Excerpted from a post made to LDS-Phil by James Faulconer.
The Languages of Philosophy
I will give a reading of the biblical story of Moses and Israel, but I do not intend that reading to be disjunct from philosophy, something I take recourse to when philosophy fails (or when I fail philosophy). I think the reading I give will be philosophy, but philosophy with an origin other than only Greek, philosophy enriched by the ancient and well-developed language of Jewish and Christian scripture. [Note: I think that the necessity of using the resources of scripture (or perhaps another discourse that is also not strictly philosophical) is an effect of the undecidability of the origin, for which I will argue.] What I will do runs the danger of dogmatism, but I hope to hear in the biblical story a voice that modern philosophy has marginalized and, thus, one appropriate place to listen for the call of the other. Obviously I am not the first to think that scripture is an appropriate resource for philosophy. More than 1,000 years of philosophy used that resource. However, today, continuing the Enlightenment prejudice against its origins, philosophers often ignore or even actively exclude medieval and late ancient philosophy and especially its scriptural sources and resources and the resources of religious traditions and communities.
I could argue for my recourse to the language of religion by twisting an Aristotelian argument: Given the use of a language over a long time, it is unlikely, even unimaginable, that the language could be globally wrong. (See Metaphysics 982b18 and 1074b1-14 and also Eudaimonian Ethics 1216b27.) It would follow that the very old languages of religious traditions are true, in some sense. Of course, unpacking what that sense is may be quite difficult. In any case, we should be leery that we can unpack the truth of religious language merely by translating an old language into a new one. In the first place, it may turn out to be impossible to make such a translation. One cannot, for example, adequately translate the language of quantum mechanics into the language of Newtonian mechanics. Perhaps a better example: it is silly to believe that one can translate Shakespeare's language into a scientific language. I think we should be skeptical about translating religious language into the language of contemporary anthropology or psychology. (For one thing, the object of religious language is generally different from that of anthropology or psychology. [See Richards and Faulconer, "Hermeneutics and the Psychology of Religion" (or something like that) for a longer discussion of the relations of religious language to the language of psychology.]
However, even if a translation from one language to another is possible, before we do so, we must be sure we speak both. Too many translations of religious language have been made by supposed translators who did not bother to learn the language of religion because, on the bases of their discipline, they already knew what it says.
We also face the danger of believing that only one philosophical language is appropriate. The language that we often associate with philosophy is a language of clarity: the object that one intends and what one's language means should be the same, and one's language should transparently embody that identity. Given such an understanding, philosophy is a love of wisdom, wisdom is self-clarity, and love is possession. In principle (even if only so), philosophy is possession of the truth of the world and self-possession. Much good philosophy is done in this language, with this idea of philosophy and this intention for philosophy. In fact, when we have a choice, most of us prefer the language and philosophy of clarity and distinctness. Our Cartesian inheritance explains a good portion of that preference, our elevation of science to knowledge per se. We cannot escape our epoch and its prejudices. But there is also more to it than mere history.
Our preference for "clear and distinct" philosophical writing is not merely contingent. Taking the identity of intention and expression to be an ultimate philosophical good is an outgrowth of our Cartesian goal of mastery over everything with no remainder, the transparency of the world. However, the identity of intention and expression is, sometimes, a good in itself: when that identity is possible, then our language ought to embody it. If our language does not, it fails. It is inadequate.
Nevertheless, languages other than the language of clarity are also possible for philosophy, sometimes even necessary. History shows that the language of philosophy informed by scripture and religious understanding has been assumed to be one of them. One mistake of Romanticism was to identify poetry with religion. The mistake is easy to make and the reasons for the mistake help us see why religious language has resources for philosophy. In the languages of each, I intend what goes beyond my understanding. In both, one speaks, but not to make everything transparent and easily grasped and controlled. In fact, in both poetry and religion, among other things, one denies, by one's way of speaking, by the language itself as well as its "content" (as if the two could be separated), the transparency of what one intends and one's ability to master it. The languages of poetry and religion point to things that one is mastered by rather than master of. In those languages, what I mean what my words and thoughts intend outstrips what I understand, outstrips what I mean. The object of my intention is excessive of my intention, of any possible intention. However, what exceeds my meaning is not another meaning, not something to be said "in other words." Thus, what I intend in poetry or religion is never an object in the strict sense of that term, making the word intention itself problematic, though it will do for now. [Footnote: Marion's discussion of intention in God without Being is instructive here.]
Because of this excessiveness, in religion and poetry I do not allow my language to dissimulate an adequacy and clarity of understanding that would belie the truth of what I say. At the same time, however, neither do I give in to nihilism and meaninglessness. Religious ordinances are a perfect example of such an excess. In them my words and actions intend more than I, as an individual human being, can possibly intend. [Footnote: The Catholic and Latter-day Saint recognition of the need for authority in ordinances is a recognition of the inadequacy of individual intentions to understanding or invoking the Divine. In general, Protestantism disagrees on this point, but its disagreement runs the risk of reducing religion to the thoughts and feelings of the individual. See my "A New Way of Looking at Scripture" for a more developed argument.]
If I write well, given the topic, the language I use here will be like the languages of poetry and religion more than it will be like that of science and logic (which, of course, does not deny the validity and necessity of either science or logic.) On this way of doing philosophy, love of truth, love of the origin, of what is transcendent this love is desire rather than fulfillment of desire (cf. Levinas, Totality and Infinity). As Plato does in the Symposium, this way of doing philosophy conceives philosophy as erotic rather than possessive. On this way of doing philosophy, wisdom is something other than transparency and identity, mastery of everything, whether self or other. In fact, on this way of doing philosophy, wisdom and such transparency are mutually exclusive with regard to some matters. Like poetry and religion, this philosophy is symbolic or allegorical, if we take those words literally: symbol something that brings two disparate things together; allegory that which says something other, something that points to the excess.
Sometimes we accuse those who do philosophy using a language that is not clear and distinct, in which what is intended outstrips our understanding, of obscurantism. The indolent and those who wish to show off often think that to be obscure or even nonsensical is to do this kind of philosophy, and so, by intending little and saying less, they give a bad name to language that intends more than it can comprehend. It is easy enough to find examples of such work in the academy. But a way of doing philosophy ought not to be judged by its incompetents. Though less commonly remarked, probably just as many are indolent or showing off who think they do philosophy merely because they are clear, precise, and "logical." In itself, a lack of "clarity and distinctness" is no more a sign of bad philosophy than is its presence a sign of good philosophy.
Of course, in some ways, these two ways
of doing philosophy are mutually exclusive. At least they have
been so, though only for the last two-hundred fifty years and
only obviously so for about sixty years. For most of the 2,700
years of philosophy, these two approaches to philosophy have lived
well together, often within the brains and pens of the same philosophers.
[Footnote: There are signs that such a harmonious relation
may yet return.] For such philosophers, part of what it meant
to be a philosopher was to judge well which kind of philosophy
was appropriate to which questions about what kinds of "objects."
In this paper, I commit the hubris of judging the language of
scripture to be a resource for thinking philosophically about
the possibility of community.