Language, Truth and Democracy

Essays in Honour of Jesús Padilla Gálvez

Margit Gaffal

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783110697506
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Language in Philosophy

The aim of this volume is to investigate three fundamental issues of the new millennium: language, truth and democracy. The authors approach the themes from different philosophical perspectives. One group of authors examines the use of language and the meaning of concepts from an analytic point of view, the ontology of scientific terms and explores the nature of knowledge in general. Another group examines truth and types of relation. A third group of authors focuses on the current factors influencing our concept of democracy and its legal foundations and makes reference to moral aspects and the question of political responsibility. The chapters provide the reader with an overview of current philosophical problems and the answers to these questions will be decisive for future development.

Et Ego Memini

Jesús Padilla Gálvez

Hic et nunc – et ego memini¹ – , I can only remember. When one recalls past events, occurrences and testimonies, such memory usually has the form of an imperfect past, since one is still unable to say which effect will be attributed to these events in the future. This incompleteness of one’s memory is a consequence of the temporal shift between past events and what one is presently remembering. Historic events are generally written or told retrospectively and once we have recognized the consequences they have caused. Yet, in this hopefully distant future, I will have ceased to exist. From what I have published will hopefully remain one or another book in a library as a form of Hinterlassenschaft. One of my vital experiences was participating in an excavation of archaeological remains left eleven thousand years ago by a group of prehistoric nomads; this made me aware of the relevance of such a legacy. Thanks to those remains, we have been able to establish a historical memory that reveals a number of interesting data, such as social order, division of labour, work techniques – in short, the organization and structure of prehistoric communities. However, I have also understood that there are people in every society who are responsible for destroying the traces left, either by intentional destruction or damage done, or through systematic copying and the subsequent destruction of results. There are those who specialise in perverting authors’ words or in wresting meaning from another, usually before they fully appropriate an author’s ideas.

Wittgenstein begins his Tractatus logico-philosophicus by stating that the world is everything that happens.² A present event can have great mediatised impact but nevertheless lack any historical consequences. Conversely, a fact can go unnoticed and create catastrophes. Human existence can be evaluated from different points of view. Each perspective enhances certain aspects and overshadows others, so there are always hidden facets of that experience. My vital circumstances have made me consider human existence from the perspective of my own life experience. This enables one to develop certain contingencies but, inasmuch as it involves the temporal dimension, it is most difficult to evaluate, since it is based on self-referential structures that may generate paradoxes. In a recent book, I reflected on these inconsistencies and proposed specific solutions to problems resulting from the use of self-referential systems.³ Therefore I must conclude that a reflection on one’s own life of over six decades is error-prone. The ability to speak or refer to oneself must be learned. The act of self-reference enables one to represent and describe oneself and to express certain properties that one shares with other individuals or various groups. This allows one to study the links between parts and the whole and to analyse the procedures that go along with a first-person perspective. I have long been interested in the problems associated with self-referential statements and the description of introspective processes. Paradoxes seem to arise especially in the case of egocentric language, as it tends to contain elements of self-deception and pretence.

A related aspect is the individual’s role within a social context, in which dissimulation plays a key role, as the actual origin and individual motives of human actions tend to remain tacit or concealed. Our subjectivity is determined by the fact that instead of a subjective “I” we commonly find an individual in interaction with others. Therefore, we should not underestimate the effect that intersubjective processes have on the constitution of the “I”. We tend to act in established manners because we have been educated in a particular way. From the beginning of our lives our taste has been shaped within in a specific environment and our awareness has been drawn to specific objects within particular environments. We have developed certain opinions, convictions, beliefs and attitudes inasmuch as we are linked to a specific culture. We presuppose, conjecture, doubt, deny, or simply opt for one thing as we place greater value on it than on another. From a very young age onwards, our preferences and attitudes have been guided by a rich legacy that our predecessors have expressed in our culture. Therefore, all that has been told, taught by instruction or described and explained in books, has produced both mistakes and successes.

Libraries have always been my second patria. In these places of peace and quiet I discovered how other people expressed their opinions, ideas and judgments, supported their certainties by arguments, or intended to make us believe their knowledge. The knowledge recorded in books is neither expressed in viva voce nor directed at a broad readership, but it has the potential to create a close relationship between author and reader(s).

The world as I found it more than half a century ago appeared in quite disarray. The first thing that surprised me was people’s muteness around me. The most urgent questions were censored, the smallest attempt to discuss social issues was rejected and those who would broach such issues were told to shut up. A peculiar collective voicelessness, or aphony, was noticeable and it was often coupled with disproportionately harsh reactions. If a classmate at school made a joke he would be severely punished. Society appeared to be extremely controlled and disciplined, a place in which any jest was sanctioned relentlessly. Many years later I would understand that this was typical of dictatorships. On the other hand, at my home there was no talk of politics, religion, or any substantive issue that could commit us to the sullen world outside. In my childhood I experienced a bitter and unforgiving external world and a delicate and innocent inner world. Recently – a few months ago – I received the relevant documentation to help me understand this radical discrepancy. The power structure that had been rehearsed during the Civil War and which was subsequently established over four decades consisted of a set of coordinated forces aimed at placing society under control. This “game” of military oppression involved certain activities such as various forms of coercion. If one force was weaker than the other, the stronger would subdue the other. This power structure was systematically established in Spanish society and some people nowadays still tend to act as if that power structure were omnipresent and may be applied to all areas of social life. Such a conception is characteristic of closed societies and is certainly incompatible with the requirements of open ones.

Yet, in the modern world history is written in hindsight once actors have died and archives have become accessible to specialists. Memory retains past experiences but remains fragmentary until it is complemented with historical facts. Sometimes memory and history mutually complement each other, but on occasions they contradict each other, which prevents us from understanding the course of events because we cannot link cause with effect. With this we easily realize that everything we know about others via intersubjective processes turns out to be only mediate or ‘second-hand’ knowledge.

The age of sixty is a good time to look back. There was a moment in my youth that remains engraved in my memory which has partly determined my understanding of the world. In late summer of 1972, a long journey began that would take my brothers and me to Germany. Obtaining passports under a dictatorship had been very difficult. One summer night, after having been driven endlessly across the Iberian Peninsula by car, we finally arrived at the Spanish-French border post in Le Perthus. Our driver stopped and completed the interminable formalities, and we could finally leave Spain, though on an uncertain course. My father’s brothers had already expatriated and my uncles on the maternal side had likewise left their place of origin. Many years later, after the dictator had died, and we were relieved that the grim and dismal years of dictatorship would not return; yet we learned that our grandparents had been condemned to exile and capital punishment, had been systematically degraded over time for having been civil servants, since they would not – the proceedings of the mock trial contain very contradictory statements – bow to ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Language, Truth and Democracy: An Introduction
• Of Fatalism and Freedom
• An Essay on Truth and Democracy
• Voids, Aliens, and the Usual Suspects The Variety of Ways Truths Can Be True
• Openness and Unboundedness
• Semantic Normativity and Moral Obligation
• On the Multifarious Aspects of the Word “Aspect”
• Wittgenstein in Contemporary Philosophy: A Differentiated Evaluation
• A Wittgensteinian Critique of Kantian Transcendental Deduction and the Question of a Transcendental Motivation in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy
• What Can One Hope for? What Can One Expect? Crossing the Border Between Expectation and Hope
• Intuition, Counter-Intuition & the Absence of Ontology for Dark Energy
• Reale und Logische Relationen
• Sinn und Geschichte: An den Grenzen der Machbarkeit
• Agon von Wahrheit und Lüge in der Demokratie
• Neubewertung der kommunikativen Handlungstheorie
• Die Gewalt des Bösen
• Die Trennung von Politik und Moral Niccolò Machiavellis „Il Principe“
• Philosophie als Erinnerung Das Paradox und die Anamnesislehre in Platons Menon
• Et Ego Memini
• Index of Names
• Subject Index