Truth and Interpretation

Luigi Pareyson, Silvia Benso, Robert T. Valgenti, Silvia Benso

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781438447506, 9781438447490
• eBook ISBN: 9781438447513
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991) was one of the most important Italian philosophers to emerge after World War II and stands shoulder to shoulder with fellow hermeneutic thinkers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. The product of a well-developed theory of interpretation that stretches back to the late 1940s, his 1971 masterpiece Truth and Interpretation provides the historical impetus and theoretical framework for the questions of existence, art, and politics that would motivate his most famous students, Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo. In a time when the meaning of truth as an interpretation is challenged by the chaotic din of media on the one side and the violent force of absolute claims from science, religion, and political economy on the other, Pareyson's meditation on the value of thinking that is shaped by the traditions of philosophy and yet responds to contemporary demands remains timely and pressing more than forty years after its initial publication.

Part I

Truth and History

1

Permanent Values and Historical Process

1. The Inadequacy of the Historicism and the Empiricism that Characterize Today’s Culture

Widespread historicism and rampant empiricism, two of the most common characteristics of today’s culture, acquire a particular relevance in light of the problem of the permanence of values in history.

Today’s historicistic mindset does not take the form of a rigorous or precise theory, even though it derives from nineteenth- and twentieth-century historicism, whether in its idealistic, materialistic or culturalistic forms; rather, it gains its strength from being the more or less conscious criterion of current evaluations by the majority of cultured individuals, and compensates for its lack of philosophical rigor by being a truly integral form of historicism. This mindset carries the historicistic principle of veritas filia temporis [truth is the child of its time] to its most extreme consequences: that is, a historical form has no other value than its exact correspondence with the time in which it is born and of which it is simply a product; thus it possesses a momentary and ephemeral reality, and it is quickly confined to an irrevocable and definitive past.

This historicistic mindset often combines somewhat coherently with a form of practicism. When Nietzsche denounced the sterility of historicism, he correctly meant to show that it was impossible to confront the present with categories that belonged to the past: An understanding that justifies everything, and thus rejects judging and acting, might perhaps be able to penetrate the past, but on the present will only have a paralyzing effect. Nothing but a dangerous rift between thought and action could follow from it: On the one hand, action—which is in itself destined to the present—is released from thought, that is, it becomes pure praxis; on the other hand thought—once released from action—is kept in the past, in fact confined to it, and remains there, rendered sterile and infertile.

And so, the current way of doing politics is often nothing more than pure praxis, blind to every relation with theory that is not reduced to a complete instrumentalization of doctrines, and the current way of doing history is often inspired by an artificial neutrality that, rightly suspicious of rhetoric, nonetheless makes us incapable of evaluating the problems of the present. Another commonplace in today’s culture is therefore explained, namely, the one according to which ideas are confined to the past while the present has room only for ideologies: Theory and speculative discussion would be things of the past, and the present day would only respect practical debates, whether political or religious. From this derives the increasingly frequent presence of philosophers as it were split in half—one half is culturalist, the other half is ideological—in whom the capacity for speculative philosophy and the understanding of the world live separately because the first, reduced to a neutral (albeit very critical) technique, serves only to deal with doctrines from the past, and the second constitutes nothing more than a practical choice, valid only in the present. Under the aegis of historicism, thought has divested itself of truth up to this extreme.

The other characteristic of today’s culture, rampant empiricism, also can be understood easily, as it is nothing other than the logical result of the attempt by the so-called social sciences to replace philosophy. Today, to the degree to which it does not give way to action, thought tends to become empirical thought, which is precisely the kind of reflection that characterizes social sciences such as psychology, sociology, ethnology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, cultural history, and so on. These sciences have the greatest legitimacy when they remain within their proper limits, where they are truly irreplaceable, fulfilling an important function that is extremely useful for philosophy itself. The data that they collect, compare, and interpret reach such a high level of generalization as to demonstrate stable elements, recurrent features, permanent structures within the flux of human history, thus bringing about a valid contribution to the ever-growing knowledge about human beings. The investigation of human cultural forms as it is practiced in this field of studies certainly intensifies the experience that human beings have of themselves and the world. One might even say that philosophy could only benefit from the success of these sciences, and they are very useful to philosophy also in the sense that they increase the plurality of experiential fields on which philosophical thought must reflect, in contact with concrete questions and dealing with particular problems.

Some intellectuals today would, however, be pleased if the social sciences did not content themselves with this function and aimed to replace philosophy, going so far as to claim to be the only philosophy currently still possible. Truthfully, philosophy itself has allowed this to happen when it has accepted its role as a methodology for particular sciences. Taken in this way, philosophy becomes a rationality transparent to itself insofar as technically effective in individual fields of experience; that is, it becomes reason aware of itself but devoid of truth. In a word, it is empty thought, and as such, it is not only incapable of stopping the invasion of the social sciences, which are so rich with concrete contents, but is also ready to surrender its domain to them. At this point empirical thought—so useful when understood as the field on which to exercise a philosophical reflection committed to its own exquisitely speculative character—takes over philosophy entirely, purges it ever more of truth, and reduces it to the most resolute empiricism.

Now, if in today’s culture there is some obstacle that keeps us from recognizing the presence of permanent values within the historical process, it is the historicist mindset and the triumphant empiricism. From a historicist point of view, the value of historical forms consists exclusively in their adherence to the time in which and from which they arise, that is, in their ability to express their own epoch. It is therefore a matter of a thoroughly transitory validity, rigorously limited to the narrow precincts and paltry duration of the historical situation. From an empiricist point of view, constant structures certainly exist in human history, verifiable beyond even the most subtle differences in situation, behavior, and civilization; but, these constants are nevertheless verifiable only in an empirical way and cannot be elevated above the level of a pure fact. In conclusion, in history there would exist on the one hand values that lack permanence, and on the other hand constant characteristics that do not suffice as values.

2. The Historicity of Values and Historical Durability

At this point it is necessary to submit the concept of permanent values in history to a rigorous philosophical critique, not only in order to protect it from ruin at the hands of historicism and empiricism, but also to correct and sharpen its meaning. Far too often we entertain, without critique, the rather naïve idea that history is the temporal realization of supra-temporal values, along with the simple distinction that follows from it between permanent insofar as supra-historical values and historical and thus temporal facts. If the problem is to distinguish in history what is truly permanent as a supra-historical value from what, as a historical fact, is solely temporal, one must recognize that in history everything is equally historical and temporal, including values, and that in the human world even permanence can mean nothing more than historical durability.

It is necessary to admit that in history all values are historical: They are born in time, surging forth from history, and live in time where they awaken new history. History is both that which flows into them and also that which moves from them; that is, it is both the substance of which they are formed and also the activity that they promote in their own footsteps because every value is simultaneously result and model, completion and beginning, and thus at the same time includes a past and opens up a future, concludes a process and begins new ones. The permanence of values consists precisely in their fully historical reality as for both origin and effectiveness; it consists in their capacity to endure in time after being born within time, and in their somewhat perpetual existence, whereby they condense the history that has nourished them into the stability of one historical form and also stimulate a new activity that is inspired by them and models itself after them. In a word, the permanence of values consists in a presence that is enduring in time because it generates history.

The dialectic of exemplarity and kindredness, which articulates the historical comportment of human beings, suffices to explain this sort of durability. On the one side, a human work that is not only new but truly original—where originality is the fortunate and indissoluble marriage of the universal and unquestionable feature of value with the singular and unrepeatable feature of success—becomes an exemplar and demands to be taken up and continued in a new activity; and on the other side, this exemplarity is effective only when it is welcomed within a historical environment spiritually akin to that from which the original value has emerged, so that only kindredness makes its original continuation possible.

On the one hand, it seems impossible to accept the still rather popular idea that the rhythm of human spirit consists in an alternation between innovative impulses and inactive pauses, as if the perpetuation of a successful result were tied to a passive habit. The exemplarity of value is not the immobile completeness of a perfection that could only allow its imitation; rather, it is the generative vigor of originality that not only demands but also even initiates an industrious and eager emulation. On the other hand, exemplarity bears fruit only when welcomed within an act of agreement and participation, the kind that only the communal feeling [simpatia] and awareness of belonging to a same spiritual community can inspire. Only at this point the new activity is in its turn original because, far from being subjected to the model, it instead seizes the opportunity to welcome and assimilate it so that the exemplarity of value, albeit an independent power, acts solely as internal stimulus and support for the activity that could discover and adopt it.

Thus, styles and customs establish themselves in all human activities as true lasting traces in the history of humanity, living incarnations of the very durability of values. But their duration is exactly historical: They last as long as the correspondence between exemplarity and kindredness ensures an equilibrium between conservation and innovation. When the kindredness weakens, this equilibrium breaks and the synthesis that inseparably united conservation and innovation gives way to the dilemma of repetition and revolt, and to the choice between conformity or rupture. Styles and customs, rigidified into manners and habits, degenerate toward death under the blows and refusals of a rebellious will.

3. Beyond Values and Beyond Durability: The Presence of Being

When speaking of permanent values in history, however, one does not mean the permanence mentioned above: In this case, one understands a presence far more originary and profound, of which historical durability can be in itself neither the effect nor the distinguishing mark.

It is a matter of a stimulating and regulating power internal to human industriousness [operosità]; it is so profound that it is inseparable from the acts that it produces and indistinguishable from the response that it receives, but it is also so peremptory that it is irreducible to human activity and present to it as its starting point and norm. In a word, it is presence without figure, yet powerful and unwavering—the presence of Being. Such a power need not appeal to external and preexistent values because it is inseparable from the activity that it stimulates and guides, nor does it need to be considered as its own value because it possesses and exercises a vigorous power in itself. We need not return to Heidegger’s very severe yet persuasive critique of the concept of value in order to convince ourselves that ontology has no need for axiology, nor to understand that to conceive of Being as value does not exalt it, but degrades it.

Value is a quality of human works, and exemplarity is the power of historical values. To claim that Being should be endowed with exemplarity in order to have a stimulating power, and likewise that Being should be a value in order to possess normative vigor, amounts to attributing to Being qualities inferior to its nature and forgetting that the capacity for stimulation and regulation derives more from the inexhaustibility and originarity of Being than from the exemplarity and originality of value. Understanding Being as value turns everything upside down: Being is then subordinated to human needs and human beings are released from the service of Being; as a result, Being depreciates and falls into oblivion, whereas human beings are degraded and consigned to the negative because to believe that one has the power to exalt humanity while suppressing the ontological character of its activity actually means reducing the human to a position below itself. When humanity strives to make itself super-human [superuomo], its destiny is to become nothing but sub-human [subuomo].

It is also impossible to claim that historical durability is the sign or effect of Being’s presence. First of all, it would be excessive optimism to believe that the durable is in itself positive. Frequently, truth is neither effective nor recognized in the human world, and evil is often more popular and successful than the good. Nor should one refrain from admitting that the negative can also be durable: In human history, the negative is certainly more persistent and tenacious than the positive. Indeed, in a certain sense, true persistence is precisely negativity because obstinacy and stubbornness are the orientations best suited to evil and error. Even if against our will, we must abandon the naïve trust that enduring things are always positive and that the good should be, in and of itself, enduring. This prejudice contradicts itself, as it is itself an effect of the persistence of the negative: diabolicum est diabolum negare [to deny the devil is a devil’s activity].

Moreover, the presence of Being has so little to do with historical durability that one could just as easily attribute it to a simple instant. There is no reason why Being should reside in the enduring rather than in the momentary, and its presence neither extends the life of the enduring nor cuts short the momentary. It matters little whether Being appears in the rapidity of the instant or in the extension of time because it can make itself present in a single instant or remain absent from an entire epoch. Thus, the merely temporal distinction between the enduring and the ephemeral does not suffice to distinguish the ontological import of any temporal trait. It is true that time is the only venue for the appearance of Being, yet it is also true that the external traits of temporality are not transformed by the presence of Being. There is also no sign that could, from the outside, characterize the bearer of Being among the moments of time, as the temporal aspect of such a bearer is always the same. Similarly for Kierkegaard, the possession of the eternal does not change the everydayness of time, and the knight of faith has all the features of a tax collector or a grocer on vacation, of a shopkeeper who dedicates himself to his work with earthly perseverance and at night smokes his pipe content that the day is at its end. He possesses the infinite, but none of it leaks through to the outside, and no sign of the incommensurable betrays him, because he lives completely entrusted to the finite, as only the one who contains the eternal can do.

The problem is not to distinguish what in history would be permanent as a supra-historical value from what, as a historical fact, would be solely temporal. In history, everything is equally historical and temporal. The problem is rather to recognize the presence of Being in history, and thus to distinguish—in what is entirely and equally historical and expressive of its own time—between that which is solely historical and expressive and that which is also ontological and revelatory, between those things whose nature and value exhaust themselves in historicity, and those whose historicity is the opening and path to Being, and thus its site and apparition.

4. The Inexhaustibility of Being as Foundation of Its Presence and Ulteriority in Historical Forms

How is Being present in history? First and foremost we should exclude the metaphysical identification of the Absolute with the finite, which would impress on history a univocal and progressive direction and would recognize the manifestation of the Absolute in a series of historical moments. The problematicity of the relation between human beings and Being has nothing to do with an objective metaphysical glance that claims to see the Absolute unfold in the multiplicity of its manifestations. Although Being only ever appears in time, not all time is revelatory because Being abandons those who betray it, and thus whole epochs remain devoid of truth.

Nor is the presence of Being tied to the exercise of a pure formality, which according to a renewed transcendentalism would receive its content only from the circumstances, and would ensure the success of human activities on the ground of an intrinsic and autonomous criterion of reason and behavior. When removed from the vigor of their originary ontological rootedness, human thought and freedom sink to the neutrality of a purely instrumental reason or a mere technique for behavior.

Furthermore, Being is not present in history through its very own determinacy, in a form that is recognizable as unique and definitive, one that aids in the comparison of historical forms, thus rendering their appraisal swift, easy, and infallible. The presence of Being can be configured only historically, and Being has no other way to appear or place to reside but in historical forms. Being resides there in its inexhaustibility, that is, on the one hand with a presence that makes these forms its only way of appearing, and on the other hand with an ulteriority that allows none of them to contain it exclusively. Being resides there in such ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Translator’s Note
• Foreword
• Translator’s Introduction: Luigi Pareyson’s Vindication of Philosophy
• Truth and Interpretation
• Part I: Truth and History
• Part II: Truth and Ideology
• Part III: Truth and Philosophy
• Bibliography
• Index
• Backcover