Thesaurus griceianum -- in twenty volumes, vol. xx.

VERUM. It. vero. veritas, adaequatio, aequalitas, concordia, convenientia, truth Fr. vérité Gr. Wahrheit, ἀλήθεια, ὀϱθότης, HEBREW ’èmèt- [אֱמּונָה] èmūnāh], ’אֱמֶת] RUSSIAN istina [истина], pravda [правда] v. ISTINA, PRAVDA and APPEARANCE, BELIEF, DOXA, DUTY, EREIGNIS, FALSE, FICTION, HISTORY, IMAGE, IMPLICATION, INTUITION, LIE, LOGOS, MEMORY, MIMÊSIS, OBJECT, PREDICATION, PROPERTY, PROPOSITION, SACHVERHALT, SENSE, SUBJECT, TO BE The European languages generally have only one word for “truth,” with the notable exception of Russian, which distinguishes “истина” (which designates truth in its ontological and epistemological relation to being) and “правда” (which is also translated as “truth” but which includes a notion of “justice”) to designate truth as that which ought to be. These different expressions (truth, Wahrheit, vérité, etc.) pose no significant problems of translation insofar as their semantic scope is more or less coextensive. They all carry a similar charge of signification that is simultaneously ontological, gnosiological, logical, and moral. These different languages have all incorporated a similar development of the notion of truth, first by freeing it from its initial poetic, religious, and juridical context, then by constituting it as a concept of philosophy, and subsequently by carrying it over to the field of science. After several centuries of this shared history, a generally agreed-upon definition has emerged: of truth as a “correspondence” between a thing and the mind, or adaequatio rei et intellectus. And yet our tradition is in this case particularly composite and heterogenous: three principal paradigms coexist within it, each of which can be traced separately through its etymology and semantics. The Hebrew paradigm ’èmèt- [תֶמֱא [is theological/juridical; it signifies “solid, durable, stable” based on faith understand, understanding in order to know—that starts with Saint Anselm (Cur Deus homo, Dedication; De l’incarnation du Verbe, 1, PL, v. 158, col. 263d–264c) and extends to Hegel and beyond. Alêtheia First, Etymologies and synonyms: A position of enunciative strategy The adjective alêthes [ἀληθής] appears earlier than the substantive; it is constituted by the negative particle a- and lêthos [λῆθος], lathos [λᾶθος], “escape from detection,” and much later (in modern Greek) as “error,” or lêthe [λήθη], “forgetting.” When one looks for alêthes, “true,” in Chantraine (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque), one is also referred to lanthanô [λανθάνω], which signifies “remaining hidden,” and even “forgetting.” The Odyssey is often cited, when Odysseus, listening to the Iliad at Alcinous’s palace, registered the bard “singing the famous deeds of fighting heroes” and “buried his handsome face, ashamed that his hosts might see him shedding tears [enth’ allous men pantas elanthane dakrua leibôn (ἔνθ’ ἄλλους μὲν πάντας ἐλάνθανε δάϰϱυα λείϐων)]” (Odyssey 8:93); see MEMORY). Lêthê is a sister to Pain, Famine, and Suffering, and along with Lies and Falsehoods (Pseudeas Logous [Ψευδέας Λόγους]) and False Oaths (Horkos [῞Oϱϰος]), is daughter of Discord and Strife (Eris [Ἒϱις]) and is considered one of the “children of night” (Hesiod, Theogony, v. 227, cf. 210–32). Alêthês (true, veridical) is said of “things and events that one does not hide,” in opposition to “false” (pseudês [ψευδής]) (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque), and thus as well in opposition to that which is “loyal, just, and fair” (Iliad, XIII: 433, with the image of the chernêtis alêthês [χεϱνῆτις ἀληθής], the painstaking “working widow,” who struggles to properly balance the scales) (Homer, trans. Fagles, 502), and, after Homer, of persons who do not deceive, do not lie, oracles and dreams that come true in other words, everything that is “real and true” as opposed to “appearance” (philos alêthês [φίλος ἀληθής], “a true friend,” [Euripides, Oresteia, Fr. trans. L. Méridier, Les Belles Lettres, “CUF,” 1968, 424]). The privative alpha, which indicates a specific form of negation that implies possibility rather than prohibition, involves a gesture of “de-concealment” (Unverborgenheit is the translation that Heidegger adopts; hors de l’oubli, “unforgetting,” was Mallarmé’s way of putting it in Crise de vers) that is a noticeable part of its meaning outside of any philosophical context. Alêtheia appears in epic narratives and poetry from Homer to Hesiod and Pindar in a manner that evokes the problematic of its construction: alêthês refers not to an accurate representation but to a strategy of utterance, in the interplay of the hero and his fame (doxa [δόξα]) or the poet with the Muse. In Homer the neuter plural form alêthês is placed next to declarative verbs (alêthea muthêsasthai, agoreuein, eipein [ἀληθέα μυθήσασθαι, ἀγοϱεύειν, εἶπειν], Iliad, VI: 382, Odyssey, III: 254, XIII: 254) to indicate that the questioner’s request for information has been satisfied by a wellcomposed account. It is storytelling and the poetic act that give the hero his heroic character; his glory coincides with the power of his discourse, which triumphs over forgetting. This is what Hannah Arendt characterized in The Human Condition as the Greek solution to the fragility of human affairs. rocky fortress, his bread is given, his water is sure [nè’èmānīm (ים ִ נָמֱאֶנ) “[(Isa. 33:16): his shelter and sustenance are assured (cf. Jer. 15:18b). A nè’èmān illness is persistent, chronic (Deut. 28:59). ’Èmèṯ qualifies as that which will definitely occur in the future: a sure sign ( Josh. 2:12), a leavening sure to rise (Jer. 2:21), a sure reward (Prov. 11:18). The travels of the servant that Abraham charged to get a wife for his son Isaac turns out to have been “a path of ’èmèṯ” (Gen. 24:48) because God ensured that it ended in success (ibid. 24:21, 40:56). The “truth” in question has less to do with the adequacy of a representation than with the satisfaction of an expectation. It is not so much something beyond time as a guarantee of continuity beyond the distance it introduces. It is on the basis of this fundamental meaning that one can understand others such as “security,” associated with “peace,” or rather “integrity” (šalōm [שׁלוֹם) ([ ָIsa. 39:8; Jer. 33:6, etc.); the word can even take on the supposedly “Greek” meaning of correspondence between an account and reality (Gen. 42:16; Deut. 13:15, etc.). The God of Israel is a historical god: at first, perhaps, a nomadic god living in a portable tent, then the god who marches at the head of his people—for example, to bring his people out of the Egyptian captivity—and who promises his help in alliance with them. He manifests himself as the one who can be relied on at any moment—this is perhaps the meaning of the famous self-definition: “I am / will be who I am / will be” (Exod. 3:14; see I/ME/MYSELF). He keeps his promises and is a sort of “God of truth” (Ps. 31:6). YHWH presents himself as rich in ’èmèṯ (Exod. 34:6). Another word that derives from the same root, ’èmūnāh, has meanings similar to ’èmèṯ, including that concrete sense of “firmness” that is said for example of Moses’s hands in prayer (Exod. 17:12). It refers above all to the attitude that is worthy of confidence: the seriousness of someone who can be counted on, a conscientious attitude, honesty. Fidelity is first and foremost the faithfulness of God, who keeps his promises. The word is normally translated into Greek by pistis [πίστις], except in the psalms. In the Bible the word only rarely has the meaning of “faith of human beings in God” and not as something that is held as true but as something that one can lean on with confidence, that one can consider worthy of faith. Actually, this is only the case in one verse, but what a verse! The “just man who will live by his faith” (bè-’èmūnāṯō [נתוֹ ָמוֱּאֶב) [ּHab. 2:4) is placed at the very heart of Saint Paul— ho dikaios ek pisteôs zêsetai [ὁ δίϰαιος ἐϰ πίστεως ζήσεται]—as the opposing alternative to the law (Gal. 3:11, and cf. Rom. 1:17) and is subsequently inflected by Luther as the expression of the sola fide. It is in playing on the meanings of the root ’MN that Isaiah can write: “If you do not have confidence [ ṯa’amῑnū (ינוּׅ מֲתא ,[( ַyou will not be able to hold on [ ṯë’āmënū (נוֵּמָאֵת “,[( which is first of all an invitation to maintain morale. The Vulgate (credideritis . . . permanebitis), Luther’s (gläubet . . . bleibet), the Authorized Version (“believe be established”), all remain literal. But the Septuagint (pisteusête . . . sunête [πιστεύσητε συνῆτε]), followed by the vetus Latina (credideritis . . . intelligetis), enable the link between “believing” and “understanding.” This gives a scriptural foundation to the dialectic of fides and intellectus—believing in order to 117 and 125 DK). One can see that alêtheia is not defined as completely separate from the “false” but includes within its condition relations to certain kinds of falsity: “negativity is not isolated, set apart from Being; it is the hem of reality. It is reality’s inseparable shadow” (Marcel Detienne, Masters of Truth). The art of the ready-voiced Muses whose “words are well-suited” (artiepeiai [ἀϱτιέπειαι]) (Hesiod, Theogony, v. 29) is an art of proper adjustment of words between each other, an art of the very structure of song and of “truth” as linked to the idea of structured rhythm (Hesiod, Works, v. 768, in which alêtheia designates the proper arrangement of works and days), and this art defines truth in harmony. Nonetheless, alêtheia enters into a great variety of configurations that survive one within another in the practices of exegesis and palimpsest. These relations are unstable and vary between contradictions, external oppositions, or internal splittings, depending on the context, the poetic narrative, or categorical elaboration. 2. A plausible history of Greek truth: From alêtheia to orthotês and the analysis of propositions Even today, the debate around the Greek conception of truth is a caricature: either Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle are timeless Oxford fellows, and we measure their truth by the yardstick of our own, or else it is first and foremost a question of history, of change of scene, of appropriation and interpretation, and their truth astonishes us just as much as it is part of our own construction. a. Parmenides and the path of co-belonging: the “Open without withdrawal” Parmenides’s Poem, written in the fifth century BC, gives the first impetus to what will become philosophy by giving dramatic figuration to the concepts of being and truth (fr. II). In the prologue, written in the manner of the grand epics of Homer and Hesiod, a young hero guided by the gods “travels a road [hodos (ὁδός)]”—far indeed does it lie from the steps of men, at the doors of Day and Night. The Goddess Justice (Dike; see THEMIS) welcomes him thus: χϱεὼ δέ σε πάντα πυθέσθαι ἠμὲν ἀληθείης εὐπειθέος [εὐϰυϰλέος Simplicus] ἀτϱεμὲς ἦτοϱ ἠδὲ βϱοτῶν δόξας, ταῖς οὐϰ ἔνι πίστις ἀληθής. (It is proper that you should learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance.) (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers) Or, with these Heideggerian words (Heidegger chooses the lesson of Simplicius: eukukleos): Du sollst aber alles erfahren / sowohl der unverborgenheit, der gutgegrundeten nichtzitterndes Herz / als auch der sterblichen Dafürhalten, dem fehlt das Vertrauenkönnen auf unverborgenes. (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 14) (But you should learn all: / the untrembling heart of unconcealment, well-rounded / and also the And the privative etymology of alêtheia is always available for use in developing an argument. In the Peri alêtheias of Antiphon, the sophist and orator of the fifth century BCE (around 480–411), for example, nature is precisely “that which one cannot escape,” as opposed to the conventional laws of the city (see nomos in THEMIS and LEX), and is thus founded “in truth”—which is why one has an interest in obeying nature, even when one is alone and without witnesses. If one breaks the laws of one’s city, insofar as one gets away with it [eian lathêi (εἰὰν λάθῃ)] and keeps it out of sight of those who have agreed to the rules, one is free of both shame and punishment; but not if one does not get away [mê lathôn (μὴ λάθων)] and is caught. On the other hand, if one does violence to a natural law, even if it remains hidden from men [lathêi (λάθῃ)], the harm is no smaller; and if it becomes known, the harm is no greater. For the harm does not derive from opinion, but from the truth itself [ou gar dia doxan alla di’ alêtheian (οὐ γὰϱ διὰ δόξαν ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀλήθειαν)]. (POxy 1364 + 3647, fr. B, col. II; cf. B. Cassin L’Effet sophistique, esp. 168–71 and 273–78) It is important to see that the usage of alêthês and of alêtheia, unlike our usage of “true” and “truth,” does not immediately entail a corresponding real and observable referent. This is clearly the case in the three terms employed by Hesiod in the Theogony: alêthês, pseudos [ψεῦδος], and etumos [ἔτυμος]. For it is not alêthês but rather etumos that is paired with pseudos. The pseudos is constructed to mimic the “real” (etumos), as if it presented and duplicated all the opacity of the real, but not as embodying the “true” (alêthês). As Homer puts it to describe the manner in which Odysseus, upon his return to Ithaca, speaks to Penelope when he still does not want her to recognize him (Odyssey, XIX: 203): “iske . . . homoia [Gr. text]” (falsehoods all . . . ring of truth; trans. Fagles, XIX: 235–36). And as the Muses say to Hesiod: ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα· ἴδμεν δ’, εὖτ’ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηϱύσασθαι. (We know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.) (Hesiod, Theogony, v. 27–28, in Homeric Hymns) Etumos, etêtumos [ἐτήτυμος], and eteos [ἐτεός] belong to the same family as the verb etazô [ἐτάζω], “examine, test” (which is also related to hetoimos [ἕτοιμος], “ready, available, imminent”). From Homer on, etumos, which is at the heart of the word “etymology” and supplies its eponymy, is used to indicate the register of the effective real. In Parmenides, etêtumos, an expressive elongation of etumos (the way “which exists and which is real [tên d’ hôste pelein kai etêtumon einai (τὴν δ’ ὥστε πέλειν ϰαὶ ἐτήτυμον εἶναι)],” VIII: 18) is used to refer to the authenticity and effectiveness of the way of truth guaranteed by the goddess, attached to which is persuasion (eupeitheos [εὐπειθέος], I: 29; cf. II: 4); and eteêi [ἐτεῇ] will be a term in Democritus used to distinguish the effective reality of atoms and vacuum as opposed to their sense qualities, which are simply conventional, nomôi [νόμῳ] (68B 6–10; 9, 1162 TRUTH Lichtung von Anwesenheit sogleich und nur als orthotês, als die Richtigkeit des Vorstellens und Aussagens erfahren wurde.) (Heidegger, “End of Philosophy,” 390) No less fundamental and “always already,” there is the system of opposition that conditions the mutation of alêtheiaopening into veritas-adequation, that is, the difference between the path of truth and the path of opinion (brotôn doxai [βϱοτῶν δόξαι], “the opinion of mortals,” “what appears to mortals”; see DOXA). Plato and the orthotês or the correctness of the gaze Whatever the status of the world of mortals, be it the manifestation of beauty or deceiving confusion, all of Platonic thought and all of subsequent philosophy is structured by Parmenides’s distinction between alêtheia and doxa. For one can or must today detach oneself from one world and aim at another: in the Platonic allegory of the cave, one must turn away from the appearances and opinions of this world that are represented by the projected shadows on the walls (“tas skias [τὰς σϰιάς],” Republic, VII, 515a) and direct one’s gaze to objects that are more “true” (“ta tote horômena alêsthestera / tôn nun legomenôn alêthôn [τὰ τότε ὁϱώμενα ἀληθέστεϱα / τῶν νῦν λεγομένων ἀληθῶν],” ibid., VII, 515d 7/516a 2), which are the objects that project those shadows, or even leave the cavern to emerge in the full sunlight of “forms” or “ideas” so as to contemplate this new and only authentic “truth,” in the sense of intelligibility, which derives from the Idea of the Good [“autê kuria alêtheian kai noun paraschomenê (αὐτὴ ϰυϱία ἀλήθειαν ϰαὶ νοῦν παϱασχομένη),” ibid., VII, 517c 3; cf. VI, 508e 1–3]. Because of this duplication of worlds into the “world of appearances” and the (real) “world of truth” (“die wahre Welt” is Nietzsche’s term in Twilight of the Idols, as in “How the ‘true world’ finally became a fable”), one must now strive to become a “philosopher,” to seek to reach the idea, the very being of the existing through appearance: “outside the cavern, sophia is philosophia.” Heidegger comments that Everything depends on the orthotês, the correctness of the gaze. . . . Thus, the priority of idea and of idein over alêtheia results in a transformation in the essence of truth. Truth becomes orthotês, the correctness of apprehending and asserting. As the correctness of the “gaze,” it becomes a characteristic of human comportment toward beings. (Heidegger, Plato’s Doctrine of Truth, 155–82) Aristotle and adequation There is no need for the Platonic duality of worlds for truth to become a task to undertake and an objective to attain. All that is required is for alêtheia of itself to be no longer thought of as the open paradise of co-belonging or of immanence, if one prefers to call it thus. If Plato is the proper name of truth as transcendence, Aristotle is the proper name for truth in the modern sense, as the adequacy of utterances. The key text is the beginning of his treatise opinion of mortals / who lack the ability to trust what is unconcealed.) (Heidegger, “End of Philosophy”) Or else, in these more traditionally exact words: You should be learned in all Both of the untrembling heart of well-persuasive truth And of what appears to mortals, where there is no true belief. (Cassin, Parmenides) Heidegger’s translation seeks to convey the way in which being and thought belong to each other in the “clearing” (Lichtung; see LIGHT, Box 2), which is alêtheia: “It is not for the sake of etymology that I stubbornly translate the name alêtheia as “unconcealment” [Ger. Unverborgenheit, Fr. trans. J. Beaufret état de non-retrait] but for the sake of the matter which must be considered when we think adequately that which is called Being and thinking. Unconcealment is, so to speak, the element in which Being and thinking and their belonging together exist” (“End of Philosophy”). This step backwards in the direction of origin exhibits some of the characteristics of a meditation on immanence, which dismisses any “aiming at truth” from its claims. For one does not aim at alêtheia, one follows its path, which brings together the three dimensions of being, thinking, and saying. This triple unity at the heart of alêtheia is expressed in fragment II (v. 2 and following) as the relationship between truth and being: “The one that [it] is [esti (ἔστι)] and that it is impossible for [it] not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for she attends upon Truth)” (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, 291), and in fragment III for the identity between thinking and being: “for the same thing is there both to be thought of [noein (νοεῖν), “notice”] and to be” (ibid., 292), and in fragment VI for the identity between saying, thinking, and being: “What is there to be said and thought [to legein to noein te (τὸ λέγειν τὸ νοεῖν τε)] must needs be: for it is there for being” (ibid., 293) (these enigmatic textual fragments are par excellence open to being interpreted and translated in different ways). But one can conclude that it is the Greek language itself that is deployed in and through the Poem: we can hear, in fragment after fragment, a subject, “what is” (to eon [τὸ ἐόν]), suddenly emerging from the impersonal verb esti, “to be,” via a certain number of marked forms such as the infinitive and participle. In other words, in alêtheia it is a language that reveals and exploits its own structure, and it is to this selfdeployment of language, in the narrative account of the road and the voyage, that the very act of ontology is entrusted (see ESTI). Yet, and this is more legible in the second translation of the prologue, We must acknowledge the fact that alêtheia, unconcealment in the sense of the opening of presence, was originally experienced only as orthotês, as the correctness of representations and statement. (In Gesichtskreis dieser Frage muss anerkannt werden, dass die Alêtheia, die Unverborgenheit im Sinne der verb: hupokeisthai [ὑποϰεῖσθαι], “to stand under”) of accidents like the predicates and itself is not supported or predicated by anything (see ESSENCE and SUBJECT). This structural discovery, which as always is presented in the form of an observation and something evident, guarantees the possibility of a correspondence between the being as he appears and the discourse as it is proposed, and this is what will henceforth be called “truth.” Truth is described in the same terms from Aristotle, the metaphysician of antiquity, to Tarksi, the modern logician. There is a clear line of filiation between the manner in which the goddess in Parmenides describes the lines of research into thought (“The one that [it] is and that it is impossible for [it] not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for she attends upon Truth)” fr. II, 3–5), through the Aristotelian definition of Truth (“To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, Г, 7, trans. W. D. Ross; cf. Metaphysics Θ, 10, 1051b 3–9: “It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth” [trans. W. D. Ross]), up to Tarski’s “semantic” turn: “The proposition ‘the snow is white’ is true if and only if the snow is white” for analytic propositions that are based on identity, and “ ‘it is snowing’ is a true proposition if and only if it is snowing,” for synthetic propositions that entail facts (“The Semantic Conception of Truth” and “The Concept of Truth in Formal Languages” in On Interpretation. Here he distinguishes between “things” (pragmata [πϱάγματα]) and “affections of the soul” (pathêmata tês psuchês [παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς]) that resemble things, as well as “speech sounds” (ta en têi phônêi [τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ]), which are both natural signs of these affections, in the case of animals, and conventional symbols in the case of human beings and their different languages. Three strata, or three places: things, the soul, language. As a result, there is no guarantee of transitivity, of full passage from one stratum to another (see SIGN). In fact, one can be mistaken (pseudein [ψεύδειν], psuedesthai): one can perceive inaccurately; one can speak falsely; in fact, one can seek to mislead, for example by lying (pseudein once again). The truth is like a target that one aims for but can miss (hamartanein [ἁμαϱτάνειν]), whether on purpose or not. Aristotle’s great discovery, which provides the foundation for this new doctrine of truth, and on which classical Western thought is built, at least until Hegel, is to propose an analogous structure for being, which is given objectively, and for discourse, which is held subjectively. Being is analyzed in terms of “substance” (ousia, which comes to take the place of platonic eidos [εἶδος], and which is translated no less correctly as “essence”) and of “accidents” (sumbebêkota [συμϐεϐηϰότα], exactly the way a proposition is broken down into “subject” (hupokeimenon [ὑποϰείμενον]) and “predicates” (katêgoroumena [ϰατηγοϱούμενα]). The substance is the subject, which is to say it is defined through the supposition, the assumption, and the reception (it is the same 1 The accuracy of the names orthotês and truth v. EIDÔLON, MIMÊSIS The Cratylus is the turning point for a definition of truth as rectitude. In it orthotês [ὀϱθότης] does not signify correct vision but rather the accuracy of names (orthotês onamatôn [ὀϱθότης ὀνομάτων]): how one passes from naming to knowing. It hedges the question of the Parmenidian equivalence of saying and being and its unfolding in the sophistical thesis of the impossibility of uttering falsehoods (Cratylus, 429d). The etymological fantasies and play on alêtheia break apart their belonging to each other. “It is the divine motion of existence (hê gar theia tou ontos phora [ἡ γὰϱ θεία τοῦ ὄντος φοϱὰ]) that seems to be called out by this locution alê theia [ἄλη θεία]”; alê as wandering is the pure movement of the goddess, and Socrates finds himself becoming Heraclitean: “on [ὄν] and ousia [οὐσία] are ‘ion’ with an ‘i’ broken off; this agrees with the true principle, for being (on) is also moving (ion)” (trans. by Benjamin Jowett). The dialogue takes the form of an interrogation on the “correctness” or orthotês of names, whether it be, as Hermogenes first believes, that there is no “principle of correctness in names” (xunthêkê kai homologia [ξυνθήϰη ϰαὶ ὁμολογία]) “other than convention and agreement” (nomôi kai ethei [νόμῳ ϰαὶ ἔθει]); or that there is instead a “natural” truth or correctness, which is thus approximately the same for Hellenes as for barbarians (383b), that consists in showing that the correct name indicates the nature of the thing (onomatos . . . orthotês estin hautê hêtis endeixetai hoion esti to pragma [ὀνόματος . . . ὀϱθότης ἐστὶν αὕτη ἥτις ἐνδείξεται οἷόν ἐστι τὸ πϱᾶγμα]) (428e); cf. 433d, and that a name is the representation (dêlôma [δήλωμα]) of a thing (433d), such that for Cratylus, logically, all names are correct, “at least, those that are names” (429b). Socrates examines several hypotheses: phonetic mimicry (423a–b), pictorial mimicry, and the ontological deficiencies of the image (beginning at 430b). In 430d, Socrates separates out the case of naming from the portrait, to which only orthotês can be applied. Naming requires another mode of assignment, dianomê [διανομή], which Socrates compares to the division between “man” and “woman” (431a). Thus Socrates can introduce “right assignment” (alêtheuein [ἀληθεύειν]) and “wrong assignment” (pseudesthai [ψεύδεσθαι]) (431b), and as a result there may also be a wrong or inappropriate assignment of names and verbs (xunthesis [ξύνθεσις]) and of the sentences (logoi [λόγοι]) that are made up of them (431c). At issue is how to know things on the basis of their relations and affiliations (di’ allêlôn ge, ei pêi xuggenê estin [δι’ ἀλλήλων γε, εἴ πῃ ξυγγενῆ ἐστιν]) without entering into a problematics of orthology and to show the “truth of what is” (tên alêtheian tôn ontôn [τὴν ἀλήθειαν τῶν ὄντων]) (438d–e). So, in the end, Socrates concludes, no matter what the correctness of names, the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No, they must be studied and investigated in themselves (ouk ex onomatôn, alla polu mallon auta ex hautôn [οὐϰ ἐξ ὀνομάτων ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον αὐτὰ ἐξ αὑτῶν]) (ibid., 439b). The accuracy of names, unlike correct vision, and despite all the pleasures of etymological play, does not give access to truth. 1164 TRUTH “word” to have and not have the same “meaning” simultaneously). It provides a foundation for being by starting with the identity of meaning and by forbidding any unmastered homonym (see PRINCIPLE and HOMONYM). After that, our utterances are structured into propositions of the type “S is P”—subject-copula-predicate—and thus also substanceaccident (see SUBJECT). Finally, our reasoning is “logical,” in particular “syllogistic.” As a result we are able to engage in “discourse” about a world become legible, and that discourse is also a “calculus” (logos; see LOGOS), from which derive its claims to universality and to universal truth, which Leibniz expressed so clearly in his conception of a universal characteristic (mathesis universalis). VERUM -- Verus, veritas. Etymologies Unlike alêtheia/alêthês, the substantive veritas appears after the adjective verus. The adjective verus and its adverbial form vero existed previously. For a long time the substantive veritas only existed in its ablative forms. Verus,-a,-um relates to the series “veritable,” “veridical,” “veracity,” Fr. vrai, and by extension “commonly used at all times,” while verbs such as verifico, as used by Boethius, signify “presenting as true.” Logics, Semantics, Metamathematics). But the term “correspondence” itself does not appear in Aristotle, nor in any of the proponents of the “correspondence theory of truth” of the twentieth century (the most plausible equivalent—homoiôsis [ὁμοίωσις], homoiotês [ὁμοιότης], “comparison, similitude, resemblance”—never defines truth; cf. Bonitz). Whatever the case, the most enduring definition of truth is traditionally referred back to Aristotle, formulated in the Latin of the Middle Ages as “veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus, which should be simultaneously understood, as Heidegger emphasizes, as “adequation of intellect to the thing” and in a preexisting or primary reciprocity, “adequation of the thing to the intellect” (). As a matter of fact, we still think “truth” as Aristotelians. We continue to define ourselves as “animals endowed with logos [λόγος],” that is, language-reason. The entire logical apparatus of the Organon (both “instrument” and “organ” or second nature) consistently comes to the rescue of the logos, helping it tell the world as it is. First of all, when we speak, we signify something; we say something that has one single meaning, both for us and for others. The principle of noncontradiction is a principle of being (“it is impossible for the same to both belong and not belong to the same and according to the same, at the same time”) that reveals and instantiates itself as a principle of discourse (it is impossible for the same 2 “True”/ ”better” or: What is relativism? The logos of ontology is framed in the opening of alêtheia as the speaking of being, so that man, in Parmenides, as well as in Plato and Aristotle, is committed to this speaking; in the Heideggerian idiom he is the “shepherd of being.” But this tradition is in tension with one of a sophistical sort, for whom discourse is not mimetic of the real or aimed at truth but rather produces the real. It is performative and performing, veracious as such: “every discourse proves to be” (this is one of the possible interpretations of the quote from Antisthenes, “pas logos alêtheuei [πᾶς λόγος ἀληθεύει],” Proclus in Platonis Cratylum Commentaria, ed. Pasquali, Tübner, chap. 37, scholie 385d). The sophist Gorgias, in his Treatise on Non-being, in fact analyzes the Poem of Parmenides as a performance of this genre, which is particularly effective because it succeeds in using language to produce this being that will be the object of all ontology. Instead of thinking of what lies on this side of the objective of truth, like the phenomenologists of today, like a received wisdom, one can instead think of it as an art of production (see SPEECH ACT). This change of perspective translates into a change of vocabulary, which Plato impartially puts on display in the apology of Protagoras. Protagoras explains in what way “man is the measure of all things” (“For I affirm,” says Protagoras [Theaetetus, 166d], “that Truth [this is the title of Protagoras’ treatise that remains] behaves just as I have written: each of us is the measure of what is and what is not”; see LEX, Box 1, “Gnômôn”). It is no longer “truth” (alêtheia) that is at issue but the “true” (alêthes), and even the “more or less true”: we have passed from the substantive to the adjective with its various degrees. And this more or less true turns out to be a “more or less good,” implying a passage from a state that is less good to a better one: “It is imperative to bring about this change in states, for one is worth more than the other [ameinôn gar hê hetera hexis (ἀμείνων γὰϱ ἡ ἑτέϱα ἕξις)] . . . as the doctor effects this change with his drugs, the sophist with his speech” (ibid., 167a). Here is the crucial text: Not that anyone ever made another think truly [ψευδῆ δοξάζοντά τις], who previously thought falsely [ἀληθῆ ἐποίησε δοξάζειν]. For no one can think what is not [τὰ μὴ ὄντα δοξάσαι], or think anything different from that which he feels [οὔτε ἄλλα παϱ’ ἃ ἂν πάσχῃ]; and this is always true [ἀεὶἀληθῆ]. But as the inferior habit of mind [πονηϱᾶς ψυχῆς ἕξει] has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a good mind [χϱηστὴ] causes men to have good thoughts; and these which the inexperienced call true [τινες τὰ φαντάσματα ὑπὸ ἀπειϱίας ἀληθῆ ϰαλοῦσιν], I maintain to be only better [βελτίω], and not truer than others [ἀληθέστεϱα δὲ οὐδέν]. (Plato, Theaetetus, 167a–b, trans. Jowett) This position has been stigmatized as relativistic. It makes no distinction between doxa and alêtheia, being and appearance, and claims full justification in so doing (as Aristotle puts it so well: “because they maintain that it is sensation [aisthêsin (αἴσθησιν)] which is thought [phronêsin (φϱόνησιν)] and that it is also alteration [alloiôsin (ἀλλοίωσιν)], they can claim that that which appears in sensation [to phainomenon kata tên aisthêsin (τὸ φαινόμενον ϰατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν) is necessarily true” (Metaphysics, Г, 5, 1009b12–15). At any rate, it has nothing subjectivist about it. The truer is better, and is more useful for the individual, as well as the city (Plato, Theaetetus, 167c). This is why Protagoras, the expert in discourse, accepts without false modesty to be called “wise,” or even better in the comparative form, “more wise” (ibid., 166e). quod non possit ab honestate sejungi” [The true and simple Good which cannot be separated from honesty], Cicero, Academica, I, 2), but also for the ontological (which one can find in Cicero’s translation [Topica, 35] of etumologia [ἐτυμολογία] by veriloquium). The association of “vera ratio” is particularly polysemic in consequence (see ratio under LOGOS) because of the equivocal status of ratio in its ascription as explication, cause, doctrine. Thus Lucretius introduces epicurean physics by “animum nobis adhibe veram ad rationem” (De rerum natura, II, 1023). “Vera ratio” is simultaneously true reason, the true cause, and the manifestation of a new aspect of things (“nove se species ostendere rerum,” ibid., II, 1025), in relation to a theory of causes (“semina rerum,” ibid., II, 1059). In turn, veritas first refers to the qualities of witnesses, which is not simply an issue of their sincerity but of their capacity to speak the truth: “in tuam fidem, veritatem confugit” (he seeks refuge in your good faith, in your truth and compassion) (Cicero Pro Quinctio, 10. trans. C. D. Yonge, 1903), “veri testes” (unimpeachable witnesses) (Cicero, In Verrem, 5, 165). This dimension of truthfulness in English has no French equivalent outside of fiabilité, which plays upon the register of confidence (see BELIEF, GLAUBE). In this manner truth comes to be instituted, but not uncovered. Veritas qualifies an accreditative function, the power of having the last word, according to Roman law. “The judgment holds the thing to be true” (res judicata pro veritate accipitur) (Digest, 50, 17, 207). Veritas is performative: it does not designate a relation of adequacy between the utterance and reality but enacts the authority of judgment, the well-founded juridical utterance. The Posterity of the Paradigms A. ’Èmèt- / alêtheia / veritas: Christian “revealed truth” Alêtheia in Paul first takes on the meaning of ’èmèṯ: the “God of truth.” This does not refer back to the idea of a supreme reality, but to veracity “in fulfilling his promises” (eis to bebaiôsai tas epaggelias [εἰς τὸ βεϐαιῶσαι τὰς ἐπαγγελίας]) (Rom. 15:8). And if Paul speaks of the “truth of Christ” and of his “true word” (2 Cor. 11:10 and 6:6), it is to refer to his veracity. In return the “truth” asked of the Christians refers to sincerity (2 Cor. 7:14), uprightness in relation to divine expectations or requirements (cf. “those who rebel against truth,” Rom. 2:8). Linked to truth are ideas of constancy (1 Pet. 5:12), solidity (1 Tim. 3:15), and plenitude (Col. 2:9), but always in relation to the imperatives of Genesis of the generative fiat. In 2 Thessalonians 2:11–12, one finds a revealing opposition between “belief in truth” and “belief in a lie.” It is only with the Epistle to the Galateans that the registers of ’èmèṯ and alêtheia become intermingled and that the evangelist is identified with truth and its revelation. Paul transforms the biblical notion of “the truth of the law” into “the truth of the evangelist” (Gal. 2:5 and 14) and points to the correspondence between the Revelation and his interpretation by stressing the contrast between the Evangelist, which is “power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16) and the ineffectiveness of the law. John’s alêtheia is completely defined by its Christological content. Thus the expression to “speak the truth,” which in Paul is solely a matter of veracity (cf. Rom. 9:1) becomes in John the proclamation of true Most contemporary hypotheses propose that “verus” —and the words signifying true, vrai, vérité, G. “wahr,” G. Wahrheit — derive from an Indo-European root, *wer, which would retain meanings of “to please, pleasing, manifesting benevolence, gifts, services rendered, fidelity, pact.” Chantraine (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque) links it to the Homeric expression êra pherein [ἦϱα φέϱειν], “to please,” as well as to epiêra [ἐπίηϱα], epiêros [ἐπίηϱος], and epiêranos [ἐπιήϱανος], “agreeable” (Odyssey, 19, 343), just like the Latin verus (cf. “se-vere,” “without benevolence”), the German war, and the Russian vera, “faith,” or verit’ [верить], “to believe.” Pokorny adds to this same theme the Greek heortê [ἑοϱτή], “religious feast, cult.” And from the same basis have come terms signifying “guarantee, protect”: French garir and later garant, German Gewähren, English warrant, to grant. According to Chantraine, this root *wer should be distinguished from another root ver-, whence eirô [εἴϱω] in Greek, verbum in Latin (“word” in English, etc.), and words from the family of vereor, revereor, “to fear, to respect,” verecundia (respectful fear). Alfred Ernout does not support this separation. We should recall that plays on the words verum and verbum were common, as Augustine mentions (verbum = verum boare, “proclaiming the truth,” Dialectics 1, 1; see WORD). Pavel Florensky, following Georg Curtius (Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie, 1873), also claims a single root for the ensemble of these derivations, including the Sanskrit vratum, “sacred act, vow, promise,” the Greek bretas [βϱέτας], “cult object, wooden idol” (Aeschylus, Eumenides, v. 258), and the Latin verbum. For Florensky the signification of verus must be considered as belonging first to the field of religious ritual and subsequently of juridical formulas: “strictly speaking, verus means protected or grounded in the sense of that which is the object of a taboo or consecration” (Pillar and Ground, 18). From the juridical to the philosophical Verus implies a rectification of an adversarial allegation considered to be fraudulent, as is indicated by the original opposition verax/fallax-mendax. It thus signifies the properly founded (in fact or in the rules of law): “crimen verissimum” a well-founded accusation (Cicero, In Verrem, 5, 158.) In texts of grammar and rhetoric, but also in juridical texts as well, verus and veritas signify the veracity of the rule, inasmuch as it can be distinguished from usage. “Quid verum sit intellego; sed alias ita loquor ut concessum est” (I know what is correct, but sometimes I avail myself of the variation in usage), (Cicero, De oratore, Loeb Classical Library); “Consule veritatem: reprehendet; refer ad auris: probabunt” (If you consult the strict rule of analogy, it will say this practice is wrong, but if you consult the ear, it will approve) (ibid., 158–69). The juridical connotation of the word verus (and thus of veritas) is retained and subsequently reinforced. In the glosses of the Middle Ages, verus signifies “legitimate” and the Latin sense of the word, “legal and authentic” or “conforming to existing law.” One normally finds verum est in legal texts to certify that a new rule conforms to preexisting ones (Digest, 8, 4, 15). It is this juridical dimension that produces the meaning of verus as “authenticated, authentic” (in contrast to “false,” “imitative,” “deceiving”) and thus “real” as in “real cream” or “a genuine Rolex watch.” The juridical here provides a foundation not only for the moral (“Verum et simplex bonum of the Trinity. He introduces a significant modification to the truth of John by applying the term of truth to God himself, and not just to Christ. He puts to use all the resources of verus, “true God,” veracious God: “Deus unus, solus, magnus, verus, verax, veritas [one God, alone, great, true, truthful, the truth]” (De Trinitate, VIII, 2, 3). Augustinian “truth” extends itself in man in the concept of the interior “Master” and the intimacy of the “mental verb” in De Trinitate. According to De Magistro: It is not a speaker who utters sounds exteriorly whom we consult, but it is truth that presides within, over the mind itself. And He who is consulted, He who is said to dwell in the inner man, He it is who teaches—Christ (qui in interiore homine habitare dictus est Christus). (Colleran, Ancient Christian Writers) From ’èmèt- to “true” and from verus to wahr From ’èmèt - to “true” The history of “truth” is distinct from the history of veritas/ verum and follows a schema similar to that of ’èmèṯ. Etymologically, “true” derives from “tree” (“firm as a tree”). “True” (cf. Ger. treu), which has yielded “truth,” is originally close to “faithful” (loyal, constant) and is related to “trust,” entailing an idea of fidelity or solidity (“firmness”). As the expression “being true to a person” indicates, “truth” signifies first of all “confidence, trustworthiness” (“They had revelation (see LOGOS). Christ is truth as the fulfillment of Revelation and as the word of God the father. Alêtheia is defined along two axes: Revelation and Incarnation. Two texts are fundamental to this point of view: the prologue that describes the incarnation—the Christ is “plêrês charitos kai alêtheias [πλήϱης χάϱιτος ϰαὶ ἀληθείας]” (full of grace and truth) (John 1:14) and the text of the Last Supper—the words of Christ: “Egô eimi hê hodos kai hê alêtheia kai hê zôê; oudeis erchetai pros ton patera ei mê di’ emou [’Eγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδος ϰαὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ϰαὶ ἡ ζωή· οὐδεὶς ἔϱχεται πϱὸς τὸν πατέϱα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ]” (I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me) (John 14:6). Two expressions are taken from the Old Testament and given a meaning specific to John, to indicate the subjectivization of truth “in us.” The Old Testament expression “poien tên alêtheian [ποιεῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν]” (to wreak the truth) (2 Chron. 31:20), which signifies “keeping to obligations” and “being faithful to the Law,” is reinterpreted by John in the sense of subjective faith: “ho de poiôn tên alêtheian erchetai pros to phôs [ὁ δὲ ποιῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἔϱχεται πϱὸς τὸ φῶς]” (he that doeth truth cometh to the light) (John 3: 21, King James version). The formula “in truth” (en alêtheiai [ἐν ἀληθείᾳ]), which is found in the Old Testament (for example to “walk in truth,” 1 Kings 2:4) and in Paul, sets up in John a dialectic of interiority: we are in truth, and we come “from the truth” ( John 3:18–19) and truth “abides in us” (2 John 1–2). The work of faith entails the inhabitation of truth (living in truth). It is Saint Augustine who gives the New Testament truth its specifically ontological determinations in his elaboration Textual truth and allegory v. ANALOGY, COMPARISON, OIKONOMIA, SENSE The Christian paradigm of truth implies a truth to the text: it is the register of the oikonomia [οἰϰονομία] as “economy of salvation”; Tertullian translates oikonomia by dispensatio, and Augustine calls it dispensatio temporalis. The revelation is only such that it announces in advance, hidden behind the veil of actuality, another event of a higher order; the new is the accomplishment of the old and “completes the preludes” (per adimpletionem) (Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, IV, 11). Tertullian invokes the “conspiracy between the meaning of the Scriptures and the deadlines of events and the order of time” (ibid., III, 23). He employs a Roman juridical term, praescriptio (the fact of having been written in advance), to characterize the mode of truth of the text, which is proven through the temporal continuity of the realization of the prophecies (ibid., V, 11). And Hilaire de Poitiers writes: “Signata sunt omnia, et per spiritalem doctrinam resignanda [all things are signified and must be unsealed through the spiritual doctrine]” (Commentary on Psalm 118, 17). This conception of the oikonomia conforms to Paul’s allegories of hermeneutics and “typology” when he declares in 1 Corinthians 10:11 that everything that occurs in the New Testament was already in figura in the whole of antique law and that Christ was the “type” (tupikôs [τυπιϰῶς]) announced by the earlier figures, especially Moses and the prophets: “Haec autem omnia in figura contingebant illis / Tauta de tupikôs sunebainen ekeinois [ταῦτα δὲ τυπιϰῶς συνέϐαινεν ἐϰείνοις] / Solches alles widerfuhr ienen zum Vorbilde [Luther, Ger. translation].” Everything had already arrived as figures (written down as warnings): the events, the actions, and the persons of biblical history were thus “figures,” “antetypes,” or “prefigures” of the arrival of Christ—Adam himself being “a type of the one that was to come” (tupos tou mellontos [τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος]) (Rom. 5:14, English Standard Version). Here allegory does not have only a simple semantic sense but an ontological sense. It rests on what is. The orthotês does not designate correct vision but the correctness of names, a relation between things, not between words, and it involves the introduction of temporality. The tupoi [τύποι] are only identifiable through a double movement of retrospection-prospection that takes into account the fulfilled Revelation. This new architecture of exegesis or articulation between the meaning of a text and the event, between the idea of “body” and of “letter,” gives rise to the theology of the four senses of the Scripture, and beyond that, it provides the very paradigm of hermeneutics. REFS.: Auerbach, Erich. “Figura.” In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays. New York: Meridian Books, 1959. French translation by Marc André Bernier. Paris: Belin, collection “L’extrême contemporain,” 1993. Lubac, Henri de. Medieval Exegesis. Translated by Mark Sebanc. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1998. Nietzsche reserves [bewährt] the rubrics “true” [das Wahre] and “truth” [Wahrheit] for what Plato calls “true being.” Holding [wahren] the “truth” is a representational holding-to-be-true [Fürwahrhalten]. . . . Truth is a condition for the preservation [Bewahrung] of will to power. Preservation [Wahrung] is of course necessary, but it is never adequate. (Heidegger, Nietzche: 3: 235–36) In its sense of safeguarding, wahr makes no mention of any materiality. It deals with either the real, “actual, concrete” (real Wert, “real value”; real Ich, “the real and concrete me”) or else with the wirklich, “effective,” Wirkung, “effect, result,” Wirklichkeit (the Hegelian translation of energeia [ἐνέϱγεια]); wirklich belongs to the paradigm of works, of labor. Here we find the ontological dimension of verus, as in the English usage of “real” (true in the sense of real: see REALITY). 3. “Real” and “true” / wahr / vrai, and the status of ontological truth Two fundamentally different relations to ontology and the ontos on can be traced through the legacy of the paradigms of alêtheia/’èmèṯ/veritas: the true as real and effective, or the true as authentic, nonimitative, or false (being such as it speaks itself). Two incompatible approaches to truth emerge, one corresponding to something said of things, the other to something said of speech. It is not clear, as Austin put it so well, that the ordinary meanings of “real” and “true,” which share the same intent, actually refer to an ontological questioning of reality. “Real” is an absolutely normal word, with nothing newfangled or technical. For instance, if we are going to talk about “real,” we must not dismiss as beneath contempt such humble but familiar expressions as “not real cream.” (Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, 63–64) In order to know what Austin calls “the Nature of Reality,” one needs to examine the meaning of “real,” “genuine,” “authentic,” as analogous to the sense of “true” in its nonveridical usage. There is a specific play between French and English and a complex relation between “real” and French vrai. “Real” is often translated into French as vrai (and in German as wahr) and not by réel. The English “real” is more common and less theoretical than the French réel or the German real. This is precisely why Austin claims in Sense and Sensibilia that “real” is “absolutely normal” and why he rejects the attachment of ontological over-investment to the term. “Real cream” would be rendered in French as vraie crème and “real color” (in hair color, for example) would be rendered as couleur naturelle or véritable (natural or true color). When one is dealing with expressions such as “not real cream,” one is dealing with an “ersatz” or substitute (as in the case of a hair dye); a “not real color” in which “not real” hardly implies a large-scale illusion. “Real” poses no great problems for “reality” in expressions such as “a real Vuitton” or “a real idiot.” But the problem can only be raised by Austin as a result of the flexibility of “real” (unlike the French réel), which brings it much closer to “true” and to a whole lexical field of terms, including “proper,” “genuine,” “live,” “true,” “authentic,” “natural” (ibid., 71). This use of “real/true” separates been friends in youth, but whispering tongues can poison truth,” Coleridge, Christabel, II). Like belief, it can be assimilated to faith (the suffix -th indicates the kinship of the two terms, according to the Middle English Dictionary) (see BELIEF, FAITH). The idea of dependability and loyalty (“trustworthiness”) inherent in “trust/truth” leads to two new usages: on the one hand, conformity to an agreement, to a promise (cf. “faith”) that can have a political meaning associating truth and normativity to sociality. In this case “truth” designates adherence to a norm or rule (agreement with a standard). On the other hand, truth is linked to sincerity, the inclination to tell the truth (veracity). For the liar, unlike the person in error, knows the truth. It is not enough to be in the truth or to know it; for social harmony one must also be disposed to say it or to agree to it. The central problem is the duality of “truth”: “sincerity” and “veracity.” Thus “truthful” and “truthfulness,” when said of a person, imply that “reliability” is not just a matter of faith but that faith itself is founded on an inclination to tell the truth. Similarly, “truly” moves from a moral sense (“faithfully, sincerely” as in the standard expression “yours truly”) to a veridical sense. There is an amusing example in Austin, in his essay on “Truth”: Yet between stating, however truly, that I am feeling sick and feeling sick, there is a great gulf fixed. (Austin, Philosophical Papers, 123–24) One finds then, even in contemporary uses of the word “truth,” an ambiguity proper to verum, in which the dimension of sincerity/reliability is prior to that of the veridical dimension. From veritas to wahr The paradigm of verus-veristas is not easy to separate from any epistemological dimensions, as is evident in the varied fates of the Indo-European root *wer, from which derives, in addition to vera (in Russian, “belief”), the old French garir, in the sense of “certifying as true, designating as true,” whence the participle garant. The evolution of these derived words inscribes wahr and Wahrheit in a semantic network from which emerge two directions, belief and salvation. Belief Wahr is often linked back, in composite words, to the idea of belief, in the sense of true belief, to take as true: wahrsagen (to predict), wahr haben (to admit, agree upon), für wahr halten (to hold as true, to believe). This is the term that Kant employs in the Critique of Pure Reason, “Transcendental theory of method,” chap. 2, 3 (“On Opinion, Science, and Belief”): “das Fürwahrhalten” is a belief, as a modality of subjectivity, that can be divided into conviction (Überzeugung) or persuasion (Überredung) and that is capable of three degrees: opinion (Meinung), belief (Glaube), and science (Wissenschaft). Safeguarding, conservation Similarly wahren, bewahren in the sense of “to guard, to conserve” is linked to Wahrung in the sense of “defending one’s interests” or “safeguarding.” One might refer to Heidegger’s use of this etymological and semantic relation in reference to Nietzsche: It remains to be said that many common or colloquial expressions, in French as well as in English, play on the semantic slippages of vrai and “real,” between the ontological sense and linguistic meanings. Thus in French, c’est pas vrai! does not mean it is false, but rather that it is not reality. In English, the opposite is the case: “get real!” means “come back down to earth,” “accept the truth.” From Medieval to Classical Truth: Truth of the Matter, Rectitude, Adequation, Evidence, Certainty The term veritas has three distinct standard acceptations during the Medieval period. The first, called the “Augustinian,” is the “truth of the thing” (veritas rei); the second, called the “Anselmian,” is truth as “the correctness grasped only by the intellect” (rectitude sola mente perceptibilis); and the third, generally credited to “Isaac” and Avicenna, is truth as “adequation of the thought to the thing” (adequatio rei et intellectus). All three uphold or, if need be, rectify, limit, or relativize the “logical” and predicative conception attributed to Aristotle. Within this network of meaning, one reformulation, called “Aristotelian,” affects the first usage: truth as an “ontological disposition” (dispositio rei in esse), as a foundation of logical or “predicative” truth. Thomas Aquinas’s De veritate, which contains a fairly exhaustive inventory of medieval elaborations, can serve as our guide. A. The truth of the thing: Predicative and antepredicative As Thomas presents it, the notion of “truth of the thing” is connected to an Aristotelian interpretation of truth as antepredicative before being logical. The three standard uses—Augustinian, Anselmian, Avicennian—clearly appear as the obligatory references starting with the first question of Thomas’s De veritate. But in this system the first definition is supposed to look at “that which concerns the notion of truth and that which founds the true itself” (illud quo praecedit rationem veritatis et in quo verum fundatur), this truth that is called today “antepredicative” or “ontic.” The tie between truth and existence, or rather beingness, is placed under the sign of Aristotle (Metaphysics, β, 1, 993b30) as an affirmation of the complete synonymity of “true” and “being” (“the true and the existent are completely the same thing” [verum et ens sunt omnino idem]). This is often alleged by the proponents of the theory of “making true” in the light of the dominant interpretation of the text, which is evident in the translations of Tricot (“autant une chose a d’être, autant elle a de vérité”) or Reale (“ogni cosa possiede tanto di verità quanto possiede di esse”). . B. Truth and correctness: Anselm, or the two ways of “making true” In his dialogue entitled De veritate (around 1080–85), especially in chapter 2, Anselm is determined to distinguish two types of truth and to define truth in relation to rightness or correctness (rectitudo). Anselm does not agree with the common usage according to which a discourse is said to be true when it signifies that what is actually exists. In that case truth would be found outside of the utterance, in things, whereas it is important that it be located within what it is, that is, in discourse itself. But truth cannot be immediately questions of truth from questions of authenticity, making the latter the central question. There is a significant difference between English usage, on the one hand, and French and German on the other. Wahr can be employed in the sense of “real, authentic,” as can vrai. But Bolzano qualifies this sense of the inauthentic (uneigentlich) and claims that it only applies to the adjective, not to the noun: “das Adjectiv ‘wahr’ werde auch im Sinne von ‘wirklich,’ ‘echt’ gebraucht.” But the English translator of Bolzano uses “real, genuine” as the equivalent of wahr, not “true.” Following in the Aristotelian tradition, Bolzano points to the derived nature of this meaning of true, which is always a manner of translating or abbreviating one of the “primary” senses of wahr and Wahrheit, that is to say, it is part of a proposition. Even in what Bolzano calls “common usage,” “true” is said primarily of utterances, not of things. An additional problem derives from the fact that German establishes reference to the true within the very idea of perception. The verb wahrnehmen, “to perceive,” is indeed constructed on wahr and literally means to “take as true.” Wahrnehmung is thus the “grasp of the true” (see PERCEPTION, Box 3, “Wahrnehmung”). Thus in Husserl: It is clear that it belongs to the essence of perception that it perceives [wahrnimmt] some thing as its object, and consequently I can ask how the object is taken for real [als was nimmt sie den Gegenstand für wahr]. (Husserl, Introduction to Logic ) Later on, Husserl proposes a curious construction relating to the false representation 2 x 2 = 5: “The representation does not conform to a corresponding perception, the represented does not reach the level of proper perception [Wahrnehmung] but of false perception [Falschnehmung].” Thus a false perception is a Falschnehmung, a direct grasp of the false. Part of German language philosophy insists in fact on the “truth” of perception based on a supposed “proper” meaning of Wahrnehmung. Brentano in particular speaks of internal perception as the only perception, “in the proper sense of the term,” as the phenomena of external perception cannot be shown to be “real and true.” “External perception is thus not, in the rigorous sense of the word, perception at all.” Gandillac clarifies in a footnote that it is the etymological signification of Wahrnehmung that justifies the author’s argument (Psychology from an Empirical Point of View). Wahrnehmung presents a problem of translation into French or English as soon as one plays on its construction based on wahr. Thus German and French have a broader usage for wahr/ vrai than the English “true,” but on the other hand, “real” in English has a broader and more “ordinary” usage. All of this is further complicated by the problems resulting from successive redefinitions of the relations of reality and truth since Aristotle. This is evident in the ambiguities of the term “realism,” which is nonetheless easily transferable from one language to another but whose history and occasional incompatible meanings were developed in parallel to the terms “true”/vrai/wahr. Recent discussions of realism have focused on the notion of truth (especially Tarski’s definition of it) without clearly separating the two issues. it signifies that it is day (whether this is actually the case or not), for this is what it has naturally undertaken to do; it is true at a second level when it is in fact day, and the utterance is correctly used for the purpose for it was fashioned. In statements that we would qualify as analytic, like “a human being is an animal” or “a human being is not a stone,” the two truths of discourse are inseparable, since these utterances always and inextricably signify what they undertake to signify, as well as the truth of what they are meant to signify. The first correctness is immutable. It belongs naturally and permanently to the statement. The second correctness is mutable, accidental (since it occurs only when the state of affairs actually conforms to the meaning of the statement, and those states of affairs are subject to change) and impermanent, according to use. Alia igitur est rectitudo et veritas enuntiationis, quia significat ad quod significandum facta est; alia vero, quia significat quod acceptit significare. Quippe ista immutabilis est ipsi orationi, illo vero mutabilis. Hanc namque semper habet, illam vero non semper. Istam enim naturaliter habet, illam vero accidentaliter et secundum usum. Nam cum dico: dies est, ad significandum esse within discourse either, since, as Aristotle says, a specific utterance, made out of the same constituent parts, can be either true or false and can even be first one and then the other as a function of the state of affairs to which it refers. Anselm overcomes this difficulty by asking himself at what the affirmation had “been aimed” (ad quid). The statement has been made to signify that what-is is (or that what-is-not is not). But it has also has the capacity to signify that what-is is not, for if this were not the case, the statement could signify falsely. A statement that does what it ought to do (facit quod debet), in signifying what it has undertaken to signify (significant quod accepit significare) thus signifies “correctly” (recte) at a first level, just as the truth or rightness of a creature consists in doing what God has given him to do, that which he must do. This first correctness or truth is independent of any conformity with things and states of affairs. Nonetheless, when the statement effectively signifies that what-is is, it doubly does what it ought to do, for it signifies both what it has undertaken to signify, as well as what it was designed to signify, that for which it was fashioned (significant et quod accepit significare et ad quod facta est). This second correctness and truth is normally what we call a true statement. The statement “it is day” is true at a first level when Logical truth and antepredicative truth: On the Heideggerian reading of Θ, 10 v. INTELLECTUS, INTUITION In the Middle Ages the canonical Aristotelian thesis as it is expressed in the Metaphysics, Θ, 10, 1051b4–5 “He who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, while he whose thought is in a state contrary to that of the objects is in error” (trans. W. D. Ross)—has now become auctoritas and circulates in a form similar to “saying the truth is to say that what is combined is combined and that what is separated is separated.” The medieval version accentuates the “logical” aspect of the definition. But for modern interpreters the primacy of the ontic truth (the truth of the thing) can lead to a very different reading. The Greek “ἔψευσται δὲ ὁ ἐναντίως ἔχων ἢ τὰ πϱάγματα,” rendered in Italian by G. Reale in the form of “sarà, invece, nel falso, colui che ritiene che le cose stiano in modo contrario a come effetivamente stanno” (Aristotle, Metafisica, trans. G. Reale, Milan: Rusconi, “Testi a Fronte,” 1993, 429), which is closer to a beginning of considering the “state of affairs” (Sachverhalt, état de choses), claims to be closer to the authentic Aristotelian inspiration than the anachronistic “nature des objets” in the French translation of Tricot. The two translations are still based on the same supposition: the “primordial character of truth in things,” the foundation of the theory that we call today the “correspondence theory of truth,” which Tricot stresses, following in the steps of Thomas Aquinas: “compositio et divisio rei est causa veritatis et falsitatis in opinione et oratione” (in Metaph., 1899, 549). This “antepredicative” truth and its primacy are still at issue in the course held in 1926 in Marburg on the Grundbegriffe der Antiken Philosophie, in which Heidegger contrasts the Aristotelian conception of truth in Θ, 10 with that from E, 4 (truth as the “truth of proposition”), with the second based on the first. In regards to the truth in Θ, 10, Heidegger posits that it is known through “a simple dis-covering (or un-veiling) by a simple gaze (itself).” In the Grundfragen der Philosophie, Ausgewählte “Probleme der Logik” of 1937–38 (a course given in Freiburg in the winter semester), Heidegger attributes to Aristotle a concept of truth as “correspondence,” “correction” (exactitude), or “adequation” between thought and being, all the while recalling that his concept is based on the concept of truth as unconcealment or nonlatency of being from Θ, 10, “the ultimate resonance of the originary essence of truth” in the history of philosophy (cf. Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 45: 15, 97, 139, and 205). In Metaphysics Θ, 10, 1051a35ff., Aristotle explains that “the terms ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ are employed firstly with reference to the categories” and “secondly with reference to the potency or actuality of these or their nonpotency or nonactuality, and thirdly in the sense of true and false” (trans. W. D. Ross). This passage, which is a prelude to the thesis of 1051b4–5, has been the object of different interpretations. Ross places the words kuriôtata on [ϰυϱιώτατα ὄν] in square brackets in the expression “to de kuriôtata on alêthes ê pseudos [τὸ δὲ ϰυϱιώτατα ὄν ἀληθὲς ἢ ψεῦδος],” and Tricot (p. 522) comments that “if one keeps these words, one must reattach them to [ἀληθὲς ἢ ψεῦδος], and not to [τὸ δὲ], because Aristotle did not intend to say that Being par excellence is the true and the false, when in his doctrine (as affirmed in E, 4, 1027b34), Being as true is only an affection of thought.” Heidegger’s interpretation is quite different. According to him, the adverb kuriôtata, which Schwegler rejected and Ross eliminated, should be maintained: Aristotle’s thesis lies in this place, contrary to the claims of E, 4, that being as true exists in things in two forms, one of them relating to “composite realities” (= complex), expressed in judgments, and the other in “noncomposite realities” (= not-complex), expressed by the thought (noein), which is not a judgment. The true thesis of Aristotle on truth is thus that being in the sense of true (being) is, of all the meanings of “being,” the most proper to it, that it is the truth of things and in things, that it is the “constant presence” on which the truth of thought, i.e., judgment, is based. 689–93 [= Latin, 318, 1–326, 32]). As it turns out, not only is the definition of truth as adequation not to be found, but the text contains another formula explicitly presented as defining the truth: “ḥadd al-ḥaqq: huwa mā huwa aš-šay’ ” (691, 6–8); veritas est quod est res (322, 10 and cf. 307; Hebrew 139, 14ff., and cf. 134, 9). The definition is not to be found in alKindī either (d. 870), who defines truth, or rather veracity (ṣidq [صدق ,([as the fact of saying what-is is and what-is-not is not (Definitions, ed. Abu Rida, Cairo, 1950, 117). One should look to Avicenna (d. 1037) for the true and original context of the idea of adequation. One of his definitions of truth is: “the state of discourse or of thought which designates the state of the exterior thing, when this ‘is’ correspondent [muṭābiq (مطابق [(to that” (Shifā, Metaphysics, I, 8; Fr. trans. ed. G. C. Anawati, Cairo, 1960, 48, 6ff.). The Arabic participle suggests an image of two layers precisely covering each other, in the way two geometric figures can be superimposed. The Latin is more vague: “Veritas autem quae adaequatur rei” (Avicenna latinus, Metaphysica, ed. S. Van Riet, Louvain, 1977, 55). It is this idea of “correspondence” between discourse and the thing that William of Auvergne will attempt to express with the aid of other synonyms: convenientia, concordia, aequalitas (De universo, I, 3, XXVI, 795a). The term adaequatio will predominate in the subsequent medieval tradition and give rise to new distinctions, particularly between the adaequatio of discourse and the thing, which defines true (verus) discourse from false (falsus), as opposed to the adaequatio of the discourse to the intention of the sincere (verax) or nonsincere (fallax) interlocutor—see the text of Bonaventure referred to infra, in IV.A.2. Averroës builds on a definition that is already a classic: “the veridical [ṣādiq (صادق [(as is said in its definition, is ‘the fact’ that what is to be found in the soul ‘is’ according to what is outside the soul” (Tahafot, I, 188; ed. M. Bouyges, 103, 5ff.). The English translation of S. Van den Bergh (London, 1954, 60 and 179) introduces the terms “agreement” or “conformity,” which are not explicit in the Arabic. The definition has remained a classic. The substantive “correspondence” (muṭābaqa [المطابقة ([is to be found in the Book of Definitions of Gurgani (d. 1413, s.v. “ḥaqq [حق “,[ ّ Flügel ed., Leipzig, 1845, 94). Truth, evidence, and certainty For obvious reasons stemming from, among other things, the necessity of harmonizing the auctoritates (authorities), medieval thinkers started by searching for cross-references quod est, recte utor hujus orationis significatione, quia ad hoc facta est; et ideo tunc recte dicitur significare. Cum vero eadem oratione significo esse quod non est, non ea recte utor, quia non ad hoc facta est; et idcirco non recta tunc ejus significatio dicitur. A statement then is right and true either because it is correctly formed or because it fulfills its function of signifying correctly. The former belongs immutably to it, the latter is mutable. The former it always has, the latter not always. The former it naturally has, the latter accidentally and according to use. For when I say, “It is day” in order to signify what it is, I correctly use what the utterance means, because this is why it was fashioned, and therefore it then is correctly said to signify. But when by the same utterance I signify that what is not is, I do not use it correctly, because it was not fashioned for this purpose, and its signification is not then called correct.) (St. Anselm, De veritate, 154–55) At the moral level, the distinction between the two forms of correctness is only of value for rational beings, who are free and can thus recognize what they are fashioned to do, what they owe themselves to be, and to decide to do or not do what they are fashioned to do. The difference between man and God becomes the difference between the being who is because he is what it is his duty to be and the being who is because he is. The duty that defines man is a debt because in fulfilling it, man submits to a truth whose cause lies ultimately in God. In a similar manner true discourse conforms to what it signifies and pays off its initial debt because it has been fashioned to signify the true, and in this case it signifies it effectively and conforms to its original purpose. Truth and adequation The most celebrated definition of truth is “adaequatio rei et intellectus.” It is the canonical expression of truth as correspondence. One finds it for the first time, it would appear, in William of Auxerre (Summa aurea I, ed. J. Ribaillier, 1980, 1: 195, 228). It is also often attributed (from Thomas [De veritate, q.1a 1, c] through Heidegger [Sein und Zeit, § 44a, 214], to the Jewish philosopher Isaac Israeli (850–950). His Book of Definitions, written in Arabic, was translated into Latin by Gérard of Cremona (ed. H. Hirschfeld, Festschrift Steinschneider, Leipzig, 1896, Hebrew, 131–41). A fragment of the original has been found (H. Hirschfeld, ed. JQR, no. 15 [1903]: 5 Hoc est corpus meum, or how adequation is set in crisis by the performative v. ANALOGY, SIGN, SPEECH ACT, II, TO BE Can the definition of logical truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus, rather than correctness, define the truth of all utterances or only of assertions? What is the status of truth with respect to different kinds of enunciations, those, for example, of a performative kind? The analysis of the formula for the consecration of the Eucharist, Hoc est corpus meum, is an important place for such discussion in the Middle Ages. The truth of the formula for Eucharistic conversion depends crucially on the reference one assigns to the pronoun hoc, the subject of the statement. If the demonstrative pronoun refers to “this bread is my body,” This reversal enables the reconciliation of two usages of the word veritas that are often opposed in the sophismata and the disputationes—the question as to whether truth resides in things or in thought, or else first in things and only then in thought, a set of questions that were commonplace in the philosophy and theology of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and were inherited from Anselm’s De veritate. In the classical age, the thesis of adequation is passed on in various ways. In Spinoza the notion of convenance allows the axiomatic formulation that “a true idea must agree with [meet with, be suitable] that of which it is the idea,” or more literally, with its “ideation”: “Idea vera debet cum suo ideato convenire” (Benedictus de Spinoza, between standard uses of veritas. Three principal ways were explored in the Middle Ages and after. Medieval thinkers sought to explain and to justify the content of the Augustinian definition by reversing the direction of the truth known as “adequation.” Instead of the obvious sense of the adaequatio rei et intellectus as the adequation, conformity or conformation of human thought to the things of creation, the adaequatio intellectus ad rem becomes the adaequatio rei ad intellectum, the adequation or conformity of creation to its exemplary cause, the creative thought of the Divine. The adequation of the created to its model is defined as “certitude.” Truth and certainty thus come together in the idea of determination, which will later be called objective, whereas here, at its origin, it is more ideal-real. the statement is false. If it refers to the body of Christ, the proposition is true, but it does not serve in the conversion, since Christ is then already present from the beginning of the utterance. Thomas Aquinas succeeds in finding a solution that relies on a distinction between two types of utterances: assertive statements and operative statements. He bases the distinction between them on the Aristotelian opposition between speculative and practical intellect. Thomas makes an original use of the adage taken from the first chapter of the Peri hermeneias, according to which words are signs of intellection (voces sunt signa intellectuum). He explains that there are two types of intellections or concepts. The concepts that pertain to the speculative intellect are drawn from things; they come from them because speculation is a contemplation of existing things. Thus, the truth of an assertive utterance depends for its adequation on a state of affairs that preexists it. If it conforms, the statement is true; otherwise it is false. Conversely, concepts belonging to the practical intellect precede the thing, since an artisan needs to have a model or concept of the object in his mind beforehand so the object can be made in its image. In this case the truth of an operative utterance can only be determined in reference to the thing it has created. Given the specificity of the utterance within which it occurs, the hoc cannot refer to a thing that exists prior to its utterance (the bread), but rather to the thing that the formula helps to create in the last instant of its being pronounced, that is, the very moment at which the conversion will take place. It turns out that using a pronoun is absolutely ideal because it possesses within itself an indeterminacy of reference that allows it to recruit bread and wine as substances that can become the body of Christ. Thomas thus draws out the particular properties of performative utterances that enable them to determine truth or assign reference to the deictic function contained within them. According to Duns Scotus, the truth of the Eucharistic utterance is not a condition of its operation. The utterance is pronounced, and it engenders a signification that enables it to realize what it has been commanded to realize by convention (in an original pact set in place at the moment of command). It is at this point “neutral” and does not carry veridical value. But once realized, hoc est corpus meum is true in that it refers to the body of Christ, which is present as a result of the conversion. So the utterance is operative insofar as it is neutral, not insofar as it is true. This constitutes a major reversal of previous analyses, which always sought to find a value for the hoc that would make it possible to say that the statement was true in order to explain how it could be operative. In chapter 15 of Logic or the Art of Thinking, Arnauld and Nicole take up the problem of the signification of the word hoc in the formula. They consider it “a troublesome quarrel which the ministers made famous, on which they based their main argument establishing their metaphorical interpretation of Eucharist” (ibid., 71). And for them this argument is “more worthy of logic than theology.” The whole mystery of the assertion, they point out, “arises not from the obscurity of terms, but from the change effected by Christ, which caused this subject hoc to have two different determinations at the beginning and at the end of the proposition” (ibid., 72). Hoc indicates only “the confused idea of a present thing,” and the apostles added to the confused idea of a present thing the distinct idea of bread that Christ held in his hands, an idea “which was only prompted and not precisely signified by this term. . . . And so when Christ uttered ‘this,’ which meant his body, the Apostles only had to subtract the distinct ideas of bread they had added. Retaining this same idea of a present thing, they conceived at the end of Christ’s assertion that this present thing was now the body of Jesus Christ” (ibid.). The distinction between after and now indicates the movement of transformation that the verb “to be” accomplishes during the act of utterance. As the authors write somewhat later, in chapter 12, “This which is bread at this moment is my body at another moment” (ibid., 112). If one finds the medieval arguments in Arnauld and Nicole, new issues are here at stake. For the logicians of Port-Royal, the insistence on a distinction between literal and figural in temporal movement is part of an answer to those (i.e., the Protestants) who would reject the idea of a real transsubstantiation in the name of a purely symbolic interpretation of the proposition. REFS.: Arnauld, Antoine, and Pierre Nicole. Logic or the Art of Thinking. Translated and edited by Jill Vance Buroker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Libera, Alain de, and Irène Rosier-Catach. “L’analyse scotiste de la formule de la consécration eucharistique.” In Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (1150–1450). Acts of the 11th Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, 171–201. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 1997. . “Les enjeux logico-linguistiques de l’analyse de la formule de la consécration eucharistique.” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin 67 (1997): 33–77. Rosier-Catach, Irène. “Éléments de pragmatique dans la grammaire, la logique et la théologie médiévales.” Histoire Épistémologie Langage 20, no. 1 (1988): 117–32. voice of Théophile, he objects that “it would be better to assign truth to the relationships amongst the objects of the ideas—i.e., the items that the ideas are ideas of— by virtue of which one idea is or is not included within the other” (ibid., 182). This accent on the objects can be considered a step toward the common notion of “objective” truth, independent of our expressions and on the “good pleasure of men.” The “relationship” in question “doesn’t depend on languages and is something we have in common with God and the angels. And when God displays a truth to us, we come to possess the truth that is in his understanding, for although his ideas are infinitely more perfect and extensive than ours, they still have the same relationships that ours do,” to which Leibniz adds that “truth should be assigned to these relationships. Then we are free to distinguish truths that do not depend on our good pleasure, from expressions, which we invent as we see fit” (IV, V, §2, ibid., 183). 3. In the modern period there have been attempts to combine the theme of rectitudo with that of adaequatio. To this end Anton Marty (1847–1914) defined truth (in Latin) as adaequatio cogitantis et cogitati (adequation of the judging [subject] to the [object] of judgment)—a formula in which cogitare has the same sense as urteilen (judging) and cogitatum has the same meaning as Urteilsinhalt (judgment-content). According to this definition, a judgment is correct if and only if “the judgment-content Ethics, I, De Deo, Axiomata, VI: Wordsworth Classics of Literature, trans. W. H. White, A. H. Stirling, 29). In Locke, the matrix of joining/separating (for signs) and agree/ disagree (for things) serves to repatriate truth to these sole propositions: truth is “nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another”—whence “the joining or separating of signs here meant is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, chap. 5, §2, ed. J. W. Yolton, London: Dent, 1974, 176–77). This purely predicative redefinition of truth constitutes, up to a certain point, a nominalist reading of Aristotle’s thesis in the Metaphysics, Θ, 10, 1051b4-5, (“He who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, etc.”). As such, this is also what Leibniz rejects: if one looks for truth in signs, one ends up reducing truths not only to “mental or nominal” truths, “according to the species of signs,” but also to “literal truths, which are indistinguishable from the paper truths or parchment ones, ordinary-ink truths or printers’-ink ones” (Leibniz, New Essays, 183). Via the voice of Philalethe, Leibniz in his New Essays takes up / translates Locke’s thesis thus: truth would consist of “the joining or separating of signs according to how the things signified by them agree or disagree with one another.” To which, via the 6 Certainty and raison d’être (essential purpose) v. PRINCIPLE, RES In keeping with the distinction between two meanings of the word res (see RES)— “res a reor reris,” “res a ratitudine”—certain medieval theologians restrict “certainty” or “determination” (Ger. Bestimmung) to only those things called a ratitudine, which possess “being of essence” (esse essentiae) as paradigms (ratio exemplaris) of God, which render them naturally able to be produced in actual being. The ratitudo thus designates, in a fashion, the “certification” of a thing, an indication of its “authenticity.” For Henry of Ghent, the “ratification” or “certification” of a thing determines both its beingness and its truth (“quanto aliquid in se plus habet ratitudinis sive firmitatis, tanto plus habet entitatis, quare et veritatis” [the more a thing has of ratification or certification, the more it has of beingness and consequently of truth], Henry of Ghent, Summa, art. 34, q. 2, fol. 212rS), as opposed to the inconstancy and inconsistency of fiction, as lacking an example in God (ibid., art. 21, q. 4, fol. 127rO). The ratification or “certitude” of a thing is sufficient reason for its creation: whatever does not have an example in God is nothing “in essence and in nature”; such a “thing” is not a “predicamental thing” (it does not belong to categorial being) and “cannot become effectively real,” for God does not put into effect, “produce,” “that which has no exemplary raison d’être in some creature or another.” The exemplary reason is the raison d'être: an “authentic” thing is “a nature or absolute essence, endowed with an exemplary reason in God, destined to exist in existence through divine operation.” The acceptation of truth as “a conformity of things with their essence, such as is thought by God” has been illuminated in a celebrated page of Heidegger: According to the traditional concept, truth [veritas] is the adaequatio intellectus et rei, the adequation of thought and thing [die Angleichung von Denken und Ding]; in the place of adaequatio, one also refers to commensuratio or convenientia, accordance or suitability [Anmessung oder Übereinkunft]. This definition of the essence of truth is ambiguous, with an ambiguity that already characterized the question of truth in the Middle Ages. As an adequation, truth is part of a determination [Bestimmung] of the ratio, of the utterance [der Aussage], of the proposition [des Satzes]. A proposition is true insofar as it comes into line with things [Wahr ist ein Satz, sofern er sich an die Dinge angleicht]. But the definition of truth as adequation does not only apply to the proposition in its relation to things. It also applies to things, insofar as they are created and, referring back to the project of the creative spirit, conform to this project. Conceived this way, truth is the conformity of things to their essence, such as it is thought by God [die Angemessenheit der Dinge an ihr von Gott erdachtes Wesen]. (Heidegger, What Is a Thing?) REFS.: Heidegger, Martin. What Is a Thing? [Die Frage nach dem Ding]. Translated by W. B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch. Analysis by Eugene T. Gendlin. Chicago: Regnery, 1967. TRUTH 1173 to be deprived of the truth) (Plato, Republic, 413a, trans. Benjamin Jowett), with the accusative (pseusma pseudesthai [ψεῦσμα ψεύδεσθαι], “to be mistaken”) (Plato, Meno, 71d), with the dative (pseusthênai gnômêi [ψευσθῆναι γνώμῃ], “to be deceived in one’s judgment”) (Herodotus 7, 9), or with various prepositions (en tini [ἔν τινι], peri tinos [πεϱί τινος], “to be mistaken about something,” “to be mistaken in something”) (RT: Dictionnaire grec français, and LSJ, s.v. ψεύδω). Dictionaries list “lie” and “lying” as the primary meanings, and for its etymology Chantraine proposes a radical *pseupsu, a slightly enlarged form of the radical *bhes-, “to blow,” entailing a semantics of “blowing, the blowing wind, lying,” which form the basis for the Greek phêmi [φημί] or Latin fari, “to say.” Perhaps what we call “fiction” will enable us to hold both ends of this chain. At the outset, as we have seen, the pseudos leads back to an enunciative strategy, similar to alêtheia but in opposition to it (cf. supra, I.B.1). We can hear its affirmative dimension in the complaints of the swineherd Eumaeus to Odysseus, unrecognizable in beggar’s disguise (Odyssey, Bk 14, 124–25): ἀλλ’ ἄλλως ϰομιδῆς ϰεχϱημένοι ἄνδϱες ἀλῆται ψεύδοντ’, οὐδ’ ἐθέλουσιν ἀληθέα μυθήσασθαι (all’ allôs komidês kechrêmenoi andres alêtai pseudont’, oud’ ethelousin alêthea muthêsasthai) (Tramps in want of a lodging keep coming with their mouths full of lies, and not a word of truth.) (trans. Samuel Butler) (Random drifters, hungry for bed and board, lie through their teeth and swallow back the truth.) (trans. Robert Fagles) The pseudos is simultaneously error, mendacious accounts, and fiction. It is a construction, superimposed and out of sync, but not a counter-truth. The beggars do not lie about Odysseus and know nothing about him. Yet, based on this ignorance, they make up stories that enable them to hide who they really are, thus concealing the truth about themselves (cf. on these “two moments in the lie,” Jean-Pierre Levet, Le Vrai et le Faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque: étude de vocabulaire [Truth and falsehood in archaic Greek thought: A study of vocabulary], Les Belles Lettres, 1976, 82–83). The false, in its traditional and more philosophical usage, is in turn nothing more than a bad construction. Pseudos or pseudês becomes a pure and simple antonym to alêthês and alêtheia insofar as it implies combining elements that do not belong together. This is how Plato defines it in the Thaetatus: There is pseudos when there is a “permutation” of two entities in thought and one interchanges one thing for another (antallaxamenos têi dianoiai phêi einai [ἀνταλλαξάμενος τῇ διανοίᾳ φῇ εἶναι], Thaetatus, 189c), or when we make a bad “connection” between a perception and a thought (“têi sunapsei [τῇ συνάψει],” ibid., 195d; see DOXA), or when one “messes up” or “misses” (this is the primary sense of hamartanein, “to mistake”) by taking one science for another, or a pigeon for a dove (“anth’ heteras heteran hamartôn labêi [ἀνθ’ ἑτέϱας ἑτέϱαν ἁμαϱτὼν λάϐῃ],” ibid., 199b). The false is of a judgment exists,” which is to say if and only if “a coexistence of a process of judging and a corresponding state of affairs is actually the case [wirklich gegeben ist]” (Untersuchungen, 426). The Urteilsinhalt is “that which objectively grounds the correctness of our judgment” (was die Richtigkeit unseres Urteilens objectiv begründet). As the Urteilsinhalt is independent of the Urteilsakt (the act of judging) and from the urteilende Person (the person judging), the Urteil must “be directed towards this content” to be true (ibid., 404). Marty’s thesis could be reformulated in more contemporary terminology as stating that the content of judgment is its truth-maker. Truth, Sincerity, Authenticity Evolution of Antonyms We can see how the process of truth’s subjectification comes to be considered one of the distinctive markers of the modern period. This is particularly evident in the evolution in meaning of antonyms. Subjectification occurs in tandem with a redefinition of responsibility and of the implication of the individual. Instead of the Greek lack of differentiation among the false, the erroneous, and the deceitful, all included in the term pseudos, Latin proposes a double terminology.” “Fallax is someone who is in error, while “mendax” is someone who lies. Modern terminology promotes confusion between truth value and moral value, as the semantic drift of certain key terms indicates. In French, for example, the word sincère, which appeared in 1475 and which derives from the Latin sincerus, “pure, uncorrupt,” “of one growth” (formed, like “crescere,” on an Indo-European root that expresses ideas of “seed” and “springing forth”), is used in 1763 for “a state of consciousness which is effectively felt” (RT: DHLF, under heading “sincère”). Even more sincere than sincerity is “authenticity,” which first appears in the juridical sense (authentês [αὐθέντης]) as indicating someone who acts on his own, autos [αὐτός], whether as an absolute master (Euripides, The Suppliants, v. 442) or as a murderer (Euripides, Rhesus, v. 117). The term subsequently assumes a resolutely moral sense that implies sincerity in relation to oneself. “Authenticity” comes to define the third age of ethics, after the age of excellence and the age of merit (Luc Ferry, Homo Æstheticus, Grasset, 1990, “Les trois âges de l’éthique,” 329–46, trans. Robert de Loaiza: Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age, 1993; see VIRTÙ). From pseudos to mendax Pseudos: falsehood, error, fiction For us in the modern age, the most striking feature of the Greek to pseudos (adj. later pseudês) is the confounding in a single term of what we take pains to distinguish: on the one hand, what we consider under the rubric of lie and falsehood, of deception and feint, as opposed to sincerity and authenticity; and on the other hand, what we consider under the rubric of error and the fake, as opposed to the true and real. The substantive is derived from the verb pseudô [ψεύδω], “to deceive,” which one finds first and foremost as a means, pseudomai [ψεύδομαι], “to cheat, to lie, to fail (an obligation), to betray,” but one should also take note of the meaning of the passive constructions: “to be mistaken” with the genitive (epseusthai tês alêtheias [ἐψεῦσθαι τῆς ἀληθείας], (appearance, opinion); but perhaps we find this all the more repugnant when we hear its echo in the French fausseté or the English “falsehood.” Falsus-fallax, then fallax-mendax Medieval reflections on the lie are based on Augustine (De mendacio, Contra mendacium). The most commonly retained definition is from the Contra mendacium (XII, 26): “falsa vocis significatio cum intentione fallendi” (“A lie is a false signification with will of deceiving,” trans. H. Browne). This, however, is not a complete expression of Augustine’s thought because for him the lie resides in the nonconformity between the “mouth of the heart” and the “mouth of the body.” The liar expresses something other than what lies in his heart, with the intent of deceiving. It matters less whether what he says conforms to a state of affairs or not: he who swears that it is raining, if he truly thinks it, is not a liar, even if it is not raining. But he who says something is true while thinking the contrary, is lying, even if what he says is not a lie. Thus for Augustine it is the sincerity of the speaker that matters above all the result of a poor adjustment between beings and words. This is its definition in the Cratylus (“hos an ta onta legêi hôs estin, alêthês; hos d’ an hôs ouk estin, pseudês [ὃς ἂν τὰ ὄντα λέγῃ ὡς ἔστιν, ἀληθής· ὃς δ’ ἂν ὡς οὐϰ ἔστιν, ψευδής]” [the discourse which says things as they are is true, that which says them as they are not, is false]) (Cratylus, 385b, cf. Sophist, 241b), and it is the definition of the Sophist, which puts forth the idea of a bad “synthesis,” a poor “composition” of nouns and verbs (263d): “When other, then, is asserted of you as the same, and not-being as being [thatera hôs ta auta kai mê onta hôs onta (θάτεϱα ὡς τὰ αὐτὰ ϰαὶ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα)] such a combination of nouns and verbs [hê toiautê sunthesis ek te rhêmatôn gignomenê kai onomatôn (ἡ τοιαύτη σύνθεσις ἔϰ τε ῥημάτων γιγνομὲνη ϰαὶ ὀνομάτων)] is really and truly false.” This is, in the end, the classical logical definition of truth as correspondence since Aristotle. We should keep in mind that the subjective intention to deceive makes no difference in the Greek terminology: the pseudos is part of the coherent and inseparable scope of alêtheia, which is simultaneously objective and subjective (truth of being, truth of propositions), and of doxa 7 Apatê v. ART (Box 2), FICTION, PLASTICITY, PROPERTY There is nonetheless a Greek word, no less difficult to translate than pseudos, which implies an intention to deceive, as opposed to the simply false or untrue. It is apatê [ἀπάτη], which might be rendered through a series of words, themselves in chronological order— from Homer to later Greek—by “deception,” “illusion,” “fakery,” “ruse,” “artifice,” “illusion,” “pastime,” “pleasure.” The word’s etymology is unknown, even though Aeschylus compares it to atê [ἄτη], “folly, fault, crime, the goddess of misfortune,” in describing human insolence (hubris [ὕϐϱις]) (Suppliants, v. 111). There is a proliferation of verbs: apataô [ἀπατάω], to “cheat” or “deceive”; exapataô [ἐξαπατάω], to “completely deceive”; proexapataô [πϱοεξαπατάω], to “completely deceive from the start.” Gorgias enables us to understand the particular value of the apatê: “He who deceives [ho . . . apatêsas (ὁ ἀπατήσας)] is more just than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived [ho apatêtheis (ὁ ἀπατηθείς)] is wiser than he who is not deceived” (82 B 23 DK). “He who deceives is more just [dikaioteros (διϰαιότεϱος)],” he says, “because he keeps to his promise, and he who is deceived is wiser [sophôteros (σοφώτεϱος)], because being easily pleased by discourse [huph’ hêdonês logôn (ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς λόγων)], he is not lacking in sensibility [anaisthêton (ἀναίσθητον)].” This fragment comes to us through Plutarch as being in reference to tragedy (De gloria Atheniensium, 5, 348). Thus justice, the founding principle of the city, and wisdom, the basis of paideia [παιδεία], are tied to tragedy: apatê leads us to the entanglements of literature, pedagogy, and politics. This is a measure of the gulf between the entirely negative pseudos that philosophy attributes to the sophist (who, as Plato and Aristotle never cease to point out, deceives by falsely speaking, passing off the false for the true, imitating wisdom and philosophy), and this apatê, which results from discursive activity. With sophism, apatê or illusion finds itself not only linked to justice and wisdom but even more radically, through the theater and aesthetic invention, to aisthêsis [αἴσθησις], to this very “sensibility” that characterizes our relationship to the world. Apatê is the tie between speaker and listener; it means that one recognizes the pseudos as plasma [πλάσμα], as “fiction,” and that one becomes aware of the demiurgical power of the logos (see SPEECH ACT and LOGOS). But such a remark only becomes meaningful in contrast to the ontological use of language, implicated since Aristotle in what will become the phenomenological tradition. In De anima, the passage from things to words, from phenomena to the logos, is thematized and woven together, with the soul acting as guarantor of adequation. Indeed, as for the feeling of one’s own sensations, the idia [ἴδια], for example, the visible-as-seen for sight (see SENSE, I), a sort of degree zero of sensation, the soul cannot be deceived. Or more exactly, the apatê is impossible, in the sense of its being radically “improper” (mê endechetai [μὴ ἐνδέχεται], non decet), and this impossibility characterizes the immediacy of the aesthetic reception as a noetic reception: peri ho mê endechetai apathênai [πεϱὶ ὃ μὴ ἐνδέχεται ἀπαθῆναι] (De anima, II, 418a12); peri tauta ouk estin apathênai [πεϱὶ ταῦτα οὐϰ ἔστιν ἀπαθῆναι] (Metaphysics, Θ, 10, 1051b31); “There can be no illusion about that” (cf. Cassin, Aristote et le logos, 140–47). Heidegger cannot but comment, playing the antepredicative against the logos and De anima against De interpretatione: The Greek conception of truth has been misunderstood. Aisthêsis, the sheer sensory perception of something, is “true” in the Greek sense. Any aisthêsis aims at its idia, those entities which are genuinely accessible only through it and for it, and to that extent, this perception is always true. (Heidegger, Being and Time, § 7) REFS.: Cassin, Barbara. Aristote et le logos. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997. . L’Effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. TRUTH 1175 such as a vow that explicitly takes God for its guarantor, is uttered for the sake of a listener who does not have access to the intentions of the speaker, only to what he says. In this case is it the intention of the speaker (intentio dicentis) or the intention of the recipient (intentio recipientis) that creates the obligation? This problem becomes even more complex when the utterances are equivocal: one solution sets up a distinction between the judgment of the Church, which considers the obligation of a vow as a function of what is said, and the judgment of God, which is based on the profound intention and “the spark of conscience” (Bonaventure, Book of Sentences III, d. 39, a. III, q. 2). 3. Authenticity and the proper The modern era prizes the authentic (Ger. echt, Eng. “genuine,” based on Latin genus and Greek gignesthai [γίγνεσθαι], “to be born, to become”; see GENIUS, INGENIUM) and prizes authenticity as the task of the subject, an existential metasincerity of the self in relation to the self. This is in a way the impact of the “decentering of the subject”—whether it comes out of Marx (see PRAXIS), out of Freud (see ES, UNCONSCIOUS), out of structuralism (see STRUCTURE), or out of existentialism (see DASEIN)—on the intersecting requirements of logic and morality. One can refer to the articles on PROPERTY and EREIGNIS and the deployment of the German eigen (from eigen to Eigentlichkeit and to Ereignis, from the “own particular” [Fr. propre] to “authenticity” and to “appropriating event”) for the analysis of a fecund terminological nexus. . V. Comparison of Some Singular Features of English and German in Contemporary Theories There are three possible paths for expressing the adequation of language to the real in the philosophy of language and to translate the classical adaequatio into contemporary terminology: depiction (theory of the image/Bild), immanence (redundancy, disquotation), and adequation updated in ordinary language philosophy (“fitting”). A. Theory of the image: Wittgenstein One of the most powerful paradigms of the representational theory is to be found in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus, according to which propositions (Sätze) represent (abbilden) states of affairs (Tatsache). What is difficult to unpack is this relationship of representation, as soon as it is conceived in terms of an image, Bild (see BILD and REPRÉSENTATION). We make an picture of the world for ourselves (2.0212: “ein Bild der Welt”), and, more precisely, we picture facts (2.1: “Wir machen uns Bilder der Tatsachen”). Bild belongs both to the order of representation (Darstellung, Abbildung) and of modelling (2.12: Modell). It is precisely this link between the Bild and reality—the Abbildung—and its specific manner of attaining the real that cannot be expressed in language (2.1511: “Das Bild is so mit der Wirklichkeit verknüpft; es reicht bis zu ihr [that is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right up to it]”). The enigma of truth in the Tractatus is to be found in the definition of “logical form,” common to the Bild and to reality (Wirklichkeit), which cannot be rigorously conceived more than the truth of his utterances. The fact that language enables a disjunction between what is thought and what is signified thus constitutes an argument against the fact of language being an adequate instrument for access to knowledge: “For I am not questioning the fact that the words of truthful [veracium] people attempt and in some way profess to express the spirit of the speaker; and they would succeed, as everyone freely would admit, if it was forbidden for liars [mentientibus] to speak” (De magistro, XIII, 42). Alexander of Hales distinguishes a duplex veritas as a pendant to a duplex falsitas, the falsitas dicti, the falsehood of what is said, and the falsitas dicentis, the “falsehood” of the speaker. As a result, according to Bonaventure, the outer speech can be considered in two modes: in comparison to the thing, the discourse (sermo) is said to be verus (as opposed to falsus) when there is adequation between the thing and the discourse (adaequatio rei et sermonis); but in relation to the intentions of the speaker, the discourse is said to be verax (as opposed to fallax) when there is adequation between the discourse and the intention (adaequatio sermonis et intentionis). As we see, the formula follows the wording of the truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. The terms verax and mendax can also describe a discourse as well as a speaker. But in Thomas Aquinas it would seem that verax can only be applied to the speaker (the translation as “sincere” is not precisely correct, in that the term is simply “[he] who says the truth straightforwardly”). He thus very clearly distinguishes, in the line just described, between logical truth, by which something said is true (adaequatio intellectus vel signi ad rem intellectam et significatam), and moral truth, by which someone is said to be verax, and it is this latter that constitutes a virtue and whose infraction results in a lie (Summa theologica, 11, 11, q. 109, a. 1). The reflections on lying reveal a development that will profoundly modify Augustinian thought. The first underscores the responsibility of the speaker in regards to his use of language; the others relate to the speaker’s responsibility to the other. The Augustinian definition refers to “intentio fallendi,” an intention to deceive, while in fact it results from a “determination to speak falsely,” as Alexander of Hales emphasizes, by reformulating it thus: “Falso vocis significatio cum voluntate falsum enuntiandi,” a false utterance with the intention of uttering falsehood) (Summa theologica, p. 402, § 399). The speaker is expected to know the rules of language as fixed by convention. If he speaks in a way that does not reflect his intentions, or speaks in equivocal terms, or in formulae that are open to different interpretations from the intended meaning on the part of the listener, he is at fault. Thomas Aquinas puts this reformulation together in proposing an analysis of lies in three parts: (1) falsehood in matter, when the utterance is false; (2) falsehood in form, or the desire to utter the false (voluntas falsum enuntiandi); (3) falsity in effect, or the intention to deceive (intentio fallendi). Since it is beyond man’s capacities to fully say or know the truth, the lie can only be defined as a voluntary deviation from the truth (Summa theologica, d. 39). In addition, the Augustinian vision of the lie as a discordance between intention and speech presents difficulties of its own, insofar as the intention itself is only accessible to God. But speech, and especially speech that carries an investment of commitment, as a “relation” to be defined or expressed: the tie between Bild and the Abgebildet cannot be uttered, only pointed to. But this showing is not exterior to language and to reality (the logical form that they share, gemein; cf. 2.2: “Das Bild hat mit dem Abgebildeten die logische Form der Abbildung gemein [a picture has logico-pictorial form in common with what it depicts]”). Truth turns out to be intimately dependent on the notion of Abbildung. For one to be able to call a proposition true or false, it must be a Bild. Truth (Wahrheit) and falsehood (Falschheit) are defined by the agreement or disagreement (Übereinstimmung, Nichtübereinstimmung) of its meaning (Sinn) with reality. Once again we come across the division between correctness and truth that the theory of the image is able to efface. 2.203 Das Bild stimmt mit der Wirklichkeit überein, oder nicht; es is richtig oder unrichtig, wahr oder falsch. (A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false.) 2.222 In der Übereinstimmung oder Nichtübereinstimmung seines Sinnes mit der Wirklichkeit, besteht seine Wahrheit oder Falschheit. (The agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.) Although a theory of truth-as-correspondence is often attributed to Wittgenstein, based on this idea of Übereinstimmung, it nonetheless splits the correspondence into two clearly distinct questions, the issue of the Abbildung (the logical form of representation in language) and the question of Übereinstimmung, the agreement between the representation and the fact (which can be determined through comparison, vergleichen). Thus Wittgenstein sets up the dominant paradigm of analytic philosophy (which also comes out of Frege and his definition of sense as thought) in the association between meaning and truth. A proposition (Satz) is true (wahr) when it states what is the case, and for a proposition to have meaning is precisely for it to be able to be true or false. 4.024 Einen Satz verstehen, heisst, wissen was der Fall ist, wenn er wahr ist. (To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true.) This sentence has been interpreted, especially by Moritz Schlick and other members of the Vienna circle, as a verificationist definition of truth and signification, in terms of the empirical and concrete verification of the proposition. In reality, Wittgenstein’s proposition is other: it seeks to show the link between meaning and reality by saying that only the Satz that says something (be it true or false) of reality is sinnvoll. The true, or the possibility of being true or false, thus defines both meaning and language, but also thought and spirit. The final consequence for truth is the bipolarity of the proposition. Even though they have opposite meanings, “p” and “not p” correspond to one single reality, so that negation does not correspond to anything in reality (4.021). The proposition “p” is thus seen as a nonassertive entity, neither affirmative nor negative (see BELIEF). All of this contributes to redefining truth and correspondence in strongly realistic logico-linguistic terms, making thought and meaning dependent on the possibility of being true. Such a redefinition turns out to be tied to the impossibility of saying in the language (or demonstrating from outside it) the adequation between language and the real. Far from being a new avatar of correspondence (or of the metaphysics of adequation), the picture theory of the Tractatus definitively reveals its aporia. One should also take note of Popper’s reversal of Viennese verificationism in the Logik der Forschung (1934, Fr. trans. Logique de la recherche, and curiously translated into 8 Mauvaise foi, a French affliction v. BELIEF, CONSCIOUSNESS, DASEIN, FAITH, GLAUBE, MALAISE, NOTHING One of the most remarkable transpositions of the malaise engendered by the imperative of authenticity is Sartre’s mauvaise foi (“bad faith”), a French rendition of Heideggerian idiom that in turn is difficult to transpose into other languages. For Jean-Paul Sartre, mauvaise foi is a structural and defining condition of man as being other than he is, as nonconjunctural: “How can he be what he is, when he exists as consciousness of being?” (Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes, Simon and Schuster, 1992). Or, as we know of the waiter at the café: “from within, the waiter in the café cannot be immediately a café waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell, or the glass is a glass” (ibid., 102); and for my part, “if I represent myself as him, I am not he; I am separated from him as the object from the subject, separated by nothing, but this nothing isolates me from him. I cannot be he, I can only play at being him; that is, imagine to myself that I am he. And thereby I affect him with nothingness” (ibid.,103). This is why the ideal of sincerity is a task impossible to fulfill, whose very meaning contradicts the structure of my consciousness. In fact, it is the impossibility of being what one is that is “the very stuff of consciousness.” Thus, “in the final analysis, the goal of sincerity and the goal of bad faith are not so different” (ibid., 110). Indeed, sincerity aims at itself in the immanent present such that “bad faith is possible only because sincerity is conscious of missing its goal inevitably, due to its very nature.” Bad faith differs from the lie in that “bad faith is faith.” Bad faith decides not to demand too much; it is in the end “a decision in bad faith on the nature of faith.” In even more stringently Sartrean terms, “good faith seeks to flee the inner disintegration of my being in the direction of the in-itself which it should be and is not. Bad faith seeks to flee the in-itself by means of the inner disintegration of my being. But it denies this very disintegration as it denies that it is itself bad faith.” Contemporary consciousness has, at any rate, recognized itself in this type of analysis, which locates in Da-Sein the structural impossibility of sincerity. English in 1959 as the Logic of Scientific Discovery). According to Popper, scientific theories cannot be verified (verifizieren) but only corroborated (bewähren): “Theorien sind nicht verifizierbar; aber sie können sich bewähren” (Logik der Forschung, 198). Against Carnap’s advice Popper preferred to translate bewähren as “corroborate” rather than “confirm” or “retain.” He saw bewähren as a process of testing by attempts at falsification (Falsifizierung), which had nothing to do with any “positive” or empirical confirmation (impossible as far as he was concerned) or with any issue of probability (Wahrscheinlichkeit). This translation of Bewährung by “corroboration” crystallizes the way Popper aimed to bring analytic philosophy into the English language. He would link the idea of empirical proof to his own method of testing through attempts at falsification (bewähren signifies both confirming and testing, as in the expression “a confirmed or proven player”) and then separate it from verificationism. This led to numerous debates, but what disappeared in “corroboration” was the wahr in bewähren. Popper addressed this problem in Conjectures and Refutations by reelaborating the concepts of truth and verisimilitude (“truthlikeness”), all the while differentiating them from probability (Wahrscheinlichkeit). All of these discussions, reevaluations, and redefinitions were only made possible though the problematic but fecund passage of Viennese German–language epistemology into English at the time of the massive emigration of German and Austrian intellectuals (including Popper and Carnap) during the 1930s. B. Redundancy, disquotation, immanence: Ramsey, Quine Another option, in the face of the aporia of correspondence, would be to eliminate the predicate of truth. Frank P. Ramsey, following the Tractatus, sought to clarify the question of truth (and Wittgenstein’s notion of the impossibility of expressing in language the adequation to the real) by proposing his “redundancy theory of truth.” This theory is one of the first passes at “deflationism.” The points in common between the different variants of deflationist theories of truth— disappearance theory of truth, no-truth theory of truth, minimalist theory of truth—are sufficiently important that one can group them together under the heading of “redundancy,” as so many theories that maintain that the words “true” and “false” simply function in a statement as signs of assertion or negation. The foundation of redundancy theory (unfortunately translated into French as “théorie redondante de la vérité”—the “redundant theory of truth”) used the meaning of the Latin nugatio (“useless repetition”). It was illustrated by Ramsey in 1927 (and subsequently by Ayer in 1935) that the phrase “it is true that Caesar was murdered” means no more than that “Caesar was murdered.” “Deflationism” seems to be too vague a term to precisely qualify the thesis according to which the affirmation that a statement is true is nothing more than the affirmation of the statement. Another way of labeling the theory was the “disquotational theory of truth,” but it remains a poor expression for this simple act of eliminating quotation marks. Whence Tarski’s utterance, paradigmatic of the correspondence theory of truth: “The snow is white.” According to Tarski’s theory, “the snow is white” is true if and only if the snow is white. In Quine’s analysis, since quotation (in quotation marks) is a name for a sentence that contains a name (snow, which is a name for snow): “By calling the sentence true, we call the snow white.” Quine concludes by stating that “the truth predicate is a device for disquotation.” The quotation marks are made for being removed: “The truth predicate is a reminder that, despite a technical ascent to talk of sentences, our eye is on the world.” (Philosophy of Logic, 97). This claim to an outside of language brings back something of the verificatory meaning of esti and of “existing” (see ESTI). This is why, according to Quine: Along with this seriocomic blend of triviality and paradox, truth is felt to harbor something of the sublime. (Quine, From Stimulus to Science) Adequation revisited Austin and “true” A third option would be to rethink adequation by bringing it down to the level of ordinary language. Austin is equally critical of metaphysical doctrines of truth and its various epistemological and verificationist versions, and he goes after the idea of correspondence without sparing the Tractatus. Rather than taking on the idea of truth, he proposes to examine the true, and hence the usage of the word “true.” We ask ourselves whether Truth is a substance (the Truth, the body of knowledge) or a quality inhering to truths, or a relation (“correspondence”). What needs discussing rather is the use, or certain uses, of the word “true.” (Austin, Philosophical Papers, 117) Rather than taking an interest in the truth, philosophers should, in his estimation, concern themselves with that which is at their level (cf. his formula “Be your size”): the usage of words. In a celebrated phrase (and following the traditional word order, cf. above), Austin adds that he places verum before veritas: “In vino,” possibly “veritas,” but in a sober symposium, “verum.” (Ibid.) If we limit ourselves to our usages of “true,” we observe that we can neither reduce them to a correspondence with the real nor eliminate them, which means that we must conclude that the two analytic paradigms of truth—correspondence and redundance—cannot fully account for “true.” The idea of a correspondence between every utterance and a determinate fact is illusory and leads one to think that each true utterance has “its own” corresponding fact: “for every cap the head it fits” (ibid., 123) Austin also points out that it is difficult to establish any purely internal and languagebased criterion of truth: truth requires two elements. “It takes two to make a truth” (ibid., 124). On cannot eliminate the qualification “is true” nor consider “true” without a family of related qualifiers, about which it cannot be said that they are “logically superfluous”: exaggerated, simplistic, vague, imprecise, general, or concise (ibid., 129). 2. After correspondence: “Fitting” / es stimmt For Austin “true” designates only one of the possible ways of saying how words “fit the facts” of the world. “Fitting” 1178 TRUTH passt, dies nicht” (“this word fits, that doesn’t”; Fr. ce mot convient, l’autre non) (ibid., 219). His entire effort in the second part of the Investigations is directed toward defining this specific “life experience” that conditions the usage of language and is the condition of its truth. To understand what is at stake in this redefinition of the truth, one can compare it to certain reflections by Brentano and Husserl on truth, no longer conceived as a correspondence between thought and object but as an agreement, an adequation revisited: to be adequate (übereinstimmen), according to Brentano in Wahrheit und Evidenz, is not to be the same or similar but to be in agreement, to be suitable: entsprechend sein, passend sein, dazu stimmen. Husserl extends this questioning of the model of correspondence by differentiating Übereinstimmung from Adäquation (which causes problems for translation) (Logical Investigations, VI § 66). These reinterpretations of the scheme of adequation entail an extension of the scope, not the elimination of the concept of truth. The formulations of Wittgenstein and Austin have nothing to do with any “pragmatist” conception of truth, and even less with any relativistic one. Austin argues that there is a great difference between his conception of truth and the pragmatist doctrines. “This doctrine is very different from almost everything the pragmatists say, which is that the true is what works, etc.” The characteristic that makes a statement appropriate, that Austin’s doctrine and Wittgenstein’s reflections seek to grasp, is determined by precise and enumerable criteria that cannot be collapsed into the success or effect of discourse, to what “works.” There is a great difference between the verbs to “work” and to “fit,” between the fuzziness of what “works” or functions and the rigor of the adjustments required. One can only be struck by the poverty of the French vocabulary when one tries to underscore or translate these differences. REFS.: Anselm of Canterbury. De veritate. Translated by Ralph McInerny. In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. . Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. . Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Ayer, Alfred J. “The Criterion of Truth.” Analysis 3 (1935). Blackburn, Simon, and Keith Simmons, eds. Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Bolzano, Bernard. Wissenschaftslehre. Sulzbach: Seidel, 1837. Theory of Science. Edited by Rolf George. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Cassin, Barbara. L’Effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. . Parménide, “Sur la nature ou sur l’étant.” La langue de l’être? Paris: Seuil, 1998. Clark, Maudemarie. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Colish, Marcia L. “The Stoic Theory of Verbal Signification and the Problem of Lies and False Statements from Antiquity to St. Anselm.” In Archéologie du Signe, thus designates a concept of adequation that is no longer correspondence, in the sense of being exact or correct but that designates the appropriate or proper quality of the utterance for the occasion, thus coming back into contact with a dimension of the rhetoric of antiquity (Greek prepon [πϱέπον], see MIMÊSIS, Box 6). There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statement fits the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions. (Austin, Philosophical Papers, 130) This analysis of “true” is carried still further in How to Do Things with Words, in which Austin looks at the true within the framework of performatives in order to extend his conception to utterances known as “constatives,” which describe a reality. “True” designates a general dimension of being proper, of what is appropriate to a particular circumstance. In that case “true” can also be said of a performative, since all of language is being considered under this aspect of convention. It is essential to realize that “true” and “false,” like “free” and “unfree,” do not stand for anything simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these circumstances. (Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 145) Such a conception of the true as “fitting” or appropriate is also proposed in the later Wittgenstein, with regard to certain relations of adequation between words and things, situations, and experiences that cannot be thought of in terms of correspondence (either logical or mental). This is what we understand by “the right expression,” the words that are proper or convenient (treffend, passend)—that one looks for and does not necessarily find easily. But when one does find them, one says “Das ist es,” “ça y est,” “got it” to describe the thing or situation. Denke nur an den Ausdruck und die Bedeutung des Ausdrucks “das treffende Wort.” (Just think of the expression, and the meaning of the expression: “the word that hits it off.”) (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, II) A feeling of adequation cannot be accounted for by a logicbased (Fr. logiciste) notion of meaning (see SENSE, III) but is essential to Wittgenstein’s understanding of signification, as when one feels that a proper name just “fits” a person or a thing. Mir ist, als passte der Name Schubert zu Schuberts Werken und seinem Gesicht. (I feel as if the name “Schubert” fitted Schubert’s works and Schubert’s face.) (Ibid.) To describe this feeling, Wittgenstein deploys an entire vocabulary: “Es stimmt” (“that’s right”; Fr. ça va), “Dies Wort Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lynch, Michael P., ed. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Marty, Anton. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie. Vol 1. Halle, Ger.: Niemeyer, 1908. Medina, Jose, and David Wood, eds. Truth: Engagements across Philosophical Traditions. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Moody, Ernest A. Truth and Consequence in Mediaeval Logic. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. Translated by Richard Polt. Introduction by Tracy Strong. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997. Quine, W.V.O. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. . Philosophy of Logic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970. . Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990. . Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960. Ramsey, Frank P. The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays. Edited by R. B. Braithwaite. Preface by G. E. Moore. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965. Rosier, Irène. “Les développements médiévaux de la théorie augustinienne du mensonge.” Hermès 15–16: 87–99. . “Le serment et les théories linguistiques médiévales.” Memini: Travaux et documents publiés par la Société des études médiévales du Québec 2 (1998): 3–28. Smith, Barry. Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1994. Thomas, Yan. “Les artifices de la vérité: Note sur l’interprétation médiévale du droit romain.” L’Inactuel 6 (Autumn, 1996): 81–99. Vecchio, S. “Mensonge, simulation, dissimulation: Primauté de l’intention et ambiguïté du langage dans la théologie morale du bas Moyen Âge.” In Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (1150–1450). Acts of the 11th Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, 117–32. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 1997. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Bilingual edition. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. edited by L. Brind’Amour and E. Vance, 17–43. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1983. Colleran, J. M. Ancient Christian Writers. Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 1950. Detienne, Marcel. The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece. Translated by Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1996. Ellenbogen, Sara. Wittgenstein’s Account of Truth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Engel, Pascal. The Norm of Truth: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Logic. Translated by Miriam Kochan and Pascal Engel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Florensky, Pavel. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Translated and annotated by Boris Jakim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Frege, Gottlob. Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. 3rd ed. Edited and translated by P. Geach and M. Black. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. Heidegger, Martin. “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” Translated by Joan Stambaugh. In Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. . An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959. . “‘Logos,’ ‘Moira,’ ‘Alêtheia.’” In Vorträge und Aufsätze. 4 vols. Pfullingen, Ger.: G. Neske, 1978. . Nietzsche. 4 vols. Translated by David Farrell Krell. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979–1982. . “On the Essence of Truth.” In Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. . “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth.” Translated by Thomas Sheehan. In Pathmarks, edited by W. McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hesiod. Theogony. In The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. London: W. Heinemann, 1914. Husserl, Edmund. Introduction to Logic and the Theory of Knowledge [1906–1907]. Translation by Dallas Willard in Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics (Hua vol. 5). Dordrecht, Neth.: Kluwer, 1993. John XXI (Peter of Spain). Syncategoreumata. First critical edition with an introduction and indexes by L. M. de Rijk; with an English translation by Joke Spruyt. Leiden, Neth,: E. J. Brill, 1991. Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 1181 proposed an infinite number of degrees between the fully conscious and the unconscious, in a text that is part of a psychological, nontranscendental perspective: Just as between consciousness and the fully unconscious (psychological darkness) [zwischen einem Bewusstsein und dem völligen Unbewusstsein (psychologischer Dunkelheit)], yet smaller degrees occur; therefore no perception is possible that shows a complete absence, e.g., no psychological darkness is possible that could not be regarded as a state of consciousness that simply is outweighed by another, stronger one, and thus it is in all cases of sensation. (Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §21) Ever faithful to Leibniz on this point, Kant therefore affirms, in Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, that “the field of obscure representations is the largest in the human being” (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 25). Philosophically, there is a great deal at stake here, since the adversary is not Descartes, but rather Locke, the founder of empirical psychology, who cannot admit that a representation is unconscious (ibid., 23–24). We can also see that Kant is in no way interested in clearing the way for a particular topos, which would have specific laws (what das Unbewusste will be for Freud), but simply in articulating the negative of consciousness (das Unbewusstsein), that is, a “negative state of consciousness”: what darkness is to light. Translating this as “unconsciousness” seems inevitable. II. Substantivizing the Unconscious: Romanticism and von Hartmann With Romanticism, a wide range of terms were adopted in German, English, and French, joining a privative prefix to the lexical field of consciousness, such as unbewusst, “unconscious,” and inconscient, and the nouns Unbewusstheit, Unbewusstsein, “unconsciousness,” and inconscience. The substantivized adjective das Unbewusste was less common, even though it is found, for example, in the opening lines of a work by the Romantic philosopher and doctor Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), in a first edition dating from 1846: The key to the knowledge of the nature of the conscious life of the soul is to be sought in the reign of the unconscious [des Unbewusstseins]. Hence the difficulty, if not impossibility, of understanding fully the secret of the soul. If it were absolutely impossible to find the unconscious [das Unbewusste] in consciousness, man would be left to despair of ever being able to attain knowledge of his soul, that is to say, knowledge of himself. But if this impossibility is merely apparent, then the first task of a UNCONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUSNESS FRENCH inconscient, inconscience GERMAN unbewusst, Unbewusste; Unbewusstheit, Unbewusstsein v. CONSCIOUSNESS, DRIVE, ES, I/ME/MYSELF, PERCEPTION, ROMANTIC, SOUL, SUBJECT Unlike other terms from the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, the term “unconscious” has never posed any particular problems of translation. French and English were already equipped to receive the German noun das Unbewusste and to render it using the equivalent terms “the unconscious” and l’inconscient. Similarly, das Vorbewusste is translated without difficulty in French as le préconscient and in English as“the preconscious.” Does this mean that the “unconscious” has effectively been understood exactly as Freud conceived it? It is important to emphasize first of all that the term only really acquires its meaning in his first topographical theory, which made a distinction among three systems: the unconscious, the preconscious, and the conscious. This theory is unrivalled in its rigor in the psychology of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is perhaps precisely this rigor that causes problems for translators. Thus, Freud is led to reject the term “subconscious,” which was very much in vogue in France and in English-speaking countries, or to put aside “unconsciousness” (die Unbewusstheit, l’inconscient). The translation of das Unbewusste as “the unconscious” is perhaps not sufficient to fully grasp its meaning. In order to understand what is at stake in this question, one has to tease out the threads of several successive moments in its history. I. “Non-Conscious Representations” and Unconsciousness The problem of “non-conscious representations” is posed in the wake of Leibniz and his “small perceptions.” For Leibniz it is a matter of affirming, against Descartes, that if the soul is always thinking, it is not always conscious of its thoughts: “at every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions, unaccompanied by awareness or reflection; that is, of alterations in the soul itself, of which we are unaware because these impressions are either too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying” (New Essays, preface). These perceptions are said to be “insensible,” this adjective thus corresponding in classical language to the future “unconscious” (cf. also Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 12–15). To be conscious is, in effect, to sense oneself (from the Latin sentire). The question that continuously haunts philosophical and psychological debates is the question of degree. If full, complete consciousness has a status determined by clarity and consciousness of self (which Leibniz calls awareness; see CONSCIOUSNESS and PERCEPTION), how does one then go from simple perception to insensibility? Kant took the Leibnizian principle of continuity to its furthest consequences, and thus U science of the soul will be to determine how man’s mind can go down into these depths. (Carus, Psyche, 1) Generally speaking, and as this extract testifies, the importance of this trend is in the recognition that this unconscious realm has a positive quality: far from being the lowest degree of consciousness, the darkness of the unconscious is a guarantee of its richness and its truth value. A third stage occurred when one work, Philosophie des Unbewussten by Edouard von Harmann (1870) definitively established the substantivized adjective das Unbewusste as a noun in its own right. Its title reveals how fully accepted and recognized the term was philosophically, since in this text das Unbewusste refers to the metaphysical basis of all things, which Schopenhauer had named der Wille, “the will.” The choice of term is significant: in Schopenhauer the will is set in opposition to representation (die Vorstellung), which excludes the idea that there can be unconscious representations. The Freudian unconscious would itself be inseparably made up of affects and representations. Hartmann’s work made a considerable impact and was soon translated into French (Philosophie de l’inconscient, translated by D. Nollen, 1877) and English (Philosophy of the Unconscious, translated by W. C. Coupland, 1884). Dictionaries, notably the French Littré (RT: Dictionnaire de la langue française), refer to this translation as full recognition of its use as a noun. III. The Subconscious and Psychophysiology Shortly before Freud there was a huge growth in scientific psychology from about the middle of the nineteenth century (in particular the Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie by Wilhelm Wundt or the works of Alexander Bain in England and Théodule Ribot in France), as well as research into multiple consciousness in somnambulism and hysteria. The intellectual context of these debates is no longer Romanticism but Positivism, which returns to the classical question of the degrees of consciousness. One can locate an effect of this vocabulary of the unconscious in the translation of texts in which the term was not present. Thus, in an early twentieth-century English translation of Leibniz’s La Monadologie, the term “unconsciousness” is used to render the French étourdissement, which refers to the states of apparent death. The first sentence of paragraph 23 thus introduces into the translation a vocabulary of consciousness and unconsciousness that was altogether absent in Leibniz: Therefore, since on awakening after a period of unconsciousness we become conscious of our perception, we must, without having been conscious of them, have had perceptions immediately before. (Donc, puisque réveillé de l’étourdissement on s’aperçoit de ses perceptions, il faut bien qu’on en ait eu immédiatement auparavant, quoiqu’on ne s’en soit aperçu.) (Leibniz, Monadology, 1902) But it was the term “subconscious” (in French, subconscient; in German, unterbewusst) that came to designate that which is just below the threshold of consciousness. In an article entitled “Consciousness and Unconsciousness,” for example, the psychologist G. H. Lewes defended the thesis of the psychic nature of the unconsciousness and of the subconsciousness against the partisans of “unconscious cerebration,” that is, of the purely reflex nature of unconscious mechanisms. But in any case, it is merely a question of complexity: “All of the arguments thus tend to show that between conscious, subconscious and unconscious states, the difference resides solely in the degrees of complication in the neural processes.” In the field of psychopathology, Pierre Janet accords great importance to “subconscious acts” (actes subconscients), or “actions having all of the characteristics of a psychological fact except one, which is that the person who performs it is unaware of it at the very moment at which he or she performs it” ( Janet, L’automatisme psychologique). These acts are due to “psychological weakness” (faiblesse psychologique), to the narrowing of the field of consciousness, which thus allows automatic acts to be expressed. IV. The Freudian Moment If we turn now to Freud, we can see that he himself uses the term “subconscious” (subconscient) in an article written in French in 1893, “Quelques considérations pour une étude comparative entre les paralysies motrices organiques et hystériques” (“Some Points for Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Motor Paralyses” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 160–72). Freud had been commissioned by Charcot to write this article, and we find him using the French terminology that was current at the time. It is from the Interpretation of Dreams on, however, and in the final chapter devoted to the “psychology of dream processes” (Strachey) that we find the first elaboration of the first topological theory, which is explained in the metapsychological article entitled precisely “Das Unbewusste” (1915). The unconscious—das Unbewusste—is therefore one of the three psychic systems. It follows its own laws (the primary process: condensation, displacement, etc.), which enable Freud to account for the formal particularities of dreams and the mechanisms for interpreting them. The Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Language of Psychoanalysis) summarizes neatly the characteristics of the “unconscious system” as follows: a. Its “contents” are “representatives” of the instincts. b. These contents are governed by the mechanisms specific to the primary process, especially by condensation and displacement. c. Strongly cathected by instinctual energy, they seek to reenter consciousness and resume activity (the return of the repressed), but they can only gain access to the system Pcs.-Cs. in compromise-formations after having undergone the distortions of the censorship. d. It is more especially childhood wishes that become fixated in the unconscious. (Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, London: Hogarth, 1973) du je, mais que cette conscience peut être éventuellement amenée à saisir sous l’espèce des siens états d’âme. (RFP, no. 2 [1928]: 369–70) (The unconscious is only what is unknown. It is always virtually subject to the reach of consciousness. For me, then, the definition of the unconscious is to be completed as follows: the set of all things presently outside the consciousness of the self, but which can eventually be accessed as consciousness through states of feeling associated with self.) We see, then, that it was that much easier for French psychoanalysts to get rid of the subconscious since the term inconscient retained what was most essential, that is, the negative relationship to consciousness. Pichon, who was a good grammarian, must have been satisfied with a term that was constructed as a privative. Freud would perhaps have preferred a term that was not simply the negative of consciousness. We remain uneasy about the fact that English and French both lack a positive term to refer to this other psychic place. But is this not simply a linguistic problem? Freud in effect chose the term das Unbewusste by default, no doubt because he was afraid of the many misunderstandings to which a term laden with dual Romantic and psychophysiological history lent itself. Since German has no term that clearly designates the “systematic” character of the new unconscious any more than it has a term for its conceptual character, there are gaps of reference. This was no doubt what Jacques Lacan noticed when, in the introduction to a lecture on the unconscious delivered at a conference in Bonneval, he declared: “The unconscious is a concept forged from the trace of what is at work in constituting Freud materializes this topological aspect by using abbreviations to refer to the different systems: Ubw, Vbw, Bw (in English Ucs, Pcs and Cs, and in French Ics, Pcs, Cs). This is a strange thing to do: the epistemology is on the face of it positivist, but Freud breaks away from any differentiation by degree (the differences between the Pcs-Cs and the Ucs are natural differences), and he appears to return to the Romantic proposition concerning the unconscious foundation of being. He only “appears” to, however, since on the one hand the unconscious “in itself” remains inaccessible, and on the other hand it is not endowed with any metaphysical attributes. We might well wonder whether the specificity of the unconscious “system” is duly conveyed by the term das Unbewusste, burdened as it is with the Positivist and Romantic double origin. . An interesting example of the way in which Freud’s “unconscious” was received in France can be found when we look at its fate in the first issues of the Revue française de psychanalyse (RFP), the official journal of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, founded in 1926. The translations of Freud’s texts are characterized by a scrupulous respect for the transition from the German das Unbewusst to the French l’inconscient and by the disappearance of the vocabulary of the “subconscious.” There are traces nonetheless of the gap left by the word “subconscious.” A significant example surfaces in Édouard Pichon’s review of Traité de psychologie by Georges Dwelshauvers, a psychologist from the neo-Thomist school, an important school at the time. We find the following: L’inconscient, ce n’est que l’insu. Il est toujours virtuellement sujet aux atteintes de la conscience. Ainsi se complète pour moi la définition de l’inconscient: l’ensemble des choses actuellement étrangères à la conscience 1 Unconsciousness and the unconscious as a system We find an interesting example of the linguistic and theoretical stakes of the unconscious as Freud understands it, and of his perspective on the term itself, in an article he wrote in English that was almost certainly translated into German by Hanns Sachs, although Freud would have proofread it. The article is “A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis” (Einige Bemerkungen über den Begriff des Unbewussten in der Psychoanalyse), originally published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1912). The final paragraph of this text presents the transition from the quality of that which escapes consciousness, simple unconsciousness, to the properly Freudian unconscious, characterized by its systematic dimension. The German text, curiously, does not take into account this shift, nor do the first French translations, up to and including 1968. Ultimately, only the English and French (in its final version, that of the OCFIP) are in this respect faithful to Freud’s theoretical operation. Unconsciousness [das Unbewusste] seemed to us at first only an enigmatical characteristic of a definite psychical activity. Now it means more to us. It is a sign that this act partakes of the nature of a certain psychical category known to us by other and more important characteristics and that it belongs to a system of psychical activity which is deserving our fullest attention. The index value of the unconscious [der Wert des Unbewussten als Index] has far outgrown its importance as a property. The system [das System] revealed by the sign that the single acts forming parts of it are unconscious [unbewusst] we designate by the name “the unconscious” [“das Unbewusste”], for want of a better and less ambiguous term [in Ermangelung eines besseren und weniger zweideutigen Ausdruckes]. In German, I propose to denote this system by the letters Ubw, an abbreviation of the German word Unbewusst. And this is the third and most significant sense which the term “unconscious” has acquired in psychoanalysis [dies ist der dritte und wichtigste Sinn, den der Ausdruck “unbewusst” in der Psycho-analyse erworben hat]. (Freud, Standard Edition, 12: 266; Gesammelte Werke, 8: 438–39) 1184 INTELLECTUM. UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING FRENCH entendement GERMAN Verstand, Verstehen GREEK nous [νοῦς] ITALIAN intelletto LATIN intellectus SPANISH intendimiento, intelecto v. BEGRIFF, CONSCIOUSNESS, GEMÜT, I/ME/MYSELF, INTELLECT, INTELLECTUS, INTUITION, LOGOS, PERCEPTION, REASON, SENS COMMUN [COMMON SENSE], SENSE, SOUL Now philosophically obsolete (we speak rather of “reason,” “mind,” or “intelligence”), the term “understanding” was used to refer to the activity of the mind for two centuries in what corresponds to the classical period (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), before disappearing, or rather, being transformed. As a translation of the Latin “intellectus,” it inherits a long conceptual history that contrasts it, as an act of intuition (νοῦς), with rational discursive acts (διάνοια), and it is defined in contradistinction to reason (Lat. ratio). But these words, being defined in terms of one another, exchange characteristics several times: the more prestigious one becomes ordinary, the ordinary one is reevaluated. The peculiar interest of these conceptual shifts derives from the clear impact of the different languages and conceptual schemes in virtue of which they redefine themselves. We can thus discern an analogy of distinctions between nous/dianoia, intellectus/ratio, entendement/raison, as well as, later, between Verstand/Vernunft, as long as we notice immediately that they are never interchangeable in their use. For between classical rationalism, which speaks French or Latin, and the thought of the Enlightenment, which is based on the English notion of human understanding, there is a conceptual break, just as there is between these two universes and that of German idealism. With the dilution of the latter, contemporary philosophy has reappropriated the term for a kind of grasp or comprehension: das Verstehen. From Ouïr to Entendre and Comprendre The reinterpretations of the word “understanding” rely on the resources of language and of individual languages. Arsène Darmesteter even used this complex term a century ago to illustrate the phenomena of semantic adjustments between words: Take the group ouïr, entendre, and comprendre. Ouïr (Lat. audire) gradually falls out of usage towards the 16th17th centuries and is replaced by “entendre,” which only had the figurative sense indicated by its etymology: intendere (animum); from the idea of intelligere, entendre changed its meaning to that of audire; but how could it be replaced in the sense of intelligere? The language went and found “comprendre,” which, to the meanings of grasp and contain within itself (“cumprehendere”), added that of intelligere. (La vie des mots) The medieval Latin “intellectus,” which Saint Thomas had etymologized as “inte-lectus intus-legere,” “to read in” by the vision of the intellect (see INTELLECTUS), was followed in vernacular European languages by entendement in French, which associates intellection with acuity of hearing and the mental the subject. The unconscious is not a type that defines within psychic reality the circle of what has no attribute (or virtues) of consciousness” (“Position de l’inconscient,” in Ecrits, Seuil, 1966, 830; “Position of the Unconscious,” in Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton, 2006, 716). And Lacan would in turn “invent” a term, not a translation but a transcription of the German into the French: the unconscious is “l’une-bévue” [lit. “one-slip”], or that which produces an unexpected meaning, not that which is outside of meaning, or which would contain the essence of all meanings (Le Séminaire, 24, L’Insu qui sait de l’une bévue s’aile à mourre, 1976–77, unpublished). REFS.: Calich, José Carlos, and Helmut Hinz. The Unconscious: Further Reflections. London: International Psychoanalytic Association, 2007. Carus, Carl Gustav. Psyche: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele. Foreword by Friedrich Arnold. Darmstadt, Ger.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975. First published in 1846. Translation by Renata Welch: Psyche: On the Development of the Soul, Part One: The Unconscious. New York: Springer, 1970. Descartes, René. “First Meditation.” In Meditations on First Philosophy, with Selections from the Objections and Replies. Edited and translated by John Cottingham. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Ellenberger, Henri F. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 1970. Ey, Henri, ed. L’Inconscient [6e Colloque de Bonneval, 1960]. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1966. Frankl, George. The Social History of the Unconscious. London: Open Gate, 1989. Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke. 18 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1968–78. . Nachtragsband (1885–1938). Frankfurt: Fischer, 1987. . The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–66. Hesnard, Angelo. L’Inconscient. Paris: Librairie Doin, 1923. Janet, Pierre. L’automatisme psychologique. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998. First published in 1894. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Edited by Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. In Kants Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 7. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902–. Translation by Robert B. Louden: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Edited by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. . Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. Edited by Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. In Kants Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902–. First published in 1783. Translation by Gary Hatfield: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science; Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason. Edited by Gary Hatfield. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, Monadology. Translated by George Montgomery. Introduction by Paul Janet. Chicago: Open Court, 1902. . New Essays on Human Understanding. Edited and translated by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lewes, George Henry. “Consciousness and Unconsciousness.” Mind 2 (1877): 156–67. MacIntyre, Alasdair C. The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958. Münsterberg, Hugo, Théodule Ribot, Pierre Janet, Joseph Jastrow, Bernard Hart, and Morton Prince. Subconscious Phenomena. Boston: R. G. Badger, 1910. Ribot, Théodule. Les mouvements et l’activité inconsciente. Paris: Cariscript, 1991. Whyte, Lancelot Law. The Unconscious before Freud. New York: Basic Books, 1960. grasp of words and things, by “understanding” in English, and finally Verstand in German, coming from stehen (to stand up), which is more clearly related to material representation— vor-stellen/ver-stehen (see Bréal, Essai de sémantique). Italian preserved intellectus with “intelletto,” which in a way transcends the displacements of the concept at the mercy of languages (“intendimento” remained rare, although Carl Friedrich Flögel’s Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes, from 1765, was translated in 1835 as “Istoria dell’intendimento umano”). Spanish, however, adopted entendement and dropped intelecto/intendimiento. The equivocity of the terms differs from language to language: entendement does not mean either “listening” or “agreement,” whereas “understanding” can, for which German uses Einverständnis. A Complex Prehistory Nous/Dianoia and Their Translations Entendement, rather than intellect, is the standard French translation for intellectus (see INTELLECT); intellectus is the standard translation of νοῦς (see INTELLECTUS). We would be wrong, however, to believe that entendement is the standard translation of nous or that the Greek pairing of nous/dianoia, even mediated by the intellectus/ratio, can ever be translated into French by the pairing of entendement/ raison. The pairs are similar in that they all contrast something on the order of immediate intuition with something on the order of discursive rationality, as is suggested by dia and its implication of process. Thus, Plato distinguishes intellectual vision and intuition (noêsis [νόησις]) from discursive knowledge, dianoia [διάνοια] (Republic, 6.511d–e). Anaxagoras’s earlier usage was of a different scope, since there it involved a function of cosmic organization, a “governing intelligence” as Leibniz would translate it in his Discourse on Metaphysics (§20), referring to the Phaedo (97b–c: nous ho diakosmôn kai pantôn aitios [νοῦς ὁ διαϰοσμῶν ϰαὶ πάντων αἴτιος]; see WORLD). Nous is characterized by the power of immediate contemplation of ideas: it is intuitive knowledge, whereas dianoia moves by way of hypotheses and demonstrations. Immediate knowledge is superior to mediated knowledge. In the “plain of truth,” the souls of the gods (and any soul who seeks the appropriate nourishment) are in direct contact with ideas: “dianoia [pensée, Robin, Brisson] of a god, nourished by nous [intellection for Robin, intellect for Brisson] and knowledge [epistêmê (ἐπιστήμη)] without mixture rejoices, and, contemplating the truths, is nourished and feels good” (Phaedrus, 247d). However, no contemporary translator has had the thought of translating nous by entendement, either for Anaxagoras or Plato. How can we account for these distortions? In part, they result from the fact that the paradigm brought into play by the Greek nous is neither that of hearing (entendement) nor of vision (intuition), but rather that of smell. In addition, with regard to the entendement/raison distinction, the word raison is preempted by logos and thus cannot be used to translate dianoia (see LOGOS). Despite its various determinations, there is a constant in what French translates as entendement: its intuitive and preeminent character in contrast to the discursive character of knowledge based on chains of reasons. It is interesting to Scent: The origins of nous “νόος” or “νοῦς” is the complement of thumos in the description of the “mind” of the Homeric man; as Bruno Snell puts it, in terms that can only be inadequate. “Thumos means that which is the source of movements, reactions, and emotions; noos, that which gives rise to representations and ideas.” Even though their semantic fields partially overlap (noein implies, as von Fritz shows, a situation with genuine emotional impact and engages the specific attitude of the individual), noos refers, according to Chantraine (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque), to the “intelligence, the mind,” insofar as it “perceives and thinks.” “νοεῖν” gives substance to the link between perception and thought, not in the sense of empiricism (in which nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses) but rather in the suddenness, the immediacy of a perception. It is thus that noein is related to “to sense” in the sense of “to scent”— von Fritz mentions an almost Cratylian etymology in English, which Chantraine does not even bother to consider, from the root “to sniff” or “to smell.” It is true that Odysseus is “recognized” (“ἐνόησεν,” Odyssey, 18.301) under his rags by his old dog Argos, who then dies on his pile of manure. It is related, equally, to sight, “in the eyes” rather than “with” or “through” them (e.g., Iliad, 24.294), and describes in particular the way in which one “intuits” the god behind the man or not (Odyssey, 16.160). Noein also means “to put oneself in mind of” (to perceive, understand), “to have in mind” (to consider, project, to have good sense, to be intelligent and prudent). Perfectly congruently, noein (in contradistinction to gignôskein [γιγνώσϰειν], 2.2 and 2.7) in Parmenides’s poem expresses the immediate relation to being and saying, in the triad that constitutes the “Way of Being” (3, 6.1, 8.34–36). In later usage, allegedly intellectualized (Anaxagoras’s Nous, the noêsis noêseôs [νοήσις νοήσεως], or Aristotle’s god, and up to the noêma [νόημα] of rhetoric, “concept” or “meaning” rather than the word), this relationship to intuition, and more precisely to scent, is probably never forgotten. REFS.: Fritz, Kurt von. “Noos and Noein in the Homeric Poems.” Classical Philology 38 (1943): 79–93. . “Nous, Noein, and Their Derivatives in Presocratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras).” Classical Philology 40 (1945): 223–42; and 41 (1946): 12–34. Reprinted in The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Alexander Mourelatos. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Snell, Bruno. Die Entdeckung des Geistes. 2nd ed. Göttingen, Ger.: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1975. First published in 1946. Translation by Thomas G. Rosenmeyer: The Discovery of the Mind. New York: Dover, 1982. Understanding, 1758). The understanding, in English, is decidedly human, and it is also as a finite power that it appears in Germany (see Tonelli, “La question des bornes”). We may note that Kant’s teacher in Königsberg, Martin Knutzen, had Locke’s essay translated into German by the orientalist Georg David Kypke, whose house Kant shared (“Anleitung des menschlichen Verstandes,” 1755). This inflection leads to a trivialization of the notion of understanding, which is thenceforth not only always human, Menschenverstand, but is also often qualified as “healthy,” gesunder Menschenverstand; in other words, “good common sense.” The insistence on the finitude of understanding leads to a defense of common sense, as is often the case among “popular” German philosophers. This is a far cry from the universally shared common sense mentioned by Descartes at the beginning of Discours de la méthode. Verstand or Vernunft, Understanding or Reason? A new twist comes with Kant that leads to a devaluation of the understanding (Verstand) in favor of reason (Vernunft), even though one could take much of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) as an analysis of understanding. Understanding is defined as the faculty of rules; it knows through concepts (discursively) and synthesizes the data of the senses into a unity. It is reason (Vernunft), however, the faculty of principles, that makes it possible to order them into a whole. The one is governed by the other. Kantian understanding is a superior faculty of the mind (see GEMÜT) that is synthetic and spontaneous even though it is only legitimately exercised with regard to sense data. That which performs the synthesis is the “transcendental I” (see I/ME/ MYSELF), which unifies the categories or concepts of the understanding. Although the understanding is a “power of judgment” just as much as reason is, it is assigned to singular judgments rather than to reasoning. Although the post-Kantian idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) criticized Kant for his servitude to finite understanding and the proscription it entails against metaphysical knowledge, it is with Kant that the change takes place. The conception of the understanding as something finite, discursive, and analytic that draws distinctions (in contrast to reason, which is able to reach principles, synthesis, and syllogisms) is a legacy of German idealism, especially notable in Hegel (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §14). With the notion of intellectual intuition (intellektuelle Anschauung) championed by Fichte, but especially by Schelling, we move beyond the complementary pair of Verstand/Vernunft and return to the intuitive intellectus of the medievals (see Tilliette, L’intuition intellectuelle). It is instructive to see how this reversal could, with regard to terminology, be used to the advantage of the enemies of idealism. Jacobi, the great attacker of rationalism, was thus able to pit reason (Vernunft) against understanding (Verstand), arguing that the latter cannot acquire unconditioned knowledge but must always depend on principles it cannot demonstrate. Reason, on the other hand, which Jacobi considers a faculty of reception (“Vernunft” being related to “vernehmen,” “to perceive” [see PERCEPTION]) is passive and open to revelation (Jacobi, preface, in David Hume on Faith). note that the shift to vernacular European languages leads to an attenuation of the foundational Platonic distinction. We may see in effect that 1) The use of entendement is restricted to a single meaning; and 2) entendement ends up referring to the power of thinking in general. From Human Understanding to Good Sense The translation of intellectus by entendement is an interesting exception in relation to Romance languages such as Italian and Spanish, which use a calque (intelletto, intelecto). Although Descartes does not specifically identify cogitatio with entendement, but also associates it with mens, animus, intellectus, and ratio (Méditation seconde), he does adopt a rather ordinary distinction in the Principes de philosophie between “perception de l’entendement” and “action de la volonté” (art. 1, §32), which involves a more or less passive view of entendement, insisting on its finitude and the limits of its comprehension. From that point on, entendement mostly falls within the domain of logic and takes on the discursiveness of its procedures, distinguishing true from false. And thus, the difference between entendement (intellectus in philosophical Latin) and raison (ratio) becomes blurred. This tendency, which becomes cemented in Oxonian philosophy, has one notable exception, namely Spinoza, who harks back to the intuitive aspect proper to the medieval notion of intellectus. The four modes of knowledge described in his Tractatus de emendatione intellectus (Treatise, §19–24)—1) by hearsay or arbitrary sign, 2) by vague experience undetermined by the intellect (entendement), 3) by inference that is not adequate, and 4) adequately by the essence or proximate cause— establish a contintuity between the third and the fourth. The third allows us to formally infer the essence of one thing from that of another, and the fourth is this same inference extended intuitively in the knowledge of proximate causes. Spinoza’s example shows how his intellectus (entendement) reconciles mathematical discursiveness and the intuition of the mind: the intellect may be able, on the basis of knowledge of a series of three numbers, to “invent intuitively without any operation” (intuitive nullam operationem facientes; ibid., §24) the fourth term. In English, “understanding” does a better job than French or German of preserving the idea of comprehension; thus in Hobbes, it is the capacity “in a man, out of the words, contexture, and other circumstances of language, to deliver himself from equivocation, and to find out the true meaning of what is said” (Human Nature, chap. 5, §8). Similarly in Locke, although the more general sense of “power of perception” is dominant (Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, para. 5), it can be analyzed as 1) perception of ideas in our minds, 2) perception of the meaning of signs, and 3) perception of the agreement or disagreement between our ideas. The semiotic dimension remains, even if the dichotomy between understanding and will tends to mask it. Furthermore, while Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz consider finite understanding by distinction with, but also with reference to, infinite understanding, for Locke it is rather a matter of a direct inspection of the understanding as a specifically human capacity, as the title of the Essay itself reveals. The same is true for Hume (Enquiries concerning Human an individual approach that is situated in a history and indefinitely revisable. Only English retained “understanding” throughout these inflections with its prior importance, while Verstand, entendement, and even intelletto have given way to other terms. The rise of cognitive science and artificial intelligence encourages the appeal to the terminology of intelligence (Intelligence, Intelligenz), whereas the critique of rationality, on the other side, gives preference to interpretation, to Verstehen. REFS.: Apel, Karl Otto. Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective. Translated by G. Warnke. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. . “Das ‘Verstehen.’ Eine Problemgeschichte als Begriffsgeschichte.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 1 (1955): 142–99. Berner, Christian. “Understanding Understanding: Schleiermacher.” In The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, edited by Simon Glendinning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Bréal, Michel. Essai de sémantique. Paris: Hachette, 1924. First published in 1897. Darmesteter, Arsène. La vie des mots. Paris: Champ Libre, 1979. First published in 1887. Descartes, René. Méditation seconde. In Meditationes, vol. 7 of Œuvres completes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Cerf, 1904. Hobbes, Thomas. Human Nature. In The Elements of Law, edited by J. C. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. First published in 1651. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, a Dialogue (1815). In Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel “Allwill,” translated by G. di Giovanni, 537–90. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. First published in 1689. Plato. Phèdre. Translated by Léon Robin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1970. Translated by Luc Brisson. Paris: Garnier, 1989. Schlegel, Friedrich. “Transcendentalphilosophie.” In Kritische FriedrichSchlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 12. Paderborn, Ger.: Schöningh, 1964. First published in 1801. Translation by Frederick C. Beiser: “Philosophical Lectures: Transcendental Philosophy.” In The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics, edited by Frederick C. Beiser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. . “Über die Philosophie: An Dorothea.” In Kritische Friedrich-SchlegelAusgabe, vol. 2. Munich: F. Schöningh, 1958. Translation by J. Schulte-Sasse: “On Philosophy, to Dorothea.” In Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings, edited by J. Schulte-Sasse et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. “Hermeneutics and Criticism” and Other Writings. Translated by A. Bowie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Schneiders, W. “Vernunft und Verstand—Krisen eines Begriffspaares.” In Aufklärung und Skepsis: Studien zur Philosophie und Geistesgeschichte des 17. und 18 Jh., edited by Lothar Kreimendahl, 199–220. Stuttgart: FrommannHolzboog, 1995. Scholz, Oliver R. Verstehen und Rationalität. Frankfurt: Kostermann, 1999. Spinoza, Baruch. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. In The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, translated by E. M. Curley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Thouard, Denis. “Verstehen im Nicht-Verstehen: Zum Problem des Hermeneutik bei Humboldt.” Kodikas/Code. Ars Semeiotica 21 (1998): 271–85. Tilliette, Xavier. L’intuition intellectuelle de Kant à Hegel. Paris: Vrin, 1995. Tonelli, G. “La question des bornes de l’entendement humain au XVIIIème siècle et la genèse du criticisme kantien.” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 65 (1959): 396–427. Wach, Joachim. Das Verstehen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1926. Zovko, Jure. Verstehen und Nichtverstehen bei Friedrich Schlegel. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990. In the context of the controversy over pantheism started by Jacobi, it is common to appeal to Spinoza to underwrite the intellectual intuition banished by Kant (Tilliette, L’intuition intellectuelle). The understanding is placed by Schlegel, however, above reason, which knows all things, insofar as it interprets (deutet), and thus allows for a historical recapitulation (“Transcendentalphilosophie”). V. Hear, Listen, Understand: Hermeneutic Understanding, das Verstehen German romanticism rehabilitates “understanding,” in a way, by effecting a radical redefinition. In the letter “On Philosophy,” published in the Athenäum (1799), Friedrich Schlegel begins a reformulation of the understanding, which is characterized as being “the highest of human faculties,” as against the recent usage of “contemporary philosophy,” which privileged reason. The reversal called for by Schlegel expresses his rejection of absolute idealism: It is entirely natural that a philosophy which progresses towards the infinite rather than presenting that infinite, which mixes and binds everything together rather than completing the particular, should prize no part of the human mind so much as the power of attaching representations to each other [im menschlichen Geiste, als das Vermögen, Vorstellungen an Vorstellungen zu knüpfen] and should ceaselessly pursue the train of thought concerning infinitely numerous modes everything takes on meaning for [the understanding], man sees each thing justly and truly [alles wird ihm (dem Verstand) bedeutend, er sieht alles recht und wahr]. Schlegel moves imperceptibly to a hermeneutic meaning of “understand,” replacing the “power of knowing” that was understanding (Verstand) with “the act of understanding” (Verstehen): “An absolute understanding is denied by a philosophy which denies an absolute truth” (“Transcendentalphilosophie,” §12). By shifting from the noun to the nominalized verb (das Verstehen), the understanding reclaims its link to interpretation, even though the analytic understanding of the classical age had broken it. Nevertheless, German retained the equivalence between Sinn and Verstand in expressions like “in the proper sense” (im eigentlichen Verstand) and “in the figurative sense” (im bildlichen Verstand) all through the eighteenth century, as in Chladenius or Herder. The abandonment of speculative claims on the part of idealism that had magnified the importance of reason (Vernunft) to the detriment of the understanding (Verstand) had the effect of a historicist reevaluation of the latter as “hermeneutic understanding,” Verstehen. Schleiermacher’s (1819) hermeneutics thus presents itself as the “art of understanding,” Kunst des Verstehens. Wilhelm von Humboldt insists equally on this historical and linguistic dimension of understanding, which is related to the possibility of misunderstanding as to its shadow. Through Dilthey and his students (J. Wach, G. Misch) and then in Gadamer’s hermeneutics (Truth and Method, 1960), Verstehen is distinguished from the formal procedures of method and explanation in order to defend UNIVERSALE: For the formation cf. quale, pl. qualia. Pl. universalia. UNIVERSALS UNIVERSALS τὸ ϰαθόλου τὸ ϰοινόν v. ABSTRACTION, ANALOGY, ESSENCE, LOGOS, MIMESIS, PRÉDICABLE, PREDICATION, RES, TO BE, TROPE The term “universal” has a wide range of uses: one can speak of linguistic universals, logical universals, mental universals(in the sense of “translinguistic categories of thought”), orsocial universals. In its contemporary philosophical use, the “problem of universals” comes down to asking whether one should allow their ontology to include properties and nonparticular relations outside of individual substances. As an important confrontation point, although not the only one, between nominalism and realism, the problem of universals has a long history. A correct approach to the problem of universals, of its difficulties and its vocabulary, entails more than a description of current theories. It requires an archeological investigation back to the very source of the debate via Porphyry and Alexander. The “problem of Porphyry” is in fact conceptually saturated, by a distinction made upstream, as it were, by Alexander between the common (to koinon [τὸ ϰοινόν]) and the universal (to katholou [τὸ ϰαθόλου]), and downstream by a distinction made by Ammonius between three “states” of the universal, popularized through the Scholastic triad of ante rem/in re/post rem. In his vocabulary, Porphyry’s set of questions indicates the same level of saturation, formulated in the Stoic language of “incorporeals” (see SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, II),which carries an opposition between Platonism and Aristotelianism, itself overlaid by a grid of readings initially set out by the Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle, in order to determine the object (skopos [σϰοπός]) of the Categories: words, things, or concepts. The history of the problem of universals thus presents itself, right up to the modern oppositions of nominalism, realism, and conceptualism, as the ongoing fusion of two sets of questions and two different lexicons, one Aristotelian-Stoic, the other Neoplatonic, with the latter replacing the former to such an extent as to entirely obscure the Stoic dimension of the problem. I. The Questionnaire of Porphyry The history of the “problem of universals” usually starts with Porphyry’s celebrated questionnaire beginning at the second paragraph of the Isagoge. About genera and species—whether they subsist, whether they actually depend on bare thoughts alone, whether if they actually subsist they are bodies or incorporeal and whether they are separable or are in perceptible items and subsist about them—these matters I shall decline to discuss, such a subject being very deep and demanding another and larger investigation. Here I shall attempt to show you how the old masters—and especially the Peripatetics among them—treated from a logical point of view, genera and species and the items before us. Introduction, trans. Barnes This set of questions, which Porphyry refrains from answering himself, has passed through various transpositions and simplifications over the course of time. By a sort of feedback of the traditional discussion of the subject (skopos [σϰοπός]) of the Categories of the Isagoge, the Greek commentators, conveyed by the medieval ones, came to ask themselves whether the genera and species were words or voiced (phônai [φωναί]), concepts (noêmata [νοήματα]), things (pragmata [πϱάγματα]), or beings (onta [ὄντα]), which opens the way to those responses—vocalism or nominalism, conceptualism, realism—and their ongoing confrontation down through the centuries. In our day, the principal formulations set the partisans of “primitive natural classes” (Quinton) against the proponents of “Resemblance nominalism” (Price), or of “universals” in the strict sense (a thesis that is invoked, but without a representative), of “natural classes of tropes” (Stout), or “resemblance classes of tropes” (Williams)—and some philosophers try to combine the theory of tropes with the acceptance of universals (Wilson). . The medieval debate on universals is often presented as an opposition between Platonism and Aristotelianism. Contemporary philosophers use the term “Platonism” to refer to transcendent realism, that is to say, any theory that admits the existence of universals or “uninstantiated properties”; and they assign to Aristotle the attempt to “bring universals back to earth,” by attributing to him, as does Armstrong, the theory of universals in things, “whose Latin tag is universalia in rebus” (Universals). Rather than directly confronting the Platonic theory of Ideas and its Aristotelian critique, it would seem more fruitful to start from the construction of the problem by an author who, even more than Porphyry, set the framework for the questions, concepts, and strategies of argument: Alexander of Aphrodisias and his collection of Quaestiones. We will then follow the course of Alexander’s theses through the Neoplatonic and medieval tradition and trace the genealogy of the distinction between the universals ante rem/post rem/in re to which the modern lexicon is deeply indebted. II. Alexander’s Construction: Community and Universality, To Koinon and To Katholou Alexander’s Quaestio, 1.11 consists of an “exegesis” of Aristotle’s “to de zôion to katholou êtoi outhen estin ê husteron [τὸ δὲ ζῷον τὸ ϰαθόλου ἤτοι οὐθέν ἐστιν ἢ ὕστεϱον]” (De anima, 1.1.402b7). Alexander’s question is rendered by Sharples as “What is meant by the saying in the first book On the Soul [that] ‘the living creature that is universal is either nothing or posterior’?” This question has been handed down in two versions: the shorter one, Quaestio, 1.11a, which proposes a single answer to the question (S2), and a longer one, Quaestio, 1.11b, which proposes two answers (S1 and S2) (402b7). The Arabic versions of the text include slightly discordant titles that draw our attention to the central problem of the Alexandrian theory and lexicon of the universal (the Arabic tradition includes two documents of 1.11a). In the inventory of Arabic Alexandrian texts drawn up by Abdurrahman Badawi, the two versions appear under the French title: Traité d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise: Des choses communes et universelles, qu’elles ne sont pas des essences existentes (Alexander of Aphrodisias: On common and universal things, which are not existing essences). UNIVERSALS 1189 The problem posed by the title of the first Arabic version is clear, if not easy to resolve: is the expression “common things” when added to the original formula of De anima (1.1.402b7) (“the universal animal”) itself a synonym? Or, to put it differently, should one distinguish between “universal” and “common” in Alexander? In short, should one distinguish between to katholou [τὸ ϰαθόλου] and to koinon [τὸ ϰοινόν]? A first part of the answer is provided by S2, which can be paraphrased thus: S2 [1.11a, Bruns = 1.11b, Bruns]: Aristotle is correct in saying that the universal animal is “posterior,” because he speaks of the universal in the sense of a “generic” universal, which is a concept engendered from individuals. On the other hand, this thesis cannot apply to the universal animal “in the sense of the common animal.” To be fully rigorous, one must distinguish between commonality [Fr. communauté] and “universality.” The latter is an “accident” that arrives from outside of “nature,” from the fact that it is realized in a number of individuals. The former is not. In fact, a “nature” is in itself common. As soon as an individual exists, this nature—which is in itself common—also exists, even when only instantiated or realized in that individual, and reciprocally, an individual exists only “because” this nature is instantiated in it. The distinction between to katholou and to koinon that S2 demands, and which has been discussed by various commentators, is fundamental for understanding the difference between the universal in re and the universal post rem, whose paternity historians like to attribute to Alexander. . III. The Universal In Re Even if the formula itself is the result of a series of reworkings, starting with Alexander, by the “Greek” commentators of Aristotle, which were further pursued by Avicenna and culminated in Albertus Magnus and the Scholastics, the notion (but not the expression) of the “universal in re” can still be traced back to Aristotle himself. In fact, in De anima, he maintains that since the notion is the “form” of the thing, it is “necessarily inherent in any given matter if it is [real]”: ‘O μὲν γὰϱ λόγος εἶδος τοῦ πϱάγματος, ἀνάγϰη δ’ εἶναι τοῦτον ἐν ὕλῃ τοιδί, εἰ ἔσται (De anima, 1.1.403b2–3). No notion, no logos [λόγος]—for example, that of an animal, that is to say, an “animated essence endowed with sensation”— can be, which is to say be the eidos [εἶδος] of anything at all, if it is not realized in some matter. What Alexander adds to Aristotle is the idea that such a notion, even while it needs realization, is still distinct from the universal that corresponds to it, which is to say that it remains distinct from itself as a universal, by virtue of the fact that universality is for it a mere accident. Alexander’s thesis is thus that the animal— or as Aristotle calls it, the logos-form of animal—only exists insofar as it is realized “in at least one individual,” but that universality is not part of its “essence.” Thus there is nothing “universal” in the notion of an ousia empsuchos aisthêtikê [οὐσία ἔμψυχος αἰσθητιϰή], that is, in the notion of the animal (to zôion [τὸ ζῷον]). But this notion is not real; it only “exists”—as the ousia (essence) which it is—as realized in a body. Despite a few superficial dissonances, the Alexandrian lexicon of the universal is quite settled: the logos-form for an ousia, in itself a commonality—in other words, communicable to more than one—must be (and is in fact) realized in a matter (an individual) at least. Its realization in more than one accidentally confers the status of universal upon it. Such a logos-form for an ousia is, insofar as it is realized in more than one, what commentators and many modern philosophers would call a “universal in re.” The concept that can be drawn by “abstraction” from the individual in which the logos is realized is what one calls a “universal post rem.” It is this concept that Aristotle refers to in De anima (1.1.402b7) when he (problematically) qualifies it as “posterior” (husteron [ὕστεϱον]). In the terms of Alexander’s language, the difference between the “universal post rem” and the “universal in re” can be defined by a weighty thesis that implies a certain difference between “being” and “existing” (in the sense of “being subject to oneself” [Fr. se subjecter, having hypostasis]: 1 Six contemporary responses to the problem of universals D. M. Armstrong sets out the six contemporary positions by considering how each would deal with the property of whiteness. 1. Primitive natural class view: The class of all the white things forms a natural class, a class with a reasonable degree of naturalness. That is all that can be said about what makes a white thing white. 2. Resemblance nominalism: The white things form a natural class in virtue of the objective fact that they all resemble each other to a certain degree. Resemblance is an objective but unanalyzable fact. 3. Universals: All white things have an identical property in common (or a set of slightly different properties to correspond to the different shades of white). 4. Natural classes of tropes: Each white thing has its own, entirely distinct, property of whiteness. But the class of the whitenesses forms a primitive natural class. 5. Resemblance classes of tropes: Each white thing has its own property of whiteness. But the members of the class of whitenesses all resemble each other more or less closely, resemblance being a primitive. 6. Tropes plus universals: Each white thing has its own property of whiteness. But these particular properties themselves each have a universal property of whiteness. David Malet REFS.: Armstrong, David. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. 1190 UNIVERSALS Metaphysics, 1.6, 987b–988a with the help of the term ekmageoin [ἐϰμαγεῖον], “seal,” to explain the multiplication of the one in the many). The desired objective is clearly to reconcile the three points of view: the theological (in Plato), the physical (in both Plato and Aristotle), and the logical and noetic (in Aristotle). The universal en tois pollois provides a form of synthesis, based on a certain understanding of the middle term, between the Platonic theory of Ideas and the Aristotelian theory of abstraction. . Ammonius’s theory had a long afterlife. One finds it of course in the commentaries of David and Elias, but also in Simplicius—when he denounces “those certain people” who only see “the second sort of genres,” who do not rise up to the level required for contemplating the transcendent (extrinsic) genres, and who believe that “common natures” only subsist in the singular; it could be found as well in the Syriac Christian Sergius de Reš‵ayn (d. 22 April 536)—who clearly locates the genera and the species anterior to the multiples in the spirit of a God the “creator.” But it is also the source of the mereological doctrine of the universal and of the whole by the Byzantine Eustratius of Nicaea, who presented it through the prism of the Alexandrian theory of homeomeric and nonhomeomeric wholes (cf. Alexander, Problem, 28); of the Avicennian doctrine of the three states of the universal; and through the latter to the Scholastic distinction imposed by Albertus Magnus and his contemporaries between universale ante rem, in re, and post rem. Each different kind of universal that emerged from this system has had its own series of problems, but these concern the history of doctrines, not the languages of philosophy. The Albertian triad has been subject to various adaptations. Although most authors until the end of the fifteenth century reproduced it unchanged, some of them focused on Avicenna’s binary distinction between logicalia and intellectualia and a distinction between an abstract “logical” universal (or “universal of predication”) and a separate “the universals have ‘being’ [einai (εἶναι)] in thought and hupostasis [ὑπόστασις (Quaestio, 59, 7–8; In topicorum Aristotelis libros)]/[ὕπαϱξις (De anima, 90)] in the particulars.” Alexander’s distinction between to katholou and to koinon, and his formulation of the difference between “being in thought” (epinoia [ἐπίνοια]) as the product of an “abstraction” and “having hypostasis” in particulars are the epochal foundations of several important theories, the tracks of which can be followed to the end of the Middle Ages, and in some cases beyond. We will limit ourselves here to the two most important. The first is the distinction of “three types of universals.” The second is the “indifference of the essence.” The following section deals with the typology of universals. IV. Universal Ante Rem/Post Rem/In Re In their search for a “harmonic” or “concordant” reading of the two “great philosophies” of Aristotle and Plato, the Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle and Porphyry formulated a scholastic division between three types of universals. In a sense, this division does not take into account the Alexandrian distinction between nature common in itself and universal by accident. But it is also clear that in another sense this division is required, even if tacitly, in order to be able to think that a “same entity” can assume different states of “being” in different substrates or “hypostases” without paradox or contradiction. The first great source for the doctrine of the three types of universals is Ammonius, in his commentary on the Isagoge. Here one finds its two main features: the distinction between universals pro tôn pollôn [πϱὸ τῶν πολλῶν] (anterior to the multiplicities), universals en tois pollois [ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς] (in the multiplicities), and universals epi tois pollois [ἐπὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς] (posterior to the multiplicities); and the reuse of a metaphor, of the seal, the wax, and the imprinted image, which derives from the Timaeus, 50c–d (also mentioned by Aristotle in his critical account of Plato’s doctrines in the 2 The grasp of the universal according to Alexander of Aphrodisias In the Peri psuchês Alexander presents the perception of the universal as follows (see ABSTRACTION): [The intellect] that perceives (labôn [λαβών]) the form of something (to eidos tinos [τὸ εἶδός τινος]) apart from matter (chôris tês hulês [χωϱὶς τῆς ὕλης]) possesses the common and the universal (echei to koinon te kai katholou [ἔχει τὸ ϰοινόν τε ϰαὶ ϰαθόλου]) since what grasps the form of man aside from material circumstances (chôris tôn hulikôn peristaseôn [χωϱὶς τῶν ὑλιϰῶν πεϱιστάσεων]) possesses the common man (echei ton koinon anthrôpon [ἔχει τὸν ϰοινὸν ἄνθϱωπον]). Indeed, the differences between individual men in relation to each other (pros allêlous diaphora [πϱὸς ἀλλήλους διαφοϱὰ]) is engendered by the fact of matter (para tês hulês ginetai [παϱὰ τῆς ὕλης γίνεται]) since their forms, thanks to which they are men, are not at all different one from another. But [the intellect] that grasps what individuals have in common (ho te to koinon to epi tois kath’ hekasta sunidôn [ὅ τε τὸ ϰοινὸν τὸ ἐπὶ τοῖς ϰαθ’ ἕϰαστα συνιδών]) also perceives (lambanei [λαμϐάνει]) the form apart from matter. In fact, this is what is common and identical (to koinon te kai tauton [τὸ ϰοινόν τε ϰαὶ ταὐτόν]) to them. Alexander, Peri psuchês, based on Bruns, ed. REFS.: Alexandri Aphrodisiensis praeter commentaria scripta minora. De anima liber cum Mantissa. In Supplementum Aristotelicum 2.1. Edited by Ivo Bruns. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961. UNIVERSALS 1191 réduisant les universaux à des prédicats, or nominalisme fondé sur la resemblance. “Predicate nominalism” (directly transposed into French as nominalisme du prédicat) is defined as a doctrine that maintains that some individuals can be grouped together insofar as they have the same relation to the token (SIGN; cf. PROPOSITION, Box 4), either written or spoken of a same linguistic type (“some individuals, ordinary or relation instances, are related to a shared entity—i.e. to a spoken or written token of a linguistic type”; cf. Mertz, Moderate Realism and its Logic). “Concept nominalism” is understood as a doctrine that replaces the idea of “linguistic type” by that of “mental construct” in the role of type—and both doctrines agree on the rejection of universals, understood as properties common to several individuals, and “instantiated” or “exemplified” in them. REFS.: Abelard, Peter. “Glosses on Porphyry from His Logica ‘ingredientibus.’” In Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994. . Logica “ingredientibus.” In Peter Abaelards philsophische schriften. Edited by B. Geyer. Münster, Ger: Aschendorff, 1919–27. Ammonius. Ammonii in Porphyrii Isagogen sive V Voces. Edited by Adolf Busse. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1891. CAG, IV, 3. Armstrong, David M. Universals and Scientific Realism. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. . Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. Bergman, Gustav. Realism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. “theological” universal (or “universal of production”) imbued with elements of Proclus’s theory of “precontent” (praehabere, praehabitio, praecontinentia). This is the case of the Germans Dietrich of Freiberg (De cognitione entium separatorum, 10, 1–4) and Berthold de Moosburg (Super elementationem theologicam Procli, prop. I A); and it is also the case of some Oxonian realists of the fourteenth century, such as Wycliff (Tractatus de universalibus, II, 2), who opposed “logical” universals to “metaphysical” universals. In the fifteenth century, the “Albertists” of Cologne and Paris added a fourth type of universal, which allowed them to inscribe the ensemble of “modern” philosophies into a four-part structure inherited from Albertinian philosophical doxography. In this new arrangement, the nominalists, who proposed reducing all universals to the status of universal post rem, hold the role of a kind of “Epicurism” they called “literal” (epiccurei litterales). If modern and contemporary philosophy has largely abandoned the thematic of the universal ante rem, modern forms of nominalism and realism have helped extend the perennial debate between Plato and Aristotle as orchestrated by antique and medieval commentary. The contemporary lexicon holds few problems for the (Continental) reader, outside of some expressions specific to English, with its own ellipses and shortcuts—such as the expressions “predicate nominalism” and “resemblance nominalism” (), which are difficult to render into French (for example) without recourse to inelegant periphrases such as nominalisme 3 The Neoplatonic theory of the three states of the universal Ammonius follows the “trajectory” of the universal from the Platonic Idea to the abstract concept as follows: In order to clarify what the text [of Porphyry] means, let us present it by means of an example, for it is not true that [philosophers] designate simply and by chance some things as corporeal and some others as incorporeal. Rather, they do so according to a reasoning, and they do not contradict each other, as each of them says reasonable things. Let us imagine a ring, with an imprint [that represents] Achilles, for example, along with a multitude of sticks of wax; let us suppose that the ring is used to mark each piece of wax with its seal; now let us suppose that someone comes afterward and that he looks at all the pieces of wax and observes that [the marks] come from a single imprint: he himself will also have the mark imprinted in his discursive faculty [dianoia (διάνοια)]; we can thus say that the seal on the ring is “anterior to the multiplicity,” that the mark in the blobs of wax is “in the multiplicity,” while the mark that is in the discursive faculty of the person who made the imprinted seals is “posterior to the multiplicity” and “posterior in the order of being.” Well, this is what one needs to understand in the case of genera and species. Ammonius, In Porphyrii Isagogen, based on Busse, ed. The Syriac Christian commentator Sergius de Reš‵ayn completes the process undertaken by Ammonius by transposing the universal anterior to the multiple into the “divine idea.” [This is how] species and genera of things are divided. Some are close to the creator, and they are called simple and primary. Others are in materials and they are called material and natural. Still others are in the intellect, and they are called last and intellectual. These are the teachings of Plato and the other members of the Academy regarding genera and species, which state that each and every thing which is naturally in the world is its own or proper species and also has a proper species near its creator—a species that subsists by itself—through which [the thing in the world] has been imprinted and has come down here to existence. And when someone sees it, he takes its species into memory, and it subsists in his thought, such that this species exists in three ways, that is: near by the creator, in the thing itself, and in the memory of the person who has seen it, the one who knows it. Sergius de Reš`ayn, Treatise on Categories “to Philotheos,” based on Fr. trans. by H. Hugonnard-Roche, §5 REFS.: Sergius de Reš‵ayn. Traité sur les Catégories “à Philotheos.” Translated into French by H. Hugonnard-Roche. In “Les Catégories d’Aristote comme introduction à la philosophie, dans un commentaire syriaque de Sergius de Reš‵ainā.” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997): 339–63. 1192 UTILE UTILITY, UTILITARIAN, UTILITARIANISM v. UTILE, and BEAUTY, ECONOMY, FAIR, HAPPINESS, RIGHT/JUST/GOOD, VALUE, VORHANDEN One starting point for the widespread incomprehension among the French vis-à-vis the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick can probably be found in a problem of translation. When the first French translators of Bentham and his friends sought an equivalent for the English neologism “utilitarian,” which Bentham had created to describe his new philosophy of the general interest (in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, first appearing in 1780 and published in 1789), they invented a French neologism: utilitaire (1831). But by 1802, Bentham was aware of the perjorative sense that his term had gained through hostile reactions to his doctrine, and he proposed another term, utilitarien, in order to distinguish the technical term from everyday usage. But this new word met with no success or acceptance, and in 1922, the French word utilitaire was belatedly replaced with utilitariste to render the English “utilitarian,” a term that has retained a pejorative connotation in addition to its philosophical content, and which is distinct from the more positive term “useful.” In French, utilitarisme, which had appeared in 1842, ultimately supplanted utilitairianisme (1845) or utilitarianisme (1872) to render the original English term “utilitarianism,” but the expression philosophie utilitaire persisted, contributing to the misunderstanding of utilitarianism over the course of the nineteenth century. In his celebrated reference book La Morale anglaise contemporaine, morale de l’utilité et de l’évolution (1885), Jean-Marie Guyau described his objective as “the history and critique of la morale utilitaire.” Likewise Élie Halévy would write in 1901 (La Formation du radicalisme philosophique, vol. 1) that “to the spiritual philosophy of the rights of man (in France), corresponded (in England) the utilitarian philosophy [philosophie utilitaire] of the identity of interests.” I. “Utilitarian” and “Expedient” It is fascinating to see how quickly the neologism “utilitarian” fell in public esteem and took on such a negative meaning. In Hard Times (1854), Dickens caricatured the “utilitarian” mentality as an attitude hardened toward moral feeling and concerned only with the facts, the eponymous “Gradgrindism” of the novel’s main character. The problem is to understand whether this negative reading derives from the hostility of the spirit of the time—the rejection of burgeoning capitalism by romanticism, and subsequently by Marxism—or whether it derives from a weakness internal to utilitarianism that should then be subject to question. The philosophical meaning of the term, the criterion of benefit or harm based on “the greatest happiness for the greatest number, each one counting equally” (Bentham, Introduction, 1789), needs to be critically unpacked. As Mill remarks at the beginning of Utilitarianism, the adjective “utilitarian” has come to designate only that which is instrumental or advantageous, that which dispenses with any concern for pleasure, for the beautiful, or for the “useless.” The philosophy of utilitarianism has come to be identified with the shopkeeper and his or her short-term interest. “Freedom, equality, property and Bentham,” proclaims Marx in Capital. In order to dispel this confusion and to defend utilitarianism against these accusations of immorality, Mill Boethius. Boethius’s “De topicis differentiis.” Translated by E. Stump. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. . Boethius’s “In Ciceronis topica.” Translated by E. Stump. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. . In Porphyrii Isagogen commentarium editio duplex. Edited by S. Brandt. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 38. Vienna, 1906. . “The Second Commentary on Porphyry.” In Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994. Brakas, George. Aristotle’s Concept of the Universal. Hildesheim, Ger.: Olms, 1988. Ebbesen, Sten. “Philoponus, ‘Alexander’ and the Origins of Medieval Logic.” In Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influences. Edited by R. Sorabji. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Küng, Guido. Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language. Dordrecht, Neth.: Reidel, 1967. Libera, Alain de. La Querelle des universaux: De Platon à la fin du Moyen Âge. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996. . L’Art des généralités: Théories de l’abstraction. Paris: Aubier, 1999. Lloyd, A. C. Form and Universal in Aristotle. Liverpool, UK: Francis Cairns, 1981. Loux, Michael, ed. Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976. Mertz, Donald W. Moderate Realism and Its Logic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Porphyry. Introduction. Translated with commentary by Jonathan Barnes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. . Isagoge. Translated into French by Alain de Libera and Alain-Philippe Segonds. Introduction and notes by Alain de Libera. Paris: Vrin, 1998. . Isagoges translatio Boethll accedunt Isagoges Fragmenta M. Victorino interprete. Edited by L. Minio-Paluello. Aristotles Latinus, I, 6–7. Bruges, Belg.: Descleê de Brouwer, 1966. Price, H. H. Thinking and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Quine, W.V.O. “On Universals.” Journal of Symbolic Logic 12 (1947): 74–84. Quinton, A. The Nature of Things. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953. Sergius de Reš‵ayn. Traité sur les Catégories “à Philotheos.” Translated into French by H. Hugonnard-Roche. In “Les Catégories d’Aristote comme introduction à la philosophie, dans un commentaire syriaque de Sergius de Reš‵ayn.” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997): 339–63. Stout, G. F. “The Nature of Universals and Propositions.” In The Problem of Universals, edited by C. Landesman, 154–66. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Williams, D. C. “The Elements of Being.” Review of Metaphysics 7 (1953): 3–18, 171–92. Wilson, John Cook. Statement and Inference, with Other Philosophical Papers. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926. Wolterstorff, N. On Universals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Wycliffe. John. Tractatus de universalibus. Edited by I. J. Mueller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. UTILE The French utile derives from the Latin uti (“to use”). This study traces a network of meanings via the English language, as inflected by Jeremy Bentham’s invention of “utilitarian” as something different from “useful”: see UTILITY; cf. FAIR, RIGHT/JUST/GOOD. It should be compared to the network of “availability” which has recently been marked by the Heideggerian notion of Vorhandenheit: see VORHANDEN, and DISPOSITION, I. v. BEAUTY, ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, PRAXIS, VALUE, VIRTUE, WORK UTILITY 1193 proposes to distinguish between “utilitarian” and “expedient.” This latter term is identified with that pejorative sense of a pure means to an end, of short-term advantage, of an easy or effective means, of utility without any notion of morality. The simply expedient is a means to an end of which we may not necessarily approve, but that we accept because it functions efficaciously. Utility, on the other hand, is useful only in relation to a good end. Mill explains it thus: [The doctrine of] Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a Minister sacrifices the interests of his country to keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. (Utilitarianism, chap. 2) Utilitarianism, on the other hand, seeks a fundamental moral principle that can be used to define the morally right and wrong: the quantity of happiness that results from an action, from a decision, from a political system, from a redistribution of goods, material and social benefits, and so forth. In short, it proposes an objective and impartial method for evaluating justice and injustice, benefit and harm, in the place of criteria based on opinion, personal interest, or power. It takes the side of Socrates against Callicles. II. “Utility” and “Usefulness” So why the pejorative meaning? Why not link utility and the Good instead of saying that utility is a moral criterion only if it leads to a good end, only if it is useful? Because this would lead to an uncomfortable circularity, already observed by G. E. Moore (Principa Ethica, 1901), which is that in order to ground the distinction proposed by Mill, we would need to know what constitutes a good end in itself, independent of our immediate advantage: an independent criterion of the Good. This is precisely what utilitarianism rejects in defining the Good as utility or happiness. As Hume already wrote before Bentham, Usefulness is only a tendency to a certain end; and it is a contradiction in terms, that anything pleases as means to an end, where the end itself no wise affects us. (“An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,” §V, part 2) From here we understand Hume’s insistence on agreement and approval in defining utility, and his conclusion that “Everything that contributes directly to the happiness of society directly recommends itself to our approbation and well-meaning” (ibid.). This is the crucial point that Mill should have insisted upon if he had really wanted to release the utilitarian from the instrumental, and it is to Hume, in fact, that we owe the solution to our problem. What defines the useful as a good for the utilitarians and differentiates advantage from the useful is the general consensus, the approbation of universal suffrage, as Kant would say. Herein lies the essential point of the doctrine: utility, according to Hume, is collective; if it is not, then it is not utility: Usefulness is agreeable, and engages our approbation. This is a matter of fact, confirmed by daily observation. But, USEFUL? For what? For somebody’s interest, surely. Whose interest then? Not our own only: For our approbation frequently extends farther. It must, therefore, be the interest of those who are served by the character or action approved of. (Ibid.) The useful can only be understood in reference to the happiness and the reduction of pain for all, in relation to human happiness in general. This is why Bentham ultimately called the principle of utility the “principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, each counting equally.” The utility of the British philosophers is thus not to be confused with the simply expedient—for it must lead to a good end, to that which has real value to us, to our happiness and satisfaction. It is not a matter of egotistical personal interest, but can be evaluated only by a general consensus, by what Halévy called an identité des intérêts (a community of interests or common interest). For the utilitarians, it is impossible to separate the individual from the whole. And it is precisely this universalist dimension that offers utilitarianism a way out of the confusions besetting its current usage. The philosophical use of the term “utility” broadens its scope to mean that which procures a satisfaction for the greatest number. It thus loses any instrumental connotation or neutrality in relation to the desired end. Like Kantian morality, as a moral principle, it relies on a principle of impartiality. The happiness to be maximized is the happiness of all, with each and all treated in equal manner: The good of a specific individual, whoever he may be, has no more importance, from the point of view of the universe, if I can put it that way, than the good of any other individual, unless there are some special reasons to think that a greater Good is to be attained in one case rather than another. (Sidgwick, The Method of Ethics, bk. 3, chap. 13) Catherine Audard REFS.: Audard, Catherine, ed. Antologie historique et Critique de l’utiliarisme. 3 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999. Bentham, Jeremy. Of Laws in General. Edited by H.L.A. Hart. London: Athlone Press, 1970. Halévy, Élie. La Jeunesse de Bentham 1776–1789. Vol. 1 of La Formation du radicalisme philosophique. Paris, 1901. Translation by Mary Morris: The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1955. Hume, David. “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.” In Moral Philosophy,edited and with an introduction by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006. Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Vol. 10 of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J. M. Robson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Rosen, Frederick. Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill. London: Routledge, 2003. Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. Preface by John Rawls. London: Hackett, 1981. 1195 V. Value and Aesthetics On the question of values in color and timbre, see STIMMUNG. On the judgment of aesthetic value, see GOÛT, STANDARD, and especially AESTHETICS, ART, BEAUTY, INGENIUM, SUBLIME. VALUE “Value,” like the French valeur or the German Gewalt, derives from the Latin valere (“to be strong, vigorous, in good health, well”; “to have force, to be able”; “to be worth”; cf. the salutation, Vale, in PLEASURE, Box 1), which is a translation of the Greek dunasthai [δύνασθαι] (see POWER). The German language contains a constellation of terms without equivalent, which includes Wert (worth), which connotes an “oughtto-be” (Fr. devoir-être; Ger. werden [“to become,” Fr. devenir]) and Geltung (value) or Gültigkeit (validity) from gelten (to pay tribute). In German philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, the different uses of “value” were developed in a systematic fashion. A rigorous distinction was made among terms, based primarily on the Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy (the Baden School) or on an attempted challenge to that distinction (Nietzsche’s “conversion” of values, Umwertung der Werte), whose impact extended to attempts to establish a phenomenology of values (Max Scheler). The German network of meanings is thus an essential starting point; see WERT; cf. SOLLEN, WILLKÜR. The difficulties around the term “value” derive from the diversity of domains in which “value” takes on its significance. In addition to WERT, which articulates the ensemble of these domains, one should refer to parts of the following entries. I. Value and Virtue “Value” comes under the lexicon of physical and moral personal qualities (“strength, bravery, courage”): see VIRTÙ (especially for the Greek aretê [ἀϱετή], L. virtus, It. virtù). See also VIRTUE. On ethics as a system of values more generally, see DUTY, MORALS. II. Value and Verity (Truth) The central question is the articulation among “true,” “valid,” and “valuable,” with the notion of “truth-value”: see TRUTH, and PROPOSITION; see also CROYANCE [BELIEF, DOXA, GLAUBE]. On the separation of the spheres of ethics and knowledge, in particular, see WERT, IV. III. Value and Meaning On the relation between the meaning and value of a word, see SENSE (especially SENSE, III and SENSE, Box 4; cf. HOMONYM, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, WITTICISM, WORD. IV. Value and Economy See ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, OIKONOMIA. On the relation between moral value and economic value, see more specifically BERUF, UTILITY; cf. SECULARIZATION, SOBORNOST’. On the question of a thing, see RES (and RES, Box 1), VORHANDEN. On the question of “surplus value,” refer to WERT, Box 1. V VERB The word “verb” derives from the Latin verbum, which signifies “word, term, expression,” based on an Indo-European root that led to the Greek Fereô [Ϝεϱέω] (“I will say”), the English “word,” and the German Wort. Thus the translation of verbum e verbo refers to the translation “word to word”; see TO TRANSLATE, III. 1. On the manner of designating the minimal unit of language, on the differences between word, noun, and verb, as well as on the evolution in the meaning of the terms that designate them, see WORD; cf. LANGUAGE, LOGOS, SENSE, SIGN. 2. On the verb as a structuring element of a proposition and as a grammatical category, see ESTI, PROPOSITION; see also CATEGORY, PREDICATION, SUBJECT, TO BE. On the verb as an expression of time and aspect in particular, see ASPECT, PRESENT, TO TI ÊN EINAI; cf. MEMORY. See also ESTI for the present participle, ENGLISH for the gerund. 3. On the primacy of the verb as expression of action, linked to being and existence, see ACT and SPEECH ACT. 4. On the relation between logos [λόγος], verbum, davar [רָבָּד ,[verb, and divine word, see especially LOGOS, III.B; cf. ALLIANCE, GOD. v. DICHTUNG, DISCOURSE, THING VERECUNDIA. VERGÜENZA (SPANISH) ENGLISH shame, modesty FRENCH vergogne, honte, fierté, honneur GREEK aidôs [αἰδώς] ITALIAN vergogna LATIN verecundia v. SHAME and ART, CIVILTÀ, DESENGAÑO, FAIR, GENIUS, MIMÊSIS, NEIGHBOR, PHRONÊSIS, POLIS, RELIGIO, SPREZZATURA, THEMIS, VIRTÙ In Spanish and in Italian, the terms vergüenza and vergogna have not fallen out of favor. Indeed, they are used in many different situations. In Spanish, the term has become oriented toward one’s own dignity and self-esteem; but as the Spanish psychologist Eduardo Crespo reminds us, it must be understood as a collective sentiment, illustrated by the expression vergüenza ajena (“the shame of the other”), which refers to the shame one feels as a result of the behavior of another. Here we find one of the essential features of aidôs [αἰδώς], the Greek personification of modesty. I. Vergüenza/Vergogne The terms vergüenza (Sp.), vergogna (It.), and vergogne (Fr.) share the same Latin root, verecundia, “diffidence,” “bashfulness,” “modesty” or “decency”—which in imperial Latin means “shame in the face of the blameworthy.” Verecundia is itself derived from the adjective verecundus, “respectful,” “reserved”/“revered,” “venerable.” The latter comes from the verb vereor (or vereri): in religion, “to fear,” “to revere,” “to have respect or scruple for.” Vereor belongs to a family of words that derive from the Indo-European root ᵒswer-, meaning “pay attention,” like the Greek horan [ὁϱᾶν] (to look, pay attention, see). Current French usage of vergogne is limited to the negative form: sans. The very obsolescence of the term is incorporated into its indication of a well-meaning disapproval bordering on irony. But what does he or she lack when one speaks of someone being or acting sans vergogne? In the adverbial form, one would say a lack of scruples and restraint; the attributive form adds a connotation of immorality: debauched (Fr. dévergondé ). The definition of vergogne seems only to reside in the space of its opposite: sans vergogne is used exclusively as a figure of accusation or judgment. One must take the path in exactly the opposite direction in Spanish. Before being sin vergüenza, one must first be con vergüenza. Persons con vergüenza are persons of honor, persons of their word. It is not so much that they keep their promises, but that they are bound by the word that they have given: they commit to cumplire and to à ser cumplido, “to carry out,” “to accomplish a mission” (to fulfill their duties in relation to the community), and “to be fulfilled” (Fr. s’accomplir). In this context, the oath prevails over judgment. The motif of shame, at that point, derives from betrayal, the violation of a commitment that constitutes an affront to dignity. Self-accomplishment is a “compliment” to the group. The dignity of each is to the credit of the community, is a mark of its worth; on the other hand, to lack vergüenza is to attack the community, to injure it. In French culture, the negative judgment is a reflection of immoderation, or the extreme nature of a person’s conduct that is stigmatized. Here, the reaction of indignation translates or conjures with the rupture of an implicit contract based on norms and conventions (see MIMÊSIS, Box 6), whereas in Spanish the negative judgment is what guarantees and constructs relations of social solidarity. To delve more deeply into the Spanish nuances, one can examine the expression vergüenza ajena, which, according to Eduardo Crespo, captures the feeling of shame that is experienced in the face of the incompetent or inadequate conduct of another person. The feeling of shame in this case has nothing to do with the subject’s actions, for he or she has not done anything and cannot feel responsible or be held guilty. It is precisely because there is no direct relation to 1196 VERGÜENZA the person for whom one feels shame that the sentiment of vergüenza exhibits and constructs the tie. Vergüenza in this instance helps build a sense of community. The one who brings vergüenza (as in the related expression ¿No te da vergüenza? [Aren’t you ashamed?]) does not stand accused or excluded from the community but is, rather, recalled to the duty of dignity. . II. Aidôs and the Gaze of the Other The relation to the community expressed in the Spanish expression of vergüenza ajena is clearly transmitted in the Greek aidôs [αἰδώς], which A Greek-English Lexicon (RT: LSJ) translates as “reverence, awe, respect, shame, self-respect, sense of honor, regard” and also the so-called active sense, “that which causes shame or scandal,” whence the plural form the “shameful parts” (Homer, Iliad, 2.262). Although both terms can be translated as a sense of shame, aidôs is to be distinguished from aischunê [αἰσχύνη], “to shame or dishonor” (RT: LSJ). The family of the latter word also refers to deformity and ugliness (as opposed to beauty); aischunô [αἰσχύνω] has the primary meaning of “to dishonor,” “to tarnish,” or “to disfigure” (Homer, Iliad, 18.24), and Plato opposes aischos [αἶσχος] or aischros [αἰσχϱός] to “beauty,” kalos [ϰαλός], in the Symposium (201a 4–5, 206c 4–5; see BEAUTY, Box 1). Aischunê is often tied to the body, and in the case of the female body, to modesty in the modern sense. Aischunô takes on the meaning of “blush,” and in botany, aischunomenê [αἰσχυνομένη] means “the sensitive,” as in the “sensitive plant” (whether Mimosa pudica [RT: Dictionnaire grec-français] or Mimosa asperata [RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque; RT: LSJ]). In this sense, it can even designate the feeling of shame that results from rape, and in the plural to the act of rape itself, the “the most extreme outrage” (for example, Isocrates, 64d [= Panegyric, 4.114]). Both aidôs and aischunê move from the possibility of feeling shame to that which causes it, so that one could well translate the nuances of either term in the same author sometimes as “honor” and sometimes as “dishonor” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.51.5; 1.5.1). This fold in the structure of shame is illustrated by Phaedra, who does not know in which direction (honor or dishonor) aidôs will incline her love for Hippolytus: “Yet they are of two sorts, one pleasure being no bad thing, another a burden upon houses. If propriety [kairos (ϰαιϱός)—due measure or proportion: RT: LSJ] were always clear, there would not be two things designated by the same letters” (Euripides, Hippolytus, 385–87; for a different analysis, see Williams, Shame and Necessity). The Latin pudor, from pudeo (to be ashamed, to cause shame) has the same type of extension: “ecqui pudor est?” (where is your sense of shame?; Cicero, In Verrem, 4.18); “vulgare alicujus pudorem” (to broadcast someone’s dishonor; Ovid, Heroides, 11.79). But unlike pudor, which, when used by itself is normally rendered by aidôs, the doublet pudor/pudicitia denotes “modesty”/“chastity”: the syntagm pudor et pudicitia speaks to chastity, morality, and high morals (Cicero, Orationes in Catilinam, 2.25; on the Spartan conjunction of aidôs-aischunê, see Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.84.3). VERGÜENZA 1197 example, the feeling of righteous indignation aroused especially by the sight of the wicked in undeserved prosperity). But perhaps one can say more correctly that in both shame-honor-respect and justice-vengeance, the look of the other is at issue more than the consciousness of self and that the other’s look determines or insists upon a behavior or punishes a misbehavior (see CONSCIOUSNESS, Box 1 and THEMIS). We would support Van Windekens’s (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique complémentaire de la langue grecque) etymological hypothesis, according to which aideomai [ἀιδέομαι] would derive from *a-Fidomai [*ἀ-Ϝιδομαι] of the same family as the Greek Fidein [Ϝιδειν], the Latin videre, and the French voir. Aidôs precisely identifies the definitive requirement of the hero, his “regard” for his philoi [φίλοι] and his genos [γένος]. Aidôs as “honor in the eyes of the other” leads to the pursuit of kleos [ϰλέος], “fame,” and timê [τιμή], “honor as esteem,” and more precisely (in Homer), that part of honor that men and gods accord to royal dignity and that is materialized in the geras [γέϱας], the gift of honor, the prize due to the king (cf. RT: Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, vol. 2, chap. 5, “honor and honors”). The threat to aidôs is hubris [ὕϐϱις], “insolence, arrogance, excess, wantonness, outrage” (it can also be a heading for legal accusations; cf. RT: LSJ, s.v. hubris [2.3]: a term covering all the more serious For its part, aidôs defines the Homeric hero: the word (aidomai [αἴδομαι]) designates, according to RT: LSJ, “to stand in awe of,” “to fear especially in a moral sense,” “to have regard for a reputation for valor.” In the French translation of The Illiad by Paul Mazon, Ajax rallies the Argives thus: “Amis, soyez des hommes, mettez-vous au coeur le sens de la honte [aidô thesth’ eni thumôi (αἰδῶ θέσθ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ)]” (put a sense of shame in your hearts), followed by “Faites-vous mutuellement honte [allêlous t’ aideisthe (ἀλλήλους τ’ αἰδεῖσθε)]” (shame each other mutually, instill a sense of collective shame) (Iliad, 15.580–90). The 1900 Samuel Butler English translation renders these lines: “ ‘My friends,’ he cried, ‘be men and fear dishonour [aidô thesth’ eni thumôi (αἰδῶ θέσθ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ)]; quit yourselves in battle, so as to win respect from one another’ [allêlous t’ aideisthe (ἀλλήλους τ’ αἰδεῖσθε)].” In the 1990 translation by Robert Fagles, shame is more clearly foregrounded as the rallying point of the call to battle: “ ‘Shame, you Argives! All or nothing now— Quick, better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches, slowly crushed to death by far inferior men!’ ” Aidos and Nemesis (Aidôs kai Nemesis [Aἰδὼς ϰαὶ Nέμεσις]) appear together in Homer (Iliad, 13.122) and Hesiod (Works and Days). Aidôs is comparable to an individual conscience, while Nemesis is comparable to a public conscience (for 1 The sans vergogne of Francis Ponge Many uses of vergüenza resemble those of the Italian vergogna. Many invocations and exclamations in French are to be found in the lexical field of honte, and some of the common expressions from Spanish and Italian can be translated as Quelle honte! C’est une honte! (For shame! That’s shameful!), but the meaning in French is most often considerably weakened. For in both Spanish and Italian, to call on vergüenza or vergogna is to bring pride into play. We would like to revive the French vergogne and give it back its meaning, a meaning that Francis Ponge was able to recover from disuse. Three examples suffice to show how the power of the term’s signification can be reactivated. As far as syntax, prose, or rhetoric goes, renewal is a matter of instinct, without shame [sans vergogne] (yet prudent, concerned only with the result, and with efficacy). But first and foremost, one must insist that the experience of recent successes (and setbacks) in matters of literary or artistic fame has been most enlightening (Mallarmé, Rimbaud). We have seen how daring in these areas pays off. (“My Creative Method,” in Méthodes) Some may reproach us for expecting our ideas to come from words (from the dictionary, from limericks, from rime, from who knows where ): well, yes we admit it, one has to use this process, to respect the material, to foresee how it will age, etc. But we would answer that this is not the only way and we also ask that an unprepared contemplation, and a cynicism, a shameless [sans vergogne] honesty of relations, provide some of them as well. (Ibid.) [I]f you want to go off on a tangent, follow me—it may look pretentious—but it is so simple at the same time. You won’t have to follow me very far. Just as far as this cigarette butt, for example, to pretty much anything, as long as it is considered honestly, which in the end is to say (without concern for everything we are told about the mind, about man) that it is considered shamelessly [sans vergogne]. (“Tentative orale,” in Méthodes) This search for the “height of propriety in the use of terms” (comble de la propriété dans les termes) revitalizes the word “shame” (vergogne). Even if Ponge only uses the negative form sans vergogne, he lets it loose by placing it in other systems of opposition; in a system of echoes and resonances (which he calls being “only concerned with the result”— from the Latin resulto, which in poetic usage “resounds,” “rebounds as an echo”). In the first quotation, sans vergogne connotes spontaneity of instinct and invention, and it is linked once again, with daring and prudence, to the concept of being “without fear”—verecundia, verecundus, vereri. In the second quotation, sans vergogne implies the leveling of relationships, freed from the weight of literary and social convention, effectively liberated from an approach that takes the side of the human (or ideas) against the side of things. In the third quotation, considering anything (even a cigarette butt) sans vergogne means to look at it “honestly,” as worthy of interest without regard to ontological hierarchies. The beauty of the paradox—and the sign of the inventiveness of the work—lies in the following: Ponge needs to do away with shame in order to bring into existence the “honorability” of the side he has chosen. By contrast, the Spanish and Italians must cultivate the positive side of “with”—as in (avec) vergogne—to translate their demands for dignity. REFS.: Ponge, Francis. Méthodes. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. 1198 VERGÜENZA French modestie, but it appears more than ever that aidôs hangs on the intersection of the gazes: as the proverb goes, “shame [aidôs] dwells in the eyes” (Rhetoric, 2.6.1384a33–36). This is why in the Politics, the “visible presence” (en ophthalmois parousia [ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς παϱουσία]) of the magistrates is recommended in the gymnasia, for the young as well as the old, because it “induces the true respect which is the form of fear proper to free men” [ἐμποιεῖ τὴν ἀληθινὴν ἀιδῶ καὶ τὸν τῶν ἐλευθέρων φόϐον] (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.12.1131a40); a contrario, the multitude, hoi polloi [οἱ πολλοί] “do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their baseness but through fear of punishment” [οὐδ’ διὰ τὸ αἰσχϱὸν ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς τιμωϱίας] (ibid., 10.9.1179b20–31). From aidôs, which is linked to the Latin videre (to see), to vergüenza, which is linked to the Greek horan (to see), we remain in the space of the gaze. But the structure of this space changes. As the public and private spheres diverge, the difference between what has been more recently labeled “shame civilization” and “guilt civilization” is recuperated (cf. Williams, Shame and Necessity). When the public space is primary, the oikos [οἶϰος], the “home” or the “family,” takes on the role of the private, specifically of privacy shielded from the public, or the properties proper to truth (see TRUTH, especially I.B, and PROPERTY). In serving thus to give structure to the relationship to the gods as well as that between persons, aidôs becomes constitutive of shame civilization. With the rise of subjectivity and the mediation of links between human beings and God, it is conscience (see CONSCIOUSNESS)—the eyes of the self and the eyes of God, not the eyes of the other— that gives structure to a form of the private that can be publicly presented: guilt civilization. But perhaps the notion of shame civilization is not refined enough to signify aidôs. The English word “shame,” or the German Scham, derives from a root that means to “cover up” (see, for example, RT: Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language). There can be little doubt that error and culpability were required when “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked” (Gen. 3:7)—Greek statuary did not conceal the pudenda. This is why vergogne, and to a lesser extent vergüenza, both of which preserve a connection to the Greek aidôs and the Latin videre, are vestigial remainders of a shame culture that continues to mutate. Barbara Cassin Vinciane Despret Marcos Mateos Diaz REFS.: Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross, revised by J. O. Urmson. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen, 1984. . Rhetoric. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen, 1984. Cairns, Douglas L. Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Cassin, Barbara. L’effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. In Verrem. In The Verrine Orations, translated by Leonard Hugh Graham Greenwood. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. injuries done to the person) and can apply to both the actor and the object. Thus the intrigue of the Iliad is entangled around the hubris of Agamemnon for his quarrel with Achilles over Chryseis and the intrigue of the Odyssey culminates in the hubris of the arrogant suitors (Odyssey, 4.627; “behaving with their old hubris”). Hubris, which a popular etymology connects with huper [ὑπέϱ], “to be superior,” consists for Aristotle “in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved” (Rhetoric, 2.2.1378b23–25). Hubris is an indication of a bad or false superiority that men should avoid among themselves as well as when they face the jealous gods: it is an insult to the cosmic and human order. It is against this background of the regulation of the world in common that one must interpret the myth of Protagoras: an assembly of citizens replaces the assembly of warriors. Even though they already have at their disposal the Promethean technai [τέχναι] as well as the logos [λόγος] of the arts and discursivity (see ART, LOGOS), humankind is still being killed off by animals or, if they gather in cities, people kill off each other. Fearing that the race would be wiped out, Zeus “sends Hermes to bring to men aidôs and dikê [δίϰη] [in A. Croiset’s French translation, pudeur et justice; in C.C.W. Taylor’s English translation, “conscience and justice”] to serve as the organizing principles of cities and as the bonds of friendship” (Plato, Protagoras, 322c2–3). Aidôs and dikê together constitute the aretê politikê [ἀϱετὴ πολιτιϰή], the “excellence or virtue in politics,” which, unlike technical competence, needs to be distributed equally among all: “and lay down on my authority a law [nomon (νόμον); see LEX] that who cannot share [metechein (μετέχειν)] in conscience and justice [aidôs and dike] is to be killed as a plague on the city” (Plato, Protagoras, 322d3–4). Aidôs is behavior, good comportment, selfrestraint (the term is conveyed by sôphrosunê [σωφϱοσύνη] “moderation” 323a2; see PHRONÊSIS) provoked by the regard and expectations of the other. Dikê, before it came to signify “justice,” referred to the rule, usage, procedure, everything that could “bring to light” (deiknumi [δείϰνυμι]), public codes of conduct. Thus aidôs is the motivation to respect dikê, and dikê carries weight insofar as everyone experiences aidôs. The Protagorean combination is not concerned with ethical intention, and even less with the autonomy of the moral subject, but instead with a definition of politics as respect for the rules of public behavior—such that, as concludes Protagoras with no risk of moral scandal, the man that we know to be unjust, if he does not pretend in public to be just, is not showing his wisdom, his sincerity, or his moderation (sôphrosunê), but simply revealing his folly (mania [μανία], 323b–c). Aristotle underscores this political dimension of aidôs. Insofar as politics is not to be confused with ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, 1.1; see PRAXIS), it is of important consequence that aidôs not be a virtue, nor an aretê, but a pathos [πάθος], an affection that involves the body, rather than a hexis [ἕξις], a state or disposition chosen by the soul (4.15.1128b10–11; see 2.6.1106b36–1107a1 for a definition of virtue as hexis proairetikê [ἕξις πϱοαιϱετιϰή]). As a result, the distinction between aidôs and aischunê becomes increasingly fragile (cf. Rhetorics, 2.6 and J. Tricot’s protestations in his notes to the Nicomachean Ethics, 4.15), in which he renders aidôs as the VERNEINUNG 1199 hand, and on the other hand, by the subject’s refusal of the same. For Freud, the subject is formed by the ways in which he compromises with everything that poses a threat to the omnipotence of his desires, whether he becomes set in the negation (Verneinung) of castration, in its denial (Verleugnung), or in its repudiation (Verwerfung) (Fr. forclusion), which lead, respectively, to neurosis, perversion, or psychosis. Thus, the specific manner by which to deny the fact of castration is constitutive of the different modes of structure for the subject. At first glance it would seem that philosophy and psychoanalysis do not engage one another on the subject of Verneinung. The former speaks of logical inferences and of utterances relating to the world. The latter, on the other hand, approaches negation as a certain way of setting up a subjective division that applies to a subject of desire faced with a “lack of being” that sexual difference introduces into human reality. But on closer analysis the question of beliefs is a place of multiple encounters between psychoanalysis and philosophy in relation to negation. For Freud “negation” and Verneinung are synonymous. He approaches the use of the expression “don’t” (Ger. nicht, Fr. ne pas) by superimposing the linearity of discourse and the dissymetries of the system of the cure; in speaking, the analysand speaks to an Other. In a first moment, negation enables an accommodation, a distribution, between the self and the supposed Other, of what constitutes the subject. By attributing the thought to another through negation, the patient can come to terms with a thought-content that constructs him or her as a subject, all the while rejecting that construction. In a second phase, knowledge as such, even in its positive affirmation, can be caught up in that same system of alterity that sets negation to work: to know something, whether something of one’s self or something outside the self, always consists of keeping at bay that which threatens us. Denial keeps that distance, as long as an Other can be assigned that which we cannot admit even as we express it. The theory of negation stands with the theory of knowledge, when understood as being carried along by drives. As one can see, it is precisely because the linearity of discourse carries with it a set of coordinates of a condition of language linked to the work of desires that Freud’s Verneinung is distinct from an ontology of negation. But in a third pass at an approach to negation, Freud in 1925 makes an incursion into the logic of judgment by referring to Aristotelian logic, which serves to articulate ontology and logic. By distinguishing the effect of the copula “to be” as joining or dis-joining subject and predicate, from the absolute meaning of “to be,” it is possible to define two functions for negation in the implication of the subject in his or her judgments. To untie the bonds between subject and predicate through a judgment in the form of a negative attribution is to spit out or expel (ausstossen) something to an outside that is constituted as bad and as outside by this very act of expulsion. The negation of the judgment of existence, which rejects while it knows, is a way of coming back on this first exclusion of an outside. It is an important point: the Verneinung as refusal is less radical a refusal than the expulsion that sets up the excluded. It is a victory over the radical exclusion of some content that would cause too much pain if it were recognized as inside the self. But this Crespo, Eduardo. “Emotions in Spain.” In The Social Construction of Emotions, edited by R. Harré, 209–17. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Euripides. Hippolytus. Translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Hesiod. Theogony; Works and Days; Shield. Translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. . Iliade. Translated by Paul Mazon. Paris: Collection des Universités de France, 1961. . The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Samuel Butler. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1925. First published in 1900. Ovid. Heroides. Translated by G. Showerman. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Plato. Protagoras. Translated by C.C.W. Taylor, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. ABIDCATUM. VERNEINUNG (GERMAN) ENGLISH negation, denial, denegation v. NEGATION and ANXIETY, AUFHEBEN, CONSCIOUSNESS, DRIVE, ENTSTELLUNG, ES, SUBJECT, UNCONSCIOUS Formed from the verb verneinen (“to say no [to a question], to answer in the negative,” and by extension, “to deny, refuse”), the substantive Verneinung has come to designate, in psychoanalysis, a turn of phrase in which the analysand becomes conscious of a thought-content while simultaneously disowning what he is saying. To achieve this, the analysand employs a grammatical or logical denial of the content of the judgment he offers and attributes the undesirable thought to the other, the analyst. The classical Freudian example goes as follows: “You ask who this person in the dream can be. It’s not my mother” (“Die Verneinung”; “Negation,” 235). The French translations initially proposed, denégation or déjugement (the terms used by Jean Hyppolite), erased the linguistic connection between the logical operation of negation and the conflictual relationship of the subject in relation to his own thought-content. But after lengthy discussions regarding the relations of psychoanalysis to German language philosophy, both Kantian and postKantian, the translation of Verneinung returned to “negation.” As J. Laplanche reminds us in the French edition of the Standard Works, the Œvres complètes of Freud, there were more than ten different translations of the term by French psychoanalysts. The first dates from 1934 (H. Hoesli, Revue française de psychanalyse 7, no. 2: 174–77). The review Le Coq Héron published several others in 1975 (and 1976) for comparison. I. The No and Negation in Psychoanalysis The history of the translation of Verneinung is a function of the fact that psychoanalysis seeks to understand what is happening in relation to the instinctual drives when a subject uses logical categories. And in philosophy, one must take into account the fact that this same term is usually used as a synonym for “negation,” a word that takes up the Latin term. In addition, modern metaphysics sometimes approaches the question of the status of the real in relation to thought through the certainty of the subject in his affirmations, making use of the same vocabulary by which Freud characterizes the various compromises that construct the subject as divided through the recognition of castration on the one 1200 VERNEINUNG expulsion (Ausstossung). He stresses the death instinct, which was, of course, a notion found in Freud, but which Freud did not set in direct relation with an ontology of negation. Freud limited himself to considering the psychotic’s compulsion to deny everything as a panic of negation, which at that point no longer plays the role of Verneinung, as a compromise between radical exclusion and the acceptance of a threatening thought-content. Lacan, on the other hand, asks the philosopher who specializes in Hegel to clarify such a possibility, which also means that the bridges between psychoanalysis and philosophy have been mended. Hyppolite’s reading is a subtle one: by translating Verneinung as dénegation (denegation) or déjugement (readjudication), he separates psychoanalysis from philosophy, since Hegelian negation has an ontological reach: death is active in reality, not just in the case of the desiring and thinking subject, but in the real taken as a universal whole. Freud relies on a distinction between affirmative judgment (Bejahung) and negative judgment (Verneinung), which is why he uses the latter as a general term, as the correlate and opposite of affirmation. Curiously, Hyppolite does not give a direct answer to Lacan’s question regarding the lack of desire in relation to Hegelian negativity. What he focuses on in Freud is the privileging of negation in relation to affirmation: in the relationship set up between the two functions of judgment, affirmation is the simple substitute for the logical unification of subject and predicate, that is to say, between a subject and a thought-content in psychoanalysis. Negation, on the other hand, is more than an impulse to untie the subject from the predicate, to expel something from the self. Verneinung is a subsequent effect (Nachfolge) of the Ausstossung. There is something creative about negation, something that produces out of a previous destruction. “A margin for thought can be generated, an appearance of being so in the guise of not being so” (Lacan, Écrits). Hyppolite clearly sees that the purpose of Freud’s incursion into the theory of judgment is not to lead him back to Aristotle but to characterize the function of negation as a sublimating link between the two functions of the verb “to be.” Affirming replaces unification. To deny is more than to destroy. Taking Hyppolite’s formulation as a basis, one could say that for psychoanalysis the appearance of being, ontology, is conveyed by an instinctual process in which negation is the operator. Being and language are never alone in their own company. It is all the more astounding that Hyppolite nonetheless brings together this instinctual function of negation and Hegelian negation, which is an ontological operator. Indeed, the latter occurs in being and experience, rather than in judgment. Hyppolite refers to an example in the Phenomenology of Mind: the struggle to the death for recognition invents a negation that modifies the absolute negation of animal desire. This first negation destroyed its object. The second negation, on the other hand, opens the way to the future by removing a situation of mastery and slavery from the risk of complete destruction. Hyppolite borrows the term “sublimation” from Freud and speaks of an “ideal negation,” an idea that the philosopher obtains from the Freudian Verneinung, and which would avoid a real destruction. The relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy are thus more complex in the case of negation: Hyppolite starts from the victory comes at a high price: the intellectual recognition of content distances it from the self; for Freud, it serves to maintain the repression. One could even claim that it establishes the repression by leaving affect out of the new-found awareness. Negation does not establish just any repression: repression through consciousness occurs nearest the most menacing figures of alterity, in the immediate vicinity of that which a subject has been tempted to radically expel from the self. Negation is a second recourse, in the face of imminent threat—and in relation to a primary defense that consists of destroying the threat by expulsion—but negation requires the prior destruction of affect in the subject. Here Freud expresses himself “backwards”: he says that negation shows how the “intellect separates itself from affect.” But by dwelling on negation as a second recourse to an expulsion that sought to abolish a content through expulsion, he in fact establishes the reverse: negation restores that which had previously been abolished, but without reestablishing the affect or instinctual content of what it enables to come to consciousness. Negation does not illustrate how the intellect separates itself from affect, but rather that negation is an attempt by the subject to limit or offset the previous exclusion of a content. It is an attempt that establishes conscious thought without being able to reconcile the subject with his own experience. Negation does not suffice to account for repression, but it characterizes that form of repression that is linked to the establishment, in thought, of logic. Freud locates negation in the sequences of discourse and judgment, but he relates it to an experimental plan, somewhat like what Kant did when he left behind the formalism of onto-logic and reflected on the negative grandeurs, or more generally on the transcendental situations that our utterances and judgments return to. But in Freud, negation does not return to non-being. The text of 1925 still does not make explicit the question of the relations between the lack inherent in desire and negation. Affirmative judgments of existence, according to Freud, are not a matter of finding an object in reality that corresponds to a desire, but to find it again, to regain it, which means that there is the possibility, already inscribed in the system of the psyche, of “not” regaining it. Admitting the absence (of the object that would be good to regain) would be another possible function of negation, which Freud does not address explicitly in this text, but which is nonetheless implicit in it. It is on this point that Lacan, making reference to Hyppolite, takes up the question again. II. Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Readings of Negation When Lacan asks Hyppolite whether the Freudian Verneinung has anything to do with Hegelian negativity, he returns to this possible relation between negation and non-being: in the first function of judgment, which unties the bonds between subject and predicate in such a manner that the bad is radically expelled to the outside, Lacan dwells on the effective workings of the death drive and wonders about its link with Hegelian negativity. He asks Hippolyte if the use of negation in language has something to do with the reality of death: whether there is a relation not only between negation and the lack internal to desire, but also between the destructiveness of desire and the negation that functions through VERNEINUNG 1201 negative—has an objective correlative from cases in which reason confuses a nothing with a something. He thus has recourse to the term Verneinung in its transcendental function as constitutive of a real object of knowledge. Thus, as early as 1763, he sees the importance of the concept of negative grandeur: an algebraic algorithm for finding the resultant of conflicting forces can be made to correspond to opposing judgments, one positive and the other negative. But since attention to judgment is for Kant only a stopping point on the path to transcendental and critical propositions, one can understand how Verneinung would be a synonym for “negation” in his terminology and that both words could apply either to a proposition as a whole or to one of its terms. This is the case, for example, when he opposes two pairs of antinomic judgments in relation to the world: the world is infinite or it is not infinite / the world is finite or infinite. What is important for Kant in relation to such pairs is to understand the difference between two cases. In one case negation divides the two alternative terms in a mutually exclusive way because the transcendental judgment, if it is correctly formed, has a real correlate. In another case the negation—whether it applies to a term or to the whole proposition—makes no distinction between the two alternative terms for the simple reason that there is no “case” at all, even if the formal appearance of the judgments seems to depict some “something” in this opposition of poorly formed propositions. Thus Kant usually uses Verneinung, but sometimes he has recourse to “negation”; and he accepts the difference between a negation that applies to a term and the negation that applies to a judgment (especially when he reflects on the question of knowing whether there are negations compatible with the idea of God), but he recognizes it as being of secondary importance compared to his transcendental concerns. . When the authors we have referred to use other German verbs such as leugnen, ableugnen, bezweifeln, and verneinen in relation to negation, we can see in these different choices a concern to distinguish the different positions of consciousness of metaphysics when it comes to doubting the reality of the external world. Kant has recourse to the difference between doubting (bezweifeln) and denying (leugnen) to distinguish Descartes from Berkeley, that is to say, questioning idealism from dogmatic idealism. Schelling establishes the same distinction between bezweifeln and leugnen so as to oppose Descartes from both Berkeley and Malebranche together (Einleitung, 76–77). Kant does not maintain these distinctions in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, which claims to “refute idealism,” instead of inscribing, as he did in the first edition, the theses on the real within the discourses on reason that constitute so many forms of belief. In that text, in effect, he affirmed that the existence of external reality could not be demonstrated but that it could be placed “out of doubt” (ausser Zweifel). One can understand, a contrario, that when psychoanalysis distinguishes between the positions of belief by which a human subject works out its relations to the real and to sexual difference—and hence indirectly to what philosophers call reality—it defines the work of negation in discourse in a far more explicit and precise fashion, by idea of a revocation of judgment (déjugement), which serves to distinguish psychoanalysis from philosophy and which limits the scope of Verneinung to settling conflict internal to a subject. But in the end he draws on the idea of the sublimation of destruction to reinterpret Hegelian negativity. Hyppolite starts out by distinguishing negativity from (de)negation. Nonetheless, he brings Freud and Hegel together on two points: first—and this is perhaps superficial— he calls the Freudian example in which the patient goes back on the first negation of a thought-content “negation of the negation” (Lacan, Écrits, 883). But this Freudian example is not a case of negativity, that mysterious sojourn that converts nothingness into being. What is at issue is how an intellectual acceptance of a previously denied content can still maintain the nonacceptance of that content. But this connection is made in order to introduce another observation: Hyppolite then connects the inventive character of Freudian Verneinung, which manages to limit a first exclusion, to the inventive character of negativity, which manages to limit the destruction at play in the work of the negative. The example he takes here is the passage from the absolute destruction of its object by animal desire according to Hegel, to the resource that in the “dialectic of master and slave” substitutes a situation of domination and slavery for the death of the adversary, enabling the possibility of a later invention of human existence. The negation of negation would be an ideal negation, as the Verneinung is an end result of expulsion, which limits the destructiveness of the Freudian death instinct. The rapprochement between philosophical negativity and negation in psychoanalysis has one more consequence: the unilateral underscoring of the inventive aspect of negation in psychoanalysis, even though it is true that this negation differs from Verwerfung as the complete abolition of a content that cannot be recovered later. Yet it still does not eliminate the repression; it establishes it in a manner particularly difficult to transform in the therapeutic context of the transference: the destruction of part of the self derives sustenance from the activity of knowledge and the development of logical thought. III. “Negation,” Verneinung, Verleugnung in the Philosophical Problematics of Belief Verneinung is the term employed in German to designate negation as applied to the form of attributive judgment (in Kant, for example) or to a proposition (for example, in Frege). So we can understand that Frege would entitle a text from 1921 Die Verneinung, as Freud would do in 1925, even though they were dealing with separate sets of problems. Frege is only interested in objective thoughts “independent of anyone thinking them,” and the only negation that he is concerned with applies to a complete proposition: “It is the case that / It is not the case that.” Freud, on the other hand, is interested in the way a subject carries on his thinking, so to speak, but he finds it in a counterpoint of affirmative and negative judgments, which brings him too to speak of Verneinung. Kant bases his redefinition of formal logic into transcendental logic on a study of judgment: it is important for him to distinguish cases in which a judgment—either positive or 1202 VIRTÙ Thom, Martin. “Verneinung, Verwerfung, Ausstossung: A Problem in the Interpretation of Freud.” In The Talking Cure: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language. Edited by Colin MacCabe, 162–87. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. Ver Eecke, Wilfried. Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative: Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. distinguishing between “denying” (verneinen), “disavowing” (verleugnen), and “foreclosing” (verwerfen). Monique David-Ménard REFS.: Baudry, Francis. “Negation and Its Vicissitudes in the History of Psychoanalysis—Its Particular Impact on French Psychoanalysis.” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 25, no. 3 (July 1989): 501–8. Freud, Sigmund. “Die Verneinung.” In Gesammte Werke. Vol. 14. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1948. . “Negation.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 19 (1923–1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works. Edited by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1989. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: International Humanities Press, 1969. . Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Hyppolite, Jean. “Commentaire parlé sur la Verneinung de Freud.” In Écrits by Jacques Lacan, 879–87. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Translation by Bruce Fink: Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Schelling, Friedrich. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Edited by W. E. Ehrhardt. Schellingiana 11. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989. First published in 1830. This, Bernard, and Pierre Thèves. Die Verneinung. Nouvelle traduction. Étude comparée de quelques traductions disponibles. Commentaires sur la traduction en général. Le Coq Héron 52 (1975). . Die Verneinung II. Essai de remise en place du concept de dénégation. Correspondance avec J. Laplanche et R. Lew. “Die Verneinung dans la théorie freudienne.” Le Coq Héron 55 (1976). . Die Verneinung III. J. Rosenberg: “Kant avec Freud, la négation.” R. SchutzwalderLochard. “De la realité psychique.” Le Coq Héron 60 (1977). 1 The alternatives of Verneinung (Kant) and Negativität (Hegel) Unlike Kant, Hegel never uses the term Verneinung but uses “negation” instead. This is consistent with his philosophical direction: he shows that the form of the proposition, specifically because it distinguishes between subject and object—whether to separate them or unify them—is ill suited to grasp the speculative element of thought. In effect, the latter consists in the destruction and internal critique of the propositional form of thought that occurs when negation affects each part of the proposition in turn, thereby critiquing the abstract hypothesis of their separation. It would seem that Hegel never gave his reasons for rejecting Verneinung, but his radical renunciation of the term is an integral part of his critique of the attributive proposition. Such an abandonment is all the more remarkable in that it extends to the author’s treatment of consciousness and all relations it has to itself, as well as to pure concepts of logic. In his critique of the moral vision of the world, one might well expect his descriptions of the tortuous displacement of moral consciousness in relation to itself, even including its disguises (die Verstellung), to include terms like “misreading” (Fr. méconnaissance) or “misjudgment” (Fr. déjugement). But such is not the case. Only the terms “negation,” Negativität, and Aufhebung are employed. The moral conscience “abolishes” its own conviction, without denial, misreading, or rejection. Even if the empirical positions of consciousness resemble those experiences in which consciousness revokes its judgment (Fr. se déjuge), to use Hyppolite’s term, Hegel never comes back to Verneinung because his primary interest is to break down the separation of subject and predicate in judgment (whereas Kant relies on it in order to evaluate, depending on the case, the capacities for tying them together, to establish a position of existence by means of the transcendental synthesis). To this end, Hegel works on what starts to move in Being when “negation,” in the logos, affects in turn the subject, the verb, the predicate, and the adverb (for example, the passage of the adverbial form nichts, “in no way,” to the noun das Nichts, “nothingness,” enables the stringing together of the first categories in the Science of Logic [Wissenschaft der Logik], 66–67, §133, chap. 1). Even when he describes the arcana of self-consiousness, Hegel’s intent is ontological. This is why he resolutely puts aside the verb verneinen. This is even more striking when he occasionally refers to specific Kantian expressions (Phänomenologie des Geistes, 565; Phenomenology of Spirit, 374) (“a whole nest” of thoughtless contradictions). In that very context Kant used the term Verneinung (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 573–75, B 601-3, in Werkausgabe, 4: 506–17). But in his reference to Kant and without explanation, Hegel replaces Verneinung by Aufhebung. For example, when he describes the permanent perversion (Fr. travestissement) of the moral consciousness, he employs the expression that Kant reserved for the illusory and tortuous reasonings regarding God, the ideal of pure reason. But at the same time, without explanation, he replaces Verneinung, which Kant had employed in that very passage, with “negation.” With all due respect to Jean Hyppolite, the negation of negation is thus not a Verneinung. VIRTUOSUM. VIRTÙ(ITALIAN) ENGLISH virtue FRENCH vertu GERMAN Tugend GREEK aretê [ἀϱετή] LATIN virtus, virtutes v. VIRTUE and DESTINY, FORCE, GENIUS, GLÜCK, LEX, MORALS, PHRONÊSIS, PIETAS, SECULARIZATION, TALENT The Italian virtù, constructed within the semantic field of the Greek aretê (excellence) and the Roman virtus (courage) as well as the Christian virtutes (virtues), takes on a new complexity with Niccolò Machiavelli and could be said to rise to the rank of concept. For Machiavelli, virtù must relate to two fundamental paradigms: the paradigm of virtue/fortune, as a principle of distinction between the new States, and the paradigm of virtue as decision and resolute action. In Machiavelli, the transition from the first to the second of these paradigms occurs through a transvaluation of the qualities traditionally associated with virtue, the result of which is to pass beyond these two paradigms in conceiving fortune as historical necessity. This necessity, to which abstract virtue must pay heed, is VIRTÙ 1203 Machiavelli returns to the theorem of Ghiribizzi and concludes that if there are no qualities that are good in themselves, “it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled” (The Prince, chap. 25). In addition to virtue as prudence, there is virtue as impetus, in the decisive and deciding act. It is the “impulse and passion” of Julius II (Discourses, 3.9, trans. Thomsen). It is the principle according to which “fortune is more friendly to the one who attacks than to the one who defends” (Florentine Histories, 4.6, trans. Banfield and Mansfield). And it is the “extraordinary” act by which one obtains that which is beyond the reach of ordinary actions (Discourses, 3.36 and 44). The problem of fortune returns in the Discourses (3.9), providing further fodder to the partisans of Machiavelli’s republicanism, who argue that republics have a better “fortune” than principalities, “since they are better positioned to adapt themselves to diverse circumstances.” The issue of fortune returns one last time in the Discourses (3.21), linked to the counsel that a careful dose of cruelty and generosity can provide the proper mixture of personal virtue with the terror one needs to inspire if one wants to obtain respect. II. The Transvaluation of Values from Antiquity The second paradigm of virtù would seem to qualify the basic elements of political decision-making: preemptive prudence on the one hand, resolutive impetus on the other. Fortune acts as an independent variable relative to virtue (as shown throughout the Discourses). Virtue is all the stronger and fortune all the weaker when men act out of necessity and not out of choice (1.1). Good institutions lead to good fortune (1.11). Rome was able to benefit from the “fortune and virtue” of its consuls, and a well-organized republic should necessarily have a succession of able rulers (1.20). Machiavelli claims that the Romans were able to dominate more through their valor and ability (virtue) than through good fortune (2.1). And he constantly criticizes Italian princes who attribute the ruin of Italy to fortune rather than to their lack of virtue. The culmination of Machiavelli’s thought is to be found in chapters 29 and 30 of the Discourses, in which he outlines a kind of pre-Hegelian philosophy of history, in which fortune no longer appears in opposition to virtue but rather seems to flow through it. Fortune blinds the minds of men who are opposed to her desires, but when she “wishes to effect some great result, she selects a man of such spirit and ability that he will recognize the opportunity which is afforded him.” Machiavelli concludes that men can second-guess Fortune, but they cannot oppose her: “They may weave the threads, but they cannot break them. They should never abandon her though, because they can never know her aims, which she pursues by dark and devious means. Men should remain hopeful, never giving up no matter what troubles or ill fortune may befall them.” After arriving at a wager in the second paradigm that recalls the Virgilian adage audaces fortuna iuvat (Fortune favors the bold), Machiavelli’s qualification of virtue reaches another adage, from Seneca this time: “fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt” (The Fates lead the willing soul, but drag along the unwilling one). One must submit to this kind of necessity if one wants to succeed. But if fortune comes to the aid of volentem, what is what Hegel in the Phenomenology of the Spirit will call “the way of the world” (Weltlauf). In relating virtù to temporality and historical necessity, Machiavelli moves away from the virtue of ancient philosophers, from Plato to the Stoics and to Augustine, to reconnect with the tradition of virtus of the Roman Republic, and he announces the relation between power and necessity that will be found in Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche. I. The Two Fundamental Paradigms: Virtù/Fortuna and Virtù-Impetus It is only in his major writings after 1512, The Prince and The Discourses, that Machiavelli takes advantage of his experience as a diplomat and his familiarity with the work of Greek and Roman historians to speak of virtù, and to lay claim to the two fundamental paradigms that give it structure. Though he neither explicitly lays out the problematic nor pens the word itself, his missions to Cesare Borgia in 1502–3 and to Julius II in 1506 clearly helped to orient his thinking on the topic. The first paradigm concerns Cesare Borgia and the distribution of virtue and fortune. The specific virtue of this model of the “new prince” for Machiavelli was to set the proper basis for his politics, but the model’s success depended on chance—in this case, the life of the pope. Thus in The Prince (chap. 6), Machiavelli made Cesare Borgia the very model of the “virtuous man” who nonetheless is struck down by “extraordinary and extremely malign fortune.” Still, Borgia’s defeat was determined not only by the death of the pope, but also by his lack of foresight in allowing an enemy (Julius II) to then be elected pope. The relationship between virtue and fortune is constructed in an unstable equilibrium dependent on the success or failure of the enterprise. In the course of his mission to Julius II, Machiavelli encountered the second paradigm of virtù, which is a matter of decisiveness, determination, and audacity. In an important letter to Giovan Battista Soderini, who was the nephew of the gonfalonier of Florence (published under the title Ghiribizzi, or “fantasies”), Machiavelli sketched out the principles of political decision-making. He asked himself how, in his conflict with his enemy Gianpaolo Baglioni, the pope was able to obtain by chance and without force that which he would probably only have succeeded in obtaining with difficulty through orders and arms. This is because, as Machiavelli says, men govern themselves according to different whims and talents. And since the times are unstable and changing, he who succeeds, whether he is good or bad, is the one who either best adapts his nature to the order of things (the role of virtù), or is lucky enough to live in times that correspond to his nature (the role of fortuna). As far as the first possibility is concerned, Machiavelli is quite skeptical. Since for him, human nature is something rigid and immutable, it is just as unlikely for there to be men capable of changing their natures according to the times as it is for there to be wise men capable of ruling the stars. So what is to be done? Human actions, wrote Machiavelli (The Prince, chap. 25), depend in equal parts on free will and fortune, the latter of which reveals its might most clearly where there is no clear virtue in place to resist it. In this respect, virtù is related to Greek phronêsis and to Roman prudentia, qualities that consist in taking precautionary measures, as when one erects dikes to protect against river flooding. 1204 VIRTÙ changes of fortune [he should not] swerve away from the good if possible, but [he should] know to resort to evil if necessity demands it” (The Prince, chap. 18). . III. Virtù and the Public Sphere, between Rigorism and Utilitarianism These chapters of The Prince effect the transition between the first paradigm and the second, because they qualify the value of an act that invariably relates to fortune in the assumption of power and is defined as a variable because of the choice involved, as impetus and as furor. But it does not involve, as it does in Kant, a universal value that holds for all circumstances. For on the one hand, if success in politics depends on the conjunction of the times in keeping with either the nature of man (on the side of fortune) or his capacity to adapt that nature to the times (on the side of virtue), then there are no good or bad qualities, nor absolutes of good and evil, and Hannibal’s cruelty can be as much of a virtue as Scipio’s humanity. On the other hand, this is not a form of absolute relativism, as in the Marquis de Sade, for the virtuous act must be linked to the common good, to the security of the State, to patriotic purpose (The Prince, chap. 26). This reference to the public sphere locates Machiavellian virtue in a sort of conditional generality, equidistant from Kantian rigorism (which addresses the subject confronting the universality of law) and Sadean utilitarianism (which only concerns an individual through his particular interests). All of these parameters serve to define what one could call Machiavelli’s “system,” but it is a system that is far from coherent, stable, or linear, because it is affected by fluctuations, changes, and frequent contradictions. It is a function of two variables: first, the mixture of hope (desirable) and necessity (unavoidable); and second, the inscription of these thoughts not onto a peacetime logic (of better government, theories of justice, ideal or imaginary states, etc.), but onto a wartime logic, in times that are defined by the effective truth (verità effettuale) constituted by variation, circumstance, and accident. This is what Machiavelli calls the “quality of the times” (qualità dei tempi), which already points to a history being made, to the radical historicity of the world. It is thus within this system, with its instability, that it is necessary to evaluate the general significance of virtù in all of its various occurrences. This significance is refracted throughout a multiplicity of local and particular ascriptions as a result of context and what is called for by the argument. . On a more general level, Machiavellian virtue radically distances itself from the ethico-philosophical Greco-Roman and Christian traditions. It is not something acquired through practice and exercise (askêsis [ἄσϰησις]), nor by the lengthy and assiduous work of the self on the self (cura sui). It is not something that can be learned like an art (technê [τέχνη]), which has fed a debate from Socrates to the Stoics and Plutarch; nor is it a measure of moderation (metron [μέτϱον]; see LEX, Box 1) between excessive extremes (as it is in Aristotle); nor is it even a simple rule for living (technê tou biou [τέχνη τοῦ βίου]). It is something that one either the object of this will? What does it “intend”? What is its eidetic target? Since antiquity, virtue (whether it takes the form of the Greek aretê [], the Roman virtus, or the Christian virtutes) has referred to a form of human action based on a teleological principle, whether it be Socratic wisdom, Epicurean pleasure (hêdonê), Stoic happiness (eudaimonia, vita beata), or those actions that, since Augustine, are meant to provide access to the City of God. With Machiavelli, however, the value of virtue or of good political conduct consists of love of country, affection for liberty, and state security. Regarding love of country, the object of the sagacious legislator and founder of a new state should be “to promote the public good, and not his private interests, and to prefer his country to his own successors” (Discourses, 1.9). The “exaltation and defense of country” is, according to Machiavelli, something that even the Christian religion endorses, despite its location of the ultimate good “in humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects” (2.2). As for Brutus’s assassination of his sons, the crime is nonetheless an object of praise for Machiavelli (and thus an act of virtue) because it was committed “for the good of his country, and not for the advancement of any ambitious purposes of his own.” Thus virtue is that “natural affection that each man should hold for his country” (letter of 16 October 1502), or (as he claims in a letter of 16 April 1527) the ability to esteem his fatherland more than his own soul, like those Florentine magistrates who dared oppose Pope Gregory IX in 1357–58 (Florentine Histories, 3.7, trans. Banfield and Mansfield). Machiavelli’s transvaluation of ancient values has contributed to the negative reputation of The Prince because it is proposed in the name of state security rather than of wisdom, pleasure, or happiness. In chapters 15 through 21 (summarized in Discourses 3.41), he condenses love of country and security of the State into the formula “safety of the country”: “For where the very safety of the country [salute della patria] depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. On the contrary, the only question that is valid is: What course will save the life and liberty of the country?” So it is as a function of the “safety of the country” that the “qualities” of traditional ethics change their meaning, as well as their relation to vice and virtue. Thus a prince should not shy from those vices without which he may not be able to safeguard the State. To follow what might seem to be the virtuous course could be his downfall, while taking the vicious one could ensure his security (securità) and well-being. The prince must then eschew liberality and not fear the infamy of cruelty if he wants to hold his subjects “united and faithful.” He must not hold to his word if it would damage his rule. He must know how to be as wise as a fox or as strong as a lion depending on the circumstance, and he must act if necessary against faith, charity, humanity, and the respect of religion. Machiavelli does seem to deplore conduct that plays on appearance and reality, on simulation and dissimulation. It can ultimately lead to a kind of absolute relativism of political action (of the Jesuitical type), if it is not required by necessity. It is only out of necessity that the prince must adopt “a versatile mind, capable of changing according to the winds and VIRTÙ 1205 1 Aretê: Excellence and purpose v. ART, GLÜCK, MORALS, PLEASURE, PRAXIS Aretê [ἀϱετή]: excellence, value, virtue, merit, consideration. In ancient Greek, a single word, based on aristos [ἄϱιστος], the superlative of agathos [ἀγαθός], “good” (see also BEAUTY, Box 1), serves to designate all sorts of excellence that are thus bound together: excellence of the body (“value,” in the sense of “valor” and “courage,” which is linked to strength, beauty, and health—and is inseparable from the qualities of the heart and intelligence that already in Homer constitute the excellence of the hero [Iliad 15.642ff.], of the gods [ibid., 9.498], and even of women [Odyssey 2.206]), as well as the soul (with “virtue” defined as control of the self [sôphronein aretê megistê (σωφϱονεῖν ἀϱετὴ μεγίστη), Heraclitus 112], by respect [to aideisthai (τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι), Democritus 179], and by political and public virtues just as by ethical and private ones [Plato, Republic 6.500d, 9.576c16]), including the rewards of that excellence, the consideration and happiness that come with it (Odyssey 12.45; Hesiod, Works and Days 313). In a much broader context, the word refers to the “competence” of a workman as well as to the “performance” of a well-adapted organ that functions correctly. Aretê is thus the accomplishment or realization of purpose, whatever that may be, and for any being. Aretê always has an ontological dimension, even when it is translated as “virtue” in a moral sense. And if the value of human action can effectively be defined within moral systems according to some determinate teleological principle (wisdom, sophia [σοφία]; pleasure, hêdonê [ἡδονή], etc.), it is because every value as such is essentially the enactment of a telos [τέλος], of an end, of a proper aim, as in the notion of perfecting an art: hê aretê teleiôsis tis [ἡ ἀϱετὴ τελείωσίς τις] (Aristotle, Metaphysics Δ.16, 1021b20, trans. Tredennick), “goodness is a kind of perfection” such that one can speak of a “perfect doctor” and, as even he points out, a “perfect thief.” In order to illustrate some of the difficulties of translation into a modern moral idiom, let us look at two classical texts whose intent is to define what we call “virtue,” to determine whether it can be taught and to see it in practice, but whose breadth of examples forces us to considerably enlarge our framework of understanding. In Plato’s Protagoras, Protagoras claims to teach the technê politikê [τέχνη πολιτιϰή], and Socrates doubts whether this is possible, because he doubts that virtue can be taught (320b). The two registers of art and ethics are indissolubly tied, and both fall under the rubric of aretê. Everything hinges on the comparison between competence in the technai [τέχναι] (for example, the aretê tektonikê [ἀϱετή τεϰτονιϰή], which can be translated as “architectural merit” or “excellence in building,” 322d) and excellence in politics (aretê politikê [ἀϱετή πολιτιϰή], 323a), which opens up the question of “human excellence” (325a2) and “excellence” tout court (328e9). There is no satisfactory translation, even if “excellence” is the most common denominator, because no translation makes sense for every occurrence. If one wants to find out about technical competence, one consults the practitioners of an art— architects, for example, if one wants to build a rampart. But if one wishes to understand the practices of the Athenian assembly, which pertains to how to run the city well, then one listens to everyone, the blacksmith and the sailor, the rich man and the poor man, the nobleman and the commoner. For Socrates, the fact that the Athenians do not consider virtue to be teachable proves that they think there is nothing to teach. But for Protagoras, this is the proof—as illustrated in the celebrated myth of Zeus’s equal distribution of aidôs [αἰδώς] and dikê [διϰή], respect and justice (see aidôs under VERGÜENZAand dikê under THEMIS), to all men in common—that political virtue, unlike technical competence, is shared simply and equally by all those who make up the city. That, Socrates, is why the Athenians—as indeed everyone else—hold the view that when their deliberations require excellence at building [peri aretês tektonikês (πεϱὶ ἀϱετῆς τεϰτονιϰῆς)] and other such practical skills [ê allês tinos dêmiourgikês (ἢ ἄλλης τινὸς δημιουϱγιϰῆς)], only a restricted group of men should contribute advice, and so they refuse to tolerate advice from anyone outside that group, as you say (naturally so, I would add); and that is why, on the contrary, when their deliberations involve political excellence [politikês aretês (πολιτιϰῆς ἀϱετῆς)] and must be conducted entirely on the basis of justice and moderation [dia dikaiosunês kai sôphrosunês (διὰ διϰαιοσύνης ϰαὶ σωφϱοσύνης)], they quite naturally tolerate everyone. For they believe that all men must have this excellence in common [tautês ge metechein tês aretês (ταύτης γε μετέχειν τῆς ἀϱετῆς)], since otherwise there would be no cities. (Plato, Protagoras, 322d–323a, trans. Hubbard and Karnofsky) This breadth of meaning is equally evident in Aristotle, in the second book of his Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defines ethical virtue and the moral actions that correspond to it. In order to convey in what sort of disposition of habitus (poia hexis [ποία ἕξις]), the aretê ethikê [ἀϱετή ἐθιϰή] consists, and before singularizing it as a mean between two extremes (mesotês [μεσότης]), he defines it as a virtue—and once again, “excellence” is the least misleading equivalent: Every virtue or excellence [pasa aretê (πᾶσα ἀϱετή)] both brings into good condition [auto te eu echon apotelei (αὐτό τε εὖ ἔχον ἀποτελεῖ)] the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well [to ergon autou eu apodidôsin (τὸ ἔϱγον αὐτοῦ εὖ ἀποδίδωσιν)]; e.g., the excellence of the eye [hê tou ophthalmou aretê (ἡ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀϱετὴ)] makes both the eye and its work good [spoudaion (σπουδαῖον)]; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well [têi gar tou ophthalmou aretêi eu horômen (τῇ γὰϱ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀϱετῇ εὖ ὁϱῶμεν)] . Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good [agathon (ἀγαθόν)] at running and carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy. (Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1106a15–21, trans. Ross, 36–37) Spoudaios [σπουδαῖος] (from spoudê [σπουδή], haste, effort, zeal, ardor, serious engagement) is opposed to phaulos [φαῦλος] (ugly, trivial, paltry, petty, sorry, poor), and is used as a term, in the Politics for instance, to distinguish good citizens from bad. Thus a single Greek expression carries a “physiological” meaning, such as “the excellence of the eye,” and a “moral” meaning: “The excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good.” Since excellence is thus the optimum of the ergon [ἔϱγον] proper to each thing, by rights and when unobstructed, we can understand that Aristotle’s version of happiness is part and parcel with virtue, and that this conception is far from Kant’s precautionary hopes for the sovereign good. Barbara Cassin REFS.: Aristotle. Metaphysics. Ιn Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vols. 17–18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. . Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. Edited by Lesley Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Plato. Protagoras. Translated by B.A.F. Hubbard and E. S. Karnofsky. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. 1206 VIRTÙ chap. 8), neither of whom hesitated to employ extraordinary, violent measures to protect themselves from enemies and reestablish State power. IV. Virtù and the Way of the World: Exemplum and Weltlauf At the stylistic level, Machiavelli’s use of virtù differs from the language of his diplomatic correspondence, where the term almost never appears. When he uses it in his major writing, he seems to want to elevate the political discourse to the “high” level of literary language, as if he had not so much “invented” his political subject as brought it back to the grand style of the history-writing of antiquity. His political analysis, previously limited in his diplomatic dispatches to deciphering current conditions and making conjectures about the future, is anchored by the use of virtù in the exemplum, which constitutes something that is not teachable, neither a warning, nor a precept, nor a piece of advice. The example consists of a history lesson that modern princes, in an era of corrupt morals and political institutions, are incapable of understanding or imitating. Machiavellian virtue irrevocably marks the irruption of history and historicity into political discourse: ancient history as exemplum; contemporary history as an ensemble of occasions, circumstances, and accidents; history to come as a matter of intention and political will. Machiavelli’s radical novelty lies in having transposed the sovereign virtue of the philosophers, in what Hegel, criticizing the “knights of virtue [Ritter der Tugend]” from the time of the Stoics to Don Quixote and Kant, called the “world process” (Weltlauf). As a result of this transposition, the previously irreconcilable opposition between abstract virtue and worldly event was has or does not have. Virtù does not exist outside of an act, a conduct, or a behavior that inflects time or tries to reorder its course. It is thus not the Stoic practice of individual subjectivation posited in a solitary relation of self to self, or of self to others and to society. It is a modification of the world made by public man through acts of taking and maintaining power or through increasing the size of the State. It is never linked to some form of natural or cosmopolitan universalism, but is inscribed as effective action in a historico-political context that gains legitimacy from civic and patriotic objectives or a commitment to preserving the State. In The Prince, the most significant act is the founding of a new State; in Discourses, it is a return to the basic and original foundations of the State. The precedents for Machiavellian virtù should be sought not in the philosophers, but in the historians (Thucydides, Titus-Livy, Sallust, Plutarch, and especially Tacitus) who rely for their models on the Sparta of Lycurgus and Republican Rome (before the outbreak of civil wars and the establishment of the empire, in which, as they acknowledge, ancient virtue was lost). It was on the basis of the Roman models—revived by the English republicans of the seventeenth century and leading to the French equation of “virtue” with “republic” by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Robespierre that the Anglo-Saxon “Cambridge” school (J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner) retracted the second paradigm of virtue as impetus. Virtue as impetus connotes the conduct of someone like Septimus Severus, a villain as an individual, but endowed, like Servius Tullius, with “great good fortune and virtue” (Discourses, 1.10), or Cleomenes in Sparta (Discourses, 1.9) or Agatocles in Syracuse (The Prince, 2 Virtù and virtus The multiple uses of virtù and virtus reflect the various significations of virtù in the Roman semantic field in which virtus— as Joseph Hellegouarc’h has shown—is associated in turn with qualities of character: with generosity of spirit (magnitudo animi), with judgment (consilium), with wisdom (sapientia), and with prudence (fortitudo, animus) on the one hand, and with the capacity for governing on the other. In Machiavelli, virtue can in turn be associated with discipline and the stability of the military, with courage and the exploits of an army or its leader, with force (dunamis) and the proper disposition of affairs (the virtue of a city, people, or institution), with the excellence of great men and legislators of States, with political and military power, with generosity and prudence as capacities for foresight, for “seeing the problem from some distance” (Discourses,1.18 and 3.28). This is in contrast to the disorder, the cowardice, the lack of foresight, the hesitation, the common behavior and half-measures that can be part of “humanity and patience,” yet for conduct that fits the times, the impetuosity and fury of Julius II (Discourses, 3.9) is still to be preferred. The model for this kind of virtue is classical virtue (antiqua virtù), the Spartan and especially Roman forms of virtue, which are opposed not so much to wealth and the vices that result from it, as in the ancient philosophers, but to corruption and its political consequences, like the weakening of, the insecurity of, the threats to, and the ruin of States. Machiavellian virtue is never an abstract principle: on the one hand, it always corresponds to real forms of behavior, to concrete and historically determined examples; on the other hand, these are carried by and subject to historical translations. This is the theory of translatio imperii (transfer of rule/authority): virtue as exceptional ability, says Machiavelli (in the introduction to book 2 of the Discourses), was first lodged in the “world” by the Assyrians, moved to Media, passed into Persia, from there to Rome, and subsequently to the peoples (of the North primarily) who still today “live in virtue.” At any rate, as Cicero points out, there is no virtue except “in practice [in usu]” (Republic 1.2) and “in action [in actione]” (De officiis 1.19). In the face of this multiplicity of meanings, the translation of the word virtù in Machiavelli must take into account these two sets of coordinates, position in the system and situation in context, even if some will still prefer to always translate Machiavelli’s virtù as “virtue” in English, vertu in French, and Tugend in German. REFS.: Hellegouarc’h, Joseph Marie. Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1963. VIRTÙ 1207 during the same period, Nietzsche talks of the “politics of virtue, of how virtue is made to dominate.” This politics of virtue is none other than Machiavellianism. “But,” as Nietzsche says, “Machiavellianism pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son âpreté, is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it will never be achieved by man, at most approximated” (ibid., 304). It is the virtue of the historians of antiquity, revisited by the Greco-Roman and Christian philosophers. As he says in the Twilight of the Idols in 1888, his “cure from all Platonism” has been Thucydides, “and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality—not in ‘reason,’ still less in ‘morality’ ” (Twilight of the Idols, trans. Hollingdale). Machiavelli’s virtù revives the tradition that goes back to the theia moira (the unteachable divine element of Aristide, Themistocles, and Pericles), according to the definition that Socrates gives to virtue in the Meno (100a). It harks back to the Spartan aretê of Tyrtaeus (which indicates military valor, not caste membership, as in Homer) and the aretê of the Athenians in the speech that Thucydides attributes to Pericles in his funeral oration (The Peloponnesian War, bk. 2); and finally it reasserts its relationship to the history of republican virtue at the end of the Roman Republic and under the empire. But the real posterity of this virtue is to be found in Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche, rather than among the “skeptics” with their relativism (from David Hume to François de La Rochefoucauld and Sade) or among the politicians with their realism (from Montesquieu to Rousseau and Robespierre). Without a doubt, Machiavellian virtue is nothing but power, the will to power, in the grip of time, with the “character of the times” (qualità dei tempi), and with that fortune that is just another name for the Hegelian Weltlauf. The Machiavellian concept of virtù thus bears no relation to the “liberty” of ancient moral philosophy (the becoming free through practice and prudence; the proper measure of, government of, and concern for the self). It is related, rather, to historical necessity, with its constraints and submissions. For Machiavelli, virtù appears only where there is necessity. Free will, on the other hand, awakens the ambitions and desires that cause the downfall of the States (cf. Discourses, 1.5, 1.37). In the face of necessity, virtue lies in the collection of acts and decisions that increase the power of an individual or State. And this historical necessity has not waited for modern revolutions to bring it into the open, as Hannah Arendt would seem to think in her book On Revolution. Indeed, Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, and their contemporaries experienced very early on the instability of the word, the changing times, the multiplicity of incidents and accidents, and the insecurity of States that followed the Italian wars after 1494. At some level, Machiavellian virtue, when confronted with the State logic of modern warfare, strangely resembles the attitude of the reformation in the face of salvation through grace—except that the faith of Luther and Calvin corresponded to what Machiavelli called virtù, whereas grace, in that century, corresponded to what Machiavelli called fortuna, fortune-necessity: the invincible force of the times, the brazen law of the world process, and the reasons and inscrutable ruses of history. Alessandro Fontana suddenly annulled, voiding the “pompous discourse” of the supreme good, along with the waste of precious gifts. In this discourse, according to Hegel, the individual “puffs himself up and fills both his empty head, and that of others,” with the verbiage of virtue as a value in itself, an “abstract unreal essence” (The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, 172–74) separate from the world’s processes and struggles. The virtue inscribed in the Weltlauf (and the virtue of Machiavelli) is that of the historians from antiquity, which is to say, a virtue referring to historic republican practices. Virtue in the olden time had its secure and determinate significance, for it found the fullness of its content and its solid basis in the substantial life of the nation, and had for its purpose and end a concrete good that existed and lay at its hand: it was also for that reason not directed against actual reality as a general perversity, and not turned against a world process. (“Virtue and the Course of the World,” in The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, 174) What Machiavelli calls “fortune” in his first paradigm is none other than the representation of what Hegel calls Weltlauf; immediate temporality within the immanence of a secularized time, and a brazen law of necessity according to which the man of virtue, the great man, “is what he does; of whom one must say that he wanted what he did just as he did what he wanted.” Within the world process, virtue is no longer wisdom, pleasure, happiness, mastery of self, or any of the other principles that served to measure the value of acts in traditional ethics. It is an irruption into temporality, the abrupt encounter of human nature and history, the will to resolute action. Thus—and here is the second paradigm— virtue has become nothing but power, pure power, and power in its pure state, in Benedict de Spinoza’s sense of the word: Virtue is human power [virtus est ipsa humana potentia] defined solely by man’s essence that is, which is defined solely by the endeavor made by man to persist in his own being. Wherefore, the more a man endeavors, and is able to preserve his own being, the more is he endowed with virtue, and, consequently in so far as a man neglects to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power. (Spinoza, The Ethics, pt. 4, prop. 20, proof 20:1; trans. Elwes, 203) According to Friedrich Nietzsche, it is with Socrates that aretê is written into a moral framework and into a system of “values” in the Heideggerian sense of the term. It is no longer the manifestation of an originary power, but is the evaluation of merit as a function of values (knowledge, rectitude, conviction) that are necessarily outside of it. Nietzsche’s conception of values is the same as that which Callicles claims in Plato’s Gorgias and which Socrates is quick to refute, specifically in the name of “values” such as moderation and the mastery of desires. The virtue of Callicles, the force and energies of intelligence in the service of passions, are, according to Nietzsche in the Posthumous Fragments of 1887–88, “virtue in the style of the Renaissance, virtù, virtue not embittered by morality” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale). And in the Tractatus politicus that he was thinking of writing 1208 VIRTUE “virtue”calls for a complex history of the term that does justice to the various strata of time and language. In particular the following should be noted: 1. The Greek aretê [ἀϱετή] (excellence): see VIRTÙ, Box 1, where one can see this excellence conceived ontologically as an energeia [ἐνέϱγεια], as the actualization of a power or capacity; see also ART, I and PRAXIS; cf. ACT, POWER, I, II, and INGENIUM. On the relationship between the physical and the moral, see BEAUTY, Box 1; on the link to measure and moderation, see TRUTH, Box 2, and LEX, Box 1. Lastly, on phronêsis [φϱόνησις] as practical wisdom, and the relationship between virtue and wisdom, see PHRONÊSIS and GLÜCK. 2. The Latin virtus (courage): see VIRTÙ, especially VIRTÙ, Box 2; cf. PIETAS, RELIGIO. 3. Christian virtues: see LOVE, cf. BERUF, SERENITY. If the meaning given to “virtue” by Montesquieu—l’amour des lois et de la patrie (“the love of laws and the homeland”)— which goes with a renunciation in relation to the self—does not derive directly from any of these other meanings, that is because it draws on another moment of the term’s history: Machiavelli’s elaboration of virtù. From Machiavelli on, the notion takes on a more distinctly political sense that will be taken up not only by Montesquieu but also by Hegel and Nietzsche: see VIRTÙ. Cf. DEMOS/ETHNOS/LAOS, FATHERLAND, LAW, POLIS, POLITICS, STATE/GOVERNMENT. v. DUTY, GOOD/EVIL, MORALS, SECULARIZATION, SOBORNOST’, VALUE REFS.: Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. New York: Viking, 1963. Dumézil, Georges. Servius et la fortune: Essai sur la fonctíon sociale de louange et de blâme et sur les éléments indo-européens du cens romain. Paris: Gallimard, 1943. Fontana, Alessandro. “Fortune et décision chez Machiavel.” Archives de Philosophie 62 (1999). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes. 1807. Translation by J. B. Baillie: The Phenomenology of Mind. London: Harper and Row, 1967. Hyppolite, Jean. Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Translated by Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1883. . Florentine Histories. Translated by Laura Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. . The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli. Translated by Christian E. Detmold. Vol. 2. Boston, MA: J. R. Osgood, 1882. . The Prince. Edited by Quentin Skinner. Translated by Russell Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Complete Works: The First Complete and Authorised English Translation. Edited by Oscar Levy. 18 vols. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964. . The Portable Nietzsche. Selected and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1976. . The Twilight of the Idols. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin, 1990. . Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967–. . The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1967. Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. . Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Spinoza, Benedict de. The Ethics. Translated by R.H.M. Elwes. New York: Dover, 1955. Translation originally published 1883. Walker, Leslie J. The “Discourses” of Machiavelli. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950. VIRTUE In his clarifications to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu writes, “Le mot de vertu, comme la plupart des mots de toutes les langues, est pris dans diverses acceptations: tantôt, il signifie les vertus chrétiennes, tantôt les vertus païennes, souvent une certaine vertu chrétienne, ou bien une certaine vertu païenne; quelque fois la force; quelque fois, dans quelques langues, une certaine capacité pour un art ou de certains arts. C’est ce qui précède ou ce qui suit ce mot qui en fixe la signification” (Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, 2:1169). (The word “virtue,” like most words in every language, takes on different meanings: sometimes it refers to Christian virtues, sometimes to pagan virtues, often to a specific Christian or pagan virtue; sometimes to strength, and sometimes to special talents and abilities in the practice of an art or craft. The meaning of this word is determined by what precedes it or what follows it.) The French word derives from the Latin virtus, which refers to the physical and moral qualities that define the value of a man (vir). The polysemy of VOCATION The concept of “vocation” (based on the Latin vocare, “to call”) is not simply a milder form of destiny, in the sense that a person could take charge of his or her fate (see DESTINY). Instead, it specifically addresses Martin Luther’s notion of a Beruf (calling), as taken up and developed by Max Weber, whose French translations as vocation or profession have never proven themselves satisfying. See BERUF and VOICE. v. ALLIANCE, ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, SECULARIZATION, WORK VOICE “Voice” (Fr. voix) derives from the Latin vox (the voice, the sound of the voice, word), which in turn, like the Greek epos [ἔπος] (speech, word, discourse, song), is formed from the Indo-European root *wekʷˉ, which indicates the voice’s emissions as well as the religious and juridical force carried by them. I. The Human Voice 1. The “voice,” or at least the Latin vox, can serve to distinguish the human from the animal—as for the Greek phônê [ϕωνή], which can also be used in connection with animals and refers to the power and sharpness of the sound emitted, one needs to specify that it is VORHANDEN 1209 the abstract substantive Vorhandenheit is rarely used, and, to our knowledge, the term Zuhandenheit not employed at all. Heidegger’s purpose, in starting with the fairly common terms vorhanden, Vorhandenheit and then differentiating them from zuhanden, Zuhandenheit, is primarily to characterize a specific mode or manner of being. This is clearly evident in their first unmarked occurrence in Being and Time. Let us start with the original text: “Seiend” nennen wir vieles und in verschiedenem Sinne. Seiend is alles, wovon wir reden, was wir meinen, wozu wir uns so und so verhalten, seiend ist auch, was und wie wir selbst sind. Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein, in Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im “es gibt.” An welchem Seienden soll der Sinn von Sein abgelesen werden, von welchem Seienden soll die Erschließung des Seins ihren Ausgang nehmen? Is der Ausgang beliebig, oder hat ein bestimmtes Seiendes in der Ausarbeitung der Seinsfrage einen Vorgang? Welches ist dieses exemplarische Seiende und in welchem Sinne hat es einen Vorrang? (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit) The English translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson goes as follows: But there are many things which we designate as “being” [seiend], and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the “there is.” In which entities is the meaning of Being to be discerned? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take its departure? Is the starting-point optional, or does some particular entity have priority when we come to work out the question of Being? Which entity shall we take for our example, and in what sense does it have priority? From the point of view of our present investigation on Vorhandenheit, there is no significant difference between “presence-at-hand” (Macquarrie/Robinson) and “being-athand” (Stambaugh).1 This extended quote clearly describes what is at stake in the determination of manners of being: if, as is classically articulated and conveys meaning: see ANIMAL, LOGOS (especially LOGOS, II.B), SIGN, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, WORD (especially WORD, II.B.2) and also cf. HOMONYM. 2. It is linked to music and song: see SPRECHGESANG, STIMMUNG; see also ACTOR, DICHTUNG; cf. ERZÄHLEN. On epos (Fr. épopée; cf. epic poem) as distinct from muthos [μῦθος] (speech, discourse, account, myth) and logos [λόγος] (speech, discourse, reason, proportion), see LOGOS, MIMÊSIS; cf. MÊTIS, RÉCIT. 3. It is also linked to destiny (Lat. fatum, from fari, “to say”); see DAIMÔN, Box 1, DESTINY, KÊR, SCHICKSAL, STIMMUNG, cf. BERUF, VOCATION. 4. Finally, it serves to speak and to lay claim to a right: see CLAIM and DROIT, RIGHT/JUST/GOOD. II. Voice in Grammar 1. Vox is one of the most common ways of designating the “word” in Latin. See WORD; cf. LANGUAGE and PROPOSITION. 2. It is also one of the grammatical characteristics of the verb, along with tense, mode, and aspect; see ASPECT (especially as to the meaning of normal voice in Greek). v. HUMANITY, RELIGION VORHANDEN / ZUHANDEN / VORHANDENHEIT / ZUHANDENHEIT (GERMAN) ENGLISH presence-at-hand / ready-to-hand / readiness-to-hand; extant, extantness / handy, handiness; occurrent/ available FRENCH subsistant / disponible, présence-subsistance / disponibilité, sous la main / à portée de la main SPANISH estar-ahí-delante / estar a la mano v. UTILITY and ART, DASEIN, ES GIBT, ESSENCE, IL Y A, OBJECT, POETRY, PRAXIS, PRESENT, REALITY, RES, SEIN, THING, TO BE, WELT, WERT, WORLD In Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time the analysis of the surrounding world (Ger. Umwelt) opens with a contrast between two clearly defined modes of being: that which is present-at-hand, or extant (Ger. Vorhanden, Fr. sous la main), which is an object of simple consideration, and that which is ready-to-hand and available (Ger. Zuhanden, Fr. à portée de la main). While the former mode is merely deficient in relation to the second, both stand in contrast to Dasein, being-there (Fr. être-là). This triplicity is clearly fundamental and raises numerous problems of translation. Ontological determinations, we would suggest, should be considered in a more general framework in order to take into account the distinctions thematized by Lotze or Meinong. We will thus start by examining the first occurrences of Vorhanden in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) and comparing a series of translations, most into French. We will then seek to disengage the doctrinal background that is the object of Heidegger’s “destruction” before finally establishing the indispensable and irreducible polysemy of Vorhandenheit, which precludes any simple opposition between Vorhanden and Zuhanden. I. The Multiple Senses of Being The coupling of the adjectives vorhanden/zuhanden is not actually an invention of Heidegger’s, but before Heidegger 1 A note on translations of Heidegger in English: One of the main difficulties in standard English is that Sein (infinitive) is normally translated as “Being,”— that is to say, already a present participle. How then shall we distinguish between Seiend (etant, “being”) and Sein (etre, “Being”)? The solution adopted by Macquarrie and Robinson is to translate the present participle seiend using “entity”/“entities” (the difference between singular and plural in the English translation seems arbitrary), and to maintain Being for Sein. Two problems then arise: 1. The so-called ontological difference Sein/seiend, etre/etant is no longer recognizable in the word pair “Being”/“entity.” 2. It is difficult to maintain the translation “entity” when Heidegger underlines the present participle and the presence of the present in it (cf. the first occurrence of “being” for seiend). Stambaugh’s translation proposes an alternative that more fully takes into account the present participle. She translates seiend by “in being,” insisting on the progressive present. She maintains Being with a capital “B” for Sein. We are thus confronted with the manifold uses of “-ing” forms in English and the difficulties of nominalization in English. 1210 VORHANDEN à l’égard de quoi nous nous comportons de telle ou telle façon; ce que nous sommes et comment nous le sommes, c’est encore l’étant. L’être se trouve dans le fait d’être comme dans l’être tel, il se trouve dans la réalité, dans le fait d’être-làdevant, dans le fonds subsistant, dans la valeur, dans l’existentia (Dasein), dans le “il y a.” (Trans. F. Vezin, 30) We can start with a few preliminary remarks. Unfortunately, the BW translation drops the quotation marks around the term “seiend.” This immediately gives too much ontological intent to a remark that applies primarily to terms that are clearly “voices” (voces) that signify things (pragmata), as is the case in Aristotelian categories. The translation goes on to reinsert the classical terminology of essence and existence in speaking of an appreciably different distinction. Heidegger does not say that “being is to be found in existence, in essence” (Fr. l’être réside dans l’existence, dans l’essence). He says, “Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein” (Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is). He says, in what may be an implicit reference to Schelling and is most certainly a reference to Alexius Meinong, that being is or occurs in the quod, the “that” of the “that is” or the “that is the case” (hoti esti [ὅτι ἐστι]), and not only in the quid, the “what is?” or the “what is this?” (ti esti [τί ἐστι]): thus in the “that” as well as in the so-being or suchness (Ger. Sosein, Fr. être-tel). The opposition between Sein and Sosein had already been thematized by Meinong as early as the Theory of Objects (Über Gegenstandstheorie, 1904), at the same time as he set out the principle of the independence of the so-being or suchness in relation to being in the sense of affirmation, of positing a fact or a state of things (“that is!” or “that is the case”) (see SEIN, SACHVERHALT). F. Vezin misses part of the point of this first opposition by making the Daßsein into “the fact of being” (Fr. le “fait d’être”). But it is in the subsequent sentences that the slippages become more serious. In all three French versions the translators resolutely overtranslate, without concern for the context of the general problematic, which is nothing but a very first pass at the question of being, or rather of the meaning of “being,” by way of the guiding thread of fundamental ontology. . II. Some Classical Concepts of Ontology in German Metaphysics The original text spoke of Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, es gibt. In his reference to Realität, we can assume (though this is doubtless the most difficult point to establish) that Heidegger is using the term in its classical sense (up to Kant), which he luminously presented in a course during the summer of 1927, The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology. The term Vorhandenheit only gains its “technical” sense (which can be translated as “presence-athand”) through its contrast to Zuhandenheit, that is to say, when it is an issue of opening up domains or regional ontologies. Here Vorhandenheit should be understood in its uncomplicated sense, characterizing everything that is there, that is present—to provide an ordinary example, a book on the case, Being is understood in various senses (to on legetai pollachôs [τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς]), if we refer to various things as being (Ger. seiend, Fr. étant, both participles of verbs) and in different senses of the word, the question at issue is whether there is some sense that can serve as a guiding principle, or even better, if there is some exemplary being that can be privileged and thus serve as a model for reading the meaning of “Being.” How would we recognize such a being, if there is one? asks Heidegger. This fairly rough paraphrase of the text quoted above already shows that Heidegger formulates the question—and no doubt, very deliberately—in a more or less explicit reference to the doctrine of the analogy of Being, or even more precisely to the doctrine of the focal unity of senses of being (pros hên legomenon [πϱὸς ἓν λεγό μενον]). It is through this doctrine that Heidegger addresses “the formal structure of the question of Being,” starting in section I.2 of Being and Time (Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, §55, in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 22). We will start by examining three existent French translations—but not for the purpose of a contest or choice between them: 1. Étant est tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce à quoi nous pensons, tout ce à l’égard de quoi nous nous comportons, mais aussi ce que nous sommes nous-mêmes et la manière dont nous le sommes. L’être réside dans l’existence, dans l’essence, dans la réalité, dans l’être subsistant, dans la consistance, dans la valeur, dans l’être-là, dans l’ “il y a.” En quel étant faudra-t-il lire le sens de l’être, en quel étant l’exploration de l’être prendra-t-elle son point de départ? Le point de départ peut-il être arbitraire, ou quelque étant jouit-il d’une primauté dans le développement de la question de l’être? Quel est cet étant exemplaire et quel est le sens de sa primauté? (Trans. R. Boehm and A. de Waelhens, 22) 2. Nous appelons “étant” beaucoup de choses, et dans beaucoup de sens. Étant: tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce que nous visons, tout ce par rapport à quoi nous nous comportons de telle ou telle manière—et encore ce que nous sommes nousmêmes, et la manière dont nous le sommes. L’être se trouve dans le “que” et le “quid,” dans la réalité, dans l’être-sous-la-main, dans la subsistance, dans la validité, dans l’être-là [existence], dans le “il y a.” Sur quel étant le sens de l’être doit-il être déchifrée, dans quel étant la mise à découvert de l’être doit-elle prendre son départ? Ce point de départ est-il arbitraire, ou bien un étant déterminé détient-il une primauté dans l’élaboration de la question de l’être? Quel est cet étant exemplaire et en quel sens a-t-il une primauté? (Trans. E. Martineau, 29) 3. “Étant,” nous le disons de beaucoup de choses et en des sens différents. Est étant tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce que nous pensons, tout ce VORHANDEN 1211 and by subsequently overturning it. This can be read, for example, through Lotze’s classical distribution of terms. When he questions the mode of being of Truth, Lotze seeks to distinguish between the specificity of gelten (to be valid or effective, or to have value) and of es gilt (it holds). We all feel certain in the moment in which we think any truth, that we have not created it for the first time but merely recognized it; it was valid before we thought about it and will continue so [auch als wir ihn dachten, galt er und wird gelten]. The truth which is never apprehended by us is valid no whit less than that small fraction of it which finds its way into our intelligence. (Lotze, Logic, 212) These precisions of definition allow Lotze to distinguish two types of reality/actuality. In a passage that is all the more remarkable because he draws explicitly on the German language and its specific resources, Lotze continues: Finally it must be added that we ourselves, in drawing a distinction between the reality/actuality that belongs to the Ideas and laws and the reality/actuality that belongs to things, and by calling the latter Being [der Wirklichkeit der Dinge als dem Sein] and the former Validity [Wirklichkeit als Geltung], have so far merely discovered a convenient expression which may keep us on our guard against interchanging the two notions. The fact [die Sache aber] which the term validity expresses has lost none of that strangeness which has led to its being confused with Being. (Ibid., 217–18) Just prior to that passage, Lotze had listed four forms of Wirklichkeit (as distinguished through their verbs): Wirklich nennen wir ein Ding welches ist, im Gegensatz zu einem andern, welches nicht ist; wirklich auch ein Ereignis welches geschieht oder geschehen ist, im Gegensatz zu dem, welches nicht geschieht; wirklich ein Verhältnis, welches besteht, im Gegensatz zu dem, the bookshelf, as long as it was not borrowed (in which case it would be checked out, nicht vorhanden). A single example should suffice to illustrate this traditional usage, taken from the “German Metaphysics” of Christian Wolff: “Wo etwas vorhanden ist, woraus man begreifen kann, warum es ist, das hat einen zureichenden Grund [Wherever there exists something whose reason for being one can grasp, it has a sufficient ground]” (Vernünftige Gedanken, §30). The French translations of être-subsistant, être-sous-la-main, or être-là-devant are all overtranslations whose principal drawback is precisely their obscuring of the lexical and doctrinal background on the basis of which (as in the case of endoxa [ἔνδοξα] and the Aristotelian construction of aporia; see DOXA) Heidegger elaborates the question of the meaning of being. In the Ideen Husserl still used Vorhanden in its most common sense: By my seeing, touching, hearing, and so forth, and in the different modes of sensuous perception, corporeal things with some spatial distribution or other are simply there for me, “on hand” in the literal or the figurative sense [sind für mich einfach da, im wörtlichen oder bildlichen Sinne “vorhanden” ] whether or not I am particularly heedful of them and busied with them in my considering, thinking, feeling, or willing. (Husserl, Ideas Pertaining, trans. Kersten) The term Bestand, just like the term Geltung, needs to be taken in the sense it receives from Bolzano, through Lotze and Rickert, up to Meinong—but not further. It is truly misrepresented when a violent retrospection already imbues it with the meanings that it will later accrue through Heidegger’s analysis of technique, and already translates Bestand into French as F. Vezin does, as some “fonds subsistant” (“standing reserve”). . III. The Vocabulary of Being in Lotze What we have just described as an indispensable lexical/ doctrinal context enables us to follow Heidegger’s way of addressing the question of being—by starting with the concrete 1 Existence, Arabic wuğūd, and Vorhandenheit Like Hebrew, Arabic does not use the copula in the present: the verb that serves its function in the past and in the future (kāna [َكان ,[ yakūnu [يكون ([has no existential meaning. To render the Greek einai, translators had recourse to the verb “to find” (Fr. trouver), which in the passive voice can mean “to find oneself there,” “to be there.” The grammatical noun (in Arabic grammar mas. ([مصدر] dar that corresponds is wuğūd [وجود” ,[the fact of finding,” or “the fact of being found.” [Ibn] The Hebrew of the translators of the ibn Tibbon school has the exact equivalent, nims. ā [הָצְ מִנ .[Al-Fārābī (d. 950) retains the memory of this derivation: “It may be that what they understand by “being” [lit.: “found”], used by them [the Arabs] in an absolute sense, is that the thing becomes known by the place where it is found, that it can be used however one wants, and that it lends itself to whatever one demands of it.” (Al-Fārābī’s Book of Letters [Kitâb al-Hurûf], Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, I, §80; Arabic text, edited with an introduction [in Arabic] and notes by Muhsin Mahdi. Beirut: Catholic Press, 1969; 110, I, 12–14). When Avicenna’s writings in Arabic were translated into Latin, the translators recognized the origin of the term and rendered it by esse, ens, or existentia. The verb “to be,” whose existential significance had remained more or less latent in Greek, was able to deploy it to the full only at the end of a journey in which the Arabic leg is an important one. When Heidegger sought to find a term capable of embodying the thesis of being in traditional ontology, he chose Vorhandenheit, “being available” or “at hand” (for example, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie [The fundamental problems of phenomenology], summer semester course, 1927, Gesamtausgabe, 24: 173). It is interesting to note that the concept he focuses on has a semitic prefiguration. Rémi Brague 1212 VORHANDEN some distance from it: “In an earlier research into the ontology of the Middle Ages, I myself returned to Lotze’s distinction and used the expression ‘actuality’ for ‘being,’ but I no longer consider that correct.” Heinrich Rickert, who was a teacher of Heidegger, noted for his part in his celebrated Logik des Prädikats: Ich nenne jetzt alles “seiend,” was es überhaupt “gibt,” oder was sich als “etwas” denken läßt, also auch das Gelten, den Sinn, den Wert, und das Sollen. . . . Wir haben also zunächst “Seiendes überhaupt” als den Begriff, unter den alles Denkbare fällt. (Now I call “being” anything that “there is” in general, or anything that can be thought of as “something,” and thus also validity, meaning, value, and that which ought to be. So we take “being in general” to be the concept which subsumes everything that is thinkable.) (Rickert, Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, 264) We can take analyses of this sort (Lotze’s or Meinong’s on the one hand, or Rickert’s on the other) as the background for the celebrated paragraph in Sein und Zeit in which Heidegger outlines different modes of being corresponding to different welches nicht besteht; endlich wirklich wahr nennen wir einen Satz, welcher gilt, im Gegenstand zu dem, dessen Geltung noch fraglich ist. (Lotze, Logik, 512) For we call a thing Real/Actual which is, in contradistinction to another which is not; an event Real which occurs or has occurred, in contradistinction to that which does not occur; a relation Real which obtains, as opposed to one which does not obtain; lastly, we call a proposition really true which holds or is valid as opposed to one of which the validity is still in doubt. (Lotze, Logic, 208) The point about Validity stems from Lotze’s conviction that “the language of ancient Greece never found any term to express the reality of simple Validity as distinguished from the reality of Being, and this constant confusion has prejudiced the clearness of the Platonic phraseology” (ibid., 211). Let us recall that in 1925–26 Heidegger had already cited Lotze’s passage on Validity in relation to the four meanings of Wirklichkeit in a course in Marburg (Logik, die Frage nach der Wahrheit). The course was also an occasion for him to take 2 From Bolzano to Heidegger: The common meaning of Bestand B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, I, §48: The subjective idea [subjektive Vorstellung] is thus something real [etwas Wirkliches]; at the particular time at which it is present, it has a real existence [wirkliches Dasein] in the mind of the subject for whom it is present. As such, it also produces all sorts of effects [Wirkungen]. This is not true of the objective idea or idea in itself [objective oder Vorstellung an sich], which belongs to every subjective idea. I mean by it something [etwas] not to be sought in the realm of actuality [das Reich der Wirklichkeit], something that makes up the direct and immediate material [Stoff] of the subjective idea. This objective idea requires no subject to whom it is present, but would have being [besteht]—to be sure not as something existent, but nevertheless as a certain something—even if no single thinking being should apprehend it [auffassen]. And it is not multiplied when one or two or three or more beings think of it, as the subjective idea related to it then exists in plural number. (Bolzano, Theory of Science, 78) Objectness changes into the constancy of the standing-reserve, a constancy determined from out of Enframing [Gestell]. (Heidegger, “Science and Reflection,” in Question Concerning Technology, 173) If technique is “provocation” and “interpellation,” it assures itself of that which is in respect of its own position and stability (Stand): Whatever is ordered about in this way [being immediately at hand] has its own standing. We call it the “standing-reserve” [Bestand]. The word expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere “stock.” The name “standing-reserve” assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the challenging revealing. Whatever stands [steht] by in the sense of standing-reserve [Bestand] no longer stands over against us as object [Gegenstand]. (Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology,” in Question Concerning Technology, 17) This collage of quotations is not meant to suggest that Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre constitutes the backdrop to the introduction of Sein und Zeit but only that every supposedly immanent and violently self-interpretative translation runs the risk of creating its own misapprehensions. There is no question of “standing reserve” (fonds subsistant) in Being and Time, where Bestand is the specific mode of being of that which besteht, which consists or subsists, without existing, as is the case of an “idea in itself,” of an ideality, a fiction, even a chimera, or an internally contradictory entity like a square circle. As Heidegger notes in the margins of his own copy of the book, Dasein here is also to be taken in its common meaning, in the sense that Kant for example spoke of the impossibility of an ontological proof of the Dasein Gottes (the existence of God), or the sense in which Bolzano spoke of the effective existence of the subjective idea in the one who conceives of something. This is a precision that E. Martineau incorporates in his French translation by adding the word “existence” between brackets to his translation as être-là. As for the last es gibt, we believe that it is meant to be understood in a technical sense prior to any of Heidegger’s elaboration, in the way that Heidegger had treated it from his first course in Freiburg in 1919. REFS.: Bolzano, Bernard. Theory of Science. Translated by Dailey Burnham Terrell. Dordrecht, Neth: Reidel, 1973. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Edited and translated by William Lovitt. New York: Garland, 1977. VORHANDEN 1213 the expression zuhanden “within reach” [à portée de la main]. He opposes this term to vorhanden which situates the same things beyond the horizon of their availability, where they generally first encounter us. Still present, but no longer a utensil, the thing as Vorhandenes is no longer anything but the subject of predicates that apply to it when its use is no longer a preoccupation. From the beginnings of philosophy, what characterizes the presence of things is that the pragmata are no longer anything other than onta [ὄντα], beings étants much more within view sous les yeux rather than within reach à portée de la main. (Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger, 3) The Chilean translator justified his decision in the following terms: Estar-ahí . . . in German, Vorhandensein or also Vorhandenheit. Gaos translates it as “ser ante los ojos” [to be in front of one’s eyes]. This translation is not bad, and it affords a basis for following the young Heidegger’s courses, but it doesn’t seem excellent to me. First of all, because the expression “ser ante los ojos” doesn’t say much in Spanish; it does not “speak” to us [no dice nada en español, no nos “habla”]. We would of course say “estar delante, estar a la vista” [to be there in front of us, to be in view]. I have preferred to translate Vorhandensein, Vorhandenheit as “estar-ahí” and sometimes for emphasis as “estar-ahí-delante.” This is the Spanish way of saying what in classical German is meant by Dasein, which was the common translation of the Latin existentia. Dasein literally means “estar-ahí” (and never ser-ahí). What is fundamental about the idea of Vorhandenheit is simply that something “is there” [está without our necessarily being affected by it. Unlike Zuhandenheit, which we translate as “lo que es o está a la mano” that which is at hand], and which has some meaning for us, because there is something at stake [lo que tiene un significato por nosotros, lo que nos importa porque en ello nos va algo], Vorhandenheit is that which does nothing else but be there, which is, if you will, “pure presence” [es lo que no hace más que estar-ahí; es, si se quiere, “pura presencia”]. (Rivera Cruchaga, Ser y tiempo, 462) One might perhaps object once again that this is a case of overtranslation. Perhaps it is, but with the difference that here the proposed translation extends Heidegger’s own approach of reinterpreting existentia, or Dasein in its standard accepted use, in terms of Vorhandenheit. Rivera Cruchaga justified his translation of Zuhandenheit in these terms: Estar a la mano: in ordinary German, the term zuhanden is used as an adjective to indicate that something is at hand [encuentro a mano], that it is available: Heidegger creates the neologism Zuhandenheit to express the particular manner of being of that with which we have a daily commerce, a mode of being. The Zuhandenes is that which we handle [lo que “traemos entre manos”] without paying attention, so to speak, without any regional ontologies: quod est (the fact that something is) and Being as it is (Daß- und Sosein), Reality (Realität), presence-athand (Vorhandenheit), consistence and subsistence (Bestand), validity (Geltung), and existence (Dasein). IV. Vorhandenheit/Zuhandenheit: The Play of Difference in Heidegger The English translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson suffers from the same lack of contextualization, and the direct consequence, once again, is overtranslation: There are many things which we designate as “being,” and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being; and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the “there is.” In 1962 the first English translators, in a particularly unfortunate reference, were already claiming that the term Dasein was untranslatable (27n1). “The word Dasein plays so important a role in this work and is already so familiar to the English-speaking reader who has read about Heidegger, that it seems simpler to leave it untranslated.” And yet if there were one and only one passage in Being and Time where it would be appropriate to translate Dasein, it would surely be that one! Joan Stambaugh and J. Glenn Gray, in Basic Writings, from Being and Time (1927) to the Task of Thinking (1964), proposed with more precision, “Being is found in thatness and whatness, reality, the objective presence of things, subsistence, validity, existence, and in the ‘there is’ ” (47). The very remarkable Spanish translation, Ser y tiempo, by Jorge Eduardo Rivera Cruchaga does not escape overtranslation either: “El ser se encuentra en el hecho de que algo es y en su ser-así, en la realidad, en el estar-ahí (Vorhandenheit) en la consistencia, en la validez, en el existir, en el ‘hay’ ” (30). The turn of phrase estar-ahí is proposed as a translation of Vorhhandenheit/Vorhandensein in counterpoint to the ser-ahí of José Gaos’s translation (1951). The Gaos translation was intended to restore the terminus technicus “Dasein” in an apparently literal fashion, following the French être-là or the Italian esserci. Gaos had suggested translating Vorhandenheit as ser ante los ojos. In this he was followed by Jean Beaufret in his Dialogue avec Heidegger, speaking of être devant / sous les yeux. In this regard Beaufret’s presentation remains especially illuminating: Beaufret recalls how Heidegger, in Being and Time, sought to follow an analytic of the everyday as a guiding thread to determine being’s mode of being in its immediate presence for us, by looking to an analysis of the first objects that present themselves, not to theôria [θεωϱία], but to that practical outlook (praktische Umsicht) that clarifies them in commerce (Umgang) with something whose reliability (Verläßlichkeit) is supposedly well established. This is the mode of being of pragmata [πϱάγματα], those ordinary things of this world that we deal with, or even better of procheira [πϱόχειϱα] (Aristotle, Metaphysics Α, 2, 982b13): In this respect, as Jean Beaufret noted, things are essentially available to us [disponible]. Heidegger uses 1214 VORHANDEN V. Beyond the Division: The Circularity of Vorhandenheit/Zuhandenheit Let us return once more to the passage in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology that previously drew our attention: Schon die Worterklärung von existentia machte deutlich, daß actualitas auf ein Handeln irgendeines unbestimmten Subjektes zurückweist, oder wenn wir von unserer Terminologie ausgehen, daß das Vorhandene seinem Sinne nach irgendwie auf etwas bezogen ist, dem es gleichsam vor die Hand kommt, für das es ein Handliches ist. (Heidegger, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, 143) The verbal definition of existentia already made clear that actualitas refers back to an acting on the part of some indefinite subject or, if we start from our own terminology, that the extant (das Vorhandene) is somehow referred by its sense to something for which, as it were, it comes to be before the hand, at hand, to be handled. (Trans. Albert Hofstadter, 101) L’explicitation littérale du terme d’existentia a déjà fait apparaître clairement que l’actualitas renvoie à l’agir (Handeln) d’un sujet indéterminé, ou encore, selon notre terminologie, que l’étant-subsistant (das Vorhandene) est, conformément à son sens, référé d’une certaine façon à un sujet devant lequel il vient pour ainsi dire à portée de la main (vor die Hand), pour lequel il est maniable. (Trans. J.-F. Courtine, 130) A passage like this one is obviously a challenge to translation, especially if one wants to retain the lexical play of handeln, Vorhandene, vor die Hand. But it becomes singularly opaque with the superimposition of the “well-known” distinction of vorhanden/zuhanden. At issue here is not the legitimacy of the distinction; Heidegger will maintain it for as long as the meaning of being is getting worked out in the framework of fundamental ontology. Yet one needs to take into account that the terms must have maintained their separate identities and that they should still be able to do so. Before becoming coupled to Zuhandenheit, vorhanden was used by Heidegger to unpack, or to interpret, the Greek and subsequent Latin work of ontological conceptualization, and this through a procedure of trans-lation (Fr. tra-duction, Ger. Über-setzung) in its literal sense. In this case, the vorhanden— beyond its opposition to the specific mode of being of the utensil, and in the broadest meaning of Zeug—can serve to designate anything that is present, more or less at hand, and capable metaphorically of coming to hand. Such is the case of ousia as Heidegger interprets it, reinvesting it with its primary and concrete meaning: property, real estate, “farmland.” Here ousia—restored to its earlier, prephilosophical meanings of Wesen or Anwesen, in the sense of “goods, riches, possession, property”—is clearly “available,” like wood in the forest, marble in the quarry, fruits on the trees, or grain in the barn. Here ousia carries with it a natural dimension but form of objectification [cas sin advertirlo y sin ninguna objetivación]. (Rivera Cruchaga, Ser y tiempo, §69, note s.v., 467) This is indeed well put, yet it seems to us impossible to be satisfied with a simple opposition of two modes of being that correspond to two attitudes—one purely theoretical and always secondary, abstract, and impoverishing, the other primary and “pragmatic—even if this opposition is often stressed by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. It is indeed within the “pragmatic” horizons of preoccupied commerce that being is first discovered in its utensil dimension, as zuhanden, à portée de la main, within reach, at hand. But for its part, Vorhanden, according to Heidegger’s quasi-genealogical account in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, does not immediately lead to some form of seeing or to pure consideration, but rather to poiêsis [ποίησις]. It is in consideration of creative production that being is first apprehended as Vorhandenes (literally, procheiron [πϱόχειϱον]) and is thus referred to an “agent” in front of whom being comes “at hand” (vor die Hand) so to speak, for whom it is something handy (ein Handliches) (Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 143). In Heidegger’s genealogy of the notion of existence (existentia), this “return to the productive behavior of being [Rückgang auf das herstellende Verhalten des Daseins]” leads him to shed new light on fundamental ontological concepts (eidos [εἶδος], morphê [μόϱφη], to ti ên einai [τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι]). He relates them no longer to a specific target or intentionality of perception but to a Verhalten, a “behavior” or primordial “posture” in relation to being. Such behavior can just as easily be called “pragmatic” or “poetic,” since it is a matter of going beyond Aristotelian separations among theôria, praxis [πϱᾶξις], and poiêsis. The Vorhandenes, in its “primitive” usage, can thus be understood not as présent-subsistant (the received French translation, meaning present-abiding), but as vorhandenes Verfügbares (Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 153), present-sous-la-main disponible—“available, present-at-hand.” Should we conclude from all of this that the distinction that seems to have been drawn so firmly in Being and Time is in fact a moving target and that we should put aside vain quarrels of translation and resign ourselves to arbitrary transpositions? Surely not. The principle of establishing an equivalent for a German term with a single univocal term in French or any other language is a falsely rigorous one. It runs the risk, especially in the case under consideration, of obscuring the complexity of Heidegger’s gesture toward genealogy and phenomenological destruction. This gesture aims at rediscovering, beneath the sedimentations of traditional philosophical conceptualization, the living source from which the first conceptual elaborations were drawn, as well as their primary meanings. It is how ousia [οὐσία] (Wesen, essence) is led back to Anwesen (presence), and from thence to property, possession, and holding. It is how Wirklichkeit (the translation of actualitas) is led back to Verwirklichung (realization, effectuation) and to Gewirktheit, the effectuated (also translated as that which has been actualized), by which we understand the result of an operation. as vorhanden in its first meaning, as that which comes vor die Hand), in Being and Time Heidegger attempts to clear away the specific meaning of Zeug (the tool or instrument) such as it is experienced in the workshop (cf. §15–16), and, more generally, wherever there is work to be done, where the tool is to be put to work. In 1925 (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 20: 263) he introduces Zuhandenheit (Zuhandensein), as opposed to Vorhandenheit, to characterize the mode of being of instruments or tools, as distinct from the being of natural entities. The question (as will still be the case in Sein und Zeit, §15) is of being as it is initially encountered, as it first presents itself. In volume 20 (Prolegomena), the analysis clearly starts from the Werkwelt, the world of works and working (cf. also Sein und Zeit, 117, 172). Why is the Werkwelt given this importance? Precisely because of its Begegnisfunktion: it is through the Werkwelt that we encounter a person or thing. It enables the encounter with the ready-to-hand, with the immediately available: “das Zuhandensein, besser die Zuhandenheit, das Zuhandene als Nächtsverfügbare.” As for the Vorhandenes, as we have seen, it is always already there. We can better understand what Heidegger is aiming at if we go back again to the Werkwelt: the world of work refers us back to nature, to the world of nature (Welt der Natur), at least insofar as we think of it as a world that is available (“Natur aber hier verstanden im Sinne der Welt des Verfügbaren,” Gesamtausgabe, 20: 262). It is, then, in the very midst of “availability” that it becomes important to take note of a difference: the difference between the wood in the woodworker’s shop, for instance, and the tools that are ready to hand. Thus the Werkwelt is not self-contained but open to nature as being available. In its very constitution working always refers back to “das Werk selbst hat eine Seinsart des Angewiesenseins auf, der Schuh auf Leder, Faden, Nagel, Leder aus Haüten [The work itself has a way of being-dependent-on, the shoe on leather, thread, nails, the leather from hides]” (History of the Concept of Time, 193). That form of being that refers to, that relies on, explains that Greek ontology, in its emphasis on the primacy of Vorhandenheit, passed over the phenomenon of the world. It is precisely because Greek ontology is developed in the context of working, of producing (or even better, of poiêsis [ποίησις]), that it is oriented toward nature (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 24: 162) and misses the world, for if the world is “daseinsmäßig” (at the measure of the being-there), it is nonetheless inaccessible from the starting point of nature (ibid., 20: 231). In the Prolegomena, Heidegger borrows Husserl’s concept of “underpinning” (Fundierung) to clarify the primacy of the Werkwelt. The world of work, where the artisan is caught up in his work, “appresents” the ambient world close by, as well as the public world (in common) and the world of nature (“die Welt der Natur,” in the sense of always already being there, as resource, as materiel, as available stock). One should posit that the world of preoccupation, the Werkwelt, underpins worldliness in general. Weltlichkeit reveals itself first as the worldliness of the ambient world: the phenomenon of the world reveals itself as and in the worldliness of the environment. We maintain that the specific world of preoccupation is the one by which the world as a whole is encountered. one that, according to Heidegger, can open up only within the framework of technê [τέχνη]. So we should not confuse the two meanings of Vorhandenheit. Its first meaning , which we cannot dare call its original or first meaning, still maintains—and this is the whole point of Heidegger’s analysis of the term—an essential tie to action and handling. Its second meaning, which has been divested of its originally “technical” or pragmatic dimension by its philosophical usage, signifies only the “given,” that which is there-present, present-subsistent. It is in relation to that second sense that it has been possible to speak (Granel, Traditionis traditio) of Heidegger’s destruction of the ontology of Vorhandenheit or of Vorhandenes (whose second meaning is retained in the English “extant,” “occurrent”). We can recognize a certain priority to the first meaning insofar as the Vorhandenes is literally “vor der Hand” (“at hand,” devant la main), present, available as a “material.” It is always already there (in the sense of prouparchein [πϱουπάϱχειν]); it is “das schon Dastehende,” which is there, which persists there (estar-ahí) (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 25: 99). In this “first” meaning, Vorhandenes, which is always there (Fr. là devant), which does not need to be produced or brought out into presence, becomes confused with what lies at hand before us (das Vorliegende, Fr. le pro-jacent), the hupokeimenon [ὑποϰείμενον]. Anteriority, permanence, stability, these are the constitutive features of Vorhandenheit. The Vorhandenes is, in fact, vorfindlich—it comes forward, it finds itself “there already” (Fr. il y en a). Availability (Verfügbarkeit) can be taken as the proper characteristic of Vorhandenheit, in its first meaning (ibid., 24: 153). The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind “in the sails.” (Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson) On the other hand, Vorhandenes in its second meaning is given a negative definition: it consists of deficient modes of preoccupation that include “abstaining from,” “neglecting to,” “refraining from.” The fundamental feature of access to the Vorhandenes in this sense is the “nur noch”: “to only,” to refrain from any handling, to refrain from any use, to abstain from the practical attitude and only “consider” (nur noch hinsehen) (Sein und Zeit, 57). VI. The Available World and the Workshop: Grounded Presence One should not be surprised that the analysis of Zuhandenheit and of the Zuhandenes that begins as early as §15 of Sein und Zeit is conducted within the framework of a study of the being of beings such as it is initially encountered in the environment (Umwelt) and that it starts with the destruction of the concept of thing (Ding), guided by insistent references to the hand and to handling (Handlichkeit, 68–69). Ding is to be understood here as a metaphysical concept, a translation of ens rather than res (see RES). As opposed to this metaphysical reduction of being as pragmata [πϱᾶγματα], chrêmata [χϱῆματα], prokeimena [πϱοϰείμενα] (so many Greek terms that can be translated 1216 VORHANDEN been paid to this double meaning of Vorhandenheit has made it possible to repeatedly deplore the absence of any ontology of nature or of natural reality in Being and Time (cf. Michel Haar, Le chant de la terre). One must not reduce all the ontological determinations elaborated in it (except of course for Dasein) to an “ontology of the workshop” or of “work” when, in fact, what is at stake in the complex play of Vorhandenes and Zuhandenes is to find a means of access to the phenomenon of the world. Jean-François Courtine REFS.: Beaufret, Jean. Dialogue avec Heidegger. 4 vols. Paris: Minuit, 1945. Translation by Marc Sinclair: Dialogue with Heidegger. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Bolzano, Bernard. Wissenschaftslehre. Sulzbach: Seidel, 1837. Theory of Science. Edited by Rolf George. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Crowell, Steven, and Jeff Malpas, eds. Transcendental Heidegger. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Dreyfus, Hubert. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Granel, Gérard. Traditionis traditio. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Guignon, Charles B., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Haar, Michel. Le chant de la terre: Heidegger et les assises de l’histoire de l’être. Paris: L’Herne, 1985. Translation by Reginald Lilly: The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings, from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. . Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Also translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. London: SCM Press, 1962. . Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 22. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1993. Translation by Richard Rojcewicz: Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. . Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 24. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975. Translation by Albert Hofstadter: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Introduction by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. . Être et temps. Translated into French by F. Vezin. Paris: Gallimard, 1986. Être et temps. Translated into French by E. Martineau. Paris: Authentica, 1985. . Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitsbegriffs. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol 20. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979. Translation by Theodore Kisiel: History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. . Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1963. . Ser y tiempo. Translated into Spanish by J. E. Rivera Cruchaga. Madrid: Trotta, 2003. Ser y tiempo. Translated into Spanish by J. Gaos. Madrid, 1951. . Vorträge und Aufsätze. 4 vols. Pfullingen, Ger.: G. Neske, 1978. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. New York: Collier Books, 1962. . Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. Dordrecht, Neth.: Kluwer, 1998. Lotze, Rudolf Hermann. Logik. Drittes Buch: Vom Erkennen. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1989. First published in 1912. Translation by Bernard Bosanquet: Logic, in Three Books: Of Thought, of Investigation, and of Knowledge. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009. Rickert, Heinrich. Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie. Heidelberg: Vorrede, 1930. Wolff, Christian. Vernünftige Gedanken von den Kräfften des menschlichen Verstandes. In Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 1, Pt. 1. Hildesheim Ger.: Olms, 1965. First published in 1713. Logic, or, Rational Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding. Hildesheim: Olms, 2003. We maintain that the world in its worldhood is built neither from immediately given things or sense data nor even from the always already present subsistence of nature, which consists of itself as one puts it [aus dem immer schon Vorhandenen einer—wie man sagt—an sich bestehenden Natur]. The worldhood of the world is grounded rather in the specific work-world [Die Weltlichkeit der Welt gründed vielmehr in der spezifischen Werkwelt] (Heidegger, Prolegomena, 194; Gesamtausgabe (mod.) 20: 263) We can thus say that Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit are co-originating, inasmuch as both are complementary modes of being that the Werkwelt necessarily opens up. Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit are the features that make a priori possible any “encounter with.” Primacy is not a feature of Zuhandenheit but more fundamentally of the Werkwelt. The Werkwelt—the world-of-work, the world-of-labor: despite appearances it is not a composite term, the sort that the language of German philosophy is fond of. The world only opens itself through and for working. Vorhandenheit is not just thought of as a foil, as a simple correlate to the abstraction that results from an objectivizing intent entirely cut off from the world. Here the Vorhandenes is a co-constituent of the world of work, as a dimension of “nature,” of “natural products,” or of materials (Sein und Zeit, 70). What Heidegger characterizes as “founded presence” (fundierte Präsenz) is thus the Zuhandenes, without any real contradiction in relation to Sein und Zeit. If handiness (Fr. l’à-portée-de-la-main) is founded presence, this is always insofar as it presupposes a “taking care of,” “concern for,” “having to do with.” The “givenness” for the factive being, which is in the world, is always the Zuhandenes, and certainly not the Naturding, which is apprehended through perception, the Naturding in its claim to be given as “in the flesh” (Leibhaftigkeit). What is given? What gives? What is there (Ger. Was “gibt es”)? This could well be the question that leads ultimately from Sein und Zeit to Zeit und Sein. Das echte zunächst Gegebene ist . . . nicht das Wahrgenommene, sondern das im besorgenden Umgang Anwesende, das im Greif- und Reichweite Zuhandene. Solche Anwesenheit von Umweltlichen, die wir Zuhandenheit nennen, ist eine fundierte Präsenz. Sie ist nicht etwas Ursprüngliches, sondern gründet in der Präsenz dessen, was in die Sorge gestellt ist. The genuine immediate datum is thus not the perceived but what is present in concerned preoccupation, the handy within reach and grasp. Such a presence of the environmental, which we call handiness, is a founded presence. It is not something original but grounded in the presence of that which is placed under care. (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 20: 264; Eng. trans. Kisiel, Concept of Time, 194–95) Presence (Präzens) is here to be understood as Besorgtheitspräsenz, the coming into presence whose origin and guiding thread lies in preoccupation and care. The insufficient attention that has 1217 within which the human being deploys his being, according to a triple determination: cosmological, anthropological, and ontological. Etymologically, Welt maintains an optional relationship with time. This relationship is underscored by Schelling, the author of the Weltalter (Ages of the world), by means of a contestable (albeit illuminating) etymological link between Welt and währen (to endure). This link is made at the end of lesson 14 of the Philosophy of Revelation in order to keep in place a speculative equivalence between world and time (the cosmic eon): Die Wahre Zeit besteht selbst in einer Folge von Zeiten, und ungekehrt, die Welt ist nur ein Glied der wahren Zeit, und insofern selbst eine Zeit, wie ja das Wort, das von w(ae)hren herkommt und eigentlich eine W(ae)hr ung, eine Dauer, anzeigt, und noch unmittelbarer das griechische aion beweist, das ebensowohl eine Zeit als die Welt. (True time itself consists of a series of times, but the world is only one element of true time. In this respect, as the very name Welt suggests, true time derives from währen (to endure) and thus indicates a duration, which the Greek aiôn reveals even more directly, as it can equally designate a time or the world.) (Schelling, Schellings Werke, 6: 308, italics added) Even if Welt does not come from währen, which is itself a term related to wesen and to the third root in the etymology of the verb “to be” (Sanskrit vasami, Germanic wesan [“to dwell, remain, to live”] [cf. Heidegger, Introduction]), Schelling has nonetheless instinctively sensed the essential co-belonging of the world and time in his reference to the Greek aiôn [αἰών] “cosmic eon,” even if in an essentially Paulist sense (1 Cor. 7:31): “the form of this world [kosmos (ϰόσμος)] will pass away.” II. Mundus and Immundus As in the case of Semitic languages, there are several words or expressions in ancient Greek to designate what we call the “world,” depending on the aspect under consideration. Still, we should return to the concept of “world” that we are familiar with, which seems to have been barely examined, in order to appreciate the amount of speculative effort that it took to conceive of a totality that synthesized the two other Kantian categories of quantity, that is to say, the singular and the plural. “Ancient Egyptian has no word for ‘world,’ nor do any of the languages of Mesopotamia” (Brague, Wisdom of the World, 10). In Greek, the kosmos is actively “produced” in fragment 30 of Heraclitus and was “installed definitively and without ambiguity in its meaning as ‘world’ ” in Plato’s Timaeus (ibid.; see also Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, MUNDANUM -- MUNDUS -- WELT (GERMAN) DANISH verden, verdensalt DUTCH wereld ENGLISH world FRENCH monde GREEK kosmos [ϰόσμος], aiôn [αἰών], pan [πᾶν], ta panta [τὰ πάντα] SWEDISH vårld v. WORLD and AIÔN, DASEIN, ES GIBT, LEIB, NATURE, OLAM, OMNITUDO REALITATIS, TO BE, WELTANSCHAUUNG, WHOLE Is there something like a predisposition to phenomenology or even to existentialism in the “Germanic” concept of the world? One that should be properly separated out from any strictly cosmological conception? If such is actually the case, it is nonetheless the semantic trajectory of the ancient Greek kosmos [ϰόσμος] (from Heraclitus to Saint Paul and Saint John, passing through Plato) seems to have prefigured the splitting of meaning, to be clearly found in Kant, between a cosmological sense corresponding to the universe and a cosmo-political, anthropological, or existential sense referring to a way of relating to both the universe and the community of human beings. Paradoxically, Kant himself emphasized, in an anthropological perspective, how the French word monde had rubbed off some of its connotations on the German word Welt in its cosmopolitan acceptations. Welt is further enriched, in the philosophical vocabulary of the twentieth century, through an impersonal verb, welten, es weltet, a word coined by Heidegger or at least endowed with new meaning by him. I. “Germanic” Conception of the World? It has been possible to detect a “Germanic” concept of the world underlying Heidegger’s thought on the subject “because the sense in which it is to be understood is suggested by the etymology of the terms” in Germanic languages, including the German Welt, the English “world,” the Dutch wereld, Swedish vårld, the Danish verden, verdensalt, and so forth. The Germanic etymon is a compound word that combines an element signifying “man” (from the Latin vir) and a second element signifying “age” (cf. English “old”). The resulting meaning would be something like “where man finds himself as long as he is alive” (ce dans quoi l’homme se trouve tant qu’il est en vie) (R. Brague, Aristote et la question du monde, 27–28n37). We can note in passing that the seventeenth-century German word Weltalter (“age[s] of the world”) is essentially redundant, since it can be taken apart as: Ger. wer-alt (“epoch,” “world,” “generation”) + Ger. Alter (“age”), whence age of ages of man. As opposed to the cosmological concept of the world, which defines a whole of which I am but a tiny part, there is then perhaps a predisposition in the Germanic etymon leading in the direction of its phenomenological conception—that W 197–200). The cosmic tends to gloss over the “cosmetic,” the world of elegance, beauty, and order, as the opposite of the impure (the French im-monde). The Latin mundus, in the sense of the ensemble of celestial bodies, skies, universe of light, “seems to be the same word as mundus, ‘finery,’ which was chosen to designate the ‘world,’ no doubt in imitation of the Greek [ϰόσμος].” Thus, according to Amyot (Vie de Dion, X: 2, in Plutarch, Vies parallèles, 1559), the universe that obeys and is governed by the divinity “est de faict et de nom Monde, qui autrement ne serait que désordre immonde”—is in both name and actuality World (monde), which otherwise would only be a filthy mess (immonde). . The meaning of kosmos will take a decisive turn in the Greek New Testament, and it will take its place alongside mundus, Welt, and monde, especially in Saint Paul (1 Cor. and Gal.) and Saint John: it comes to designate a way of being human, the ensemble of conditions and possibilities for terrestrial life, in the form of an attitude that turns away from God. The meaning of kosmos is no longer cosmological, but 1218 WELT historical, even eschatological. “The sophia tou kosmou [σοφία τοῦ ϰόσμου], human wisdom as opposed to divine wisdom ho kosmos [ὁ ϰόσμος], on its own is interchangeable with ho kosmos outos [ὁ ϰόσμος οὖτος], an expression interchangeable in turn with ho aiôn outos [ὁ αίὼν οὖτος] (Bultmann, Theology, § 26, 254–59). It is also another name for philosophy: until the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a discussion in German around Weltweisheit, the “wisdom of the world” (the cover page of Hegel’s article of 1801 on The Different between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philiosphy presents the author’s credentials as der Weltweisheit Doktor, “the doctor in wisdom of the world”). Starting with the Greek-language versions of the New Testament, whose Hebrew origins specifically led them to set themselves apart from any Greek (pagan) sources, “world” comes to be understood as based on “this world” (this transitory world down below, with its existential attitude that entails turning away from God), and it takes on a negative connotation, even one of damnation, that brings it into almost direct opposition to mundus as the pure or the orderly. “World” paradoxically comes to connote that which the French refer to as immonde, literally “unworldly.” 1 “Order for the city”: The meaning of kosmos v. BEAUTY, DOXA, SPEECH ACT (Box 1), STRUCTURE One could render the term kosmos by the Baudelairian syntagm of “order and beauty” and compare it to our modern “structure.” Already in Homer the range of meaning resonates in every use of the term: thus the famous toilette of Hera, as she prepares herself for addling the mind of Zeus, in the seclusion and secrecy of her bedroom: ambrosia, oil, perfume, braids, dress, pin, belt, earrings, veil, and sandals, “she surrounds her body with panta kosmon [πάντα ϰόσμον],” all her finery, in other words, that glorious order which makes her woman’s world (Iliad, XIV, 186)—the world that Sophocles in his Ajax, 293, defines as silence: gunaixi kosmon hê sigê pherei [γυναιξὶ ϰόσμον ἡ σιγὴ φέϱει], “it is silence that brings women their finery / their world” (cf. Democritus 68 B 274 DK; even today we still think to say “just be beautiful and be quiet”) (Fr. sois belle et tais-toi). And when Odysseus at Alcinous’s house asks the bard Demodocus to “sing the kosmos of the wooden horse” (Odyssey, VIII, 492ff.), Victor Bérard’s French translation refers to the “histoire,” the Lattimore translation into English refers to it as “another part of the story,” and Robert Fagles has Odysseus ask the bard to “shift his ground.” At issue in the story is the construction-fabrication, the technique and the ruse, and the course of the world it determines. The goddess of Parmenides deploys both the “world of deception” in her speech (kosmon apatêlon [ϰόσμον ἀπατηλόν]) and the world of doxa [δόξα] that men adhere to in their minds (diakosmon [διάϰοσμον]), the “whole arrangement” of the world (VIII, 60), in the interweaving of a discursive arrangement and the order of the world. Finally, Gorgias brings to light the optimal form of organization that constitutes the kosmos and its corresponding excellences: “The order [kosmos] proper to a city is the excellence of its men; to a body, beauty; to a soul, wisdom; to a deed, excellence; and to a discourse, truth—and the opposites of these are disorder [akosmia (ἀϰοσμία)],” Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, 82 B11 DK, §1). In Heraclitus, cosmology does not triumph over cosmetics either: in fragment B 30 DK, which “produces” the kosmos, not only is fire required, but it is required in precise amounts (“This world-order [kosmon] did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is, and shall be: an everliving fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures [metra (μέτϱα)]”) (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers §217, 198). And the world so “cosmologized,” both elementary and measured, is also “the most beautiful” (“The most beautiful order of the world [ho kallistos ho kosmos (ὁ ϰάλλιστος ὁ ϰόσμος)]” is still a random gathering of things insignificant in themselves—Guy Davenport trans.). Thus in Plato’s Timaeus, Critias is left with but one hypothesis to consider: “that this world is most beautiful [ei men dê kalos estin hode ho kosmos (εἰ μὲν δὴ ϰαλός ἐστιν ὅδε ὁ ϰόσμος)] and that the demiurge is good” (29a 2–3). This equivalence of world and order (kosmos kai taxis [ϰόσμος ϰαὶ τάξις]) (Aristotle, Metaphysics, A, 984b16–17) is always at play: From the Pythagorean “harmony” to the Timaeus or the Aristotelian treatise De caelo, this identity is what makes it possible to physically describe or even to make mathematical calculations about the sky, celestial spheres, or the universe. But it also opens up the rhetorical and poetic sense of the kosmos as ornament (Aristotle, Poetics, 21, 1457b1–2: “a noun must always be either the ordinary word for the thing, or a strange word, or a metaphor, or an ornamental word [kosmos],” Bollingen Series 71, vol. 2), as well as an easy usage of the plural (Plato, Protagoras, 322c2–3: “the principles of organization of cities [poleôn kosmoi (πόλεων ϰόσμοι)] and the bonds of friendship”). Does the much praised beauty of the Greek world hang from this: that the kosmos always also involves the aesthetic? Barbara Cassin REFS.: Homer. Iliad. With an introduction, a brief Homeric grammar, and notes by D. B. Monro. 5th ed., rev. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958–1960. . Odyssey. Translated by Walter Shewring, introduced by G. S. Kirk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. WELT 1219 defined. There is a branching out and differentiation of the concept in the overlap of languages (Latin, German, French). III. World and Universe . Leibniz’s classical definition of the “world” does not admit of a plural form, according to the explicit terms of article 8 of the Theodicy: “The ‘world,’ in the pejorative sense, flows in again unceasingly to the very midst of these islands which have been won from its expanse of miry waters” (Lubac, Catholicism, 272). Once on this theological trajectory, mundus in the patristic and subsequent scholastic Latin will still designate a “totality,” but the totality “of creation,” the ens creatum that is thus distinct from God. In the modern era it is especially between Leibniz and Kant that the very concept of “world” will be 2 “Whole” and “ensemble”: Pan open / holon closed v. IDENTITY, UNIVERSALS Ancient Greek has two main ways of saying the “whole”: the adjective pas [πᾶς] and the noun to pan [τὸ πᾶν], or the adjective holos [ὅλος] and the noun to holon [τὸ ὅλον]. The difference is all the more difficult to grasp as it cannot be mapped onto the Latin distinction between omnis and totos. The word holos is basically to pas what omnis is to totus (RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, see “Holos”), except for the fact, noted in even the most elementary grammars and indicated in the dictionaries as well, that “[πᾶς] pas, whole, each, corresponds to omnis and totus, while [ὅλος] holos, entire, only corresponds to totus” (Ragon, 39). Word order further complicates the semantics, since pasa polis [πᾶσα πόλις] is supposed to mean “any city,” while pasa hê polis [πᾶσα ἡ πόλις] means “the whole city,” and hê pasa polis [ἡ πᾶσα πόλις] “the city as a whole” (Fr. l’ensemble de la ville). In addition, there is an intensive form hapas [ἅπας], “the whole, completely,” pl. hapantes [ἅπαντες], “all without exception, all together.” Thus the LSJ (RT: LSJ) gives three ways of understanding pas, the collective pronoun: “when used of a number, all; when used of one only, the whole; of the several persons in a number, every.” But the second translation holds equally for holos: “whole, entire, complete in all its parts” (LSJ, s.v. “Holos”). So how can one make the precise distinction between to pan and to holon? Etymology gives an indication of the specificity of to holon, better rendered in English by “the whole” than by the French totalité or ensemble: holos is identical to the Sanskrit sárva-, “complete, intact,” from which the Latin adjective salvus (“well, safe, unhurt”) derives (cf. also the greeting salve, and the French salut) and which is also no doubt the source for “whole” and “holy” (Fr. saint), as well as “hale and healthy” (Fr. sain). Holon designates the whole as something more than the sum of its parts. Socrates takes the syllable hê sullabê [ἡ συλλαϐή] (literally “com-position,” or “com-prehension,” or even “con-cept”) as an example to illustrate the difference between to holon, ensemble rather than totality, and to pan, the sum of the two elements S and O: Socrates: Or would you say that a whole [to holon], although formed out of the parts, is a single notion different from all the parts [ek tôn merôn gegonos hen ti eidos heteron tôn pantôn merôn (ἐϰ τῶν μεϱῶν γεγονὸς ἕν τι εἶδος ἕτεϱον τῶν πάντων μεϱῶν)]? Theaetetus: Yes, that is what I should say. Socrates: And would you say that all and the whole [to holon tou pantos (τὸ ὅλον τοῦ παντός)] are the same, or different? (Plato, Theaetetus, 204a–b, trans. Benjamin Jowett) We cannot help observing that this passage is immediately and irresistibly complicated by the play of the plural ta panta kai to pan esth’ hoti diapherei? [τὰ πάντα ϰαὶ τὸ πᾶν ἕσθ’ ὅτι διαφέϱει], “Or would you say that a whole, although formed out of the parts, is a single notion different from all the parts?” [Fr. trans.: Diès: “la totalité et la somme”; Narcy: “l’ensemble et le total”] as well as by the intensive form “then in predicating the word ‘all’ of things measured by number we predicate at the same time a singular and a plural? [to te pan kai ta hapanta [(τὸ τε πᾶν ϰαὶ τὰ ἅπαντα)],” 204d [Diès: “la somme et la totalité”; Narcy: “le total et l’ensemble au complet”]. Where French is concerned I would propose keeping the relation among the singular pan “tout,” the plural panta “total” of the parts, and the plural hapanta, “totalité” or “totalisation” of the parts. Aristotle takes up the example of the syllable, as opposed to the “heap” (sôros [σωϱός]) to explain what makes the unity of a composite; what Socrates referred to as the eidos [εἶδος], as opposed to the letters that make up matter (hulê [ὕλη]), “causes the fact that it is a syllable” (aition tou einai todi de sullabên [αἴτιον τοῦ εἶναι τοδὶ δὲ συλλαϐήν]), (see TO TI ÊN EINAI). Aristotle calls ousia [οὐσία], “essence,” which is to say phusis [φύσις], “nature” (“their substance would seem to be this nature, which is not an element but a principle “(hautê hê phusis ousia, hê estin ou stoicheion all’ archê [αὕτη ἡ φύσις οὐσία, ἥ ἐστιν οὐ στοιχεῖον αλλ’ ἀϱχή]) (Metaphysics, Z, 1041b25–32; see NATURE, PRINCIPLE). And he chooses to call to sunolon [τὸ σύνολον] what is usually understood as the “concrete thing” (or “complete substance,” LSJ), the “formula taken with the matter” (or eidos with the hulê, LSJ), but which properly refers to the concrete “individual,” Socrates himself or Callias, constituted by “the indwelling form” of what he refers to elsewhere as ousia prôtê [οὐσία πϱώτη] or “primary substance (or essence)” (cf. Z, 11, 1037a29–33, hê sunolê ousia [ἡ συνόλη οὐσία]; see ESSENCE III.A.1 and SUBJECT, Box 1). Chapter 26 of book ∆ very succinctly specifies the difference between pan and holon, for finite quantities that have a beginning, middle, and end: “those to which the position does not make a difference are called totals (pan), and those to which it does, wholes (holon).” Some things can be both wholes and totals, for instance, wax or a coat. “These are the things whose nature [phusis] remains the same after transposition, but whose form [morphê (μοϱφή)] does not” (ibid., 1024a3–6). But it is clearly the joining of body and soul, or that whole that is the body, which is holistic par excellence. (When a “part,” such as a foot or hand, is removed, it is mutilated and no longer itself; they are “organs” only as homonyms: Politics, A, 2, 1253a20–21; cf. for example De partibus animalium, 645b14–17). We can see how the difference of pan/holon refers to the constitution of unity and of unicity, juxtaposition/organicity, and thus determines a powerful and lasting ontological modulation (cf. for example its application to Dasein in Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Niemeyer, §648, 244 and note 3). The primacy and status of the holon is tied to the superiority of the finite over the infinite, of the closed over the open. With Parmenides (his being is houlon [οὖλον], “whole,” and tetelesmenon [τετελεσμένον], “finished, completed,” VIII, 38 and 42), but in (continued) (A world is a real connection of finite things, which itself is not part of another in turn, which it would belong to through any real connection.) (Crusius, Entwurf der notwendigen Vernunft, §350) Mundus will come to be defined as “totum quod non est pars,” “a whole which is not a part [in turn],” as in Sectio I, entitled “De notione mundi generatim” (Of the notion of world in general) of Kant’s Dissertation of 1770: In compositio substantiali, quemodium Analysis non terminatur, nisi parte quœ non est totum, h.e. SIMPLICI: ita Synthesis non nisi toto quod non est pars. (As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.) (Kant, Dissertation, section I, §1) In section two of the same Dissertation, Kant enumerates the three “moments” that constitute the “world”: material, forma, universitas (universality); this last defined as “omnitudo compartium absoluta,” “the absolute totality of companion I call “World” the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have existed in different times and different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one Universe. (Leibniz, Theodicy, “Essays on the Justice of God and the Freedom of Man in the Origin of Evil,” I, 8, 128) Baumgarten defines it thus in Latin, in 1743: Mundus (universum, pan [πᾶν]) est series (multitudo, totum) actualium finitorum, quoe non est pars alteris. (The world [universe, pan (πᾶν)] is the series (multitude, whole) of actual areas that is not part of another [i.e., that is not in turn part of a larger whole].) (Baumgarten, Metaphysica, II, §354) And Christian August Crusius, two years later, in German: Eine Welt heißt eine solch reale Verknüpfung endlicher Dinge, welche nicht selbst wiederum ein Teil von einer andern ist, zu welcher sie vermittelst einer realen Verknüpfung gehörte. opposition to Anixamander, Atomism, and later Epicurus, Aristotle shapes an entire “classical” Greek tradition: the infinite to apeiron [τὸ ἄπειϱον] “turns out to be the contrary of what it is said to be. It is not what has nothing outside it that is infinite, but what always has something outside it” (Physics, 6, 206b34–35, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye). The infinite is linked to matter, to privation, to the absence of telos [τέλος], to dunamis [δύναμις] (see FORCE and PRAXIS), and by definition it can neither be measured or known. The prevalence of the whole and holistic can function in every domain. In aesthetics, for example, it is of necessity the rule, and it is beautiful that tragedy represents a holê praxis [ὅλη πϱᾶξις], an action that is complete of itself, with a beginning, middle, and end that is of a length that can be held in the memory (Poetics, 7). In logic it meets up with the problem of the “universal,” to katholou [τὸ ϰαθόλου] (which prior to Aristotle was no doubt written kath’ holou [ϰαθ’ ὅλου], “on the whole” [RT: LSJ], “d’ensemble” [RT: Dictionnaire grec français]), which could be articulated analytically with kath’ hekaston [ϰαθ’ ἕϰαστον], “the particular,” one by one, according to the distributivity of pan (cf. Metaphysics, ∆, 26, beginning; see UNIVERSALS), but which, unlike the latter, defines all objects of science. In politics we can see a strong dividing line separating Platonism and Aristotelianism: the Platonic city is a holon, a hierarchical organism completely oriented toward a single goal, whereas democracy for Aristotle is a pan and even a pantes hoi Athênaioi [πάντες οἱ ᾽Αθηναῖοι], “all Athenians,” in other words, a mass and mixture of citizens (cf. B. Cassin, “De l’organisme au pique-nique”; see POLIS). But it is clearly in cosmology that this difference is thematized most powerfully, as in its original domain. The Stoics, who insisted so strongly on the organic and systematic, make it into a difference of doctrine: to holon designates the kosmos, the “world,” while to pan designates both the world and the incorporeal emptiness that surrounds it, which it requires in order to dilate (“the whole [pan] is different from the universe [holon] for the Stoics. They call the “universe” the world [holon men ton kosmon (ὅλον μὲν τὸν ϰόσμον)], and “whole” the world with the void [pan de meta tou kenou (πᾶν δὲ μετὰ τοῦ ϰενοῦ)], RT: SVF, II, 523, cf. Goldschmidt, Le système, 27–28). Thus to holon is to be rendered as “the universe” (universus, literally “turned as a whole toward”): the choice of term is understandable. It lays emphasis on the unity of a common goal (see already, in Aristotle’s De caeolo, the characterization of the holon and of the parts as “according to the prevailing element” [eis to auto pheretai to holon kai to morion (εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ φέϱεται τὸ ὅλον ϰαὶ τὸ μόϱιον)], A, 3, 270a4). But the intersections and crossings of traditions through translation, via Cicero (Timeaus, 6, where pan is rendered as universitas; of De natura deorum, I, 120 [de universitate rerum in eodem universo], II, 29–32 [mundum universum], for example), via Lucretius, and through translations of translations, leads to an utter terminological imbroglio: thus in Lucretius omne, the infinite whole, and summa are both rendered at random, sometimes within the same passage, as “whole” (or “Whole”) or as “universe,” “ensemble,” “space,” etc. (compare, for example, the French translations by A. Ernout and J. Kany-Turpin for I, 706, 951–984, or II, 1044–1096). Small wonder, then, that at the dawn of the modern era, given all the confusion and regroupings of the differences of pan/holon, the world would be closed and the universe infinite (A. Koyré). REFS.: Cassin, Barbara. “De l’organisme au pique-nique. Quel consensus pour quelle cité?” In Nos Grecs et leurs modernes. Paris: Seuil, 1991. Goldschmidt, Victor. Le système stoïcien et l’idée de temps. 4th ed., rev. and augm. Paris: Vrin, 1979. Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957. Lucretius. De rerum natura. Edited and translated by Cyril Bailey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947. Ragon, Éloi. Grammaire grecque. Completely revised by A. Dain, J. de Foucault, and P. Poulain. 5th ed. Paris: J. de Gigord, 1957. (continued) WELT 1221 The translation of this passage into English poses particular difficulty. On one hand we are dealing with the thorny issue of idiomatic anachronism—does one say “Welt haben” in contemporary German with the same meaning that Kant had implied in the late eighteenth century? Does one ever say “having the world” in English, especially when it is being contrasted with “knowing the world”?—and on the other hand we are faced with an additional maneuver of translation (the Foucault), which has inadvertently complicated the thrust of the original. To parse this out, we can start with Kant’s German. Kant’s equivocation of anthropology (Menschenkunde) and world-knowledge (Weltkenntnis) places “knowing the world” (Welt kennen) squarely in opposition to the notion of “having the world” (Welt haben). As Kant subsequently makes clear, having the world requires an active engagement—one who has the world has played within it (gespielt)—while knowing the world is a separate form of passive engagement, perhaps akin to the attentive remove of ethnographic fieldwork, wherein the observer is attuned to the play of the natives without directly affecting their behavior. Thus, a basic dichotomy emerges, from which we can formulate a sense of Kant’s implied meaning. Here, Welt kennen is the analytic mode of the dispassionate, academic observer, the one who does not enter into the action of the world but merely comprehends it as it plays out—who knows the world insofar as he or she would approach it, as from a distance, as critical object. Welt haben, by contrast, is an affair of contact and action. Like a certain Dasein in motion, to have the world is to engage with its sensorial splendor, to be materially involved in its goings-on, getting caught up in the mucky bits—being a body interacting with other bodies. In this sense the contemporary French expression “avoir du monde” gains both philosophical ballast and justification in Foucault’s translation. One uses the expression to denote a flood of people in one place, a surfeit of bodily contact; on the dance floor, at the parade, or in the train station at rush hour, il y a du monde. In such instances to inhabit the space of the real is manifestly to have contact with other bodies, to be pushed along among them, to be caught up in play. Thus, Foucault’s casual shift from German’s formal “die Welt” to French’s partitive contraction “du monde” privileges the tangible and corporeal aspects of the experience of “having the world.” And yet, his rendering of the opposite term seems to contribute to a new confusion. Welt kennen has become connaître le monde, obvious given the denotative equivalency of the two verbs, but slippery in their unequal connotations. In the literary French of the nineteenth century, “knowing the world” implies sexual experience, a certain fleshy materialism underfoot. This seems a far cry from Kant’s anthropology, at a cold remove from carnal commerce. With this rendering Foucault inadvertently confounds the two modes. When he states that one mode has merely “understood the game” while the other has joué le jeu, it becomes difficult to separate “knowing” the world from “having” it. For as these notions are presented here, “knowing the world,” the way, say, a dashing Flaubertian protagonist might, involves a fair amount of both knowledge and play. This encoded possibility of prior knowledge acquired through experience exceeds the binary initially established by Kant between aloof parts” (translated by Eckoff as “absolute allness of the appertaining parts”), which is, according to a celebrated formula, “the crucial test of philosophers”: Nam statuum universi in æternum sibi succedentium numquam absolvenda series, quomodo redigi possit in Totum, omnes omnino vicissitudines comprehendens, agere concipi potest. (For it is scarce conceivable how the inexhaustible series of the state of the universe succeeding one another eternally be reducible to a whole comprehending all changes whatsoever.) (Ibid., §2) The fact that the “crucial” difficulty inherent in the concept of “world” thus defined lies in the third constitutive moment, which is the universitas, indicates that the problem of the “world” is none other than the problem of the universe, with whom it becomes henceforth confused—the “entire universe” (Leibniz), or “that continuous vicissitude which produces the beauty of the universe” (Malebranche, Éclaircissements, 3: 218; Élucidations, 665). In other words, the problem has less to do with the “world” and more to do with the universitas mundi—at least for the Latin author, Immanuel Kant. IV. The German Adventures of “World” The same does not hold true of Kant the German author, who in positing the equivalence of anthropology (or Menschenkunde) and Weltkenntnis, “knowledge of the world,” draws out the existential meaning of Welt from German phraseology, which, unlike Latin, was his mother tongue. (We might also note the old French toz li mon in Commynes, in modern French tout le monde, “everyone,” or the Creole timoun [“little world,” “child(ren)”]; beginning in the sixteenth century du monde signifies “people” [Fr. des gens], and kosmos has the same meaning in modern Greek.) Noch sind die Ausdrücke: die Welt kennen und Welt haben in ihrer Bedeutung ziemlich weit auseinander: indem der Eine nur das Spiel versteht, dem er zugesehen hat, der Andere aber mitgespielt hat. (In addition, the expression “to know” the world and “to have the world” are rather far from each other in their meaning, since one only understands the play that one has watched, while the other has participated in it.) (Kant, Anthropology, 4) Michel Foucault translates the passage into French as follows: Encore ces deux expressions: connaître le monde et avoir du monde sont-elles, quant à leur signification, passablement éloignées l’une de l’autre vu que dans un cas on ne fait que comprendre le jeu auquel on a assisté, tandis que dans l’autre on a joué le jeu. (Kant, Anthropologie, Preface, in AK, 8: 120, Fr. trans. Foucault (modified), 11–12) 1222 WELT The plural form of the world is not without consequence for the very meaning of the concept of the world, which can no longer be defined as universitas mundi in the light of the plurality of worlds, even if only possible or imaginary worlds (Leibniz, Fontenelle). Only “knowing the world,” “die Welt kennen,” is to refuse to become involved, to draw back and look upon something transformed into a spectacle, a scene that one can withdraw from at will, according to the Baroque topos (Shakespeare, Corneille) of the world as theater—right up to Descartes: “ego, hoc mundi theatrum conscencurus, in quo hactenus spectator exstiti [as for me, I was getting ready to mount that world stage of which I had previously only been a spectator]” (Cogitationes privatae, 10: 212). Whence comes the distinction that will be established in the Critique of Pure Reason (A840–B868) between philosophy according to the Schulbegriff = in sensu scolastico, or scholastic concept intended for certain arbitrary ends, and philosophy according to the Weltbegriff = in sensu cosmico, that is, “what is necessarily of interest to each and everybody.” V. “Welt” and “Welten”: From the Noun to the Verb (Heidegger) In Kant the discussion of Welt starts out from the French monde in its anthropological sense, and hence from the Latin mundus, especially in its Augustinian usage, and thus invites us to work our way back to the meaning of kosmos in the New Testament (especially John). This is the source of the equivalence posed or supposed by Heidegger, who proceeds in this connection to underscore the differences between the Greek kosmos in the Hellenistic sense, the Latin mundus, and the German Welt: Liegt das metaphysisch Wesentliche der mehr oder minder klar abgehobenen Bedeutung von ϰόσμος, mundus, Welt darin, daß sie auf die Auslegung des menschlichen Daseins in seinem Bezug zum Seienden im Ganzen abzielt. (Rather, what is metaphysically essential in the more or less clearly highlighted meaning of kosmos, mundus, world, lies in the fact that it is directed toward an interpretation of human existence [Dasein] in its relation to beings as a whole.) (Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground,” in Pathmarks, 121) In the same text Heidegger will nonetheless adopt an unusual approach to the specificity of Welt and its connotations, and he prepares the reader through the discreet assonance of walten/welten (“to rule” / “to world”—i.e., to be deployed in the measure of a world [Fr. se deployer à mesure d’un monde]). “Welt ist nie, sondern weltet [World never is, but worlds]” (ibid., 126); Fr. “le monde n’est jamais, le monde se mondifie” (Fr. trans. H. Corbin, ibid., 142). The French comes close to Nerval (Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, “La Pléiade,” 2: 848): “Le monde amonde.” It was in fact in 1919 that Heidegger first took the risk of expressing welten, which in some way turns Welt into an unword (Fr: déverbal). comprehension alone and comprehension achieved in the moment through the added level of physical involvement. Has Foucault blurred this separation deliberately? Likely no, but he has provided a great occasion for considering the troublesome density of connotation added to the signifier awaiting translation. Thus, as we reflect on how to accurately render these terms in English, we should look beyond the French elaboration of Welt kennen and return to the messy world of bodies and crowds that helps to make avoir du monde such an evocative stand-in for Welt haben. We seek a term that simultaneously indicates play, presence, and embodiment. Heidegger achieved this magisterially, with all of the permutations of Dasein, but what is a translator of Kant to do? Can one mash up Kant and Heidegger together?—in English, can one be in the world, and have it too? In Kant’s diglossia, mundus carries a primarily cosmological meaning (= universitas mundi), whereas Welt is more oriented toward an anthropological and existential sense (with man as a Weltbürger, “a citizen of the world”)—the irony of the story lies in the fact that, as Kant himself observes, it is the French usage of monde (from the French used at court, in diplomacy, and in culture) that left its mark on the German Welt, which would in some sense adopt the same distance from that point on, from the Latin mundus up to its usage in scholastic French and the monde in the classical age of France. Welt haben, heißt Maximen haben und große Muster nachahmen. Es kommt aus dem Französischen. (Having the world means to have maxims and to imitate the great models. It comes from the French.) (Kowalevski, Die philosophischen Hauptvorlesungen, 71) We will refrain from following Michel Foucault and Henry Corbin in translating Welt haben by “having the ways of the world” (Fr. avoir les usages du monde), since Kant himself has drawn our attention to the literal transfer of the French avoir du monde into the German Welt haben (for the equivalences of avoir du monde, savoir son monde, savoir-vivre et se conduire dans le monde [“how to behave in good society”], see RT: Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 5: 372, esp. meaning 19 [“the society of men, or a part of this society”], which quotes Mme. de Sévigné, Molière, Saint-Simon, and Jean-Jacques Pauvert). It is when “world” ceases to entail a totality, a role now taken on by the concept of “universe,” that different “worlds” can be distinguished from one another and as ways of relating to this world: Mais de quoi jouissais-je enfin quand j’étais seul? de moi, de l’univers entier, de tout ce qui est, de tout ce qui peut être, de tout ce qu’a de beau le monde sensible, et d’imaginable le monde intellectuel. (But what did I enjoy in the end when I was alone? Myself, the entire universe, everything that is, everything that can be, everything beautiful about the sensible world, everything imaginable about the intellectual world.) (Rousseau, Troisième Lettre à M. de Malesherbes, quoted in RT: Dictionnaire de la langue française, meaning 3 [the physical world, the sensible world]) WELT 1223 3 Umwelt: From ecology to the commerce of being Popularized by ecology in the sense of “environment” (through the contrast between the terms of Umweltschutz/ Umweltschmut-zung: “environmental protection,” “pollution”), Umwelt appears around 1800 in an ode of Baggasen, is then taken up by Campe (1811), and is borrowed from the German and transposed into the Danish omverden by Dahlerup (1822); but it is Goethe’s usage that sanctions the entry and adoption of the term in the German language. At that point its meaning is given as “die den Menschen umgebende Welt [the world around mankind]” (Grimm, s.v.): the prefix um, like the Latin circum or French autour, gives Umwelt the meaning of umgebende Welt, the world “around” (us). But with Heidegger the prefix um- will take on intentional significance, in the locution um zu, “in order to,” and will displace the meaningfulness of the world, insofar as we are “in cahoots” with it, into our daily commerce with being. Outside of a specifically philosophical context, the term Umwelt can be taken up in German by the use of the French word milieu. 4 “Planetarity” “Planetarity,” as an English word, was first used in a paper I presented at Stiftung-Dialogik in Zurich, December 16, 1997, entitled “Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet,” and later printed as Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet/Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten, ed. Willi Goetschel, Vienna: Passagen, 1999. “Planetarity” was figured as a word set apart from notions of the planetary, the planet, the earth, the world, the globe, globalization, and the like in their common usage. The untranslatability of “planetarity” rests on an old-fashioned argument. If we think dogmatically (to borrow Immanuel Kant’s phrasing on the “dogmatic,” in English translation) of “planetarity” as contained under another, prior concept of the object (the “planet”), which constitutes a principle of reason, and then determine it in conformity with this, we come up with contemporary planettalk by way of environmentalism, referring usually, though not invariably, to an undivided “natural” space rather than a differentiated political space. This smoothly “translates” into the interest of globalization in the mode of the abstract as such. This environmental planetspeak is the planet as an alternate description of the globe, susceptible to nation-state geopolitics. It can accommodate the good policy of saving the resources of the planet. My use of “planetarity,” on the other hand, does not refer to any applicable methodology. It is different from a sense of being the custodians of our very own planet, although I have no objection to such a sense of accountability. (For that custodial sense a good epistemological preparation can be undertaken by way of Isabelle Stengers’s Cosmopolitics.) The sense of custodianship of our planet has led to a species of feudality without feudalism coupled with the method of “sustainability,” keeping geology safe for good imperialism, emphasizing capital’s social productivity but not its irreducible subalternizing tendency. This is what translates and provides the alibi for good global capitalism. On a different scale, Richard Dawkins–style DNA-ism is an attempt to translate planetthought digitally. But “planetary” is bigger than “geological,” where random means nothing, which no individual thought can weigh: “living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way around. The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes. The lifetimes of DNA messages (give or take a few mutations) are measured in units ranging from millions of years to hundreds of millions of years; or, in other words, ranging from 10,000 individual lifetimes to a trillion individual lifetimes. Each individual organism should be seen as a temporary vehicle, in which DNA messages spend a tiny fraction of their geological lifetimes” (Dawkins, Blind Watchmaker, 127). This, too, is a “dogmatic” thinking of planetarity. If we think critically—via Kant again—only in reference to our cognitive faculties and consequently bound to the subjective conditions of envisioning planetarity, without undertaking to decide anything about its object, we discover that planetarity is not susceptible to the subject’s grasp (see BEGRIFF). “The planet,” I said in the original paper, “is in the species of alterity.” I was iterating the older expression “in the species of eternity”—sub specie aeternitatis. The globe is on our computers. No one lives there. The “global” notion allows us to think that we can aim to control globality. The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan. It is not really amenable to a neat contrast with the globe. I cannot say “the planet, on the other hand.” When I invoke the planet, I think of the effort required to figure the (im) possibility of this underived intuition. Since to be human may be to be intended toward the other, we provide for ourselves transcendental figurations (“translations?”) of what we think is the origin of the animating gift of life: Mother, Nation, God, Nature. These are names (nicknames, putative synonyms) of alterity, some more radical than others. If we think planet-thought in this mode of alterity, the thinking opens up to embrace an inexhaustible taxonomy of such names, including but not identical with the whole range of human universals: aboriginal animism as well as the spectral white mythology of postrational science. If we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away— and thus to think of it is already to transgress, for, in spite of our forays into what we render through metaphor, differently, as outer and inner space, it remains that what is above and beyond our own reach is not continuous with us as it is not, indeed, specifically discontinuous. We must persistently educate ourselves into the peculiar mindset of accepting the untranslatable, even as we are programmed to transgress that mindset by “translating” it into the mode of “acceptance.” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak REFS.: Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, 1986. Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitics. Translated by Robert Bonono. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 1224 WELTANSCHAUUNG In einer Umwelt lebend, bedeutet es mir überall und immer, es ist alles welthaft, “es weltet,” was nicht zusammenfällt mit dem “es wertet.” (Living in an environment, it signifies to me everywhere and always, everything has the character of a world. It is everywhere the case that “it worlds” [es weltet], which is something different from “it values” [es wertet].) (Heidegger, War Emergency Semester 1919, in Definition of Philosophy, 58) As F.-W. von Herrman has noted (Hermeneutik, 43), welten is not properly speaking a neologism first used by Heidegger, for the verb, although no longer used, signified “leading the good life.” Heidegger has thus not coined it but reinterpreted the verb and given it a much broader signification. With Being and Time, Welt, “world,” will become an existential, that is to say, an ontological structure of human existence. This is both a radicalization of the “anthropological” sense of the word (even though existential analysis would not consider itself to be a form of anthropology), such as it emerges in the New Testament and is separated out by Kant, and an emancipation of the concept of “world” in relation to that of “universe” as well. In a course from 1929/1930 (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 29–30: §42, 261ff.), the stone is called weltlos, “without a world,” the animal is weltarm, “poorly endowed with world,” and the human being is weltbildend, “world image-making.” See Boxes 3 and 4. Pascal David REFS.: Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. Metaphysica. Hildesheim, Ger.: Olms, 1982. Brague, Rémi. The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament. Translated by Kendrick Grobel. New York: Scribner, 1951–1955. First published in 1948. Crusius, Christian August. Entwurf der notwendigen Vernunft—Wahrheiten, wiefern sie den zufälligen entgegengesetzt werden. Hildesheim, Ger.: Olms, 1964. First published in 1745. Descartes, René. Cogitationes privatae. In vol. 10 of Oeuvres. 11 vols. Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1996. Heidegger, Martin. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. In Gesamtausgabe. Vols. 29–30. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983. Translation by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. . Einführung in die Metaphysik. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953. Translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt: Introduction to Metaphysics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. . Pathmarks. Edited by William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. . Sein und Zeit. In Gesamtausgabe, Vol 2. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977. Translation by Joan Stambaugh: Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. . Vom Wesen des Grundes. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol 9. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976. Translation by Reginald Lilly: The Principle of Reason. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. . Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. In Gesamtausgabe. Vols. 56–57. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1987. Translation by Ted Sadler: Towards the Definition of Philosophy. London: Continuum, 2002. Hermann, Friedrich Wilhem von. Hermeneutik und Reflexion: der Begriff der Phänomenologie bei Heidegger und Husserl. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2000. MUNDUS -- WELTANSCHAUUNG (GERMAN) ENGLISH worldview FRENCH vision du monde, conception du monde v. WORLD and AIÔN, ANSCHAULICHKEIT, INTUITION, LEIB, PERCEPTION, REPRÉSENTATION The fact that Weltanschauung (Eng. “worldview,” Fr. vision du monde) sometimes appears in untranslated form in French philosophical prose (as in Sartre’s L’Être et le néant [Being and nothingness]) is an indication of this composite term’s resistance to translation. The paternity of the term is sometimes attributed to Schelling (“Schelling, who was the first to coin the term Weltanschauung,” Tilliette, Schelling, 1: 492) or to A. von Humboldt (“It seems that it was A. von Humboldt who coined the term Weltanschauung,” Brague, La Sagesse du monde, 294n76). Although these attributions are erroneous, they are nonetheless instructive, for they attest to the various uses of the term that range from the intuition of the world to its interpretation. In actual fact it would seem to have been Kant himself who first proposed the term Weltanschauung in §26 of the Critique of Judgment: Denn nur durch dieses [Vermögen] und dessen Idee eines Noumenons, welches selbst keine Anschauung verstattet, aber doch der Weltanschauung, als bloßer Erscheinung, zum Substrat untergelegt wird. (For it is only through this faculty and its idea of a noumenon, which latter, while not itself admitting of any intuition, is yet introduced as a substrate underlying the intuition of the world as mere phenomenon.) (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 103) Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Robert B. Louden. In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. . Dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis form et principiis [Dissertation on the form and principles of the sensible and intelligible world]. Translated by W. J. Eckoff (1894). . Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation and Early Writings on Space. Translated by John Handyside. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1979. Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Kowalevski, Arnold, ed. Die philosophischen Hauptvorlesungen Immanuel Kants. Nach den neu aufgefundenen Kollegheften des Grafen Heinrich zu Dohna-Wundlacken. Hildesheim, Ger.: Olms, 1965. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Translated by E. M. Huggard. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985. Lubac, Henri de. Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man. Translated by L. Sheppard and E. Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988. Malebranche, Nicholas. Éclaircissements sur la Recherche de la verité. In Œuvres complètes. Vol. 3. Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp: The Search for Truth and Elucidations of the Search after Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. . The Search after Truth. Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. In Philosophical Selections, edited by Steven Nadler. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992. Richardson, William. Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. Preface by Martin Heidegger. 4th ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von. Philosophie der Offenbarung. Edited by M. Frank. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977. First published in 1841–1842. WERT 1225 (En effet c’est seulement par cette faculté et son idée d’un noumène, qui lui-même n’autorise aucune intuition, mais qui est toutefois en tant que substrat mis au fondement de l’intuition du monde [Weltanschauung] comme simple phénomène.) (Fr. trans. A. Philonenko, 94; Fr. trans. J. Gibelin, 87) In the French translations, as in the English ones by Meredith and J. H. Bernard (Hafner Library of Classics), the translators balked at translating Weltanschauung as, respectively, vision du monde or “world view.” The translation problem is complicated by the fact that in Kant’s writings Weltanschauung does not necessarily have the meanings that it will subsequently assume in the philosophical literature. In his Marburg lectures from the spring of 1927, Heidegger undertook a preliminary reconstruction of the history of the term: This expression is not a translation from Greek, say, or Latin. There is no such expression as kosmotheôria [ϰοσμοθεωϱία]. The word “Weltanschauung” is of specifically German coinage (italics added); it was in fact coined within philosophy [das Wort ist eine spezifisch deutsche Prägung und zwar wurde es innerhalb der Philosophie geprägt]. It first turns up in its natural meaning in Kant’s Critique of Judgment—world-intuition in the sense of contemplation of the world given to the senses or, as Kant says, the mundus sensibilis. Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt thereupon use the word this way. This usage dies out in the thirties of the last century under the influence of a new meaning given to the expression “Weltanschauung” by the Romantics and principally by Schelling. Thus the word approaches the meaning we are familiar with today, a self-realized, productive as well as conscious way of apprehending and interpreting the universe of beings [einer selbsvollzogenen, produktiven und dann auch bewußten Weise, das All des Seienden aufzufassen und zu deuten]. (Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans., intro., and lexicon by Albert Hofstadter, §2, 4–5 [with modifications]) Actually, one does indeed come across the term kosmothêoria [ϰοσμοθεωϱία] but in modern Greek—and this as a translation or transposition of Weltanschauung! Heidegger goes on to describe the salient outlines of the semantic trajectory of Weltanschauung through a series of references: Hegel, Görres, Ranke, Schleiermacher, Bismarck, and finally Jaspers. In a lecture course given in 1936, Heidegger notes the extent to which the waning and deracination of the term has turned it into a slogan of the utmost platitude, even though it derived from the heights of German Idealism: Es wird hier die “Weltanschauung” des Schweinezüchters zum maßgebenden Typus der Weltanschauung überhaupt gemacht. (The world vision of the pig farmer has become the type and measure of the world vision altogether.) (Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise) An annotation (j) on the same page specifies in reference to Weltanschauung: “Das Wort ist nicht übersetzbar [the term is untranslatable].” After 1936 Heidegger would engage in a ferocious critique of the confusion, abetted by the phraseology of the Third Reich, between philosophy and Weltanschauung, reserving the latter for what it had become: an ideology. The semantic trajectory of Weltanschauung goes from an intuition of the world (the universe) to an ideology. Victor Klemperer provides further testimony in his study of the Lingua Tertii Imperii: “Philosophie” wird totgeschwiegen, wird durchgängig ersetzt durch “Weltanschauung.” “Weltanschauung” schon vor dem Nazismus verbreitet, hat in der LTI als Ersatzwort für “Philosophie” alle Sonntäglichkeit verloren und Alltags—, Metierklang bekommen. (As a substitute for philosophy, the word “Weltanschauung,” already prevalent before National Socialism, lost its solemnity and acquired an everyday, business-like ring.) (Klemperer, Language) Pascal David REFS.: Brague, Rémi. La Sagesse du monde. Paris: Fayard, 1999. Translation by Teresa Lavender Fagan: The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 24. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975. Translation by Albert Hofstadter: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Introduction by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. . Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. In Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 42. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1988. Translation by Joan Stambaugh: Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Translated by James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Translation by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews: Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited by Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Translation into French by Alexis Philonenko: Critique de la faculté de juger. Paris: Vrin, 1993. Translation into French by Jean Gibelin: Critique du jugement. Paris: Vrin, 1946. Klemperer, Victor. The Language of the Third Reich, Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. Translated by Martin Brady. London: Athlone Press, 2000. Tilliette, Xavier. Schelling: Une philosophie en devenir. 2 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1970. VALIDUM. valere. WERT / GELTUNG (GERMAN) ENGLISH worth, value FRENCH valeur, validité v. VALUE and DUTY, ECONOMY, ES GIBT, MACHT, MORALS, SOLLEN, UTILITY, VIRTUE, WILLKÜR Wert traces back to the Latin valere as do the etymologically related English terms“worth” and “value,” the French valeur, and the German Gewalt. Its substantive form derives from the adjective wert, itself close to the verbs werdan and werden (to become), placing Wert in the semantic orbit of the ought-to-be (cf. SOLLEN). Gelten comes from the Gothic and Old High German geltan (which means 1226 WERT “to pay tribute, to offer up as sacrifice”), as does Geld (money, cash; cf. gold, Fr. l’or). “Es hat keinen Wert” (it is of no value) refers back to a quality that is specific (or given) to the object being evaluated, while “es gilt nicht” signifies, for example, that a particular move in a game “does not count” or breaks the rules. Likewise the adjective geltend is used to describe legal tender or what is in effect (an act of jurisprudence, or a currency). Geltung can also signify the accepted use of a term or sign within a system of signification, and this “value” can also be given Gültigkeit, a pertinence or validity. The three terms Wert, Geltung/Gelten, and Gültigkeit, in their separate articulations, bring reflections on moral values into contact with ontology and the doctrine of judgment, in a configuration without equivalent in other languages. In his polemical essay “Die Tyrannei der Werte” (The tyranny of values) Carl Schmitt considers the “philosophy of values” to be a “reaction to the crisis of nihilism of the nineteenth century” (46). This may well be the right dating and an accurate characterization of a reaction to the spread of positivism, but it does not address the philosophical reflection on value in a larger sense that entailed the problematization of Wert as critique of morality (even an axiology), as well as an analysis of what constitutes the validity (Geltung, Gültigkeit) of judgments in the form of a logical reflection. Schmitt sums up the essentials of the relation among Wert, Geltung, and Gelten in a way that is not without pertinence to philosophy, even if it falls short of qualifying as a truly philosophical definition: Geltung is the actualization of value (Wert), while Gelten is the process by which a value acquires its validity (52). I. Nietzsche: The Evaluation of Values (Werte) and Their Validity (Geltung) It was undoubtedly Nietzsche who introduced from the perspective of a critique of traditional morality and its foundations an incisive radicalization of the Kantian reflection on the limits of our instruments of knowledge. By reducing the entire rational process to a story in which one set of values replaces another, he implicitly stressed the importance of value: Skepticism regarding all moral values is a symptom of the fact that a new table of values [Werttafel] is in the process of emerging. (Die Skepsis an allen moralischen Werthen ist ein Symptom davon, daß eine neue moralische Werthtafel im Entstehen ist.) (Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, VIII 4 [56], Nov. 1882–Feb. 1883) Values are, in effect, presented here as configurations that crystallize the developments to which they are consistently reduced: Pleasure and displeasure are the oldest symptoms of all judgments of value [Werturteile]. (Lust und Unlust sind die ältesten Symptome aller Werthurtheile: nicht aber Ursachen der Werthurtheile!) (Ibid., VIII 1 [97], Autumn 1885) The judgments themselves should be referred to more fundamental activities: Moral evaluation [moralische Wertschätzen] is an exegesis, a way of interpreting. The exegesis itself is a symptom of certain physiological conditions, likewise of a particular spiritual level of prevalent judgments: Who interprets?—Our affects. (The Will to Power, §254 [1885–1886], 148) Moral values, he argues, compared to physiological evaluations, are false, as is the “metaphysical postulate” that leads us to establish a correlation between levels of value and levels of reality. The highest levels are no truer; they are simply the most symptomatic: “Whatever has proven itself useful [nützlich] from time immemorial is good: as a result, it may assert its validity [Geltung] as ‘of the highest value,’ as ‘valuable in itself ’ [wertvoll]” (Genealogy of Morals, 14, First Essay, §3 in fine). The “utility” in question is part of the general economy of the will to power, that is to say, the permanent struggle among different affects, each seeking its maximum outpouring and release. Each affect is always “judging,” constantly “evaluating” what it will accept and what it will refuse. From the ensemble of these conflicts, the state of our “health” can be seen as the psychophysiological result whose evanescent equilibrium can give us the illusion of a stability that we call “self,” “identity,” “value,” and “truth.” The only “truth” that we can attain is a state of health (or sickness) that enables us to affirm (or deny) our personal interpretation of the dynamic of drives, then taken as foundational of thought and cultural patterns. Values are thus nothing other than symptoms. Every belief in values is an illusion whose ends have nothing to do with morality. The successive scales of value thus take the form of a spiral, ascending or descending, necessarily finite in possibility—the form of the eternal return. The life of the emotional drives is completely “intellectual” in as much as it consists only of evaluations; it has no “foundation” outside itself. Consequently, the “conversion of all values” (Umwertung aller Werte) is not a “subversion of values” (Umwälzung) that leads to an ultimate unalienated life; it is simply a segment of the spiral of the eternal return. The “truth” of values is valid only as a function of the greater or smaller levels of risk assumed by the person that grants them this validity: the “giving virtue” (die schenkende Tugend) of the creator (in whichever system) lays claim to superiority by being the only one capable of achieving a balance between destruction and creation. Nietzsche does not abandon the field of values; in fact he postulates that it is impossible to even hope to escape it. The axiological horizon—which is also that of the “body”— is the only one given to us. . II. Lotze: Bestehen and Gelten, Geltung and Gültigkeit In his lecture course from the summer semester of 1919, Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie (Phenomenology and transcendental philosophy of value), Martin Heidegger credits Hermann Lotze with having reacted in the WERT 1227 middle of the nineteenth century against the “absolute reification of the spirit promoted by naturalism” and “the reduction of all Being to corporeal matter, objectified events, matter and force” (Heidegger, Towards the Definition of Philosophy, 106–7). “His ubiquitous idea of the ought [des Sollens] and of value, and along these lines his interpretation of the Platonic ideas, which are not but instead hold, i.e., are valid as valuable, had a strong effect on the further development of philosophy, in the sense of a move away from naturalism and especially from psychologism” (ibid., 107). Heidegger sees a decisive motif in the development of modern value-philosophy in Lotze’s doctrine of the primacy of practical Reason according to Fichte’s interpretation, as “value-sensing” (wertempfindenen) (ibid). In his great work of 1864, Mikrokosmos (part 3, 500 and 510), Lotze had already introduced an opposition between Bestehen (to exist in the sense of “maintaining constancy”) and Gelten (to have value in the sense of needing to be taken into account). In his Logik Lotze proceeds to make the following distinctions: For we call a thing Real which is, in contradistinction to another which is not; an event Real which occurs or has occurred; a relation Real which obtains [besteht], as opposed to one which does not obtain; lastly we call a proposition Really true which holds or is valid [gilt] as opposed to one of which the validity [Geltung] is still doubtful. (Lotze, Logic, bk. 3, §316, 207) Here Gelten and Geltung refer back to Gültigkeit, but the formal validity of a proposition does not necessarily entail its objective validity; to confuse geltend and gültig is reductive. The only effective reality of a proposition lies in the fact that it is valid and that its contrary is not. Likewise, our thoughts and representations, which are always in a perpetual becoming and not in a stable form of being, “arrive” and take place like events, and their content does not have effective being either but is “valid” (gilt). Thus there are three fundamental concepts, none of which can be reduced to something derived from one another: being, taking place, and holding or being valid. Worth is interpreted by Lotze in the manner that Plato understood the ideas: a validity of truths that are eternally identical to themselves, independent of the existence of objects in the phenomenal world to confirm their relevance or of minds to think them. This intervention of Lotze’s will have a significant impact on posterity, for example in the Austrian school: Meinong, for instance, will oppose (effective) being (Sein) and the “constancy” (Bestehen) of the habitual objects of knowledge (identity, difference, etc.). Lotze’s theory will survive also in the neo-Kantianism of Baden under its normal appellation as “theory of the two worlds.” This latter approach developed the consequences of Lotze’s reinterpretation of the Platonic theory of ideas in all their breadth and complexity. . III. Rickert: Wert and Sollen, the Primacy of Practical Reason Taking his starting point in Windelband’s reflections on negative judgment, Rickert shows that a factor that lies outside representation comes into play in any judgment: it is indeed impossible to judge without taking a position, either as an affirmation or as a rejection, on the established relation between a state of affairs and a predicate; thus “to know is to accept or reject” (Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 58). Since what holds for judgment also holds more generally for the processes of knowing, what becomes primary is not the taking of a position in relation to a state of factual affairs but in relation to a value: for a fact does not require one to take a position; it can be simply accepted as such: “in all knowledge it is a value [Wert] that is recognized” (ibid., 57ff.). And further, value is acknowledged as something psychologically given, a feeling that intervenes to such an extent that “in each judgment, I know at the instant of judging that I recognize something as eternally valid [gilt]” (ibid., 60). What is accorded “validity” (Geltung) can thus only be a value and not a being that I know only through the bias of representations. For it is according to their connections that I pronounce judgment and not on a being to which they refer. It is according to their connections that I accept or reject a value and this process in its turn is not raised by an objective necessity but by an ought-to-be (Sollen): “When I hear notes 1 Mehrwert It is in Capital that Marx develops his theory of Mehrwert, or “surplus value” (the French expression plus-value is an Anglicization and was more precisely rendered as survaleur by Henri Lefebvre). Surplus labor (surtravail) is a given fact of any more or less developed civilization. In these societies it is simply a fact that work of any sort produces an excess that sustains persons other than the direct producers, as a kind of stocking of provisions. But the capitalist system of production was the first to make surplus labor into the direct source of profit. “Surplus value” is the result of the difference among the productive work time that reimburses fixed capital investment, raw materials, and salaries, and work time that produces pure and simple profit. This theory of “surplus value” leads to the conception according to which in a capitalist system use-value (Gebrauchswert) tends to give way to exchange-value (Tauschwert), as well as to the contested prediction of a “tendency to reduce the profit margin” engendered primarily by competition. REFS.: Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 3 vols. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. I must necessarily judge that I hear notes, which means that I am given an obligation [ein Sollen] along with the notes, that calls for an eventual judgment” (Wenn ich Töne höre, so bin ich genöthigt, so zu urteilen, sagt, dass mir den Tönen ein Sollen gegeben ist, das von einem eventuellen Urteil Zustimmung fordert und Zustimmung erhält) (ibid., 63). Thus, the truth of a judgment is not a quality that it possesses and that I should recognize, but a judgment that is true because I recognize a value in it. We should therefore take care to distinguish between, on the one hand, the specific content of the judgment which is independent from all statements and psychical processes, and which we thus can call the “transcendental” logical sense, alongside the objective good which it clings to, and on the other hand, the subjective act of taking a position, with its own “immanent” meaning. The content of the judgment must be examined in relation to logic as well as in relation to the Form and its content. By “Form” we refer to the moment of validation [Geltungsmoment] in its conceptual isolation whereby content, itself logically indifferent, is elevated to the logical sphere and transformed for the first time into a logically valid [gültig] element of meaning. (Wir müssen daher von dem eigentlichen Urteilsgehalt, der unabhängig von allen Sätzen und psychischen Vorgängen gilt, und den wir deshalb auch den “transzendenten” logischen Sinn nennen können, einerseits das objektive Gut, an dem er haftet, und andererseits den subjektiven Akt der Stellungnahme mit dem ihm “immanenten” Sinn sorgfältig scheiden. Der Urteilsgehalt ist von der Logik dann mit Rücksicht auf seine Form und seinen Inhalt zu 2 Wertfreiheit v. UNDERSTANDING The Weberian notion of “value-neutral” factfinding has been translated into French as “axiological neutrality” (neutralité axiologique). (Julien Freund explained his position on the topic in his edition of Weber’s essays devoted to the theory of science. Weber himself explained what he understood by the concept in “The Meaning of Value Neutrality in the Social and Economic Sciences” [Der Sinn der “Wertfreiheit” der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften] (1917). In explicit reference to Rickert, Weber defends both the methodological utility of “axiological neutrality” and the problematics linked to values. Es sei daher nur daran erinnert, daß der Ausdruck “Wertbeziehung” lediglich die philosophische Deutung desjenigen spezifisch wissenschaftlichen “Interesses” meint, welches die Auslese und Formung des Objektes einer empirischen Untersuchung beherrscht. Innerhalb der empirischen Untersuchung werden durch diesen rein logischen Sachverhalt jedenfalls keinerlei “praktische Wertungen” legitimiert. Wohl aber ergibt jener Sachverhalt in Übereinstimmung mit der geschichtlichen Erfahrung, daß Kultur— und das heißt: Wertinteressen es sind, welche auch der rein empirischwissenschaftlichen Arbeit die Richtung weisen. Es ist nun klar, daß diese Wertinteressen durch Wertdiskussionen in ihrer Kasuistik sich entfalten können. Diese können dem wissenschaftlich, insbesondere dem historisch arbeitenden, Forscher vor allem die Aufgabe der “Wertinterpretation”: für ihn eine höchst wichtige Vorarbeit seiner eigentlich empirischen Arbeit, weitgehend abnehmen oder doch erleichtern. (Weber, “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften”; Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Hrsg. von Johannes Winckelmann. Tübingen 61985, S. 540) (It should only be recalled that the expression “relevance to values” refers simply to the philosophical interpretation of that specifically scientific “interest” which determines the selection of a given subject-matter and the problems of empirical analysis. In empirical investigation, no “practical evaluations” are legitimated by this strictly logical fact. But together with historical experience, it shows that cultural (i.e., evaluative) interests give purely empirical scientific work its direction. It is now clear that these evaluative interests can be made more explicit and differentiated by the analysis of value-judgments. These considerably reduce, or at any rate lighten, the task of “value-interpretation”—an extremely important preparation of empirical work—for the scientific investigator and especially the historian.) (Weber, “The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics,” in Methodology of the Social Sciences, 22) Scientific work that respects valueneutrality consists in the rational understanding of the point of view that gives direction to the actions of such-and-such social group or such-and-such historical individual, without engaging in judgment on the ethical validity of the point of view. But Weber never defines what value is; he limits himself to giving synonyms (ideal, ethical rule, etc.). As for the essentials, he adheres to the distinction made by Rickert in his work Science of Nature and Science of Culture between explaining (erklären) (the causes of a natural phenomenon) and understanding (verstehen) (the motives behind a cultural and historical event, the reasons for a human action). REFS.: Rickert, Heinrich. Science and History: A Critique of Positivist Epistemology [Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft]. Translated by George Reisman. Edited by Arthur Goddard. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1962. Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. . From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. . The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finche. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949. WERT 1229 untersuchen, wobei wir unter “Form” das theoretische Geltungsmoment in seiner begrifflichen Isolierung verstehen, durch welches der für sich logisch indifferente Inhalt in die logische Sphäre gehoben, also zum logisch gültigen Sinngebilde erst gemacht wird.) (Rickert, “Über logische und ethische Geltung,” in Philosophische Zeitschrift, Berlin, 1914) Rickert reinterprets the “primacy of practical Reason” by making value (Wert) the archi-lexeme that includes moral values (die Güter, Fr. les biens) and the validity (Geltung) proper to all judgments on which knowledge depends. It is a “practical” procedure (ein Sollen) that recognizes a particular association of representations to be valid (gilt) and thus true. The ought-to-be must be understood before the “to be”: “All our arguments depend on two statements: that judgment is not a representation and that ‘being’ gains meaning only as a component of a judgment” (Auf den beiden Sätzen, dass Urtheilen nicht Vorstellen ist, und dass das “Sein” nur einen Sinn gewinnt als Bestandtheil eines Urtheils, beruhen all unsere Ausfuhrungen) (ibid., 84). Values can be inflected by taking the form of a truth, norm, or law. In the end, however, the criterion that enables one to distinguish an “unreal” value from an actual being is negation. To deny something real results in nothingness, not its opposite, unreality. By contrast, to deny a value results in a negative value (false, ugly, etc.). IV. Lask: Wert and Geltung, the Separation of Spheres Emil Lask, a disciple of Rickert, caused his teacher to revise his own conception of value. Starting in 1908, Lask opposed what he called the “ethicization” (Ethisierung) of notions of knowledge and judgment: We call for a concept of value [Wertbegriff] in knowledge that is not an ethical one [nichtethisch], and we would also clearly distinguish it from scientific life, where, of course, practical reason has priority. At the same time, we raise the objection that making ethical value [der ethische Wert] the immediate correlate of objective worth [das objektive gelten] would be to give it a systematic standing which does not belong to it. (Lask, “Does a ‘Primacy of Practical Reason’ Exist in Logic?” [1908] in Néokantismes et Théorie de la connaissance, 304 [trans. from Fr.]) Here, the highest position in the conceptual universe is not that of objective being but that of objective validity (Geltung). Ethical value is not endowed with objective validity: What is encountered by the moral will, in the form of a demanding ethical value, is not a demand [das Fordern] in the sense of objective validity, but always some action whose doing is endowed with value. Knowing is a behavior commanded by the objective validity of truth [Wahrheitsgelten]; moral will has as its object a commanded action. (Ibid. [trans. from Fr.]) Lask introduces the distinction between the knowing subject (Erkenntnissubjekt) and the person (Persönlichkeit) (responsible for an action ordered by a moral ought-to-be). This amounts to a distinction between the subjective correlate of the objective validity of truth—knowledge—and the fact of devoting oneself to science, an act that comes from the ethical: “the subjective sphere of the ‘processes of knowledge’ is completely independent of the personal ethical sphere” (ibid., 307). In making these distinctions, Lask does not leave the field of value, but simply dissociates his two orientations from its meaning. This is why, without breaking their ties to Wert, the terms Geltung and Gelten appear in his reflections on logic and its categories, as well as in his arguments about judgment. The nonethical concept of value is related to objective validity (Geltung), and when Lask claims that a being is a Gelten, his intent is to stress that our access to the predicate of being is from within a judgment and not from the point of real being. Since the sphere of judgment is part of the unreal sphere of the world, that is to say, the world ruled by validity (Geltung), we are complete “prisoners” of the sphere of gelten, which our knowledge obeys. The same holds true a fortiori for the ethical sphere, even if discussions of values (Werte) are more common there. In both spheres, no matter what, one finds notions of value, of validity, of ought-to-be, and of norm, but their usage no longer stipulates recourse to practical Reason. Logical value and ethical value become equivalent. V. Scheler: Value and Feeling Taking up the Husserlian notion of the vision of essence, Scheler extracts from the flux of experience that presents itself to consciousness contents that have no direct signification but that are nonetheless intentional acts. Thus, it is possible to apprehend qualities (such as the good, the agreeable, or the beautiful) without having an idea of their signification. In fact, the significations—of beauty, the good, etc.—are posterior to those actions at the heart of which one experiences such qualities (the exception is the quality of redness, which is experienced at the same time as its signification). Scheler insists on the importance of the intentional feeling (intentionales Gefühl; see GEFÜHL) that is not the same as an affective state and that leads directly to a content without the intermediary of a thought or representation. This content is the “material” base of the values apprehended by pure feeling. The world of values is grasped through pure feeling, by what Scheler calls the “emotional function” (emotionale Funktion). In addition, values are not experienced in a merely indistinct manner for there is a specific intuition of their hierarchy that depends on two other emotional acts, preference and repugnance (Abscheu) (this is not a matter of an empirical preference that relies on mere taste or idiosyncrasy, but of a “pure” preference attached only to values—a preference, for example, for beauty over the sacred, etc.). At a higher level than these acts of preference/repugnance is the level of love and hate (Liebe, Haß). Love guides and precedes actions of preference and repugnance. When one loves a person, one sees in that person qualities that reveal themselves little by little, by virtue of the love that one devotes to him or her. These acts of love and hate delimit the field of values accessible to a subject. The fact that a person strikes us as sympathetic (sympatisch)—or antipathetic—from the start shows that value presents itself independent of direct 1230 WERT matter if they are factually “universally valid” [geltend] or not. (Scheler, Formalism in Ethics, 273) . Marc de Launay REFS.: Albert, Hans, and Ernst Toptisch. Werturteilstreit. Darmstadt, Ger.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969. Aron, Raymond. Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity. Translated by George J. Irwin. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. . La Philosophie critique de l’histoire: essai sur une théorie allemande de l’histoire. Paris: Vrin, 1969. Blosser, Philip. Scheler’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995. Cohen, Hermann, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, Heinrich Rickert, Wilhelm Windelband, Emil Lask, and Jonas Cohn. Néokantismes et théorie de la connaissance. Paris: Vrin, 2000. Heidegger, Martin. Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1987. . Towards the Definition of Philosophy. London: Athlone Press, 1998. Lotze, Hermann. Logik. Edited by G. Gabriel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1989. Logic, in Three Books, of Thought, of Investigation, and of Knowledge. Edited by Bernard Bosanquet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. . Nietzsche Briefwechsel, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975–. . Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967. Rickert, Heinrich. Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Tübingen: Mohr, 1927. Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Translated by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. 5th rev. ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Schmitt, Carl. “Die Tyrannei der Werte.” In Säkularisation und Utopie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967. Windelband, Wilhelm. Beiträge zur Lehre vom negativen Urteil. Tübingen: Mohr, 1921. First published in 1884. support, yet not without “material.” What this means is that we cannot confuse values with goods (Werte with Güter). Values are extratemporal essences that can be grasped though emotional intuition. Nor can one confuse values with goals or purposes (Zwecke with Ziele). The goal is an intellectual representation of a real good, and it is based on an end that is entirely independent of a representation or intellectual act. The end consists of the expression of a value and an image of this value. Values are thus independent of ends, and these in turn are independent of goals. Values (as in the case of altruism) establish ends (as in the case of helping one’s neighbor) that are in turn the basis for goals (for example, creating a neighborhood aid association). Since values depend on an emotional act, it follows that they become in some sense imbued with history (the histories of the subject and of various collectivities—sociopolitical, cultural, and religious—at the heart of which this subject is to be found). This historical condition reopens the question of how to establish their validity (Geltung) and their “valuability” (Gültigkeit): It is therefore also possible that certain moral value-qualities will be comprehended for the first time in history, and that they will appear first, for example, in the feeling insight of a single individual. The evidential comprehension of such a quality and the fact that it represents a value higher than all those [values] known up to this point have nothing to do with the universality of this comprehensibility or with the so-called “universal validity” of norms [Normen]. But it is necessary to distinguish three things: first, the factual universal possession of dispositions to comprehend certain values; second, what is morally valid [gilt] for a given group of people ; third, those values whose recognition is universally “valid” [gültig] no 3 Werturteilstreit: Value and interest The controversy over “value judgments” that emerges at the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna with Carnap’s positivistic reaction to the philosophy of values breaks out again at the end of the 1960s between Adorno and Karl Popper. In the later instance it takes the form of a dispute among a (European) continental movement, the Frankfurt school, and critical positivism (of Viennese inspiration). Aside from the political affiliations that set partisans of “revolution” (those committed to Marxism in its revised iterations) against those who adhere to an empirical and liberal “reformism,” the conflict’s stakes concern the methodological grounding of the social sciences. The adversaries of hermeneutics (in its broadest sense) contest, as always, any possibility of articulating utterances that apply to being. They disqualify any ought-to-be as a naturalist fallacy, insisting that one cannot derive ought from is. To support this position they rely on Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, III, i.1. The defenders of the Frankfurt school, for their part, claim that the scientific status of the human sciences should be recognized and not rejected out of hand on the basis of criteria that apply only to the domains of the “empirico-analytic” sciences (mathematics, physics, biology). J. Habermas (cf. Knowledge and Human Interests and Technology and Science as “Ideology”) has echoed this controversy by attempting to substitute the notion of interest (Ger. Interesse) for the notion of value. He treats interest as a kind of anthropological invariant: to homo faber there corresponds a “technical” interest derived from work and to which the empirico-analytic sciences adhere; to Homo loquax, a “practical” interest, derived from language, which becomes a principle of the historico-hermeneutic sciences. In early Habermas there is also the concept of “emancipatory” (emanzipatorisch) interest derived from the impulse to strive for freedom against the constraints of nature, as well as distinct sociopolitical forms of coercion that have preoccupied the “critical sciences” (ideology critique, psychoanalysis, etc.). REFS.: Habermas, Jurgen. Technik und Wissenschaft als “Ideologie.” Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. Translation by J. Shapiro: “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology.’” In Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977. CONSERVATUM. WHIG, TORY FRENCH libéral/conservateur v. LIBERAL, and CIVIL SOCIETY, LAW, LEX, LIBERTY, POLITICS The terms “Whig” and “Tory” have been conventionally used, respectively, to designate liberal and conservative tendencies in British politics (before the rise of the Labor Party at the end of the nineteenth century, which resulted in a change to previous political divisions). But these words possess a meaning at the same time more general and very English, which distinguishes them from the French terms libéral and conservateur. A Whig is not simply a liberal, but also a self-conscious heir to the English constitutional tradition, to the Rule of Law, and to the rights of Parliament. Likewise, a Tory is a conservative attached to certain kinds of social relations in which the authority of the aristocracy (Fr. notables) cannot be separated from its protectionist role. Such relations are bound to a specific interpretation of Anglican religious tradition. In addition to these political divisions, one can also speak of a Whig manner of writing political or intellectual history, or of the Tory legacy in the political doctrines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After reviewing selected moments in the historical development of the Whig/Tory opposition, we will examine the central role that these two notions play in Hume’s writings and their general impact on English-language political philosophy. We will conclude with some reflections on the status of these terms as untranslatables of British political thought, with special reference to their influence on Enlightenment notions of liberty and their role as political terms in colonial America. I. “Whig” and “Tory” in English Politics The historical origins of the words “Whig” and “Tory” are disputed, but the context in which they gained currency is well known, as are the negative meanings they initially carried. The adjectives “whig” and “tory” appeared during the emergence of the modern English political system, and their use became widespread during the crisis that resulted from the attempts of radical Protestants to exclude James of York (the future James II) from ascending to the British throne because of his Catholic and French sympathies. The adjective “whig” had already been used during the English Civil War in reference to Cromwell’s Scottish partisans. A pejorative term of Gaelic origin, it referred, according to its most likely etymology, to thieves of horse and cattle. It also connoted attachment to the Presbyterian form of Protestantism and, by implication, to a penchant for rebellion. The term was applied to those whose antipapist convictions led them to advocate passing over the legitimate heir to the throne. The term “tory” was originally no less insulting since it referred to the Catholic rebels (the Irish “papist bandits”) and was applied to those who defended the rights and claims of James. His accession to the throne in 1685 was followed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which removed him from the throne and replaced him with William of Orange, thus bringing about a redefinition of partisan differences. Most of the Tories abandoned their defense of absolutist doctrines and to some extent accepted the Whig interpretation of the British political system as a limited monarchy. But they remained attached to the notion of royal prerogative (which allows the monarch under certain circumstances to go against the laws of Parliament) and to all those parts of the English political system that upheld traditional hierarchies. Tory became the party of the High Church and the provincial nobility, while Whig came to represent the more dynamic factions of the aristocracy allied with the middle classes to constitute a new dominant class, all the while relying on the support of the sensibilities of the most liberal currents of English Protestantism. The death of Queen Anne (1714) and the accession of George I to the throne marked the final ruin of the Stuarts and entailed the exile or discredit of those Tories who had remained faithful to them (the Jacobites). A long period of Whig supremacy in English politics ensued, a period in which Toryism was more of a sensibility than a true party (despite the presence of close to one hundred deputies in the House of Commons who identified themselves as Tories). The division Whig/Tory regained its importance at the end of the eighteenth century when William Pitt the Younger became the leader of a new Tory party, supported by both the gentry and the commercial classes. This led to the appearance of new Whigs with more progressive opinions who, under James Fox, set themselves up as the defenders of religious freedom and as advocates of various reforms of a quasi-democratic nature. The French Revolution provoked a rupture within the Whigs that was epitomized by the break between Edmund Burke and James Fox. While the English liberals siding with Fox saw the acts of the constitutional convention as the application of the principles of the Glorious Revolution (and as a way to inflect the English constitution in a more liberal direction), Burke saw the French Revolution as a radical subversion of tradition, and thus as something entirely hostile to Whig politics (which up until that point had been part of the continuous development of English freedoms). The conflict between England and revolutionary France led to a rapprochement of the more moderate Whigs and the new Tories around Pitt. What was left of the revolutionary heritage of the Whigs became absorbed into a new democratic culture that came in the wake of the French Revolution. After 1815 English politics increasingly took the bipartisan form with which we are familiar and which became dominant in the nineteenth century by virtue of the opposition between the liberal and conservative parties. These parties can legitimately be called the heirs of the Whigs and Tories (indeed the name “Tory” has remained in use for a long time to designate the conservative party). II. “Court” and “Country” The history of English politics cannot be completely accounted for by the story of the opposition between Whigs and Tories. Nor can the meanings of those two terms be reduced to a simple partisan division (just as the opposition between right and left in France can no more easily be reduced to the two sides of the parliamentary chamber). The long period of Whig supremacy, from 1714 to 1760, was in fact a period of fundamental transformation in the English political system, culminating in the Walpole ministry (1721–42). Intense controversies divided the Whiggery, many of them informed by Tory thinkers whose position could not be reduced to the simple defense of hierarchies. The Whig supremacy was in fact inseparable from the rise of a new figure, the prime minister, whose task it was to establish his position between the Houses of Parliament and the king. He could accomplish this 1232 WHIG (and the abandonment of republican models founded solely on virtue). Hume gave new meaning to the split between Whig and Tory despite his criticism of the unilateral quality of the doctrines defended by each of the two parties. III. Hume’s Synthesis In his Essays, as in his History of England, Hume showed himself to be equally distant from Whig orthodoxy as from the traditional prejudices of the Tories. If he were indulgent toward the Stuarts and critical of English Protestantism, and only too aware that the “old English Constitution” was in many respects similar to those of the continental monarchies, he nonetheless appreciated the merits of the English political system, seeing it as favorable to liberty and to the development of the sciences. In the same spirit, he attempted to define a philosophical position midway between the “whig” principle of an original contract (that cannot account for the nature of political association), and the “tory” principle of passive obedience (which is incompatible with the interests of society properly understood). This impartiality is itself founded on an original interpretation of the English system: for Hume, the divisions between the “parties of Great Britain” derived from an internal dualism of the English Constitution, which combined monarchical and republican features and thus naturally produced (even as it limited) partisan division. The opposition between Whigs and Tories becomes, then, part of a sequence that starts with the Cavaliers and the Roundheads during the Civil War and leads to the divisions in Hume’s time between a party of the court and a party of the nation. This opposition does not in and of itself undermine the system, because it rests on a compromise acceptable to both parties on the basics of the system in question: A Tory may be defined in a few words, to be a lover of monarchy, though without abandoning liberty; and a partisan of the family of STUART. As a Whig may be defined to be a lover of liberty though not without renouncing monarchy; and a friend to the settlement in the PROTESTANT line. (Hume, Political Essays) The opposition between the two parties took on new and somewhat confused meaning after the Revolution of 1688: just as the Whigs had often “proceeded with measures that could become dangerous for liberty” in order to better assure the Protestant succession, the Tories were led to oppose the Crown and to act like republicans after the change in dynasty. In addition, the development of the English regime (which translates into a certain predominance of the principle of liberty) is more favorable to Whig philosophy, as is evident in the decline of the Tories, even after they had abandoned their most shocking doctrines (like that of passive obedience). IV. The Future of an Opposition The central importance of the English system in the formation of liberal politics has been such that the opposed terms of “Whig” and “Tory,” along with their different connotations, have been recognized and faithfully task only by winning the support of part of the assemblies, while at the same time presenting himself as the agent of the crown. The simplest means of playing this game was to buy the support of members of parliament in various ways, ranging from corruption pure and simple to the creation and distribution of positions for the defenders of the ministers of the king. Since this form of politics, carried out with virtuosity by Walpole, was accompanied by a stable and relatively small oligarchy, relying on complex electoral laws that bypassed the older gentry, it is understandable that the system seemed to certain Whigs to be a betrayal of their principles. Walpole Whiggery thus helped revive an older Whig/Tory tension between the party of Country or Commonwealth, and the party of the Court. During Stuart times, the defenders of the rights of Parliament against the “papist” attempts at the subversion of the English Constitution were often called the Country Party, and its influence at the court was condemned. The same opposition made it possible to denounce the power of the executive “wielding two great instruments of corruption, of which the first was parliamentary patronage and the second public credit” (Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History). But even this argument can be subject to Whig or Tory interpretation, and it plays a central role both before and after the birth of liberal politics in England. The Whig version of the “Country problem” redounded to the Old Whigs, who denounced Walpole’s politics as a betrayal of the ideals of the Glorious Revolution. They rejected the foreign policy of the new oligarchy, which was favorable to a politics of peace, supporting an alliance with absolutist, Catholic France. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon were the most well-known representatives of these new Old Whigs. Their text, Cato’s Letters, published between 1720 and 1723, emerged as the classic expression of a sensibility imbued with civic humanism. At once liberal and republican, they cast civic virtue—always threatened by corruption—as the only sure guarantor of liberty. The Tory version of this position found its best defender in the person of Henry Bolingbroke (1678–1751), who, after describing the decrepitude of the old parties of Great Britain (A Dissertation upon Parties), defended the idea that under these circumstances only a “patriot king” could overcome the divisions between parties and restore to the country the rights usurped by the ministers and the oligarchs (The Idea of the Patriot King). These thinkers contributed to a current of civic humanism inaugurated by Machiavelli and taken up in England by James Harrington. It ranged across diverse political, social, and even religious contexts: the Deist Bolingbroke, for example, was the ally of writers and apologists for the High Church, and even of papists such as Atterbury and Pope. Meanwhile the Country party was supported both by the urban middle classes and the rural gentry (on all of these points, see Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History). The opposition between court and country thus transcended the traditional divisions between Whigs and Tories. It became a sign of the difficulties encountered by the new liberal world in asserting itself in the face of older republican ideals, themselves weakened by the crisis of absolutism and religious tradition. Hume’s work is important here, because it illustrates a deliberate choice in favor of the emerging liberal society and unfaithful to it (in its critique of formal liberties). Contemporary authors tend to treat the ethnocentric character of Whig history with indulgent humor. In this spirit, J.G.A. Pocock, who has elucidated the subtleties of English politics better than anyone, estimates that there is no such thing as a pure Whig historian because his or her relation to the political paradigms holding sway in society is always a mixture of conservative and radical. V. Translating “Whig” and “Tory” in France and the American Colonies The terms “Whig” and “Tory” emerge as such quintessentially local terms for British politics that they stand as premier examples of national untranslatables. In France, one does not find the terms adopted in English very often, but their influence on definitions of liberty can be clearly discerned. Consider, for example, Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (1734), which played a central role in France in the “invention” of English liberty as an alternative to the French regime. Despite what one might expect, Voltaire espoused an interpretation of the English regime that was not unlike Bolingbroke’s, and thus rather clearly tory (see letter 8, in which he analyzes the sharing of power between parliament, the arbiter of the nation, and the umpire king). In The Spirit of the Laws (1748) Montesquieu hews closer to the classical whig theses, all the while showing in-depth how English liberty differs from that of the republics of antiquity. The Old Whigs, such as Trenchard and Gordon, had their own followers in France, where their implacable anti-Catholicism led the Baron d’Holbach to translate some of their writings. But it was arguably in America that whig politics came to have a truly creative influence on posterity, coming into its own as a political “translation” despite the fact that the English language remained the same. In the pre-Revolutionary period, the English colonies in America provided a highly receptive context for the republican problematic of the Old Whigs. As a consequence, their influence was determinative on the first phase of the Revolution (Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment) The epithet “Tory” was applied pejoratively to loyalists faithful to the British Crown, and, as a result, one of the great American parties adopted the name “Whig” before later becoming the Republican party of Lincoln. Philippe Raynaud REFS.: Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Bolingbroke, Henry Saint John. Works. 5 vols. Hildesheim, Ger.: Olms, 1968. First published in 1754. Butterfield, Herbert. The Whig Interpretation of History. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1931. Hume, David. A History of England: From the Earliest Times to the Revolution in 1688. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1878. First published in 1859. . Political Essays. Edited by Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. History of England from the Accession of James II. 5 vols. New York: Dutton, 1953. First published 1848–61. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty; with The Subjection of Women; and Chapters on Socialism. Edited by Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. duplicated everywhere that there has been interest in the British experience. The transformations of the British system since the end of the eighteenth century have, of course, modified the content of the notions of Whig and Tory. There is no longer room in the parliamentary government for a party that would support an active intervention by the monarch in the legislative process, and the executive power itself must remain in the hands of the prime minister at any given time. Even though one currently speaks more often of liberals and conservatives, the terms “Whig” and “Tory” have nonetheless been of use in interpreting new divisions in the traditional terms of English politics. One can call liberals with advanced and reformist ideas Whigs who are open to social reforms without being socialists properly speaking (in this sense, there was something “whiggish” about the New Labor party of Tony Blair). And “Tory” is a term with multiple meanings, suggesting a ruling class that is both guardian of tradition and protector of the weak, while remaining open to audacity and modernity. In literature, Coleridge’s (1772–1834) romanticism tacks Tory, even if it includes radical elements. In the politics of the nineteenth century, the great man of the Tories was Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), who embodied a conservatism that both favored popular interests and supported the greatness of empire. Beyond the play of politics and partisanship, the opposition between “Whig” and “Tory” (and the dissymmetry between the two notions) plays a certain role in the ways that political thought is framed in the English language. Political movements are classified according to distinctions whose origins lie in the English system of partisanship (liberal or conservative), and one often encounters in the best authors the idea that proper politics requires that there be a party of order and tradition and a party of progress and reform, and that their coexistence is a condition of a free political regime (see, for example, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, chap. 2). The influence of Whig and Tory as modes of interpretation has been greatest on historical schools of thought. The dominant vision of English history (which stresses the continuity of English liberties since the mythical times of the “old constitution,” and which sets up the limited monarchy of Great Britain and the Revolution of 1688 against absolute monarchy and the French Revolution) can be described as fundamentally Whig: it has inspired great historians, the most brilliant of whom is undoubtedly Thomas Macaulay (1800–1859). More generally, one can speak of a “whig interpretation of history,” in the words of Herbert Butterfield, in reference to a history written from the point of view of the progress of the human spirit, which looks to the past for traces of the conflict between progressives and reactionaries in order to bring out the stages in that emancipation. In this sense, Whiggism is simply the English version of Enlightenment philosophy, which culminates in an interpretation of history whose continental equivalents could easily be found among authors such as Lessing or Condorcet. One should not be surprised to see that the endpoint of the Whig interpretation of history approximates versions of bourgeois progressivism. Marxism is both faithful to it (in its emphasis on the compatibility between political liberty and the interests of both the middle class and the market economy) provenance. In De fide orthodoxa, John of Damascus gives a definition of thelêsis [θέλησις], which is translated as voluntas by Burgundio of Pisa and will subsequently serve to frame all of medieval thought on the will: the thelêma, or will, “is an appetite, both rational and vital, depending only on what is natural” (De fide orthodoxa, 2.22). Burgundio makes a choice of translation that will become an essential one and renders thelêsis by voluntas: “thelêsis, sive voluntas, est naturalis et vitalis et rationalis appetitus” (thelêsis, or will, is a natural, vital, and rational appetite). This definition will be taken up by medieval authors and become the authoritative version for Scholasticism: John of la Rochelle, Saint Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas will in turn define voluntas as an essentially rational appetite that naturally tends toward the Good. In this respect, will differs both from desire (orexis [ὄϱεξις]) and from reason (logos [λόγος]), and designates a third faculty, an intermediate between the other two. Such a faculty was entirely lacking for the Greeks, as the German philologist Bruno Snell underscores: But the will, ever straining and champing at the bit, is a notion foreign to the Greeks; they do not even have a word for it. Thelein means “to be ready, to be prepared for something.” Boulesthai is “to view something as (more) desirable.” The former denotes a subjective preparedness, a kind of voluntary attitude devoid of specific commitment; the latter refers to a wish or plan (boulê) aimed at a particular object, i.e. a disposition closely related to the understanding and appreciation of a gain. But neither word expresses a realization of the will, the effective inclination of subject toward object. (The Discovery of the Mind) We should add the word orexis to this list, which refers to desire in its broadest sense, as well as the term coined by Aristotle to designate that state of mind that immediately precedes action: proairesis [πϱοαίϱεσις], “deliberate choice.” None of these notions can be directly understood in terms of the medieval and modern concepts of voluntas. But how does this concept emerge? What justifies its adoption? In which philosophical or theological context is it to be understood? II. The Absence of a Problematics of Will in Aristotle and the Stoicism of Antiquity The lack of an equivalent concept of will in ancient Greek thought can be established through a few examples. In Aristotle, the act of making a deliberate choice (proairesis) is not an indication of a power of self-determination analogous to the will, but refers to a judgment of the practical intellect that starts from a wish or recognition of a desired end (boulêsis [βούλησις]) and carries out a process of deliberation (bouleusis [βούλευσις]). It is a rational calculation of the means to achieve the end. Thus the choice itself is an act of the nous [νοῦς], which selects the means to that end, according to a rational process that yields a practical syllogism (On the Movement of Animals, 6.700b23). Many a misunderstanding has resulted from the translation of this doctrine in terms of will. Thus Thomas Aquinas, thinking he was following Aristotle, fixes on the electio, which chooses a modality of Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Reprint. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. First published in 1975. . Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. . Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Trenchard, John, and Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects. 4 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995. First published 1720–23. WHOLE The French tout derives from the Latin totus, and applies to the object considered in relation to its extension and in its entirety, in the sense of tout entier (as a whole). Like totus on occasion, tout can be used in the distributive sense, in the sense of chaque (each), even though omnis has taken on that specialized function in Latin. The Greek language also has two ways of expressing the whole, pas [πᾶς] and holos [ὅλος], to which omnis and totus do not precisely correspond. To holon [τὸ ὅλον] like “the whole” in English, designates the integral and complete whole, but as something more than or other than just the sum of its parts: see WELT, Box 2. The medieval Latin totalis (Nicole Oresme) refers to that which is complete, not lacking in anything, and thus opens the way to the translation of to holon as “totality.” Totality (Ger. Ganzheit, Gesamtheit, Allheit, Totalität) is one of Kant’s twelve categories and establishes the synthesis of unity and multiplicity: cf. CATEGORY, JUSTICE. For the relationship among the words “world,” “universe,” and the “totality of the real,” see WELT and OMNITUDO REALITATIS; see also MIR, NATURE, REALITY, SVET; cf. GOD. On ways to think and express totality, see AUFHEBEN, COMBINATION AND CONCEPTUALIZATION, CONCEPT, HISTORIA UNIVERSALIS, MEMORY, STRUCTURE, UNIVERSALS. v. COMMUNITY, HUMANITY, SOCIETY VOLITUM. voluntas, appetitus, WILL FRENCH volonté GREEK thelêsis [θέλησις], orexis [ὄϱεξις], boulêsis [βούλησις] v. AGENCY, DESIRE, HERRSCHAFT, I/ME/MYSELF, INTELLECTUS, INTENTION, LAW, LIBERTY, LOGOS, OBJECT, PATHOS, PHRONÊSIS, REASON, SUBJECT, SVOBODA, WILLKÜR “Philosophers,” wrote Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, “are accustomed to speaking of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world.” But “the Historian cannot forget that it took mankind some eleven centuries of reflection after Aristotle to invent ‘the will’“ (R. A. Gauthier). How did this lexical and philosophical invention occur, with its considerable implications for medieval and modern thought? I. The Medieval Invention of a Third Faculty: “Thelêsis sive Voluntas” In an attempt to answer this question, one should start by taking the finished concept of will and examining its WILL 1235 Latin as appetitus. The immediate principle of action, for Panaetius, is thus not assent, insofar as it determines the logical impulse (logikê hormê), but rather this irrational impulse, which simply follows assent. This impulse has the specific feature of being, like voluntas, independent of reason. But insofar as it follows from assent, it still finds its source of freedom in the judgment of reason, and it is thus neither free in and of itself nor rational in essence. It remains to interrogate the notion of thelêsis [θέλησις] in Epictetus: the word appears frequently in his work, along with the verb thelein [θέλειν], and is largely synonymous with boulesthai [βούλεσθαι], to the point that one can agree with Voelke’s claim that “no other Stoic writing in Greek uses these verbs as frequently” (L’idée de volonté dans l’ancien stoïcisme). For example, Epictetus affirms that the single criterion of wisdom consists in the following: “Be willing at length to be approved by yourself (thelêson aresai autos pote seautôi [θέλησον ἀϱέσαι αὐτός ποτε σεαυτῷ]),” which is to say, “be willing to appear beautiful to God (thelêson kalos phanêtai tôi theôi [θέλησον ϰαλὸς φανῆται τῷ θεῷ])” (Discourses, 2.18, Long trans.). Yet Voelke is forced to admit that “the will in Epictetus does not have a clearly defined and specific function” (L’idée de volonté dans l’ancien stoïcisme). In addition, for Epictetus, as for the Stoics of antiquity, there is no such thing as an independent notion of free will, for freedom is a determination of judgment, and is consequently completely intellectual. Epictetus even goes so far as to claim that “the soul of man is nothing else aside from his judgments” [ἀνθϱώπου ψυχὴν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ δόγματα] (Discourses, 4.5.26). III. The Christian Problematic of the Will: Saint Augustine Should one look then to the Christian tradition of the church fathers for the first appearance of the concept of “will” in its modern sense? Should one follow Hannah Arendt and see in Saint Augustine the “first philosopher of the will”? Nothing is less certain. Just as one could speak of a “Roman voluntarism” (Pohlenz, Die Stoa, I) one could speak of Augustine’s “voluntarism” since all activities, including perception and cognitive activity in general, are for him imbued with will. In order to see, he maintains, one must want to see, which is to say that the sensory organ of vision fixes upon a visible object through attention. This is also the case for rational knowledge: in this respect there is not a single motion of the soul that is not engendered by the will: “voluntas est animi motus” (De duabus animabus, 10.14). So can one still speak of a “primacy of the will” in Augustine, as is the case, for example, in Duns Scotus or Descartes? Undoubtedly not, insofar as the will for Augustine is not a distinct faculty independent of desire in general and love in particular: “voluntatem nostram, vel amorem seu dilectionem quae valentior est volunta” (our own will, or love, or affection, which is a stronger will) (De Trinitate, 15.21.41, Haddan trans.). Love, or the affection by which the soul takes joy and rejoices in God (fruitio), is only the will in all its power, which means that inversely, will is a weaker form of love or desire. This is why Augustine can compare love to the weight that strains the will and impels it toward its object, just as weight drags down bodies toward the center of the earth: “My love is my weight: wherever I go my love is what brings me there” (Augustine, Confessions, voluntas whose objective is its end. The same applies to the point of departure, the boulêsis or wish. Aristotle defines it as a desire penetrated by reason (logistikê orexis [λογιστιϰὴ ὄϱεξις]) (Rhetorics, 1.10.1369a2), suggesting that what we have here is a precursor of voluntas or a quintessentially rational form of desire. This argument, however, is misleading, for boulêsis designates a modality of desire “accidentally” subject to reason; as a result, it can diverge from reason. One can always wish for the impossible, affirms Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2.1111b22: boulêsis d’ esti tôn adunatôn [βούλησις δ’ ἐστὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων]). Here, it becomes apparent, we are as far as it gets from the medieval and modern concept of the will. Similar problems arise in relation to the understanding and interpretation of one of the central concepts of Stoicism in antiquity: the accordance of assent (sugkatathesis [συγϰατάθεσις]). Giving assent is an act of reason (logos), the basis for establishing a radical difference between human and animal. In the animal, as soon as the presentation occurs (phantasia [φαντασία]), the impulse to act (hormê [ὁϱμή]) immediately follows. But in human being, reason (logos) must give its assent to the presentation for the impulse to follow, and freedom resides in this assent, as a judgment applied to a presentation, as the privileged role of reason. So assent is not a property of the will, but of judgment alone. At this point one can see the distortion that results from the imposition of the vocabulary of voluntas on the doctrine of sugkatathesis: “to these presentations which are accepted by the senses, so to speak, he [Zeno] adds the assent of the soul, which he considers up to us and voluntary [in nobis positam et voluntariam]” (Cicero, Academica posteriora, 1.11.40–42). Similarly, the central idea of Stoicism in antiquity, “that which is up to us” (eph’ hêmin [ἔφ’ ἡμῖν]), constitutes the very idea of moral responsibility, which is expressed from Seneca on in terms of will: anger depends on us, which is to say it is voluntary, insofar as we assent to it. We give in to anger of our own volition, and thus we are responsible for it (“est enim voluntarium animi vitium”) (De ira, 2.2.2). Of course, one could still inquire into the notion of logikê hormê [λογιϰὴ ὁϱμή] in ancient Stoicism: doesn’t this rational impulse of man, set into motion by assent, prefigure the will as appetitus rationalis? In other words, by making reason itself into an “active” faculty, didn’t the Stoics come very close to the later notion of voluntas? Yet to be able to properly discuss the will, one must presuppose the existence of a faculty of the soul “distinct” from thought (dianoia [διάνοια]), from the intellect (nous), and from reason (logos), an autonomous and independent faculty that can on occasion be in opposition to reason and elect to go against it—which specifically excludes the psychological monism of Chrysippus, according to whom the human soul is not made of parts, but consists entirely of logos. As a result, nothing can assume the role of “will” as an independent faculty. Things would change somewhat in the middle phase of Stoicism, which abandoned the thesis of the unity of the soul. In fact, the main innovation of Panaetius was to dissociate the rational part (logikê [λογιϰή]) of the soul from the impulse (hormê), which would become in both human and animal an irrational drive. This hormê no longer fundamentally differs from Aristotle’s desire (orexis), which will be translated into 1236 WILL and its “rest” (De Trinitate, 11.5.9). True freedom is thus none other than love itself. IV. The Emergence of the “Completed” Concept of Will and the Controversy of Monothelism If the concept of will in Saint Augustine still remains largely indeterminate (will “deserves the name of love, of concupiscence, of passion”; De Trinitate, 11.2.5) or underdetermined in relation to its “completed” version in Scholasticism—one could also say that it is overdetermined since the will for Augustine is but a modality of love. This leaves unanswered a number of questions that we are addressing: where does the canonical determination of the will as “appetitio rationalis sive intellectualis” make its first appearance? As part of what philosophical or theological debate? Within which intellectual context does the concept (which has since become classic) of the will as an autonomous faculty, equally independent of desire and the intellect, first emerge and find form? In our attempt to answer such questions, we need to return to our point of departure. We had found in John of Damascus a first instance of the concept of the will that will become the classical notion from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on, reaching Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz virtually unchanged. In fact, along with this canonical definition of the will, a definition of free will emerged (autexousion [αὐτεξούσιον]), traceable to John of Damascus and accorded an extended afterlife: In the case of creatures without reason, as soon as appetite [orexis (ὄϱεξις)] is aroused for something, straightway there arises an impulse [hormê (ὁϱμή)] to action. For irrationality is the tendency of creatures without reason who are ruled by their natural appetites [phusikê orexis (φυσιϰὴ ὄϱεξις)]. Hence, neither the names of thelêsis nor boulêsis are applicable to the appetite of creatures without reason. For thelêsis is rational, free, and natural desire, and in the case of man, the natural appetite is under his rule [autexousiôs (αὐτεξουσίως)]. John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, 945 b–f The Latin translator Burgundio of Pisa will in fact translate autexousiôs as “free will.” However, we still need to take further philological and historical steps if we are to understand the provenance of this concept of “will,” and determine whether John of Damascus might himself have received his definition from elsewhere. Here it is compelling to follow the hypothesis put forward by R.-A. Gauthier in a relevant article (“Saint Maxime Confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humain”) that demonstrates how John of Damascus found direct and literal inspiration for his definitions from an author of the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor, specifically from his two texts Dispute with Pyrrhus (645) and the first Letter to Martin (645–646). This philological discovery is not simply a matter of historical interest; it allows us to identify the context in which the notion of the will may well have first come to light. The context in question concerns the heresy of monothelism. It consists in the affirmation that Christ had only one (divine) will—that of God the Father—and that, as a consequence, when Christ at Gethsemane prays, “Father, all things book 13, 9, 10). And since the notion of affection is indissociable from the notion of love, one could also say that “delectatio quasi pondus est animae” (De musica, 6.11.29); such an affection is the union of the heart and its object, according to the saying of Matthew the Evangelist that Augustine likes to quote: “ubi enim erit thesaurus tuus ibi erit et cor tuum” (6.21). Thus will is not an abstract faculty, indeterminate as to its object, but is essentially determined as love by its dilectio Dei. It is love itself reaching toward God to rejoice, and reaching to the things of creation only to use them from the point of view of God himself. In that sense, sin does not stem from the will’s desire for evil, since evil is nothing, but results from inverting the hierarchy of goods by “enjoying” the things of creation rather than simply using them in relation to the supreme and uncreated good, God himself. Thus for Augustine the will is only this capacity to be open to God and to take joy in him, to attain that point through love and beatitude where God fills the soul and leaves no room for anything else. This is why all precepts and commandments come down to a single one: to desire God, to join with him passionately, in other words to love him; any act that comes from this love of God is necessarily and infallibly good. Everything comes down to love: “Dilige, et quod vis fac” (love, and then what you will, do; In Epistulam Johannis ad Parthos, 7.8). It is true that for Augustine, will is the deepest of the three human faculties. It puts memory and intellect to work and ultimately “unites them one to another,” since it is thanks to the will that “these three elements are united [coguntur] in a single whole, and this union [coactus] endows that whole with the name of thought [cogitatio]” (De Trinitate, 10.2.6). But if the will is the deepest faculty of the soul, and since the fact that it unites the two others gives it its real name (Augustine derives cogitatio from cogere, “to collect or compress with force”), this is only because love holds them together. Since love is the universal bond, those united by love, writes Augustine, are “strangely wedded together by the bond of love” (cohaerunt enim mirabiliter glutino amoris) (10.8.20). And thus love, the true bond, is the best and proper name for the will. It is difficult to see how this Augustinian doctrine of the will would prefigure a finished concept of the will as an essentially rational appetite (differing in this regard from the Thomistic problematic). Complicating things further is the fact that Augustine is also taken to be the “inventor” of the problematic of free will. He writes: “nihil tam in nostra potestate quam ipsa voluntatas est” (nothing is so much under our control than the very will itself), which allows him to conclude that “because it is within our power, it is free for us” (De libero arbitrio, 3.3.27). It is this doctrine of free will that will have the greatest philosophical traction, along with the problem of the reconciliation of free will and grace. Yet here too, we should stress Augustine’s originality in relation to the Scholastic treatments of will. For the free will is nothing without freedom, that is to say, without restoring the integrity of the will divided against itself by sin (Confessions, 8.9.21), a restoration of integrity that results from grace. This unity of the will with itself, which results in the will not only wishing for the good but also being capable of effectively achieving the good, is none other, once again, than love. Only love frees. Only love confers integrity on the will rendered impotent by sin, and gives it its strength, its permanence, WILL 1237 We should emphasize two essential points: first of all, what is perhaps the first expression of the medieval and modern conception of the will is elaborated in a theological context, specifically in a Christological one. It is only insofar as humans are understood as “following God” or rather “following Christ” that a will as a rational power distinct from desire and ordered toward the good can be attributed to them. In other words, it is the notion of “God’s will” that seems decisive in attributing to humans (through the intermediary of Christ) an appetite that is “rational in essence.” Second, this “technical” concept of will (which will subsequently become the philosophical concept), although it is developed in a theological and Christological context, will become secularized bit by bit over time. By the beginning of the modern times, with Francis Bacon and Descartes, the will becomes this infinite capacity in man (if it is considered “formally in itself”) that is not directed at any predetermined object, but can aim at any object in general. Entirely abstract, indeterminate in its object, the will can reach toward a possible object and thus become the ideal instrument in the service of science and technique in the light of a project of domination of the world, in which man considers himself “the lord and master of nature.” This concept, theological in origin, will still serve in modern times to elaborate political concepts of sovereignty or of the general will. This provenance is perhaps not without consequence for philosophy. . Claude Romano are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me” (King James Version), he is expressing the point of view of humankind and not his own. This thesis was condemned by the church insofar as it ignored the union of both human and divine natures in Christ. To counter the monothelist heresy, Maximus the Confessor proposed two complementary truths: (1) as a man, Christ possesses a human will that he expresses in the prayer quoted above; (2) nonetheless, this will is not capable of sin, as it is always in accordance with the will of God the Father. This is the basis for a distinction in Maximus between two types of will: natural will (thelêma phusikon [θέλημα φυσιϰόν]), corresponding to that human will that Christ must possess, and gnomic will (thelêma gnômikon [θέλημα γνωμιϰόν]), corresponding to that will capable of sinning that must be denied to him. In this way, Maximus the Confessor “invents” a naturally righteous will, arrayed alongside a fallible will, one that is erratic, prone to sinning, capable of wishing for the good and then turning away from it. The righteous will, by contrast, is naturally and rationally directed only to the good. In Gautier’s commentaries, “The thelêsis is no longer a desire that is subject to reason by accident, but a desire that is rational by nature, it is a faculty (dunamis) carried on its own élan, before any intervention by consciousness, in the direction of that same universal good of nature that consciousness is made for knowing.” The choice between good and evil that belongs to the gnomic will is now no longer an intellectual act (as was decision [proairesis] in Aristotle), but an act of free will (autexousion), as Maximus had also affirmed. 1 The emergence of a new vocabulary to describe the will The contemporary philosophy of action has set out to address a number of problems left unsolved by the moderns, but the big question that remains is whether a unified field theory of action in humans and animals is desirable, or whether priority should be given to the reasons for action that give acts their meaning or that explain the causes of an action’s appearance. The terms in play are largely determined by doctrinal positions, so we cannot avoid outlining their principal articulations. The “hermeneutic” approach (Ger. hermeneutisch, Fr. herméneutique) conceives of action as the direct expression of the will by an agent capable of practical reason (Ricoeur, Philosophy of the Will; Taylor, “What Is Human Agency?”). As for the “causal” approach (Ger. kausal, Fr. causale), it defines an action as a causal relation among mental states— beliefs and desires—and behavior (Davidson, Essays on Action and Events; Searle, Intentionality). The definitional stakes of the vocabulary of action illustrate how current debates recall some of the issues that were at stake in the medieval debates, with the practical register taking the place of the religious. This is particularly clear with respect to the concept of desire. Should one distinguish between desire as a “non-motivated appetite” and desire as a “motivated pro-attitude,” a state at which the subject arrives through decision and deliberation (Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism; Schueler, Desire; Dancy, Practical Reality)? (The category of “pro-attitudes” encompasses every form of conative thought, and includes desires, intentions, urges, and wishing along with moral views and aesthetic principles insofar as these are guides toward actions of a specific kind [Davidson].) Or would it not be better to introduce a category independent of “second-order desire” that enables the subject to hold to a set of preferences among desires of the first order (Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will”)? The notion of will is at the heart of this debate. Does this term derive from the domain of judgment or from an autonomous faculty for forming and putting intentions to work? Some philosophers close to the Aristotelian tradition do not see a complete and separate faculty, but rather, the result of reasoning based on an ensemble of pro-attitudes and beliefs or propositional attitudes. Donald Davidson justifies his “rational and interpretive” conception of actions by their reasons, as well as by a “causal” conception in which a given cerebration yields a corresponding movement and its accompanying effects on the world. The “reason to act” formed from the desires and beliefs of the agent is normally a representation that tends to produce a behavior that realizes it. The principal difficulty of this perspective stems from the possibility of akrasia [ἀϰϱάσια], which Aristotle had already tried to address, that is to say, the incontinence (continued) 1238 WILL or “weakness of the will.” In this case, the subject acts contrary to what he thinks best. If, in the analysis proposed above, the intention of the subject coincides with his reasons to act, then how can he de facto form an intention that is incompatible with his rational judgment? Davidson addresses this difficulty by distinguishing between two types of judgment at work in action: the “prima facie” judgment relative to a group of objectives, and the “unconditional judgment” not subject to circumstance, which expresses the absolute preferences of the subject. The irrationality of the subject results from the non-coincidence between his reasons for action and the attitudes that in fact determine his behavior. A second type of approach declares the independence of the will in relation to beliefs and desires, and makes intentions into an irreducible propositional attitude (Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason). This analysis aims at underscoring the difference between the existence of simple preferences (which determine desires) and the fact of deciding to act in some particular fashion, or to form a specific intention. It points out that the motivational characteristics of desire and of intention are not identical—and that they do not tally with the distinction between the two types of desire invoked above. While desire constitutes a premise of practical reason at best, the relation between intention and reasoning is a more complex one. It is formed after practical reasoning is finished and puts an end to further deliberations; but it can also be formed without prior practical reasoning at all. This is the case of intentions that form themselves “in action”—and the term “intention in action” (Fr. intention en action) tends today to supplant the classical term of “volition” (Searle). Finally, intentions “on the future” constitute the element in which planning takes place. The notion of intention in this context takes on a clear “executive” meaning since the intention can cause a given behavior without any mediation from a primary reason for action. This realist analysis of the will leads to the specification of intention in its double role as “guide” for behavior and “rational control” of action. The naturalist philosophers have drawn a specialized vocabulary and new themes of argument from the computational theories of monitoring and from the neurosciences. The ideas of “internal model,” of “inverse model,” and of “perceptual feedback” have been discussed in relation to philosophical problems like the anchoring of intentions in the environment and the justification of action in its motor accomplishments (Israel et al., “Executions, Motivations, and Accomplishments”; Pacherie, “The Content of Intentions”). These works have helped articulate the differences between multiple levels of consciousness and voluntary action (Proust, “Awareness of Agency”). Contemporary thinking about the will, according to the terms of Pierre Livet, is determined “to abandon neither the linguistic pole nor the motor pole” (Livet, “Modèles de la motricité et théorie de l’action”). What results from this constraint is a palpable lexical tension destined to simultaneously maintain the general comprehensibility of terms while inflecting them with innovative characteristics, in expressions such as “non-conceptual content of action” or “motor representation.” Joëlle Proust REFS.: Bratman, M. E. Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Dancy, Jonathan. Practical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Davidson, Donald. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Frankfurt, Harry. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 1 (1971): 5–20. Israel, David, John Perry, and Syun Tutiya. “Executions, Motivations, and Accomplishments.” Philosophical Review 102, no. 4 (1993): 515–40. Livet, Pierre. “Modèles de la motricité et théorie de l’action.” In Les neurosciences et la philosophie de l’action, edited by J. L. Petit, 341–61. Paris: Vrin, 1997. Nagel, Thomas. The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Pacherie, Elisabeth. “The Content of Intentions.” Mind & Language 15, no. 4 (2000): 400–432. Proust, Joëlle. “Awareness of Agency: Three Levels of Analysis.” In The Neural Correlates of Consciousness, edited by T. Metzinger, 307–24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. Ricoeur, Paul. Philosophie de la volonté. Paris: Aubier, 1988. Schueler, George. Desire: The Role of Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Searle, John. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Taylor, Charles. “What Is Human Agency?” In Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, Human Agency and Language, 15–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. (continued) REFS.: Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. Vol. 2, Willing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX. Translated by M. Pakaluk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Augustine, Saint. Confessions. Translated by F. J. Sheed. Indianapolis, In: Hackett, 1993. . On the Trinity. Books 8–15. Edited by Gareth B. Matthews, translated by Stephen McKenna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bobzien, Susanne. Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Burns, J. Patout. The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace. Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1980. Epictetus. Discourses. Translated by George Long. London: George Bell and Sons, 1888. . The Discourses and Manual, Together with Fragments of His Writings. Translated by P. E. Matheson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916. Gauthier, René-Antoine. Introduction to L’Ethique à Nicomaque. Louvain, Belg.: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1970. . “Saint Maxime Confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humain.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 21 (1954): 51–100. Gilbert, Neal Ward. “The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 1, no. 1 (1963): 17–35. Gilson, Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine. Translated by L.E.M. Lynch. New York: Random House, 1960. John of Damascus. De fide orthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus. Edited by Eligius M. Buytaert. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1955. Long, Anthony A., and David Sedley, eds. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Lottin, Odon. “La psychologie de l’acte humain chez saint Jean Damascène et les théologiens du XIIIe siècle occidentale.” Revue thomiste 36 (1931): 631–61. Maximus the Confessor. The Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father among the Saints. Translated by Joseph P. Farrell. South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1990. Pohlenz, Max. Die Stoa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1948. Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought. Translated by T. G. Rosenmeyer. Oxford: Blackwell, 1953. Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologica. Translated by Laurence Shapcote of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, revised by Daniel J. Sullivan. 2nd ed. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990. Vernant, Jean-Pierre, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. Translated by Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Voelke, André-Jean. L’idée de volonté dans le stoïcisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973. WILLKÜR 1239 WILLKÜR, FREIE WILLKÜR (GERMAN) ENGLISH free will, (free) choice, free power of choice FRENCH arbitre, libre arbitre LATIN (liberum) arbitrium v. LIBERTY [ELEUTHÊRIA], and DESTINY, DUTY, MORALS, POWER, SOLLEN, WILL The cluster of terms used to translate the Kantian notion of (freie) Willkür—“(free) will, choice,” “free power of choice”; (libre) arbitre (Fr.)—provides a remarkable example of what philosophical philology can contribute to the understanding of a concept operative within a given theory. In German there are strong morphological and semantic reasons for linking die Willkür to der Wille (the free choice and the will). There are also theoretical reasons for this link when this (free) choice is further qualified as explicitly “free” as freie Willkür. In Kantian terms freie Willkür (free power of choice) expresses the highest exercise of reasoning; the “freedom” associated in Kant with the highest “autonomy of the will.” More generally, however, the German Willkür carries additional morphological and etymological applications. One important usage, distinct from its relation to free will and choice, is “arbitrariness” or “caprice,” or Willkür, as linked to the “arbiter.” This meaning complicates the translation of Kant’s terminology. The problem arises of how to bring to another language what Kant manages in his own by linking frei (free/autonomous) to Willkür (both arbiter and free choice). The existing English translations of both Kant’s freie Willkür and Willkür/ willkürlich rarely make explicit the link between Willkür as morphologically/etymologically related to “caprice” and “arbitrariness.” Often they opt for the highest form of free will indicated by the expression “free power of choice.” This, however, entails relinquishing the philological richness of the German in which freie Willkür (free power of choice) retains its capricious potential (it is liberum but nonetheless an arbitrium). It is only via other translations of Kant’s (freie) Willkür that the other side of Willkür can again be recuperated. In French translation this recuperation is especially apparent. In this case, the concept is rendered not as freedom of the will but as libre arbitre, a free or independent arbitrator (which suggests the discretion of an arbiter and therefore an uncertain outcome, neither determined nor necessary). This said, the French translations of Willkür can also be problematic since they often use the expression libre arbitre for both Willkür and freie Willkür, thereby obscuring the way in which the Kantian doctrine of freedom distinguishes between an already free choice (Willkür/arbitre) and a free power of choice (freie Willkür/libre arbitre). I. Willkür in French Translation: Terminological and Philosophical Problems A. The problem of translation The difficulty raised by the French translation of Willkür was pointed out as early as 1853, by J. Barni, who was faced with the need to translate it in his introduction to the French translation of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Barni wrote the following in a note: The (French) word arbitre, which I use to translate the German word Willkür, is normally only used along with a qualifying adjective, such as libre arbitre, franc arbitre, etc.; but I cannot use libre arbitre here, for I will use it to translate freie Willkür, and so I am forced to use the word arbitre by itself. Any other expression would either not serve as well or is completely unavailable, because I need to hold all related words in reserve to render other distinctly defined Kantian expressions. Later, when I can do so without inconvenience, I will translate Willkür as volonté (will). (Barni, trans., in Kant, Éléments métaphysiques de la doctrine du droit) Is it possible for the Kantian doctrine of freedom to hold up against the inevitable confusion that arises from the impossibility of differentiating the “freedom“ of Willkür from the more pointed freie Willkür? Does one solve the problem by rigorously adhering to arbitre for Willkür, while retaining libre arbitre for freie Willkür (the rule adopted by J. and O. Masson in their edition of Kant’s Œuvre as part of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade)? The French attempts to render Willkür foist a long history of confrontations between Pelagius and Augustine, Erasmus and Luther, Molina and Jansenius, back onto Kant’s understanding of the term. These confrontations inform subsequent philosophical debates pertaining to Cartesianism, including its critiques and modifications by Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz. Ultimately they amount to imposing a doctrinal debate on Cartesianism that is extraneous to it, obscuring Kant’s intentions and originality, especially the manner in which they were meant to be taken within his own doctrinal system. The translation problem of freie Willkür that we encounter in Kant, namely how and when (in French) to apply the qualifier arbitre to Willkür, or for that matter how to mark the notion of frei (libre, free) in relation to arbitre, leads us back to a longstanding tension between philosophy and theology in the history of rationalism. The problem is one of understanding the freedom of individual choice in what is known as liberum arbitrium both in relation to the will and to understanding, judgment, reason, action, and God. To clarify this problem one must first restore the coherence of the Kantian doctrine to its French translation by relating Willkür to Wille through the element of freedom, and by drawing on arbitre libre to convery freie Willkür. The problem of translation, which at first might have seemed to be merely tangential, turns out to be of vital concern to the integrity of the concept itself. What is at stake is not just the validity of Kantian metaphysics but its value: that which animates it and makes it live. We are talking about the point where Kantian metaphysics seeks to justify itself, that is, in the two domains where the arbitre must be qualified as free: that of morals (law and virtue) and that of the relationship to evil. In both cases these justifications are made from the point of view of “practical reason.” B. Lexicography, etymology 1. The arbiter and the arbitrary (l’arbitre and l’arbitraire) Let us dwell a bit longer on some of the insights into l’arbitre and Willkür that can be gleaned from major French-language dictionaries. From Émile Littré’s RT: Dictionnaire de la langue française to the RT: DHLF, essentially two meanings come to the fore. The first, which would eventually become classic, appeared early in the seventeenth century as “the person -- same root as wählen but also the same root as wohl (see WERT), which is combined in so many German terms to mean the well and the good; fulfilled or in a state of contentment, and related feelings of pleasure. It is surely this same possession of the power to choose, linked to the gratifying experience of sensible pleasures or happiness, that finds expression in Kant’s definition of Willkür in his introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals: The faculty of desire in accordance with concepts, insofar as the ground determining it to action [Bestimmungsgrund] lies within itself and not in its object, is called a faculty to do or to refrain from doing [zu tun oder zu lassen] as one pleases [nach Belieben]. Insofar as it is joined with one’s consciousness of the ability to bring about its object by one’s actions it is called choice [Willkür]. (The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. J. Gregor [German added within text; emphasis added to English]) The specific feature of Willkür lies indeed in the decision to act (in the sense of being “free to ,” being—supposedly— “master of ”), nach Belieben, that is, according to one’s will and desires in whatever way seems “good” to us, as one “pleases.” These directives of the will (arbitre) are linked to the satisfaction of our senses and feelings. Let us return to our initial question: from what does the word frei liberate the Willkür when the latter comes to be defined within the term freie Willkür? A good way to gain access to this metaphysics of Willkür is to examine German grammar more closely, focusing on the full play of Will within Willkür. C. Grammar: Freedom and temporality 1. Ich will, preterite-present Grammatically speaking, ich will (I want) is the first-person present indicative of the verb wollen (to want) in its use as an auxiliary mode, characterized specifically by the past form of its present —what grammarians call the preterite-present. Germanic languages contain a whole family of preteritepresents; they form a small, anomalous group in which the present tense shows the form of the strong preterite (the preterite being actions completed in the past, as in the French passé simple). Preterite-present verbs signify completed actions situated in the nonpast that are temporalized as present tense. In addition to ich will from wollen, the list of verbs with a similar temporal modal function include the following: • ich kann, from könne (“power to do” in the sense of “being capable of” and thus of “knowing how to” ([Fr. savoir-faire]), which links it to Kunst, to art in all its forms; • ich darf, from dürfen (still as the “power to do,” but this time in the sense of “being authorized,” of having permission within the framework and limits of a “right”); • ich mag, from mögen (“to like” or even “to love”), but in relation to another sense of power: möglich (the power of being possible) or Möglichkeit (having the possibility). who judges when there is disagreement” (later this becomes “the authority whose decision is to be respected”). The second, which is specifically philosophical, even metaphysical (for Littré), from the thirteenth century onward, refers to “the power of the will to choose between several options without external influence.” This sense is further defined as “the faculty of making a determination for oneself, with only the will for cause” (RT: Dictionnaire de la langue française), or as “the faculty of making a decision by the will alone, without constraint” (RT: DHLF). The philosopher will note the immediate politicization of the classical meaning: the arbiter as absolute master. The substantive form of the adjective, the “arbitrary,” refers more to the pleasure of the prince than to his good will, drawing the arbitre more in the direction of the irrational and capricious (together with all the associations these terms entail), as well as toward despotism. In its more purely philosophical ascription, the term arbitre must first be determined as franc or libre (unfettered or free). Once it is, it will be detached from power and transferred to the faculty of the will, itself defined as a capacity for choice without external influence or any form of determinism. The source of the “metaphysical” dimension of the arbitre (as evoked by Littré) derives from the fact that it is free only by virtue of the will. It is then an eminently classical philosophy of the will (the predestined place of true freedom) that takes over the idea of arbitre in the notion of libre arbitre. And we are perhaps in a better position to address the following question enabled by close attention to Willkür: Was Kant in fact breaking with classical philosophy, particularly its culmination in Leibniz’s comment in his Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes (“On Article 39”): “To ask whether our will is endowed with freedom is the same as to ask whether our will is endowed with will. Free and voluntary signify the same thing” (trans. Loemker in Philosophical Papers and Letters, 9). 2. Willkür Dictionaries of current accepted usage underscore the emphasis in German on the sense of the arbiter as arbitrary or capricious (as in the expression nach Willkür handeln [to act according to a caprice of the will, or according to its freedom]). This sense dominates the meaning of the adjective willkürlich (shifting from “without external motives” to “despotic”), and does so even more explicitly in Willkürherrschaft (a tyrannical regime, despotic, subject to the whim and pleasure of the ruler). Furthermore—and this is essential to our discussion—from the Grimm to the Duden the lesson of the etymology of Willkür teaches that the doubling of the Will with Kür leads to a redundancy of meaning significant in itself. That aspect of free choice that is completed in a decision by the will (and that takes on pejorative meanings of the unmotivated and the despotic from the middle of the eighteenth century), becomes the dominant one. Kür refers back to the verb kiesen (in the past-tense kor, with the past participle gekoren), which has the same sense as wählen (to choose), a meaning that is still retained, for example, in the “free program” in gymnastics, which are in effect called Kür, as in the Kurfürst, who is the elector prince. The unity of meaning is fully achieved when, through further etymological study, one takes into account that wollen (to will) has not only the WILLKÜR 1241 the thrall of time’s passage? If to be free is to be dominos compos sui (master of oneself, master of one’s own mind), what power would the will have over itself if in the passage of time there were no present but only a past that imposes form and content? As Kant often reminds us, “that which belongs to time past is no longer within the power of the acting subject” (AK, 5:94–95, 97). Under the semblance of a “freedom of choice,” reinforced by the German sense of freie Willkür, we understand Kantian “freedom” in all its rigor. In the terms set out in the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason (B 1–3), freedom of the will is none other than the return of the will to an a priori order. But before we turn to the doctrinal implications of this provisional conclusion, it is worth lingering one last moment on what might be the effect on that family of modal auxiliaries when freie Willkür is liberated as frei from its wollen, which is to say from its wählen, and thus as a correlative also frees the present of this wollenwählen from all that is indicated and endures in the form of ich will: the persistence of the past, the marks of a legacy, the weight of an empirical history. A whole chain of effects follows from the way in which modalities of freedom are signified within the preterite-present. Especially important are those instances in which the Kantian lesson finds its most memorable articulation, that is, where Kant tell us (and thereby legitimizes the recognition of freedom and its purview), that man wants what he ought, and thus what he can do (cf. Critique of Practical Reason, in AK, 5:159: “that one can do it because our own reason recognizes this as its command and says one ought to do it”; or Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in AK, 7:148: “what [the human] wills at the order of his morally commanding reason he ought to do and consequently can do”). Here, in the most direct way, Wollen, Sollen, and Können are bound together in solidarity. It is a solidarity that reminds us that every choice made in the Wollen, which is in fact a Wählen, is inscribed within the framework set up by all the various modal auxiliaries, insofar as each of them, in its present indicative, expresses the conclusion of a past. When the Wollen is freed from choice as determined by the past, isn’t the Sollen liberated as well? Isn’t the weight of debt lifted from its own obligation (ich soll does in fact mean “I have incurred a debt”)? Isn’t Sollen then released from its obligation to reimburse or repay the legacy of a fault in the form of original sin? What we discover is a will no longer subject to the “legal clause” that refers it back to a reductive motivation that sustains the illusion that it is independent or “quits” with the obsession with acquittal. The same solidarity also implies that Können can now be liberated from the long, painstaking process that makes it a Kunst or a Kennen (ich kann does in fact mean “I have finished learning, and now I know how to do it”). “Power” is freed from the skill and measure required for savoir-faire in relation to things and to men. So now we have an arbiter freed from the pragmatic clause that makes “techno-practical” intelligence the determinant of will, autonomous only insofar as it is instructed and trained. Pierre Osmo • ich soll, from sollen (“ought” in the sense of “oughtto-be”), which very generally relates to the register of order (to make happen), in particular to obligation, especially an obligation that comes from a Schuld (a debt to be repaid or a fault to be redeemed); • ich muß, from müssen (here again an “obligation,” but in the sense of “needing to,” in the register of necessity, generally in submission to a constraint, of a “de-fault” [French wordplay on dé-faut], of a lack that must be filled, of a need); • and finally, ich weiß, from wissen (“to know” in the sense of being acquainted with or knowing what something is [Fr. connaître]), which also brings us back to können (Fr. savoir-faire, see first entry in this list) by passing through its other form, kennen. Preterite-present verbs share the fact that they are imbued with an awareness of time. They contain, implicitly, the recollection of the subject’s essential temporality (of action, including the very act of knowing itself). As auxiliaries (see ASPECT and PRESENT), they open past determinations to future expectations (uncertainties, promises, hypothetical projections). This family of preterite-presents is the element in which Kant’s reflections live and breathe. In his critical philosophy what he calls the “interest of reason” is constantly being articulated in terms of these modal verbs. They saturate both the letter and spirit of his German. Salient examples may be found in a series of questions posed in the Critique of Pure Reason that encapsulate Kant’s philosophical anxiety: was kann ich wissen? (what can I know?), was soll ich tun? (what should I do?), was darf ich hoffen? (what hope am I permitted?) (Critique of Pure Reason, B 833). What story would “ich will” tell us if we asked it to unpack everything contained in its past form of the present, which in fact stretches toward its future? Ich will in German extends to a sense of “out of my present-day desire.” It refers to the decision to update or not to update positions as a result of sampling, tasting, testing, and comparing the multiple “objects” of experience, determining the pleasure or displeasure such objects afford. The Kantian “choice” in its typical usage is signified precisely as a choosing faculty defined in the context of a Begehrungsvermögen (power of desire). It connotes actions that are the result of a representation or that arise from expectation of either an anticipated pleasure or a dreaded displeasure. It also implies decision-making that takes place in the ambiguous space between “what one can do” and “what one ought to do.” 2. The persistence of the past What Kant seems to stress when he qualifies the will as frei, is the wollen of the Will-kür; the power to “choose” (wählen as reiterated in -kür), released from all experience, from all circumstances in which diverse impulses and stimuli constrain behavior. Will is thus freed from everything impinging on it from the outside, including the sense of exteriority as such and the succession of time, with its inexorable flow. In the final analysis, how could the will be free if it continued to be a choosing in 1242 WISDOM WITTICISM A witticism is an instantaneous linguistic invention that is linked to the specific occasion in which it is used (see MOMENT, II), and that both engages and at the same time eludes its author. Every age and every linguistic region has its own means of determining the value and the relevant traits of a witticism. INGENIUM discusses the elements of a comparison among, in the first place, the Greco-Latin, classical, humanist, and baroque traditions, in which a witticism is above all the sign of a natural gift (euphuia [εὐφυΐα]); the French esprit in the second place (see also FRENCH); and finally the Anglo-Saxon tradition of “wit” and of the Witz (from wissen [to know]). The first tradition privileges the rhetorical and political aspect of the witticism: for Greek and Latin, see COMPARISON (the Greek word for a witty remark is asteion [ἀστεῖον], from astu [ἄστυ], “the town”; cf. COMPARISON, Box 1 for a treatment of this metaphor), and, for witticism in Italian (and still hewing to this tradition), ARGUTEZZA, CONCETTO; cf. CIVILTÀ and SPREZZATURA. For the emphasis on invention and cunning, see MÊTIS and the play on words described by Ulysses (MÊTIS, Box 1). Likewise, in Arabic, see INGENIUM, Box 1; cf. TALAT. T.UF. The second tradition stresses the break in logic, and the relation to nonsense; see NONSENSE and ABSURD. English is particularly rich in nuance: wit, humor, joke, pun (see INGENIUM, Box 2). The contemporary thematization of witticisms is linked to Freud, for whom Witz, along with dreams, stands out as one of the privileged roads to the unconscious (see UNCONSCIOUS). The Freudian Witz is discussed both in INGENIUM, IV, and in NONSENSE, IV, and in its relation to the signifier when adopted by Lacan, under SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, V. v. GEMÜT, GENIUS, LOGOS, MANIERA, SOUL, WORD WISDOM I. The Twofold Meaning of Wisdom 1. Sapientia translates the Greek sophia [σοφία] and retains that term’s twofold practical and theoretical orientation: the sophos [σοφός] is first a clever man, an expert, before he is a scientist. He is a life-model before he is a master of the sciences: see ART, MÊTIS. This happy conjunction that characterizes both Greek sophia and Latin sapientia can malfunction: the distinction drawn by Plato, and clearly marked by Cicero, between the sophistês [σοφιστής], the “sophist” who claims to know everything, and the philosophos [φιλόσοφος], the “philosopher” who is a lover of wisdom, also marks the dividing line between theory and practice, scientia and sapientia: see PRAXIS; cf. SOPHISM. On the relation between wisdom and philosophy in the various traditions, see EUROPE. The characteristic of the sage, which is connected with the key role played by Stoicism (cf. LOGOS and GLÜCK), nonetheless remains the conjunction of the greatest possible wisdom in the epistemological sense (science, knowledge) and also in the practical-ethical sense (prudence and/or detachment). But modern languages generally distinguish between theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom and retain for wisdom only the practical-ethical meaning: see, in addition to GLÜCK and LOGOS, PHRONÊSIS, PRUDENTIAL, SOUCI, VERGÜENZA. 2. More broadly, on practical-ethical wisdom, see CONSCIOUSNESS, DUTY, MORALS, VIRTUE [VIRTÙ, WERT]. On knowledge and science, see EPISTEMOLOGY, GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN, REASON (particularly GERMAN, INTELLECT, INTELLECTUS, UNDERSTANDING). REFS.: Allison, Henry E. Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Castillo, Monique. Kant. Paris: Vrin, 1997. Delbos, Victor. La philosophie pratique de Kant. 3rd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. . Éléments métaphysiques de la doctrine du droit. Introduction by J. Barni. Paris: A. Durand, 1863. . The Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. . Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. . Gesammelte Schriften (AK). 29 vols. Edited by the Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900–. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von. Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes. In Philosophical Papers and Letters, translated and edited by Leroy E. Loemker. 2nd ed. Dordrecht, Neth.: Reidel, 1969. Roviello, Anne-Marie. L’Institution kantienne de la liberté. Brussels: Ousia, 1984. On the relation between wisdom and ordinary life, see CLAIM, COMMON SENSE, ENGLISH. On the relation between human wisdom and divine wisdom, see ALLIANCE, DEVIL, INTUITION, LIGHT, LOGOS, SVET. II. The French Terms Sagesse and Goût The French word sage (wise, good) is derived from classical Latin sapidus, “that which has taste, tasty,” formed from the verb sapere, which means “to have taste, sense,” but also “to have intelligence or judgment, appreciate,” and finally “to be acquainted with something, understand, know.” Sapientia (sagesse, “wisdom”) was thus initially connected with taste, with the ability to assess, with discernment— and Thomas Aquinas is still aware of the etymology: “Doctrina per studium acquiritur, sapientia autem per infusionem habetur” (Doctrine is acquired by study, but wisdom is acquired by infusion; Summa theologica, 1.1a6): see GOÛT, and cf. SENSE. v. CROYANCE, CULTURE, EXPERIENCE, MADNESS, MENSCHHEIT, PATHOS, TRUTH EXPRESSUM. WORD Fr. mot G. Wort, ὄνομα, ῥῆμα, λέξις, parola, vox, verbum, dictio, locutio, muttum, pars orationis, vocabulum PORTUGUESE palavra ROMANIAN cuvânt RUSSIAN slovo [слοвο] SPANISH palabra v. HOMONYM, LANGUAGE, LOGOS, PRÉDICABLE, PREDICATION, PROPOSITION, SENSE, SIGN, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, SUBJECT, TERM, THING All European languages have a term that refers to an element of the language felt spontaneously to be distinct, grammatically and/or semantically, and that corresponds to the English term “word”: Italian parola, Spanish palabra, Portuguese palavra, French mot, German Wort, Russian slovo [слοвο], etc. This pleasing unanimity glosses over several questions, however. The first is knowing whether the word is a universal category. It is not in fact certain that in all languages there is a signifying unit perceived as autonomous by its speakers. Furthermore, even if we confine ourselves to the Greco-Roman tradition, this unit was constituted for its speakers in a way that was not independent of the process of the formation of its grammar. Finally, the designation of such a unit has been the object of so many political and religious debates over the centuries that its modern form was not established until the end of the seventeenth century. In addition to this, whether we distinguish the minimal unit that is a word on the basis of criteria that are grammatical (morphology, function) or semantic, different words to say “word” are related to, or in competition with, each other, not only from one language to another but also within the same language, to the extent that there is sometimes no generic term, or no longer any generic term, to designate a “word.” Thus, in Aristotle’s De intepretatione, the word is made up of the pair onoma-rhêma [ὄνομα-ῥῆμα], “noun-verb,” which constitutes logos [λόγος], so that when medieval commentators introduce dictio (the “word”) as a generic term covering both nomen and verbum, it appears as a distortion. Moreover, the terms that are continually reinvested from within other perspectives are particularly difficult to translate, terms such as onoma (word/name), verbum (word/verb), and at the confluence of several different traditions, lexis [λέξις] (speech, style, expression, articulate vocal sound, word) or vox (voice, word). I. A Linguistic Entity? The Word as a Result of Grammar Formation In Greek and in Latin, everyday language did not contain a term devoted specifically and monosemically to a linguistic entity that corresponded to the word and that was endowed with its general properties (Fruyt and Reichler-Béguelin, “La notion”; Lallot, “Le mot”). It was the predominance of parts of speech in the process of forming a grammar that placed the segmentation into words at the center of how language was discussed (see Auroux, Histoire des idées linguistiques, vol. 2). In the Hellenic graphic tradition, the norm was the scriptio continua, and the regular separation of words by a space did not appear until later in the Byzantine era. As for the designation “word,” which since Plato had been confused with that of “name,” onoma [ὄνομα], from the Hellenistic period onward it was expressed by the term lexis [λέξις]: “word” was understood at that time to mean “part of speech.” It was only with the grammarians in the Alexandrine tradition that the word came to be characterized as an autonomous segment with a single stress and meaning (see Lallot, “Le mot”). For Latin, it would seem that it was Varro (1 BCE) who named the word verbum (whose etymology was verum boare, “to proclaim what is true”) in his De lingua latina. Nevertheless, the polysemy of the word verbum was omnipresent for this author, who assigned it several meanings (Di Pasquale, “La notion”). This polysemy (see below) was evident in the first French-Latin dictionary, Jean Nicot’s Thresor de la langue françoyse tant ancienne que moderne (1606), where the entry “Mot: dictio, verbum” contains a list of expressions in which the occurrence of the word mot is translated alternately as verbum, dictio, oratio, vox, vocabulum, tessera: “haec vox dominus,” “dictum breviter,” “prisca vocabula,” “oratio capitalis,” “vigiliarum tesserae,” “pervetusta verba.” This polysemy, which is still very much present in modern dictionaries through collocations, is as much indicative of the questions linked to the designation of the word as it is of the difficulties of translating the different terms that name it. . II. The Word in Greek, Grammatical and Semantic Issues A. Onoma/rhêma: “Word,” “noun,” “verb” In Greek grammatical terminology, onoma and rhêma [ῥῆμα] refer to the basic constituent elements of logos (“statement, phrase”; see LOGOS), the noun and the verb. These are the preferred terms of merismos [μεϱισμός], the separation of the sentence into functionally different constituent parts. But this pair has a history, and the terms onoma and rhêma preexist their conjunction. 1. Onoma and rhêma: Two possible designations for “word” The term onoma is intimately associated with the oldest and most elementary awareness of the referential function of language: language gives names to things, it is a nomenclature that has the world as its referent. Even though at this stage it is still not a question of “parts of speech,” the elements of nomenclature are prototypically substantives, that is, nominal types of words that are applied to concrete—“substantial”—objects around us: it is quite likely that in the first instance these are proper names of people (Socrates, Zeus—it is important to note the Greek use of the definite article, so they would say ho Sôkratês [ὁ Σωϰϱάτης], literally “the Socrates” or “the Zeus”; see SUBJECT). During this roughly pre-Platonic stage, onomata [ὀνόματα] in the plural refers to the “vocabulary” of a language, and the singular, onoma, to a “word” (proper noun, common noun, adjective, or verb). As for the other kinds of “words” (articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, particles, etc.), we can see that for Aristotle, in any case (Poetics, 20), all of this “small matter” of the language is classified, like syllables, as phônai asêmoi [φωναὶ 1244 WORD 1 The word is not a universal category The word poses a problem as a universal category. We know that it is extremely difficult for Western grammarians to deal with agglutinative and polysynthetic languages from the vantage point of the Western model of the dictionary of words, which presupposes a segmentation into units. In the cases where grammars were constituted independently of the Western model, the system of writing played a fundamental role. So in languages with logographic writing, such as Chinese, the unit is iconic and does not always correspond to a fixed acoustic image (the number “5” can be expressed as “five,” cinq, fünf, etc.). In Chinese, two ideograms correspond partially to the word: the ideogram that translates the notion of word or term, the character ci, was only recently imported (after 1920), whereas the unit of analysis remains the character zi (Alleton, “Terminologie de la grammaire chinoise”). In certain cases, two systems can coexist, such as when the parts of speech derived from the Greco-Latin model are superimposed on the traditional units. The Japanese tradition thus has two terms: kotoba in everyday language, and tango as a grammatical term. Japanese presents a duality of the basic units, at present visualized through notation: the referential part (called either kotoba or shi, depending on the era) is notated as an “ideogram,” and the syntactic or enunciative part (teniha or ji, depending on the era) is notated using syllables. The grammatization of Japanese by Western languages, in this case by the translation of Dutch grammars from the beginning of the nineteenth century, produced terms for the parts of speech that reduplicated those of the Japanese tradition. The terms ending in -shi correspond to the parts of speech (dôshi, verb) and translate the Dutch woord: those containing the Chinese root -go correspond to the functional groups (shugo, subject). Moreover, -go refers to lexical units: tango, “simple word”; fuku-go, “complex word” (Tamba, “Approche du signe et du ‘sens’”). In the Greco-Roman tradition, the word was finally accepted as a unit by grammarians, by theologians, and by everyday language during the first few centuries of the Common Era. This did not, however, resolve the problems of designating this unit. If we confine ourselves to the Romance languages, we notice that there are in fact three terms that contribute to the naming of the word: mot, verbe, and parole. Romanian is an exception, since it is the only Romance language that does not have an equivalent of parole, and the word for mot is cuvânt, which comes from the Latin conventus, “assembly.” The semantic shift from “assembly” to “conversation” then to “word” is apparent in other Balkan languages, such as ancient Bulgarian, Albanian, and Serbian, in which kuvent means “assembly,” “conversation.” Romanian also uses (at a more stylistic and familiar level) the noun vorb ā, meaning “speech,” “way of speaking.” In modern Greek, there is a very common word, kouventa [ϰουβέντα], also derived from the Latin, which means both “conversation” and “spoken word,” “word.” Mot, parole, and verbe were all present in their Latin forms, muttum, parabola, and verbum, as names for a unit of language, and one of these terms, in a given vernacular, would become the established term meaning word. We should also mention here historical, political, or religious reasons, and one would have to make a detour through the various etymologies. REFS.: Alleton, Viviane. “Terminologie de la grammaire chinoise.” Travaux du Groupe Linguistique Japonaise 1 (1975): 12–23. Tamba, Irène. “Approche du signe et du ‘sens’ linguistique à travers les systèmes d’écriture japonais.” Langages 82 (1986): 83–100. ἄσημοι], “vocal sounds that have no meaning” and in this respect is quite distinct from onoma, the first vocal sound to be recognized as “signifying” (sêmantikê [σημαντιϰή]) in the ascending hierarchy that goes from the phoneme to speech in general. This generic meaning of onoma would continue in Greek, including in the writings of the grammarians, well beyond the grammatical specification of the term that we will go on to discuss (so we can find in Galen [17A], who was certainly aware of the grammar of his time, the second century CE, the expression, the “onoma ‘illainein’ ” [τὸ ἰλλαίνειν ὄνομα], which is remarkable once we understand that that illainein is a verb). Alongside onoma, a synchronically unmotivated term inherited in its prototypical sense of “proper noun” from a distant Indo-European past, the Greek language in its ancient period came up with a postverbal derivation with a very clear formation, rhêma, first attested in the sixth century BCE. As an integral part of the family of rhêtôr [ῥήτωϱ], “orator”; rhêsis [ῥῆσις], “speech”; etc., rhêma is the action noun with a -ma ending derived from a root *wera-/*wre-, meaning “to speak,” “to say” (see Gr. Ϝεϱέω, “I will say,” Lat. verbum, Ger. Wort, Eng. “word,” etc.). As its formation suggests, rhêma seems initially to have designated something “said,” a complex expression or a simple word, no doubt noted first of all for its semantic range, and then, in a more banal sense, any “word” as an instrument used to say something (an expression such as kata rhêma apaggeilai [ϰατὰ ῥῆμα ἀπαγγεῖλαι], “to report word for word” [Aeschines, Peri tês parapresbeias, 2.122] illustrates well this aspect of the materiality of saying), so in this respect it is explicitly opposed to “acts” and to “truth.” Plato uses rhêma widely and does so at times in this loose sense of an unspecialized linguistic indicator (see Timaeus, 49e, where he refers to the demonstrative tode [τόδε]), which is more or less equivalent to onoma, and with which he alternates freely in the same contexts (Laws, 906c 3; see also in this same free variation, the composite noun prosrhêma [πϱόσϱημα] [Politics, 276b 4, Phaedrus, 238b 3], which refers initially, no doubt, to a form of salutation; see chaire [χαῖϱε], “salute” [Charmides, 164e 1]). 2. Platonic pairs We might conclude from the above that in Plato’s time the Greek language invented, by different routes, two interchangeable words for “word” as an instrument of linguistic expression: onoma and rhêma. Although it is not essentially incorrect, this conclusion does not do full justice to the semantic richness of the pair onoma/rhêma. It is precisely in Plato that we can observe how the two terms, far from sinking into banality and a lack of differentiation, each develop in opposition to one other (in the Saussurean sense) its own semantic potentiality and produce a very unusual pair. WORD 1245 2. Although it is similar to the two passages quoted in C1 in that the logos is said there to be “composed of onomata and rhêmata,” the famous passage from the Sophist 262a–e is decisively different on one point: onomata and rhêmata each have their own distinct definition and exemplification. The sui generis combination that is a “first and minimal” logos, such as “man learns,” owes its singularity to the fact that it connects an onoma that designates an agent (prattôn [πϱάττων]), for example, “lion,” “stag,” or “horse,” to a rhêma that designates an action (praxis [πϱᾶξις]), for example, “walks,” “runs,” or “sleeps.” Onoma and rhêma each have here, without question, an inalienable specificity of minimal, noninterchangeable constituent elements of the predicative statement, and they are prototypically represented by what grammar will call, with the help of the very terms Plato uses, onoma and rhêma, a “noun” and a “verb.” We have to stress that this in no way implies that in the Sophist onoma and rhêma refer exclusively to the grammatical categories of “noun” and “verb”: the only thing we can say is that onoma here designates a propositional constituent, typically a noun that is liable to function as a subject, and rhêma designates a propositional constituent, typically a verb that is liable to function as a predicate. That being the case, no single word can provide a satisfactory translation of these two terms. This in itself matters little, but what is important is that Plato was able to analyze a simple affirmative proposition in terms of its two fundamental constituent elements and to find in his language two terms capable of designating each one of these. The innovation of the Sophist would prove to be exceptionally productive. 3. Nouns and verbs a. The Aristotelian polarity Aristotle, for whom the functional pair appears to be a successful outcome of the analysis of logos as a simple affirmative statement, enriches the definitions of the two constituent terms and makes their relationship more symmetrical. In the Peri hermêneias (16a 19), onoma is defined as “a vocal sound, which has a conventional meaning, without reference to time, and no part of which has any meaning when it is taken separately” [φωνὴ σημαντιϰὴ ϰατὰ συνθήϰην ἄνευ χϱόνου, ἧς μηδὲν μέϱος ἐστὶ σημαντιϰὸν ϰεχωϱισμένον]. In the following chapter (16b 6), rhêma is defined as “that which adds to its own meaning the meaning of time, and it always indicates something that is affirmed by something” [τὸ πϱοσσημαῖνον χϱόνον, οὗ μέϱος οὐδὲν σημαίνει χωϱίς, ϰαί ἐστιν ἀεὶ τῶν ϰαθ’ ἑτέϱου λεγομένων σημεῖον]. Rhêma is thus clearly identified as conveying a predicative function and is functionally opposed to the substratum, or subject (hupokeimenon [ὑποϰείμενον]). The insistence on the nonsignifying nature of the parts that onoma and rhêma can be broken down into has the effect of not allowing these terms to be applied to segments of more than one word: in “the little horse is white,” the constituent subject “the little horse” is not a noun nor is the constituent predicate “is white” a verb, since We can distinguish three types of contexts in which the pair regularly appears with a formulaic regularity that deserves our attention: A. Typically “Cratylian” contexts, in which rhêma is opposed to onoma as the “etymological expression” is opposed to the “name” it accounts for, formally and semantically. So Dii philos [Διΐ φίλος], “dear to Zeus,” is the underlying rhêma of the onoma Diphilos [Δίφιλος], “Diphilus” (399b 7, 421 1). This feature appears as a local analysis of the opposition between onoma as name (a single term that designates) and rhêma as expression (a syntagm with a predicative content), an opposition that is clear in the Republic, 463e, where onomata are names of relations (“father,” “mother,” etc.), and rhêma is a time-honored expression, such as “things are going well.” B. Contexts that have a rhetorical connotation. Here, the pair onomata te kai rhêmata [ὀνόματα τε ϰαὶ ῥήματα] (sometimes in inverse order) refers to the variety of forms of linguistic expression that the masters of spoken language, orators (Apology, 17c 1; Symposium, 198b 5, see 199b 4; Theaetetus, 184c 1, see 168c) or poets (Republic, 601a 5), are capable of exploiting to aesthetic ends, whereas Socrates, who had no technical training, is content to speak with the words (onomata) that he happens to have been provided with (eikêi legomena tois epituchousin onomasin [εἰϰῇ λεγόμενα τοῖς ἐπιτυχοῦσιν ὀνόμασιν]; Apology, 17c 2). Influenced by what we observed in group A, translators readily translate the pair as “words and expressions.” A plausible alternative would be to consider that in the contexts in group B, we are dealing with a more-or-less redundant expression of the kind, “ways and customs”: Plato can be seen, then, to have freely exploited the combination of two terms of weakly contrasting values in order to create an expression that “imitates” in its very superfluity the use of language it attempts to describe. C. Contexts in which the pair onoma-rhêma is closely associated with logos. We can probably distinguish between two varieties here: 1. Typical of this variety is the first definition of logos in Theaetetus (206d 2): “make one’s thought [dianoia (διάνοια)] manifest with one’s voice using rhêmata and onomata.” Although there is no question in this passage of a rhetorical logos, and although the paired expression certainly has no aesthetic connotation here, we could be very close to group B (see LOGOS). We would place in this section the passage from Letter 7, 342b, where the noun (onoma) kuklos [ϰύϰλος], “circle,” is opposed to the logos, “definition” of the circle, “composed of onomata and rhêmata” (see 343b 4), namely “that of which the extremities are always equidistant from the centre.” There is clearly no question here of aesthetics, but it would be no less risky, as regards the logos of “circle,” to claim to be able to say precisely what is onoma and what is rhêma—the French translators of the Belles Lettres edition (A. Diès for the Theaetetus and J. Souilhé for the Letter 7) are certainly making a bold statement in translating them as “nouns” and “verbs.” 1246 WORD The other parts of the sentence fulfill auxiliary functions and are all related to the functions that the noun and the verb perform. In the ordered list of parts of the sentence, the noun precedes the verb. Following on from Apollonius Dyscolus (Syntax, 1.16), the Alexandrine grammatical tradition—for example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De compositione verborum, 5)—almost unanimously justifies the precedence of the noun over the verb by the physical primacy of the body over its dispositions or of a substance over its accidents. Among grammarians, onoma and rhêma are given new technical definitions, but the symmetry of these definitions means that they preserve the memory of the pair invented by Plato and incorporate the criterion of time introduced by Aristotle. In the Technê grammatikê of Dionysius Thrax, onoma is defined (chap. 12) as a “part of the sentence that has a case, designating a concrete entity, for example ‘stone’, or abstract, for example, ‘education,’ ” and rhêma (chap. 13) as a “word [lexis, see below] that has no case, which includes tense, person and number, and which expresses the active or the passive.” The personal inflection of a verb, which has no case, corresponds to the inflection of a noun, which has a case, and the verb opposes its temporal variation and diathetic flexibility to the stability of the entities reflected by the nouns. In Alexandria, the Stoic legacy is partially rejected: onoma restores the generic value that Chrysippus had taken away from it—“the appellative [prosêgoria] is classed as a kind of noun [onoma]” (Technê grammatikê, chap. 11). On the other hand, Apollonius Dyscolus remains faithful to the Stoic definition of the noun in terms of quality (poiotês [ποιότης]) and not of substance (ousia [οὐσία]) (ibid., chap. 12).The pair qualitysubstance is used to contrast the noun to the pronoun; for him a noun and a pronoun do not have the same attributes; indeed, a noun does not involve deixis [δεῖξις] but instead signifies quality, whereas a pronoun does have deixis but only signifies substance. One could say, then, that strictly speaking pronouns are “substantives” par excellence, whereas nouns are “qualifiers.” Whereas all that “I,” “this,” etc. do is to point to a substance without describing it, “Socrates,” “man,” “big,” “Greek,” etc. in their own way each give some qualitative indication, whether the quality in question is given as something “proper” to a substantial individual (Socrates), as “common” to a class of substantial individuals (man), or as predicating a substance of which it will designate an “added” attribute— epitheton [ἐπίθετον]—(large), etc. By including predicable terms, we might be concerned that onoma comes dangerously close to rhêma. For a grammarian, the protection against this danger resides in morphology: defined by the case inflection and having nothing to do with personal inflection, the noun could in no way be confused with the verb, which is also endowed with personal inflection and has no case inflection. So, for better or worse, the meanings of the two terms that Plato was the first to join together as a pair become stabilized in grammatical theory, but their values are still multiple and fluid. B. Lexis 1. The evolution of the meaning of lexis The gains made in the reflection on language that gave the specia lized meanings of “noun” and “verb” to onoma and they each can be broken down into separate signifying parts. What was only implicitly explained in the Sophist thus becomes an intrinsic part of the definition of each of the terms: onoma is a single word that can occupy the subject position, typically a substantive noun, and rhêma is a single word that can occupy the predicate position, typically a verb. The latter is distinguished from the former by its capacity to “signify time as well”: clearly one thinks here of the system of verbal inflection, which produces, among other things, temporally specific forms. Even though Aristotle from his own logical perspective refines his analysis by further restricting the application of rhêma to the verbal forms of the present (see PARONYM, Box 2) and that of onoma to the nominal nominative (which effectively corresponds to the form that the noun takes in the subject position), it is clear that he laid the foundations of a specifically grammatical understanding of “noun” and “verb.” b. Parts of speech Stoic dialectics undoes the self-evident nature of the polarity between onoma and rhêma as it was defined by Plato and Aristotle, since onoma and rhêma are now seen as two of the five parts of speech presented in place of the vocal sound (topos peri phônês [τόπος πεϱὶ φωνῆς]) and form part of the investigation concerning the signifier (see SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED). Rhêma is defined by Diogenes Laertius (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.58) as “an element of speech which cannot be declined, signifying a non-composite predicate” [στοιχεῖον λόγου ἄπτωτον σημαῖνον ἀσύνθετον ϰατηγόϱημα], or by others as “an element of speech which cannot be declined, signifying what can be formed with one or several subjects, for example: (I) write, (I) say” [στοιχεῖον λόγου ἄπτωτον, σημαῖνόν τι συνταϰτὸν πεϱί τινος ἤ τινων, οἷον γϱάφω, λέγω] (ibid.). In accordance with how Aristotle characterizes it, rhêma is here clearly presented as signifying a predicate— in other words, a morphological entity that, having no case, is opposed to the noun and its satellites; more precisely, in relation to the composite predicate “eats the mouse,” which includes an oblique case, rhêma signifies the noncomposite predicate “eats.” Rhêma thus seems to be the part of speech that signifies a part of what enables complete predication. The verb, since we need to call it by its name, is understood here by its subtraction as the part that has no case of a composite predicate (its definition also allows it to include the case of an intransitive verb that would constitute a predicate by itself). In the same context, onoma means “proper noun,” which is defined as “a part of speech designating a particular quality, like Diogenes, Socrates” and is distinct from prosêgoria [πϱοσηγοϱία], the “appellative,” which for its part is defined as “a part of speech signifying a common quality, like man, horse” (Diogenes Laertius, ibid.). After the initiative taken by Chrysippus, there is in Stoic dialectics no longer any generic term meaning a noun, whether proper or common. Among grammarians, and most particularly Apollonius Dyscolus, the noun and the verb are considered, of all eight parts of the sentence (merê logou [μέϱη λόγου]), to be “the most essential,” “the most important,” or even, “the most lively.” Without a noun or a verb, indeed, no phrase is “complete” (“sugkleietai [συγϰλείεται]”; Apollonius Dyscolus, Syntax, 1.14). WORD 1247 The Stoics, who invented the analysis of language in terms of signifier/signified/referent, thematize this relationship between lexis and signifier and define lexis as one of the three moments of the signifier that may or may not present a meaning (see SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, and below, 2). Nothing is said, however, either by Aristotle or the Stoics, of the dimension of lexis, and articulate vocal sound could correspond equally to a syllable, a word, or a succession of words. It is not easy to explain precisely how, from there, the shift in meaning occurred that led grammarians to define lexis as referring to “the smallest part of the sentence constructed” (meros elachiston tou kata suntaxin logou [μέϱος ἐλάχιστον τοῦ ϰατὰ σύνταξιν λόγου]; Dionysus Thrax, Technê grammatikê, chap. 11). It is possible, as Baratin has suggested (“Les origines stoïciennes”), that grammarians, while retaining the intermediary position that the Stoics had assigned to lexis (between an inarticulate sound and a statement as a site of meaning), also used the term to refer to an intermediary unit, the word, as a compound of syllables devoid of signification and as a unit in a signifying sentence. While remaining faithful in part to the Stoic analysis, this new meaning of lexis had the unquestionable advantage for the grammarians of Alexandria, philologists that they were, of finding a concrete application and a functional usefulness for this term in the field of textual studies. The word, as a minimal signifier resulting from the segmentation of logos, constituted a precious empirical entity that ancient grammar would make into its object par excellence. Its definition, even in the Technê of Dionysus mentioned earlier, explains that lexis (word) and meros logou (part of a sentence) are strictly interchangeable and alternate in free variation. We can thus see how, after having allocated to the terms onoma and rhêma the designation of specific parts of speech that could, at least in some instances for the latter, refer to the word, the Greek language ended up taking lexis as a truly generic name for the word as a minimal signifying unit. It would later on derive the name for a collection of words from it, lexikon [λεξιϰὸν] (biblion [βιϐλίον]), the ancestor of our “dictionary,” which itself is derived from dictio, the Latin calque for lexis. The most ancient collections of words, simply entitled Lexeis [Λέξεις], “words,” or Glôssai [Γλῶσσαι], “strange words,” did not at all claim to be exhaustive but were lists of words that were, for one reason or another, marginal to the reference idiom (obsolete words, dialect words, etc.). (On glôssa [γλῶσσα], see Aristotle, Poetics, 1457b 4; glôssarion [γλώσσαϱιον], “glossary,” is a late derivation.) 2. The tripartite Stoic division into phônê, lexis, and logos and the change of perspective in relation to Aristotle We have to give a particular mention here to the Stoic reinvestment of Aristotelian terms, which are placed in a new order. This blurring, which is the sign of a doctrinal will, is the only way we can understand the terminological complexity of someone like Boethius, for example, who superimposes or assimilates these different usages. For the Stoics, lexis is the second of the three stages of the signifier (see SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED; on this, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.56–57). The first stage is the phônê: it is both a generic term, since the signifier is rhêma paradoxically deprived Greek of two potential designations of “word.” Even though onoma, as we mentioned, could on occasion continue to designate a word once it had been given its specialized meaning of “noun,” we can legitimately ask whether or not Greek grammatical vocabulary produced a specific term for “word.” The answer is yes: in grammatical texts, the word for “word” is lexis, and this perfectly stable term remains the designation for “word” in modern Greek (demotic, lexi). But lexis has a singular history that should also be mentioned. As an action noun derived from the root leg-, “to say,” this term refers in principle to saying, as opposed to doing (praxis), (for example, Plato, Republic, 396c), but also as opposed to “the said.” This latter distinction is stipulated by Plato as well, for instance in Republic 392c, where lexis is opposed to logos as the form of a linguistic expression is opposed to the content expressed—or the style opposed to the thought, if one prefers. This semantic orientation is clearly confirmed by Aristotle, who makes a distinction between dianoia, “thought,” or the “faculty of saying the appropriate thing,” and lexis, “expression,” or “manifestation, interpretation [of the thought] by means of its being put into words” (tên dia tês onomasias hermêneian [τὴν διὰ τῆς ὀνομασίας ἑϱμηνείαν]; Poetics, 6.1450b 14–15), whose “figures,” schêmata tês lexeôs [σχήματα τῆς λέξεως], refer both to an actor’s vocal schema for asking or demanding and to the varieties of an enthymeme or the morphology of an expression. This same opposition structures the argument of Rhetoric, which makes a distinction between “what is to be said,” the dianoia, and “how it is to be said,” the lexis (3.1.1403b 15). The meaning of lexis as “style” will continue in Greek well beyond the appearance of its meaning of “word”: in the entire Alexandrine and Byzantine tradition, lexis pezê [λέξις πεζή], like its Latin calque sermo pedestris, will be the technical designation for prose, as opposed to metrical expression, lexis emmetros [λέξις ἔμμετϱος]. In Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations forces us to widen the meaning of the term, so it is closer to the Saussurean signifier than to style. Aristotle in fact makes a distinction between two tropes of refutation: those that are “exô tês lexeôs [ἔξω τῆς λέξεως]” (extra dictionem, “outside expression,” “independent of speech”), which are designed to dispel the errors of reasoning produced in particular by the confusions between the different meanings of being; and those that are “para tên lexin [παϱὰ τὴν λέξιν]” (in dictio, “tied to expression,” “part of speech”), which are designed to dispel the confusions produced by the very materiality of language (homonymy and amphiboly, composition, separation, accentuation, morphology of expression: 4.165b 23–27). In the examples he uses to support his argument, we can see that what comes under lexis is what we would nowadays call the signifier, via the play of audible meanings in the sounds of the language (thus, sigônta legein [σιγῶντα λέγειν] is an amphiboly that can be understood both in the sense of ‘to speak of mute things,’ neuter plural, and ‘to speak by being silent,’ masculine singular: 4.166a 12–14; 10.17a 7–10.17b 2; 19.177a 20–26). But these illusions are highlighted in order to be dispelled with the aid of the tools of the categories and of grammar (see HOMONYM). . 1248 WORD whereas the lexis is always something articulate. The lexis differs from the logos, because the logos always has meaning (aei sêmantikos [ἀεὶ σημαντιϰός]), whereas the lexis can be devoid of meaning (kai asêmos [ϰαὶ ἄσημος]), for example, blituri, but never the logos (ibid., 7.57). This can be illustrated by the following diagram: studied in treatises Peri phônês (On Sound), and the basic signifier as a physical body, that is, air that is percussed as an effect of an animal impulse (hormê [ὁϱμή]) or of a human reflection (dianoia), which goes from the sender to the receiver. Thus specified, the phônê is not as such articulate (it can be animal, and then it is an êchos [ἦχος], a “noise” that is not written), and it certainly does not carry meaning. The second stage is then the lexis, which is a phônê eggrammatos [φωνὴ ἐγγϱάμματος], a sound (this time, phônê tends to be translated as “voice”) that lends itself to writing, and the “letters” that make it up (stoicheia [στοιχεῖα]) are a guarantee of articulation (enarthron [ἔναϱθϱον]; ibid., 7.57): for example hêmera [ἡμέϱα], “day” (ibid., 7.56). It is lexis that is properly human, but it is quite remarkable that it should be defined as not necessarily carrying meaning (asêmos [ἄσημος]): blituri [βλίτυϱι], an onomatopoeia imitating the sound of a vibrating string, is as much a “lexical item,” or lexie, as “day.” In fact, only the logos, the final stage of the “vocal sound endowed with meaning impelled by a reflection” (phônê sêmantikê apo dianoias ekpempomenê [φωνὴ σημαντιϰὴ ἀπὸ διανοίας ἐϰπεμπομένη]; ibid.), is at once a voice that is articulate and that carries meaning; for example, hêmera esti [ἡμέϱα ἐστι], the statement from a sentence implying, by means of a conjugation, something like an event, “it is day.” The summary at the end is clear: “The phônê differs from the lexis in that the phônê can be a noise, 2 Schêma tês lexeôs and the schêma in grammar v. COMPARISON, FORM, IDEA, SPECIES, TROPE Schêma [σχῆμα], documented in Greek from 5 BCE onward, is a nominal derivation constructed from the root σχε/ο- of the verb echein [ἔχειν], “to hold,” “to have,” and intransitively, “to stand,” “to be in such and such a condition”: semantically, schêma is related to the intransitive value of the verb and so refers primarily to the “way one stands.” This basic meaning took on many more specific and diverse meanings during the fifth and sixth centuries: it is variously translated according to the context as “stature,” “posture or pose,” “look,” “style,” “configuration,” “figure (including geometrical),” “form.” Schêma, one of the Greek names for “form,” refers usually to a complex configuration; in geometry, it is a closed figure. In Aristotle, we see quite a wide variety of applications of schêma in the domain of language: configurations of the mouth allow the air to be shaped into distinct sounds, characteristic morphological features of certain classes of signifiers, the modulation of an utterance to assist modal differentiation, and syntactic and rhetorical configurations. Several of these meanings are conveyed by the syntagm schêma tês lexeôs [σχῆμα τῆς λέξεως], which can be translated literally as “figure of expression.” Post-Aristotelian rhetoric would retain schêma to refer generically to any unusual turn of phrase: via the intermediate stage of the Latin translation figura, the schêma of Greek orators would become the figure of classical rhetoric. Grammatical theory, which we can see being formed as of 2 BCE, would retain, alongside a diverse and loosely specified usage of schêma as the name for a form, three clearly technical kinds of usage: – In inflectional morphology, schêma forms the basis of a family of words describing the phenomenon of the variation of meaning of inflected words: at the heart of this family, metaschêmatismos [μετασχηματισμός], literally “trans-formation,” applies principally to the case variation of nominals and to the variation in person of verbs; – In lexical morphology, schêma, “figure,” refers to the simple or compound status of a word. Three schêmata can be distinguished: the simple (for example, Memnôn [Mέμνων]), the compound (for example, Aga-memnôn [’Aγα-μέμνων]), and the derivation of a compound (for example, Aga-memnon-idês [’Aγα-μεμνον-ίδης]). Why schêma was applied to this particular type of morphological feature is not clear: commentators would later on (for want of a better reason?) suggest that the greater or lesser complexity of the word gives it the “look” of a type, comparable to the poses (schêmata) of a statue; – In syntax, based on the rhetorical meaning of “figure” as an unusual turn of phrase, schêma would acquire the specialized meaning of “deviant turn of phrase in relation to the syntactic norm.” As an anomalous turn of phrase that is in theory incorrect, schêma can, however, become an acceptable part of the language whenever an ennobling origin can be assigned to it, which can be found either in a dialect (an Attic figure, a Boeotian figure, etc.), or in a renowned author (a Pindaric figure, a Sophoclean figure, etc.). One commentator combines the defining characteristics of syntactic schêma in a striking expression: a schêma is, he says, an “excusable error.” Phônê inarticulate articulate êchos = lexis devoid of .endowed with meaning meaning blituri  “day” = logos “it is day” Claude Imbert remarks that “the Stoic terms seem to have been deliberately chosen to contradict Aristotelian semantics” (“Théorie de la représentation”). It is not the word as such, whether a noun or a verb, that constitutes the signifying unit, as it does at the beginning of De interpretatione, but rather the statement—obviously an entirely different way of apprehending the world, in terms of events and not of substances or in terms of a narrative of action and not of predicative syntax; in short, an entirely different “phenomenology.” WORD 1249 or confused, can or cannot be written, etc. When it applies to linguistic entities, vox is used to designate their form and, insofar as the word is the natural frame of reference for etymological, semantic, and morphological analysis, vox signifies the form of the word: so Varro contrasts the vox and the significatio of the word (De lingua latina, 9.38–39; 10.77), vox being “what is made up of syllables,” “what is heard,” as opposed to what the word means. Vox thus also refers at the same time to the different forms that appear as the variables of a same word or as the inflected forms of a declined or conjugated word: Aemilius is a word, but this form itself is the nominative and all of the oblique corresponding forms (Aemiliu, Aemilii, Aemilio, etc.) are discrimina vocis, variable forms of this word. Varro’s text (ibid., 8.10) clearly suggests a dissociation between the notions of word and of form, insofar as a single word can have several forms if it is inflected. Vox is thus one of the forms of word, but at the same time refers, in the concrete reality of its realizations, to a particular word (Aemilius, or Aemilium, Aemilii, etc.). Identified in this way with the word, and unlike its synonyms forma and figura, which are less determinate, vox is even used by Varro to signify the word in relation to the thing (ibid., 10.69 and 72). This use is also attested in Quintilian (De institutione oratoria, 1.5.2) and is occasionally found in the texts of the grammarians. However, it remains an exception in relation to the two original terms used to designate the word, verbum and vocabulum. The first characteristic of verbum in Varro is that it is presented as being at the heart of a process of signification, between vox, which is the means by which the verbum signifies, and res, which is what the verbum signifies (De lingua latina, 10.77, and see 9.38–39, where verbum is defined as the combination of a vox and a significatio). These two terms are polysemic at all times. Verbum in fact also signifies “verb,” beginning with Varro and then constantly among grammarians. Another specialized use appears with Saint Augustine, in the De dialectica, with a very particular distinction between verbum, or a word “when it is spoken for itself,” that is, when it “only refers to itself,” and dictio, or a word when it is used “to signify something else.” . Vocabulum alternates in Varro’s work with verbum, with no apparent nuance (see for example De lingua latina, 6.1 or 9.1), and pairs up with res in the contrast of the word and the thing. Vocabulum is itself also polysemic, but whereas verbum signifies the verb, vocabulum signifies the noun, exactly opposed to verbum (ibid., 8.11, 9.9). At the other end of the history of the Latin language, Priscian suggests moreover that nomen, a term normally used to signify a noun, could also be used as a generic term for “word.” So there would have been a perfect parallelism between vocabulum and nomen, both able to correspond to both noun and word, but with vocabulum signifying primarily a word and secondarily a noun, and nomen the other way around (this use of nomen is, however, only documented by Priscian). Another specialized use of vocabulum appears in the texts of the grammarians, where this term is sometimes cited as representing a specialized category of common nouns, those which designate concrete objects, as opposed to abstract common nouns (see Dositheus First of all, the Stoic phônê is not the Aristotelian phônê. Aristotle defines phônê in De anima as “a certain noise [psophos (ψόφος)] produced by an animate being” (2.8.420b 5; see De historia animalium, 1.1 and 4.9): this “noise” applies to man as well as to an animal, and the definition goes from noise to voice by means of a certain number of physical dichotomies, each determining a category of exemptions (the sound made by an animate being—not flutes; produced by a movement of the air inside—not fish, but dolphins; striking the tracheaartery—not a cough). This definition appears to be compatible initially with the Stoic definition until it intersects with another kind of prerequisite, presented as self-evident by means of a simple “and,” which I will quote here for emphasis: Not all sound emitted by an animal is a voice, as we have said (since we can make a noise with our tongue or by coughing), but what strikes has to be animate and accompanied by a certain representation [meta phantasias tinos (μετὰ φαντασίας τινός)], since the voice is of course a semantic noise [sêmantikos gar de tis psophos estin hê phônê (σημαντιϰὸς γὰϱ δέ τις ψόφος ἐστὶν ἡ φωνή)]. (Aristotle, De anima, 420b 29–33) The “voice” in Aristotle is a kind of noise that already involves articulation (it is said to be dialekton [διάλεϰτον; 420b 18], with the same property, precisely the property of articulation, as the lexis of the Stoics) and meaning (it is said to be hermêmeia [ἑϱμηνεία; 420b 19 ff.], having this time the same particularity, meaning, as their logos). So the three levels that the Stoics chose to keep distinct are collapsed here, three levels that in Aristotle gravitate toward, so to speak, this last one the “end” and the “good,” which, beyond animal impulse, constitutes meaning for man: “A living being has hearing so that meaning can be conveyed to him, and a tongue so that he can convey meaning to someone else” (ibid., 435b 19–25). We might say that all the Stoics did, in the end, was to move Aristotle’s sequence forward a notch, giving the name phônê, “vocal sound,” to what he had chosen to call psophos, “noise.” What it involves, however, is a shift in the very direction of the hierarchies: noise can be, and even must be, envisaged independently of meaning. Whereas the Aristotelian lexis, particularly in On Sophistical Refutations, was at first an analytical tool and involved initially through the definition of homonymy in a relationship to the signified, the Stoic logos is conceived, conversely, in terms of the category of the signifier, as a particular kind of lexis. At the same time, the requirement of fullness of meaning that defines logos means that the most relevant unit has no longer to do with the word, whether it is onoma or lexis. III. The Words Designating “Word” in Latin A. Dictio, locutio, pars orationis, verbum, vocabulum, vox: Distinctions and polysemies In Latin, the word is understood as form, as the combination of form and meaning, and, finally, as a linguistic category. As form, the term for word is vox. This term, which originally meant “voice,” “phonic matter” (and it retains this meaning at all times), becomes the object of all sorts of classifications, depending on whether the vox is articulate 1250 WORD 3 Verbum, dicibile, dictio, res: St. Augustine, De Dialectica, 5.8 Haec ergo quattuor distinct teneantur: verbum, dicibile, dictio, res. Quod dixi verbum, et verbum est et verbum significant. Quod dixit dicibile, verbum est, nec tamen verbum, sed quod in verbo intellegitur et animo continetur, significat. Quod dixi dictionem, verbum est, sed quod jam illa duo simul id est et ipsum verbum et quod fit in animo per verbum significat. Quod dixi rem, verbum est, quod praeter illa tria quae dicta sunt quidquid restat significat. (These four terms must be kept distinct: verbum, dicibile, dictio, res. What I call verbum both is a word and means “word.” What I call dicibile is a word but does not signify “word,” but what is understood in the word and what is contained in the soul. What I call dictio is a word, but signifies together the two preceding meanings, that is, the word and what is produced in the soul by the word. What I call res is a word and signifies everything else, that is, everything not signified by the three preceding words.) The young Augustine, in his De dialectica, introduces a four-term system: verbum, dicibile, dictio, res. The passage quoted makes clear the distance he takes in relation to Stoic dialectics: Augustine considers that it is the simple term, and not the statement, that is “the meeting point between the signifier and the signified.” The verbum is a sign of a thing (verba sunt signa rerum), and the sign is what is offered to the senses and, in addition, shows something to the soul (signum est quod se ipsum sensui, et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit). The verbum is the word understood insofar as it refers to itself, thus independently of its relation of meaning to something else, and this sense becomes manifest in a metalinguistic context. The word “autonym” is sometimes used in this respect. This does indeed correspond to something of this kind, but on condition that one does not give too restricted a definition of the signified of autonym. Augustine’s verbum corresponds to a use that is a mention; that is, it does have its signified but is not used to manifest this signified. This usage of verbum is not attested among grammarians. The dicibile is the mental content associated with the word, which Augustine sometimes says is anterior to the utterance of the word, sometimes simply contained within the word, and sometimes even what is given to be understood in the mind or soul of the listener. The dictio is the word insofar as it is uttered to signify something: it is a verbum taken in its relation to a dicibile. The res is everything that is not yet either expressed by a word nor conceived by the mind, whether or not there is a word that can signify it. So if a grammar teacher takes the first word of the Aeneid—arma—and asks about its grammatical category, he takes it in itself as a verbum, whereas in the line by Virgil, it is a dictio, used to signify arms. These same arms, insofar as they were in fact borne, could be pointed at and are in that case neither verba, nor dicibilia, nor dictiones, but res. Augustine is keenly aware of the distinction between the linguistic level and the metalinguistic level: all of the terms—verbum, dicibile, dictio and res—are verba when they are part of statements that refer to themselves, but dictiones when they are understood in terms of their relation to the mental content that corresponds to them and things. The rest of De dialectica attempted to examine the value of words that are used in argumentation, either understood in and of themselves or in terms of their relation to what they signify. These relations can be seen from the original point at which they are established (the discussion about whether the nature of this connection is natural or not) or according to the way in which they work in synchrony, with all of the potential for discordance because of the equivocality and obscurity that can affect them. One question for French translators is knowing whether to use mot for verbum or for dictio: Baratin and Desbordes (L’analyse linguistique) chose the first solution, even though in De dialectica verbum sometimes appears to be equivalent to the simple signifier: they translate dictio as dit [thing said] in order to keep the close connection with the mental content of dictio, the dicibile. It is not possible to translate res as “referent” because this term is relational: while res can be the res of a sign, it is not necessarily so. In the De doctrina Christiana, the term res gathers together all the elements of the world, with signs constituting a subset. Shortly before the passage cited earlier, Augustine defined the thing as “everything that is perceptible to the senses or to the intellect, or which escapes perception” (Res est quidquid vel sentitur vel intelligitur vel latet). In the passage cited, res are all the things which are not in some relation to a signifier— just like actual weapons if they are considered as material objects, and not as things that can be signified by the word “arm” (whether this is understood as verbum, and does not refer to them in speech, or whether it is understood as dictio, and is used to signify these arms) or that can be the mental contents associated with this word. In the English translation, Darrell Jackson translates verbum as word, notably in the initial definition in chapter 5 (“verbum est uniuscujusque rei signum” [a word is a sign of any sort of thing]), but when it is a question of the four-term system, he keeps them in the Latin (which gives for the Latin sentence “Quod dixit verbum, et verbum est et verbum significat” [see above], and for the translation: “‘verbum’ both is a word and signifies a word”). In his Italian translation, Mariano Baldassarri interprets the passage in light of Stoic dialectics, which introduces some confusion, since he makes sêmainon [σημαῖνον] correspond to both signum and verbum (equivalent to the signifier alone) but also posits verbum as equivalent to phônê; he interprets dictio as lexis sêmantikê [λέξις σημαντιϰή], dicibile as lekton [λεϰτόν], and res as tughkanon [τυγχάνον]. These problems of translation ultimately depend on the weight assigned to the Stoic influence in the writing of De dialectica. REFS.: Augustine, Saint. De dialectica. Edited by Jan Pinborg. Translated by B. Darrell Jackson. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. I principii della dialettica. Translated by Mariano Baldassarri. Como: Noseda, 1985. Baratin, Marc. “Les origines stoïciennes de la théorie augustinienne du signe.” Revue des etudes latines 59 (1981): 260–68. Baratin, Marc, and Françoise Desbordes. L’analyse linguistique dans l’Antiquité classique. Paris: Klincksieck, 1981. . “Sémiologie et métalinguistique chez saint Augustine.” Langages 65 (1982): 75–88. Long, A. A. “Stoic Linguistics, Plato’s Cratylus, and Augustine’s De Dialectica.” In Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age, edited by Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood, 36–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Munteanu, Eugen. “On the ObjectLanguage/Metalanguage Distinction in St. Augustine’s Works: De Dialectica and De Magistro.” In History of Linguistics I: Traditions in Linguistics Worldwide, edited by David Cram et al., 65–78. Amsterdam: Benjamins, to the others, just as the noun is in contrast to the verb or to the pronoun. One last term appears as a way of saying word: locutio, already documented in Quintilian (De institutione oratoria, 1.5.2), but its uses in this sense are rare and isolated. B. The double meaning of vox in the Middle Ages 1. The semantic understandings: Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius Vox is used among Latin grammarians, along with verbum, vocabulum, and dictio, to designate the word. All through the Middle Ages, the term vox will keep the two meanings Boethius gives to it, that is, “vocal matter” and “vocal sound endowed with signification,” which for him are merged because of the two sources that are in the background of his commentaries on the Peri hermêneias (Commentarii in librum). The term vox, at the start of the second commentary, is defined on the one hand in Aristotelian terms: the vox is the result of the tongue striking the air and is produced with some intended meaning. But elsewhere, Boethius uses vox to translate phônê on the basis of the Stoic tripartite division phônê, lexis, logos (see above, II.B.2), which he renders as vox, locutio, interpretatio. The hiatus is clear: signification is present in the first definition, whereas in the economy of the Stoic system, signification does not take place at the level of the phônê-vox, rather only at the third level, with the second level, as we saw earlier, being one of articulation (the fact of being made up of letters or of discrete sounds: thus, blituri is a lexis but not a logos). With Boethius, the problem resurfaces and becomes even more confused once we move on to the question of the parts. What he understands by the expression partes locutionis, because of the translation of the Stoic Greek lexis as locutio, is the merê lexeôs [μέϱη λέξεως] of Aristotle’s Poetics (elements, syllables, conjunctions, articles, nouns, cases, verbs, orationes), and by partes interpretationis (because of the equivalence of logos and interpretatio), the merê logou of Aristotle’s Peri hermêneias (noun, verb, oratio), although he also talks about partes orationis, taking oratio in the stricter sense of “minimal statement” (noun, verb). Later tradition will generally leave this lack of precision aside and will focus on how Boethius uses these terms, not on his definitions. Indeed, in his commentaries on logic, Boethius uses vox to refer to any articulate expression, which can be meaningful or not and may, if it is significant, have been the object of an imposition and thus signify ad placitum, or may signify “naturally” (see SIGN). It is this term that forms part of the triad vox, intellectus, res in the first chapter of the Peri hermêneias. Sermo is sometimes used when it is a question of mentioning or talking about a word (“hic sermo homo,” “hic sermo lexis”; Boethius, Commentarii in librum). Elsewhere, however, vox alternates with other terms, notably at the beginning of the commentary on the Categories, a work which, according to Boethius, deals with “de primis vocibus [the first voces]” (RT: PL, vol. 64, col. 161A), “sermonibus prima rerum genera significantibus [sermones signifying the first types of things]” (col. 162B), and in the same context we find the term vocabula (col. 162D). . When De anima (2.8.420b 5ff.) began to be reread at the beginning of the thirteenth century, particularly with Magister in RT: Grammatici latini, 7:390, l. 16), or inanimate objects (see Diomedes in RT: Grammatici latini, 1:320, l. 23). Perhaps in order to clarify a terminology suffering from these phenomena of polysemy (this is Quintilian’s interpretation, at least in relation to verbum [De institutione oratoria, 1.5.2]), these different terms were subsequently supplanted by dictio, which appears in the sense of “word” after Varro. The fundamental characteristic of dictio is that it is made up, like verbum, of a signifier and a signified: Diomedes (ibid., 7:436, l. 10) defines this term as “vox articulate cum aliqua significatione” (an articulate vocal sound with a meaning). Similarly Priscian, while readily acknowledging that a dictio can have only one syllable, makes a careful distinction between the syllable, as a signifier without a signified, and the dictio, which has a signified (RT: Grammatici latini, 3:3, ll. 13–18). The use of dictio by St. Augustine in De dialectica is based on this same contrast. Dictio can, however, also be contrasted with sensus, that is, to the signified alone: when it is a question of accounting for the phenomena of syllepsis (agreements with more than one meaning), for example, in the case where the subject of a plural verb is pars (part), a singular that we would call collective (in an expression such as “part of them are cutting out pieces . . .”), Priscian remarks that the verb “relates not to the dictio, but to the sensus, that is, to what we understand by the word in the singular” (RT: Grammatici latini, 3:201, ll. 22–23). To relate the verb to the dictio would have consisted in matching it to the form of the word pars, which is singular, to get to the signified “singular,” whereas relating it to the sensus consists in starting with the meaning “part” and then inferring that it can apply to a plurality of persons, so it therefore contains the signified “plural.” There is a sort of parallelism between the disjunction of word and form in Varro, and the disjunction between a word and its sense in Priscian (a single word, but more than one sense, that which corresponds to the form and another). Dictio, moreover, can be understood within a hierarchical perspective as the constituent part of a much larger whole. This is how Diomedes explains the relationship between the dictio and the oratio (statement)—by emphasizing that the statement is a construction of which the dictio is the unit (“dictio ex qua instruitur oratio et in quam resolvitur” [the word from which the statement is formed and in which this statement is resolved (that is, is analyzed)]; ibid., 1:436, l. 10). Priscian likewise notes that the dictio is the “pars minima orationis constructae” (the smallest part of the constructed statement). The most frequent expression, however, for designating the word as a constituent of a much larger whole is pars orationis. The meaning of the whole that is referred to here, oratio, is not obvious. For Varro, oratio can apply to the language in its entirety (De lingua latina, 8.1 or 44, etc.), and in this sense, the partes orationis are the main divisions of the language, the “categories of words.” But elsewhere oratio also means “statement,” and it is indeed in this sense that Priscian, just like all the grammarians, understands the partes orationis, as the “constituent parts of the statement.” However one understands it, pars orationis signifies the word as a set of traits (accidentia) such as gender, number, person, tense, etc. in a system in which each set of traits is in contrast 1252 WORD etymology: vox a vocando dicitur [vox is the term for what is expressed with a voice]). The answer to the question also depends on the status of the imaginatio for animals and on the role that the imaginatio plays in the vocals sounds made by animals in relation to instinct (see PHANTASIA and LANGUAGE). Along with Avicenna, some consider that the emission of voces (Avicenna’s Latin text has soni) is confused for animals, in the sense that even if two vocal productions are numerically distinct, they are specifically distinct—in other words, all dogs bark, but each bark does not correspond Avicenna’s commentary, the questions that arose centered immediately on the imprecision of the terms vox and vocare. Given that vox is both the “vocal” sound made by animals that have lungs, a trachea, etc. and the same sound inasmuch as it is associated with a representation (“cum imaginatione aliqua”; 420b 29) (it is a sound that signifies, sonus significativus), the question of knowing whether animals vocant (this is glossed by habent vocem) or whether this activity is particular to man is literally untranslatable, since the verb refers to the two meanings of the noun (according to the classical 4 Vocales and Nominales The question of the origin of the term Nominales, used in the eleventh century, has given rise to an interesting debate. Were the Nominales partisans of a particular position on universals, which considered genera and species to be names (nomina), or were they defenders of the so-called theory of the unita nominis, the unity of the name? According to this latter theory, the three vocal expressions (voces) albus, alba, album constitute one and the same name (nomen), and based on this assertion, certain theologians have maintained that the three complex statements or expressions “Christ is going to be born,” “Christ is born,” “Christ will be born” correspond to one and the same enunciable (enuntiabile), which constitutes the eternal and sole object of faith (see DICTUM). The debate was not settled, nor was the question of knowing whether Abelard was dubbed the “prince of Nominals [Princeps Nominalium]” (Walter Map, 1181) by virtue of his position on universals. The interesting point regarding universals is that the Nominales are in reality the successors of the Vocales, and that strictly speaking, Roscelin de Compiègne and Abelard are Vocales, and indeed, for them, genera and species are voces. The first accounts of the existence of this current of thought, which appeared around 1060–70, show that it was originally concerned with a discussion about how to engage in dialectics, that is, how to read and interpret Porphyrius’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, and thus about the primary object of these texts and of dialectics: in other words, did Porphyrius and Aristotle aim to deal with vocal sounds or things (de rebus de vocibus agere) (see Iwakuma, “Vocales or Early Nominalists”)? Boethius’s position is not clear: in the Categories (RT: PL, vol. 64, col. 160A), he maintains that Aristotle’s aim was to talk about voces, but he also describes the categories as “first names of things” (de primis rerum nominibus; col. 159C), and also says that species “are in certain sense names of names” (nomina nominum; col. 176D). In the commentaries on the Isagoge, he agrees with Porphyrius in saying that predicables are res. Those who, like Roscelin, maintain that universals are voces (the sententia vocum) are until the middle of the twelfth century called Vocales. Abelard clearly seems uncomfortable with the imprecision of the term vox. He attempts to make a distinction between vox as physical matter, and vox as an expression that conveys meaning (Super Porphyrium) and will in the end keep the term vox in the first sense, and for the second use the term sermo: “there is another position on the universals, which is more in accordance with reason; it attributes community neither to things (res) nor to sounds (voces); according to its advocates, they are sermones, whether they are singular or universal” (Logica “Nostrorum petitioni sociorum”). In his French translation (Abélard ou la philosophie dans le langage), Jolivet translates sermo as terme (term), but in his commentary also uses mot (word) and nom (name), which is justified by certain passages in Abelard (nomen sive sermo, he says on the same page). It is perhaps out of concern for originality that he chose sermo rather than nomen, but perhaps also because he considered that other expressions than those which grammatically speaking are nouns, such as verbs, could be universals (Super Porphyrium). So it is no longer voces but sermones that are now universals, insofar as they are vocal expressions that convey meaning. It is likely that it is Abelard’s critiques of the universal as vox, along with the alternation between vox and nomina in Boethius, that led to the term nomen being retained and that ultimately motivated the transition from Vocales to Nominales around the middle of the twelfth century (see Marenbon, “Vocalism, Nominalism”). Whatever the primary motivation was for using the term Nominales, it is clear that the theses attributed to the Nominales are not restricted to a position on universals (in logic) or on the unita nominis (in theology) but concern other questions as well, on propositions, on the relationship of the parts to the whole, and so on. Theologians from the middle of the thirteenth century will remember the Nominales exclusively as the defenders of the theory of the unity of the enunciable. Only Albert the Great will talk about the Nominales as supporting a thesis about universals, according to which they exist within the intellect, and this transition constitutes an essential link between the Nominales of the twelfth century, and those of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, a period in which the term refers unequivocally to Nominalists (see Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales à Paris). UNIVERSALE. REFS.: Abelard, Peter. Abélard ou la philosophie dans le langage. Translated by J. Jolivet. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1994. . Logica “Nostrorum petitioni sociorum.” Edited by B. Geyer. Münster: Aschendorff, 1933. . Super Porphyrium. Edited by B. Geyer. Münster: Aschendorff, 1919. Courtenay, William. “Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century.” In Lectionum varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux, edited by Jean Jolivet, Zénon Kaluza, and Alain de Libera, 11–48. Paris: Vrin, 1991. Iwakuma, Yukio. “Vocales or Early Nominalists.” Tradition 47 (1992): 37–111. Kaluza, Zénon. Les querelles doctrinales à Paris: Nominalistes et réalistes aux confins du XIVe et du XVe siècles. Bergamo: Lubrina, 1988. Libera, Alain de. Querelle des universaux: De Platon à la fin du Moyen Age. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996. Marenbon, John. “Vocalism, Nominalism and the Commentaries on the Categories from the Earlier Twelfth Century.” Vivarium 30 (1992): 51–61. Tweedale, Martin M., ed. and trans. Scotus vs. Ockham: A Medieval Dispute over Universals. 2 vols. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1999. MOTTUM. Dictio within speculative grammar While dictio and vox were used almost interchangeably, as we have seen, to signify a word, the Modists, or Modistae, philosopher grammarians of the second half of the thirteenth century, proposed an original theory that articulates these two terms in a precise way on the basis of a double articulation of language. In this sense, no term in our modern languages can translate exactly what dictio meant for the Modists. The theory of the Modists is based on a reflection on the process of the imposition of words, which is conceived in two stages. The process begins with vox, sound matter. Since it is endowed with a property that confers upon it an aptitude to signify (ratio significandi), at the end of the process of the first imposition vox becomes dictio. In a second stage, dictio is endowed with a property that confers upon it an aptitude to consignify (ratio consignificandi), and at the end of this process of second imposition, or articulation, dictio becomes pars orationis or constructibile. Strictly speaking, dictio is the signifier (matter) in that it is associated with the signified (form) that corresponds to the things as it is conceived, then signified (res significata). All of these terms correspond to the same res and are thus the same dictio (for example, “to suffer,” “suffering,” “ouch,” etc.). In this context, dictio is untranslatable and corresponds to a sort of arch-word, or lexeme, or signifying unit that conveys a signified, although it would be difficult to imagine a single “vocal” vehicle that could carry the identical meaning that all of these expressions have. It is only once it is specified as a grammatical category (for example, as a verb) with its own grammatical properties, the means by which it can signify, that the linguistic unit is complete and able to be part of a statement: only then is it constructibile. The distinction between the two processes of imposition is justified on both an ontological and a psychological level. For the first time, and rather ephemerally as it happens, the two types of properties of the linguistic unit—the semantic properties and the morphosyntactic properties—are distinguished in this way: dictio corresponds only to the first, and constructibile to the second (See SENSE, III.B.3, and Box 3). The notion of word as a minimal unit of meaning and of construction seems unavoidable and was not challenged until the nineteenth century. It was with comparative grammar that the idea of signifying units that are less than a word was first introduced, some expressing a meaning (roots, semantemes, Ger. Bedeutungslaute), others expressing a relationship (morphemes, Ger. Beziehungslaute), which are themselves separated into inflections and affixes. Realizing that this distinction is not valid for all language, linguists preferred to use a single term for all of the signifying units making up a word (Eng. “morpheme,” “formative”; Fr. morphème, formant, or even, in Martinet, monème), which correspond, depending on the theory, either to signifiers (physical entities) or to signs. Moreover, the problem, which Aristotle and his commentators had already confronted with examples such as tragelaphus (goat-stag) or respublica, was that of the minimal signifying units which appear to be greater than the word, since they are made up of other minimal signifying units, and the consequent difficulty of separating them out from the sentence. One solution was proposed based on the notion of choice: for the speaker, tragelaphus or “pineapple,” say, each to an individual mental imago (see the Quaestio de voce by Albert the Great). For Dante, when Ovid in the Metamorphoses talks about fish “that speak [loquentibus],” he is talking figuratively, since the act of fish or birds is not in fact a language (locutio) but rather an “imitation of the sound of our voice” (imitatio soni nostre vocis), “an imitation in the sense that we make sounds, and not in the sense that we speak” (vel quod nituntur imitari nos in quantum sonamus, sed non in quantum loquimur; De vulgari eloquentia, 2). So for him, the answer is clear: man alone was endowed with the ability to speak (loqui) (“Et sic patet soli homini datur fuisse loqui”; ibid.). It is worth noting again the terms locutio and interpretatio in the translation of De anima: “Jam enim respiranti congruit natura in duo opera, sicut lingua in gustum et locutionem, quorum quidem gustus necessarium est, unde et pluribus inest, interpretatio autem est propter bene esse” (For here nature uses the air that is inhaled for two purposes, just as it uses the tongue for tasting and for speech, the former use, for tasting, being indispensable, and therefore more widely found, while expression of thought is a means to wellbeing; Aristotle, De anima, 420b 16–20). Locutio, according to an anonymous commentator, is what allows man to “express what is within him by means of his speech [sermo]” (Lectura in librum “De anima”). He then posits an equivalence, glossing the second part of the sentence, between interpretatio, sermo, and loquutio (sic), to which he attributes this same definition. This distinction exists, however, in Greek, intepretatio translating hermêneia, a faculty that is not specific to man and that certain birds have, according to De partibus animalium (2.17.660a 35-b 1). This passage from De anima will become an oft-cited adage in universities (see LANGUAGE). Medieval logicians were in general agreement about a minimal system in terms of a hierarchy that starts with sonus and to which successive differences are applied. The sonus (sound) is simply what is perceived by the ear. It can be vocal (vox) or not (non vox). The vox can be meaningful or not. The meaningful vocal sound can signify ad placitum or naturaliter (see SIGN, Box 3). The dictio is a vox significativa ad placitum, no part of which can signify separately, as opposed to the oratio, whose parts are meaningful. In the Peri hermêneias, Aristotle opposed the noun and the verb, on the one hand, with the logos, on the other, using a single criterion: the former have parts that are not meaningful, and the latter is made up of parts that are meaningful. The Latin authors later introduced the generic term dictio as a means of joining together the noun and the verb and distinguishing them from oratio, which allows them to oppose a simple signifying unit to a “complex” signifying unit. In practice, however, vox will be synonymous with dictio in the sense of “simple word.” It is worth noting that vox, unlike dictio but like nomen, can be constructed with a genitive and thus becomes a relative term (see for example Roger Bacon, De signis, §148: “rebus corruptis utimur vocibus illarum significative” [when things are destroyed, we use (lit.) the vocal sounds of these things (that is, the ones which refer to them) in a way which signifies]). The terminus is a word insofar as it fulfills a function in a proposition, and “categoremic terms” are distinguished from “syncategoremic” terms, leading to the two types of treatises that constitute the so-called terminist logic, or logica modernorum (see TERM). there is no light in a wood (lucus a non lucendo [a clearing because one cannot see clearly]). If we postulate more simply that muttum means “sound emitted” (RT: Bloch and von Wartburg, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française; RT: DHLF), we see that, in Low Latin, the first attested uses of the word mot were always negative, meaning “not to make a sound”: ne muttum quidem audet dicere (he does not dare say a word); ne mu quidem audere facere (to not even dare to say mu). This is also true of the first attested uses of the word mot in Old French, in the Song of Roland in the eleventh century: “N’i ad paien qui un sul mot respondet” (Not one pagan replied with a single word), or “N’i a celui qui mot sont ne mot tint” (There was no-one who made the sound or the ring of a word). We might also think of the French exclamation motus, urging someone to remain silent (in present-day French one also says ne mot dire (not to say a word). Mot is said to have evolved into its meaning of parole (spoken word) through its contact with verbs such as dire (to say), sonner (to sound), tinter (to ring), respondre (to reply), and mot became the signifying unit we use today through the expression mot à mot (word for word), suggesting as early as the twelfth century a segmentation of language. B. Verbe Verbe comes from the Latin verbum, which shares the same Indo-European root with terms from a dialect region of Indo-European. Compared to the Latin verbum, which has three meanings, the meaning of verbe in French is more restricted. Firmin Le Ver’s first Latin-French dictionary (RT: Firmini Verris dictionarius) thus contains three entries for verbum: (1) a conversation among several people, (2) the son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, and (3) a part of speech that has tense and mood. The last two meanings of verbe are attested in French from the twelfth century as a part of speech, tel fist personel del verbe impersonal, and as the word of God, Deu verbe (1120), which will become le Verbe (the Word), the second person of the Trinity, God incarnate, from the sixteenth century. C. Parole Parole comes from the Greek parabolê [παϱαϐολή], which Latin borrows as parabola, documented since Seneca. It was when the Septuagint was being written (the first Hebrew-to-Greek translation of the Old Testament) that its translators gave two meanings to parabolê: “comparison” and “allegory,” using the Greek parabolê to translate the Hebrew mashal [לַשָׁמ ,[which did have these two meanings. This double meaning was adopted by the Christian Latin writers Tertullian and Jerome, and the term parabola, as well as its derivations, would spread throughout the everyday language of Christianity between the fifth and eighth centuries, with the meaning “fable,” “tale” and would then finally assume the meaning of “speech,” “way of speaking.” In almost all Romance languages it therefore replaced the Latin verbum as a term designating the word; verbum would remain in these languages, but it would be reserved for technical, theological, and grammatical uses. D. Verbe/parole The Low Latin parabola was used to designate the word in Romance languages (with the exception of Romanian) because of correspond, just as “table” does, to one single choice and not to several consecutive choices. In the same way, the syntagm has been recognized as a minimal unit of construction after breaking the sentence down, since a syntagm can be made up of several words of morphemes that do not necessarily appear to be joined together in the linear chain of speech. In the same way again, the prospect of translation becoming an automatic process led French structuralist linguists at the beginning of the 1960s to define the units of segmentation of the written chain, which could also be units of translation. They therefore had to coin new terms to define syntactic units that are greater than the word being understood, not only from the point of view of their internal mode of construction, but also in terms of their relationship to the rest of the statement. All of these new names introduced (lexies in Bernard Pottier, synapsies in Émile Benveniste, synthèmes in André Martinet, and so on) reflect an unprecedented questioning of the criteria of identification, of construction, and of classification of minimal units and are based on precise theoretical choices (see Léon, “Conceptions du mot”). Attempts to eliminate the word and to treat it as one syntagm among others, in order to assimilate the different processes of combination, have ultimately been called into question. In recent linguistics, attention has turned once again to the word, and to its specificities as a unit (that is, as the site of realization of phonological or morphological phenomena), which is distinct from the sentence (the constrained, nonmotivated, non-free nature of the combination of its constituent elements, and so on). What is more, the segmentation into words remains, in the Western tradition, inseparably bound up with certain practical ends: teaching, classifying, translating, and making dictionaries. IV. The Terms for “Word” in French A. Mot Latin (RT: Du Cange, Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis) and etymological dictionaries (RT: Ménage, Dictionnaire etymologique, ov Origines de la langue françoise; RT: Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine; RT: von Wartburg, Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch) all agree that the word mot comes from the Low Latin muttum (word, grunt), derived from the verb muttire meaning “to say mu,” that is, both (a) to make a grunt, or an inarticulate sound like cattle, or humans deprived of the power of speech (mute, mutus), and (b) to breath a word, to make an articulate statement. This etymology, which might seem paradoxical, is, however, part of the tradition in that it accumulates two types of etymology anticipated by Isidore of Seville: onomatopoeia and antiphrasis. The recourse to onomatopoeia in etymology was a common practice from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (see Buridan, L’étymologie). It constituted the privileged site and example of the principle of a fit between designation and signification, insofar as the signification reduplicated the designation, and motivated it by giving it a meaning. Moreover, the contradictory meaning of “to say mu,” both an inarticulate sound and an articulate statement, can be compared to the etymology by antiphrasis, or opposition, that the ancients were fond of: so, for example, lucus (wood) was said to be derived from lucendo (light), because -- raisonnée (1660), and the appearance of the first monolingual dictionaries, French came of age as a language and as a rival to Latin. Parole was the scientific term referring to the faculty of language. It was the only entry in the Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences de l’Académie française (1694) to the exclusion of mot and verbe: “The articulation that the sound produced by the air passing through the trachea receives from the tongue and the throat,” a definition copied from the way Aristotle defined phônê [φωνή], the “voice,” that is, the noise produced by an animate being (De anima, 2.8.420b 5–29; see above, vox, III.A). In the first monolingual dictionaries, even though mot and parole were defined the one by the other—“Mot: parole of one or more syllables. Parole: articulated mot of one or more syllables” (RT: Furetière, Dictionnaire universel)—mot became the unit of language, and parole the unit of speech. So, following Furetière’s definition, mot was clearly defined as a linguistic unit required by the dictionary and by the grammars that classified words as parts of speech. As for parole, it referred more generally to the language “used to explain thought, and that man alone is capable of speaking” (ibid.). Likewise, in the RT: Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, the first collocations referred to mot as a unit of language— “French word, Latin word, Greek word, Barbarian word”— whereas parole was a unit of speech: “mot prononcé” (spoken word). Finally, in RT: Richelet (Dictionnaire françois), it is the unit of language as a distinct unit that is foregrounded for mot: “Everything that is spoken and written separately To transcribe word for word [mot pour mot]”; while parole was defined as “speech and explanation of thought by using sound and voice.” Nonetheless, the norm advocated during the seventeenth century by no means dispelled the different meanings of mot and parole, and present-day dictionaries retain many traces of this historically determined polysemy (see also LANGUAGE). MOTTUM. REFS.: Aeschines. The Speeches of Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919. Allan, Keith. The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics. London: Equinox, 2007. Apollonius Dyscolus. De constructione. Edited by Gustav Uhlig. Grammatici graeci 2.2. Leipzig: Teubner, 1910. Translation by Fred W. Householder: The Syntax of Apollonius Dyscolus. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1981. Aristotle. De anima. Translated by R. D. Hicks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907. . Poetics. In Vol. 2 of The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen, 1984. Aurous, Sylvain, ed. Histoire des idées linguistiques. Vol. 2, Le développement de la grammaire occidantale. Liège, Belg.: Mardaga, 1992. Baratin, Marc. “Les origines stoïciennes de la théorie augustinienne du signe.” Revue des Études Latines 59 (1981): 260–68. COMBINATUM. word order, v. ASPECT, COMBINATION AND CONCEPTUALIZATION, DISCOURSE, EUROPE, FRENCH, LOGOS, PREDICATION, PROPOSITION, SIGN, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, SPEECH ACT, WORD Terms and word order are part of ordinary language. They are used in the informal description of languages and in particular serve to identify differences among languages. Thus German differs from French in its vocabulary (its words) and in the word order in utterances. Grammar and then linguistics have provided concepts to characterize the formal nature of what they designate. Here we will provide an analysis of the phenomena grouped under the rubric “word order,” presented as a rational reconstruction (I. Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations). We will first review the problematics that emerges from grammatical reflection on the phenomenological diversity of languages We synthesize the observation by saying that French is a fixedorder language and Latin a free-order language. We have succeeded, after long controversies, in explaining this differential. It is because French does not have a case-based morphological system that it resorts to a fixed word order: French exploits the opposition between preverbal placement and postverbal placement to identify the nominal terms fulfilling the functions of subject and object. On the other hand, the reason that several word orders are available in Latin is that this language has an inflectional system of morphology that marks cases: thus in (2), the NGs filium and pater, whatever place they occupy in relation to amat, are identified as forms bearing, respectively, the affixed marks of the accusative and the nominative, and thus as terms performing distinct functions. From this analysis we draw the following proportion: word order is to French as case is to Latin. If case-based inflection is a system of marks, then word order is a system of marks. They are grammatical functions that are marked, in one case by morphological means, and in the other by means of a relative order. . B. The free word order of Latin We have to return to this notion of Latin’s “free” word order. Latin permits six orders realized in the sentences in (2). But it is acknowledged that among these six orders, one is unmarked: the order SOV (Subject Object Verb, to adopt the vocabulary of modern typologies), illustrated by the following sentence: (7) Pater filium amat In particular, we maintain that this order is pragmatically neutral. The latter analysis assumes that if the six sentences of (2) share the same propositional content, they differ in their pragmatic value. The orders exhibited by the other five sentences are associated with values that have long been known as expressivity, emphasis, or insistence. We can render these values by means of glosses that, in French, appeal precisely to constructions of the utterance that are distinct from the one that presides over the canonical sentence proposed in (1): (8) (a)    Amat pater filium (a’)   Il l’aime, le père, son fils (b)   Filium pater amat (b’)   Son fils, le père l’aime (b’’)  C’est son fils que le père aime (b’’’)  C’est son fils qu’aime le père The word order in Latin is free, that is, not constrained insofar as the marking of functions in the syntactical dimension is concerned, but it is neither aleatory nor without meaning. We can synthesize the observation by positing the following generalization, which condenses the content of a vulgate shared by the grammatical and stylistic traditions: (9) The order of words constitutes a mark. Depending on the languages, it has a role as a syntactical mark or a role as a pragmatic mark. C. The division of labor If we project generalization (9) into a grammatical apparatus, we are led to understand that the different dimensions of organization distinguished in languages can enter into relationships of equivalence. What morphology marks in language A is marked by word order in language B. What is marked syntactically in language C is marked by intonation in language D. For example, contemporary theories acknowledge that whether or not the subject NG (the fact that the grammatical subject NG is also the logical subject) has a thematic character is marked in Italian by word order, in English by intonation, and in Japanese by morphology. Thus in (10), the grammatical subject NG is not a logical subject: it is postverbal in Italian, accent-bearing (with correlative disaccentuation of the verbal group) in English, and marked by the particle ga (which is opposed to a “thematic” particle wa) in Japanese: (10) (a) Mi si è rotta la macchina (b) My car broke down (c) Watashino kuruma ga koshoo  sheiteimas (I car  particle  breakdown  verb) This image of grammar is now common in linguistics, particularly in grammatical approaches that include the pragmatic dimension (cf., for example, K. Lambrecht, Information Structure and Sentence Form), but also in reflections on translation. Foucault bases his (enthusiastic) critical assessment of Klossowski’s translation of the Aeneid on the following premise: The Latin sentence can be governed simultaneously by two prescriptions: that of syntax, which declinations 1 A “Natural and Perfect Order” In Simone Delesalle and Jean-Claude Chevalier’s book La linguistique, la grammaire et l’école, we find a synthetic presentation of the debate that brings out the problematics of word order in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We can also consult Ulrich Ricken, Grammaire et Philosophie au siècle des Lumières (1978), which identifies two central points in this debate: (a) the relation between word order and thought, and (b) the evaluation of languages in relation to each other, the French order being considered perfect because it is natural. In the initial analyses of Claude Lancelot’s Port-Royal Grammar (1975), language is compared with “thought,” which is supposed to constitute the reference: “The natural order, in conformity with the natural expression of our thoughts, consists in a judgment expressed with regard to a concept, the substantive subject coming first” (S. Delesalle and J.-C. Chevalier, La Linguistique, 40), because the substance has to precede the accident. “We can say that at this stage of the analysis [at PortRoyal] the resemblance between the order of French and the natural order of thought is itself so natural and so integrated that it does not need to be explained, much less justified” (ibid., 4). Weil’s thesis: Syntax, word order, and the order of thought The thesis that Henri Weil published in 1844 and that was republished by M. Bréal in 1869 marks a break with the problematics inherited from the eighteenth century and introduces a certain number of ideas that prefigure those that we take as the basis of our analysis. A synthetic presentation of this thesis will be found in Simone Delesalle and Jean-Claude Chevalier, La linguistique, la grammaire et l’école (37–90, 179–94), and it is put into a contemporary perspective in Françoise Kerleroux, “Discordances d’une langue à une autre, d’une langue à elle-même.” a. According to Weil, syntax and word order constitute distinct orders. We find the same principle of partitioning in contemporary grammars that treat relations of constituence and relations of dependency (which cover functional relations) as a module of rules (or constraints) distinct from the module bringing together the rules that govern the linearization of constituents (rules or constraints of “linear precedence”). Gerald Gazdar et al., Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, is the standard reference work. b. Weil posits, alongside the development of syntax, a development of thought (marche de la pensée) in which the notion of thought refers to a pragmatic-enunciative dimension, and which he conceives as a universal organization. In this organization he distinguishes the “initial element” and the “end” of the sentence. This conception is still alive in contemporary functionalist approaches (cf., for example, P. Downing and M. Noonan, eds., Word Order in Discourse). There are thus two principles of order: a purely syntactical principle and a pragmatic-enunciative principle. c. Weil relates the order that we observe in actual utterances to a “mutual relationship” between the different developments. We make the same distinction between two principles of order in what we will call “construction”: we will distinguish between the topological organization of the utterance, and constraints of a pragmatic-discursive nature bearing on the places (or fields) defined by topology. make sensible; and another, purely plastic one that is revealed by a word order that is always free but never gratuitous. Whereas in French syntax prescribes the order and the sequence of words reveals the precise architecture of the system. (“Les mots qui saignent,” 425) D. The terms and content of the relation of order The term “word” in “word order” covers two types of units: lexical units considered in the constitution of groups, and groups considered in the constitution of the utterance. When we speak of “word order” we are thus speaking about the order of the constituents in the different groups and about the order of the groups in the utterance. Furthermore, the notion of order covers three types of phenomena. The first is constituted by the relations of placement relative to a term: for example, the French subject NG is preverbal (to the left of the inflected verb). If it appears to the right of the verb, then we speak of “inversion.” The second is constituted by the fixed placement of certain constituents. For example, the subordinating word necessarily appears at the head of the subordinate clause in Latin; Latin has, from this point of view, at least one rule of fixed order. Finally, the third phenomenon groups together relations of adjacency. In a language like French, the parts of a given group are adjacent; one cannot mix the parts of several syntagmas in the sequence, as one can in Latin; in (6), the subject NG is interpolated between the two parts of the object NG. In French, the relation of adjacency brings together terms that enter into a relation of grammatical dependency that contemporary linguistics has constructed under the name of “syntagma.” It is not true that in all languages the relations of dependency coincide with relations of adjacency in the sequence. II. Critique of the Vulgate In relation to the details of the organization of languages, neither generalization (9) nor the relationships of equivalence between the means of expression that it produces are empirically correct. These propositions are defective mainly because of the idealization they presuppose and because, by immediately constituting word order as a mark, they cannot envisage recognizing in it a purely formal type of organization. In the following we will limit ourselves to the syntactical dimension (reduced to the coding of functional relations between the verbal head and its arguments) and the pragmatic dimension; we will leave completely aside the semantic and prosodic dimensions. . A. The accumulation of values According to generalization (9), word order is used to mark either grammatical functions or pragmatic distinctions. If the analysis we have given of the contrast between (1) and (2) is correct, we might expect word order not to be available in French to mark pragmatic distinctions, because it is used to mark grammatical functions. But that is not what we see. In French, the order of constituents in the utterance also serves as a support for the expression of pragmatic values. We have seen that utterance (1) (Le père aime son fils) exhibits the sole possible order in the sentence, namely the SVO order. This order characterizes the canonical construction of the sentence. We can schematize the spatial organization, or, to adopt a terminology traditional in the linguistics of Germanic languages, the topological organization of construction by a tree-representation (11), in which the order among groups is explicitly represented: (11) S 1 2 [NG] [VG] WORD ORDER 1259 of complementarity: if one language has a rich morphology (used to distinguish grammatical functions), we would expect word order, freed of the responsibility of marking functions, to be available for the expression of pragmatic distinctions. However, German constitutes a clear counterexample for this expectation. German is a language that includes both a rich case-morphology and phenomena of strict fixation in word order. Moreover, this fixity is not associated with the expression of any value in any interpretive dimension (semantic or pragmatic). Three kinds of order are characteristic of the German sentence. The untensed verb (participle, infinitive) occupies the final position in the sentence; (14) illustrates the rule with a past participle (gesehen): (14) Adam saw a rose (a) Adam hat eine Rose gesehen (b) *Adam hat gesehen eine Rose The tensed form of the verb (in the examples above, the auxiliary hat) can occupy only two places: either the absolutely final position in a subordinate clause (15), or the second position in an independent clause (16): (15) I believe that Adam saw a rose (a) Ich glaube, dass Adam eine Rose gesehen hat (b) *Ich glaube, dass Adam hat eine Rose gesehen (16) Adam saw a rose (a) Eine Rose hat Adam gesehen (b) *Eine Rose Adam gesehen hat Finally, the initial field (which German grammarians call the Vorfeld) can be occupied by only one constituent: (17) Adam saw a rose yesterday, or, Yesterday, Adam saw a rose (a) Eine Rose hat Adam gestern gesehen (b) Gestern hat Adam eine Rose gesehen (c) *Gestern eine Rose hat Adam gesehen This constituent can be any element dependent on the verb, whatever its function and category (18a, b), but it can also be a conjunction (18c, d), as is shown by these two verses by Goethe (in “Erlkönig”), which we have segmented into sentences: (18) (a) Ich liebe dich (b) Mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt (c) Und bist du nicht willig (d) So brauche ich Gewalt (I love you, / your fair face pleases me / and if you’re not willing / then I’ll use force) Thus we must dissociate the two characteristics of fixed word order and the “richness” of case morphology: the existence of a rich morphology does not necessarily imply a free order of the constituents. The only generalization that a language like German allows us to make is that a rich morphological repertory, when it is used to mark functional distinctions, can enable dependent elements to avoid subjection to fixed placement, either among themselves or in relation to the constituent on which they depend. The three rules of word order in German are associated neither with functional marking nor with the expression of a The construction figured by the tree in (11) is far from being neutral from the pragmatic point of view. We see, in fact, that the NG that appears under branch 1 (or the left field of the sentence, by opposition to branch 2, which describes the right field) is, in an actual utterance, rarely an NG that introduces a new referent of discourse, that is, a referent that does not belong to the shared universe of discourse and that the content of the utterance makes it possible to identify. We can show this fact by contrasting the answers to a question of the following type: (12) Qu’est-ce qui se passe? This type of question calls for an answer bearing on a situation whose characteristics are completely new, in particular the participants. We see that an utterance belonging to the canonical construction, like (13a), is not the most appropriate form of answer; in ordinary usage, one would answer with the utterances (13b) or (13c): (13) [Qu’est-ce qui se passe?] (a) Un chien aboie (b) Il y a un chien qui aboie (c) C’est un chien qui aboie The utterance (13a) is well formed syntactically: no syntactical constraint prevents an indefinite NG from appearing in the left field of the sentence or from being a grammatical subject. If (13a) is not appropriate in the context defined by question (12), we have to seek the reason in the pragmatic value attached to the canonical construction in general and to its left field in particular. The existence of turns of phrase like (13b) or (13c) (two split constructions that are called “presentational”) and their appropriate character in the context of (12) constitute another indication that (11) is not pragmatically neutral. For an NG that introduces a new referent of discourse, the right field of the sentence is favored. It is the “genius” of the two presentational constructions (split into il y a qui, and c’est qui) to make the NG, a dog (chien), which introduces a completely new referent, appear in the right field of the matrix sentence (il y a un chien or c’est un chien): we note that the main informational content of the utterance is provided by the subordinate clause qui aboie. In other words, the cleavage uses for discursive ends not so much the fixed nature of the grammatical order SVO as the rigidity of the matching between a pragmatic value and a field in the construction of the sentence of which (11) describes the topological organization. We can analytically dissociate grammatical distinction (the expression of functions) and pragmatic distinction (the expression of the informational value of an NG), but the support for this double system of values is one and the same. It is the topological organization figured by the tree in (11) that constitutes this support. Thus the word order in actual utterances can accumulate a double system of values. That is the case in French: the order of constituents is simultaneously syntactical and pragmatic. B. Morphology and the value of word order According to the view of grammar that underlies generalization (9), morphology and word order are in a relationship 1260 WORD ORDER determined by an external principle that prevails in the language. In other words, a generalization like (19) cannot be considered proof of the motivation of the order of constituents by an external process, but rather as the effect of the coding, by the grammars of languages, of pragmatic distinctions. Word order is thus arbitrary in the same sense and on the same grounds as the relationship between signifier and signified in the morpheme: it is not motivated by any external principle. In section III we will examine more closely this comparison between word order and morphemes. D. Critique of the founding paradigm of the vulgate The vulgate regarding word order is essentially based on the comparison between Latin and French illustrated above by the contrast between (1) and (2). It has given rise to a series of variants using other pairs of languages (Russian and English, English and Finnish, etc.), to the point of becoming a cliché in contemporary linguistic arguments. But this contrast is deceptive: in fact, it draws attention exclusively to the fact that the dependent elements are not subject to placement constraints with regard to each other or to the constituent on which they depend. We have just seen that the placement of elements depending on the verb (which constitutes the major syntactical phenomenon in many languages) is distinct from the placement of constituents in the utterance. From a contrast like (1)-(2) we can therefore draw no conclusion regarding the order of constituents in the utterance in general. III. Word Order and Construction Word order is a reflection, in utterances, of the topological organization of the language. Figure (11) offers a representation of the topology of the phrastic field; figure (21) below situates the phrastic field within the topological organization of the utterance. Recently it has been discovered that the value attached to each field is variable. It varies depending on the construction. Thus a single field can be associated with distinct values. We will illustrate this point by considering the pragmatic values associated with the prephrastic field. Here we will grant, in accord with theories of the informational component (K. Lambrecht, Information Structure and Sentence Form), that there are two types of pragmatic value to be distinguished: the old (pragmatically presupposed) or new (asserted) nature of a bit of information, on the one hand, and the degree of accessibility of the referents of discourse (generally introduced by an NG), on the other hand. . A. A single topological organization and two pragmatic values French has two constructions that are designated by the conventional names of “left dislocation” (dislocation gauche) and “topicalization.” Several properties distinguish them from each other; the most obvious is the fact that the prephrastic constituent is repeated by a pronoun in the case of dislocation, and that there is no repetition in topicalization: (20) (Dislocation) (a) Marie, (je pense que) je l’ai vue [The constituent “Marie” is repeated by the anaphoric pronoun “l”] (Topicalization) given semantic or pragmatic value. Their only value is to create demarcations in the topological space itself: they delimit distinct fields in the utterance. C. Word order is arbitrary The fact of appearing to the left or the right of another term is in itself an insignificant characteristic. For example, the fact that the object is placed to the right or to the left of the verb plays no role in the definition of what the grammatical function of the object of the verb is. The same goes for all grammatical functions (subject, complement, addition) or semantic functions (argument, modifier, determinant). The fact of occupying a fixed place in the utterance and even the fact that two constituents must necessarily be contiguous are also in themselves insignificant. For example, appearing at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence in no way affects the functioning of the French possessive determinant in relation to its Latin equivalent, which is not subject to this constraint [cf. (5) above]. In other words, there is nothing natural about word order. This point is important, because it constitutes word order as an arbitrary characteristic of languages. This outcome is commonly recognized by specialists in syntax. Among typologists inspired by functionalism, there is still some debate as to whether the chronology of psycholinguistic processes of encoding and decoding might constitute a factor determining word order, at least at the level of the utterance. Many languages, in fact, allow us to make the following observation: (19) Thematic constituents precede rhematic constituents. A thematic constituent is one that refers to the referent about which it provides information; a rhematic constituent is one that conveys new information. In languages that have the notion of a subject, the subject is generally thematic and the verb (and its dependencies) is rhematic. For example, the distribution of pragmatic values in the canonical construction of French [cf. (11) above] falls under this generalization. The same seems to be partially true of German: the utterances in (17) can be analyzed as illustrating the generalization formulated in (19), but not those in (18c, d), because the initial field is occupied by constituents that have no descriptive content. Thus the hypothesis has been put forward that (19) could be the effect of a cognitive principle according to which it is natural to present the theme of the discourse first, so that it functions as an anchor-point for information or elaborations conveyed by discourse. In other words, the linearization of the informational constituents might reflect the chronology of psycholinguistic operations. However, experiments on encoding and decoding have provided no decisive empirical support for this hypothesis. Moreover, there is a direct counterexample: some languages have the inverse order—the rhematic constituents precede the thematic constituents. This is the case for languages like Ojibwa, Nandi, or Toba Batak (Amerindian, Afro-Asiatic, and Austronesian languages, respectively). These are languages in which the verb appears in the first position in the sentence (so-called VSO languages). This correlation suggests that the relative order between theme and rheme is not WORD ORDER 1261 from the verb with which it is interpreted. It is this complex that contemporary modelings call a construction. A construction is the given of a matching between several dimensions: syntactical, semantic, pragmatic, and topological. If the matching is arbitrary, we might expect that it will differ from one language to another. That is confirmed by the comparison with English. B. Left dislocation and topicalization in English It happens that English has two constructions almost identical with those that we have just defined for French, whose names we retain. Their syntactical and topological properties are identical, as is shown by the two sentences below: (25) (a) Mary, (I think) I saw her (b) To Mary, (I think) I’ll say no We would expect each of these constructions to assign a different value to the prephrastic constituents, as in French. And that is the case. But what is remarkable is that these values are different from those in French. The prephrastic constituent of the topicalized English construction must introduce an identifiable and thematic referent of discourse, unlike the constituent in the corresponding French construction, which is neither thematic nor necessarily identified, as is shown by the contrast between (26) and (27). In (26), the group “in London” can be (pragmatically) inferred from “in England”: (26) Q: Are you planning to settle in England? A: Yes, in London, I’ve bought a studio. (27) Q: Tu penses t’installer en Angleterre? A: *Oui, à Londres, j’ai acheté un studio. On the other hand, the prephrastic constituent in the English dislocated construction is thematic and identifiable, as in French. But the same resources of identifiability cannot be mobilized in both languages. The constituent of the English sentence can be identified thanks to a relation of the partwhole (metonymic) type, with a theme belonging to the universe of discourse, which is not the case in French: (28) (a) Mary made three groups. The first one, she gave them algebra. The two others, she gave them permission to leave. (b) *Marie a fait trois groupes. Le premier, elle leur a fait faire des exercices d’algèbre. Les deux autres, elle leur a donné quartier libre. (b) À Marie, (je pense que) je répondrai par la négative [The constituent “Marie” is not repeated in any way] It has been shown, and we will accept here, that the two constructions make use of the same topological organization, which we can schematize as follows: (21) Utterance (1) (2) Prephrastic Field Phrastic field Even though the word order is identical, the pragmatic value attached to the constituent that occupies the prephrastic field is different in the dislocated construction (20a) from what it is in the topicalized construction (20b). The prephrastic constituent of left dislocation introduces a referent that must already be identified (in particular, the information contributed by the sentence cannot serve to identify it) and that necessarily functions as a theme. This constraint has an impact on the type of NG that can appear in this prephrastic field. It can be neither an NG reduced to a bare quantifier (22a) nor an indefinite NG with a specific or existential interpretation (22b): (22) (a) *Beaucoup, je les vois (b) *Un chien, je le vois If an indefinite NG is possible, it can be interpreted only in a generic way: (23) (a) Un enfant, ça se soigne (b) Q: As-tu vu des enfants sur ta route ?     A: Des enfants, je n’en ai vu aucun The constraint is quite different for topicalization, as is shown by the fact that the NG reduced to a bare quantifier and the indefinite NG with an existential interpretation are permissible in the prephrastic field: (24) (a) À beaucoup, on a donné de mauvais conseils (b) À un clochard, Pierre a même donné cent francs The prephrastic constituent of the topicalized construction is not subject to any constraint of identifiability external to the utterance and it is not necessarily a theme. In (20), the constituents Marie and à Marie occupy the same field, but they are not associated with the same pragmatic values. Neither the lexicon nor the placement in the sentence varies; what varies is the complex of properties that allow a constituent to appear at a greater or lesser distance 3 How should we deal with the order of constituents? In grammars that make use of the notion of construction, there are three ways of dealing with the order of constituents: (a) by orderly trees, (b) by the constraints of linear precedence, or (c) by positing a topological organization (O. Bonami, “DI/ DP, linéarisation, arbres polychromes”). For the defense and illustration of the topological approach, see, among others, Andreas Kathol, Linear Syntax, and Jean-Marie Marandin, “Sites et constructions dans la théorie de la syntaxe,” and the references cited therein. For a presentation of the concept of construction, see Charles Fillmore, Paul Kay, and Mary C. O’Connor, “Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions,” Language 64, no. 3 (1988): 501–38, and Arnold M. Zwicky, “Dealing Out Meaning: Fundamentals of Syntactic Constructions,” Berkeley Linguistic Society, 20 (1994): 611–25. order” in relation to the untranslatable that arises from words. According to the hypothesis put forward by construction grammars, the grammar of a language is composed of two repertories: a lexical repertory (infinite) and a repertory of constructions (finite). The elements of these two repertories are of the same type: they are signs marked by arbitrariness, in the sense in which the principle of matching the different dimensions that constitute them does not refer to an external principle. From this we can conclude that the untranslatable arising from word order is of the same nature as that arising from words. Just as a word in a language A has no exact equivalent in a language B, we predict that a construction in a language A has no exact equivalent in a language B. If that view is correct, it allows us to understand that there is no place for a study of a phenomenon such as word order by comparing language A and language B, because this phenomenon cannot be detached and isolated from the instance of each of its constructions. If constructions, like words, are multidimensional entities subject to arbitrariness and overdetermination, the problem of the translation of constructions is posed in the same terms as that of the translation of words. If the translation of words is “abridging and partial” (Cassin, “Présentation: Quand lire, c’est faire”), the translation of constructions is as well, and for the same reason: the unique assemblage that characterizes a construction in language A (its internal constitution and its place in the grammatical system) is destroyed and must be reconstructed in language B. Beyond the referential equivalence, every choice regarding the translation of a word has consequences for the metaphorical sequences, the models of assonance, and the morphological figures into which it may enter in language A and into which its equivalents can enter in language B. Similarly, every choice regarding the translation of a construction has consequences for the network of discursive relations and the rhetorical arrangement that constitute the text in which it occurs. Each time, we have to choose, not a word order, but a construction, that is, a set of constraints connected with a form of utterance, constraints that bear on the expression of a content and on the type of relation that the utterance can entertain with other utterances in the text (for an example, see F. Kerleroux and J.-M. Marandin, “L’ordre des mots”). Françoise Kerleroux Jean-Marie Marandin REFS.: Bonami, Olivier. “DI/DP, linearization, arbres polychromes: Trois approaches de l’ordre des mots.” Linx 39 (1998): 43–70. Carnie, Andrew. Syntax: A Generative Introduction. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Cassin, Barbara. “Présentation: Quand lire, c’est faire.” Pp. 9–68 in Parménide: Sur la nature ou sur l’étant. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1998. Delesalle, Simone, and Jean-Claude Chevalier. La linguistique, la grammaire et l’école: 1750–1914. Paris: Colin, 1986. Downing, Pamela, and Michael Noonan, eds. Word Order in Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1995. Emonds, Joseph E. Discovering Syntax: Clause Structures of English, German, and Romance. New York: De Gruyter, 2007. Inversely, in French the identification of a referent of discourse by means of a metonymic relation is possible in the context of a topicalized construction: (29) Marie a fait trois groupes. Au premier, elle a donné des exercices d’algèbre. Aux deux autres, elle a donné quartier libre. C. The singularity of constructions We have gradually abandoned the notion of word order. Under this rubric, tradition designates a set of relations that are definable in the sequence (relative placement, fixity, adjacency), as we have shown in the previous sections. But the crucial relations of order are the ones that constitute the topological organization of the language. We have just seen that it is a given field that is the support for a given value, syntactical or pragmatic, and that the association of a value with a field is carried out in the context of a construction. It follows that the notion of word order has a limited descriptive and theoretical pertinence. What constitutes the pertinent entity is the construction. At the same time, a parallelism between word and construction has taken shape. Words and constructions are entities that associate several dimensions belonging to either the signifier or the signified. The signifier of construction implements a topological organization. The specific character of a construction is to associate a syntactical, semantic, or pragmatic value with the fields that it distinguishes. We have just seen that the association of a given value (in our example, a pragmatic value) with a field is arbitrary. We were able to show that this association is oppositive: the two French split constructions, il y a un NG qui V or c’est un NG qui V, do not assign the same pragmatic values to the NG (K. Lambrecht, Information Structure and Sentence Form). In other words, what characterizes the word insofar as it is a sign also characterizes the construction. This common character can be explained by borrowing a generalization formulated by Jacques Lacan: Every linguistic symbol that can be easily isolated is not only inseparable from the whole, but is intersected and constituted by a whole series of incoming elements, oppositional overdeterminations that situate it in several registers simultaneously. (Le Séminaire, Book I, Les Écrits techniques de Freud) Construction appears as a linguistic individual, and like all individuals, it has general characteristics that make it “inseparable from the whole” and irreducibly specific characteristics. In one or in several languages, constructions share common ways of functioning; topicalization shares with relativization the same mechanism of distancing. It is the same mechanism in English and in French. The same goes for words: the way a verb functions transitively is identical in French and English. The irreducibly specific character of constructions can be seen in the fact that there are no synonymous constructions, just as there are no synonymous words. IV. Word Order and Translation We can now come to the question of the untranslatable and characterize the untranslatable that arises from “word –how frequently this term was used in sermons and also because people were loath to use verbum, which was reserved for Verbe, the translation of the Greek Logos [Λόγος], the Word of God in John’s Gospel (see LOGOS). In French, parole was used until the sixteenth century in a nonreligious sense. But as a result of the wars of Religion and the advent of French as the national language with the creation of the Académie française in 1635, Parole began to compete with Verbe as a translation of the incarnation of God in religious texts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Geneva Bible of 1669 we thus find the following commentary: “the Greek ho Logos, which in vulgar language is called le Verbe, and which is more conveniently translated as la Parole.” But it was the term Verbe, first used in the Œuvres chrestiennes of Desportes (around 1600), that would replace Parole, first in religious literature and then gradually in the translations of the Bible (Le Maistre de Sacy, 1678), where it would finally become the accepted term. This was a transitional period from a linguistic and religious point of view. In the sixteenth century, French prevailed over Latin as a means of expression in literature and theology. The debate was complicated by the religious disputes between Protestants and Catholics, who supported opposing positions. Protestants called for the use of French as the ecclesiastical language, and Catholics firmly held on to Latin in the liturgy and the translations of the Bible. In the sixteenth century, parole became a word that was appropriated by Protestants, who called their ministers ministres de la Parole de Dieu (ministers of the Word of God). La Parole was even used to refer to Protestantism (“The king has proclaimed a general abolition whereby the prisons have been opened for all those who were prisoners for the word [parole]. This is the term we use instead of saying religion”; É. Pasquier, Lettres, 4.5). For Calvin, the Word (Parole) was the incarnation of God: “Therefore, as all revelations from heaven are duly designated by the title of the word of God, so the highest place must be assigned to that substantial Word, the source of all inspiration, which, as being liable to no variation, remains for ever one and the same with God, and is God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 71); “Christ is that Word become incarnate” (ibid.). It was thus no surprise that it was Verbe that would prevail during the Counter-Reformation. The transition was apparent in the first monolingual dictionaries of the seventeenth century. Verbe was thus defined as Parole in the Richelet dictionary, RT: Dictionnaire françois (1680): “This word is used in terms of Theology and Holy Scripture, and means Jesus-Christ, the second person of the Trinity. It also means la parole”; see also the RT: Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694): “Jesus-Christ is called la parole éternelle, la parole incréée, la parole incarnée [the eternal word, the unbegotten word, the word incarnate] although one more commonly says le Verbe.” The Word of God (Verbum Dei) refers in both dictionaries to the Holy Scripture. E. Mot/Parole In the seventeenth century, as a result of the establishment of French as the language of the state and the national language (see Collinot and Mazière, Un prêt-à-parler), the production of the Port-Royal Grammaire générale et --- when we consider the placement of functional constituents in the sentence. Then we will set forth a few elements for the critique of this problematics, which contemporaries see as a kind of vulgate. Finally, we will abandon the notion of word order and propose the concept of construction, as it is defined in one of the contemporary schools of the generative paradigm (construction grammars) to analyze the pertinence of the placement of constituents in the utterance. From this point of view, it can be maintained that the lexical unit (the concept making it possible to analyze what the term “word” designates) and construction are entities of the same type, signs (lexical signs and syntagmatic signs, according to the terminology of the grammatical framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar [HPSG]), which allows us to extend the notion of arbitrariness, in Saussure’s sense, to the architecture of the utterance, and to overdetermination, in Lacan’s sense. The linguistic analysis completed, we conclude that, if word order gives rise to an untranslatable, this untranslatable has the same etiology as the one to which words may give rise. I. The Vulgate on Word Order A. The fixed order of French Word order seems at first to be what distinguishes French from Latin. Sentence (1) has the same meaning, that is, the same propositional content, as sentences (2): (1) Le père aime le fils (2) (a) Pater filium amat (b) Amat pater filium (c) Filium pater amat (d) Pater amat filium (e) Amat filium pater (f) Filium amat pater We say that the order is “fixed” in French because (1) can be translated by (2) in Latin, but also because (1) is not equivalent to (3): (3) Le fils aime le père and because the order of (1) is not open to any variation, which is shown by the agrammaticality (signaled in the examples by the asterisk *) of the sentences in (4): (4) (a) *Le père le fils aime (b) *Aime le père le fils (c) *Aime le fils le père (d) *Le fils le père aime Moreover, the possibility of varying the order of the constituents in Latin is further increased if we take into consideration two facts: the order of a noun and its determinant can vary within the noun group (henceforth NG); and the members of a given group cannot form a continuous sequence. In (5), the determinant (suum) is to the left or the right of the determined noun (filium); in (6), the determinant is separated from the noun that it determines by constituents that do not belong to the NG that they constitute (they are separated, in this case, by the NG subject pater): (5) (a) Pater suum filium amat (b) Pater filium suum amat (6) Suum pater filium amat Boethius. Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri hermêneias. 2nd ed. Edited by C. Meiser. Leipzig: Teubner, 1880. Buridan, C., ed. L’étymologie de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance. Lexique 14 (1998). Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008. Cassin, Barbara. “Homonymi et signifiant.” In L’effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. . “Who’s Afraid of the Sophists? Against Ethical Correctness.” Translated by Charles T. Wolfe. Hypatia 15, no. 4 (2000): 102–20. Collinot, André, and Francine Mazière. Un prêt à parler: Le dictionnaire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997. Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R. D. Hicks. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. Dionysius Thrax. Technē grammatikē. Edited by Gustav Uhlig. Grammatici graeci 1.1. Leipzig: Teubner, 1883. Translation by Thomas Davidson: The Grammar. St. Louis: Studley, 1874. Di Pasquale, M.-L. “La notion de mot dans le De lingua Latina de Varron.” Lalies 10 (1992): 135–41. Frede, Dorothea, and Brad Inwood, eds. Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Frede, Michael, and John M. Rist. “Principles of Stoic Grammar.” In The Stoics, edited by John M. Rist, 27–75. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Fruyt, Michèle, and Marie-José Reichler-Béguelin. “La notion de ‘mot’ en latin et dans d’autres langues indo-européennes anciennes.” Modèles Linguistiques 12 (1990): 21–46. Imbert, Claude. “Théorie de la représentation et doctrine logique dans le stoïcisme ancient.” In Les Stoïciens et leur logique, edited by Jacques Brunschwig. Paris: Vrin, 1978. Juilland, Alphonse, and Alexandra Roceric. The Linguistic Concept of Word: Analytic Refs.:. The Hague: Mouton, 1972. Lallot, Jean. “Le mot dans la tradition grammaticale et prégrammaticale en Grèce.” Lalies 10 (1992): 125–34. Lectura in librum “De anima.” Edited by R. A. Gauthier. Grottaferrata, Italy: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1985. Léon, Jacqueline. “Conceptions du mot et débuts de la traduction automatique.” Histoire, Épistemologie, Langage 23, no. 1 (2001): 81–106. Long, A. A. “Stoic Linguistics, Plato’s Cratylus, and Augustine’s De Dialectica.” In Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age, edited by Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood, 36–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Manetti, Giovanni. Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity. Translated by Christine Richardson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Nicot, Jean. Le thresor de la langue françoyse tant ancienne que moderne. Paris: D. Douceur, 1606. Padley, G. A. Grammatical Theory in Western Europe, 1500–1700. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–88. Fillmore, Charles, Paul Kay, and Mary Catherine O’Connor. “Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions.” Language 64 (1988): 501–38. Foucault, Michel. “Les mots qui saignent.” Pp. 424–27 in vol. 1 of Dits et Écrits. Paris: Gallimard, 1994. Gazdar, Gerald, et al. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Kathol, Andreas. Linear Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kerleroux, Françoise. “Discordances d’une langue à une autre, d’une langue à ellemême.” Le Gré des langues 6 (1993): 5–27. Kerleroux, Françoise, and Jean-Marie Marandin. “L’ordre des mots.” Pp. 277–302 in Cahier Jean-Claude Milner. Edited by Jean-Marie Marandin. Paris: Verdier, 2001. Koktova, Eva. Word-Order Based Grammar. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999. Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Book I: Les Écrits techniques de Freud. Edited by JacquesAlain Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975. Translation by John Forrester: Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–1954. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Vol. 1 in The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lakatos, Imre. Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery. Edited by John Worrall and Elie Zahar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Lambrecht, Knud. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Marandin, Jean-Marie. “Sites et constructions dans la théorie de la syntaxe.” In Cahier Jean-Claude Milner, edited by Jean-Marie Marandin. Paris: Verdier, 2001. . “Contours as Constructions.” Constructions 1 no. 10 (2006): 1– 28. Ricken, Ulrich. Sprache, Anthropologie, Philosophie in der französischen Aufklärung: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Verhältnisses von Sprachtheorie und Weltanschauung. Berlin: Akademie, 1984. Translation by Robert W. Norton: Linguistics, Anthropology, and Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: Language Theory and Ideology. New York: Routledge, 1994. Virgil. The Aeneid. Rev. ed. 2 vols. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. Translation by Robert Fagles: The Aeneid. Introduction by Bernard Knox. New York: Viking, 2006. French translation by Pierre Klossowski: L’Éneide. Marseille: André Dimanche, 1989. Weil, Henri. De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes: Question de grammaire générale. Reprint. Paris: Didier, 1991. First published in Paris by Joubert in 1844. Translation by Charles W. Super: The Order of Words in the Ancient Languages Compared with That of the Modern Languages. Boston: Ginn, 1887. Zwicky, Arnold M. “Dealing Out Meaning: Fundamentals of Syntactic Constructions.” Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 20 (1994): 611–25. LABOR. Opus, work, Fr. travail, œuvre GERMAN Arbeit, Werk, πόνος, ἔϱγον, v. ART, BERUF, CULTURE, ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, ESSENCE, PERFORMANCE, PLASTICITY, STRADANIE, THING, UTILITY, VOCATION The human activity that falls under the category of “work,” at least in some of its uses, is linked to pain (the French word travail derives from the Latin word for an instrument of torture), to labor (Lat. labor [the load], Eng. “labor”), and to accomplishment, to the notion of putting to work (Gr. ergazomai [ἐϱγάζομαι], Lat. opus, Fr. mise en œuvre, Eng. “work,” Ger. Werk), which is not necessarily the opposite of leisure but can be its partner. With Hegel, work (Ger. Arbeit) becomes a philosophical concept, but it designates self-realization (whether the course of history or the life of God) rather than a reality that is exclusively or even primarily anthropological. That form of human activity that is specifically human can be designated from two distinct points of view: stress is placed either on the tedious, “laborious,” or even painful, or else on accomplishment. The first sense of “labor” reverts to the Indo-European term for agricultural laborer (laboratores), and was used in opposition to the warrior (the bellatores) or the preacher (oratores). These three terms have their structural analogy in Roman mythology, with the Capitoline triad of Jupiter-Mars-Quirinius. The tedious character of work, its “negativity” in the analysis of philosophers such as Hegel and Marx, comes out clearly in the French word travail, from the vulgate Latin tripalium (first documented in the year 578 as trepalium), which was a “torture instrument formed from three stakes whose purpose was to immobilize recalcitrant animals” (as in the “travail” of the horse smithy) or to torment slaves. Travailler is to take pains to do something (from the Greek ponos [πόνος], which designates all fatiguing exercises, in the plural, as in the example of the labors of Hercules). It is this sense that is underscored in a verse from La Fontaine’s fable “Le Laboureur et ses enfants” (The Laborer and his children): “Travaillez, prenez de la peine” (Work, and take pains to do it). This usage entered the French language to such an extent that it became the preferred expression for designating the exhausting activity of turning over the soil. The biblical heritage is felt in the notion of working “with the sweat of one’s brow.” “Labor” also refers to the pains of childbirth. These last two uses are linked in the Bible (Gen. 3:16–19). It is only with Hegel, in the preface to the Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) that work becomes a philosophical concept, which is at first not anthropological (since it is applied to the “life of God”) in the expression “the work of negativity” (Arbeit des Negativen), itself picking up “the serious, pain, and patience.” Nonetheless, the German Arbeit points toward an entirely different area of meaning, related to the Greek orphanos [ὀϱϕανός], the Latin orbus (deprived of), the German Erbe (inheritance), as well as Armut (poverty). To be an orphan is to be a child subject to harsh physical activity in order to provide for one’s own needs. This is the source of the reluctance of Ernst Jünger, author of Der Arbeiter, to have his work translated into French: If I was reluctant for so long to have Der Arbeiter (Fr. Le Travailleur) translated into French, it stems in the first place from a pure problem of etymology. Arbeiter comes from arbeo, the gothic word “inheritance.” Travailleur comes from tripalium, an “instrument of torture.” From the outset, there is a risk of a fundamental contradiction which could only increase in the translation. (Hervier, The Details of Time: Interviews with Ernst Jünger [emphasis added]) The meaning of this human activity is nonetheless not exhausted by reference to its painful character. At least in some of its aspects, it can be seen as the accomplishment, the institution of a work (Gr. ergon [ἔϱγον], Lat. opus, Fr. œuvre, Ger. Werk). In his Second Treatise on Civil Government (chap. 5), Locke distinguishes between the “labor” of his body and the “work” of his hands, as properly belonging to each man as his own, but without clearly thematizing the distinction, and within the context of an analysis that paradoxically tends to erase rather than accentuate it insofar as the word “labor” becomes a generic term absorbing the distinction. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt takes up this distinction, but in the opposite sense from Locke’s analyses, as being “somewhat reminiscent” of the classical Greek distinction between ponein [πονεῖν] (to take pains to, to make the effort to) and ergazesthai [ἐϱγάζεσθαι] (to accomplish, to set to work; mise en œuvre), which is also used to distinguish slaves from artisans. The free man, on the other hand, is defined by his leisure, Greek scholê [σχολή] (whence the English word “school”), Latin otium, whose neg-otium (cf. Fr. négoce) is a privation. One should be careful not to confuse leisure (otium) with idleness (Lat. otiositas), or even with simple “free time” that corresponds to a “chronometric leisure” that Valéry opposes to “interior leisure” (The Outlook for Intelligence). See Boxes 1 and 2. Pascal David REFS.: Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Hervier, Julien. The Details of Time: Conversations with Ernst Jünger. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995. Jünger, Ernst. Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by P. Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Valéry, Paul. The Outlook for Intelligence. Volume 10 of The Collected Works of Paul Valéry. 15 vols. Edited by Jackson Mathews. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956–75. 1 “Labor,” “work” / Arbeit “Labor” and “work” form one of the many pairs of English words whose origins lie in the Norman Conquest. “Labor” derives from the Norman French and refers back to the exercise of mental or corporal faculties, especially when it is difficult or painful. “Work” is more humble. It derives from the Anglo-Saxon and simply designates everything one does or the act of doing it. “Labor” has been employed in Marxist discourse because it connotes suffering and difficulty. In America, the pragmatists adopted the happier word “work” in their discussions. As in French, the German language does not make this distinction. Arbeiten, like travailler, refers equally to labor and to work. In a lecture on “Hegel’s Legacy,” given at Northwestern University in 1998, Jürgen Habermas developed an argument first published in English in 1973 under the title Labor and Interaction. But in the changed circumstances of 1998, Arbeit would now be translated as “work,” such that Habermas’s discourse, instead of sounding like that of a European Marxist, comes more into line with contemporary American pragmatism. John McCumber 2 Œuvre: A complex network of terms Œuvre is part of a vast family of words connected with the Indo-European root *op-, “productive activity.” In Latin, for example, we find, alongside ops, opis (“abundance,” whence copia [resources, wealth], which yields French copie [large quantity, reproduction]; see MIMÊSIS), opus, operis (to designate “work” and its product, the “œuvre” [whence opifex (worker, craftsman)] and officium [function, office, duty]), and the feminine opera (activity, care). Another noun root, *werg, designates action, whence the Greek words ergon [ἔϱγον] (task, work), energeia [ἐνέϱγεια] (action, activity)—see PRAXIS, Box 1, and FORCE, Box 1—organon [ὄϱγανον] (tool, organ), and the Germanic werk (Eng. “work,” Ger. Werk). We must add two heterogeneous families of Latin words around labo: labare (to slip, collapse; cf. Fr. lapsus), whence labor (work as a “load” under which one bends) and tripalium (from palus [pillory, post]), which connotes our work as torment. I. ŒUVRE AND WORK OF ART Modern uses of œuvre link the term to artistic and literary production. In this sense, a literary œuvre is the result of a “doing” or “making,” as in a Greek poeien [ποιεῖν] (see DICHTUNG, ERZÄHLEN, POETRY; cf. SPEECH ACT). Œuvre is also used in the critical and technical discourses around the creation of art and the nature of art and artists, see ART, BEAUTY, MIMÊSIS, TABLEAU; cf. AESTHETICS, LOGOS. II. ŒUVRE, ACT, THING An œuvre can also be seen as an exercise of power or will, a coalescence of forces. This vein opens onto the ontological dimension of implementation, power, and act (dunamis [δύναμις], ergon [ἔϱγον], energeia [ἐνέϱγεια]), explored in ACT, I, and additionally in FORCE and PRAXIS, ESSENCE, and SPECIES; cf. NATURE, WELT. Thinking in these terms raises the question of work as the result of human practice(s), explored in ACT, II, as well as in PRAXIS and ACTOR, BERUF ; cf. ENTREPRENEUR, MORALS. In counterpoint, the notion of God’s work is addressed in GRÂCE, II. A final consideration, that of the work as physical embodiment, as a “thing” itself, is examined in RES, in particular RES, Box 1. v. FACT, FICTION, IL Y A, OBJECT, REALITY, THING, VORHANDEN MUNDANUM. The term refers to a totality of belonging, a set of objects that have the same mode of being (the “world of the senses,” the “intelligible world,” the “sublunar world”), unlike a simple “summa” of objects. In Greek, as well as in Latin, it can have a “laudatory” meaning, that of a well-organized totality (see WELT, Box 1 on the meaning of kosmos). The Russian constellation, where “world” is always only one of a number of possible meanings, linked to “light” or to “peace,” is explored under MIR and SVET; cf. PRAVDA, RUSSIAN, SOBORNOST’. The German WELT is the point of departure that introduces the division, particularly apparent in Kant, between a cosmological sense (mundus as “universe”) and an anthropological sense. Finer distinctions can be made among the following: 1. A cosmological sense; see also NATURE. 2. An ontological sense, linked to the representation of the whole and of totality; see WELT, Box 2; see also OMNITUDO REALITATIS; cf. WHOLE. 3. A theological sense (mundus, saeculum; cf. the scriptural expressions: “to come into the world, to leave the world”); see OLAM, SECULARIZATION. 4. A chronological sense (aiôn [αἰών]), as in Weltalter (historical time or period); see AIÔN, and TIME; cf. HISTORIA UNIVERSALIS. 5. A sociological and anthropological sense, as in Umwelt (world, environment, milieu); see WELT, Box 3. 6. An existential sense, as in the world of experience, mundanity (Weltlichkeit, in-der-Welt-sein); v. DASEIN, LEIB, WELTANSCHAUUNG. v. ERLEBEN, GOD, IL Y A, OBJECT, REALITY, RES, SEIN, VORHANDEN DESIDERATUM. G. Wunsch, wish Fr. désir, souhait v. DESIRE and CONSCIOUSNESS, DRIVE, ES, I/ME/MYSELF, INTENTION, LOVE, MALAISE, PLEASURE, SEHNSUCHT, UNCONSCIOUS, WILL The German term Wunsch is, like Trieb (drive, instinct), at the heart of Freudian conceptualization, as it designates the fulfillment of desire (which is literally “filled,” erfüllt) by the formations of the unconscious (dream, fantasy, symptom, lapsus, etc.). While the English “wish” is a near relative to Wunsch, close in meaning and deriving from the same root (the Sanskrit wunskjan), the French language has no obvious equivalent. The two words closest in meaning are souhait,which is a weaker term than wunsch, and désir, which is both stronger and more active and has the additional disadvantage of being used to translate a number of other terms that regularly surface in Freud’s writings with different meanings. The French reception of Freud has been marked by the decision to adopt désir as the standard translation, obscuring the automatic quality of the mechanism described by Freud. This translation has also masked the wealth of terms that Freud used to account for multiple facets of human desire. There is nothing in Freud’s writings that resembles the theory of desire that Lacan believes he can find in them, even if he does so through the intermediary of Hegel as interpreted by Kojève and the latter’s readings of Heidegger. Lacan’s désir is much closer to Hegel’s Begierde (contentiously translated as “recognition,” “appetite,” or “desire,” and assumed to refer to a conscious state) than to the Freudian notion of Wunsch (assumed to refer to an unconscious psychic mechanism). I. The Meaning of Wunsch in Freud The particular conceptual meaning Freud gives to Wunsch can be traced back to his Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) and especially to The Interpretation of Dreams [Die Traumdeutung, 1899], whose most celebrated thesis is the definition of the dream as a Wunscherfüllung, translated into English as “wish-fulfillment,” but into French as “réalisation de désir” or as “accomplissement de souhait.” The difficulty is a double one: establishing the precise meaning of Wunsch and addressing the multiplicity of terms in Freud’s work that can all be translated by désir in French: Begierde (appetite, recognition, desire, conscience), Begehren (to desire, to crave, to covet), Begehrung (longing), Lust (lust, pleasure, delight, inclination), Gelüste (hankering, longing), Sehnsucht (longing, yearning, desire), Gier (avarice, craving), Verlangen (to demand, to call, to want). In Freud Wunsch refers to an unconscious and automatic psychological mechanism linked to the necessities of living. It is to be understood in relation to an experience of satisfaction. In the chapter of Die Traumdeutung specifically called “Zur Wunscherfüllung” (on wish-fulfillment, Fr. sur la réalisation du désir), Freud clearly explains the link between the experience of satisfaction and desire. He makes a hypothesis about a “psychic apparatus” whose purely reflexive functioning becomes more complicated as a result of a “necessity of life” that imposes its own requirements on the organism: A hungry baby screams or kicks helplessly. But the situation remains unaltered, for the excitation arising from an internal need is not due to a force producing a momentary impact but to one which is in continuous operation. A change can only come about if in some way or other (in the case of the baby, through outside help) an “experience of satisfaction” can be achieved which puts an end to the internal stimulus. An essential component of this experience of satisfaction is a particular perception (that of nourishment, in our example) the mnemic image of which remains associated thenceforward with the memory trace of the excitation produced by the need. As a result of the link that has thus been established, the next time this need arises a psychical impulse will at once emerge which will seek to re-cathect the mnemic image of the perception and to re-evoke the perception itself, that is to say, to re-establish the situation of the original satisfaction. An impulse of this kind is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the perception is the fulfillment of the wish; and the shortest path to the fulfillment of the wish is a path leading -- sixteenth century (cf. Johann Fries, Novum dictionariolum puerorum latinogermanicum, Zurich, Froschover, 1556) as a translation of appetitio (along with Begird), desideratio (with Begird and Verlangen), and desiderium (with Lust, Begird, and Verlangen). And this meaning has not become any weaker over time. When Goethe writes, “In deinem Herzen muß eben der Wunsch keimen,” he clearly wants to say that “desire must stir in your heart” and not some weaker wish or souhait. Furthermore, the idea of an unconscious souhait seems harder to accept than an unconscious desire. A souhait presumes the active participation of the person who wishes. It would be difficult to think of oneself as the plaything of a souhait the way one can be subject to a desire. So there can be some justification in translating Wunsch as “desire.” III. Multiple Desires in the Freudian Text Freud makes full use of the wealth of the German lexicon to account for the different levels of human desire: Begierde (or Begehren), Lust, Gelüste, Verlangen, and Sehnsucht. Verlangen (which literally means “extending out an arm to reach” or more colloquially “at arm’s reach”) is the most general term, the form of “desire” par excellence. Freud uses the term Gelüste (formed from Lust, but retaining only its meaning of desire, not of pleasure) for the strong longings that made it necessary to erect the two fundamental totemic interdictions: do not kill the totem animal and do not have sexual intercourse with members of the totem clan. As Freud wrote, parricide and incest “must be the oldest and most powerful human desires [Gelüste]” (Totem und Tabu, in Gesammelte Werke, 9: 42). Can neurosis, the essential object of Freudian theory, be understood as the cultural transformation of Gelüste into Wunsch, or of desire into wish, by means of the effect of repression? In interpreting dreams, then, we would recover the unconquerable power of desire behind the mechanism of wish. We find the same mechanism at work in Sehnsucht, a term deemed untranslatable into French that contains the sense of a violent, painful desire for a distant or unattainable object. In The Interpretation of Dreams this is the term used for the longing to go to Rome, a desire so strong, and an object so distant, that for a long time it could only be expressed as the Wunsch of a dream. Freud writes: “In another case I note the fact that although the wish that excites the dream is a contemporary wish it is nevertheless greatly reinforced by memories of childhood. I refer to a series of dreams which are based on the longing [Sehnsucht] to go to Rome” (Traumdeutung, in Gesammelte Werke, 2–3, p. 199). The fact remains that only Wunsch was subject to rigorous definition and thus raised to the status of concept: so it is in relation to this core meaning that the other terms are deployed, terms that have retained meanings closer to common usage and the literary tradition. It is in this sense that Lacan thought it legitimate to show that the work of Freud was much more a theory of desire than an anthropology of desires that would entail, as Kant established, precise definitions of the multiple terms afforded by the German language: Desire [Begierde] (appetitio) is the self-determination of a subject’s power through the representation of something in the future as an effect of this representation. direct from the excitation produced by the need to a complete cathexis of the perception. (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, in Standard Edition, 5: 565–66) We see how Wunsch, like Trieb, has a technical meaning in Freud. The psychological mechanism to which the two terms refer are for that matter very close to each other. Freud mentions repeatedly that desire is the driving force (Triebkraft) without which the dream would not take form. At issue is Wunsch as the “sole psychical motive force for the construction of dreams” (einziger psychischer Triebkraft für den Traum) (Gesammelte Werke, 2–3: 574, Standard Edition, 5: 568). Freud, however, defines Wunsch, as we saw in the passage above, as an “excitation arising from an internal need [that] is not due to a force producing a momentary impact but to one which is in continuous operation.” The Interpretation of Dreams takes up the formulae from the Project for a Scientific Psychology and also anticipates the later definition of the drive. Thus, we can see Wunsch as an instinctual mechanism with its own specific characteristics: the hallucinatory reliving of an experience of satisfaction. Insofar as what is proper to desire lies in its link to a perception, one can understand how the study of dreams would permit a better understanding of its nature. But above all, it is the unconscious dimension of desire that needs to be taken into account. How does one apply the wish-fulfillment rule of desire to painful dreams or nightmares? The answer derives from the division of psychic life into two agencies: one (the unconscious) seeks to obtain pleasure through the fulfillment of a desire that is subsequently experienced as painful in the second agency (the preconscious-conscious). Thus nothing could be further from the Freudian Wunsch than an ontological model of desire, whose origin would be found in the Platonic erôs and whose tracks could be followed in the Augustinian amor Dei: that is to say, a force inscribed in the being of man that leads him, if he knows how to follow it, toward an object that would offset his essential lack. Here desire becomes a mark of human imperfection and a trace of the perfection that man aspires to. But Freudian desire is based on an unconscious mechanism over which man has no mastery. What is more, this desire translates the fundamental maladjustment of the human psychic process: unconscious desire is indestructible and always follows the “shortest path,” the most dangerous one, since it concentrates all of its energies on simple perception. The Translation of Wunsch into French Is it correct to translate Wunsch as désir in French? Here questions of terminology and the weight of the Lacanian theory of desire converge. This was the standard translation right up until the team of the Œuvres complètes de Freud/ Psychanalyse (OCF/P) made its own determination (cf. Bourguignon et al., Traduire Freud). In an attempt to take into account the diversity of Freudian terms that touch upon the domain of desire, and in an effort to establish a precise and systematic language, the OCF/P chose to translate Wunsch by souhait (and reserved désir for Begierde). But Wunsch means something stronger than souhait. Whereas souhait translates the Latin votum, Wunsch is mentioned in the -- “Desire” according to Jacques Lacan v. AUFHEBEN, DASEIN Lacan’s interpretation of desire according to Freud leads him to make a rigorous distinction between Wunsch and désir: “Il faut s’arrêter à ces vocables de Wunsch, et de Wish qui le rend en anglais pour les distinguer du désir. Ce sont des vœux” (We must pause at the term Wunsch and its English translation “wish” to distinguish them from the French désir [desire]. Their French equivalent is vœu) (Lacan, Écrits). Whereas Freud makes Wunsch a special case of Trieb, Lacan makes desire into a general structure of the drives (Fr. pulsions): “This desire, in which it is literally verified that the desire of man is alienated in the desire of the other, structures in fact the drives discovered in the analysis.” But this interpretation reproduces on Freud the very operation that A. Kojève had already carried out on Hegel during his celebrated seminars at the École pratique des hautes études from 1933 to 1939, which were faithfully attended by Lacan. In his commentary “Autonomy and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Mastery and Slavery” (IV § A), Kojève gives desire a scope it does not have in Hegel. For Kojève, desire (with a capital D in Queneau’s compilation) is at the heart of the process of subjectivation: “The (conscious) Desire of a being is what constitutes that being as a ‘myself.’ . . . The very being of man, the self-conscious being, therefore, implies and presupposes Desire.” But, Kojève specifies, “by itself, this Desire only constitutes the sentiment of self” (Reading of Hegel, 3–4). How does one pass on to the specifically human stage of selfconsciousness? By the desire of desire: “For there to be Self-Consciousness, Desire must be directed toward a non-natural object, toward something that goes beyond given reality. Now, the only thing that goes beyond given reality is Desire itself” (ibid., 5). From this comes Kojève’s interpretation of the “struggle for recognition,” which is for him a “desire for recognition”: “Man’s humanity ‘comes to light’ only in risking his life to satisfy his human Desire—that is, his Desire directed toward another Desire. Now, to desire a Desire is to want to substitute oneself for the value desired by this Desire” (ibid., 7). How does Hegel address this? “Desire” is the translation of the German word Begierde in Hegel’s text, a term that clearly implies a relation to an object. But which object? For Hegel it is life that is at issue: life presents itself as the other of consciousness: “selfconsciousness is thus only assured of itself through sublating [aufheben] this other, which is presented to self-consciousness as an independent life; self-consciousness is Desire [Begierde]” (Phänomenologie des Geistes, 174). The satisfaction of desire in the object (cast not as Wunscherfüllung but as Befriedigung der Begierde) does not cancel the desire but instead reproduces it. For Hegel, consciousness can only be satisfied in an object that does not cancel it, that is to say, in an object that “effects the negation”—in other words, in another self-consciousness. “Selfconsciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” (ibid., 175). But it would seem that in the course of this analysis, and contrary to Kojève’s interpretation, “desire” never goes beyond the sphere of “life,” of the immediate, of independence, of the “object,” whereas the “I” [Ich] that is according to Hegel the “object of its own notion [of self-consciousness], is in point of fact not ‘object’” (“Ich, das der Gegenstand seines Begriffs ist, ist in der Tat nicht Gegenstand”; ibid., 177). The struggle for recognition, the dialectic of master and slave, entails a stage superior to that of life (with its implication of a death-risk) and thus superior also to desire itself. If Freud’s Wunsch may be translated as a vœu (promise, vow, wish), there is no term in Freud that corresponds to this ontological desire fabricated by Lacan, who used Heideggerian Dasein to interpret Hegel. REFS.: Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Edited by R. Queneau. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. Translation by J. Nichols: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Edited by A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1969. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Translation by Bruce Fink: Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Bourguignon, André, Pierre Cotet, Jean Laplanche, and Robert François. Traduire Freud. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989. Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke. 18 vols. London: Imago, 1940–1952. Translation under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1957–1974. . The Interpretation of Dreams I. Standard Edition, Vol. 5. The Interpretation of Dreams II. Standard Edition, Vol. 6. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Meinert, 1988. Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Edited by R. Queneau. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Translation by Bruce Fink: Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Desiring without exercising power to produce the object is wish [Wunsch]. Wish can be directed toward objects that the subject feels incapable of producing, and then it is an empty (idle) wish [leerer Wunsch]. The empty wish to be able to annihilate the time between the desire [Begehrten] and the acquisition of the desired object is longing [Sehnsucht]. (Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Bk. 3, § 73, R. B. Louden, ed. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 149 [German added]).