When examining the beginnings of philosophic literature it is tempting to ask whether that historic literature might have the structure of a deductive science, beginning with axiomatic postulates, and all the rest following coherently. Alfred North Whitehead famously said that all Western philosophy has been a series of footnotes to Plato. Reading The Beginning of Philosophy by Hans-Georg Gadamer is an excellent chance to test that hypothesis. Gadamer reads with authority refined by years of experience, reinforced by repetition in teaching university courses, and backed by his astute scholarship – so astute that it deservedly has been given the names “textual analysis” and “hermeneutics” when done with such a degree of expertise. Fair to expect, his study of the pre-Socratics and reflections on them by Plato and Aristotle would reveal a structure based on first principles if one were to be found.

To get such an overview we must first look at some details. In fact the book ends with two chapters on the very beginning in Parmenides’ philosophic poem in which the topic of being and nothingness is treated in a poetic fantasy about an encounter with supernatural beings. It poses a question which, as the goddess cautions, might be better left unanswered, whether being and non-being can be called two. While Aristotle has answered that, in his concept of “privation”, Gadamer appears to claim to give an answer by his method of hermeneutics, though it is far from clear, and by the same method he shows the uncertainty of the results of the pre-Socratics inquiries. Gadamer writes, on p. 102,

The first step consists of the insight that all of this is compatible with the views of the Ionians [that oppositions resist and replace each other], while the second step has to do with that fact that in such an exchange of opposites what is unthought in the nothing is still avoided. There is no becoming and no passing away there. When light and darkness replace each other – is this something separated? And does not the being of things remain untouched by this? The text confirms this: it is only subsequently that human beings have distinguished opposites by signs (semata) that are separated from one another.

There is in fact a structure in Gadamer’s view of philosophy. It is a structure of literary sources deriving from each other and consisting of works by the Greeks and Germans, including most importantly Hegel, and ending with Heidegger and himself. It is one in which each participant stands outside the subject-matter, looking from a standpoint of detachment. This structure must be considered a tradition and not a natural science. What can be found in it is the thoughts or more particularly the expressions of men. Those can not be found by any other means than by reading their works (doxography).

From the standpoint of a student who is assigned to read the traditional literature and the sidelights on it by other scholars, and to write a report, Gadamer’s study is exemplary.

Gadamer is an old hand at this young man’s game. His work stands to command the attention of students, even to grab them at the point of a question that may well be on their minds – is there anything as heady as a good stein of German beer? It bubbles and makes the head swim. Not at all a mere mixture of ingredients, it is well-fermented and aged.

He is good at distinguishing Anaximander (city politics) from Anaxamines (physics of air).

An example of Gadamer’s astute reading is his pointing out, in Chapter 5, in particular the plural, doxai, rather than the singular, doxa, in Parmenides’ text, referring to human opinions as differing and not forming a consensus in a single opinion.

Gadamer’s brew has this bitter hop for the taste of young scholars: “We can see from the course of our investigation what heights of nonsense blind doxography can attain.” –p. 122.

Opinions on how being originates are examined at some length without finding a clear answer, though in the modern age we might consider it common knowledge that parts can be assembled to make something that was not there before, and that being as a genera, not rightly to be questioned, must be considered given and not in the process of becoming.

Is there a purpose – do people need wisdom? Should philosophy pertain to and serve real life, or should it take the earliest tangent into an academic abeyance or caesura of reality?

The enjoyment of literature, specifically philosophic literature, is a fruitful search for ways to say what we think. We discover that authors have thought the same thoughts as we, and have attempted to put them into words, to some extent successfully. Yet because of the very historicity of literature, we wonder if there is any immortal standpoint, from which immortal literature might be written, or if all a human can attain is a development of thought which is a structure of prejudices, forming new ones from a basis in old ones, and going on to form further prejudices, which Gadamer calls “the complexities of the hermeneutical standpoint.” — p. 46. This would parallel the quality of rhetoric in comparison to logic in which, in the same structural capacity, premises are spoken of, and always with respect to their truth or falsity, not their usefulness to support a preset conclusion.

To the modern mind, there may be such perfect and exact science – a body of timeless information. But Gadamer, like Aristotle, does not consider mathematics relevant, and does not consider it a science, but rather a sort of pure prejudice, perhaps thought by Pythagoras. And we may ask which is the prejudice? Which is the popular but unsophisticated notion?

Gadamer seems to agree that “mathematical concepts cannot be gained from experience”, p. 44. “Plato is mathematically oriented, while Aristotle sticks to physics and, above all, biology.” – p. 73. In one passage he contrasts the natural sciences with the human sciences as “fundamentally different”, p. 31 – an attitude which can only be taken from a detached and doxological approach in which neither is more than human opinion.

Is mathematics a science? It is presumed by physics, but does that mean that it is only in the mind, or is it also empirically verifiable and prior in the structure of empirical sciences? If an arithmetic proposition can be found by experiment then it is no less a science in which observation and reason are married. Further confirming this view the applicability of arithmetic can be noted, as it is used in all practical affairs, in all industries and sciences. It is a fact worthy of the theological term, “the tremendum” (Rudolph Otto, The Idea of The Holy), in that the applicability is universal and so beshaming to any alternative it is frightening, especially to anyone with a philosophical axe to grind.

No other science is allowed to remain in its ancient estate, unimproved in the age of science since Galileo, and nor should philosophy. It is fortunate no less for us that whoever has not read the traditional philosophic literature may, with some luck, observation and reason, find out any important and relevant truth for oneself as well as and identically to all others.

Ronald Jump runs The Institute of Formal Social Sciences

Categories: Philosophical