into
a defined detention. But this is simply unavoidable. For it is in the
nature of human language to express thoughts in distinct manner.
Without definition and distinction, human thought would be left in
the darkness of ambiguity and elusiveness.
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Obstacle can thus be a vehicle towards the discovery and appreciation
of value. For it not only evokes value by being opposite to it. It likewise
lends its definiteness to make the articulation of value possible.
Such an approach to obstacle enables one to look at it not only as
something defined but also as a carrier of value. Le Senne offers
concrete examples in this regard. He writes, “The evidence of the
obstacle is inseparable from the evidence of value. The first act of
the infant chewing with its lips on its mother’s breast and the last
act of the drowning man struggling to keep himself afloat manifest
an effort not only toward an end but, by means of this end, toward
the appropriation of value which is existence itself. The skeptic, who
denies value, defends the value of skepticism.”7
In this case, every obstacle would constitute an invitation towards the
detection of value. And here even science would be led to discover
that beyond the necessity of its schematization there exists a reality
that evades every sort of systematization.
Indeed, the mere fact that object and method of science are instances
of obstacle already suggests that they can point to the ideal which
they fall short of. And insofar as they constitute determination, they
can likewise give expression to the value they evoke. Le Senne thus
avers, “Obstacle was a hindrance which now becomes the objective
mediation whereby the self raises itself from inferiority to triumph,
from an attitude in which negation prevailed to a free flight in which
obstacle no longer intervenes except as a propulsive factor.”8
4. Self and God
The interplay of contrasts that we have so far tackled concerns
the opposition in the realm of objects. This nonetheless has been
occasioned by the intervention of human subjectivity. For it is precisely
the dynamicity of the human spirit that distinguishes existence from
determination, while the interaction between obstacle and value can
be ascribed to involvement of human insightfulness in the latter.
Such a distinction of Le Senne, however, presses on in such a way that
even within the Cogito an interplay of contrast is established. Here
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Le Senne relates and contrasts the self with God, by speaking of the
double Cogito, which consists in the distinction between the self’s
weakness and divine infinity. “Subjectively, the content of experience
is divided into the I of determination, or the self, and the I of value, or
God. ”9
Human being experiences his self as finite. Despite the evasive
nature of his experience, human being cannot deny that his self is
limited. Still on account of the inexhaustibility of experience, the self
recognizes a counterpart which represents the ideal it lacks. Just as
the determinedness of obstacle evokes the open-endedness of value,
so this time around the self, given its finiteness, is led to acknowledge
a self that rises above all forms of definition. Le Senne states,
“Manifestly, the self who alleges transcendence supposes thereby his
own limitation, and undoubtedly his lowliness. Thus experience must
first present to us so that we can recognize the situation and purposes
leading the self to allege transcendence.”10
Le Senne’s framework makes the self understandable only in relation
to God, in the same manner that the reality of God would not make
sense without reference to the self. He writes, “What essentially
constitutes the double cogito is that the two existential terms that it
opposes and unites, namely, God, whom the self concretely experiences
alternately in his will as obstacle and in his grace as value, and the
self, which restricts the concrete experience of value by reason of the
determinations of its own nature, can only be considered and can only
exist by virtue of their connection.”11
Here the risk of ontologism is avoided. What comes to be emphasized
is the subjectivity of God instead of his objective existence.
Ontologism would want us to concern ourselves with the objectiveness
of God’s reality.12 But that would turn God into a static all-embracing
perfection, which would either confront human being as an infinite
determination – which would already be a contradiction in terms – or
drown him into its magnitude and extent, resulting thus in pantheism.
Either way, God would be reckoned as a mere force, before which the
self would not only remain helpless but also seem not to make sense.
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Le Senne sees God as the principle of value. By discerning value in the
obstacles encountered, the self not only transcends determination but
also draws closer to the source of transcendence.
The detection of value evokes God or the reality of its source. Here the
self is led to encounter God as a finite being. But by acknowledging
him as the principle of value, one is readily reminded of his infinity.
Le Senne thus characterizes God as infinite in himself but finite in his
connection with us.
What takes place in the God-self rapport is an encounter between the
determination characteristic of human situation and value which traces
its origin in God. According to Le Senne, both determination and value
are important in the said encounter in that determination grounds
communication whereas value gives foundation to communion.
5. Conclusion
The unrelenting success of scientific research certainly does constitute
a unique experience for people today. But as in any other experience,
one can either get stuck within the determination which articulates
such an experience or one can be led towards the infinity and absolute
which value and existence insinuate.
Undoubtedly, some have chosen to remain within the framework of
science’s quantitative schematization, mesmerized perhaps by the
order and efficiency it exhibits. Nonetheless, many have opted to
go beyond the scientific account not so much because they doubt its
efficacy – they are well aware of the benefits of science! – as because
they are convinced that there’s more to our experience than what
scientific method allows us to detect.
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Endnotes
1
Francis Bacon, Novum organum, I,3.
4
See Le Senne, p.226.
2
3
5
6
7
8
9
H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1954), frag. 3, 231, 22.
René Le Senne, Obstacle and Value (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1972), pp.25-26.
Le Senne, p. 24.
Le Senne, pp. 3-4.
Le Senne, pp.216-217.
Le Senne, p. 222.
Le Senne, p.3.
10 Le Senne, p.14.
11 Le Senne, p.192.
12 See Michael Schmaus, Dogma: God and Creation (New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1969), p 15.
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ANG PAGTATALABAN NG
EROS AT AGAPE
AYON KAY BENITO XVI
FR. MAXELL LOWELL C. ARANILLA, PH.D.
1. Panimula
Sa homiliya ni Robert K. Tschannen-Moran ng United Congregation
Church na nailathala sa internet noong unang araw ng Disyembre
1996, isinalaysay niya ang isang kwentong maaaring magbukas sa
ating puso’t isipan sa iba’t ibang kahulugan ng pag-ibig. Ganito ang
kanyang naging kwento:
May isang lalaking nakaupo sa kabilang dulo ng
dangan. Kausap niya ang kanyang tatay. Medyo hindi
pa nakapag-aahit ang lalaki. Mukha itong balisa.
Makikitang tila may mahalaga siyang sasabihin,
subalit hindi niya malaman kung paano ito sasabihin.
Nangangapa siya ng salita. Balisang-balisa siya at
nagiging emosyonal na siya hanggang mangiyakngiyak niyang sinabi ang ‘di-malilimutang linyang iyon:
“I love you, man!” (Mahal kita, ‘tay!).
Dahil nakakahalata ang kanyang tatay sa totoo niyang
dahilan, sumagot ito: “You’re not going to get my Bud
Light” (Hindi mo makukuha ang Bud Light ko). Sa
puntong ito, ang sawimpalad na binata ay bumaba ng
daungan para simulan na naman ang kanyang nauna
nang ginawa. Sa pagkakataong ito, sa kanyang kapatid
na lalaki (1996:5)..
Isang komersyal raw ito sa Estados Unidos. Sa patalastas na ito sa
telebisyon, naipapakita ang problema sa pag-unawa sa pag-ibig.
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Ayon kay Tschannen-Moran, sa wikang Ingles, ang salitang “love” ay
maraming maaaring paggamitan. At kung minsan, nalilito na rin ang
tao sa kung ano nga ba talaga ang kahulugan ng salitang ito at saan ba
talaga ito dapat gamitin.
Sa pagdaloy ng kasaysayan, ang mga pilosoper at manunulat ay
mayroong iba’t ibang tawag sa salitang pag-ibig. Sa katunayan, ang pagibig ay nagkaroon ng iba’t ibang uri o mukha. May mga nagsasabing
may apat na uri raw ng pag-ibig. Una, may pag-ibig daw na dumadaloy
mula sa Diyos patungo sa tao; ikalawa, may pag-ibig naman daw na
dumadaloy mula sa tao patungo sa Diyos; ikatlo, may pag-ibig din daw
ng Diyos tungo sa kanyang Sarili; at ang huli’t ikaapat, may pag-ibig
daw ng tao sa kapwa-tao (2006:179-181).
Sa pilosopiya at sa relihiyon, nagkaroon din ng iba’t ibang tawag ang
salitang pag-ibig. Ang apat na mukha raw ng pag-ibig ay ang “Eros,”
ang “Philia,” ang “Storge,” at ang “Agape.” (1996:6).
Ang una ay ang “Eros.” Ito ang “pag-ibig sa kasiyahan at sarap” (mas
palalalimin pa natin ang paglalahad tungkol dito sa mga susunod
pa nating pagtalakay). Ang ikalawa ay ang “Agape.” Ito ang “pag-ibig
ng Diyos” (tulad ng “Eros,” magkakaroon din ito ng mas malalim na
pagtalakay sa susunod na mga paglalahad).
Ang ikatlo ay ang “Storge.”Ito ang “pag-ibig ng mga magulang.” Ang
“Storge” o pag-ibig sa pagitan ng mga magulang at mga anak ang
pangunahing karanasan sa pag-ibig ng sinumang tao. Sa sinapupunan
pa lamang ay dama na natin ang pag-ibig ng ating mga magulang;
dama na natin ang kanilang pagmamahal sa pagkanlong nila sa atin,
sa paghehele ng ating mga nanay, sa pagpapatulog sa atin ng ating
mga tatay. Hindi makikita sa Bagong Tipan o sa anumang sinaunang
Kristiyanong sulatin ang salitang “storge.” Kung ang salitang “storge”
ay isang likas na pagkiling lamang ng magulang sa kanyang anak,
masasabi ngang wala itong masyadong kaugnayan sa buhay Kristiyano.
Subalit kung ang salitang “storge” ay sumasalamin sa iba’t ibang nibel
ng pagmamahal ng mga magulang sa kanilang mga anak, masasabing
sinasalamin din ng salitang ito ang pag-ibig ng Diyos sa tao. Ipinakikita
nito ang pagkandili ng inahing agila sa kanyang mga inakay na siyang
paglalarawang ginamit naman sa Lumang Tipan (1996:6)
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Ang huling mukha ng pag-ibig ay ang “Philia.”Ito ang “pag-ibig ng mga
magkakaibigan.” Masasalamin ang salitang “philia” sa Bagong Tipan.
Sa isa sa mga pagpapakita ni Jesus sa kanyang mga alagad, matapos
ang Muling Pagkabuhay, tinanong ni Jesus si Simon Pedro, “Iniibig mo
ba ako?” Ginamit ni Jesus ang salitang agape. “Iniibig mo ba ako tulad
ng pag-ibig ko sa iyo?” Sumagot si Simon Pedro na gamit ang salitang
philia. Kung titingnan mabuti ang sinabi ni Simon Pedro, ganito ang
sinabi niya, “Kaibigan mo ako.” At tumugon si Jesus sa pamamagitan
ng isang utos: “Pakainin mo ang aking mga tupa.” Muli, hiniling ni
Jesus ang tungkol sa agape, tungkol sa kung gaano siya kamahal ni
Pedro, at muli ang tugo ni Pedro ay philia. “Kaibigan mo ako.”“Alagaan
mo ang aking mga tupa.”Sa huli, sa ikatlong pagkakataon, subalit sa
pagkakataong ito ginamit na niya ang salitang philia, nagtanong si
Jesus: “Pedro, kaibigan ba kita?”Ganoon na lamang ang pagkabalisa
ni Pedro at sa ikatlong pagkakataon, “Jesus, alam mong kaibigan kita.”
Kaya naman, “pakanin mo ang aking mga tupa.” Makikita sa tagpong
ito sa Bagong Tipan, na maging sa pakikipagkaibigan kay Jesus
kinakailangan ang aktibong pagkalinga sa iba. At ito rin ang katumbas
na kahulugan sa karaniwang pagkakaibigan.
Ang “Eros,” ang “Philia,” ang “Storge,” at ang “Agape” ang iba’t ibang
mukha ng pag-ibig na ipinaliwanag at pinagnilayan ng mga pilosoper
sa pagdaloy ng panahon. Subalitsa pagkakataong ito, pagninilayan
natin ang dalawa sa mukha ng pag-ibig: ang “Eros” at ang “Agape” sa
liwanag ng ensiklikal ni Papa Beniti XVI na Deus Caritas Est.
2. Eros
Kapag ang salitang “eros” na ang napag-uusapan, iba’t iba na ang
pumapasok sa isip ng tao. Nandiyan ang mga pelikulang erotika;
nandiyan ang pagnanasa; nandiyan ang
Walang patumanggang seks. At kung anu-ano pa.
Ayon sa Banal na Papa, sa ensiklikal na “Deus Caritas Est,” dalawang ulit
lamang ginamit ang “eros” sa Griyegong Lumang Tipan samantalang
hindi ito ginamit sa Bagong Tipan (Deus Caritas Est, 13). Bago pa ang
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16 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
‘Sang-Kristiyanismo, itinuturing ng mga Griyego ang “eros” bilang
pampalango. Inilarawan ito ng Papa sa ganitong paraan:
Katulad ng ibang mga kultura, ang pangunahing turing
ng mga Griyego sa eros ay isang bagay na nakalalasing;
pinangingibabawan ng “banal na kabaliwan” ang pagunawa ng tao, na siya namang naglalayo sa tao mula
sa kanyang panandaliang pag-iral na siya namang
nagdadala sa kanya na maranasan ang rurok ng
kagalakan dahil na rin sa pangingibabaw sa kanya
ng kapangyarihang banal. Kaya naman, pangalawa
lamang ang lahat ng mga kapangyarihan sa langit at sa
lupa: Wika nga ni Virgil sa Bucolics, “Omnia vincit amor”
– nagtatagumpay ang pag-ibig sa lahat – at idinagdag
pa niya: “et nos cedamus amori” – halinang sumuko
na rin tayo sa pag-ibig. Sa mga relihiyon naman, ang
gawing ito ay makikita sa mga kulto ng pagkamabunga,
bahagi nito ang “sagradong” prostitusyong nagaganap
sa maraming mga templo. Kaya naman, ipinagdirwang
ang eros bilang banal na kapangyarihan, bilang
pakikiisa sa Banal (Deus Caritas Est, 4).
Kaya naman masasabing ang “eros” para sa mga Griyego ay lango
at walang disiplinang pag-ibig at hindi ito pag-akyat sa “ganap na
kaligayahan” patungo sa Banal, kundi pagbulusok pababa, at pag-aalis
sa dangal ng tao (Deus Caritas Est, 4). Sa isang banda nga, ang “eros”
ay pagtatampisaw sa marumi, sa mga bagay na tila walang kinalaman
sa pag-ibig. Ito ay pagkiling sa tawag ng laman at wala nang iba pa.
Subalit pata sa mga makabagong manunulat at pilosoper naman, may
naiibang pag-unawa rin sa salitang “eros.” Halimbawa na lamang ang
ang pag-unawa ng kilalang manunulat na si Marc Gafni. Isa siyang
panauhing iskolar ng Oxford University at ng Hartman Institute. Siya
rin ang sumulat ng mabentang aklat naSoul Prints at tagapagtatag
ng Bayit Chadash, isang pandaigdigang espiritwal na pagkilos na
nakabase sa Israel. Sa aklat niyang “The Mystery of Love,” ipinakilala
niya ang iba’t ibang mukha ng “Eros.”
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Sabi ni Gafni, ang unang mukha raw ng “eros” ay ang “Kalooban.”
Para kay Gafni, ang erotikong pamumuhay ay ang mabuhay mula
sa kalooban ng tao. Ito ay ang paglalakbay sa gitna ng kawalan na
nagdurugtong sa obheto at ng subheto. Ito ay ang pagiging kaisa ng
iyong reyalidad, ang makapasok sa kaloob-looban ng karanasan. Kaya
nga, ang erotikong pamumuhay ay ang mabuhay sa kaloob-looban at
ang maging banyaga ay ang mabuhay sa labas ng iyong kalooban – ang
mabuhay na walang masasabing kanlungan (2004:14-15).
Ang ikalawang mukha naman daw ng “eros” ay ang “ganap na
presensiya.” Hindi raw hiwalay ang katangiang ito sa unang mukha
ng eros. Likas na dumadaloy ito mula sa unang mukha – mula sa
kalooban. Subalit iba rin naman ito. Ang binibigyang-diin lamang ay
ang katotohanang ang pag-iral mula sa kalooban ay nangangailangan
ng ganap na presensiya. Ngunit maaari nating maranasan ang ganap
na presensiya kahit na hindi pa tayo nakikiisa sa kalooban. Tungkol
sa pagpapakita at pagdating ang ganap na presensiya. (2004:22-23).
Sa madaling salita, wika nga ni Gafni, “Ang erotikang pamumuhay
ay ang maging ganap ang presensiya sa kasaganaan ng isa’t isa, sa
kasalimuutan ng pagkatao ng isa’t isa, at sa likas na karingalan. Ito ay
ang hintayin ang ganap na pagdating ng isa” (2004: 24).
“Pagnanasa”o pagnanais naman ang ikatlong mukha ng “eros.” Muli
sa paliwanag ni Gafni, “Kapag ako ay nasa aking loob, kapag ako ay
ganap na naroroon, nararating ko ang ikatlong mukha ng erotikang
karanasan – ang pag-asam. Ang pag-asa at pagnanasa ay dalawa sa
napakahalagang pagpapadama ng pag-ibig at ng eros. Basta ako ay nasa
labas ng aking sarili, maaari kong balewalain ang pinakamalalim kong
pagnanasa at pigilin ang aking mga inaasam. Subalit ang pagnanasa
ay mahalagang bahagi ng anumang erotiko” (2004: 32). Ipinaliwanag
din ni Gafni na kailangang mula sa kalooban ang eros, kasama na ang
kaibuturan ng iyong pagnanasa. Ang pagkanasa-loob ay paanyaya sa
tao na balikan ang kanyang mga pagnanasa, ngunit hindi ang lagpasan
ang mga ito. Nararating ang totoong pagnanasa sa pamamagitan ng
malalim na pagninilay na kung saan naaabot mo ang saksi sa kalooblooban. Ito ang lugar na kung saan umiiral ang pagiging hiwalay sa
damdamin, na kungb saan iniisa-isa mo nang may pagmamahal
ang lahat ng iyong mga pagnanasa…. Ang pagnanasa at pagnanais
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18 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
ay mabubuti, hindi dahil lahat ng ating inaasam ay matutupad o
magaganap, kundi dahil ang pag-asam ang nagpapaganap sa atin. Ang
pag-asam mismo ang pumupuno sa kahungkagan. Kapag nais nating
lumago, kapag tayo’y buhay at nagtataglay ng pagnanasa, nararating
din natin ang kaganapan” (2004: 33-34).
Ang huli’t ikaapat na mukha ng “eros” ayon kay Gafni ay ang “pagkakaugnay-ugnay ng mga pag-iral.” Ipinaaalala sa atin ng ating pagnanasa,
pagnanais at mga luha na ang lahat ng umiiral ay magkakarugtong.
Walang taong nabubuhay ng nag-iisa lamang. Ang salitang relihiyon
nga raw ay nag-uugat sa Lating salita na ligare na may pagkakahawig
sa salitang Ingles na “ligament” – at ito ay masasabing tungkol sa
pagkaka-ugnay-ugnay. Kaya naman ang adhikain daw ng relihiyon
ay ang mapag-ugnay-ugnay ang mga tao. Ang orihinal na intensyon
ng relihiyon ay ang madala tayo papasook sa ating kalooban na kung
saan mararanasan natin ang pundamental na pagkaka-ugnay ng lahat
ng tao at ng lahat ng umiiral (2004: 37). “Binibigyan tayo ng eros ng
pagkakataon na iwanan ang damdamin ng pag-iisa at paghiwalay
at ang maranasan ang ating sarili bilang bahagi ng sang kwilt. Ang
lumayo sa eros ay ang magkasala. Hindi lamang natin maiwawala ang
pinadakilang bukal ng kasiyahan, kundi maiwawala pa natin ang mga
bagay na pundasyon ng pagkaka-ugnay-ugnay na kung wala ang mga
ito sa katapusan ang mundo ay babagsak” (2004: 37).
Sa dalawang magkatunggaling pananawa sa eros, maitatanong natin
kung ano nga ba ang kahulugan ng eros para sa tao. Dapat nga ba itong
talikuran at wala nga ba itong kaugnayan sa salitang “agape”?
3. Agape
Subalit bago natin sagutin ang mga katanungan sa itaas, balikan muna
natin ang salitang “agape.” Ano nga ba ang “agape”?
May mga nagsasabing ang “agape” ay ibang iba sa “eros.” Nagmula
ito sa tradisyong Kristiyano. Sinasabing ito ang pag-ibig ng Diyos sa
kanyang mga nilikha at ng mga nilikha sa kanilang Lumikha. Gayundin
naman, sinasabi ring ang “agape” ay pag-ibig ng tao sa kanyang kapwatao dala ng kanyang pag-ibig sa Diyos. Kusa at walang ibang dahilan
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ang pag-ibig na “agape.” Hindi ito nakabatay sa merito ng tao kundi
sa kalikasan ng Diyos bilang pag-ibig (Mind, 86:532-54). Ito nga raw
ang kahulugan ng Pasko. Nagkatawang-tao ang Diyos upang ganap na
makipamuhay sa tao. Kaya naman sa Bagong Tipan agape ang salitang
Griyego na madalas ginagamit kapag pag-ibig ang napag-uusapan.
Ito raw ang pag-ibig na naglalarawan sa ating ugnayan sa iba; kapag
mas madalas daw tayong magbigay, agape ang ating pag-ibig; kapag
madalas na lumalapit sa atin at naghahanap sa atin ang Diyos, ito ay
dahil sa kanyang agape (1996:4)
Kung paghahambingin ang eros at ang agape,angeros na pag-ibig ay
makamundo, samantalang ang agape ay pag-ibig na nag-uugat at
hinubog ng pananampalataya. Kung ang eros ay pag-ibig na “pataas,”
ang agape ay pag-ibig na “paibaba.” Kung ang eros ay makasariling
pag-ibig (amor concupiscentiae), ang agape naman ay mapagbigay na
pag-ibig (amor benevolentiae).
Tila nga malalim ang pagkakaiba ng eros at ng agape kaya naman
maraming pilosoper at mga manunulat ang naniniwalang mahirap
pagsamahin at pagdugtungin ang eros at ang agape.Sa sulatin ng
Swedish na teologong Luterano na si Anders Nygren (ang Eros and
Agape), ipinaliwanag niya na may dalawang uri ng pag-ibig: ang
pag-ibig na mapaghanap na tinawag niyang eros at ang pag-ibig na
mapagbigay na tinawag niyang agape. Sinabi niya na tanging ang
agape lamang ang masasabing tunay na Kristiyanong pag-ibig. Para
kay Nygren, tayo ay nahaharap sa malinaw na pagpipilian sa pagitan
ng dalawang uri ng pag-ibig; walang posibleng kompromiso at walang
sintesis sa pagitan ng eros at ng agape (Dulles. 2006:20). At tulad ni
Nygren, ganito rin ang paninindigan ni Denis de Rougement na isang
Swisong Protestante. Para sa kanya, ang eros ay may kaugnayan sa
mga mahihiwagang relihiyong (mystery religions), kay Plato at sa mga
Neo-platonists. Isang itim na pag-ibig ang eros samantalang ang agape
ay kumakatawan sa pag-ibig ng Diyos sa mundo na sinisimbolo ng pagiisang dibdib ni Cristo at ng Simbahan. Subalit may pagkakaiba rin ng
pag-unawa si De Rougement at Nygren tungkol saeros at sa agape. Para
kay De Rougement, ang eros ay isang irasyonal o walang katwirang
pag-ibig at pagnanasa na laging hindi nakukuntento sa anumang nasa
lupa at panandalian lamang; itinutulak nito ang kanyang maingingibig
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20 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
sa ganap na pagsuko ng sarili at pagkuha sa lahat-lahat nito. Ang agape
naman para sa kanya ay pagpapatotoo sa mundong ito at pagtanggap
sa kahinaan at mga limitasyon ng tao. Samantala, para kay Nygren,
ang eros ay isang intelektwal at makasariling anyo ng pag-ibig; at
ang agape naman ay ganap na pagbibigay na walang hinihintay na
kapalit – isang pag-ibig na mula sa itaas. Kaya nga sa unang tingin, tila
kailangang mamili ang isang Kristiyano. Wika nga ni Papa Benito XVI:
Sa mga tunggaliang pilosopikal at teyolohikal, madalas
na pinalalalim ang pagkakaiba ng mga ito hanggang sa
puntong nilalagyan na ito ng malinaw na salungatan
sa pagitan nila: ang pababa at mapagparayang/
mapagbigay na pag-ibig – ang agape – ay tipikal na
Kristiyano, samantalang ang pataas at makasarili o
mapag-imbot na pag-ibig – ang eros – ay tipikal na diKristiyano, at natatangi sa kulturang Griyego (Deus
Caritas Est, 7).
Ngunit kung tuluyan ngang paghihiwalayin ang eros at ang agape,
“kung darating sa sukdulan ang salungatang ito, magiging hiwalay ang
diwa ng Kristiyanismo mula sa mga mahahalagang ugnayan na siyang
batayan ng pag-iral ng tao at magkakaroon sila ng kanya-kanyang
mundo, maaaring kahanga-hanga ito, ngunit ganap namang hiwalay
sa masalimuot na kabuuan ng buhay ng tao (Deus Caritas Est, 7).
4. Ang Pag-uugnay
Sa unang ensiklikal ni Papa Benito XVI, binanggit niya ang pahayag ni
Friedrich Nietzsche:
Ayon kay Friedrich Nietzsche, nilason ng Kristiyanismo
ang eros, na datapwat sa bahagi nito’y hindi naman
ganap na sumusuko, ay unti-unti rin namang naging
isang masamang gawi. Dito, sinasabi lamang ng
Alemang pilosoper ang tingin ng nakararami: hindi
ba, dahil sa dami ng mga utos at bawal, ginawa nang
mapait ng Simbahan ang pinakamahalagang bagay sa
buhay? Hindi ba’t tila bigla na lamang siyang pumito
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habang tayo’y nasa gitna ng kagalakan na siya namang
kaloob ng Lumikha bilang patikim sa Banal? (Deus
Caritas Est, 3).
Itinanong ni Papa Benito XVI sa kanyang ensiklikal kung totoo nga ba
ang sinabing ito ni Nietzsche. Inamin niyang hindi naman ganap na
mali ang pilosoper na si Nietzsche. Subalit ipinaliwanag niyang hindi
naman talaga hiwalay at salungat ang eros sa agape. Inihihilig tayo ng
erosna tanggapin ang mga biyaya ng Diyos; at itinutulak nman tayo ng
agape na ipasa sa iba ang ating natanggap. Ang eros ay ang paakyat
na sandali sa buhay espiritwal ng isang tao na kung saan hinahanap
natin ang Diyos, na siyang pinagmumulan ng bawat ganap na biyaya.
Bahagi ng isa’t isa ang eros at ang agape; dalawang bahagi sila ng
iisang proseso. Kung wala tayong tinanggap, wala tayong ibibigay;
at kung hindi tayo handang magbigay, hindi tayo magiging handang
tumanggap (Cardinal Dulles. 2006:21).
Sa pahayag ni Papa Benito XVI, kanyang ipinaliwanag ang pagkakaugnay ng eros at ng agape:
Subalit hindi maaaring ganap na paghiwalayin ang
eros at ang agape – ang pataas na pag-ibig at ang
pababang pag-ibig. Kung ang dalawang ito, sa kanilang
pagkakaiba, ay makatagpo ng tamang pagkakaisa sa
iisang reyalidad ng pag-ibig, mas matutupad naman
ang totoong kalikasan ng pag-ibig. Datapwat sa simula’y
mapag-imbot at pataas ang eros, ang pagkahalina sa
dakilang pangako ng kaligayahan, sa pagkaakit sa
isa, unti-unti nitong nakalilimutan ang sarili, habang
papalago ang pagnanais niya sa ikasisiya ng isa,
habang mas iniisip niya ang minamahal, ibinibigay
niya ang kanyang sarili at nais niyang “nandoon siya”
para sa isa. Sa gayon, pumapasok ang elemento ng
agape sa pag-ibig na ito, dahil kung hindi, nagigingsalat at naiwawala ng eros ang kanya mismong
kalikasan. Sa kabilang banda naman, hindi mabubuhay
ang tao sa mapagparaya/mapagbigay at pababang
pag-ibig lamang. Hindi maaaring bigay lamang siya
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22 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
nang bigay; kailangan din niyang tumanggap. Dapat
maging handa ang sinumang nais magbigay ng pagibig na tumanggap din ng pag-ibig bilang kaloob. Tama
nga, tulad nang sinabi ng Panginoon, ang isang tao ay
maaaaring maging daluyan na kung saan bubulwak
ang mga ilog ng tubig na buhay (tng. Jn 7:37-38).
Subalit upang maging ganoong daluyan, kailangan ng
sinuman na laging uminum mula sa orihinal na bukal,
na walang iba kundi si Jesu-Kristo mismo, na mula sa
kanyang sinibat na puso’y bumukal ang pag-ibig ng
Diyos (tng. Jn 19:34) (Deus Caritas Est, 7).
Malinaw nga na ang eros at ang agape ay nagtatalaban at hindi totoong
magkasalungat. Sa konteksto ng mga paliwanag ni Papa Benito XVI,
makikita ang eros at ang agape ay totoong dalawang mukha ng pagibig na hindi magkakaroon ng kaganapan kung wala ang isa’t isa. Sa
ensiklikal, malinaw itong ipinahayag:
Dalawang bagay ang malinaw na lumalabas mula sa
mabilis na pagbabalik-tanaw sa konsepto ng eros sa
nakaraan hanggang sa kasalukuyan. Una, mayroong
ugnayan sa pagitan ng pag-ibig at ng Banal: pangako
ng pag-ibig ang kawalang-hanggan ang kawalangkatapusan – isang reyalidad na higit at ganap na iba
sa pang-araw-araw nating pag-iral. Subalit nakita rin
natin na ang daan upang marating ang hantungang
ito ay hindi sa pamamagitan nang pagpapaubaya sa
likas na simbuyo. Kinakailangan nang pagpapadalisay
at paglago; at nagdaraan ang mga ito sa daan ng
paglimot sa sarili. Malayo sa pagtalikod o “paglason”
sa eros, hinihilom at ibinabalik ng mga ito ang totoong
karingalan ng eros (Deus Caritas Est, 5).
Pagpapadalisay tungo sa tunay at wagas na kahulugan ng eros ang
kinakailangan upang magtagpo ang eros at ang agape. Ngunit paano
nga ba ito magaganap?
Siguro, kailangan munang kilalanin ng tao ang kanyang sarili. Ang tao,
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23
higit sa anupaman, ay binubuo ng katawan at ng kaluluwa. Totoong
tao ang taokapag matalik na nagtatalaban at nagkakaisa ang kanyang
katawan at ang kanyang kaluluwa. At ang hamon saeros ay totoong
mapagtatagumpayan kung ang pagkakaisang ito ay magagawa. Kung
nanaisin lamang ng tao na maging purong espiritu at tanggihan ang
kanyang laman, sabay na maiwawala ng espiritu at ng katawan ang
kanilang karingalan. At kung tatanggihan naman ng tao ang espiritu
at bigyang-pansin lamang ang katawan bilang natatanging reyalidad,
mawawala rin ang dangal ng tao. Tanging sa pagtatagpo lamang ng
eros at ng agape totoong nararating ng tao ang kanyang karingalan
(Deus Caritas Est, 5).
Kung babalikan natin si Papa Juan Pablo II, makikita rin natin ang
kanyang pagpapahalaga sa katawan bilang kabahagi ng pagpapadama
ng pagmamahal sa kapwa. Sa Familiaris Consortio o Apostolikong
Panawagan sa Pamilya (1981, 11), sinabi ni Papa Juan II na ang
bokasyon ng tao na ibigay ang sarili sa kapwa ay makikita sa
pagbibigay ng mag-asawa sa isa’t isa ng kanilang mga sarili at katawan.
Sa halimbawang ito ng mag-asawa, makikita natin ang kahulugan
ng pagtatalaban ng katawan at ng espiritu ng tao upang ganap na
mapagbigay sa iba; at ang pagbibigay na ito ay hindi nangangahulugang
sekswal lamang. Wika nga ni Papa Juan Pablo II tungkol sa mga may
bokasyon sa pagpapari o buhay relihiyoso, “sa kabila ng pagtalikod
nila sa pisikal na pagpaparami, ang mga celibatong tao ay nagiging
mabunga sa espiritwal na antas, nagiging ama at ina sila ng marami,
nagiging kabahagi sa pagkakaroon ng katuparan ng isang pamilyang
ayon sa plano ng Diyos” (1981:16). At dahil ang tao ay nagkatawangdiwa (espiritu), tinatawag ang tao na magmahal sa kanyang kabuuan.
Kasama sa pag-ibig ng tao ang kanyang katawan, at nagiging kabahagi
ang katawan ng espiritwal na pag-ibig [Familiaris Consortio o
Apostolikong Panawagan sa Pamilya (1981:11).
Tinutuligsa ang Simbahan dahil sa pagpaparumi raw nito sa eros.
Subalit, kung tunay na hahalukayin ang kahulugan ng eros at hindi
na ito itutumbas bilang katawan lamang na maaaring “gamitin,”
matatagpuan din na ang eros ay tunay na isang mukha ng pag-ibig.
Dapat lamang kilalanin ang eros,hindi bilang sekswal na bahagi lamang
ng tao, kundi bilang bahagi ng kabuuan ng tao, kabuuan ng kanyang
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24 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
malayang pag-iral, kabuuan ng kanyang malayang pagbabahagi
ng BUONG SARILI. At ang eros na ito ay nagdadala sa atin tungo sa
“lubos na kagalakan” sa Banal; dinadala tayo nito palabas sa ating
mga sarili, at inaanyayahan tayo nito sa daan ng pag-akyat, pagtanggi,
pagpapadalisay, at paghihilom (Deus Caritas Est, 5). Ngunit ano nga
ba ang daan na ito na paakyat at ng pagpapadalisay? Ayon na rin kay
Papa Benito XVI:
Kumpara sa isang di-tiyak, “naghahanap” na
pag-ibig, ipinahahayag ng salitang ito ang isang
karanasan ng pag-ibig na totoong nakakikilala sa
iniibig; nilalagapasan nito ang pagkamakasarili na
namamayani noong una. Ngayon, ang pag-ibig ay
naging malasakit at pag-aalala sa iniibig. Hindi na ito
mapaghanap, na kung sa nalulunod sa pagkalango sa
kaligayang ang isang tao; sa halip, hinahanap nito kung
ano ang makabubuti sa minamahal: nililimot na nito
ang sarili at handa at bukas-loob itong magsakrpisyo.
Bahagi ng paglago ng pag-ibig tungo sa mas mataas na
antas at mas dalisay na anyo ang paghahanap ngayon
nito ng katiyakan, at nangyayari ito sa dalawang
paraan: sa paraang eksklusibo o nagtatangi (ang taong
ito lamang) at sa paraang “pangmagpakailanman.”
Niyayakap ng pag-ibig ang kabuuan ng pag-iral sa
bawat dimensyon nito, kasama na ang dimesnyon ng
panahon o oras. Wala nang iba pang paraan, sapagkat
nakatanaw ang pangako nito sa isang tiyak na hangarin:
nakatutok ang paningin ng pag-ibig sa kawalanghanggan. Totoo ngang ang pag-ibig ay “lubos na
kagalakan,” hindi sa kahulugang saglit na pagkalasing,
kundi bilang isang paglalakbay, isang nagpapatuloy
na exodo palabas sa kakitiran ng pagkamakasarili
tungo sa kalayaan na dala ng pag-bibigay ng sarili,
na nagbubulid naman sa totoong pagkakilala sa sarili
at, tunay nga, sa pagkilala sa Diyos: “Ang sinumang
magsikap na magligtas ng sarili ay mawawalan nito,
at ang mawawalan naman ng sarili ang magsisilang
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25
nito sa buhay” (Lc 17:33), tulad na rin nang inuulit-ulit
ni Jesus sa mga Ebanghelyo (tng. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mc
8:35; Lc 9:24; Jn 12:25) (Deus Caritas Est, 6).
Hindi nga mapaghihiwalay ang eros at ang agape.Sa halip, ipinaliwanag
ni Papa Benito XVI na ang mga magagandang katangian ng eros at
agape ay maaaring pagsamahin sa iisang pagpapakita ng pag-ibig ng
tao at ng Diyos. At upang magawa ang sintesis na ito, o ang pag-uugnay
na ito ng eros at ng agape, kailangang padalisayin nng tao ang eros.
Wika nga ni Papa Benito XVI:
Una sa lahat, ang “pag-ibig” ay iisang reyalidad, na may
iba’t ibang mukha; sa iba’t ibang panahon, maaaring
mamayani ang isang mukha kaysa sa iba. Ngunit kung
lubos na puputulin ang ugnayan ng isa’t isa, ang bunga
nito ay isang karikatura o salat na anyo ng pag-ibig.
Sa paglalagom, nakita rin natin na ang biblikal na
pananampalataya ay hindi lumikha ng ibang mundo,
o ng isang mundong laban sa pangunahing karanasan
ng tao na walang iba kundi ang pag-ibig; sa halip,
tinatanggap nito ang kabuuan ng tao; nakikisangkot ito
sa paghahanap ng tao sa pag-ibig upang padalisayin ito
at upang ipahayag ang mga bagong mukha nito. Higit
sa anupaman, ipinakikita ang pagiging bago ng biblikal
na pananampalatayang ito sa dalawang elemento na
dapat bigyang-pansin: ang larawan ng Diyos at ang
larawan ng tao.
At ang larawang ito ay sabay na makikita kay Jesu-Cristo na totoong
Diyos at totoong tao. Sa kanyang pagkakatawang-tao, binigyan niya
ng dangal ang katawan ng tao, ang paghahanap ng tao sa anumang
makapagpapaligaya sa kanya; ngunit sa kanyang kamatayan sa krus
at muling pagkabuhay, binigyang-dangal din ni Jesus ang pagiging
kalarawan ng Diyos ang tao – ang taong tulad ng kanyang Lumikha ay
maaaring magbigay dahil nakatanggap siya ng lubos na pagmamahal
sa isang Diyos na walang hinihintat na kapalit.
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26 ANG PAGTATALABAN NG EROS AT AGAPE
5. Pangwakas
Sa kasaysayan ng mundo, laging pinagtutunggali ang “eros” at ang
“agape.” Kung paghahambingin ang eros at ang agape,angeros na pagibig ay makamundo, samantalang ang agape ay pag-ibig na nag-uugat
at hinubog ng pananampalataya. Kung ang eros ay pag-ibig na “pataas,”
ang agape ay pag-ibig na “paibaba.” Kung ang eros ay makasariling
pag-ibig (amor concupiscentiae), ang agape naman ay mapagbigay na
pag-ibig (amor benevolentiae).
Madalas na sinasabing hindi sapat ang “eros” at kung minsan sinasabi
pang masama ang “eros.” Subalit sa maanyong pagtalakay na ito at sa
unang ensiklikal ng Banal na Papa, ang Deus Caritas Est, ipinakikita
ang ugnayan ng dalawang konseptong ito ng pag-ibig. Ipinaliwanag ni
Papa Benito XVI na hindi naman talaga hiwalay at salungat ang eros sa
agape. Inihihilig tayo ng erosna tanggapin ang mga biyaya ng Diyos; at
itinutulak naman tayo ng agape na ipasa sa iba ang ating natanggap.
Ang eros ay ang paakyat na sandali sa buhay espiritwal ng isang tao
na kung saan hinahanap natin ang Diyos, na siyang pinagmumulan
ng bawat ganap na biyaya. Bahagi ng isa’t isa ang eros at ang agape;
dalawang bahagi sila ng iisang proseso. Kung wala tayong tinanggap,
wala tayong ibibigay; at kung hindi tayo handang magbigay, hindi
tayo magiging handang tumanggap. Ipinaliwanag rin ng Papa na kung
ang “eros” at ang “agape,” “sa kanilang pagkakaiba, ay magkatugma
sa iisang reyalidad ng pag-ibig, matutupad ang totoong kalikasan ng
pag-ibig. Mapag-imbot at pataas ngang pag-ibig ang eros, subalit sa
pagkahalina nito sa dakilang pangako ng kaligayahan, sa pagkaakit sa
isa, unti-unti nitong nakalilimutan ang sarili, at lumalago naman ang
pagnanais niya sa ikasisiya ng isa; mas iniisip na niya ang minamahal;
ibinibigay niya ang kanyang sarili at nais niyang “nandoon siya” para
sa isa. Doon, pumapasok ang elemento ng agape sa pag-ibig na ito,
dahil kung hindi, nagiging-salat at naiwawala ng eros ang kanya
mismong kalikasan. Sa kabilang banda naman, hindi mabubuhay ang
tao sa mapagparaya/mapagbigay at pababang pag-ibig lamang. Hindi
maaaring siya lang ang nag-aabot. Hindi maaaring bigay lamang siya
nang bigay; kailangan din niyang tumanggap.Dapat maging handa ang
sinumang nais magbigay ng pag-ibig na tumanggap din ng pag-ibig
bilang kaloob.
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Sa puntong ito, malinaw nga na ang eros at ang agape ay nagtatalaban
at hindi totoong magkasalungat. Sa konteksto ng mga paliwanag ni
Papa Benito XVI, makikita ang eros at ang agape ay totoong dalawang
mukha ng pag-ibig na hindi magkakaroon ng kaganapan kung wala
ang isa’t isa. Kaya naman, sa ensiklikal na Deus Caritas Est, nakita
natin na dahil tayo’y nakatanggap ng pag-ibig, natural lamang na
ipasa rin natin ito sa iba sapagkat ito ang kalikasan ng pag-ibig. Ito ay
tinatanggap at ibinibigay.Ang tao nga ay umiibig at iniibig rin.Sabay
itong nagaganap. Walang dahilan upang maging punto ito ng pagpili
sapagkat hindi walang kaganapan ang totoong Kristiyanong pag-ibig
kung wala sa buong proseso ang pagtatalaban ng “eros” at ng “agape.”
Mga Sanggunian
Aquinas, Thomas. 2006. Christian Love. http://www.georgetown.
edu/faculty/ap85 /1445/spring06/ChristianLove.html.
Benedict XVI, Santo Papa. 2005. Deus Caritas Est (Encyclical Letter on
Christian Love). Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Dulles, Avery. 2006. Love, the Pope and CS Lewis. http://forum.stirpes.
net/religion-theology/23657-agape-eros.html
Gafni, Marc. 2004. The Mystery of Love. New York, NY: Atria Books.
John Paul II, Santo Papa. 1981. Famliaris Consortio (Apostolic
Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern
World). Pauline
Lewis, C.S. 2006.The Four Loves.http://www.boundless.org/2006/
departments/pages/ a0000588.html.
Tschannen-Moran , Robert. 1996.
sermons/961201-1224.htm
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Page
28
THE
FAMILIENÄHNLICHKEITEN
OF CONCEPTS
Rethinking the Problem of Universals
through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
MARVIN M. CRUZ
Twenty-first century philosophy exhibits the emergence of positivism
and linguistic analysis. Metaphysical questions about the nature of
existence and essence are disregarded and dismissed as misconceived
construction of meaningless terms that find no place in verifiable
truths. Likewise, the search for what is absolute or ultimate in the
metaphysical sense is considered old-fashioned and irrelevant.
Nevertheless, the questions of antiquity remain to be unresolved.
The aversion from the speculative systems of the past does not solve
these problems at all. Here the problem of the nature and function
of universals is an example. The history of this problem presents
serious problems to the understanding of concepts, their origin and
their function in logical thought especially in questions of absolutism
and pluralism. This paper offers to present Wittgenstein’s insights on
meaning and practice as discussed in the Philosophical Investigations1
to aid a re-examination of the problem of universals. A final section
presents a test-case in which certain problems are discussed using the
method outlined below.
1. The Philosophical Investigations
The Investigations opens a variety of ways at looking at the workings of
language. Its main purpose, as its title admits, is ‘to investigate,’ i.e. to
examine, language from its multiple dimensions in order to command
a clearer view of it. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein remains
firm to his insistence on the nature of philosophical discourse. The
investigation to be carried out in the Investigations is philosophical
in the sense that it aims at clarifying the practice of language and
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the nature of meaning. It is concerned with two principal topics:
philosophy of language and philosophical psychology.2 The former
concerns meaning, sense, reference, etc., while the latter concerns the
activity itself. The Investigations addresses these concerns through
examples where particular opinions about language could be brought
to proper light. Below are certain themes that concern the aims of this
paper.
a. Naming and Ostension
Wittgenstein’s analysis of language begins with a passage he quotes
from Augustine’s Confessions3 in which he identifies “a particular
picture of the essence of human language” (PI §1).
“When they (my elders) named some object, and
accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and
I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they
uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention
was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the
natural language of all peoples: the expression of the
face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts
of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our
state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding
something. thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in
their proper places in various sentences, I gradually
learnt to understand what objects they signified; and
after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I
used them to express my own desires.” (Augustine,
Confessions, I. 8.)4
Wittgenstein takes Augustine’s opinion as a familiar mindset as to how
language is said to work: “individual words in language name objects”
(PI §1). A word and its meaning stand in a corresponding relation of
object and its reference. Wittgenstein, however, quickly reveals the
limitations of this idea: it fails to speak of any difference between
kinds of words (PI §1). Augustine presents here only a valid picture
of words that function primarily as nouns, but it does not depict such
other functions that may pertain to words. Wittgenstein continues to
illustrate this in two important examples:
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Now think of the following use of language: I send
someone shopping. I give him a slip marked “five red
apples”. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens
the drawer marked “apples”; then he looks up the word
“red” in a table and finds a colour sample opposite
to it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I
assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word
“five” and for each number he takes an apple of the
same colour as the sample out of the drawer.——
It is in this and similar ways that one operates with
words.——“But how does he know where and how
he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do
with the word ‘five’?”——Well, I assume that he acts
as I have described. Explanations come to an end
somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word
“five”?—No such thing was in question here, only how
the word “five” is used (PI §2).
Let us imagine a language for which the description
given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to
serve for communication between a builder A and an
assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there
are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the
stones, and that in the order in which A needs them.
For this purpose they use a language consisting of
the words “block”, “pillar”, “slab”, “beam”. A calls them
out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at
such-and-such a call.——Conceive this as a complete
primitive language (PI §2).
The examples describe specific limitations in the Augustinian
picture of meaning and present a rough sketch of language in daily
interaction. The first example describes language in a very concrete
activity—shopping. The story is basically “about behavior and the use
of signs”5 and there is no mention at all of any verbal communication.
Wittgenstein nonetheless makes an examination of how the words
‘apples’, ‘red’ and ‘five’ are taken to mean in this illustration. It seems
that the Augustinian picture may fit perfectly the way the word ‘apple’
is to be understood, but as to the words ‘red’ and ‘five’, such description
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would be pointless. Wittgenstein, therefore, directs the attention
rather to the manner of operation itself—“Well, I assume that he acts
as I have described.” Hence, what matters here is not so much the
correlation between a word and its object as the way in which acting,
i.e. the behavior or reaction, is drawn out by the signs. Augustine’s
picture describes a system of communication, but not everything that
is language is this system (PI §3).
The second illustration likewise carries out the same purpose.
Wittgenstein sets this example as a ‘complete’ [vollständige], i.e.
independent, primitive language. Here, words are entirely drawn as
orders to be carried out by the assistant. The communication between
builder A and assistant B takes place according to the instruction
of former to the latter. The words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab’ and ‘beam’
designate not objects or ideas but particular action to be done. The
mastery that assistant B exhibits in this primitive language is shown
not by his grasp of the things but by his proficient training into acting
according to the instruction. There need not, therefore, be any mental
idea ‘mediating’ the instruction and the execution (PI §6), for “[h]ere
the teaching of language is not explanation [Erklären], but training
[Abrichten]” (PI §5).
The Augustinian picture, therefore, does not adequately present a
fundamental picture of language. It already presupposes a particular
training into the activity of naming and ostension that are at the whole
already specific skills in language. This picture thus provides only a
part of the entire picture of language. It describes the association of
words to specific meanings in such a way that the “child is credited
with an innate insight into the technique of assigning names to things.”6
Wittgenstein’s critique of ostensive explanations (§§26-38) reveals
that the technique of naming forms part of what could be designated
as the practice of language, for the meaning of a word can never be
definitely resolved by ostensive explanations. Consider the definition
of the number ‘two’ as an example (PI §28). An ostensive definition
here can be variously interpreted in every case (PI §28).
Perhaps you say: two can only be ostensively defined
in this way: “This number is called ‘two’”. For the
word “number” here shews what place in language,
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in grammar, we assign to the word. But this means
that the word “number” must be explained before
the ostensive definition can be understood.—The
word “number” in the definition does indeed shew
this place; does shew the post at which we station the
word (PI §29).
Likewise, words that function as color would invite similar problems.
Wittgenstein thus maintains that meaning is to be understood in the
practice itself that defines how the word functions appropriately.
b. Language-Game and Rule-Following
The discussion on naming and the paradox of ostension precipitates
Wittgenstein’s analysis of language-game [Sprachspiel]. He describes
it as “the whole, consisting of language and the action into which it is
woven” (PI §7). Words function and find their original home [Heimat]
in the language-game (PI §116) which presents how they receive
meaning from the actual practice where they are used. Language is
fundamentally an activity. Words are employed in the context of a
social activity that includes “not just the uttering of words and the
movement of limbs, but also […] what we might ordinarily consider
their surroundings.”7
Wittgenstein’s description of language as ‘games’ shows the deep
interconnection between meaning and the activity engaged into. The
German word Spiel “covers [even] freeform activities that in English
would be called ‘play’ rather than ‘games’.”8 Like games, each specific
practice of language can be an autonomous activity, i.e. it does not need
to have any external goal.9 The game assigns the meaning of a word
according to the roles it takes in that language-game. Nevertheless, as
practices founded in social life, language-games relate to another (in
Wittgenstein’s analogy) like “an ancient city: a maze of little streets
and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions
from various periods” (PI §18).
Wittgenstein takes the game of chess to explain how a language-game
functions.10 To show someone the ‘king’ in chess and to say “This is the
king” amounts to nothing but to show him the shape of the king (PI
§31). The meaning of this piece in the game can only be understood
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according to the rules that prescribe the use of such piece. In fact, the
words “This is the king” can only be understood by one who already
“knows what a piece in a game is” (PI §31). Playing the game, therefore,
requires a familiarity with the landscape within which such an activity
takes place. It requires a certain amount of mastery:
A move in chess doesn’t consist simply in moving a
piece in such-and-such a way on the board—nor yet
in one’s thoughts and feelings as one makes the move:
but in the circumstances that we call “playing a game
of chess”, “solving a chess problem”, and so on (PI §33).
Language, therefore, involves similarly a skilled proficiency in the
activity. To understand a color, a name or a number pertains to a
familiarity with such activity of identifying colors, naming or counting.
The critique of naming opens to the questions as to how the meaning
of a word is understood. How does the meaning of a word correspond
to its application in this sentence? “But can’t the meaning of a word
that I understand fit the sense of a sentence that I understand? Or
the meaning of one word fit the meaning of another?” (PI §138).
Wittgenstein’s response to these questions forms his long discussion
of meaning, rules, and understanding in which he critiques the
mentalist theory of meaning as a psychic event.11
Understanding the meaning of a word, as has been mentioned earlier,
is revealed in the mastery of particular applications of that word in
language. It consists in a familiarity with the rules and standards that
set limit to indicate how the meaning of such word is to be properly
understood. Wittgenstein, however, denies that grasping such a rule
or standard is a mental event in the mind:
But now it looks as if when someone says “Bring me
a slab” he could mean this expression as one long
word corresponding to the single word “Slab!”——
Then can one mean it sometimes as one word and
sometimes as four? And how does one usually mean
it?——I think we shall be inclined to say: we mean
the sentence as four words when we use it in contrast
with other sentences such as “Hand me a slab”, “Bring
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him a slab”, “Bring two slabs”, etc.; that is, in contrast
with sentences containing the separate words of our
command in other combinations.——But what does
using one sentence in contrast with others consist in?
Do the others, perhaps, hover before one’s mind? (PI
§20).
The appropriate interpretation of the meaning of a word or a sentence
in language is significant in understanding how interaction happens
in language-game. Each language-game contains within itself its own
set of parameters, i.e. rules that act as a ‘sign-post’ [Wegweiser] (PI
§85), within which interpretation and application attain conceivable
definiteness. Rules, however, remain to be sign-posts; they do not rule
out the multiplicity of interpretations. “Every action according to the
rule is an interpretation,” for
This was our paradox: no course of action could be
determined by a rule, because every course of action
can be made out to accord with a rule. The answer
was: if everything can be made out to accord with the
rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it.
And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here
(PI §201).
‘Obeying a rule’ [der Regel folgen] therefore is a practice [eine Praxis]
(PI §202), since any interpretation presupposes standards already set
forward. Hence, “it is not possible to obey a rule ‘privately’ [privatim]
(PI §202). Wittgenstein’s analysis of rule-following cites the vital
importance of the social (i.e. public) dimension of interpretation,
meaning and application against the temptation towards a qualified
skepticism to meaning and interpretation that submits everything to
mere conventions or personal taste.
c. Family Resemblances
Language, therefore, consists of several language-games that form
a network that arise from the practical engagements within a
community. Wittgenstein’s analysis of language-games, however,
opens the inquiry into the ‘essence’ of language:
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For someone might object against me: “You take the
easy way out! You talk about all sorts of languagegames, but have nowhere said what the essence of
a language-game [Wesentlische des Sprachspiels],
and hence of language, is: what is common to all
these activities, and what makes them into language
or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very
part of the investigation that once gave you yourself
most headache, the part about the general form of
propositions and of language” (PI §65).
As a response to his critic, he simply furthers his analogy of ‘games’
by enumerating several kinds of games (board-games, card-games,
ballgames, Olympic games) and invites the inquirer to “look and see”
[schauen] whether there is anything common at all.
For if you look at them you will not see something that
is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a
whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but
look [denk nicht, sondern schau]! […]
[W]e see a complicated network of similarities
overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall
similarities, sometimes similarities of detail (PI §66).
Wittgenstein summarizes this ‘network of similarities’ into ‘family
resemblances’ [Familienähnlichkeiten]. In much the same way that
family members exhibit various resemblances that are in no way
common to all, but present overlapping and criss-crossing traits,
‘games’ also form a family (PI §67).
The concept of ‘family resemblances’ presents a critique against
the traditional conception of definition. This is not, however, to be
understood as a ready submission to ambiguity; this rather is a
recognition of the embeddedness of meaning and application into
the multiple aspects of human practice. Wittgenstein identifies the
temptation to locate very rigid restrictions to meaning as a mental
cramp that fixates the mind to one conception of meaning. Nonetheless,
the experience of ambiguity reveals that language completely eludes
such fixation.
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But is it senseless to say: “Stand roughly there”?
Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city
square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind
of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand—as
if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just
how one might explain to someone what a game is.
One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a
particular way.—I do not, however, mean by this that
he is supposed to see in those examples that common
thing which I—for some reason—was unable to
express; but that he is now to employ those examples
in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an
indirect means of explaining—in default of a better.
For any general definition can be misunderstood too.
The point is that this is how we play the game (PI §71).
Wittgenstein, therefore, goes against the usual requirement for
‘crystalline purity’ (cf. PI §107) and exactness in definitions. He
insists that ‘exactness’ as a criterion arises in language only within the
conception of usefulness. Thus, such criterion is unnecessary and can
hence be discarded on account of the sufficiency of already attending
explanations (PI §88).
Consequently, the intersecting network of family resemblances also
denies the sublimity of logic as an “ideal ‘must’ to be found in reality”
(PI §101). It is nothing else for Wittgenstein but an unshakable
[unverrückbar] ideal that fixates the vision like “a pair of glasses on
our nose through which we see whatever we look at” (PI §103). What
constitutes the actual interaction in the language-game, however, is
the activity itself—the actual engagement in practice—and not the
formality of logical operations.
The analysis of rule-following reveals the public character of any
understanding and application of expressions in language. A shared
language reveals the common form of life [Lebensform] shared by
a community. “To imagine a language means to imagine a form of
life” (PI §19). A form of life is characterized by several languagegames that overlap to one another. Language is not a result of purely
arbitrary human agreement in opinions, but of a form of life lived
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by a community that shows the characteristic social life unique to
it that embodies its culture, customs, standards, experiences, etc.12
Understanding the practices, hence the language, of another means,
therefore, to share a form of life.
2. The Problem of Universals and the Philosophical Investigations
Wittgenstein’s invitation to see language as a game pushes the
understanding of the nature of universals beyond the conflicting
paradigms of essentialism and the nominalism. In contrast to such
traditional views, Wittgenstein rejects the priority of such theories
and demonstrates the reality that human language as an activity
does work even without such theories (PI §1). The question as to
how language does so pertains simply to its actual performance
in social life. This, however, does not commit Wittgenstein to any
form of skepticism. He plainly insists that explanation (theory) qua
explanation is an activity that already presupposes a whole range of
practices within which it becomes fully intelligible as a justification.
The insistence that theories ought to take such priority to the activity
itself brings about the assumptions that result to the stubborn need
for rigorous frameworks. This fixation then gives rise to philosophical
confusion (cf. PI §101, 103).
Essentialism and nominalism impose complex sets of requirements
to the nature of universals. Objectivism (essentialism) and
conventionalism (nominalism) exist as pictures through which reality
is assumed to operate. There then arises the logical tendency to put
forward reductionist conclusions, since the standards in place were
really from the beginning of the inquiry already fixed constructions
that influence how observed reality is perceived.13 Hence, essentialism
situates universals within a strict metaphysical framework thereby
diminishing the role of social life; nominalism, on the other hand,
upholds the arbitrary capacity of the thinking agent and hence rules
out the objectivity most cherished by essentialism. Wittgenstein,
however, maintains that such conceptions neglect that universals
emerge from human activities such as naming that involve rules
providing their foundation.14 Here, Wittgenstein clarifies the function
of such activity by pushing aside particular mindsets that result only
to difficulties; his investigation proposes that understanding such
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activity as naming falls within the context of several other activities
involving activities (such as ‘using a word’ and ‘pointing to a thing’)
which hang together in a relation grounded on human practice in
general. The problem of universals, therefore, can be seen as the result
of the failure to understand the belongingness and interdependence
of activities to the entire plurality of human practical engagements.
The real solution to the problem then consists in the clarification of
the role of universals in language (PI §202).
And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must
not be anything hypothetical in our considerations.
We must do away with all explanation, and description
alone must take its place. And this description gets its
light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical
problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems;
they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings
of our language, and that in such a way as to make
us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to
misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not
by giving new information, but by arranging what we
have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the
bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language
(PI §109).
a. Universals and Familienähnlichkeiten
The perception of similarities, whether discrete or remarkable ones,
and the use of concepts in language are undeniably everyday human
experiences. Concepts aid thinking and speech. In the opinion of
the essentialist, such connection between a mental concept and the
plurality of things designated by it can only be explained through a
metaphysical principle—an ‘essence.’ Things of one particular species
do not only appear to be similar, but they are essentially the same.
The mind recognizes this unity in essence through its capacity for
abstraction, but the unity itself exists as an actualized principle in its
several instances. Wittgenstein, however, puts aside this requirement
for an external metaphysical framework that characterizes
essentialism and embarks rather into a description of how concepts
are actually used in everyday discourse.15 The problem of meaning,
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hence, requires not an explanation through a complex metaphysical
system, but simply an understanding of the dynamics of language.16
This distinction is vital so as not to quickly label Wittgenstein as a
positivist. His interests were broader as compared to positivism.
Wittgenstein maintains that meaning is a function that emerges
from human interaction. It forms a family which embodies the form
of life shared by a community bound together by experience, culture,
needs and customs. The idea of family-resemblances among words
and their application is an affirmation of this webbed network of
interdependence. Language-games are primarily activities and
hence create an interlocking network that weaves together language
to other human activities (cf. PI §23). Viewing language in terms of
overlapping language-games discards the need for much exactness
and complexity17 typical of metaphysical systems and gives way to the
gradual shadings of family resemblances.18 The doctrine of analogy
somehow stands close to this conception of meaning; it maintains
that predicates apply to their subject in partly the same but partly
different manner. The conception of meaning into family resemblances
likewise affirms this interrelatedness, although it does not impose
any metaphysical requirement; what is taken as foundation for such
similarities is the belongingness of meaning to a family of activities.
b. Universals and Language-games
The absence of metaphysical constructions in Wittgenstein’s account
of universals and his conception of family-resemblances of meaning,
however, do not imply that he denies objectivity. Total relativism
is entirely alien to Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the significance of a
community in the interpretation and application of words in languagegame. As an activity, language is a trained proficiency (PI §5) involving
such rules that set standards for what is appropriate, i.e. intelligible,
in a given context. Meaning originates from the arrangements in the
language-game which is its home (PI §116) as seen from his criticism
of the idea of a private language. The interpretation and application
of words cannot find justification except within a set of socially preestablished practices.
Wittgenstein’s insights bear evidence against the tenability of absolute
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relativism in language. The arbitrariness of nominalism is incongruent
to the intelligible activities within the language-game. The standards
that pertain to a language-game are parameters that allow words in
language to become meaningful by being organized into their roles
in language. The nominalist thus may be right in the stress he puts
on “the role of human interests and human purposes in determining
our choices of principles of classification”19 but he misses the point
by ruling out objectivity as illusory being plainly imposed by the
mind. “The nominalist is so impressed by infinite diversity of possible
classifications that he is blinded to their objectivity.”20 Meaning is not
an object separable from the framework of the practice that defines
its role in language. “To imagine a language,” maintains Wittgenstein,
“is to imagine a form of life” (PI §19). The tenability of nominalism,
therefore, could be much improved by a recognition of the public
nature of the meaning and the application of words in language. As
there can be no private language (PI §261), meaning cannot simply
be confined to a private choice made by an individual receiving
universality through a consensus among others. The very conception
of consensus (agreement and disagreement) could not but take place
in a venue where a practice already operates.
c. Beyond Objectivism and Conventionalism
Wittgenstein’s analysis of language moves beyond the particular
issues of objectivism and conventionalism into the nature of language
and practice. His analysis proposes a recognition of the dynamicity
of language and meaning among human interactions. The problem
of universals stands as a pseudo-problem requiring not a new set
of theories but a clarification of how universals as such function in
language. Wittgenstein’s therapeutic methodology thus relieves the
mind of its paralysis to one inordinate view and enables it to perceive
wider horizons.21
The analysis carried out, however, does not just end with the dissolution
of the problem. Such endeavor would seem futile if it would only result
in plain verbal dispute over the matter. A command of a clearer view
by the dissolution of the problem ought to bring about a different way
of looking at other issues related to it. The next section shall go over
a select survey of some possible implications of the reinterpretation
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41
of the problem of universals proposed in this study. The problem of
universals touches several other problems as its long history suggests
and thus its resolution would benefit the understanding of such other
related disciplines. What have been included here are only possibilities,
not compelling implications, which may aid in understanding the
foreseeable influence of this reinterpretation to other fields.
d. Exploring the Implications of the Investigations’ Critique
(1) Moral Language
In 1936, the logical positivist Alfred Jules Ayer published the influential
book Language, Truth and Logic where he expounds an emotivist theory
of ethics. In accordance with logical positivism’s theory of knowledge,
he suggests that ethical propositions amount to nothing but mere
reports of personal sentiments towards an action. Nonetheless, this
was not an entirely new ethical theory, for centuries before him, the
philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) already denied any implicative
relation between descriptive and evaluative assertions.22 Ayer denied
the function of ethical proposition as ethical on the grounds that
empirical analysis does not provide any warranted claim beyond
the individual’s pronouncement of a personal belief or sentiment.
Such positivist analysis committed to the ‘principle of verification’
inevitably delimits the claim to universality of ethical propositions
thus reducing their value to conventional paradigms among common
personal sentiments. Alasdair McIntyre, one of the critics of emotivist
ethics, showed that such opinion is loosely founded on misconceived
presuppositions that do not give notice to the historical character of
moral concepts. He writes,
Some philosophers have even written as if moral
concepts were a timeless, limited, unchanging,
determinate species of concept, necessarily having the
same features throughout their history. […] In a less
sophisticated way, historians of morals are all too apt
to allow that moral practices and the content of moral
judgments may vary from society to society and from
person to person, but at the same time these historians
have subtly assimilated different moral concepts—and
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so they end up suggesting that although what is held
to be right or good is not always the same, roughly the
same concepts of right and good are universals.23
He points out that the alleged failure of ethical paradigms to account
for changing contexts such as historical epochs is not a flaw in moral
concepts themselves but a flaw in understanding their relative
application to different contexts in history. Moral concepts constitute
the evaluative vocabulary of a particular social context characterized
by the practical engagements in the social life of that community.
Philosophical ethics, therefore, has the role of clarifying how such
moral concepts function within the social life that provides roles for
the concepts to play. In addition, philosophical discourse takes part
in changing moral concepts by lubricating its appropriation to social
life.24
Consider for example the concept ‘good’—the most widely designated
word in ethics. The concept ‘good’ is central to any moral vocabulary
such that the appropriation of it in social life fixes the working set
of moral concepts. ‘Good,’ however, as the existence of many ethical
schools show, is not very clearly designated. Several accounts attempt
to propose a definition of it through formal analysis, while others make
practical delimitations. These, however, have proven unsatisfactory;
the concept ‘good’ escapes exact definition.25 Hence, some opinions
take forms of moral skepticism and relativism.
Moore, however, in his Principia Ethica (1903) claims that ‘good’ is a
simple, unanalyzable property.26 He suggests a form of intuitionism
against the opinions that fall into what he calls the ‘naturalistic fallacy’
that designates ‘good’ as a natural thing—pleasure, satisfaction, food,
etc.27 Such opinions confuse the predicate copula ‘is’ to identity (e.g. in
‘two plus three is five’) and hence they assume that ‘good’ as predicable
ought to be interchangeable (consider the contrast between ‘pleasure
is good’ and ‘the good is pleasure’). Such error results due to a poor
analysis that Moore seeks to replace in his work.
The analysis of the concept ‘good’ through its many roles in the
practice of language, however, reveals something more than what the
intuitionists claim. Intuition does not itself rule out the possibility
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43
of arbitrariness that may result to ambiguity. Hence, it would be an
insufficient ground. An analysis of its grammar, i.e. its use in language,
may provide a better understanding. Consider this example: when
one asserts that ‘an apple is good’, one indicates that what he seeks is
something sought in general by people who want what he wants.28 The
predicate ‘good’ is not merely an indicative of personal preference, for
it involves a “criteria characteristically accepted as a standard”29 by
those who apply the word in similar context. The concept ‘good’ is not
a mere result of many personal accounts that converge to form a single
concept by convention; rather the word plays a role in the network
of social life and is intelligible not according to a neatly constructed
definition but by its role in such context where it receives justification.
To predicate ‘good’ to something is to invoke a set of criteria nested
in the social landscape of a community. Moore’s analysis ended with
the conception of ‘good’ as a simple precisely because he did not
fully acknowledge the interconnectedness and interdependence that
characterize language and social life. Moore was actually invoking
a pure concept of ‘good’ as if it could be understood in vacuum, i.e.
outside social life.
Emotivists, on the other hand, likewise make an erroneous denial of
the functional integration of concepts to social life. Their insistence
that moral utterances are reducible to personal sentiments results
from a misconception that language could only function in a limited
way, i.e. describe empirical facts or assert tautologies. Contrary to such
opinion, language involves a family of functions that stand parallel to
the network of human activities stemming from a shared form of life.
Moral utterances, therefore, play a different role, which differentiates
them from other assertions.
Emotivism does not attend sufficiently to the
distinction between the meaning of a statement which
remains constant between different uses, and the
variety of uses to which one and the same statement
can be put.30
Emotivists, therefore, tend to conflate meaning and use, and even
confuse the primary use of moral utterances in human language to
assertions of empirical facts.31
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(2) The Inexorability of Mathematics
The primary problem that undoubtedly gave rise to Wittgenstein’s
interests in philosophy was that of the foundations of mathematics
and logic. A huge section of his Nachlass contains several of his insights
in mathematics, which centered on the conflict between regarding the
content of mathematics as transcendental (i.e. that a mathematical
reality has truth and meaning regardless of human rules or use) and
espousing a psychologistic interpretation of mathematical truths.32
This dispute apparently parallels the opposition between that of the
realist and the idealist, and Wittgenstein’s insights concerning the real
and ideal have significant contributions to understanding the nature
of mathematical and logical statements.
Wittgenstein’s early writings in the Tractatus reveal his hesitation
in giving up totally his early transcendental picture of logic and
mathematics. There he assigns logical truths with absolute value:
“Logic must look after itself. […] In a certain sense, we cannot make
mistakes in logic.”33 It contains its own justification, and hence its
meaning (as tautologies)34 is completely independent of human rules
or use. Wittgenstein, however, dropped this initial opinion when he
began to look at language in terms of games, which include not only
the rules of its operation but also the wider background that covers
even human practice. Mathematics thus in this conception belongs
properly not to an independent transcendent absolute, but to a system
of social engagements in a community; but then, asks Wittgenstein:
“What does the peculiar inexorability of mathematics consist in?”35
It is first important to recognize that mathematical statements
are widely different from empirical ones. The former according to
Wittgenstein are ‘nonrevisable’; they play a special role in language.
“Mathematics as such is always measure, not the thing measured.”36
Unlike empirical statements, mathematical ones do not describe
empirical facts and hence no such facts or sensory impression can
make them true or false.37 When one adds two to five and gets eight,
he does not cast any doubt as to whether the mathematical statement
‘two plus five makes seven’ is correct or not; rather, what he does
is to redo his counting in the assumption that he must have had
somewhere made a mistake. Mathematical statements, therefore, are
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considered as such according to the role they play in human practice;
their inexorability exhibits a specific arrangement in human practice,
not in anything transcendent, that assigns to mathematics a different
role in language. “There is no guarantee that our mathematics will not
change (indeed it has), and certain statements that were considered
nonsense will then become necessary (such as “2 – 4 = -2” before
and after the introduction of negative numbers).”38 Mathematical
propositions are thus ‘grammatical’ in function, i.e. they pertain to
new ways that introduce useful innovations to the vocabulary and
articulation of a practice.39 Thus, the introduction of negative numbers
to the number system allowed new ways of doing arithmetic, while
the emergence of imaginary numbers paved the way to different
meanings for ‘multiplication,’ ‘square root’ and even ‘number’ itself.40
Some interpreters of Wittgenstein, however, in this area of his work
immediately labels Wittgenstein’s conception of mathematics as
conventionalist,41 in which “the logical necessity of any statement is
always the direct expression of a linguistic convention.”42 Such reading,
however, does not run consistently with Wittgenstein’s conception
of mathematics. Such conventionalism ascribes the correctness of
mathematical statements as a result of the plain agreement among
mathematicians who grant them objectivity. “Wittgenstein’s target
here is not our common notions of mathematical objectivity, but the
misleading picture of the source of this objectivity.”43 Mathematics
simply provides the common framework where without which even
agreement or disagreement would make no sense at all. Agreement
does not make a mathematical statement true, but simply provides
the venue in which truth and falsity along with its role in language
would be intelligible.44
“So you are saying that human agreement decides
what is true and what is false?”—It is what human
beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the
language they use. That is not agreement in opinion
but in form of life (PI §241).
Mathematical statements that arise from this common framework
take their place in language according to their use, i.e. in their ability
to facilitate activities such as doing arithmetic, counting, solving a
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mathematical problem or evaluating an equation. Wittgenstein’s
insights thus provide points to clarify such apparent conflict between
the conception of mathematics as inexorable and the changes that
may take place due to new mathematical conventions.
Endnotes
1
2
3
4
The Philosophical Investigations, henceforth Investigations, was edited
and translated into English by G.E.M. Anscombe and published in 1953
(New York: The Macmillan Company). All references cite the third edition
of the work and designates the title as ‘PI’. All citations from Part I follow
Wittgenstein’s numbering of the remarks.
McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (London:
Routledge, 1997), p.9.
The choice of Augustine for the beginning the Investigations serves
different opinions. Anthony Kenny points out that Wittgenstein’s
presentation of Augustine is misleading, Legacy of Wittgenstein
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp.10-11. Ray Monk, however, claims:
“Connected with the degree of personal involvement required to make
sense of it, there is another reason why it seems appropriate to begin
the book with a quotation from St. Augustine’s Confessions. And that is
that, for Wittgenstein, all philosophy, in so far as it is pursued honestly
and decently, begins with a confession.” Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty
of Genius (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p.366. For discussions of
Wittgenstein’s choice of Augustine, see Stanley Cavell’s “Notes and
Afterthoughts on the Opening of Wittgenstein’s Investigations” in Sluga
and Stern’s The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.261-295; Fergus Kerr’s Theology
After Wittgenstein (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp.38-42; and David
Stern’s Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.72-75.
PI §1, this is Wittgenstein’s translation of the quoted Latin text.
5Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, p.86.
6McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, p.41.
7Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, p.89.
8
Ibid., p.89.
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9
47
Kenny, Wittgenstein, p.163.
10 Wittgenstein remarks, “The question ‘What is a word really?’ us
analogous to ‘What is a piece in chess?’”, PI §108.
11 Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following together with his discussion
on private language has been interpreted in several ways. The most
provocative arrangement of the argument is that of Saul Kripke’s
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) where he interprets
Wittgenstein’s arguments into a skeptical framework of rule-following.
The exposition here, however, follows McGinn’s Wittgenstein and the
Philosophical Investigations, pp.82-106.
12 The discussion of forms of life is provided clear elaboration in
Wittgenstein’s last writings. See On Certainty, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe
and G.H. von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969).
13 In Wittgenstein’s analogy, they are like “a pair of glasses on our nose.” PI
§103.
14 See for example PI §49: “Naming is a preparation for description.”
15 Whether Wittgenstein denied the validity of metaphysics or found its
conclusions untenable is not at all very clear. A reading of the Tractatus
reveals that what he clearly denies is that of speaking beyond the limits
of language. Hence, some interpreters take Wittgenstein to be arguing
solely against the act of metaphysical discourse, but not the existence
of the entities proposed by metaphysics. Some even read some of
Wittgenstein’s writings as paving the way to the construction of a
metaphysical language that would be sufficiently valid. See for example
M.J. Charlesworth’s Philosophy and Linguistic Analysis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University, 1959), pp.219-220; and Hugh Petrie’s “Science and
Metaphysics: A Wittgensteinian Interpretation” and E.D. Klemke’s “The
Ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” both in Essays on Wittgenstein
edited by E.D. Klemke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp.138169 and pp.104-119 respectively. Other recent interpreters, however,
have challenged such readings where Wittgenstein seems to be advancing
a kind of ‘theory.’ They take a literal reading of Wittgenstein’s insistence
that philosophy is solely an activity, not a body of doctrines and hence
dismiss the possibility of metaphysical discourse, cf. Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, henceforth TLP, trans. by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd, 1961), §4.112, PI §§126-128.
For a reading on these interpretations, see David Stern’s Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Investigations pp.40-55 where he identifies the two camps
as the Pyrrhonian and non-Pyrrhonian readings of Wittgenstein.
16 PI §116: “What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to
their everyday use.”
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17 Cf. PI §107: “The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper
becomes the conflict between it and our requirement.”
18 “A Philosophy of Mathematics Between Two Camps” by Steve Gerrard,
p.176 in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein edited by Hans
Sluga and David Stern, pp.171-197. Gerrard regards this as a shift
from Wittgenstein’s calculus-based language to a wider conception of
language through games.
19 “Universals and Family Resemblances” by Renford Bambrough, p.121
in Loux, Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), pp.106-124.
20 Ibid., p.123.
21 Such comparison of philosophical elucidations to therapies can be found
in PI §133.
22 On Hume’s dichotomy between ‘is’ and ‘ought,’ see James Baillie’s Hume
on Morality (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp.136-138.
23 Alasdair McIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy
from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1966), p.1.
24 Ibid., p.2.
25 Even Aristotle’s designation of good as that which is desired is ambiguous.
Cf. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle translated with an introduction
by Sir David Ross (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p.1.
26 Charlesworth, Philosophy and Linguistic Analysis, p.28.
27 Ibid., pp.29-30.
28 Ibid., p.58.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., p.259.
31 Ibid.
32 Gerrard, “A Philosophy of Mathematics Between Two Camps”, pp.172173.
33 TLP §5.473.
34 TLP §6.126.
35 Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics I, §4 in Gerrard, “A Philosophy
of Mathematics Between Two Camps”, p.177.
36 Ibid., p.178.
37 Ibid., p.179.
38 Ibid.
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39 Monk, The Duty of Genius, p.468.
40 Ibid., pp.546-547.
49
41 Gerrard, “A Philosophy of Mathematics Between Two Camps”,
p.183. Gerrard identifies as one example Michael Dummet’s article
“Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics” in The Philosophical Review
68 (1959), pp.324-348, reprinted in Wittgenstein: The Philosophical
Investigations edited by George Pitcher (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1968).
42 Ibid., p.425.
43 Ibid., p.191.
44 Ibid., p.190.
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LOVE AS DUTY
A Kierkegaardian Response to the
Kantian Critique of the Divine Commandment
JEROME C. JAIME
Most people would consider love as a good. Some thinkers would even
go as far as claiming it to be the good—a necessary good.1 Hence, to
their opinion, love would be an end worthy of pursuit such that a
moral precept obliging it would be universally valid. In this manner,
one may even speak of self-perfection resulting from love: a perfection
opening man even more fully to others.2 Love, therefore, becomes a
necessary condition in a relationship between persons. As a good, it
gives meaning to one’s existence: “it frees the lover from slavery to
the relatively meaningless.”3 Love seeks what is good for oneself and
for the other, as it reveals the goodness in the lover and the beloved
leading to their perfection. One wants those whom one loves to be
perfect and to enjoy all possible goods.4 It is a good that is sought for
the well-being of every man.
The search for completeness through a love-relationship seems to be
imbedded in human nature. “It is not only necessary but also noble;
for we praise those who love their friends and it is thought to be a fine
thing to have many friends.”5 No one would want to live in isolation,
even if he has all the other goods of the world.6 Man has a natural
longing to complete himself by personally relating with other men, for
without “love, there can be no true interpersonal relations”7 among
people. Isolation can only be conquered through a union of individuals
through unselfish love. Nonetheless, the lover, though he does not
expect the other to love him in return, also has a need to be loved.
If the lover would deny his need for affection, expressing love would
soon become a burden and it would only result to a different form of
isolation. “A truly personal and human sphere is created where two
or more persons meet as persons in mutual love.”8 Even if the beloved
is an enemy, love would transform him such that he also becomes
capable of reciprocating the goodness expressed by the lover.
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This therefore grounds somewhat reasonably the affirmation made
by religious traditions of the divine command that raises the act
of love and benevolence as necessary moral responsibility that
all should fulfill. This is a generally acceptable idea among many
religious and non-religious perspectives. The ‘divine command
theory’ claims that love is a necessary good because it is commanded
by a sovereign divine authority. This kind of obedience, nonetheless,
is not a blind submission to authority. Love remains to be seen as an
activity9 whereby a person consciously, deliberately and intentionally
expresses benevolence towards another individual. Such love is made
perfect through God’s intelligently-willed order as a divine lawgiver
by which man in his rational obedience is directed to his end.
1. Kantian Critique of the Divine Commandment
Philosophers like Kant are not easily persuaded by such arguments;
they deny that love has to be or could be commanded. Kant denies
the idea that moral norms could be deemed as universally binding
simply by virtue of natural inclination or of divine authority. He
asserts that the ultimate source of the principles of the moral law
should be grounded “in reason considered in itself, without reference
to specifically human conditions, to human nature or to any factor in
human life or society.”10 He therefore concludes that “nothing in the
world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be
conceived which could be called good without qualification except
a good will.”11 In the Critique of Practical Reason and Foundations of
the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant directly puts forward a critique of the
divine commandment. He contends that there are only two ways to
take the commandment: either as pathological love (passionate) or
practical love (duty). He writes,
It is in this way, undoubtedly, that we should understand
those passages of Scripture which command us to
love our neighbor and even our enemy, for love as an
inclination cannot be commanded. But beneficence
from duty, when no inclination impels it and even when
it is opposed by a natural and unconquerable aversion,
is practical love, not pathological love: it resides in the
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will and not in the propensities of feeling, in principles
of action and not in tender sympathy; and it alone can
be commanded.12
Here, Kant clearly identifies the divine commandment as practical love
and rejects the idea that any kind of action motivated by or done out of
such sentiment and feeling can be commanded. Hence, one could but
express love for another as practical love, i.e. in actions which arise
not from inclinations, but which arise from duty. For Kant, acting out
of sentiment is something beyond the control of one’s will.
The same affection towards men is possible no doubt,
but cannot be commanded, for it is not in the power
of any man to love anyone at command; therefore it
is only practical love that is meant in that pith of all
laws.13
Kant understands the divine commandment as practical love on
the basis that moral life cannot require that one strive to develop
sentiments or feelings of love for others in which they mean more
than acting from and for the sake of duty. 14 “For Kant the demands of
moral life require that we act from maxims that are consistent with
the moral law.”15 Likewise, he argues that if one would accept the
commandment as a rule, it would mean that individuals should have
a kind of disposition wherein “to love God means […] to like to do His
commandments; to love one’s neighbor means to like to practice all
duties towards him.”16 Consequently, it cannot compel anyone to have
such a disposition, for it would be plainly absurd.
For a command to like to do a thing is in itself
contradictory, because if we already know of ourselves
what we are bound to do, and if further we are
conscious of liking to do it, a command would be quite
needless; and if we do it not willingly, but only out of
respect for the law, a command that makes this respect
the motive of our maxim would directly counteract the
disposition commanded.17
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For Kant, this kind of disposition is an ‘Ideal of Holiness.’18 In this state,
there is nothing in the individual that would tempt him to deviate
from the moral law. Though this is impossible to be attained because,
“being a creature, […] he can never be quite free from desires and
inclinations, […] they can never of themselves coincide with the moral
law.”19
2. Kierkegaard on the Triangular Nature of Love
The Kantian idea of love is only one of the many possible interpretations
to the concept of love. Although, there may be common ideas in every
thinkers’ elucidation of the term, “there [remains] considerable
confusion as to what love is and how it works.”20 An appropriate
understanding of love that fits the idea of the divine commandment is
therefore needed to accomplish the task of giving a plausible response
to the critique elaborated in the last section.
There are two key concepts in the divine commandment: the individual
and the concept of love as duty. These two are very much interrelated
such that one cannot conceive of love as a duty without first being
able to understand who is the individual. Kierkegaard’s treatment of
these two concepts and his system of thought provide a more dynamic
interpretation of the divine commandment and its ethical foundation.
a. The Other as Neighbor
The concept of the individual plays a very crucial and significant role
in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. In his philosophy, Kierkegaard reinstates
man to his original position so to speak.21 His thought detaches the
individual from the mob and places him in the face of his own absurd
existence wherein he becomes the main actor. He is not merely a
spectator but an active individual who realizes his very essence
as “a personal center of responsibility, selfhood and equality.”22 For
Kierkegaard, the “highest self-actualization of the individual is the
relating of oneself to God, not as the universal, absolute Thought, but
as the absolute Thou.”23
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Kierkegaard adds another complicated point to this already radical
understanding of the individual. In describing the ‘self’ he adds: “Such
a derived, constituted relation is the human self, a relation which
relates itself to its own self, and in relating itself to its own self relates
itself to another.”24 Here the Other occupies a significant place in the
process of self-realization. The self is confronted by the fact that,
though one exists as an individual, one is not alone in the world. The
attainment of selfhood is a joint affair among individuals who are all
equal. This equality among individuals is exemplified in the concept
of the neighbor. The neighbor is a hidden quality of the other such
that it can only be seen through a kind of divine assistance. Each
individual is a neighbor to oneself. “Although on the surface level they
may have differences, both are unique human beings who must learn
to recognize and appreciate their common characteristics, as well as
their differences”25
The concept of neighbor is indeed an intrinsic value of the other. All
people possess this intrinsic value. “There is not a single person in the
whole world who is as surely and easily recognized as the neighbor.”26
Therefore, one easily recognizes a neighbor, since the neighbor is any
person.27 To recognize the neighbor is to respect the other as he is.
It safeguards the other from the Sartrean mistake which says that
the self is shattered when the “stare of the other turns me into an
object”28 and can only be recovered if one transform the other into an
object.29 Kierkegaard offers the concept of neighbor as a solution. “The
neighbor is self-denial’s middle term that steps in between self-love’s
I and I, but also between erotic love’s and friendship’s I and the other
I.”30
The neighbor, however, is not identical with the term Other. When
Kierkegaard uses the term ‘neighbor,’ it refers to every human person
who is apart from the I but nonetheless bears resemblance thereto
in virtue of being an individual. However, the same concept may not
apply to God when he discusses the divine commandment. He would
consider God not as a neighbor (i.e. the proper object of love) but
the ‘middle term’ of Christian love. The I (self), the other (neighbor)
and God constitute the dialectical movement of love that reaches its
synthesis in Christian love. Love therefore has a triangular nature
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whereby God is the middle term. It is only in this sense that one
can properly love the other without falling into the dangers of selflove. Kierkegaard thus sees the nature of Christian love in terms of a
triangular dynamic:
Worldly wisdom is of the opinion that love is a
relationship between persons; Christianity teaches
that love is a relationship between: a person – God – a
person, that is, that God is the middle term. [...] To love
God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to
love God is to love another person; to be helped by
another person to love God is to be loved.31
For Kierkegaard, two people who love each other see their equality,
either because of the image of God in them, or because of the foundation
of love within them.32 “When someone goes with God, he does indeed
go without danger; but he is also compelled to see and to see in a unique
way.”33 Therefore, one fulfills the requirement of the commandment,
“Thou shall love thy neighbor,” and the neighbor precisely is everyone.
To love therefore means to love without preference. The reason is very
simple: “the neighbor has the object that is without difference. The
neighbor is the utterly unrecognizable dissimilarity between persons
or is the eternal equality before God.”34 The divine commandment
says that one has a duty to love the neighbor, not the friend or the
beloved. It does not forbid one to love the friend but admonishes one:
“love your friend honestly and devotedly, but let love for the neighbor
be what you learn from each other in your friendship’s confidential
relationship with God.”35
“The ‘neighbor’ is what thinkers call ‘the other,’ that by which the
selfishness in self-love is to be tested.”36 Loving the other as the
neighbor also means respecting the other as a Thou. When one is able
to discern this common watermark among individuals through a kind
of divine assistance, one is, to some extent, motivated to love the other
in whom it is perceived.37 “Only if it is mediated by the commanded
love of God can the commanded love of neighbor reach out to every
other human being, excluding no one on preferential grounds.”38
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b. Love as Duty: Between Christian Love and Preferential Love
Kierkegaard answers the central question, why is there a need, or simply
why should love be commanded, and thus, a duty by distinguishing
three kinds of love. He tries to distinguish the distinctively Christian
form of love (agape, caritas) from both erotic love (eros, amor) and
friendship.39 “The aim of both erotic love and friendship is to love
this single human being above all others and in distinction from all
others.”40 The kind of love that the divine commandment speaks of is a
love that stands in sharp contrast with these two kinds of love. While
the divine commandment compels the individual to love (agape) all
without exclusion, erotic love and friendship are both preferential and
exclusive. Kierkegaard writes,
The issue between the poet and Christianity can be
defined very precisely as follows: Erotic love and
friendship are preferential love [Forkjerlighed] and the
passion of preferential love; Christian love [Kjerlighed]
is self-denial’s love, for which this shall vouches.
To deprive these passions of their strength is the
confusion. But preferential love’s most passionate
boundlessness in excluding means to love only one
single person; self-denial’s boundlessness in giving
itself means not to exclude a single one.41
For Kierkegaard, only by becoming duty can love become secure from
the dangers of self-love that is akin to passionate preferential love.
“Just as self-love selfishly embraces this one and only self that makes it
self-love, so also erotic love’s passionate preference selfishly encircles
this one and only beloved, and friendship’s passionate preference
encircles this one and only friend.”42 Three things destroy erotic love
and friendship: “changes in our inclinations and feelings, changes in
the objects we love, and the unhappiness, pain, and suffering that can
lead to despair.”43 However, love can be secured from these if it is a
duty, and so compliance is motivated by a sense of duty imposed by the
commandment to love the neighbor, independent of one’s inclinations
and feelings. “Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally
secured against every change, eternally free in blessed independence,
eternally and happily secure against despair.”44
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It is possible to put up an argument against the divine commandment
by saying that love ought to be spontaneous if it is to be sincere.
Spontaneity is one aspect of passionate preferential love. Nevertheless,
Kierkegaard argues that even spontaneous love seeks security.
“Therefore the two swear an oath, swear fidelity or friendship to each
other.”45 However, this oath offers nothing but a false security because
the two persons who swear to love each other forever, “swears by
something that is lower than [love] itself.”46 “The two swear by their
love to each other forever, instead of swearing love to each other by
eternity.”47 Therefore, both of them swear by something that could
change over time. If what one feels changes, then there would be
nothing else that would bind their love. The only way to find true
security if one is to make an oath is to swear by the higher or “if one
is to swear by eternity, then one swears by the duty that one ‘shall
love.’”48 Spontaneous love is still subject to change because “it is not
consciously grounded upon the eternal”49 but depends entirely on
one’s emotion and feeling. It could change into its opposite, “into hate”50
or “it can become the sickness of jealousy.”51 This is what Kierkegaard
means by securing love against change, he is thinking of changes in
the desires or feelings that are in part constitutive of preferential love,
desires and passions that sometimes spontaneously alter even when
there is no change in the object of love or in the lover’s beliefs about
the object. 52
Kierkegaard also speaks of love being free in blessed independence.
“Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally made free
in blessed independence.”53 Christian love is a kind of love that is
independent from any mutable characteristics of the object. On the
other hand, erotic love has for its object the beloved, while friendship
cannot exist without the friend. “The dependence of erotic love and
friendship on mutable characteristics of the beloved and the friend
make them vulnerable to alterations in their objects.”54 If in any case
the beloved loses his external attractiveness, erotic love fades and
dies. Friendship is also destroyed if at one point the friend starts to
become unfaithful, and the virtues for which he was cherished turn
into vices. The divine commandment of love has no other object than
the neighbor who is every human being, who possesses nothing of
the perfections of the beloved or the friend. Love does not require the
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perfection of its object. “Erotic love [Elskov] is defined by the object;
friendship is defined by the object; only love for the neighbor is defined
by love [Kjerlighed].”55
“Only when it is a duty to love, then is love eternally and happily secured
against despair.”56 One experiences despair when one loses a friend
or beloved. Despair pertains to the unhappiness brought about by
preferential love. Christian love by becoming duty and by undergoing
the change of eternity secures the individual from any danger of
preferential love. Rather than be in despair, “the one who loves is with
blessed joy conscious of this and God in his confidant.”57 Kierkegaard,
therefore, offers an alternative to Rational love which is merely
grounded on reason’s practical function. As such, what it only implies
is that Rational love (in the same way as preferential love) falls short
of an appropriate interpretation that can appropriately describe the
real value of the act of love.
3. Love and the Three Stages on Life’s Way
Kierkegaard is very much credited by general histories of philosophies
for his ideas concerning the three spheres of existence or what he
calls three stages on life’s way.58 The three modes follow a hierarchical
pattern from the most basic to the highest level of existence: the
aesthetical, the ethical, and the religious. The levels of love explained
above follow a similar scheme; hence, the aesthetical is to preferential
love, ethical is to rational love and religious is to Christian love.
a. The Aesthetical Sphere: Preferential Love
The aesthetic sphere as the first stage of existence is “characterized
by self-dispersal on the level of sense.”59 Man in the aesthetical stage
(the aesthete)60 regards his existence as an expression of freedom.
The aesthete lives in such a way that he is almost entirely governed
by his emotions, impulses, and passion. The aesthete thus presents
a preferential love. It is a love driven by passion and pleasure and
security from pain. Thus, one loves a friend or a beloved because of
the perfection that one perceives in the other. At times, it is simply
motivated by self-love.61 Preferential love, nonetheless, later loses the
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passion that motivates it; “the sophisticated aesthete realizes that the
pursuit of pleasure itself becomes boring, […] but he tries to solve this
problem from within the aesthetic sphere.”62 Thus, to avoid boredom
he never makes any serious commitments to any person. Moreover,
since aestheticism is a form of alienation from selfhood, the aesthete
cannot love the other in the right way. It cannot satisfy the demands
of the commandment to love oneself in the right way63 because the
aesthete does not know himself. “At this volatile moment of near
derangement, one can make “THE LEAP.” By the sheer force of his
passion, the individual rips himself out of his old form of existence
(aestheticism), and by losing his self, gains his self.”64
b. The Ethical Sphere: Rational Love (Kantian Ethics)
The individual thus enters the second stage of existence: the ethical
sphere. In this stage, the individual “accepts determinate moral
standards and obligations, the voice of universal reason, and thus
gives form and consistency to his life.”65 His new life is thus constituted
by a new self who makes choices not out of sheer passion but out of a
definite ethical code. It does not matter what kind of ethical code one
adopts as long as it fulfills these two imperatives which Kierkegaard
requires: a commitment to self-perfection and a commitment to other
human beings.66
Rational love, therefore, is very much appropriate for the ethical
individual. It is a love of a rational being who “utters the commands of
morality to himself.”67 The ethical self is Kant’s autonomous will who
acts in practical love. He does not love to become happy but simply for
the sake of moral uprightness. To do an act of kindness for the other is
morally good; hence, the will affirms it to be a worthy course of action.
Rational love, nonetheless, still fails to be an ideal actualization; this is
very evident in the limitations of the ethical sphere.
Although […] the ethical involves a balance of the
aesthetic, the moral and the religious […] there is
nevertheless certain harshness in Kierkegaard’s
ethical realm. The individual is engaged in a constant
self-scrutiny and self-judgment from which there is
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no reprieve. It is almost more than one can bear. And
indeed, Kierkegaard talks about an “ethical despair”
that eventually brings the individual to his or her
knees.68
The ethical man’s love is often cold and leads to despair. Moreover,
rational love does not see the eternal’s mark—the neighbor—in the
person. What he rather sees is loveworthiness. “Someone we call a
loveworthy man is a man who above all does not take too much to
heart eternity’s or God’s requirement for an essential and essentially
strenuous life.”69 The ethical man loves the other because reason and
morality tells him that it is worthwhile to do so. The ethical individual,
therefore, becomes aware of his own self-insufficiency, his sin, guilt
and incapacity to conform with the demands of the commandment.
In the point of ethical despair and meaninglessness, the individual
makes a “leap of faith” to the religious sphere.
c. The Religious Sphere: Christian Love (Kierkegaard)
The highest form of self-actualization is attained in the religious
sphere. And as the individual makes a leap to this sphere his love
also achieves the perfection of Christian love. He, therefore, becomes
what Kierkegaard calls the “Knight of Faith.” Kierkegaard’s best model
for a person who has reached the religious sphere of existence is the
biblical character Abraham.
Christian love is a love that makes no distinctions. Therefore in
some sense, the religious individual who loves according to the
commandment leaves the friend and the lover. He does not see them;
what he rather perceives is the neighbor. The individual loses himself
by an act of self-denial. “True love is self-denial’s love.”70 This selfdenial’s love is the Christian idea of self denial not the human idea of
self denial.71 Kierkegaard says,
The merely human idea of self denial is this: give up
your self-loving desires, cravings and plans – then you
will be esteemed and honored and loved as righteous
and wise. […] The Christian idea of self-denial is: give
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up your self-loving desires and cravings, give up your
self-seeking plans and purposes so that you truly
work unselfishly for the good – and then, for that very
reason, put up with being abominated almost as a
criminal, insulted and ridiculed.72
The Christian ideal of love is foolishness to reason and an offense to
the world.73 This kind of love alone “can open man to the infinite in a
way that no mere reasoning can.”74 Thus, Christian love is the highest
form of love and the real fulfillment of the divine commandment. The
individual fulfills his commitment to humanity and to his God and
reaches self-actualization. “We owe all our love to God, but that he
commands us to express this in loving our Neighbor; one loves God
by loving one’s Neighbor.”75 One is confronted with the fact that one
cannot love without divine assistance.76 One rests one’s confidence
not upon the power of one’s autonomous will but on God’s hands.
“And the man who appropriates and affirms his relationship to God in
faith becomes what he really is, the individual before God.”77
Endnotes
1
2
3
4
“Joseph Fletcher would even make it the good. If Fletcher is correct, love
is a necessary good, obligatory for those who admit this fact.” Thomas M.
Garrett, Problems and Perspectives in Ethics (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1968), 174.
Garrett, Problems and Perspectives in Ethics, 173.
Ibid., 162.
Ibid., 165.
5Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in Steven M. Cahn and Peter Markie, Ethics:
History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 167.
6
Ibid.
7Garrett, Problems and Perspectives in Ethics, 169.
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9
62 LOVE AS DUTY
Ibid., 164.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in Cahn and Markie, Ethics: History, Theory,
and Contemporary Issues, 171.
10 Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy Vol. VI Modern Philosophy:
From The French Enlightenment to Kant (New York: Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, Inc., 1994), 313.
11 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?,
trans. by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational
Publishing, 1959), 9.
12 Ibid., 15-16.
13 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 104.
14 Alan R. Drengson, “Compassion and Transcendence of Duty and
Inclination,” Philosophy Today 25, 1 (Spring 1981), 35.
15 Ibid., 35.
16 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 104.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 105.
20 Garrett, Problems and Perspectives in Ethics, 160.
21 James Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard (Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company 1953), 175.
22 Ibid., 176.
23 Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII, 341.
24 Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death in Palmer, Kierkegaard for
Beginners, 67. Italization is the author’s.
25 Ben Alex, Soren Kierkegaard: An Authentic Life (Copenhagen: Scandinavia
Publishing, 1997), 30.
26 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 52.
27 Ibid.
28 Garrett, Problems and Perspectives in Ethics, 158.
29 Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, 353.
30 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 54
31 Ibid., 106-107.
32 Alex, Soren Kierkegaard: An Authentic Life, 30.
33 Kierkegaard Works of Love, 77.
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34 Ibid., 68.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 21.
37 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 365.
38 Ibid., 359.
39 Here friendship and erotic love are treated as both preferential love.
However, it does not mean that Kierkegaard claims that erotic love is
always wrong or that all forms of friendship are selfish, he only points
out in the Works of Love that the there are dangers with such kinds of
relationships. The problem arises when a man “does not see to it that his
wife [or his friend are] to him the neighbor.” Kierkegaard, Works of Love,
141.
Pia Sotoft also says, “Many have misread Works of Love by suggesting that
Kierkegaard’s view of love between man and woman is negative. If they
were right, Kierkegaard would have a problem. But that is not the case.
Kierkegaard doesn’t make any judgments here, he just tries to analyze
relationships among people, while pointing out the dangers of self-love.”
Alex, Soren Kierkegaard: An Authentic Life, 29.
40 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 354.
41 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 52.
42 Ibid., 53.
43 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 357. 44 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 29.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., 30.
47 Ibid., 31.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., 34. Italization is the author’s. “Hate is a love that has become its
opposite, a love that has perished [gaae til Grunde]. Down in the ground
[I Grunden] the love is continually aflame, but it is the flame of hate; not
until the love has burned out is the flame of hate also put out.”
51 Ibid.
52 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 355.
53 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 37.
54 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 355.
55 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 66.
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64 LOVE AS DUTY
56 Ibid., 40.
57 Ibid, 279.
58 Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard, 43.
59 Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII, 342.
60 Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, 80.
61 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 54.
62 Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, 84.
63 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 17.
64 Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, 100.
65Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII, 343.
66Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, 102.
67MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 194.
68 Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, 108.
69 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 370.
70 Ibid., 369.
71 Ibid., 194.
72 Ibid.
73 Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics,” 362.
74 Garrett, Problems and Perspective in Ethics, 169.
75 Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark in Quinn, “Kierkegaard’s
Christian Ethics,” 363.
76 Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 24. Italization is the author’s.
77Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII, 343.
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“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
on Nihilism
JOHN ZERNAN B. LUNA
It is very embarrassing to think that a great thinker like Friedrich
Nietzsche is often recalled on account of his seemingly radical
atheism, as per his declaration ‘God is dead.’ Sadly, mainstream
criticisms have, more often than not, boxed him under this label,
preventing further exploration of the richness of this philosophy. Be it
as it may, our current philosophical studies are now rising from such
shame and attempting to revive the murdered ideas. The bookshelf of
our knowledge requires a much awaited space for new thinkers; the
kind that will boost our awareness of what our world today needs,
what society today needs. Philosophy after philosophy, resolve after
resolve, our quest to understand Being, that fountain of existence, and
to understand the meaning of life and of the universe, has led us to
countless ideas none of which seems to satisfy our thirst, our human
thirst for reason. Let this paper be further satiation, albeit a temporary
one, an offering of enlightenment to anyone who wants a taste of
something new, something light and worth appreciating. Nietzsche is
a positive thinker, this the writer guarantees, and the guide for such
thought is none other than the very book with which he was, though
not completely, condemned for: ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra.’ It is with
hope of considering Nietzsche under a new light that this paper is
written. Man cannot afford to disregard even the most dangerously
provocative ideas, if he is to find meaning during his short life-span.
It may be that Nietzsche is just one among the many drabbles in the
classroom, though it pains to excuse such a possibility. But no drabble
would be so irrelevant if it directs attention to a deeper sense of things.
Although wide in the contexts with which Nietzsche tackles, this paper
will focus solely on an exposition of aforementioned particular book.
Nevertheless, what is need is a singular line of thought through which
a discipline of interpretation will be guided. The primary foundation
of this paper is Bernard Reginster’s book, ‘The Affirmation of Life.’ It is
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impossible to exhaust an explanation on how this book is relevant in
considering Nietzschean mindset. Although much of the same context
in the book has been tackled before Reginster, it offers the most up-todate discussions. True to its name, the book tackles on how Nietzsche
affirms life in his attempt to overcome nihilism. The basis for such
an account is what the philosopher’s central project is: something
that can be found in (almost) all his writings. This project concerns
nihilism: its effects on contemporary European ideals and its future
implications on mankind. Although Nietzsche’s ‘The Will to Power’
offers the most extensive discussions about nihilism, it is also with
considerable weight that the book of Zarathustra tackles the same
concern. Note, however, that most of the references that will be made
are on the first two parts of the book- the writer believes it provides
sufficient passages for the purpose of this paper.
1. Return to the Earth
Among the many things with which Nietzsche is often accused of is
his blatant and apparent attack on religion, particularly the one which
stands on the Judeo-Christian Tradition. ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ is
no exception from this, and it is not only on account of the passage
‘God is dead.’ More than that, the book deals on what it refers to as
the Afterwordly1. Another passage in the prologue says “To sin against
the earth is the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of
the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth,”2 which also
tramples any religious claim of any sort like a name for God, a world
in the after life, ethereal truths and the like. Needless to say, there is
an aspect of religion that seems to provoke aggression on the part of
Nietzsche. The book in concern here does not show grace in expressing
this, but the specific aspect with which Zarathustra seems to dwell is
on, as stated, the afterwordly. A chapter in the first of four parts of the
book is entitled as such.
True to their title, people of ‘after worldly’ disposition concern
themselves to anything beyond the world that is known, that is, a
material world. In the narrowest of understanding, they are priests3
who designate existence on the basis of an ambiguous reality,
something that cannot be conferred by any faculty or instrument. The
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attack with which the said chapter in the book proceeds touches on
both the doctrine and the teacher. It may seem from the outset that
Nietzsche is simply perverting what is held of much value on the
part of the religious lot, which is tantamount to devaluating it. Once
a particular reality of a person is devaluated, it will no longer have
any authority on the part of the person, and the moral judgment that
depends once depends on such conventional reality will be, in a way,
set free on its own.
The truth of the matter is that these priests lie is a dangerous ground,
Nietzsche would say. They stand on the idea that there is something
beyond this world that speaks of the purpose of man, and they seem
to claim the way, the only way to it. What is dangerous is the fact
that with little or no way of proving nor of denying the existence of
such reality means a firm hold on what a priest says require much
defensive stance. In other words, someone who knows he is protecting
something vulnerable, and is firmly resolved to such protection, is
always willing to resort to measures even as drastic as murder. Add
the fact that there is fear on account of said person that should he fail
to protect this doctrine of the other world, he will lose his soul. Doubt,
it would mean, is a grave sin on the part of a believer. This complicated
process entails the birth of a religious fanatic, which is not rare in
modern society.
There is another aspect to this. What is of utmost urgent concern is
the condition through which the Overman is to be realized. In order
to do this, people must, in a way, ‘Make straight his way.’ The problem
of the after world does not only point to the dangerous fanatic. There
is, in a graver matter, the need to reconsider the value of the world
today. Consider the scenario of the ascension as found in the Synoptic
Gospels of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. It is said there that as Jesus
was no longer seen in the sky and as the apostles were still at awe
at the powerful revelation, an angel had to come down and instruct
them to go on with their lives. In a way, that is what Nietzsche tries
to snap out of the religious lot. There is simply too much work to be
done right here, right now, that a time to refer to another world is
not affordable. A person who claims he knows there is heaven but
does not know earth is not a real human person, Nietzsche would say.
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People should not look at the sky- at least not for the whole of their
lives. The demands of the ground is commitment to it, to toil and work,
to wage war, to discover and develop- in truth, Nietzsche knows that
we still need to make this world a better place- we have no time to talk
about heaven.
The nihilistic context4 of the doctrine of the after world is what is
referred to as ‘despair’. Despair is a form of nihilism wherein the state
of such disposition realizes that the world in which he lives does not
allow the actualization of his values. Take for example a person who
wants to be a doctor, but the society in which he lives does not allow,
or does not recognize the need for doctors to be trained. Such person
will most likely fall into nihilistic despair. Zarathustra accuses the
priests of directing the will of the people into a world other the one
that would instantiate the Overman. More importantly, the priests
actually made the world in which man lives in inhospitable to his
values. The same chapter of the after worldly discusses the root of
this doctrine to the unrealizability of what its creators hold with much
value.5 “It was suffering and incapacity that created all after-worlds.”6
Suffering connotes another devaluation, that is, the devaluation of the
human self. Whatever suffering it was that led to the creation of such
doctrine hardly matters, because obviously enough, every suffering
has that unacceptable state of displeasure to the status quo, it is not
mainly physical suffering.7 Nevertheless, it was the priests, those after
worldly people, who first fell to nihilistic despair which eventually
triggered our alienation from the necessary condition of the earth for
the realization of the Overman.
The earth is the arena for the overman to rise. Under Spartan code
the king is the survivor of a brutal ordeal of skill and wit, after which
his words become supreme, and Sparta will be led into glory. Should
human feet keep on trying to escape this valley of tears he calls the
material world, it will never actualize its worth, the Overman will not
find its place on the face of humanity. Man must return to the earth.
2. Man and the Necessity of God’s Death
As far as Nietzsche is concerned there is much about man that needs
to be reconsidered; thus the whole point about the many books he
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has written. The same disposition has led the countless philosophical
projects in recorded history the motion that it has taken. Simply put,
it would appear that the whole point of philosophizing is to realize the
existential identity of man. If existence precedes essence, and man is
this existence, what kind of existence? “Man is something that shall
be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”8, thus goes a
celebrated passage in the book. Self-overcoming is not exclusive to
Nietzschean philosophy. There have been many schools of thought
which demanding this sort of ‘transcending of one’s self.’ However,
there is an aspect of Nietzsche’s version of transcendence which is
different from the rest. The usual emphasis of transcendence would be
going beyond limits- not succumbing to lower appetites, doing more
than what is necessary, going beyond the boarders of bodily capacities,
and the like practices. Thus Spoke Zarathustra teaches transcendence
while considering all these as essential features9but there is another
requirement. This would be referred to as ‘transvaluation.’
Nietzsche is not a nihilist; he is not counted among those who consider
the non-existence of values, nor of the inability of the world to make
such values possible. It is therefore surprising that he is often times
considered as a devaluator, hence a precursor of nihilism. However,
this would be very difficult to accept if we consider the famous passage
‘God is dead.’ God, for apparent reasons, represents the value of religion.
And religion, if it is to be taken as a creation of man, represents a value
which he has imposed upon himself- a spiritual value. This value has
grown to a point where it has shaped civilizations. Meaning to say,
more often than not, religion is the very discipline which evolutionary
man has used to humanize his existence on the face of the earth.
Insofar, however, as values are concerned, religion pretty much has
limited the very valuation of man. In the context of ‘The Genealogy
of Morals’ Nietzsche provides how the valuation of the priests has
affected and continues to contribute on what we know today as our
valuations; kindness, mercy, gentleness, justice, etc. These are nothing
more than inverted values of the noble race. “The noble virtues of
courage, self-confidence and intelligence [now] became the vices of
cruelty, arrogance and pride”10, that is, to name a few.
Religion has played a significant role in inverting the values of the
nobles which were once the values standing on the ground of power.
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The Overman, as what Zarathustra echoes across the whole of parts
three and four of the book, does not stand on values other than that
which he creates11. This necessarily means that he has to go beyond the
values that conventional authority has imposed on him, specifically
one that is held by religion. No religion holds any moral authority
other than which it declares to have come from an incontestable
being, which it has named ‘God’. The impact, then, of having declared
the death of God is understood in the context with which religion has
concentrated its moral authority. What Zarathustra actually meant is
that the dawn of the Overman entails the destruction of conventional
values created by religion.12
God had to die, Nietzsche would say, because we have to let go of all
that limits the actualization of our ultimate self. God is the embodiment
of religion, and unless man finally lets it go, he will never be able to
realize the possibility of the Overman.
It has been noted that a form of nihilism is despair; that the world in
which a person lives in does not allow the instantiation of the values
which he holds. There is another form, and this completes the idea
of Nietzschean nihilism, according to Bernard Reginster. The two
relevant aspects of nihilism is that first there has to be a value held,
and second there has to be a condition through which such values
are realized. Despair allows no such condition, which means a person
lives in a world that does not set the condition for his values. Now
in the case wherein there is a condition, or that the world allows for
the realization of such values, but the values themselves loses their
‘value’, that is to say their being worth pursuing, such nihilism is called
‘disorientation.’ Following the example used earlier, it could be that
a person pursuing medicine finds available training, and the society
in which he lives gives worth to such practice, which means what he
values is esteemed. But in a state of disorientation, the person would
see medicine as no longer worth pursuing, for one reason or another.
What is relevant here is that there was once something valued,
something affecting the moral judgment of a person, something
being pursued, but for some reason the person finds at some point
such value as no longer worth pursuing. The case may be that being
a doctor loses its appeal, or any like factor. Regardless, once a person
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loses sight of the worth of a value, hence losing such value altogether,
he is in a state of disorientation.
3. Deicide and the Overman: Purpose Driven
The danger of nihilism lies in the disposition to which it takes man.
Such disposition is completely devoid of any purpose, of any reason
to live. Imagine a world where everybody is in such state. Simply put,
‘why’ will not have any answer for anyone. That is why it is important
for a person to keep his feet on the ground, and to realize the need to
transcend the values he has imposed on himself. Otherwise, nihilism
will be the only consequence left for him. If the world in which we
live gains a new value, it will be a place worth living. And so long as a
person lives in such a world there is a greater possibility of realizing
the overman. Man should not be ashamed of himself because he can
grow beyond himself, and he should know this better than what the
cruel dictates of religion would impose. What’s the big deal about
God’s death, then? It’s not really about God, it’s about what he seems
to represent. Often times he will be used to justify things which are
tantamount to making excuses for personal incapability. At other
times he will be pointed to when a certain kind of suffering makes it
way. Regardless, he stands for something that has made man lazy on
the face of existence. Whether or not Nietzsche really was a radical
atheist is beyond accurate consideration. But true to his project, the
writer believes that Nietzsche would’ve tapped on anything so long
as it instantiates a reason for man to keep on holding on to a certain
value, hence continue on living.
The Overman gives man a reason, something to make him always
attempt to outgrow himself, to transcend... even to the point of going
beyond the God which the society around him has created.
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Endnotes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
The first essay of ‘The Genealogy of Morals’ deals with the same subject,
but under a different term. What concerns Nietzsche more in this essay
is the impact of the priests, that is, the divinization of suffering, and the
transformation of ‘bad’ to ‘evil’. Such transformation required the priests
to teach the doctrine of a ‘spiritual reality,’ sort to speak.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (Penguin Books Inc. USA,
1996), p 13.
Chapter 4 of the Second Part (Walter Kaufman ed.,) deals extensively on
Zarathustra’s perspective of the priests. (p. 90).
Nihilism is traditionally understood as synonymous to nothingness. This
is rather broad and uncritical. According to Bernard Reginster, a form of
nihilism requires a set of values, and a condition with which such values
are actualized. The form will depend on the absence or disregard of any
one of these elements.
“Among them, too, there are heroes; many of them have suffered too
much therefore they want to make others suffer.” –On Priests, p 91.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p 31.
On account of those who seem to claim pleasure in self-inflicted suffering
(masochists, sadists, etc.), the idea of Nietzsche applies only in so far that
it is not actually the state of suffering which gives them pleasure but the
state of pain, or the absence of a certain pleasure. Suffering in its strictest
sense means an encounter of a total devaluation of something significant
to another person.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p 12.
If a plausible division of the book shall be made, the writer believes that
the first part of the book together with a greater portion of the second
part deals with exposing what self-overcoming necessitates, while the
rest of the book deals with actual actualizations of over-coming.
10 Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006) p 149.
11 “And however must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he must first
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be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the
highest goodness; but this is creative.” –On Self-Overcoming, p116.
12 “Everything that the good call evil must come together so that one truth
may be born. O my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth? The
audacious daring, the long mistrust, the cruel No, the disgusting, the
cutting into the living- how rarely does all this come together. But from
such seed is truth begotten. Alongside the bad conscience, all science has
grown so far. Break, break, you lovers of knowledge, the old tablets.” – On
Old and New Tablets, p200.
Sources
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a book for none and all, Walter Kaufman trans.,
(Penguin Books USA Inc., 1996).
The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, Francis Golffing trans.,
(New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1956).
Reginster, Bernard, The Affirmation of Life, (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard
University Press, 2006).
________, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 57, 2, (June, 1997) 281-305.
Zeitlin, Irving, Nietzsche; a Re-Examination, (Cambridge: Oxford Polity Press,
1994).
Young, Julian, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
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A PHILOSOPHICAL
ANALYSIS OF THE
NATURE OF DESIRE
DANIEL A. DOMINGUEZ
1. Introduction
Philosophers throughout history have been interested in the nature
of human desires and its relevance to society and morality. Desire is
an innate human reality. It affects our actions, our judgments, and our
way of living. In order for the readers to have a better understanding
of human desires, I will present its general meaning in terms of its
nature and dynamics, as well as the two contemporary models and
the interpretations of some philosophers, followed by some moral
question based on Aristotle and Mortimer Adler’s perspectives.
2. Nature of Desire
Desire is an impulse towards an object or experience that promises
or guarantees enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment. It is a
part of the human passions which constitute human reality. Every
desire has its object, which the subject usually lacks. Desire cannot
be self-enclosed.1 In other words, desire is desire for something; it
reaches beyond itself.2 In a negative sense, it is an unfulfillment; in
a positive stance, it is an anticipation of something that can satiate a
lack or unfulfillment. The negative, thus, solicits the positive. When
the negative impulse aggravates, the anticipation becomes obsessive.
The intensity of the emptiness inside becomes congruent with the
obsession outside. The more a person is hungry, the more he becomes
obsessed with food, which is the object of this hunger. Moreover,
desire is related to motivation. When a person desires something, he
will normally be motivated to pursue what he desires.
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3. Dynamics of Desire
There are two kinds of desires: (1) innate or natural desires and (2)
conditioned or artificial desires.3 Natural desires are desires that one
naturally manifests within human conditions, such as food, sex, drink,
knowledge, friendship, and beauty. Artificial desires are desires that
are dictated to us by our environment or by society. Good examples
of artificial desires are gadgets, wealth, and commercial luxuries.
Natural desires are derived from within, from our human nature while
artificial desires, on the contrary, arise from external influences. The
existence of the object of desire depends upon the kind of desire one
has. Natural desires have their real objects. The desire for food entails
for an existence of food. Artificial desires, on the other hand, may or
may not entail the actual existence of their object. Some people may
desire to buy limousines, and limousines do exist. Others may desire
for a so-called “flying train” which appears in many films today but
they do not exist in reality. Unlike artificial desires, our natural desires
are grounded in our human existence. The lack expressed by natural
desires is geared toward fulfillment in life. Desire, in this context,
becomes desire for life. The desire for life is a manifestation of the
instinct to struggle for survival which is inherent to all human beings.
This explains why natural desires are first in order compared to
artificial desires, although today there are distortions such as greed,
selfishness, and an emphasis on artificial worldly desires over natural
desires in our socio-economic structures.
In the fulfillment of desire, there are two movements: satisfaction and
departure. When one is hungry, he yearns for food. After being fulfilled
in eating, his desire for food ends. Thus, one finds in these processes a
homeostatic model4: the desire disappears when the desire is satisfied.
This homeostatic model, however, is different from desiring pleasure.
Pleasure is often equated with happiness. There is, however, a decline
in happiness when the pursuit of pleasure is repeatedly attained. Say
for instance, a person desires for ice cream. Once he attains the object
of his desire, he obtains pleasure from it, and therefore he becomes
happy. But when his desire for ice cream exceeds what can please him,
he may not become happy.
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A paradoxical characteristic of desire is its infinitude. Man has an
infinite number of desires. After he attains a desirable object, he has
the tendency to be dissatisfied again, and he strives for the same object
again. Yet, on the larger scheme, man’s simple desires are inclined to
generate complex desires. For example, a man purchases for himself
a desktop computer. He is satisfied at having one but eventually
becomes dissatisfied with it at another time. When he is no longer
satisfied with his desktop, he desires a better version or buys a laptop.
After some time, he again becomes discontented. He then opts for a
palm desktop. Whichever the case, there is a sense of infinitude in the
desires that man possesses.
4. Two Contemporary Models of Desire
Before linking the concept of desire to the history of philosophy, let us
first examine two contrasting views on desire which are predominant
in the twentieth century. These two views serve as the foundation
of the historical account of the notion of desire in the realm of
philosophy. Namely, these are desire as sex (Freudian) and desire as
power (Hegelian).5
Sex or the libido is a particular energy or drive for the object of
one’s desire. It is characterized as affective yet often out of control.
It is ecstatic – it takes one outside oneself. The desire to surrender to
the other implies a concomitant desire not to overpower the other.
Conversely, power emerges out of concrete relationships in society. It is
a result of the distinction between a master and a slave, as expounded
by Hegel and Nietzsche. Power invokes desire to dominate and control
others. Moreover, power allows us to achieve self-consciousness at the
same time.6 The desire for sex can aggravate and become a desire for
power. In sexual relation, when the desire instigates control over the
other as it is not supposed to, it becomes excessive. Thus, this libidinal
desire is translated into a form of power.
Although the dichotomy between desire for power and desire for
sex dominate the twentieth century discussion on the philosophy
of desire, it serves as the threshold into the historical account of the
notion of desire, which has been an apparent issue since the dawn of
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ancient Greek philosophy. The concept of desire as an antecedent for
sex and power traces its roots from the dialogues of Plato, Socrates,
and a number of Sophists.
5. Philosophers and Their Notion of Desire
In this section, I will discuss the philosophical roots of the discussion
on desire, focusing on the essential points. We begin from the time
of the ancient Greeks. The sophist Polus equates desires with power.
He affirms that the aim of rhetoric is to acquire power. Thus, he
concludes that a successful orator can do anything he desires.7 The
greater the desires one has, the more he becomes powerful in society.
Socrates, in this regard, refutes Polus by saying that inasmuch as man
can do whatever he desires, he may opt not do the things he desires.
Callicles, another sophist, asserts that the supreme good is the power
to satisfy all desires. Socrates disagrees with Callicles by saying that
it is impossible for one to satisfy all his desires. Human desires are
unlimited, and if they are unlimited, it is impossible to satisfy them all.
Therefore, desires can be satisfied only when they are limited.8
Plato’s discussion of desire is highlighted in his concept of έρως
(literally, “eros”), which can be found in the Symposium. Ερως is
casually translated as “love,” but in its original context, it is rather the
halfway between love and desire. The pre-Socratic philosophers apply
this term for whatever impulses drive all beings in nature toward
their goals as well as for the specifically human impulse to grasp
and to possess.9 Aristophanes explains έρως with the use of a myth.
According to him, men originally had four arms and four legs, like two
human beings tied up together in a single body. These entities, who
are clever and strong, became a threat to the Greek gods. In an attempt
not to be overpowered by such beings, the gods separated men into
two. Thus, men became half-beings, and as such, man continuously
searches for the being who will complete him as he journeys through
life. Eρως, in this context, is a desire for what one does not possess. The
lover is a man who is unsatisfied, and therefore he strives to search for
the one who shall eventually satisfy his existence.
The priestess Diotima teaches that έρως is a desire that cannot be
satisfied by any particular object in the world. The lover ascends from
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the love of particular beautiful entities (objects and persons) to the
love of beauty itself, which is virtually the good that the soul desires.
Our desires should lead toward the pursuit of the good. The difficulty
in Plato is that he identifies the good to the world of Forms, which can
never be found in ordinary encounters in life.
The notion of desire gradually changed during the Renaissance.
Desire became understood as the pursuit of knowledge – knowledge
of one’s self, of bodies, of society, and of the universe. The knowledge
of such contributes to the achievement of arts, sciences, and politics.
Hence, personal desires must conform to higher desires of knowledge.
Many times, the pursuit for knowledge demands a will for control and
power in order to attain such end.
Hobbes speaks of desire as any endeavor towards or away from an
object that causes that endeavor. Since desires are causes for actions,
they are considered as motions. Desire, in a narrow sense, is similar
to appetite. Aversion is also an appetite. In a broad sense, aversion is a
desire away from the object that causes the desire. Hobbes oftentimes
confuses desire in the narrow sense (that is, appetite) with love and
pleasure (voluptas), and aversion with hate or annoyance (molestia).
Thus, his concept of desire contributes to his mechanistic view of man
and society, which is summed up in the proposition that man is but a
body in motion.
By the 17th century, desire is identified with passion. For empiricists
like David Hume, the knowledge of one’s passions will enable one to
attain self-knowledge. Jean-Jacques Rousseau deals with feelings in his
social doctrine of man. He speaks of feelings as intermediary between
reason and experience.10 Feelings are reflections of one’s true self.
Understanding one’s feelings allows one to understand oneself. Selfconsciousness, therefore, comprises reason, experience, and feeling.
In this regard, desire fully expresses itself through feelings.
6. The Ethical Problem of Desires from the Viewpoint of Aristotle
and Adler
Plato’s notion of the good, which consists in the contemplation of the
good, presents a dilemma that gives less emphasis on human desires.
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Aristotle proposes a solution to this. He incorporates the concept of
desire with his notion of good. Doing good, for Aristotle, does not only
entail the knowledge of the good, but also, the desire to do it. Desire
is an important element in knowing and doing the good. It functions
between knowledge and action.11 It is not a form of love, an emotion
itself, or a drive or passion for a particular object or person; rather,
desire pertains to a kind of power over oneself and one’s emotions.
In this context, desire entails self-control and mastery over bodily
pleasures.
Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), a proponent of Aristotelian ethics,
states that there are two kinds of desires: natural and acquired desires.
Natural desires are desires intrinsic to human nature. Acquired
desires are desires that are influenced by man’s social environment
or circumstances. Natural desires can be classified as “needs” or
real goods, while acquired desires are “wants” or apparent goods.
For Adler, desires can be problematic especially when one wants
more than what one needs. Real goods refer to goods that ought to
be desired, whether one actually and consciously desires them, since
they are perceived as good to us. Examples of real goods are basic
biological needs in order to survive – food, drink, shelter, and clothing.
On the other hand, “wants” or apparent goods are considered desires
insofar as one can actually desire them, even if they cannot be good for
us. The question posed here is how can man realize the ultimate end
of his desires, given that there is such distinction between real and
apparent goods. Going back to Aristotle, the answer is happiness, and
happiness (understood as the totum bonum) should be the content of
every man’s telos. Desires that are properly grounded in the pursuit
of the good will enable one to attain one’s ultimate happiness. This is
what Adler refers to as right desires.12
Then, what are wrong desires? Adler points out three roots for wrong
desires. The first root is when a desire is only a partial good, yet is
desired as if it were the only or total good. The second root is when
desire is taken as an ultimate end, and not as a means to the totum
bonum. The third root is when the object of desire is actually evil or
harmful. Wrong desires may involve money and pleasure. Money is
important in day to day life, but it becomes a wrong desire once it is
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treated as a desire in itself or a complete good thus leading to selfserving purposes. Pleasure is important as a means to acquire the
good, but it can be desired wrongly in the same manner that it can be
desired rightly.
In general, the distinction between right and wrong desires are
important in the study of moral acts because the good zeroes in right
desires, while the bad is rooted in wrong desires. That is why Adler
recognizes Aristotle’s need of virtue. Virtue is the moderation between
the excess and the lack, and therefore virtue is needed for the proper
orientation of human desires. Aside from the practice of virtues, one
has to desire the ultimate purpose of all goods – the totum bonum or
the ultimate good, and not just the partial or temporal goods which
include wealth, power and desire.
7. Conclusion
Desires are important in the realm of philosophy. They are related
to our understanding of society and of morality. In this paper, I have
laid down the nature and dynamics of desire, as well as its problem
in the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, the problem lies on to the
readers. Can one’s life be dictated by his desires? Or can one masters
over his desires? The most important matter in this regard is that
one should be able to properly channel his desires in his pursuit of
genuine happiness or ultimate fulfillment. Desires are innate to man.
They speak of the inner stirrings of man. It depends on man as to how
he can integrate his desires with his being.
Endnotes
1
2
William Desmond, Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness: An Essay on Origins
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 18.
Ibid.
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
81
cf. Peter J. Kreeft, “C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire,” G. K. Chesterton
and C. S. Lewis: The Riddle of Joy, ed. Michael H. MacDonald and Andrew
A. Tadie (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdsman, 1989), 250.
See footnote in Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 16. “Homeostatic”
here includes both resolution to zero-level tension and resolution to
optimum-level tension (not necessarily “zero”).
Hugh J. Silverman, ed., Philosophy and Desire (New York: Routledge
Publishing, 2000), 1.
Ibid., 1.
cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1966), 28.
cf. MacIntyre, 30.
Ibid., 52.
10 Silverman, ed., Philosophy and Desire, 6.
11 Ibid., 4.
12 cf. Mortimer J. Adler, Desires: Right and Wrong – The Ethics of Enough
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991), 36.
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Semantics and the
Transformational
Generative Grammar
An Interconnection
1. Introduction
BRYAN JOSEPH V. RODRIGUEZ
Chomsky has been known in the field of linguistics for his development
of the Universal Grammar and the Transformational Generative
Grammar. His theory has even become a revolution in the field of
linguistics named after him. He is said to be one of the linguists who
tried to formalize the study of language, i.e., studying language without
semantic reference. With this, a great number of misconceptions
have arisen, one of which is the misconception about his so-called
“distaste for semantics.”1 Before this discussion proceeds, it should
first be clarified that this study acknowledges the fact that in forming
a linguistic theory, it is possible that grammar can be independently
studied from the sense of the sentence under study. This is evident in
the second chapter of his Syntactic Structures. However, the study of
reference and meaning, especially that of lexical entries, is necessary
for studying grammar. Another fact that should be recognized is
that in the Syntactic Structures, there is no statement about formal
semantics, unlike in many of his books such as the Studies of Semantics
in Generative Grammar, Aspects Theory of Syntax and The Minimalist
Program, wherein he explicitly shows the surface structure and the
deep structure. In the later development of the theory, this refers to
the phonemic form and the logical form, wherein the phonemic form
is the grammatical component of an utterance of a particular language
and the logical form is the semantic component.
The proofs of the interconnection of semantics to the Transformational
Generative Grammar, from which the misconception arises, are to be
discussed in the following sections.
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2. Intelligibility of the Parts of Speech
Traditionally, grammar, as in composition, can be studied, like in for
example the English language, through the relation of words and their
arrangement in a particular sequence within a sentence.2 However,
although the morphemes of a sentence are limited, words of a particular
language are indefinite. Linguistic theory will be fundamentally
impossible if these indefinite set of words are individually related to
each other, i.e., certain rule has to be set in order to determine the
words precede and succeed it. Thus, if the words are not classified
according to their functions, then, there would be indefinite set of
rules, depending upon the number of words a particular language
has. Consequently, the first task of linguistic theory is to classify the
words according to their function. Thus, parts of speech are formed
to easily identify the function of a word in a given sentence. Every
word can thus be classified among the eight parts of speech: Noun,
Pronoun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Conjunction, Preposition and
Interjection.3 Few of these are used by the structuralist tradition of
the Phrase-Structure and of Chomsky’s Transformational Generative
Grammar. This classification by function has its source in the meaning
of the word. Take for example the word “ball” in the sentence “The
man hit the ball.” The phrase “the ball” is a noun phrase made up of an
article (T->the) and a noun (N->ball). Not all words can substitute the
noun in the NP->T + N. At a first glance, this process (substitution or
rewrite) is very structural; however, a deeper analysis of the process
could lead one to the notion that it has appeal to the study of meaning
and reference. In order for a word to be a noun (thus be substitutable
to N) it should be able to fulfill the description of a noun, i.e., name of
people, place or thing.4 Thus, the reference and meaning of the word
“ball” should first be known to the speaker before one can use the
word as a noun. Hence, determining the meaning of the word “ball,” as
a name for an object that is round or of roundish body or mass, thus, a
name of an object, could suffice for substituting it to N. This is a clear
proof of Chomsky’s claim of semantics’ connection with grammar, in
the intelligibility of the parts of speech. However, this is an account of
mere nominalization or naming; it is concerned merely with lexical
items which, in themselves, have semantic characterization.5
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3. Intelligibility of Transformations applied
In the previous section, the concern is on the morphemic level which
can be taken as one of the proofs of relevance of semantics to grammar.
From hereon, the concern will be on the level of sentences and their
formation.
One of Chomsky’s concrete arguments for the inadequacy of phrasestructure is that of the notion of constituency. In his examples which
can also be seen below, sentences (1a-b) can yield sentence (2)
through conjunction.
(1) (a) the scene—of the movie—was in Chicago
(b) the scene—of the play—was in Chicago
(2) the scene—of the movie and of the play—was in Chicago6
This is possible since sentences (1a), which can be referred to as S1, and
(1b), which can be referred to as S2, are both grammatical sentences of
English and differs only slightly from each other such that X appears in
S1 as S1=A—X—B and Y appears in S2 as S2=A—Y—B, where X and Y are
constituents of the same type in S1 and S2 respectively. The resultant
sentence of the conjunction (2), which can be referred to as S3, is then
a sentence derived from combining S1 and S2 thus yielding S3=A—X
and Y—B.7
However, this transformation is not possible for sentences (3a-b),
thus cannot yield sentence (4). Although it has, in fact, fulfilled the
requirements for the conjunction of two sentences, such result for the
transformation applied is not a grammatical sentence of English.
(3) (a) the scene—of the movie—was in Chicago
(b) the scene—that I wrote—was in Chicago
(4) the scene—of the movie and that I wrote—was in Chicago 8
The elements that can be substituted to variables X and Y in S1=A—
X—B, S2=A—Y—B and S3=A—X + and + Y—B in this example is not
clear. The clarity of the variables used in the transformations effected
to strings depends upon the constituency of the variables X and Y,
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i.e., they need to be of the same type. Here, it seems that semantics is
necessary to trace the course of determining X and Y. This, however,
does not mean that semantics is confined to the convention-based.
Rather, these sentences (3a-b) originate from what can be called
the kernel. What has been demonstrated here is the fact that the
semantic component of a structure is necessary in performing the
transformation to a grammatical sentence in English.
(5) (a) The movie has a scene.
(b) The scene was in Chicago.
(6) (a) I wrote a scene.
(b) The scene was in Chicago.
The sentences above (5a) and (6a) are not the same. These are
sentences where X and Y are derived according to how each sentence
is to be understood. Thus, the variables X and Y of the sentences (5ab), respectively, are not of the same constituents.
Another argument for the relation of semantics to grammar, particularly
to the Transformational Generative Grammar is the Tobsep. There are
two structural analyses which operate the same transformation or
structural change, i.e., X1–X2–X3–X4 -> X1–X2–X4–X3. This consists of
either V1-> V+Prt or V2-> V+Comp. Given the sentences “Everyone in
the lab considers John incompetent.“ and “The police brought him
in.”9, the structure of these sentences can be analyzed as:
Sentence -> X—V—Y
In the first sentence, wherein X->NP­1 and Y->NP2, “NP1 = everyone + in
+ the + lab and NP2 = John.”10
(7) “Sentence -> X—Va—Comp—Y”11
Sentence -> Everyone in the lab—considers—incompetent—
John
Thus, transformation begins in this part. This has the effect of
interchanging the third and the fourth segments of the string to which
it applies.12 Thus yielding:
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(8) Sentence -> X—V­a—Y—Comp13
Sentence -> Everyone in the lab—considers—John—
incompetent (Everyone in the lab considers John incompetent.)
In the second sentence, NP is composed of Pronoun instead of the
article + Noun. Thus, the formula might as well be substituted.
(9) Sentence -> X—V1—Prt—Pronoun
Sentence -> The police—brought—in—him
Thus, transformation begins in this part. This has the effect same as
the example identical to this structural analysis, i.e., interchanging the
third and the fourth segments of the string to which it applies. Thus
yielding:
(10) Sentence -> X—V1—Pronoun—Prt14
Sentence -> The police—brought—him—in (The police
brought him in.)
What makes the two structural analyses distinct from one another are
their verbs (V1 and V2) which bring a particle (Prt) and a complement
(Comp) respectively. Hence the structural change made to any
sentence that has the same structural analysis as the two above, is in
itself, ambiguous. Hence, the only possible way to determine whether a
sentence that takes a structural change as above is to identify a particle
or a complement in reference to the word, particle or complement,
and its function to the verb. This distinction is necessary for Tobsep to
be intelligible. For if not, neither of the two structural analyses will be
intelligible, and in result, any transformation that can occur to one of
the two Tobsep can occur to the other. Such case would lead to confusion
whether a sentence should provide a Tobsep (Prt) or Tobsep (Comp).
Last of these proofs is put in sentences (11a-b).
(11) (a) The book is interesting.
(b) The child is sleeping.
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Here, it might be seen that a possible nominalizing transformation
of T­adj may occur to (11a). Thus, applying the Tadj, converts sentences
(11a-b) into (12a-b). Observing the sentences above, (11a) appears to
bear a similarity in structure with sentence (11b). And thus the same
structural analyses can be effected: Tadj.
(12) (a) The interesting book
(b) The sleeping child
The competent speaker-hearer of the English language will recognize
that both “interest” and “sleep” can be taken as verbs. However, the
words “interesting” and “sleeping” are different. “Interesting” is an
adjective while “sleeping” remains to be a verb.15 Thus, In the given
examples above, (11a) can be analyzed as S-> NP+V+Adj, while (11b)
can be analyzed as NP+C+be—ing+V, where the transformation
follows Af+v-> v+Af#.
A support to this claim is to place the word ‘very’ as a test for
each instance. This word only appears in modifying adjectives as
for example in very tall, very old, etc. Here sentence (13b) is not a
grammatical English sentence, unlike (13a).
(13) (a) The book is very interesting.
(b) The child is very sleeping.
‘Very’ appears in the occurrences of adjectives and adverbs as a
modifier, but it, it cannot appear within any verbs. This peculiarity of
the occurrences of the word “very,” and the like, does not only happen
in the structure, but also in its function of modification.16 Modification
cannot be identified within the structure alone; rather the function
that the word takes identifies its proper meaning and reference.
4. Clarification
In the Syntactic Structures, it is acknowledged that, there is no
semantic reference, in creating a grammar, or the formation of
grammar is not based on meaning of the sentence. It may thus appear
that a basic foundation of this grammar is that it does not appeal
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to the study of meaning or semantics. Even from the beginning, on
paragraph 2.3, Chomsky had mentioned the independence of syntax
on semantics. Indeed, the question like “how can one construct a
grammar with no appeal to meaning?” is actually, logically unsound.
Take for example the sentence, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
This is a grammatical sentence as it can be seen. This statement
itself is meaningless. However, this does not mean that semantics is
irrelevant to grammar. There are possible semantic implications of
studying syntax which could be seen in the remarks in §8.17 Even the
formation of the Transformational Generative Grammar, which carries
such a strict sense of independence of grammar from semantics, is
concerned with the meaning of a sentence, by understanding it from
the history of kernel sentences, and in turn, understanding the kernel
sentences themselves. Hence, this grammar can be said, not just to
generate all and only the grammatical sentences of English, but
also to explain much of the problem of ambiguity of sentences in a
particular language, more particularly, the English language, which is
a concern of semantic studies.18 According to Chomsky, it is not just
difficult to prove that semantic notions are of no use to grammar, but
it is also impossible.19 It could then be claimed that there are striking
correspondences between the structures and elements that are
discovered to be formal, grammatical analysis and specific semantic
functions. Thus, the correspondences between formal and semantic
features exist and cannot be ignored. He even claimed that the §8 of
the Syntactic Structures suggests briefly an investigation of semantic
function of level structures which can be considered as a reasonable
step towards the interconnections between syntax and semantics.20
It should also be understood that the author of the book does not
disregard the fact that semantics is also necessary for linguistic
analysis of sentences, which syntax could be said to be of less help. To
understand a sentence, we must know more than the analysis of the
sentence on each linguistic level. We must also know the reference
and meaning of the morphemes or words of which it is composed.21
5. Notes
a. Semantics is the study of meaning of particular elements of language
in its various linguistic levels. It does not merely concern itself with
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the necessary or contingent connection of the meaning to the word,
phrase, fragment, sentence or paragraph of a given language. It also
deals with how does meaning relate itself with the linguistic elements
and levels.
b. Grammar is according to Chomsky, “a device of some sort for
producing all and only grammatical sentences.” According to him,
there are two kinds of grammar according to function. The first is
the universal grammar. This theory states that there is a “universal
grammar which is a part of the genetic birthright of human beings.”
This serves a “template for language that any specific language fits
into.” This is evidenced through observation of the verbal behavior of
children. Grammar, according to him “has certain rules which are too
hidden, too complex to be figured out by children who have so little
evidence to go on.”22 Hence, there is a basic structure that a child can
use to generate indefinite number of grammatical sentences of any
particular language. The second kind is particular grammar. Particular
grammar is the grammar of a specific language.
c. Phrase Structure Rules generate sentences through substitution.
Σ: # Sentence #
F :
1. Sentence ->NP + VP
2. VP -> Verb + NP
3. NP -> {NPsing
NPpl }
4. NPsing -> T + N + ø
5. NPpl -> T + N + S
6. T -> The
7. N -> man, ball, etc.
8. Verb -> Aux + V
9. V -> hit, take, walk, etc.
10. Aux ->C(M) + (have + en) (be + ing)
11. M -> will, can, may, shall, must23
d. Transformational Generative Grammar works in the manner of
substitution. This is more like the Phrase-Structure Grammar, However,
in the Transformational Generative Grammar, the substitution occurs
in not in the morphemic level, but in the syntactic level.
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Passive – optional:
Structural analysis: NP – Aux – V – NP
Structural change: X1 – X2 – X3 – X4-> X­4 – X2 + be + en
– X3 – by + X124
Wherein X1=NP X2=Aux X3=V X4=NP
6. Appendix
In this appendix, a brief account of terminologies and notations used
in the paper are presented. These terminologies and notations are
given a section in this paper in order that these may be fully clarified
as they are used herein.
i. “-> This is a symbol which reads ‘rewrite as.’
X->Y; wherein X and Y are strings.”25
“Rewrite X as Y.”26
ii. + This is a symbol for the process which forms the “finite vocabulary
of symbols” into strings called “concatenation.”27
iii. – This is also a symbol for the process which forms the “finite
vocabulary of symbols” into strings called “concatenation.” It has
no syntactic relevance. However, it is “used to emphasize certain
subdivision of utterance which is the concern of the moment.”28
iv. – In the case of discussing transformations, this hyphen assumes
a special use. “It is used to indicate the inversion of the first two
segments.”29
v. ( ) Parentheses are used to indicate that the element or elements
inside the parentheses are optional, meaning, it or those may or may
not occur.30
vi. { } “Brackets are used to indicate choice among elements.” This
means that either of elements inside the brackets should occur.
X-> {Y + Z
Y} ; wherein X, Y and Y+Z are strings.
X->Y+Z
X-> Y31
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vii. “NP” stands for “Noun Phrase.”32
viii. “VP” stands for “Verb Phrase.”33
ix. “T” stands for the modifier of a Noun, i.e. article or adjective.34
x. “N” stands for “Noun.”35
xi. “NP­­­sing” stands for “Noun Phrase in singular form.”36
xii. “NPpl” stands for “Noun Phrase in plural form.”37
xiii. Σ stands for “finite set of initial strings.”38
xiv. F stands for “finite set of ‘instruction formulas. ’”39
xv. “[Σ, F]” stands for “grammar [Σ, F] beginning with the initial string
of Σ and with each string in the sequence being derived from the
preceding string by application of one of the instruction formulas of
F.”40
xvi. “Aux” stands for “Auxiliary verb.”41
xvii. “V” stands for “main verb.”42
xviii. “C” stands for the conditional element of the verb considering
the state of the number and time.43
xix. “M” stands for the additional optional morpheme depending upon
the state of ‘C’.44
xx. “en” is an affix of both have and be as optional additional auxiliary
morpheme.45
xxi. “S” as a string stands for “sentence.”46
xxii. “S” as a morpheme is an “affix of a regular verb if the NP is in the
singular form.”47
xxiii. Ø The Zero Morpheme is a blank element which is an affix of a
verb if the NP is in plural form.48
xxiv. “past” is an affix of a verb if the time of the verb is in the past.49
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xxv. “Af” stands for “Affix.”50
xxvi. “#” is interpreted as “word boundary.”51
xxvii. “A” stands for the “morpheme of contrastive stress.”52
xxviii. “wh” is a morpheme which is added to the “NP” when the
Question Transformation Tq that occurred is not answerable by yes
or no.
For animate nouns:
Wh+he-> /huw/
Wh+him-> /huwm/
For inanimate nouns:
Wh+it->/wat/53
xxix. “Adj” stands for “adjective.”54
xxx. “PP” stands for “prepositional phrase.”55
xxxi. “Prt” stands for “particle.”56
xxxii. “Comp” stands for “complement.”57
Endnotes
1
Władysław Chłopicki, “Graeme Ritchie: The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes,”
Elsevier, 37, (2005), 962.
3
Ibid, p. 20.
2
4
As can be portrayed in the function of a diagram, a sentence is a pattern
of relation of words in a certain sequence. Forlini, Bauer, Biener, Capo,
Kenyon, Shaw, and Verner, Grammar and Composition, Prentice-Hall,
Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990, p. 98. “Diagramming is a way of
seeing all of the many different parts of a sentence relate to each other.
Like a blueprint, a diagram can make a fuzzy mental picture of a sentence
clear and logical.”
Ibid, p. 20.
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5
6
7
8
9
93
Chomsky, Noam, Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar, Mouton
Publishers, Inc., Hague, Paris, 1972, p.196. “The semantic characterization
of lexical items and the structure in which they appear can be given in
terms of phrase-markers and transformations, for the uninteresting
reason that virtually anything intelligible can be presented in these
terms.”
Chomsky, Noam, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, Paris,
1957, p. 35.
In the (26) of the book, Sn=…X/Y…. however, for the sake of a clearer
demonstration, the ellipses are replaced with variable A and B in this
study. Cf. Ibid, p. 36.
Cf. Ibid, p. 36.
The examples above (i.e., Everyone in the lab considers John incompetent;
and The police brought him in) are examples (88) and (82iii) respectively
by Chomsky in the Syntactic Structures wherein, he compared this
sentence with sentences (82i), (82ii) and (83). Ibid, p. 76.
10 Ibid, p.76. “…we must analyze (88) into the structure NP1—Verb—NP2,
where NP1= everyone + in + the + lab and NP2= John.”
11 (86) in the Syntactic Structures is (7) in this study. Ibid, p. 77. “We now
extend Tsep permitting it to apply to strings of the form (92) as well as to
strings of the form (86), as before.
(92) X—Va—Comp—NP.”
12 Cf. Ibid, p. 77. “Thus, the treatment of the verb + complement and verb +
particle constructions are quite similar.”
13 Cf. Ibid, p. 76. “Further investigation of the verb phrase shows that there
is a general verb + complement (V + Comp) construction that behaves
very much like the verb + particle construction just discussed.
Consider the sentences
(88) everyone in the lab considers John incompetent
(89) John is considered incompetent by everyone in the lab.
14 Prescript Transformational Structure § 13
15 Cf. Chomsky, Noam: Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague,
Paris, 1957, p. 72-73. “In the phrase structure grammar we have a rule
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(72) Adj->old, tall...”
(73) the child is sleeping.
Which lists all of the elements that can occur in the kernel sentences of
the form (71). Words like “sleeping,” however, will not be given in this
list, even though we have such sentences as
16 Ibid, p.74. […]it will never introduce “sleeping” into the context “very—.”
Since “very” never modifies verbs.
17 Ibid, p. 93. “The remarks in §8 about possible semantic implications of
syntactic study should not be misinterpreted as indicating support for
the notion that grammar is based on meaning.”
18 Ibid, p. 92. “This [understanding ambiguous sentences on the
transformational level] gives an independent justification and motivation
for description of language in terms of transformational structure, and for
the establishments of the transformational representation as a linguistic
level with the same fundamental character as other levels. Furthermore,
it adds to the force to the suggestion that the process of “understanding
a sentence” can be explained in part in terms of the notion of linguistic
level.”
19 Ibid, p.100. “It is, of course, impossible to prove that semantic notions
are of no use in grammar, just as it is impossible to prove the irrelevance
of any other given set of notions.”
20 Ibid, p.102.
21 Ibid, p. 103-104.
22 David Cogswell, Chomsky for Beginners,
23 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, 1957,
p. 110.
24 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, 1957,
p. 111
25 Justin Leiber, Noam Chmosky: A Philosophic Overview, St. Martin’s press
incorporated, New York, 1975, p. 54-55. “E.g. (I) S->a+(S) - The arrow
means ‘rewrite S as a+(S).’” Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax, The M.I.T. press, Campbridge, Massachusettes, p. 66. “The natural
mechanism for generating Phrase-markers such as (3) is a system of
rewriting rules. A rewriting rule is a rule of the form
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(4) A-> Z/X—Y
*(3) Ibid, p. 65.”
95
Where X and Y are (possibly null) strings of symbols, A single category
symbol, and Z is a nonnull string of symbols.
26 Cf. Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague,
1957, p. 26. “Suppose we interpret each rule X->Y[...] as the instruction
“rewrite X as Y.”
27 Cf. Ibid, p. 109. “It [linguistic level] has finite vocabulary of symbols […]
which can be placed in a linear sequence to form strings of symbols by an
operation called concatenation and symbolized by +.”
28 Cf. Ibid.
29 Ibid, p. 109-110.
30 Cf. Ibid , p. 110.
31 The strings X and Y and the element Z are used to substitute the exact
example of Chomsky, i.e., a, b and c, in order that there would be
consistency in the examples of the prescript. However, there would be
no syntactic significance herein. Cf. Ibid, p. 110. “We use […] brackets (or
listings) to indicate choice among elements. Thus both the rules (121i)
and (121ii)
(121) (i) a->b(c)
(ii) a-> {b+c
b}
are abbreviations for the pair alternatives: a->b+c, a->b.”
32 Cf. Ibid, p.26.
33 Cf. Ibid.
34 Cf. Ibid.
35 Cf. Ibid.
36 Cf. Ibid, p.28.
37 John Lyons, Chomsky, Wm. Collins & Co. Ltd, Fontana, 1970, p. 57.
38 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, 1957, p.
29.
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39 Ibid, p. 29.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid, p. 38.
42 John Lyons, Chomsky, Wm. Collins & Co. Ltd, Fontana, 1970, p. 57.
43 Cf. Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague,
1957, p. 39.
“(29) (i) C->{S in the context NPsing}
Æ in context NP pl
past}”
44 Cf. Ibid, p.39. “(iv) M-> will, can, may, shall, must, etc.”
45 Ibid. “(iii) Aux-> C(M) (have+en) (be+ing) (be+en)”.
46 There is not any definite source for this. However, this proposition is
implied in the Syntactic Structures. This has been used in this study in
order for an easier representation.
47 See footnote 39.
48 See footnote 39.
49 See footnote 39.
50 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, 1957,
p. 39. “(ii) Let Af stand for any of the affixes past, S, Ø, en, ing.
51 Ibid, p.39. “[…] where # is interpreted as word boundary.”
52 Ibid, p. 65. “Suppose we set up a morpheme A of contrastive stress to
which the following morphophonemic rule applies.”
53 Ibid, p. 69. footnote 2.
54 Cf. Ibid, p. 72. (71) “T—N – is – Adj (i.e., article – noun – is – adjective)”
55 Cf. Ibid, p. 74. “[…] prepositional phrase (PP)”
56 Cf. Ibid, p. 75. “Consider first such verb + particle (V+Prt) construction as
‘bring in,’ ‘call up,’ ‘drive away’.”
57 Cf. Ibid, p. 76. “[…]general verb +complement (V+Comp).”
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Sources
Chłopicki, Władysław, “Graeme Ritchie: The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes,”
Elsevier, 37,
Chomsky, Noam, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, The MIT Press, Massachusetts,
1965.
________, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist
Thought, Harper and Row Publishers, New York , 1966.
________, “Logical Syntax And Semantics,” Language, 31,1, (January-March
1955), 36-45.
________, Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar, Mouton & Co. N.V.,
Publishers, Paris, 1972.
________, Syntactic Structures, Mouton Publishers, Hague, 1957.
________, “Systems of Syntactic Analysis,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 16,
3, (September 1953), 242.
________, The Minimalist Program, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1995.
Leiber, Justin, Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Overview, St. Martin’s Press, Inc.,
New York, 1975.
Lyons, John, Chomsky, Wm. Collins & Co. Ltd, Fontana, 1970.
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A BRIEF HISTORY
The annual celebration of the Philosophy Week began in 2004 as
a simple mix of activities and jingles. It aimed to arouse interest in
the study of philosophy of students in San Carlos Seminary through
participation in the various activities. The Philosophy Week has grown
and developed ever since. It has improved not only in the number of
activites but also in the participative response to the objectives from
students. During the celebration of the Fourth Philosophy Week in
2008, the reflections and essays of the participants as well as a synopsis
of that year’s academic symposium were brought into a single volume
under the name THEORIA. This was followed by another volume in
2009. By 2010, it was decided that the official Academic Journal for
the Philosophy Department shall be made under the same name.
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Contributors
Fr. Lorenz Moises J. Festin, Ph.D. is the dean of the Philosophy
Department of San Carlos Seminary where he currently teaches Cosmology,
Anthropology, Thesis Writing and Philosophical Synthesis. He also teaches
at San Carlos Graduate School of Theology and De La Salle University in
Manila.
Fr. Maxell Lowell C. Aranilla, Ph.D. is professor at the Philosophy
Department of San Carlos Seminary where he teaches Epistemology,
Philosophy of God and Philosophy of Education. He also teaches at De La
Salle University in Manila.
Marvin M. Cruz earned his degree in Philosophy at San Carlos Seminary
in 2009. His article in this journal is a summary of his thesis for which he
received the Zwaenepoel Award for Best Thesis in 2009.
Jerome C. Jaime earned his degree in Philosophy at San Carlos Seminary
in 2010. His article in this journal is a summary of his thesis for which he
received the Zwaenepoel Award for Best Thesis in 2010.
John Zernan B. Luna earned his degree in Philosophy at San Carlos
Seminary in 2011. His article in this journal is a summary of his thesis for
which he received the Zwaenepoel Award for Best Thesis in 2011.
Daniel A. Dominguez earned his degree in Philosophy at San Carlos
Seminary in 2011. His articles appear in the SCSInformation, the official
newsletter of San Carlos Seminary.
Bryan Joseph V. Rodriguez earned his degree in Philosophy at San Carlos
Seminary in 2011. He served as Chairman of the Intellectual Formation
Committee in 2010 and organized the Sixth Philosophy Week that year.
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