PALMQUIST - Tree.16. Analytic Philosophy

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16. Analytic Philosophy:

Positivism and Ordinary Language
by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
Having now examined three ways of applying the logical distinction
between "analysis" and "synthesis", and having explored in some detail its
application to the Geometry of Logic, our remaining task here in Part Two is
to consider how an over-emphasis on either analysis or synthesis has
shaped the way some philosophers have developed their ideas. Back in
Lecture 1 I contrasted two opposing movements that have dominated
western philosophy during most of the twentieth century: linguistic
analysis and existentialism (see Figure 1.2). Most versions of the former
have emphasized the importance of analysis, and most versions of the
latter, synthesis, so much as to neglect or even explicitly reject the
significance of the opposing trend. Yet as we have come to expect, given the
complementary relationship between analysis and synthesis, the continued
existence of each trend depends on that of the other, for they are
complementary poles of a single movement. Hence it should come as no
surprise to find that, toward the end of the century, both trends began
passing away together, and being replaced gradually by other ways of
thinking, the most important being hermeneutic philosophy. Interestingly,
these three major approaches to philosophy all emphasize a common
theme: the centrality of language to the philosopher's quest. So this week
we shall devote one lecture to each.
Today we shall discuss the main elements of the philosophical movement
that dominated English-speaking philosophy throughout the past century,
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known as "linguistic analysis". The same way of philosophizing also goes by

such names as "analytic philosophy", "linguistic philosophy", or "philosophy
of language", depending on the preference of the philosopher in question.
But in general we can characterize this approach as one that regards the
analysis of language as the philosopher's fundamental task. The precise
way language ought to be analyzed, the exact definition of what analysis is,
and even the proper delimitation of what counts as language, are all issues
of open debate among members of this school. But amidst all their
differences, linguistic analysts are united by their common belief that
philosophical issues must be approached, first and foremost (if not
exclusively) from the point of view of their roots in human language. Some
believe that in upholding this belief they are the true heirs of Kant's great
limitation of human knowledge-to the extent that the notion of a
"transcendental turn" in philosophizing is thought by many philosophers
today to be identical to a "linguistic turn".
The roots of linguistic analysis are planted in ground prepared by a
mathematician named Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Frege instituted a
revolution in (analytic) logic, the implications of which are still in the
process of being worked out by contemporary philosophers. He regarded
logic as virtually reducible to mathematics, and believed proofs should
always be exhibited in the form of clearly expressed, deductive steps. More
importantly, he believed logic could perform tasks far beyond anything
envisioned by Aristotle, provided logicians could develop ways of
expressing linguistic meaning entirely in terms of logical symbols. One of
his most influential ideas was to distinguish between the "sense" of a
proposition and its "reference", arguing that a proposition has "meaning"
only if it has both a sense and a reference. (This idea bears a striking
resemblance, incidentally, to Kant's claim that knowledge arises only out of
the synthesis of concepts and intuitions.) Frege also developed a new
notation enabling "quantifiers" (words such as "all", "some", etc.) to be
expressed in terms of symbols. He hoped philosophers could use this
notation to perfect the logical form of their arguments, thus making it
possible to come far closer than ever before to the ideal of making
philosophy into a rigorous science.
One of the first philosophers to recognize the profound importance of
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Frege's new discoveries in logic was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)-probably

the best known English philosopher in this century. Russell, together with
A.N. Whitehead, applied many of Frege's insights in writing what must be
one of the most important, yet least read, philosophy books written during
the twentieth century, Principia Mathematica. Russell developed many
interesting and influential ideas on a vast array of subjects during his long
career. Unfortunately, on a number of occasions he changed his views,
arguing in one text against a position he himself had defended in previous
writings. Since he never developed a single, consistent system of
philosophy, it would be too difficult to examine his vast array of ideas here.
However, the case is quite different for a younger contemporary of
Russell's, who began his career in philosophy as one of Russell's students.
After studying engineering for several years in Manchester, this Germanspeaking philosopher sent an essay to Russell in Cambridge, telling him he
wanted to study philosophy under Russell's guidance-either that, or he
would pursue further studies in the field of aeronautics. Fortunately for the
philosophical world, Russell invited this young man to become his student
in Cambridge.
If Frege can be viewed as the "father" of linguistic analysis, then its greatest
"son" was, undoubtedly, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Not long after
coming to Cambridge, Wittgenstein launched out on his own, to become one
of this century's two or three most influential philosophers. The bulk of his
influence came through his lectures and tutorials, and through the students
and other philosophers who shared in these discussions with him. For
Wittgenstein himself published only one book during his lifetime, written
while he was still a young man. When he died, however, he left the
manuscript for a second book, eventually published two years after his
death. Each of these books laid the foundation for a major new version of
linguistic analysis. For the remainder of today's lecture, let's take a look at
these two trends in turn.
Wittgenstein's book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), came to be
treated as a manifesto for one of the earliest versions of linguistic analysis:
"logical positivism". It begins by defining the limits of the linguistic world
in terms of the following set of foundational propositions:
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1The world is all that is the case.

1.1The world is the totality of facts, not things.
1.11The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever
is not the case.
1.13The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2The world divides into facts.
1.21Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains
the same.
Throughout the book Wittgenstein follows the same rigorous, mathematical form used in this introductory passage, numbering each successive
paragraph in hierarchical order. This logical form reflects the overall aim of
the book: to construct a set of analytic propositions that can be used as a
framework for understanding all "facts" (i.e., meaningful propositions)
about the world. The analytic focus of Wittgenstein's concern is evident
when, for example, he states that each of these facts "can be the case" (+) "or
not the case" (-).
After setting up a fixed boundary line between what counts as "the world"
and what does not-i.e., between "facts" and "things"-Wittgenstein weaves
an intricate web of logical propositions in sections 2-6 of his book. These
propositions are supposed to establish a philosophical framework for
understanding any legitimate fact that the "world" (i.e., the set of all
meaningful propositions) presents to us. He then concludes with a passage
that is worth quoting at length:
6.522There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
6.53The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say
nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science-i.e.
something that has nothing to do with philosophy-and then, whenever
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someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him

that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.
Although it would not be satisfying to the other person-he would not have
the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy-this method would be the
only strictly correct one.
6.54My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who
understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has
used them-as steps-to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw
away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these
propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
7What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Analytic philosophers have debated long and hard over the proper
interpretation of the enigmas in this surprise ending to Wittgenstein's
Tractatus. But if we keep in mind the distinction between analytic and
synthetic logic, then the meaning of these claims can be seen quite clearly.
Relating the distinction between "facts" and "things" to the distinction
between analytic and synthetic logic, especially as depicted in Figure IV.6,
suggests the following way of picturing the main structure of
Wittgenstein's argument in the above passage:
Figure VI.1: Wittgenstein's "Ladder"

Wittgenstein's view was that any philosophy based solely on the rigorous
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foundations of analytic logic must limit its scope of inquiry to questions

arising within the resulting "world of facts", even though this requires us to
treat many traditional philosophical questions as if they do not exist. He
quite rightly recognized that this metaphysical realm (i.e., the realm of
"things" outside of analytic logic) is a mystical realm. For synthetic logic has
always been a favorite tool of mystics. However, because of his firm belief in
the universal and exclusive validity of analytic logic, Wittgenstein was
forced to conclude that the proper response to this mystical realm is to
remain silent. If he was correct when he said talking about such "things" is
not a proper part of the philosopher's task, then much of the philosophy I
am teaching you in this course is not actually philosophy at all, but merely
disguised nonsense.
As we shall discover in Part Four, silence is actually a very proper way of
responding to a mystical experience. Nevertheless, as word-using animals,
we humans inevitably try to describe such experiences in words.
Wittgenstein was describing this attempt when he referred to those who
use analytic propositions as a "ladder" in hopes of climbing beyond facts to
a direct apprehension of things. He was quite right if he meant to say that in
such cases analytic logic turns out to be "nonsensical"; as such, his advice,
that such a person should "throw away the ladder after he has climbed up
it", is quite appropriate. He was also entirely correct to insist that we must
"transcend these propositions" in order to "see the world aright", for
mystics are interested far more in changing the way we see the world than
in changing the way we describe it. What Wittgenstein failed to take into
consideration, however, is that this realm of vision might have its own kind
of logic, whereby words that would otherwise be nonsense can make sense
after all: propositions using synthetic logic make sense because they shock
us into seeing the world in a new way!
Unfortunately, the philosophers who first followed Wittgenstein's lead
were not interested in exploring the implications of his enigmatic
references to "things" that somehow "manifest themselves". Rather, they
were intrigued by his idea of constructing an analytic foundation that
would enable philosophy to become, for the first time, truly scientific. The
most influential of his followers was A.J. Ayer (1910-1989), who, at the age
of 26, wrote the book, Language, Truth, and Logic, popularizing a positivist
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interpretation of Wittgenstein's ideas. Far from leaving open a space for

silent appreciation of "mystical things", Ayer argued that the nonsensical
character of mystical experiences, together with all metaphysical ideas,
should lead us to discard them as utterly useless. Thus, near the beginning
of the first chapter, called "The Elimination of Metaphysics", he writes:
For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a "reality"
transcending the limits of all possible sense-perception can possibly have
any literal significance; from which it must follow that the labours of those
who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the
production of nonsense. (LTL 34)
The knife Ayer used to cut away all such illusions came in the form of what
he called the "verification" principle. He described this principle in the
form of a question we are supposed to ask about any proposition put
forward as a possible "fact" about the world: "Would any observations be
relevant to the determination of its truth or falsehood?" (LTL 38). If the
answer is "no", reasoned Ayer, then there is no way to verify the truth or
falsity of the proposition in question; and in any such situation, the
proposition must be literally meaningless. So, if I were trying to defend the
truth of a proposition such as "God exists", Ayer would require me to
describe some potential empirical situation that would cause me to give up
my belief in God. For example, if I said I would give up my belief in God if my
mother were to die a tragic death, then he would admit that my belief has
some meaningful content; but it is now primarily a belief about my mother,
not a belief about God. A person who claimed to have an unshakable faith
would simply be regarded as believing utter nonsense. Ayer argues along
these lines in the remainder of his book, employing the knife of verification
to carve away most of what have traditionally been regarded as the most
important areas of philosophical inquiry. Not only metaphysical
propositions as such, but also most of the nearest and dearest propositions
of moral, religious, and aesthetic value are also explained away as, at best, a
mere expression of a person's emotional state (and hence, as irrational).
However, there is a serious problem with Ayer's program, as with any such
attempt to establish on logical grounds a set of so-called "positive" limits to
philosophical inquiry. The problem is that the very principle this whole
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school of thought is based on cannot pass the test of verification. In other

words, if Ayer were here today and we asked him to point to some
observation-any observation-that would count as evidence against the
principle of verification, he would be unable to do so! Why? Because this
principle is not merely a "logical tool", as Ayer thought; it is itself a
metaphysical belief every bit as much as those he tried to discard as
nonsense. This means either the principle is true, in which case the
principle itself is meaningless, or else the principle is false, in which case
the very foundation of logical positivism falls to pieces. We can express the
self-contradictory character of the verification principle in a more rigorous
form as follows (assuming "VP" stands for "verification principle" and "-v"
stands for "a proposition not verifiable by some observation"):
All -v's are meaningless. (= VP)
VP is a -v.
\VP (if true) is meaningless.
The form of this argument should look familiar to you; it is the infamous
problem of "self-reference", exposed as a fallacy in Lecture 10.
Although logical positivism did experience a period of hopeful support
among many philosophers, mainly during the 1930s and 1940s, it was not
long before the self-contradictory nature of its basic claims became
undeniably evident. Indeed, it became so evident that Ayer himself
eventually stopped trying to defend such an extreme, positivist position.
The lesson we can learn from the relatively brief life of this philosophical
experiment is that presuppositions of some sort are essential for any
philosophical endeavor, and that such presuppositions, like the myths we
encountered in Part One, always transcend the realm of the knowledge they
serve to define. Such a transcendent principle generally must be accepted
on faith, since it cannot be proved from within the system it supports; yet
without it, there would be no boundary line in the system, and hence no
knowledge at all. In other words, logical positivism may have succeeded, in
a sense, in making philosophy into a science; but the price it had to pay was
to affirm the basic incoherence that plagues so much of modern science: the
belief that knowledge can be gained without being rooted in some
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underlying myth. Once we recognize the futility of such a belief, we can see
that Wittgenstein's "things" are just as important as his "facts": without the
former we could not even speak about the latter!
One of the most interesting contrasts in the history of twentieth-century
philosophy was between the first and second of Wittgenstein's two great
books. No sooner had he developed the framework for a positivist
philosophy than he began working toward quite a different way of
conceiving the philosophical task. He set out his new views in Philosophical
Investigations (1953), a posthumously published book that has come to be
treated as a manifesto for another version of linguistic analysis, called
"ordinary language philosophy". The different character of these two books
is evident even in their titles: whereas his Tractatus is rigorously logical
and utterly analytic, Wittgenstein's Investigations is written in a much
looser, more synthetic, style-not unlike a detective story. The
foundation-stone of ordinary language philosophy (replacing logical
positivism's verification principle) is the principle that the meaning of a
word or proposition is determined by its use. Armed with this principle,
analytic philosophers turned their attention to the task of examining the
way words are used in ordinary language, in the belief that all metaphysical
problems can ultimately be traced back to a misuse of some of the key
words involved.
In addition to the principle of use determining meaning, Wittgenstein
suggested a number of other guidelines for how ordinary language ought to
be investigated by philosophers. Two of these should be mentioned here
before we conclude our discussion of linguistic analysis. The first is that
words get their meaning by participating in a particular "language-game".
Just as different games have different rules, yet all can be called "games", so
also different ways of using language have different rules, yet meaning can
arise within all of them. This means that science, the only admissible realm
of knowledge for the logical positivist, is now regarded as just one of many
possible language-games. The words we use in non-scientific contexts, such
as in moral reasoning, in forming aesthetic judgments, and even in
constructing systems of religious belief, can be regarded as having
legitimate meanings after all. In each case, though, we cannot understand
such meanings from the outside, but must participate in the game in order
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to appreciate what is going on. For this reason, understanding the concept
of a "game" is crucial for ordinary language philosophers. Indeed, while I
was studying in Oxford, I once attended a series of lectures by a philosopher
who had been one of Wittgenstein's students. Believe it or not, he spent the
entire term discussing with us the question "What is a game?"-yet we never
came up with a set of defining principles that could apply to all games!
Another guideline introduced by Wittgenstein was again based on an
analogy-namely, that groups of words sometimes bear "family
relationships" to each other and to other groups of words. By tracing these
relationships and becoming aware of the intricate patterns exhibited in
ordinary language, he believed philosophers could avoid repeating many of
the mistakes committed by past philosophers. To try to use a word as if it
were a member of a family it is not related to in ordinary language is to
break the rules of language-games; so it is no wonder seemingly irresolvable
problems arise as a result. Using these and other guidelines, Wittgenstein
detected numerous errors in the way philosophers tend to treat words.
Although such detective work sometimes ends with conclusions not unlike
those of the logical cogitations of Tractatus (e.g., that philosophical
problems are due to a misuse of language), its open and flexible tone is a far
cry from the rigidity of the work of his youth.
If logical positivism tried to make philosophy into a science, ordinary
language philosophy tried to make it into an art. In this way linguistic
analysis in some of its forms has actually come to appreciate more fully the
importance of synthesis-though still treating analysis, of course, as having
priority. This emphasis on analysis has had the benefit of calling to the
attention of philosophers the importance of clarifying language. One of the
most serious problems with this whole movement, however, is that in many
cases analytic philosophers who claim to be saying "we are just trying to
help clarify what you are already doing when you use language", are actually
implying another, quite different claim as well. Some analytic philosophers
do philosophy with the attitude that, in fact, "we know what was wrong with
the whole tradition, and we don't need it any more!" And this, of course, is
always a dangerous thing to say, since philosophical traditions constitute
the very soil from which the metaphysical roots of our philosophical tree
draw their nourishment.
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17.Synthetic Philosophy:
Existentialism and God Talk
An over-emphasis on analytic logic in philosophy often gives rise, as we
have seen, to a position that ignores all myth in the quest for a scientific
system. The extent to which philosophers allow mythical ways of thinking
to play a legitimate role in their philosophizing is likely to be directly
proportional to the extent to which they recognize some form of synthetic
logic as the legitimate complement of analytic logic. As I mentioned in
Lecture 16, today's focus will be on existentialism, a school of philosophy
whose proponents tend to emphasize synthetic logic more than analytic
logic. This movement exercised a dominant influence in so-called
"Continental" (i.e., non-English European) philosophy, especially during
the first half of the twentieth century. Actually, much of the fourth part of
this course will deal with issues raised primarily by existentialist
philosophers in their attempts to apply philosophical thinking to improve
our understanding of concrete, human experiences. So today we can limit
our attention to an issue related more directly to logic-namely, the problem
of how religious language, and "God talk" in particular, gets its meaning. (Of
course, analytic philosophers have also devoted much attention to this
issue; but we will focus here on the way existentialists tend to deal with it.)
This topic serves as an appropriate contrast to linguistic analysis because
language about God, far from excluding myth, is regarded by some as the
"language of myth".
Religious language at its best, like myth, often uses synthetic logic to help
us cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. In other words, it is
essentially an attempt to speak about the unspeakable. In most religions,
this "unspeakable reality" is referred to as "God"-hence the phrase "God
talk". But many philosophers prefer to use less presumptuous terms; a good
example of such usage is "Being". Long before existentialism came into its
own as a distinct philosophical movement, many philosophers and
theologians adopted the convention of distinguishing between humans (and
all other things that exist in our ordinary world), as "beings", and the
ultimate reality that underlies all existence, as "Being". John Macquarrie, a
contemporary existentialist theologian who was strongly influenced by
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Heidegger's existentialist philosophy, describes this distinction in his book,

Principles of Christian Theology (PCT 138):
... there could be no beings without the Being that lets them be; but Being is
present and manifest in the beings, and apart from the beings, Being would
become indistinguishable from nothing. Hence Being and the beings,
though neither can be assimilated to the other, cannot be separated from
each other either.
This distinction between Being and beings serves as the primary
starting-point for many existentialists, though philosophers who are not so
theologically-minded often prefer to start from the even more basic
distinction between Being (and/or beings) and nothing.
The primary existentialist distinction (in whichever version we take it)
corresponds in its basic form to Kant's distinction between the realms of
possible knowledge and necessary ignorance. Although the two distinctions
are not identical, and so are often applied in vastly different ways, we can
picture this existential distinction by using the same, circular map in the
now familiar way (cf. Figures III.5 and VI.2). One advantage of using the
same root word to refer to both levels of reality is that
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this suggests that-as anyone who has Figure VI.2: The Primary Existential Distinction
ever had a religious experience will
testify-Being reveals itself in beings.
But this raises a problem: given the
radical difference between beings
and Being, how can we ever speak
meaningfully about this Being that
manifests itself in beings yet
transcends them all? This is the
central problem of reli-
gious language; and there have traditionally been two ways of solving it.
The first kind of solution can be called the "way of negation". Those who
take this approach insist that any words used to describe Being must be
literally true-i.e., true in the same way they would be if we applied the same
words to beings. The result is that this way of approaching language about
God gives rise either to extremely austere descriptions of ultimate reality,
or to no description at all. We have already come across several typical
representatives of this approach. The long passage quoted in Lecture 12
from Pseudo-Dionysius is one of the earliest and best examples. As we saw,
his propositions are limiting to the point of being virtually empty if we
interpret them solely in terms of analytic logic, though they can point to
deeper meanings if we interpret them in terms of synthetic logic. Kant's
theory of knowledge, outlined in Lecture 8, is also frequently interpreted as
implying a strict limitation of language to the realm of beings. And, of
course, Wittgenstein's Tractatus ends with an explicit recommendation
that we remain silent when it comes to the "mystical things" that "manifest
themselves" to us, beyond the "world of facts".
The second approach to explaining how words can be used to construct
meaningful expressions concerning some ultimate "Being" has been called
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the "way of affirmation". Interestingly, each of the above-mentioned

philosophers proposed, at some point, not only a negative "way", but also a
complementary affirmative "way"-evidence suggesting they all deserve to
be called "good" philosophers. Wittgenstein's Investigations can be
regarded as his attempt to forge an affirmative way. Kant's moral
philosophy, to be examined in Lecture 22, was purposefully constructed as
an affirmative complement to the negative restrictions established by his
epistemology. And Pseudo-Dionysius himself was actually the philosopher
who first named these two "ways"; his elaboration of an affirmative way is,
in fact, surprisingly rich, given the extreme austerity of his negative
theology.
Philosophers and theologians who employ the way of affirmation often
develop such an approach by utilizing what is called the "analogy of being".
This analogy states, quite simply, that in certain cases "Being" is to "beings"
as "being x" is to "being y". Or we can express the same idea in the form of a
mathematical equation, as follows:
This analogy does not imply that every relationship
between two beings is somehow similar to the
relationship between Being and all beings, but only
that in certain instances such a similarity comes to our minds as an
appropriate way of using words to explain our experience of Being. For
example, Jesus experienced the relation of Being to beings in a way that
reminded him of the relation between a father and a son, so he taught his
followers to pray to their "heavenly father". The analogy here is:
where "father" refers, of course, to the ideal of perfect
fatherhood.
The analogy of being enables us to resolve an interesting paradox that arises
from the primary existential distinction between Being and beings. Paul
Tillich (1886-1971), a German existentialist who lived most of his life in the
USA, has argued that if we regard God as "being-itself" or the "ground of
being"-i.e., if we think of God as Being rather than as one of the "beings"
existing around us-then it is really not appropriate to say God "exists" at all!
One of my teachers once said such claims indicate that Tillich was really an
atheist. Such an interpretation, however, completely misses the point of
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Tillich's position. A better interpretation suggests itself once we recognize

that existentialists of all types are fond of pointing out that the word "exist"
originates from the Latin words ex ("out") and sistere ("to stand"); so this
means, as theologically-minded existentialists are quick to add, that in
order for a being to exist, it must stand out from the Being it is rooted in.
We will look more closely at some of Tillich's ideas in Part Four of this
course; but for now it will suffice merely to point out that, when Tillich
insists we should not, strictly speaking, say "God exists", since God simply
is the Being from which existing beings stand out, he is adopting the
"negative way". If we look at the same problem from the more "affirmative"
point of view of the analogy of being, then we can say that God's mode of
existence (or perhaps we can say God's reality) is to our human mode of
existence (or reality) as the mountain-tops are to the valleys below, or as
the sun is to the moon, or as any other higher or primary power we know
about is to its corresponding lower or derivative power. Such comparisons
do not give us knowledge of God, but they do give us a way of using words to
express our belief about how our experience of God can best be described. In
other words, the distinction between Being and beings does not imply that
God is not real, but that God's reality is of a fundamentally different kind
than that of any other beings we know about. Whereas Tillich would say
that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say either "God exists" or "God
does not exist", I would add that, from the more flexible point of view of
synthetic logic, we are better off saying both of these propositions are true
and meaningful, each in its own way. For God is not merely the greatest of
all existing beings: we beings have existence; God is existence -or, as
Macquarrie puts it, God "lets-be" (PCT 141). This is surely the main point of
Tillich's claim that God does not literally "exist".
The analogy of being, like virtually any metaphorical use of language,
derives its meaning from synthetic logic. For whenever we use a known
relationship to describe an unknown relationship, we are drawing an
equivalence between two opposites in a way that analytic logic can never
justify. If we try to understand the proposition "God is my father" solely in
terms of analytic logic, we will be forced to conclude that the proposition is
nonsensical. For a "father" is a male individual who helps produce a child by
having sexual relations with a female individual. If God were merely a
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"great being", then this might be possible; and some religious people who
view God in this way do not find it difficult to think of God as (for example)
a wise old man who (in some supernatural way) had sex with the Virgin
Mary to produce the baby Jesus. But if God transcends the limited realm of
beings, then such a conception of God as a father, interpreted with analytic
rigidity, is absurd. Nevertheless, if we accept synthetic logic as a legitimate
tool for constructing meaningful propositions, then we can recognize that
the notion of the fatherhood of God is intended not as a literal description of
God, but as a way of shocking us into gaining deeper insight with respect to
our experience of God. Christians nowadays tend to forget what a shock it
must have been for the Jews who first heard Jesus exclaim "God is our
father!" Today some people try to shock traditional Christians in the same
way by exclaiming "God is our mother!" Such a suggestion is likely to offend
those who accept analytic logic alone: for how could God be both our father
and our mother? Yet synthetic logic shows how both claims could be true in
their own way, each fostering legitimate insights into the nature of Being.
Macquarrie (who was, by the way, my supervisor at Oxford) has provided a
helpful discussion of the meaningfulness of religious language in general
and God talk in particular in his book, Principles of Christian Theology. He
argues that God talk does not merely express some abstract analogy, but
arises out of a person's existential response to some kind of concrete
experience of being-itself (PCT 139). For example, if a person has an
experience of feeling humbled and struck down by reverent awe, as if in the
presence of some greater or higher power that is infinitely beyond any
previously experienced power, then, Macquarrie assures us, that person is
expressing a meaningful proposition whenever he or she refers to the
mysterious source of this experience (i.e., God) as "Most High", or as the
"Highest Being". Even for people who no longer believe God lives in a place
that is literally "high up in the sky", this metaphor of "highness" can
appropriately express the response they have had (namely, a sense of
lowness) when in the presence of God.
Such God talk is often regarded not as referring merely to an individual's
private experience of Being, but as doctrine that ought to be affirmed by
everyone. This dogmatic use of religious language can also have a legitimate
meaning, provided the language reflects an existential response to a shared
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experience of the disclosure of Being in a given religious community. In a

passage affirming Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Macquarrie reminds us
that the meaning of a doctrine or dogma is ultimately determined by its use
in a religious community (PCT 124-125). If the words used to express a
dogma are no longer relevant to the kind of existential response to Being
experienced by the members of a given religious community, then the
dogma has lost its meaning, and ought to be discarded or expressed in a
fresh form. In other words, religious believers should view their beliefs not
as containing fixed, analytic meanings, equally meaningful in all times and
all places, but as expressions of flexible, synthetic meaning, directly related
to the ever-new and ever-changing realities of life.
Macquarrie also notes that God talk has its historical roots in the language
of myths (PCT 130-134). He describes the view of some existentialists, that
myth is a form of narrative attempting to answer a basically subjective
question, "Who am I?", in an objectified form. But he warns that myths also
have a properly objective aspect (134): "The myth talks indeed of our human
existence, but it talks of this existence in relation to Being, in so far as Being
has disclosed itself." In other words, the experience is an experience of
something objective, even though the knowledge it reveals is primarily about
the situation of the person having the experience. Although today we "live
in a post-mythical age" (132), understanding the nature of mythological
language is important because of its close relationship to religious
language: both types of language depend heavily on the use of symbols.
In Part Four of this course, we will consider in some detail how certain
symbols function in such a way as to enable us to cope with our ignorance of
ultimate reality. So it will be helpful here to give a brief, preliminary
account of how symbols function in religious language. A symbol, according
to Macquarrie, is anything in the realm of beings that discloses and thereby
points our attention toward the realm of Being. He calls attention to the
synthetic character of symbols when he notes that they inevitably involve
"paradox" (PCT 145): "Just because symbols are symbols, that is to say, they
both stand for what they symbolize and yet fall short of it, they must be at
once affirmed and denied." Macquarrie also alludes on several occasions
(e.g., 135-136) to the definition of symbols suggested by Tillich. As we shall
see in Lecture 31, Tillich defines a symbol as a sign that participates in the
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reality to which it points. In other words, the symbol in once sense is the
reality itself (A), even though in another sense, as a merely empirical object,
it is not the reality (-A). Accordingly, some writers refer to the law of
contradiction as the law of "participation", governing situations where "A
participates in -A."
The difference between mythological language and religious language is
that a mythological understanding remains unaware of the symbolic nature
of its words, whereas a genuinely religious understanding recognizes a
symbol as a symbol. Macquarrie compares the former to the activity of
dreaming and the latter to the activity of interpreting a dream (PCT 134).
He then goes on to discuss a number of important characteristics of
symbols. He observes, for instance, that symbols normally operate only
"within a more or less restricted group of people" (136). As a result, there
are probably "no private symbols", as well as no "universal symbols", since
the same object often has different symbolic meanings in different cultures.
Furthermore, Macquarrie claims that, "although Being is present and
therefore potentially manifest in every particular being, some manifest it
more fully than others" (143). That is, there is a "range of participation in
Being", from impersonal objects that tend to participate less, to personal
beings that participate more. The reason personal symbols are so common
in religious language, then, is that they have "the widest range of
participation in Being and so [are] best able to symbolize it." We know this
is true because personal beings "not only are, but let-be" (144). For human
beings in particular do not just exist, like the rocks; they also create. And
this is one of the primary characteristics of the religious conception of the
role of being-itself.
Before concluding this lecture, I should remind you that synthetic
philosophies, such as existentialism, are sometimes presented in a form
that is just as exclusive and one-sided as analytic philosophy typically is. In
reality, both of these schools of thought make use of both analytic and
synthetic logic: just as linguistic analysis has its logical positivists and its
ordinary language philosophers, so also existentialism has its proponents of
the negative and the affirmative "ways". Nevertheless, while analytic
philosophers tend to over-emphasize analytic logic, existentialists tend to
over-emphasize synthetic logic. The latter sometimes results in an
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approach that says, as it were, "Only the subjective experience really

matters; the philosophical tradition, to the extent that it ignores this
experience, can be discarded." But as I mentioned at the end of Lecture 16,
the tradition is the soil that feeds that very experience, and cannot be
discarded without rendering the experience itself inexplicable.
18. Hermeneutic Philosophy:
Insight and the Return to Myth
In ancient Greek mythology one character frequently appears who stands
out among the others as more symbolically significant than any other in
helping us understand the nature and purpose of logic. Hermes was the
illegitimate son of tryst between Zeus and Maia, the eldest of the so-called
"Pleiades" (the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione). Maia gave birth to
him while hiding in a cave; but after growing almost immediately to the size
of a small child, he snuck away at night, stole fifty of Apollo's cattle, and hid
them in another cave. To confuse any pursuers, he covered their hoofs with
shoes carved so that the tracks appeared to be going in the opposite
direction. In the cave he invented fire, then cut two cows into twelve pieces,
sacrificing each to one of the gods. Using a tortoise shell and skin from the
two cows, he made the first lyre. When Apollo finally found the hidingplace, he was so enthralled by the sound of Hermes' lute that he gave him
the entire herd in exchange for the instrument, and the two became best
friends. To soothe himself with music while tending his cattle, Hermes
made the first shepherd's pipe and began to learn the forbidden art of
divination. Zeus eventually became so impressed with Hermes' divination
skills that he appointed him messenger of the immortal gods-one of his
chief duties being to give dreams to mortals.
Unlike most Greek gods, who were regarded as governing only one or two
aspects of life, Hermes was associated with a wide variety of attributes.
Because of his initial act, he became the god of thieves and the trickster god,
with cunning being one of his chief characteristics. But he was also honored
as the god of musicians, shepherds, traders, and craftsmen, as well as the
god of love-making and magic (especially spells to be used in attracting
one's beloved). Of all his traits, the ones that defined his role among the
gods more than any other was his job as the messenger. (Interestingly, the
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Greek term for "angel" also literally means "messenger of God".) As one of
the few gods who was allowed to travel freely between the human and
divine realms, Hermes can be regarded as the god of boundaries-a title
whose suitability is evident in Figure VI.3.
The third major school of philosophy in the twentieth century draws its
name, with good reason, from this mythical character. Just as
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Hermes' job was to reveal hidden messages from

the gods to humans, so also hermeneutic
philosophy seeks to understand the most basic
issue in a general study of logic or the philosophy
of language: how understanding itself takes place
whenever we interpret spoken or written
messages. As such, we can regard Hermes as a
symbolic representation of the philosopher,
whose primary task (once we recognize that, as
human beings, we are ignorant of ultimate
reality) is to interpret the meaning of words.
Figure VI.3: Hermes as

Messenger of the Gods
Hermeneutic philosophy has deep roots in western culture. Indeed,

Aristotle himself wrote a book entitled Peri Hermeneias (On Interpretation), though it deals more with basic questions of logic than with the issues
we now associate with hermeneutics. For Augustine, Aquinas, and the
Scholastics, hermeneutics was a significant issue primarily (if not solely) as
it related to how the Bible ought to be interpreted. The first work that
attempted to lay out objectively applicable principles of interpretation as
such was Introduction to the Correct Interpretation of Reasonable
Discourses and Books (1742), by Johann Chladenius (1710-1759). Defining
hermeneutics as the art of attaining a complete understanding of
utterances (whether spoken or written), he proposed three basic principles
that must always be followed: (1) the reader must grasp the author's style or
"genre"; (2) the unchangeable rules of Aristotelian logic should be used to
grasp the meaning of each sentence; and (3) the author's "perspective" or
"point of view" must be kept in mind, especially when comparing different
accounts of the same event or idea.
During the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, her-
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meneutics gradually developed into a standard area of academic study,

especially for theologians, because of its significance for assisting in
biblical interpretation. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) taught hermeneutics as a specific university subject, introducing many new insights
and distinctions that are still considered important today. One of his most
influential theories is that our ability to understand a text is restricted by
the "hermeneutic circle". This refers to the reciprocal relationship that
holds between the parts of a text (e.g., the meaning of each word, phrase,
etc., considered in light of the original language and its grammar) and the
entire text considered as a meaningful whole (often requiring, e.g., an
understanding of the author's cultural and psychological background). The
paradox is that we must understand the parts in order to grasp the whole;
yet we cannot hope to understand the parts without understanding the
whole. In practice, this means the interpreter's task is never finished: the
more we understand the parts, the more accurate will be our idea of
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the whole, and vice versa. I think this neverending "circle" is even more appropriately
regarded as a spiral, with our understanding of
the text growing ever wider and wider, with each
parts-whole revolution. As suggested by Figure
VI.4, this gives us one way of understanding how
hermeneutics combines synthesis and analysis:
synthesis is the process of combining the parts to
make a whole; analysis is the reciprocal process
of dividing the whole into its parts.
Many scholars with varying de-
Figure VI.4: The Hermeneutic Spiral
grees of interest in philosophy, such as William Dilthey (1833-1911),

contributed further insights to our understanding of hermeneutics; but our
main focus this week is on the twentieth century. Such a focus is actually
quite appropriate, because hermeneutic philosophy only really came into
its own as a way of doing philosophy (as opposed to a set of principles for
biblical interpretation) through the work of one of the century's most
distinguished philosophers. Let us therefore discuss his ideas in more
detail, with a view toward gaining a further understanding of how they
constitute a synthesis of analytic philosophy and existentialism, thereby
representing what may well be the closest thing to "good" philosophy in the
twentieth century.
Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-) was formatively influenced by the
philosophies of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976). Husserl developed a philosophical method called "phenomenology", involving a process called "transcendental epoche", whereby the
philosopher attempts to reduce phenomena to their most essential
characteristics by "bracketing out" anything that is nonessential. Focusing
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on speech acts, Husserl tried to explain how words point beyond themselves
to an objective reality. Heidegger, a student of Husserl's, used his teacher's
ideas as a springboard for a new philosophy that regarded hermeneutics as
the core philosophical task. In his highly influential book, Being and Time
(1927), Heidegger argued that "Dasein" (a term meaning "being-there", but
used as the name for the essential core of human nature) has "ontological
priority" over all other beings, because humanity has an in-built "openness"
toward (or "pre-understanding" of ) Being. The problem, Heidegger pointed
out, is that through a process of "closure", we "forget" our intimate
connection with Being. And as long as Being remains hidden from our view,
we are "alienated" from our deepest roots. Such closure happens because
most of our speech (i.e., word usage) stems from an "inauthentic" relation to
Being. The philosopher's task, then, is to overcome this problem through a
process of "self-realization" that requires us to recognize, first and
foremost, how we are limited by our temporal nature. Unfortunately,
Heidegger never wrote the second volume of this book, wherein he had
claimed he was going to interpret Being as such.
Gadamer, a student of Heidegger's, was a late bloomer. Like Kant, he was
near the age of retirement when he wrote his magnum opus., Truth and
Method (1960). This book, sometimes called the "Bible" of modern German
hermeneutic philosophy, assesses the historical contrast between the
Enlightenment and Romantic periods in philosophy. The former
philosophers held the naive view that reason can solve all human problems,
provided we learn to discard all presuppositions and view the world from
the objective standpoint of universal truth. The latter rejected this
"prejudice against prejudice" (TM 240), replacing it with a prejudice for
tradition, and along with it, a new respect for myth. Thus the Romantics
viewed the world from the subjective standpoint of individual truth.
Gadamer argued that by simply saying "no" to the opposing standpoint, this
movement committed the same basic mistake as the Enlightenment:
philosophers in both traditions tended to remain unaware of their
prejudices. Hermeneutic philosophy goes beyond both movements by
claiming that having some prejudices is inevitable. A pre-judgment is bad,
Gadamer claims, only when it results from an over-hasty look at the
evidence. A prejudice based on trust in a legitimate authority is not only
not bad, but is a necessary step in gaining any genuine knowledge. The key
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is to recognize that "authority" comes not from a person's position, but from
a person's knowledge. People obey others willingly not when through
political force, but through a free recognition that the person knows what he
or she is talking about. Gadamer agrees that the tradition is the most
frequently reliable source of such authority; but when it conveys genuine
knowledge, we should be able to support it with reason as well. Again like
Kant, he warns that reason (i.e., logic) alone cannot always be trusted to
lead us to the truth.
The paradox of the Romantic period is that, while it awakened humanity's
historical consciousness, it failed to recognize that our finitude, as beings
in time, limits our ability to understand our own history accurately. This at
the core of the "hermeneutic problem" (TM 245): "history does not belong to
us, but we belong to it." Because the interpreter is in history, the process of
interpreting any text's meaning is a never-ending task. Understanding
requires us first to overcome the "strangeness" of the text or object under
consideration, and we do this by transforming it into something more
familiar, something we already understand. This is why prejudice is an
inevitable part of the process of understanding, and why becoming aware of
our prejudices is so important to the task of interpreting texts-or any aspect
of our experience, for that matter. An awareness that the interpreter exists
within the same historical continuum as whatever is being interpreted is
what Gadamer called the "principle of effective history" (267).
One of Gadamer's central arguments in Truth and Method was that the
scientist's "naive faith in scientific method" (268) "leads one to deny one's
own historicality." Actually, any attempt to gain truth must be based on
some method; and whatever method we choose is paradoxically bound to
limit our view of what is true. This is because, as I have stressed at various
points throughout this course, we can recognize something as true only
when we view it from some perspective. (I shall examine this theme in more
detail in Lecture 24.) But the scientific method is particularly dangerous in
this regard, because its most vocal proponents tend to treat it as the one and
only method of attaining truth; yet by remaining ignorant of their own
prejudices (or "myths", as we called them in Part One), such claims end up
hiding as much truth as they reveal-if not more. By contrast, a philosophical
appreciation for the principle of effective history gives us a "consciousness
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of the hermeneutical situation" (268).

A "situation", according to Gadamer (TM 269), is "a standpoint that limits
the possibility of vision." The limits of our situation is called our
"horizon"-a term Gadamer borrowed from Heidegger. The importance of
becoming aware of our own personal horizon is that it gives us a sense of
perspective regarding everything we can see from our particular standpoint.
Without such an awareness, a person tends to care only about what happens
to be nearest at the moment. Hermeneutic philosophy solves this problem
by providing a sense of historical consciousness-"the horizon of the past"
(271)-that enables us to broaden our horizon until it includes within it the
situation of the other person (the one whose words we are interpreting).
This fusion of horizons happens whenever we interpret another person's
words.
In what sense can we say that hermeneutic philosophy, as expressed in its
most complete and systematic form by Gadamer, actually synthesizes the
earlier movements of linguistic analysis and existentialism? One of many
ways of defending such a claim would be to consider how each movement
tends to view the task of doing philosophy. Whereas linguistic philosophers
see themselves as (ideally) scientific analyzers of objective language forms,
existentialists see themselves as prophets calling humanity to a new
appreciation of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of human experience. By
regarding philosophy as essentially a conversation to be interpreted,
Gadamer combines both the analytic bias of Wittgenstein and the synthetic
bias of Heidegger (as interpreted by avowed existentialists such as
Macquarrie): philosophy is and must be both an attempt to analyze and
understand linguistic forms of expression and an attempt to synthesize and
experience the meaningful push and pull of such forms as they evolve in
historically-mediated communities. Indeed, the key lesson hermeneutic
philosophy teaches us as we enter the twenty-first century is essentially the
same as the lesson we learned in Lecture 10 when we discussed the problem
of self-reference: that truth can be "grasped" only to the extent we are
willing to recognize and acknowledge our myths.
One way of emphasizing the importance of making room for our own
prejudices is to distinguish between "exegesis" (reading the meaning out of
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a text) and "eisegesis" (reading your own meaning into a text). Most
scholars nowadays still regard the former as the only valid approach to
interpretation. But Gadamer's philosophy demonstrates that analytically
picking apart the meaning of a text (exegesis) and synthetically adding our
own insight to the text's possible meanings (eisegesis) are both necessary
aspects of the hermeneutic process. A rare example of a scholar who did not
share the bias against eisegesis is Kant, who argued that all biblical
interpretation that takes place in the context of a religion ought to be given
a moral interpretation, even if that is not part of the text's literal meaningprovided it does not contradict that meaning. We shall talk more about
Kant's view of religion in Week XI. The point here is that, without some
measure of eisegesis, our understanding will be void of insight and so also,
void of any deep meaning. Before concluding today's lecture, let us
therefore explore in more detail the nature of insight in relation to the
distinction between analytic and synthetic logic.
As we conclude this second stage in our exploration of the tree of
philosophy, I want to be sure the trunk of the tree, logic, has given you some
new insights about how we understand words. In particular, I hope you now
see how important it is to recognize the complementary relationship
between analysis and synthesis in all their forms. Recall the comparison
made in Lecture 12 between this distinction and the sight-insight
distinction: whereas analytic logic often provides the best way to describe
the surface of what we see and experience, synthetic logic takes us beneath
the surface, into the depths of new ideas. But new ideas cannot stand on
their own. If we have an insight and then just leave it alone, it will produce
no fruit. The synthetic discovery of a new insight must therefore always be
followed by an analytic criticism; and the latter can
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be done properly only by someone who is

Figure VI.5: Analysis and Synthesis as
thoroughly immersed in the tradition. With a few
Complementary Functions
slight alterations to Figure IV.6, we can picture this
way of describing the complementary relationship
between analysis and synthesis, sight and insight,
criticism and discovery, as shown in Figure VI.5.
Keeping this map in mind during the third part of
this course may prove to be quite helpful in guiding
our reflections concerning the nature of wisdom.
In preparation for our next session, when we shall
discuss the question "What is wisdom?", I would
like each of you to
read the short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Although the word "wisdom" never appears in that story, I want you to
search as you read it for any clues it might hold as to the nature of wisdom.
Bach is not a philosopher, so his books are not ordinarily assigned as
required reading for philosophy classes; but he is a man who writes with
insight, and whose writing can often fire the embers of insight in his
readers. My hope, therefore, is that discussing his popular story of a bird
who searches for wisdom will provide us with insights that can serve as an
appropriate introduction to Part Three.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1.A. Why do mathematical and natural truths so often correspond?
B. Is the meaning of a word or proposition any different from its use?
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2.A. What function, if any, does synthesis have in linguistic analysis?

B. Could there ever be a language that was entirely analytic?
3.A. Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
B. Is there a middle way between the ways of negation and affirmation?
4.A. Could we ever say anything literally true about God?
B. Is exegesis or eisegesis more important for good interpretation?
RECOMMENDEDREADINGS
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus2, tr. D.F. Pears and
B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974[1961]), 1, 6.1-3,
and 7.
2. Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic2, Ch. One, "The Elimination
of Metaphysics" (LTL 33-45).
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations2, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968[1953]), 1-25.
4. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997[1912]), Ch.15, "The Value of Philosophy", pp.153-161.
5. John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, Chapter 6, "The
Language of Theology", (PCT 123-148).
6. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1951), especially Part II, "Being and God", pp.163-289.
7. "Hermes" (http://web.uvic.ca/grs/bowman/myth/gods/hermes_t.html),
maintained by Laurel Bowman.
8. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method2, Second Part, II.1, "The
Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of
Hermeneutical Principle" (TM 235-274).
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PALMQUIST - Tree.16. Analytic Philosophy

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16. Analytic Philosophy:

known as "linguistic analysis". The same way of philosophizing also goes by

Frege's new discoveries in logic was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)-probably

1The world is all that is the case.

someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him

Figure VI.1: Wittgenstein's "Ladder"

foundations of analytic logic must limit its scope of inquiry to questions

interpretation of Wittgenstein's ideas. Far from leaving open a space for

school of thought is based on cannot pass the test of verification. In other

Heidegger's existentialist philosophy, describes this distinction in his book,

the "way of affirmation". Interestingly, each of the above-mentioned

Tillich's position. A better interpretation suggests itself once we recognize

experience of the disclosure of Being in a given religious community. In a

approach that says, as it were, "Only the subjective experience really

Hermes' job was to reveal hidden messages from

Figure VI.3: Hermes as

Hermeneutic philosophy has deep roots in western culture. Indeed,

meneutics gradually developed into a standard area of academic study,

Figure VI.4: The Hermeneutic Spiral

grees of interest in philosophy, such as William Dilthey (1833-1911),

of the hermeneutical situation" (268).

be done properly only by someone who is

read the short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

2.A. What function, if any, does synthesis have in linguistic analysis?

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