So, we've had two outstanding presentations today by Barbara Cassin and by Alexander Garcia-Brittmann. So, Barbara's paper was a kind of presentation of the general field of her research on the relation between sophistry and philosophy, with particular attention at the end of the paper to Lacan and the problem of the position of the sophist vis-à-vis psychoanalysis. And Alex's paper treated Adorno's, the question in the aesthetic theory of lying in art. The problem of how it's possible, how it can be true that art both has to lie and can never lie.
Qua art. And so I thought that we'll have about at least an hour and a half for conversation between the four keynotes, keynotes and then we'll do this again tomorrow evening, although unfortunately Alex won't be able to be with us. So, these are usually very interesting, I'm sure that'll be the case again to date, and I think that there are some, so I just wanted to mention two, maybe, two possible topics that we could arrive at at some point. I want to start by allowing Alberto and Ray to maybe pose some questions to our two presenters from this afternoon. But I also think that at some point it might be interesting to talk through a couple problems between the two papers.
So it occurs to me just that the general problem that Alex is dealing with might give us an opportunity to think more about the role of art or literature in Barbara's accounts of sophistry or a sophistical history of philosophy. So that is to say, the account that you've tried to develop of that which is not philosophy or that which is designated as not philosophy. So that was something that I think is very important to your work, but that you didn't have time to touch on in your own presentation. So that might be one thing we could talk about. And I also think that with regard to Alex's paper, it might be interesting to speak a little more about specifically the relation of art to philosophy
or about aesthetics as a philosophical field and how that relates to the capacity of philosophy to kind of give an account of what happens in art. So those are two questions that I thought might draw some connections between the papers. But let me start off by asking if Ray or Alberto have some questions that they'd like to pose. Topics for discussion. You've been watching that football match too closely. Ray, Alberto. Oscar. Sure, yeah, okay, if you don't mind. Okay, no, no, it's good. So, your notes?
It's not going to be that drawn out. So maybe I'll start. I had a question for, or two questions for Alex and one for Barbara. So I was really curious about this expression regarding the full presentation of false consciousness. and I was wondering I suppose who if who is the right term who that full presentation is for because it's clearly not a full presentation of socially necessary false consciousness for the artist
him or herself and so then there's a possible risk in a sense, but I don't know if it's a risk or not, that the critic or philosopher is a necessarily imminent figure within this particular figuration of what art is. So if the full presentation of socially necessary false consciousness is, in a sense, what takes place in the artwork, then the artwork would in a way only retroactively become such by the attestation on the part of a suitably attuned critic or philosopher of this full presentation.
Which then opens up a further issue regarding the question of politics because it's almost as though the critic or the philosopher is also a kind of, whether real or imaginable, nevertheless a kind of mediator between this full presentation of false consciousness and something, however tenuous, which might take the name of politics. So that would be the first question that I had. And the second one, I suppose, is more a point of clarification than a question, or just an occasion perhaps for you to expand some of the argument regarding Adorno in particular,
which is that in a way, if we speak of lying in art or the lying of art, that then the questions of forms of art and indeed within the arts of genres of art seem pertinent. So if I, I mean, it's a somewhat idle thought, but I was wondering to what extent it was fleshed out either in Adorno and something that you wanted to bring out. The way in which fiction, narrative fiction can be seen to organize some or construct some form of semblance is, at least prima facie, seems very different than to say, you know,
Wagner's Gotterdammerung is, you know, a lie. You know, the nature of lying or the nature of semblance seems to differ, you know, between painting, on which we have very ancient debates about, you know, verisimilitude and the like, to narrative arts, and then poetry or song or music. So those are really the two questions. I mean, I had a question for Barbara, but it may... Well, maybe you could say what it is right now. Okay, all right. Yeah, and the question for Barbara was really about the passage from your delineation of sophistical practice to the more, I suppose, explicitly political dimensions,
especially in terms of your contemporary examples. And I was particularly interested in the whole question of the link between sophistry and transitional justice because that brings in to the debate about sophistry and the debate about performativity a question regarding time. So, I mean, the first part that in a way I thought was curious is that, you know, at least in a certain philosophical understanding of politics, sophistry seems to be a menace, seems to be a threat to a proper hierarchy of values, to a proper circulation of meanings, and so on and so forth, as you laid out in terms of Aristotle.
But if one takes a rather, which I think is legitimate retrospectively, a rather pessimistic or critical stance vis-a-vis the horizon of transitional justice, which incidentally is a stance that Desmond Tutu himself has taken by saying essentially it's made no difference to the question of social justice in South Africa, that that was a huge absence within it, that certain forms of sophistry or certain forms of politically doing things with words seem to have a kind of palliative or potentially palliative or potentially therapeutic function within a generally consensual liberal order.
And I think one of the things that critiques of transitional justice, I'm thinking in particular just because I ended up reviewing it of this Robert Meister book called After Evil, where he has a long discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he argues, even though he sees it as the sort of the only, in a way, form of transitional justice that could be treated as a political worth or interest. rather than the ones mostly taking place in Eastern Europe that have been rather more straightforwardly neoliberal. That in that case, you have a very strange theater of political time. And for him, the theater of political time, hence the title of his book,
is one that places subjects after evil in order that they're always before justice. So in order that justice is always deferred by a particular moral theater in which the beneficiaries, in this case the beneficiaries of apartheid, i.e. the vast majority of the white population of South Africa, are no longer viewed as perpetrators. So the theater allows the beneficiaries to disidentify themselves with a history from which they're still benefiting, but the benefit itself is not in any way affected. That is to say, the truth and reconciliation commission has not undone the nonverbal or partly nonverbal structure of social violence.
So I was wondering about that because, you know, especially because the elocutionary in Austin is so often linked by so many theorists to this moment, to moments of political foundation or to moments of materially effective speech that I was curious, you know, if a critical view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that it's a speech that cauterizes a certain form of social violence, but also defers a certain kind of social justice, potentially infinitely and with potentially very negative consequences. Well, maybe we can...
Okay, so those are three topics for conversation. It's important that anyone can speak to these questions, but Alex, I mean, why don't we start with you in this first question about... Basically, I take it the question is about the relation of art to interpretation. The interpretation of the art object by the philosopher and the role that that plays. I mean, I wouldn't really know how to answer the question differently from the way in which I answered it this afternoon. Because if the question is for whom, yes, then in the examples I tried to give
what you have is basically the possibility that at some point you know something as it were, how shall I put it, I think I said there's something which like a kind of short circuit if you wish something which is suddenly which comes out like a sparkle or whatever you want to call it of the work of art and then it turns into an impetus which becomes as it were political impetus without there being really a relationship of cause and effect. So I would find it very difficult to say much more beyond that because I think then I would as it were limit I mean I would limit the issue more than I would want to
limit the issue. Maybe to specify my question, because maybe I didn't... Die vollkommene Darstellung falschen Bewusstseins, that is the total presentation of false consciousness. You can understand that as the integral, but you can also understand it as a moment of intensification, as I said. So say, I mean, that was the example I gave this afternoon, but without many details. Say you are watching, you know, Leni Riefenstahl's film on the Olympics in Berlin in 1936. And there is this moment where she shows how the athletes, I don't know what they're doing. I suppose they're doing this kind of, what do you call that,
when you run a cross-country and... Cross-country runner. Okay. That's the only term. They're doing cross-country running. And there is that moment when they are basically, they go into this sauna, and it's part of that. Don't ask me why. And they're all naked, and they're all these beautiful athletes, all boys, and then they're basically in the sauna, and she shows that, and very Germanic boys, as it were, and then afterwards they run into the lake outside and then they keep running, so it's like a little moment in the sauna for some reason. I suppose they don't do that these days anymore,
but in 1936, it seemed that they did. And there's really this moment where you could suddenly, I mean, if you have a bit of a, you know, if you know something of film, as I said, you know, suddenly you're reminded of that moment when, I mean, the way in which she shows those bodies in you know sweating and in the sauna you're reminded suddenly a little bit of of the way in which Visconti films the bodies of the young SA Nazis in Batvisi when they have the big gathering it's the Röhmpoch basically that this is all about the kind of choral scene where suddenly then the SS comes in all dressed in black and they kill everybody around and what Visconti does of course in his film
is that he draws out the homosexual component, which in Leni Riefenstahl remains completely as it were, it's there, but it's not. Yes? And it's almost as if, you know, this is not just a kind of contingent connection you make there, but it's almost as if there is that moment when Riefenstahl takes it to that extreme where suddenly the other images come in and you can see that Visconti as a without, I'm not trying to imply that Visconti ever thought of that, yes? But you see it as a continuation. And if that happens, that could be the moment of such a sparkle, yes, when suddenly you see how a certain ideology of the body and of bodily beauty and so on and so forth has this political, I mean, you know, it's basically pushed to an extreme where it begins to touch upon something else.
where the absolute horror of that moment that Visconti shows when they are caught, as it were, and all killed, you know, that massacre that happens, plays, becomes almost like the logical consequence of what Riefenstahl is already showing without showing it. And that would be such a moment of intensification of ideology, as it were, you know, where Visconti is the logical consequence of what she is doing. As it were, he exposed, you know, the exposure which is already there in that moment of intensification in Riefenstahl becomes evident, self-evident in this context. I can see that as a moment of, like a sparkle, you know, just as with Fassbinder, with the other example. So I would, so the for whom is, for anyone, anyone for whom that happens,
and where that does not simply then remain an aesthetic effect, but is transformed into an impetus which is carried into a kind of political context, if you wish. Yes? So I would say for whom? For anyone and everyone, but without any kind of in advance guarantee that it may happen like this or like that or the other way around. I was also thinking about this question, actually, as you were giving your paper, the question of the role of interpretation by the critic or the philosopher of the art object in relation to the politics or the history of the art object. because this problem that you raised, I think, of the relationship between having to lie and not being able to lie in art
bears directly upon, I think, what it is about the structure, the dialectical structure of the art object that Adorno says calls out for interpretation. So he says art objects have to be, they demand interpretation precisely because they expel their historical context by becoming autonomous, by becoming autonomous objects, but at the same time, of course, in the very act of doing so, they take up that context within themselves as it is expelled and through the act of expulsion. So that's this kind of utopian moment of making art where it's a lie. It's a production of a different reality, which is not just empirical, but at the same time, the inability to lie is in the relation of that becoming autonomous
to the particular historical context that it becomes autonomous from. And so that dialectic is what Adorno says demands interpretation, because the gestalt, if you want, of the art object has to be broken down and looked at in its details and related back to the process of its becoming, the relation between the subject and the object in the historical context, etc. So there is this, there's a kind of interesting role of, not necessarily the philosopher, but the viewer or the critic or the aesthetic theorist who has to take the autonomous object, decompose it, and then relate it in its decomposition back to the historical context that it comes out of.
And in order to examine the sort of political inscription of art in history, it requires that kind of process of interpretation. And I think that has to do with this double nature of the object. Yes, that would be possibly another way of answering the same question. I mean, I find my answer, as it were, more intuitively. I mean, I know that Adorno says all of that. you see when you ask the question about philosophy and art I thought of something else because I think for me that's where that question poses itself now it poses itself in relation to so called contemporary art and not too long ago I had a big fight with Juliane Rebentich
in Berlin who is like Mrs. Contemporary Art in Germany for some reason she's not the only one but I mean she is one of them And she's just written a book called Theories of Contemporary Art, which I think gets it completely wrong. Because she thinks that contemporary art, I mean, the distinction to be made here, of course, is between art made in the present and what is called contemporary art. And not all art made in the present is contemporary art. I mean, I think that if we use contemporary art as a name, not as a description of art made in the present. and I find it extremely difficult but also very challenging to find out what that name names actually but I think it names something so basically the position that you find in Redentisch as some of you will know is it is ultimately
so called contemporary art a continuation of what Habermas calls and I think she even quotes Habermas at that point the open project of modernity so basically not much changes with contemporary art you re-inscribe it in that tradition and that means that there is a critic and a philosopher as a critic perhaps who has to show in which ways this art continues critically the open project of modernism or modernity. I think it's in Howard and so on and so forth. I think that's really completely wrong. Contemporary art is something different altogether. It has nothing to do with the open project of modernity. It's almost as if at some point in the 90s perhaps or 80s, I don't know enough about it to really give you a date, something happened and I don't know why I mean maybe there was an exhaustion of
philosophy and aesthetics and at that point it was almost as if art crossed not a limit but what I mean if you want the Kentian distinction between Grenze and Schranke but a border I mean what is Schranke? You know the probably in the Prolegomena there's this distinction between a barrier so a limit is something you can cross but a barrier you can't and it's almost as if if in art that had happened. Which means that I think that philosophy has absolutely nothing to say about contemporary art. But not just because it hasn't found the concepts to do so, but because it's really something else. But what is it? It's a kind of strange amnesia. I mean, of course, if you look at contemporary art, you will find lots of philosophical concepts flying around,
and bits of discourse, and they're all the phenomena we know about curators, you know then quoting a bit of this and that but ultimately one always has the feeling that it remains arbitrary and anything goes somehow so I'm interested in that what is it that it's really doing because I think there's a real challenge to philosophy there in as much as the traditional role of philosophy in relation to art and I think what you just described in relation to Adorno is still part of that no longer applies and I'm a I'm lost there I don't know what it is so you think that it's that it is in fact for example I mean I read one Sorry, I don't want to, but one last sentence. Something I also read recently in relationship to contemporary art is a novel that came out in Spain in March by this writer who is not a great but an interesting writer called Eduardo Villamatas.
You know him, yes? And he was invited by Documenta, what was the last one, 13? Enrique Villamatas? Oh, I said Eduardo, Enrique. Enrique Villamatas. So Enrique Villamatas was invited as a writer in residence to the last documenta, and he was meant to sit in a restaurant called Genghis Khan at the outskirts of Kassel and, you know, at a table like this with the little thing saying, writer in residence, exposed to everyone who would come and ask him questions. Now, he went because he had a prejudice against contemporary art, he thought, like many people in Barcelona, not many of his generation, like Felix Nerthua and such people, it's bullshit. Yes? and he thought well let's find out and he went and he loved everything
you know and then he wrote this novel called Kassel Neumit a la Logica which has a double it's equivocal it can mean Kassel does not invite logic but also Kassel does not invite to reason logically as it were and you know he was in a hotel Hessenland which everybody I mean I went because I had I gave a paper that's why I was amused by the novel I recognized things I was in the same hotel. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but we had to stay there because it was this 50s architecture thing that was so special in Kassel. And next door there was Tino Segal with his installation, and he fell in love with Pierre Ruy and his stuff with a dog and a little pink, well, you know. And you read it, and this novel, and he loves everything, but there's absolutely no critical approach to it.
He just gets a kick out of everything without any kind of conceptual critical approach. And he even says, it's one hypothesis, what contemporary art does is take things into nothingness. And he does not mean that critically or despectively. He means that, I mean, the whole point would be to elaborate this notion of nothingness here. Nancy in L'Autre Portrait, which he published in January, says there's like an amnesia. There's no, you know, that separates contemporary art from other art. So that's where I think the relationship philosophy art today is really challenged. And it's an interesting question to ask because what I feel is that all the concepts that philosophy has developed in aesthetics to deal with art no longer apply.
Including Adornos. Including Adornos. I don't think that you can do much with that. with very few exceptions. I mean, I found a passage in Aesthetic Theory where he talks about Beckett, not exactly contemporary art, but then Adorno died in 1969, as you know, and that was as much as, you know, as... So where he says, you know, for a moment, he says Beckett is interested in a positive notion of nothingness and one would have to extrapolate other and different concepts than the concepts that aesthetics has used so far from this nothingness. But he doesn't say what kind of concepts. He doesn't specify anything. That's the most advanced moment I've found so far in Adorn in relation to that. Something like that, yes. But I think, you know, to talk about form and content and expressiveness and mimeses and criticality and all of that,
it seems to me that it's like, what are we doing? We are not really... But I have no idea what that phenomenon is. I mean, for a long time, I thought it was bullshit. But now I'm interested in looking at it from a different perspective. Maybe it's not, but what is it? I don't know. well maybe if we stick with this topic for a moment it might be an interesting opportunity Barbara for you to speak about the way that you think about literature just to frame it a little bit there's that which is not philosophy or that which is said to be not philosophy by part of literature I think here there is a real point and we have to try to deal with it because when Alexander speaks, I was wondering,
but who is a contemporary artist? And if, for example, Bill Voila is... No, no, he's not. Ah, good! Very happy. So I think that, because he is certainly an artist... No, they don't like him in contemporary art that much. No, but I don't know, but I mean contemporary artists are living today and making new things. It's not art made in the present. Thinking they make new things. Yes, of course. And they make very old ones. And we have a lot of concepts to say what they are making. So I wonder if there won't be any contemporary art in the past and if there are many past artists today that we think that are passing for contemporary artists.
So I always have problems, you know, to say this is contemporary, this is not. If you don't say, well, they are living today, what means contemporary? We are in the same tempus. Or you say that. Or you say, well, what I cannot deal with my old concepts, this is contemporary. But maybe your concepts are really not the right ones. And okay. But you see, I have problems here, really. Because I, and you know why? It's because for the first time in my life, I am working with contemporary artists because I'm making an exhibition at the museum about translation, and I prepare it, and so I met Huygues, et cetera, et cetera, Sophie Kahl, and what?
Who is contemporary there? I don't know. But what I can say is that it's very easy to deal with their works with some concepts that are as silly as other concepts. That's all. You see, my problem is really a living problem. So for you though, when you think about if there's literature, that which is said to be not philosophy, of course, beginning with, well not beginning with, but in the case of Socrates famously, or up to the present, what's the role, how do you think about the role of aesthetics?
because aesthetics, I mean, obviously attempts to mediate within philosophy, if you want, between art and philosophical conceptuality. But it's... I'm not the good person to answer. Oh. I can say things about Plato, about Aristotle. I've read Hegel and I can't. Sorry. I won't say anything new, anything that you don't know, except if I, you know, if I take a text and then try to deal with it with you. But I'm not the right person. And, well, I'm nobody in aesthetics. I just am a customer.
I only ask because you think a lot about the relation between literature for example and philosophy so arts and philosophy in that sense yes I am I am a customer in literature too and I am a writer too yes but I I don't know what I am doing I mean the only thing I can I am I do perfectly recognize myself and what I think of art, if I can think anything about that, when you describe the moment where something happens that you don't expect. And that could be politics, but that could be politics, that could be anything, that could be art.
It could be something else. That could be art. this is for me the moment when it begins to be art it's when something happened you didn't expect so this is art for me when I paint or when I write or when I dance or when I do anything that could be not music because I don't know but anything that could be called art it's when something happens that I don't expect and when I try to follow it even if I absolutely how can I say
dismiss if I make a mess with this new thing that happens this is art and if I were an artist For example, if I were a painter, when I begin to see something in my toile, that I don't expect. And if I follow it, and if I accept to make amiss with that, and not to do it well, and to... This, I will be a painter. But I don't, because I'm so happy to find something that... So I leave it, you know, and I begin another one. That is absolutely silly. If I was a painter, I had to pursue in this way and to accept that it's not good
and to accept that it is still not good and still not good but interesting. But as I'm not a painter except a Sunday painter, I just protect what happens. You see? So that's the only thing that I can really say from my experience. What about Alberto's question?
look, this school, well, we just have chairs now. So this is absolutely the disgusting truth. Reparations have not been enough, and they have not been made at the same time than the TRC itself. So it's, of course, not enough at all. And TRC could be seen, and it's true, as a kind of avoidance, a vitement of the real problem. But it has, I think it is in this point, really like psychoanalysis.
and the similarity has been made by TRC itself, by Tutu they always say that it was a psychoanalysis at the scale of a nation and they say revealing is healing and you pass under this banner when you went when you enter in the court and revealing is healing healing our land these were the mottos and it's extraordinary and after when when you when people spoke there was a lot of psycho things psycho people saying how do you feel now are you better it's terrible okay but just as terrible as Tutu you
you know, on his knees and praying just on the back. So all this existing, was existing. But psychoanalysis can help sometimes. That's all. It doesn't guérir, it doesn't heal completely. And if you are Lacanian, you don't have to. It's not the point. The point is that logos, speech, is something like a pharmacon. It helps. It's good and bad. And it helps to continue. That's all. I don't mean, you know, I don't make at all any apology.
But what I want to say is that it... The point where it, of course, has been useful It has evited, prevented blood, shed. So that's true. It's just the reality. This you must recognize. And of course, the price to pay was that no revolution could occur. No real revolution could occur. Just transformation.
And it's what is, well, I mean, I take the term transitional justice seriously. It makes a transition from a worse state to a better one. It's a comparative. That's why it is so sophisticated. And that's why, if I had time, I will now read the Protagoras Apology in the Theatetus. You have the last text, you know. It's the text about, that perfectly fit with transitional justice. it's
the point is I didn't you see the word the Greek word in parenthesis it's metabalene it's transition transformation making pass to a bad state to a better one that is to a comparative not to a good one not to truth, not to good, but to better. So this is transition. And when Tutu, the house where Tutu was living near Cape Town, when he came in Cape Town, on the wall, this is the picture I took for the cover of the book
about our book about TRC. It was an extraordinary graffiti, but very, very beautiful, saying how to turn human wrongs into human rights. This was the point. How to turn human wrongs into human rights. not how with the point with the interrogative form it was the way you can this is real transition with the equivoc of human wrongs and human rights extraordinary equivoc it's logic, it's ethics
it's politics how to turn human wrongs into human rights that was the point of TRC just go to a better state with the logos pharmacone logos remedy and poison and that's all so for the it was a special tempus it was Cairo Cairo's it was at the certain moment it could occur only at a certain moment not perpetuation. There is no perpetuation of TRC. It was just when there were this moment where there were neither victors, neither vanquished, neither victors, victorious people,
nor vanquished people. At that point, at that moment, could occur speech. I mean, to maybe take up Alberto's question a bit further, though, if turning human wrongs into human rights... I mean... How to turn? How to. But what if... So if the discourse of true enough for if that's the kind of the project that that's capable of right so as you say it's a it's a project of reform or transition moving from human wrongs to human rights plays on the term yes but one could ask whether human rights so if one then if one poses the
question in response to that is human rights a better state or is it a contemporary political ideology which reinforces inequality etc then it opens up a different political problem right then then you have to have that is to say standard of you have to you have to have the capacity to critique ideology in a way that um that is not just true enough for but that points out that is to say poses the problem of ideology yes but of course we are in in full ideology But we are dismissing the ideology at the same time we are putting it. That's to say, instead of saying, well, human rights are universal,
you say at the same time, well, human writers, can you say that? better rights could be, on this kairos of transition, a better state. That's not at all the form of the, for me, ideology is always universal. I make a link between universality of human rights and ideology. I don't make a link, not so easy, with kairos, kaironic human better, you see? Kaironic comparative, dedicated comparative to a moment and to a time, to a people, to a moment, to a situation.
This for me is not so ideologic. It's less ideology. and I propose you to to think in terms of more or less not in terms of ideology and good and right but you already have to choose the frame for the more or less that is to say more or less what I mean already choosing more or less bloodshed is not a straightforward decision plenty of situations that one could think of where less bloodshed now means more bloodshed later or so on and so forth. So in a sense that's kind of what I was trying to get at
in terms of the temporality because there is a particular temporality to that conception of transition. I mean after all transition is a concept that was not only a liberal concept. And in the other variants, it was precisely not, you know, apotheosis event. I mean, many of the same problems, including problems of violence, etc., were problems of every revolutionary government as well. But they're formulated in a quite different manner.
And that question of calibrate, I think what's interesting about putting it in terms of the more or less is the question of whether those logics of quantity and calibration, which are also in a sense often logics of lesser evil, which is in many ways the consensual ideology of our moment, that the best that you can expect is a lesser evil. I mean, this is agreed by every single power and government that's considered to be legitimate in a kind of international sense.
At that point then, but the logics of the lesser evil, like the pharmacon that you're talking about, have precisely the possibility that the temporality of the cure now is the temporality of a worse disease later. So, I mean, I think that's what I mean about the fact that that already involves a decision of framing and a set of priorities whereby the priority not to have bloodshed, which I'm not saying is a bad priority, but that's a decision. That's not a given. Can I add something to the reminder?
Yes. Because I was wondering whether the logic of the more or less and the logic of the kai hos are really compatible with each other. I mean it depends on what you mean by the logic of the kairos I suppose, but my sense was is that the logic of the more or less is always a logic that moves within a certain more or less homogeneous, more or less continuous time and space frame as it were. The logic of the kairos must be a logic of interruption, of caesura, of a moment that cannot be repeated and that cuts through as it were. So either you re-inscribe that within a bigger frame, which you have set up in advance and say it's a kind of lesser kairos, as it were, or you have a really strong logic of the kairos and then it's incompatible at some point with the logic of the more or less.
Yes, I do understand your logical point, but it's less true than the other way of thinking. Let me explain. The logic of Kairos is the logic of the moment you can introduce, you have to seize this particular occasion to introduce the possibility of a better state. and better is a logic of comparative. When I say more or less, I want to say that I am not in the superlative. I am in a kind of dedicated comparative.
Dedicated to a kairos. Dedicated to a situation, to people in a certain situation, at a certain moment, in a certain country. so you find Kairos everywhere if you want if you think like that I think well this is how I will try to answer you but what I wanted I wanted to answer also about given what did you say about given it's not a given what is not a given Well, the frame is not a given because to frame the Kairos in that way, let's take the South African example, to frame the Kairos at the level in which it was framed means to leave a whole other set of temporalities untouched.
the temporality of property, the temporality of money, the temporality of... Absolutely, absolutely. The temporality of Sida, of AIDS. That was one of the biggest temporalities in South Africa, you know. And what apartheid didn't do, AIDS did do. And effectively, it has been let out. So, I mean... But that's what I meant, I guess, about the frame, that the more or less is already within a choice of frame, which is a political decision. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Yes, it's true. I don't say there is no decision. That's why I'm saying that the more or less, it's not given what it's a... There's a decision and then there's a more or less within that decision of what the frame,
the moral political frame is. The decision has to be taken, but it's also a decision that the more or less logic, the comparative, the dedicated comparative will be enough. Will be all what we can do at that moment. And of course you can here reintroduce the less worse. But that's a point to discuss. Is less worse less worse than good? Well it seems to me like that's what opens the conversation up to this larger question about relativism and about sophistry.
So that is to say, I mean, I take it that part of what Alberto is pointing out is that if one says, well, revolution would be less worse than the TRC, then the very frame within which one decides upon the better or worse is displaced by a different frame, a different kind of decision, right? And so that rather than, that is to say it's possible to choose as less worse a form of action which doesn't abide by the rule of the better and the worse. Nor is it necessarily absolute. There are lots of terrible things about revolution. It's not that it's the good. But one can displace the transitional frame by thinking a totally different form of politics and saying that it's less worse or that it's better.
Yes. And that the TRC is worse. so then it's but that isn't I think to frame the question in terms of encouraging one to think in terms of better or worse and equating that with a transitional change for me those two things aren't they don't necessitate one another, they don't require one another they're not necessarily the same thing so the question about relativism and sophistry for me that would come out of that would be is it actually true? that the sophist is the one who doesn't have a model okay socrates or the elianic stranger certainly not will say that the the sophist is a cheater and a liar etc but the sophist has his
own kind of truth i think but one could one could ask after the way in which the sophist actually looks like the philosopher just as much Socrates as Socrates sometimes looks like the sophist. The indistinguishability goes both ways. So one has to wonder if, it's not that, and I understand it, that your project is not to promote sophistry over philosophy, but in thinking the indistinction, you see that kind of indistinction, when one actually does carry out a deconstructive practice on a binary like that, that you can then deconstruct the relation as well between absolutism and the better or the worse so that it's very difficult to you can say that absolutism is better
than the better and the worse and now you have a problem you see well when you take apart the well you can't simply choose one over the other and so I wonder how when we think about sophistry You know, one has to insert the philosopher into the figure of the sophist, just as much as the sophist into philosophy. Of course you can do that, but it's a philosophical gesture. Of course you can. No problem. Just do it. But then, you know, the point is that sophist is always second. And better and worse is always after the absolute.
And this is really important to think. It is not only a historical fact, it's a structural fact. No, there couldn't be Gorgias without Parmenides. that's why my first book was entitled If Parmenides then Gorgias etc so if but then this seemed implicit in your argument the mapping of the philosophical absolute or the desire for the absolute of a certain understanding of philosophy and of philosophical truth and a form of politics be it the politics of immediacy or the politics of revolution or the politics of not the more or less,
which would be viewed as somehow absolute or absolutist. But that doesn't seem to be really a necessity in that sense. That is to say that somebody could adopt the thinking and behavior or the modes of thinking of sophistry, hypothetically, and engage in extremely violent politics, for instance. and somebody as exists today could be a liberal in the most absolutist sort of way. Because otherwise I think that one runs the danger, which is a kind of Poparian danger,
of identifying philosophical, and it's not just Popper, but of identifying philosophy's relationship to truth to a politics of absoluteness. But I think that to me seems a kind of historical travesty that depends on theories of totalitarianism and so on and so forth. And in fact, it turns out that if you look at the actual politics of both, of the political forms that have been treated as absolutists, actually they're mired in the most flamboyant forms of improvisation, relativism, or what have you. So I think there's a real danger if we then map the philosophical debate between philosophy and sophistry onto a political debate between a gradualist liberalism and a kind of absolutist politics.
Yes, I think you can say really everything there. But the point is, what do you call relativism? And I think it's what we have to think about. I don't know exactly. I just know that when you just dismiss relativism as a bad thing, you are Platonician. That's certain. That's all. So if you don't want to be Platonician, maybe you want to be. But I don't. Because when I... And that's why it's so interesting for me to work with Badiou, because he is real platonist. So it's very interesting to work together. Barbara, one thing for Sain.
Yes? No? I'm just following up on this. I actually have a question, both for you and actually for you and Alex. First of all, about the issue of equivocity and the relationship between relativism and equivocity. If you have a different theory of meaning, for instance, like a post-Wittgenstein theory of meaning is use, where meaning is accounted for in terms of propriety of linguistic functioning, of how people use words, then the possibility of equivocity presupposes the ability to discriminate between proper and improper uses of words. So in other words, you have to be able to recognize the proper use of a word in order to be able to recognize something like an equivocal.
If I say the bank's just over there, and I'm talking about the river bank, not the institution, you need to be aware of at least one of these proprietors to recognize the equivocity. isn't in the quote from our end at the end of your handout it seems to me that unless you have what's called a kind of a matrimonial theory of meaning which assumes that all meaning is naming this is the old theological theory of meaning is that all the ultimate linguistic functioning is that of nomination so that naming is the ultimate paradigm of meaning.
And this is the metaphysical kind of naming that has been subjected to kind of scaling critiques in both philosophical traditions, both the European and Anglo-American traditions. But once you've eliminated this identification of meaning and essence, okay, as Quine says, you know, meaning is what essence become when it's divorced from substance and wedded to the word. Once you no longer think that meaning is the nomination of an essence, you can identify meaning with function and proprieties of function, then the ability, for instance, the equivocity identified by people like Arendt, still requires the ability to identify proprieties of use across languages.
So for instance, we can identify proprieties of use, I can identify the way in which someone in French uses parler and an English person uses speaking or sprach in German, whatever, because I can identify an equivalence of function. So the first question is, then this already undermines a kind of metaphysical interpretation of relativism, because all you're saying is that equivocity has no kind of implications about relativism, because the ability to identify equivocity implies the ability to identify invariances of function across different linguistic economies. so I'd be interested to hear
what you have to say about this could you reformulate the question I had a lot of thoughts when you were speaking could you ask me if I can answer I don't know I think it's a mistake to talk about the faltering equivocity of the world equivocity is a linguistic phenomenon, a semantic phenomenon, we can identify equivocity in terms of, you know, we know that people can use words, the same words, for different purposes. Well, this is the point where I can, I think this is the point where I don't agree. it's not only that
people can use it is that when you hear sounds then just Aristotle says in his refutation of sophists they want to be they want that the demonstrate... How can I say it in English? Say it in French. No, I say it in Greek. That's the point. Restricting the linguistic community. Ta ente phone, kai tu logo. What is in the sound of voices
and in the logos. They want me, says Aristotle, to demonstrate the principle, but they could be persuaded only by ta ente phone kai entou logu. And this is impossible, he said. I cannot deal with that. I cannot deal with what? With ta and te phone, kai and tu logo. I cannot deal with the things that are in the sounds, or in the sound of voice, and in the logos. Without meaning. Without consideration of anything else. And let us imagine Lacan.
That's why I always take Aristotle on Lacan. Lacan, of course. is always dealing with ta ente pho ne kai entou logu. And it is, of course, his point. And the equivocity, there is no proper meaning. There is no proper and improper meaning. There are many meanings of ta ente pho ne kai entou logu. And when you stay there, when you stay just a minute there, Then you can say in a very interesting way that man is the measure of all things. Man in the measure of what is said, what is meant.
Man, that means at a certain moment, in a certain situation. There could be at the same time many meanings, and you can maybe choose one, but all the others are here, and you are in a hole. It's what Lacan called le trou du souffleur, the blowing hell. You say soufflé? Yes. Blowing hell. So, I don't say that Gorgias was thinking of that. I don't say that Aristotle could think of that. But it makes me think of that. And really, I think it's an interesting way of understanding what Aristote can do and cannot do
if you are thinking with Lacan's model. You see? That's all what I say. But, of course, if I say that, I say also that there is no proper meaning. There could be a proper meaning in one sentence. You want, because you want, you intend to say something and not, you want to say that the bank of the river, but not the bank of the money. Okay, you want that, but that's all. I think also that this... Craig is just saying equivocation is not such a big problem. Why is equivocation a problem? No, but it bears a lot more problematic content than you can isolate in a word.
Yes. So of course, you say sentence, and the equivocation of the word depends on its context of the sentence. But it's also true that when in Derida's essay in signature than context, part of the problem of iterability is it's not just about thinking about, in your example, the word speech in three different languages and we can identify what would be a proper or improper meaning of the word based on its use, which doesn't rely upon some naturally proper meaning. But actually, when language is used, you know, Derigat's point is,
the dissemination of its contextual meanings or its contextual field is radically in excess of one's capacity to isolate just the meaning of a word in a sentence in terms of the way that one thinks one is using it or that someone else is using it. That is to say, the iterability of the word is always active in this differential relation between the previous context, which is not there, and the context in which it's being used right now. Now, you acknowledge all of that, but I would just say that when one tries to isolate and say, well, in order to understand the implication between bank and bank. One has to understand the way that the words are used and therefore we can sort of...
I take it that part of your point would be, and the point that you're making, is that one doesn't know all the equivocations that are in the uses of a word in a context. When you say one, you mean the speaker or the community? Both. But no, that doesn't make any sense, I think. It's one thing to say that the speaker, I mean, it's clear that the individual speaker has no control over it, because meaning is not, I mean, this is a critique of an excessively phonological account of intentionality, which thinks that the speaker can determine the meaning. And of course we can't. The whole point is that you can't. You can only learn, you know, language is a kind of a social phenomenon. We can only learn to use words as parts of sentences, as assertions, and we can only learn how to assert things in the context of social practices.
The social context fixes the proprieties of function. And none of us individually gets to decide what are the proper and improper functions, but we can always be corrected. So there's someone there who can correct you about your use of words. If you claim that that is completely indeterminate... No, it's not completely indeterminate, but it's not determinate either. And I would just say that what you're articulating is quite a conservative theory of meaning as use, in which the point of an essay like Derrida is to interfere precisely with the capacity to be corrected in a univocal way. But surely it already presupposes this phenomenological theory.
I mean, the idea that, you know, the indeterminacy, the indeterminacy is unproblematic and banal. It's actually the idea that there's a, you know, kind of an equivalency. There are different ways of using words. That doesn't determine the determinacy or the fact that there's a proper and improper use, you know, or words can be repurposed. So this whole claim about indeterminacy, what do you actually mean when you say that meaning is indeterminate? Indeterminate compared to what? I take it that in Barbara's... Only this metaphysical account, which is the determination is a nomination of a reference. Don't give to me. But in a passage by Aristotle, Aristotle is just saying, words can only have one meaning at a time, and you have to acknowledge that
whenever you use a word. Words don't have meanings. Assertions have meanings. Words are not units of meaning. That's the whole reification of meaning, which is rooted in this bad theological model. Maybe we are no more Aristotelian. And maybe I am wrong when I think that my words are meaning only one thing. It's the idea that meaning is a thing that's a problem. And if meaning is not a thing, it can't be indeterminate. Okay. I think we are coming in a... you have very determinate meanings for the word meaning, determination, etc. I am not sure I share them because I am not sure I know what are yours.
I think I can guess, but I am not sure I know. But my problem, if I can just say this, my problem now is, well, the way I am using Humboldt, Novalis and the way Heidegger used the same sentences in for example Unterwechslsprache to do something very different and the way Derrida is just in between and well this could be a real discussion.
For me, I don't mean that your point is not real, I'm just, sorry. But I mean, my problem now is that how not to sacralize differences, how not to sacralize equivolts, how not to, etc. And this is very important because there is always, is nearly sacralizing, you know, Heidegger is always sacralizing equivokes. And when you say that it is linked with the history of a tongue, it's a problem, you know, it's another problem.
And Heidegger says that you see all the meanings of all the meanings of all the meanings are linked together and that's why Greek is such a tongue and such a language etc. etc. So what I just tried to do is, and it's also piége, tract. It's to shift on translation. but it's also tracked because Heidegger does also but not in the same way and Derrida does but not in the same way and just look at this sentence of Lacan, maybe you know what does meta-language mean if not translation
so that will be interesting that's all that I can say And it's interesting about equivocs, and it's really a way of thinking of what is translation in the TAO. Is it TAO? Or Google Translate, for example. You know TAO? What is TAO doing? Mechanic Translation. Well, Ordinator, yes.
And it's very interesting because you see that the first way to do was you take a tongue, French, and then you disambiguate the words by putting them in a root tongue, already disambiguated, but very badly, if you look inside English. disambiguated with really terrific things, you know, terrific categories, much worse than Aristotle ones. And then you pass to Chinese. So, or you pass to Italian.
So you pass from French to Italian by disambiguation of an English pseudo-language. That was the first way the computer did. And now there is another one which is much better because in this way, you know, that was impossible, it was impossible to deal with syntax. For example, when you put, I make research on Google, so when you put, Et Dieu créa l'homme à son image, and God creates man to his image, but you put it in French, and you translate it in German, and then you translate the German in French, and then you translate the French in German,
and then it was always the same. So when it stops, you know, when there were no difference, you obtain, et Dieu, et l'homme créa Dieu à son image, and man creates God to his image. Because you cannot deal well with syntax. And if you do the same thing with English, et Dieu crée à l'homme à son image, translated into English, and then, and then, and then, and stopped, you obtain, et Dieu crée à l'homme avec son image. It's very interesting. With its image. God creates God, God creates man with its image. It's very interesting. It was very interesting about the difference between German and English.
and well, okay. So now all this is over and quality of translation, but quality begins to be an emerging property of quantity and that's all. So you put all contexts, you deal with all the sentences in the word that are computed in the word, all what you can find and you pass to all what you can find. So there must be all the context possible and then all the context possible and it is chosen by itself. You see, the meaning is chosen by itself,
by the number of contexts. It's very interesting. And it's something that we, a cloud of words and a cloud of words. So this is, I think, the most interesting way of thinking of equibox and of use and of occurrences, you see. And I try to work with that now. And I think we could work together on such a topic, you know. So even if I don't know exactly what you mean, and if you don't know exactly what I mean, it doesn't matter with that, with that new tool. I see we're going to...
Sorry, I speak too much. No, not at all. I mean, I know that one shouldn't do that, but I would still like... I mean, I'm bringing two remarks or two questions. One has still to do with the discussion we had before. So I'm just going to say it, but we don't have to dwell on it. I would still maintain that if you have a logic of Kairos, as it were, you know, that is in the first instance something where you really don't know what's going to happen. And you cannot predetermine it in terms of more or less. That you can do only if you re-inscribe that logic within the frame of the more or less, and in doing that you make a decision which may be a political decision.
I think that's how I understood Albertus' point, and I would re-insert that. In the moment of Kairos, it can go anywhere. You don't know where it's going to go or what's going to happen. You can't prejudge it in terms of more or less. So that was one point. The other point, maybe I have completely misunderstood what the question that Ray was asking was all about, but if I understood it, I mean, the way I understood it would be the following. Now, I mean, let's start with an example, or let me try to put it with an example. I mean, there's a seminar from 1976, which is unpublished as yet by Derrida, which is about theory and practice.
And he does something that, as you know, he likes to do. He uses one idiomatic phrase in French, which is ambiguous or which is equivocal, namely Faux-le-Faire. Yeah, the whole seminar with Faux-le-Faire. Faux-le-Faire. Which is devoted to Marx, to the 11th Thesis, and Feuerbach, to Althusser, and so on and so forth. He keeps, at the beginning of each séance, Faux-le-Faire, Faux-le-Faire. And Faux-le-Faire is, of course, as you know, an equivocal idiom, because it can mean, literally, it has to be done, it must be done, it needs to be done, something must be done. but also, oh, Faux-le-Faire is a kind of expression of What an extraordinary thing to be done. Now, say someone says Faux-le-Faire
and you run out onto the streets and start killing policemen. And he, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do the Americans say? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It wasn't... You could start a series of seminars. It wasn't meant when you touch someone. So what I'm saying is that there are situations in which you can take that kind of form. And maybe at that point, the equivocation really had some kind of consequence, which is difficult. I mean, at that point, you have killed a number of policemen where you can't really go back and it can't be corrected that easily. Although in a way it can. The other man can come and say, look, you're completely misunderstood.
That's not what I meant. It's a bit too late by then. But that's not the normal case on the whole. The normal case is that one can correct it in one's communication with the other, and then there's a disambiguation and it's not a problem on the whole. So maybe one would have to distinguish between those two cases. One where, unusual and rather rare one, where it may lead to consequences which cannot be, as it were, undone after the fact. My example is a bit silly. You could also think of an example where really something new emerges out of the, you know, something, interest, something... Although in my example, who knows? A revolution can start there and the whole society... One doesn't know, yes?
Where it has that effect and other normal contexts of communication where it's not at all like that and where equivocation is banal and trivial because it can be corrected any time. And that's what we do all the time. That's how we function all the time. Yes? No, I mean, I agree with your point. I mean, look, I'm not saying that the... Maybe the word propriety is a kind of misleading thing. the claim is that there's a kind of malleability it's never going to be it's not something that is kind of
fixed an invariant in some kind of logical or mathematical sense it means that there's a kind of continuity or a kind of consistency and that consistency allows of a great deal of rather there's a kind of degree of acceptable variation which is negotiable precisely through familiarity with the concept. So think about all the ways in which we can understand... It's a vagueness which is not threatening at all, because without it, we wouldn't function. Yes, and it's enabling. It's an enabling condition of being a good game. Absolutely. But ecologetic is interesting when you're reading Finnegan's Wake or when you're in psychoanalysis. It's a completely different situation.
Think about the kind of situation where... The analyst, and this is something I was going to say that I was thinking of during your paper as well, the analyst doesn't just occupy the role of the sophist, maybe in Lacan's seminar he does, but during analysis he occupies precisely this role of the plant that you're interested in. The analyst doesn't talk. But let's say I say something in analysis and the analyst clears their throat or says, hmm. Uh-oh. So, okay, so they equivocate your discourse. And what they do has meaning. But you can't either identify it or correct it. It's not equivocal in that sense, but it is equivocal.
That is to say, it equivocates... The psychoanalyst is the master of the equivocation at that point. Well, sure, but the analyst doesn't know what the equivocation is. So that is to say there's a linguistic field in which a discourse is equivocated. And actually it's not the kind of equivocation that can either be explained or corrected or recognized through the propriety of contextual speech. And the reason that it's not banal, this kind of thing, and that it's interesting is because in fact we have this whole practice called psychoanalysis, which is extremely consequential. Maybe you don't think so. And extremely interesting. So it's not the kind of thing that you can,
that Habermas has anything to say about. And I'm not saying that you're, you know, but that's sort of, That's where that comes from. Which we say, in order to talk, we have to be able to do this and that. No, no. That's not what happens to someone else. But it's a unique context, the reason why the analyst clearing his throat or raising his eyebrow or sniffing, whatever, is going to be equivocal in a really, you know, interesting, significant sense, is because the context is unique and specific, okay? The context of the cycle of analysis is radically unlike the context in which someone... Because you don't need to do... I mean, you can wink at someone equivocally. You can raise an eyebrow equivocally. You can say hello and go to the devil at the same time. Yes, okay. So, but it's the context... It's precisely because the analytical context is unique.
And that's... But that's an absolutely interesting... That means that things happen in analysis and you can discover things about what you mean and what's going on inside you that you would not discover in other contexts. Just quickly, I only mean though to point out that that practice emerges precisely because of the theory of equivocation, which cannot be accounted for on the terms that you're proposing. That's all I mean to say. But I think, Su-Chan and... I just want to precise the point you are making together. for me the point is to know whether the language has a function of communication or not and that's all that's why psychoanalysis is so interesting as an alternative
because just it shows that something else than communication but I don't think language is a medium for communication that's the whole point of this account is that language is not a medium for communication you do things when you speak and you're not communicating a pre-existing intention the speaking is what you do and the fact that that is equivocal is precisely because there is no pre-existing intention, no meaning to be communicated well I don't think we agree on the term communication then I just mean it's not a medium for anything it's not a medium so it seems to me that what Ray you're bringing up was an attempt to sort of
Not necessarily to defend, although I see that that's your view, not necessarily to defend this kind of functional understanding of language and meaning, but to sort of say that the difference made by the possibility of equivocal speech versus non-equivocal speech, that distinction is what lets these forms of equivocal speech have its power. Sorry, the end of the sentence? Right, it is the difference between univocal and equivocal speech that allows, say, psychoanalysis or the sophist speech to have its specific mode of, its specific effectivity or its specific power.
Right? No. No. I mean, this is what it means for, isn't this what it means for the sophists to come after, to come second? But it's not linked with equivocity in this point. Right. It's, Aristotle makes it, but not the sophists. Oh. Well, what I simply, what I meant was that the power that you get from the power of language that is developed through psychoanalysis, through, say, Lacan's way of speaking, is precisely that which allows for some effects
or some disturbance precisely because it disturbs this presumed normal way of speaking. This is true, yeah. And I think what this functional, more functional kind of language does is it releases the, it puts these two forms into one single way of thinking of language. so that in a way this unequivocal way of speaking is kind of a strongman against which you can distinguish another way of speaking, another way of using language. If I can... Because it seems like with enough complexity, you can account for all forms,
you can map all forms of equivocation through this functional account because precisely what you're saying is there's a certain number of there's a certain set of inputs and then there's a certain set of outputs and then but then we're going to be we're going to be okay with the fact that meaning has this kind of this black box that has no sort of essential you think that it's possible to map all possible equivocations with discourse maybe I don't know but I'm saying that's at least what I think if this account, this functional account is to be powerful enough or consistent enough would have to be committed to
on some level. I just want to make a split between performance and equivocity. Performance, effectivity, effectiveness, effect has nothing to see with equivocity. well they are not substantially linked it happens that Lacan plays on performance and equality it happens that sophistic plays on both two and we have to wonder why but it is not linked except that Aristotle didn't think of well I mean to show that it is not linked you can just
think of Aristotle he didn't, he had none idea of performance, of performativity but he pointed equivocity and when I read to you the first sentences of Ellen's Encomion no equivoc so this is not the point Sure. You have to... I think Alberto... Sorry. I was wondering someone... So maybe we'll wrap up around 10, so that's in about five minutes. I mean, I was... All right. So I was wondering somewhat, you know, diagonally to this discussion, whether, partly because I was looking at the sentence, which I think is a kind of meaningless sentence in its own way by Arendt,
which is a sentence or phrase, a homogenous human community, which is weirdly, seems to show our passage as a way of kind of pluralizing or what is nevertheless remains a kind of Heideggerian conception of the relationship between grammar and thought. So the idea that there's some, you know, that a linguistic grammar homogenizes a linguistic community seems to be empirically and indeed, shall we say, sociologically quite dubious. So the plurality is built on a homogeneity that actually doesn't exist.
But on that basis, then I wanted to ask, in a way, in terms of the account that you were giving, Ray, to what extent does that account or family of accounts depend on individuating, or in what way, sorry, does it depend on individuating a social and or linguistic community? because on a very high level of generality, I don't find it problematic at all. But of course, at other levels of mediation, linguistic communities are much more institutionalized entities than simply tacit pre-understandings
and negotiations of meanings of the kinds that Alex was talking about. People are forbidden from saying certain things by the law. You go to a court, you have to make your meaning univocal. people are not allowed to speak certain dialects. I mean, you know, this is how, you know, so I was wondering in those accounts whether there isn't a risk for what is, I think, a very persuasive in many ways refutation of a certain theology of meaning to then have, and I think this is maybe my misgivings about some of the brandon that I've read, for instance, about having what seems to be a very schematic and in its own way very problematic spontaneous
sociology of the philosopher so that there would be these rather you know these these communities of of of meaning and of language so on a very high level of abstraction i can agree but then And at that level, isn't it only community understood in a way that's so abstracts from its institutions, practicalities, conflicts, and so on, that actually it's something other than the community that you, you know, the community which legislates, you know, the Académie Française, legislates about it, you know, or whatever, like, or practices a certain, you know, policing and normation of language, which I imagine is something totally different than what people, what the account you're talking about. is intending. But I wonder whether those two levels can be kept
separate, just like whether they can be kept separate in the far less persuasive and indeed partly repugnant account of Heidegger or indeed the problematic one of that. Yes, there is a problem. If you tie you know, if you say that meaning is use, or language is about, you know, meaning is use, and use is anchored in social practices. So you have to be able to recognize language users or creatures, language using creatures as social beings. And obviously then, there's an issue about whether or not you do have this kind of empirical, kind of, some dubious empirical assumptions
about what it is to be a social being, what counts as a social practice. It's going to over-determine the conditions of you recognizing someone as a speaking being. But then the abstraction of the account does offer some resources I think that countermand this risk. The minimal criteria is assertion. Thinking beings, speaking beings engage in the game of giving and asking for reasons. So the question is, what kind of criteria could you invoke to recognise a creature, not conspecific, maybe an alien or radically unfamiliar creature, as engaged in this practice of giving and asking for reasons. And here it's clear that
you're going to have to kind of, you can't mortgage the account to any assumptions. In other words, they may be engaged in doing things which you simply cannot recognise. And that's, I mean, I think you have to factor that into the account. You can't say what counts as a practice of justification may take a lot of, may be very difficult to kind of, you know, to determine. However, it's, you know, it's not, I mean, it can't be radically, radically, you can't leave it wholly indeterminate because then, I mean, it applies even to human communities and it has within the history of our own species, okay?
If you don't recognise your conspecifics as, if you, for instance, if you think that, if you refuse to recognise the category of thinking being or sapient being, and you say they're just these creatures who are more or less like us, but there's no point in trying to identify kind of the universal criteria that would allow us, such as rationality or endowment with the lowest or whatever, to acknowledge them, then obviously the risk is going to be this kind of radical relative to it, where people can be more or less human. And whatever people mean to say, they can't have the same interests and the same kind of motivations as you are, because they're engaged in this practice. There are only degrees of analogy, degrees of resemblance between what we do and what these creatures who look like us but aren't really like us do.
So you have a commitment to the universality of assertion. Propositional assertion is this kind of baseline of meaningfulness. This counts as being engaged in this game of giving and asking for reasons. And look, if you can recognize something as engaged in a kind of behavior that has a... The question is, how would you distinguish between an action and a behaviour? When you speak, you act. An assertion is an action, as opposed to behaviour, parroting is not an action. This is why parrots don't mean anything. So the real question is, how do you identify an action?
And is this action over-determined by these sociological prejudices? Sorry, I'm kidding. Carrots, sorry, yes. But, okay, granted this is an issue, but the alternatives, it seems to me, are hardly... This is a problem that afflicts this particular account, but the alternatives are saddled with crippling debilities. I mean, it seems to me that the alternative accounts of what's speaking and what language is, they either kind of reify meaning in this problematic metaphysical register, the ontologized sense, the ontologized meaning, or they think that consciousness, there's an original intentionality, consciousness and the ability to intend and to mean things
is an irreducible ontological property of certain kind of, you know. This account allows you to kind of explain how meaningful activity emerges from meaningless behavior. The question, whether there is a metaphysical dividing line is a moot point, and people like Dennis say no, there isn't. It's a question of degree. We emerged from creatures who were incapable of, creatures that were motivated by unconscious rationales for activity, but we are the first reason representers. Animals do things for reasons, but we are the first animals that represent the reasons that motivate their behaviour. For him, this is kind of a phase transition.
evolution. So you can admit that there's a kind of the boundary between activity and behaviour is porous, but it would be, it's an empirical question, okay, and it wouldn't be metaphysically adjudicated. You can't say this is what it means to be, you know, a kind of a thinking being, to have these kind of empirical characteristics, okay, to to engage in these kinds of activities. So I take your point, it's a real problem, but I think the alternatives are even less attractive. Okay, well we should. You're gonna speak more about this kind of thing,
I assume, tomorrow. So let's wrap up for now. And that was great, I think. And so tomorrow we start again between, you know, 12.45 and 1. And Alberto will speak first. And then again at 4, I think, Ray will speak. And then we'll have another roundtable with just 3 tomorrow. So thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.