Mock Severity

Fellow philosopher in training Chris Hoover wrote about the benefits of having a large, well understood vocabulary on his blog, Living Via Cognition.  I wrote out a detailed reply to his post only to lose it by naviagate away from his page.  Thinking about what I wrote the first time, and re-reading his post made me think a bit deeper about what he is responding to.

First, consider the quote Chris was responding too:

“Hegel wrote in his essay “Who Thinks Abstractly?” that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly but the person on the street, who uses concepts as fixed, unchangeable givens, without any context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because he goes beyond the limits of everyday concepts to understand their broader context. This makes philosophical thought and language seem mysterious or obscure to the person on the street.”

As this quote on Hegel points out, the philistine think less concretely than the sophisticated.  The “person on the street”, who lacks a philosophers subtle conceptual understanding of the world, approaches language in a dogmatic fashion.  For these people, words have strict “meanings” which are ironcally imprecise.

The title of Hegel’s essay, “Who Thinks Abstractly”, baffled me at first.  His thesis is that it is the unsophisticated who think abstractly, not philosophers.  At first blush, that is ridiculous.  If anyone thinks abstractly, philosophers do.  It is the philosopher who writes about the nature of necessity, not the philistine.

But a more charitable interpretation of “concrete” and “abstract” gets at Hegel’s point – the “person on the street” uses language in a way that requires much interpretation, while the philosopher is at his best when he writes lucid prose with a clear and definite meaning.  Here, concrete means reliable rather than tangibale; abstract means indefinite rather than conceptual.

Chris analyzes the quote a bit differently than me.  His two interpretaions explicate the kind of mistakes often made by the “person on the street”.  I have no problem with either of them.

Second, what is motivating this discussion?

Although he approaches the discussion through the lense of Hegel and Heidegger, it seems clear to me that what is at stake here is the value of making subtle distinctions.  As he points out, Heidegger and many philosophers like him spend huge amounts of time distinguishing between the different possible interpretations of any concept discussed.  The quote about Hegel’s essay “Who Thinks Abstractly” provides us with good reason for doing such work when thinking about the world.

Despite the fact that I agree with Chris, there is a point of view being ignored here.  From a pratical standpoint, many people get pissed off at philosophers when they make fine distinctions.  People sometimes catagorize philosophy majors as arrogant or a bunch of smart-asses, and this isn’t mere envy.  People who are stuck in pratical concerns day in and day out are not pleased when philosophers start questioning the meaning behind there job, or when they try to understand the exact nature of their work.

When a philosopher responds to what is typically taken as a straight-forward question with a fivefold distinction, normal people will get hostile.  Although Hegel has a point when he says the unsophisticated don’t fully know what they mean, ordinary people can easily retort that philosophers do not know anything at all.  And if the topic of discussion is typical day to day stuff, they have a point.

I am much more Hegel than Philistine.  I’m more likely to piss people off with fivefold distinctions than say something I don’t fully understand.  But those who do get pissed off sometimes do have a point – it isn’t always time for philosohpy.