NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Rorty alluded to the âfuture Gadamerian cultureâ for the first time at the conference he gave to celebrate Gadamerâs hundredth birthday on February 12, 2000, at the University of Heidelberg. This conference can now be found in a marvelous book edited by Bruce Krajewski, Gadamerâs Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics, 21â29.
2. Bubner goes on to specify that Tugendhat âhas taken seriously Heideggerâs emphasis on the concept of truth, and for that very reason has found fault with the obscurity of Heideggerâs analysis of truth as the locus of an original âdisclosureâ of Being. That has brought him back, in opposition to the common opinion of the school, to the position prior to Heideggerâs advance beyond Husserl. The transformation of the exact method of phenomenological analysis of conscious experiences into a comprehensive hermeneutic of Da-sein in the historical context is not simply reaffirmed, but painstakingly scrutinized to see what has been gained and what lost.â Bubner, Modern German Philosophy, 91.
3. DâAgostini, Analitici e continentali, 273. Hans-Johann Glock reminds us that some German philosophers after the war âapproached analytical philosophy from their own indigenous perspective (many of them taught for some time at Heidelberg, the University of Gadamer). One important example of this approach is the critical hermeneutics of Apel and Habermas. But their use of analytical philosophy is eclectic: they invoke certain points in support of their own position, without altering their preconceptions or style of thought.⊠Ernst Tugendhat is a German Jew who, in 1949, returned from exile to study with Heidegger, and later immersed himself in analytical philosophy. Throughout he has used analytical tools to pursue his own questions, derived mainly from Aristotle and Heidegger. Moreover, he has done so in a way which transforms both the traditional questions and the analytic methods. His discussion of analytical and traditional philosophy is not based on pointing out interesting but ultimately inconsequential analogies, e.g. between Frege and Husserl, or Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein.â Glock, âThe Object of Philosophy,â 234. Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan have critically noticed how âTugendhat turns out to resemble Martin Heidegger: Heidegger, too, was happy to emphasize the importance of something called âontological analyticâ without ever saying what the âanalyticâ means.â Smith and Mulligan, âTraditional Versus Analytical Philosophy,â 202.
4. Tugendhat has accepted the term âsemantizationâ to characterize his own position toward Heidegger. See the epilogue to this volume. Barthes also talks about an âuniversal semantizationâ to characterize the linguistic turn. See Barthes, Elements of Semiology, 42.
5. Rorty, âBeing That Can Be Understood Is Language,â 28.
6. This fusion is well explained by Jean Grondin when he states that âwith Continental hermeneutic philosophy, analytic philosophy remains dominant, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, though it has endured fundamental changes affecting its self-understanding. Following the steps of the late Wittgenstein and under the auspices of the older pragmatic tradition (Peirce, James, Dewey), Quine, Goodman, Rorty, and Davidson have gradually detached analytic philosophy from its early program of logical critique of language. In doing so, they reoriented it toward general questions such as the possibilityâgiven perspectivism and cultural relativityâof binding truth, as well as of responsible behaviour and knowledge, a task that had been entrusted to Continental philosophy since the advent of historicism. Today, quite unlike formerly, it seems that analytical philosophy stands for no precisely formulated program. In the very pursuit of its own tradition, analytical philosophy came to the recognition that it is faced with the same challenges as is transcendental hermeneutics on the Continent. Both are impelled toward a pragmatic philosophy of finitude that must take its chances and weigh its risks. That is one way of describing the dissolution of philosophical analysis, or at least its convergences with hermeneutic philosophy.â Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, 9â10. DâAgostini also observes that the âdichotomy âanalytical and continentalâ ⊠does not have an effective empirical collateral reality. More so, for some time, tight connections between the inheritors of neo-positivism (analytical) and those of the phenomenological-existential (continentals) can be found and young researchers study without any discrimination authors of one or the other side.â DâAgostini, Breve storia della filosofia nel Novecento, 193. For a historical reconstruction of contemporary philosophy, see Prado, ed., A House Divided; Niznik and Sanders, eds. Debating the State of Philosophy; Brogan and Risser, eds., American Continental Philosophy; Cavell, Philosophical Passages; Rorty, The Linguistic Turn; DâAmico, Contemporary Continental Philosophy; and Grondin, âContinental or Hermeneutical Philosophy.â
7. In the German term Ăberwindung we should think of the âovercomingâ of metaphysics; Verwindung, instead, is the âturning to new purposes,â as Rorty says, or even âsurpassingâ or âtwistingâ metaphysics. R. P. Pippin has explained, commenting on Vattimoâs investigations, that âetymologically, the term suggests a convalescence from an illness, a twisting, or even distorting, as well as a resignation (one can be verwunden to a loss). It suggests both an acceptance of Western humanism and a taking leave from it at the same time, much in the manner of the later Heideggerâs remarks about the always intertwined nature of revealing and concealing truth. Metaphysics is not âresponsibleâ for the obscuring of Being as presencing; Being always must be obscured as presencing.â Pippin, Hegelâs Idealism, 138.
8. Vattimo, âPensiamo in compagnia,â 193.
9. Rorty, review of Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, 727.
10. Bubner, Modern German Philosophy, 97.
11. Rorty, âBeing That Can Be Understood Is Language,â 26.
12. Ibid., 23.
13. JĂŒrgen Habermas, âAfter Historicism, Is Metaphysics Still Possible?â 18. Andrew Bowie, commenting on Habermasâs philosophy, noted how in his taking up key ideas from the analytical tradition, âhe was influenced by Heideggerâs pupil, Ernst Tugendhat, who had, in turn, come to reject many of his teacherâs ideas in favour of arguments from analytical philosophy.â Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy, 182.
14. R. Brandom believes that when âwe talk of the âend of metaphysics,â whether that be in Nietzscheâs sense, or in that of Dewey and Rorty, the point ought to be that we give up the idea of a vocabulary that is final in the sense of unrevisable and irreplaceable, a set of concepts and categories that can be counted on as fully adequate as we develop and our circumstances change.â Brandom, âHegelian Pragmatism and Social Emancipation,â 561. Habermas, discussing Rorty, has also noted how Tugendhat fits in this list of postmetaphysical philosophers: âlike, for example, Apel and Tugendhat, Rorty regards the history of philosophy as a succession of three paradigms. He speaks of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.â Habermas, âRichard Rortyâs Pragmatic Turn,â 37.
15. âSo the result seems to be: thoughts are neither things in the external world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognized.â Frege, English translation of Der Gedanke, in Beaney, ed., The Frege Reader, 336â337.
16. DâAgostini observes that âreconnecting analytical thought to its Austrian and Bretanian origins helps one to understand the affinities (explained by Tugendhat) with continental ontology. Not only did Husserl start with Bretanian introductions, but even Heideggerâs interest in ontology is due to his early reading of Brentanoâs dissertation.â DâAgostini, Analitici e continentali, 228.
17. Tugendhat, Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, x.
18. âTugendhat is the author of penetrating books on Aristotle and on the concept of truth in Husserl and Heidegger, and the present work deservedly drew attention to itself on its first appearance, not least because in it we find a philosopher steeped in traditional philosophy giving an account of the results of his confrontation with the thought of Frege, Wittgenstein, Searle, Strawson, âet frĂ©res.ââ Smith and Mulligan, âTraditional Versus Analytical Philosophy,â 194. John. R. Williams has rightly observed that Tugendhatâs main aim is this book was to âdemonstrate that linguistic philosophy does indeed answer the questions of traditional philosophy, such as the question of the meaning of âBeing,â and does so better than any form of traditional philosophy has been able to do.â Williams, âTraditional and Analytical Philosophy,â 346â347.
19. Tugendhat, preface to the Italian edition of Traditional and Analytical Philosophy: Lectures on the Philosophy of Language (Genova: Marietti, 1989), 4.
20. Tugendhat, Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, 8.
21. Tugendhat, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, 30.
22. Bubner, âZur Wirkung der analytischen Philosophie in Deutschland,â 448.
23. Although Dummett has also reconstructed the origins of analytical philosophy in his Origins of Analytical Philosophy, I agree with H.-J. Glock when he says that âTugendhat traces the origin of a cultural theme of analytical philosophy in a way which is more conscientious and less myopic than comparable attempts by Anglophone writers like Dummet. He shows that philosophyâs concern with the concept of an object and the role of singular terms has deeper (and in many respects more important) roots than Fregeâs distinction between objects and concepts or the logical atomism of Russel and the Tractatus, notably in Aristotleâs ontology and Kantâs transcendental philosophy.⊠He shows how analytical philosophy can profit not only from âclassicalâ traditional philosophy, but also from contemporary Continental philosophy. For example, he intimates that the understanding of sentences in turn presupposes a larger context, namely membership of an intellectual tradition, an idea which could be developed by reference both to the historical dimensions of understanding discussed by hermeneutics and to Wittgensteinâs claim that speaking a language is part of a âform of life.â For all those who are interested in a serious debate between analytical and Continental philosophy, Tugendhatâs works the best place to start.â Glock, âThe Object of Philosophy,â 240.
24. On this matter, see Pothast, âIn assertorischen SĂ€tzen wahrnehmen und in praktischen SĂ€tzen ĂŒberlegen, wie zu reagieren ist, Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung,â 26â43.
25. Rorty, review of Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, 726â727.
26. For an ethical-political profile of Tugendhatâs later works, see Wolf, Das Problem des moralischen...