Inexhaustibility and human being: an essay on locality 9780823212279

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page vi)
Preface (page vii)
1. Being (page 1)
2. Knowing (page 49)
3. Meaning (page 88)
4. Emotion (page 149)
5. Sociality (page 196)
6. Politics (page 237)
7. Life and Death (page 294)
Bibliography (page 305)
Index (page 313)

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INEXHAUSTIBILITY AND HUMAN BEING

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INEXHAUSTIBILITY

AND HUMAN BEING An Essay on Locality

STEPHEN DAVID Ross

=a FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York 1989

© Copyright 1989 by FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

All rights reserved LC 88—82222 ISBN 978-0-8232-1227-9

CONTENTS

Preface Vil 1. Being I

Acknowledgments vi

2. Knowing 49 3. Meaning 88 4. Emotion 149 5. Sociality 196 6. Politics 237 7. Life and Death 294

Index 313

Bibliography 305

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Some of the material included here has appeared in a modified form in the following publications: ‘Judgment and the Question of Human Being.” Philosophy Today, 27, No. 3 (Fall 1983), 258-68. “The Limits of Sexuality.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 9, No. 3 (Spring

1984), 321-36. “Metaphor, the Semasic Field, and Inexhaustibility.” New Literary History, 18 (1986— 1987), 517-33.

PREFACE If our time is to be known to the future for its intellectual and spiritual accomplishments, it will be known, I believe, for the discovery of inexhaustibility, as the time in which we first came to understand, explicitly, the inexhaustibility of our experience and our surroundings. By “our time’ I refer specifically to the last half of the twentieth century, but the entire century may be included,

particularly the classic American tradition. By “inexhaustibility,” I refer to finiteness, to the inescapable conditions of finite beings and to their unquenchable openness to departures. The subject of this book is the inexhaustibility in finiteness, specifically in relation to human being: individual, collective, centered, and dispersed. It is remarkable that early readings of Wittgenstein’s later work should have found in it a method on which a secure foundation for philosophical analysis

could be constructed, given the profound inexhaustibility inherent in Wittgenstein’s position: that of forms of life. If all rules and methods, including those definitive of reason, are based on social practices, then none can define rationality intrinsically; but all are a function of what human beings say and do, and are changeable with variations in practice. There are no norms absolutely outside of, independent of, social activities. In this sense, understanding is indefinitely open and variable in principle but terminatable in practice in forms of life. This complementarity of openness to modification and determination by conditions is what I mean by inexhaustibility. However, I do not

restrict it to human experience, for it is an intrinsic characteristic of finite things. The movement on the Continent from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, on the one hand, and from Marx to Foucault, on the other, manifests a far more profound acknowledgment of inexhaustibility—in particular, Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the ambiguity of things (leading explicitly to inexhaustibility in Dufrenne’), on the invisible in the visible, and Heidegger's emphasis on the reciprocity of concealment and unconcealment, in dA7jOeta.* There is a transcendental argument in Being and Time that suggests that the return to Being has absolute primacy over questions of beings, that the primacy of Dasein—that being whose being is to question Being—is similarly unqualified.’ In Heidegger's later work, however, Being is and must be inexhaustible, given the manifold ways in which truth establishes itself.* A related expression of inexhaustibility is given by Derrida’s view of supplementarity, the “surplus” in every meaning.’ Derrida’s arche-trace is an important expression of inexhaustibility, though he minimizes both the positive side of inexhaustibility and the materiality of human activities. Foucault gives us a

Vill INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING very strong sense of such materiality—for example, “the ponderous, awesome

materiality” of discourse°—but similarly emphasizes only one side of inexhaustibility. Some of the most striking formulations of inexhaustibility are to be found in the writings of James and Dewey early in the century. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely “external” environment of some sort or amount. Things are “with” one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word “and” trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. ‘Ever not quite” has to be said of the best attempts anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness.’ . . . the chief characteristic trait of the pragmatic notion of reality is precisely chat no theory of Reality in general, zberhaupt, is possible or needed. . . . It finds that “reality” is a denotative term, a word used to designate indifferently everything that happens. Lies, dreams, insanities, deceptions, myths, theories are all of them just the events which they specifically are.®

Pragmatism, with its emphasis on context and problem-solving, clearly entails inexhaustibility, for although any valid solution of a problem is indeed a solution, in its contextual terms, different contexts require different solutions. Yet Dewey, whose instrumentalism is the most effective version of pragmatism, does not envisage the possibility of a systematic theory of inexhaustibility. He formulates inexhaustibility negatively, as the rejection of absolutes. Such a negative view is all too common. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,

for example, Rorty relegates philosophy to “conversation” (however highminded) and makes far too sharp a distinction between normal and abnormal discourse.” Quine’s view of the indeterminacy of translation and Goodman's view of manifold world versions are also worth noting for their emphasis upon the negative side of inexhaustibility, the limitations rather than the achievements of every theory, though Quine and Goodman maintain that only some versions or theories are right and valid.” Closely related to these last positions is that of a sophisticated epistemological realism in which reality is effectively acknowledged to be inexhaustible.'’ All these views emphasize the absence of closure without also emphasizing the conditions and embodiments of such absence. What is required is a systematic theory of inexhaustibility. I have elsewhere formulated such a theory from a number of perspectives based on the concept of ordinality.'* Ordinality is the general condition that beings (orders) are always multiply located, in other orders, and that what they are is a function of their locations. I shall henceforth formulate the theory in terms of the concept of locality. '* Every being is local, finite, and its conditions contribute both to its determinations and to its openness to other determinations. Inexhaustibility here ts equivalent with the indefinite relevance of local conditions, and con-

ditions of conditions, in relation to every being. The unending relevance of

PREFACE 1X conditions and locations both inhibits and enriches, encloses yet provides escape from closure. The result for human beings is centering mixed with displacement and dispersion. The general theory based on locality is an ontology. What is needéd is to bring it into specific application within human concerns, to trace its implications within and for human experience. What is required is an examination of inexhaustibility in relation to human being. I include here quite specific features of human life: history, temporality, rationality, meaning, consciousness, emotion, sociality, and power among others. An important, if subsidiary, purpose is to lay to rest the suspicion that inexhaustibility pertains uniquely to human experience, that the universe apart from humanity would be entirely determinate. That view is effectively absolutist. In this sense, I shall be arguing for a philosophic naturalism, but one very different from many of its traditional manifestations. All too often, naturalism has been effectively an adulation of science: what science tells us is true about the natural world must, by explanatory continuity, be true about human experience. I shall argue in reverse: a naturalistic theory must include human experience as part of nature; if science cannot tell us all that we need to know about human life and experience from the knowledge it provides of the natural world, then science must be supplemented——but not replaced—by other forms of knowledge. There are irreducibly many forms of reason with irreducibly different modes of validation, one of the major manifestations of inexhaustibility. There are also irreducibly many forms of human being and ways in which it is to be thought. In order for experience to be inexhaustible—complex, rich, and inventive as well as confining, oppressive, and diminishing—our surroundings must be inexhaustible, for they are transformed by both our presence and the origin of our existence. We have here the basis of a complex naturalism, which avoids

both a narrow, reductive materialism, on the one hand, and a language-, thought-, or act-centered idealism, on the other. Experience is among the prominent manifestations of the inexhaustibility of being, simultaneously and complementarily grounded in natural conditions yet transcending them unceasingly. Being is similarly one of the manifestations of the inexhaustibility of experience, transcendent relative to any conditions of experience yet equally and inseparably inclusive of thought and action. Each is a wealth of conditions for the other while inevitably transcended by it. The experience I shall discuss is human experience. I know of no other and I am not sure what profit could be gained from imagining any. It is ovr experience that we seek to understand, in manifold ways, including efforts to charac-

terize the essential properties of any experience, human or otherwise, and efforts to characterize the generic properties of human life, individual and collective. The latter efforts, my primary focus here, may be essentially descriptive, generalization of salient patterns observed to hold in human life. Such an endeavor is typically regarded as the domain of the human sciences, behavioral

x INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING and social. But there is a different approach to understanding human experience: the examination of relationships among very general principles and their ramifications in human life. This approach, with emphasis on the concept of inexhaustibility, is the one I shall take to human experience. I am concerned less with showing that experience is inexhaustible than with tracing its implications for some of the most important characteristics of human being. I hope to make some of these characteristics more intelligible, more understandable, in terms of the notion of inexhaustibility and its associated concepts. Such an understanding is not, could not be, a replacement either for the many different human sciences or even for other forms of philosophical analysis. Inexhaustibiliry entails that every subject matter be understood in manifold ways that are not all reducible to a supreme form of understanding. It entails that there be manifold forms of rationality and manifold perspectives whereby we may understand being and human being. In this multiplicity of human being, we may find the rejection of any essence to humanity. It may seem strange to characterize human experience as inexhaustible when so much of human life is pervaded by misery. The conditions of human life seem to confine us more than they liberate. Yet it is as mistaken to identify conditions with fetters as to identify freedom with caprice. Inexhaustibility is a function of conditions, but also of conditions of conditions, so that no conditions, however extensive, can be exhaustive. The conditions of capitalist production engender the conflicts that, to Marx, lead to the supersession of such capitalist production. One need not agree to see that determining conditions can open novel possibilities. Ricoeur traces in psychoanalysis both an archaeology of human being and a ¢eleology.'” The archaeology looks to the enduring traces of our personal, social, and species development. Yet it cannot be complete without a purposive future, for psychotherapy depends on our being able

to transform ourselves in both personal understanding and practice. I think Ricoeur's view is too unreservedly historical; history and development are only one mode of human being, and provide only one perspective—albeit a very general perspective—on human being. '° But history is inexhaustible, involving both its past and an open future. What is disturbing about a view such as B. F. Skinner's behaviorism is, not that it establishes the dependence of human

behavior on reinforcing conditions, but that it suggests we might be able to create a society in which human beings would be capable of functioning only in

terms of their reinforcement history.'’ In other words, novel possibilities, however inexhaustible, are forever being circumscribed by entrenched conditions of human life. Iam awed by many human achievements but I do not admire human life and

Iam not sanguine about the human future. Human beings are frequently thoughtless, untrustworthy, capricious, greedy, and cruel. Yet they are also inventive, honorable, heroic, generous, and loving. I believe, with Aristotle, that the essence of humanity is rationality, but in an extended sense that in-

PREFACE Xl cludes more than science or theoretical knowledge, that includes art and practice as forms of reason, in myriad and changing forms. Reason is the essence of being human, but reason itself has no essence. Here, then, science and philosophy, politics and art, manifest the most public forms of our rational activities, but there are equally rational activities in our private lives in which we

create means to better and richer human experience.

I am pessimistic about our capabilities, in our public social and political activities, to resolve the larger difficulties that face the world. Iam pessimistic also about the prospects in our private lives for love and care, for happiness and responsibility. Yet the remarkable thing about human life is the capacity of human beings to rise to transcendent insights and achievements amidst oppressive conditions. I am in this sense unreservedly optimistic about the spiritual achievements of human beings as a species if we only can secure our future.

NOTES

1. Mikel Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, trans. Edward S. Casey and Albert A. Anderson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 27. 2. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 57-71. 3. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), esp. the Introduction. 4. Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art,” pp. 61-62. 5. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 7, 61. 6. Michel Foucault, “The Discourse on Language,” trans. Rupert Swyer, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), Ap-

pendix, p. 216. 7. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green, 1909), p. 321. 8. John Dewey, “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,’’ On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, ed. Richard Bernstein (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), p. 59. 9. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). See my discussion of Rorty in ‘Skepticism, Holism, and Inexhaustibility,” The Review of Metaphysics, 35, No. 3 (March 1982), 529-56. 10. Willard Van Orman Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978). 11. Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969); Rom Harré, The Principles of Scientific Thinking (London: Macmillan; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970); Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities, 1978). See also Charles Taylor, “Understanding in Human Science,” The Review of Metaphysics, 34, No. 1 (September 1980), 28, and my “Skepticism, Holism, and Inexhaustibility.” 12. See my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics (1980), Philosophical Mysteries (1981), A Theory of Art: Inexhaustibility by Contrast (1982), all published in Albany by

xii INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING the State University of New York Press. See also Justus Buchler’s Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment (1951), Nature and Judgment (1955), The Concept of Method (1961), Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (1966), all published in New York by Columbia University Press, and The Main of Light: On the Concept of Poetry (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1974). My understanding is deeply indebted to Buchler’s view of ordinality, but seeks to avoid what I take to be certain limitations of substance, on the one hand, and of formulation, on the other. 13. With this book, I gratefully and regretfully take leave of the terminology that I have utilized in my other analyses of inexhaustibility. I no longer shall speak of ordinality and orders, but shall speak instead of locality and locations. Although such a

change seems extreme, since I do not intend by it to indicate any variation in my theoretical position or in my sense of debt to Buchler's Metaphysics of Natural Complexes,

the departure now seems to me unavoidable. I have never intended to reject or to diminish Buchler’s accomplishments. My debt to him is insurmountable; my gratitude for being able to work with him and to build upon his ideas is profound. Yet I have found it impossible to develop a satisfactory view of inexhaustibility in terms of his categories, especially his notions of gross integrity and contour. I have, then, without wishing to belittle his accomplishments, reformulated the ordinal categories where I thought necessary without always indicating my differences and reservations. I thought of myself as developing and extending the notion of ordinality. Yet I have found that by not distinguishing my position more clearly, I was being

unfair both to Buchler’s views and to my own; that to the extent that my position diminished his authority over his own categories and terminology, he suffered; and that to the extent that my position appeared to repeat his, our differences were obscured. I shall henceforth employ my own terminology, emphasizing the ‘‘localness” of the theory. It is this locality that is the basis for my understanding of finiteness and inexhaustibility. Nevertheless, I should like to emphasize that there are no changes but terminological ones between the formulations in my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics and the expressions here.

There are, then, the following equivalences: instead of order, I shall speak of Jocale or locus; the term constituent remains the same; instead of zntegrity, I shall speak of wnzson, emphasizing the multiplicity of constituents unitariness comprises; instead of scope, | shall speak of ramifications, again emphasizing a multiplicity of constituents; instead of gross integrity, I shall speak of superaltern unison; instead of prevalence, I shall speak of belonging, both to avoid Buchler’s highly idiosyncratic term and to emphasize a softer form of predominance over a range of unisons; instead of deviance (Buchler’s term is “‘alescence’’), I shall speak of departing, to emphasize more modest forms of variation; the terms actuality and possibility are essential to any adequate metaphysical theory, providing the applicability of its categories within experience. Nevertheless, con-

sistent with the principle of locality, I shall express them technically as sztuality and availability, though I shall always speak of actualities and possibilities in any application; the categories that pertain to judgment and query, including the category of perspective, remain largely the same except that I shall speak of “practical” rather than “active” judgment and of “fabricative” rather than “constructive” judgment; in connection with judgments and perspectives, I shall speak of ‘‘settlements” and

PREFACE X11 “alternatives” rather than compulsion and convention, the application of situalities and availabilities within human experience. The theory of locality is developed in chap. 1. See pp. 1-14. 14. See esp. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), where Being-in-itself is regarded as entirely determinate. Similar views appear to be present

at times in Heidegger's Beng and Time. It may also be worth mentioning Karl R. Popper's third world, created by human beings, as another anti-reductive alternative (Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, esp. the second volume, Te Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982). 15. Paul Ricoeur, Frevd and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).

16. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965). 17. B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam, 1972).

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INEXHAUSTIBILITY AND HUMAN BEING

1

INEXHAUSTIBILITY

Being is inexhaustibility. This equation, essential in our understanding and experience, is far deeper and more intimate than may be apparent. For it 1s not that being is definable independent of inexhaustibility but transcendent relative to any of its conditions, any more than that being is definable independent of finiteness but conditioned. Such a position would suggest that unqualified

determinateness might be intelligible. The equation of being, inexhaustibility, and finiteness is far deeper and more thoroughgoing, but also more radical, for it opposes a major part of the philosophic tradition going back to its origins: namely, the view that being must be entirely determinate to be

intelligible. |

On the epistemological side, this aspect of the philosophic tradition has been called foundationalism: the conviction that without unimpugnable foundations, knowledge is impossible; that without some completely determinate form of being, all being is unintelligible. It is rooted, as Dewey notes, in a yearning for certainty.’ That there might be such a yearning would be an important fact about human beings, and is worth consideration. If being is inexhaustible yet we desire certainty—thereby complete determinateness—then we are profoundly doomed to failure. Such an attitude may be at the heart of the existentialist conception of the absurdity of existence and our consequent despair. Existentialism, in its negative way, portrays one side of inexhaustibility, failing to acknowledge that the absurdity of existence is not after all unqualified, that despair is a consequence of demanding total and absolute intelligibility. An unmistakable irony inherent in the quest for certainty is that if there were total determinateness, we could not achieve it; our quest for certainty would be in vain. Interrogation and rationality are incompatible with complete determinateness. I have suggested that the philosophic tradition has been foundational, emphasizing epistemological certainty.” Such a conception of the tradition is onesided; there have been many affirmations of inexhaustibility, even by foundational philosophers. Yet the inexhaustibility has remained uninfluential save in skeptical forms, as if the tradition had a life of its own that demanded epis-

2 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING temological settlements while the theoretical positions developed within it made certainty both impossible and unintelligible. In the tradition, Plato is among the philosophers thought vulnerable to Dewey's criticisms, for the Theory of Forms is founded on a repudiation of the intelligibility and rationality of change and indeterminateness. Parmenides is a more extreme example, but he did not explicitly face the problem of how the

unity and determinateness of being could be compatible with inexhaustible variations in experience. Plato suggests in the Repzblic that only what is completely determinate, unchangeable and indivisible, can be known. Yet even in

the Republic there are recurrent acknowledgments of the limitations of this view of knowledge. In particular, there is an infinite gap in principle between knowledge of the Forms and practical statesmanship, yet the philosopher is expected both to have timeless knowledge and to be able to administer the practical affairs of the state. To this we may add Plato's view of dialectic as the unceasing examination of every understanding of the Forms. Both the temporality and the interminability of dialectic here speak against a self-validating and complete knowledge of the Forms. Rather, dialectic is a prime exemplification of the forever incomplete nature of inquiry. Here both Plato’s rhetorical style and his ironic treatment of the theory of recollection in the Meno are relevant.” Knowledge of entirely determinate Forms can never be acquired, but must always have been possessed by the soul in its manifold incarnations. There can be no answer to the question of how this knowledge was implanted in the soul, how we can be sure it is accurate, or how we can find out if we do not know. Iam arguing that Plato profoundly acknowledges inexhaustibility in both being and knowledge. Yet I shall make only a weaker claim here: that inexhaustibility is essential to Plato’s view of dialectic and inquiry and is incompatible with traditional interpretations of the Theory of Forms. If Forms are entirely determinate and self-sufficient, entirely unaffected by temporal participation, then they are unknowable, unintelligible, and effectively meaningless. To the contrary, however, Forms are inexhaustible at least in their exemplifications and in our ways of knowing them, the questions we can ask

about them.” If we can seek knowledge of the Forms, they must be accessible—in this sense, indeterminate. If they participate in many instances, they must at least in that sense be variable—in that sense, indeterminate. The inseparability of determinateness and indeterminateness is the generic expression of the finiteness and inexhaustibility of beings. I do not know why the foundational side of Plato has had predominant influence on the history of thought. Aristotle clearly recognizes inexhaustibility even amidst the impulses that lead to an unmoved mover.’ He affirms coincidence and contingency: diverse processes intersect in diverse ways, and there are diverse ways of understanding such processes.” Nevertheless, though there are many kinds of substance, individuals are primary. The tension is clear, and

BEING 3 it is an acknowledgment of inexhaustibility. It is, however, a restricted, not a thoroughgoing, acknowledgment. A similar tension is prominent in Spinoza, where God as one individual Substance is absolutely infinite with infinite attributes.’ If these represent general and infinite Ainds of being, categories or ways of being, then Spinoza clearly acknowledges an inexhaustibility of being that is nevertheless unified in one, all-complete God. Empiricism takes a very different approach to inexhaustibility. Foundationalism here is methodological, not substantive. All knowledge is derived from elementary sensory materials. In principle, any sensory materials are legitimate, depending on their provenance. In practice, only certain standard sensory categories are considered acceptable. Inexhaustibility is inherent in empiricism in principle, in the acceptance of whatever experience brings before us, but not in practice. The inexhaustibility can be emphasized by questioning the basis of the standards inherent in sensory experience. Standards and rules, as Wittgenstein shows, are social constructs.” (If they were not, they would be genetically determined, a condition that is no more foundational than social life.”) Science ought to manifest the authority of sensory experience. Instead, it z#terprets such experience, often calling it profoundly into question. Such interpretation manifests inexhaustibility, but does so only in part. A similarly incomplete acknowledgment of inexhaustibility is found in Kant's Third Critique: the freedom of imagination and judgment in contrast with the a priori determinations of the understanding grounded on concepts.“ Kant's theory is the culmination of foundationalism and, once we repudiate his apriorism, indicates the inescapability of finiteness and inexhaustibility. Yet two hundred years have passed since Kant in which inexhaustibility has been recurrently tempered with different forms of foundationalism and ontological priority. Hegel’s resolution in Absolute Spirit of what is essentially an inexhaustible dialectic is not entirely unlike Spinoza’s: inexhaustibility transformed into unity. The religious and theological elements in both are strong. Perhaps Nietzsche was correct that inexhaustibility is a threat to our security, that we take refuge in false doctrines that give us solace.” Yet even eternal

recurrence is not inexhaustibility to the extent that it is repetition, and the repudiation of norms is only the negative side of inexhaustibility. Recent views

of indeterminateness—in Derrida, for example, and possibly including the later Heidegger '’—have not surpassed Nietzsche in this regard. But the interplay of concealment and unconcealment in Heidegger looks toward a more comprehensive understanding of inexhaustibility, tempered by his occasionally one-sided views of being, poetry, science, and technology.’ No doubt Heidegger would regard inexhaustibility as too metaphysical, as disregarding the “truth of Being.” It is my view that we can express whatever is important in this view of Being in terms of the inexhaustibility of beings. Every revelation obscures; every opening confines; every determination is indeterminate; but in each case, conversely. Determinateness and indeter-

4 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING minateness are complementary, and only together constitute inexhaustibility. To emphasize inexhaustibility is to emphasize the indeterminateness in every being, but an indeterminateness that coexists within all determinations, and conversely. This is finiteness. And even indeterminateness has many sides, including an openness to the future conjoined with the loss of the past, two forms of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness.

FINITENESS

If we are to develop a coherent theory of inexhaustibility, we must relinquish the view that it is equivalent to indeterminateness. Such a negative view 1s

skeptical, even nihilistic, since if being is simply indeterminate (an unintelligible view), it is both unknowable and unconditioned. Such a negative view is an incomplete expression of itnexhaustibility, and is the other side of foundationalism. The reply, that although each being is contingent, all beings together—the universe—are necessary, is cosmological, and incompatible

with inexhaustibility, for it assumes that all beings may be taken together without acknowledgment that being is limitation, including totality, even finiteness and inexhaustibility themselves. Even in Spinoza, though Substance cannot be limited by another substance, it can be intelligible only in relation to its modes. Modes, then, defime Substance relative to other modes. If they did not, then Substance and modes could have no relationship.

The reply to cosmology is that every being is finite, conditioned by other beings. Yet epistemological foundationalism asserts that if every knowing is subject to local conditions, knowledge is dissipated into regress. Two replies can be given. One is that there are no foundations; belief never passes into knowledge. Without qualification, such a conclusion is indistinguishable from skepticism. The second reply is therefore essential: knowledge is no more absolute than belief; justification and proof are subject to conditions. Claims to knowledge are qualified along with the qualifications of being. The regress

of explanation is terminated within the boundaries of finiteness. In other words, every claim is conditioned by limitations that both open that claim to further questioning and challenge, from some other point of view, and establish conditions for its validation. I shall discuss the conditions of knowledge later. Here I am concerned with the conditions of being, that is, with finiteness. No being is self-sufficient, independent of all others. Every being is dependent on, conditioned by, others. The regress of determination here is terminated, not in independence, an

unmoved mover, or the totality of all things together, but by an adequate understanding of what determinateness means. To say that every being is conditioned is not—could not be—to say that every being is wholly dependent on something else. There are two closely related reasons why. One is that we

BEING 5 cannot say what a being is dependent on, exhaustively, because it transcends any of its relationships; it is inexhaustible relative to any of its relations. The traditional notion of limitation seems to entail dissolution of identity. But in acknowledging that a being is inexhaustible, we are saying, in part, that it may enter new and unexpected relationships, may manifest new and unantic!pated properties. . . . all scientists usually believe . . . that science offers us an aspect of reality and may therefore manifest its truth inexhaustibly and often surprisingly in the future. We can account for this capacity of ours to know more than we can tell if we believe in the presence of an external reality with which we can establish contact. This I do. I declare myself committed to the belief in an external reality gradually

accessible to knowing, and I regard all true understanding as an intimation of such a reality which, being real, may yet reveal itself to our deepened understanding in an indefinite range of unexpected manifestations.

Such a being inexhaustibly transcends any, even infinite, accountings. Finiteness entails inexhaustibility when we acknowledge the limits of conditions as well as the limitations imposed by them. The second reason for rejecting the notion of complete dependence is that conditions themselves are conditioned. It follows that being is a complementary relationship of determinateness and indeterminateness, limitation and openness. Finiteness is inseparable from inexhaustibility in virtue of the complementarity of identity and constituency that is inherent in finite being. Finiteness entails that every being is constituted by other beings. Inexhaustibility entails that no constituents together exhaust any being. The two entail that what a being is, its identity, is at once a function of its constituents, other beings, and transcends them indefinitely. There is a complementarity of determinateness given by conditions and an indeterminateness given by the conditionality of these conditions that is essential to every being. Finiteness and inexhaustibility pertain to each other and to themselves. Each is limited as well as inexhaustible, taking manifold forms and demanding manifold expressions. There is an epistemological version of the argument for inexhaustibility that manifests orily part of its scope, but manifests it relatively clearly. No particular form of knowledge takes unqualified precedence over all others. Our history and forms of social life play a determining role in the languages and theories we employ, and there is no “pure” or entirely “transparent” language or theory. '° Every claim to knowledge is conditioned by social practices. It follows that what we know, what we can legitimately say, about our surroundings is inexhaustibly conditioned by our forms of life as well as by their surroundings.

The epistemological argument is very strong, and offers a complementarity of conditions and variation that is indicative of inexhaustibility. It suffers from the profound limitation that it recognizes only human contexts and locations as relevant conditions, while the finiteness of beings is a function of their par-

6 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ticipation in manifold relationships, of many kinds, in and out of experience. The language- and epistemology-centered argument is effectively idealistic. The naturalistic extension of the argument is that beings are functions of conditions, indefinitely. Relationships, locations matter, and they matter in two complementary ways: defining the conditions on which a being depends, of which it is a function, and opening that being to variation in virtue of different defining conditions. There are, then, at least two sides to inexhaustibility, one inherent in limitation and conditions, the other the openness that is a result of the limitations of every condition. Wherever there are conditions, they both open and close, re-

veal and conceal, manifest and obscure. Inexhaustibility provides the adventure of new prospects for the future but also terror at what is unfamiliar and

sadness at what has been lost. Unceasing openness is both challenge and despair, as is unremitting limitation. We might say that finite being is both blessed and cursed—inseparably, virtually indistinguishably—1in what, where, and when it is. Inexhaustibility emphasizes that the different ways of being are unending. Finiteness emphasizes that each is definite. The two are

inseparable, are virtually indistinguishable, with different emphases. I am emphasizing inexhaustibility because it is the side of finiteness that has been largely neglected. Being is finiteness and inexhaustibility based on the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Indeterminateness is dependent on determinate conditions, while determinateness is pervaded by openness and indeterminateness. This complementarity is a consequence of the principle that being is always conditioned, including the being of both determinateness and indeterminateness. There are traces of such complementarity in Hegel and Dewey, Heidegger and Derrida, but the traces are incomplete. The complementarity of negations in Hegel is overwhelmed by the necessity of the dialectical movement. Both time, on the one hand, and Spirit, on the other, represent limited resolutions of inexhaustibility, absolute conditions imposed on

being. Dewey's arguments concerning the complementarity of means and ends, freedom and conditions, are much closer to the spirit of inexhaustibility, in some cases without reservation. '’ But Dewey has no systematic theory of inexhaustibility. Heidegger's view of @\7eva emphasizes the interplay of concealment and unconcealment,'” important movements toward inexhaustibility. Yet Heidegger rejects the possibility of a metaphysics of inexhaustibility. Indeterminateness ts complementary with determinateness not only in be-

ing dependent on determining conditions, but also in being determinate in inexhaustibly many ways. The invention of a new machine is a departure from prior practices but becomes a determinate condition of subsequent practices.

New styles and approaches to art establish novel practices. Deviations are transformed into norms and become intelligible within subsequent traditions. There is no absolute and unconditioned determinateness—and no absolute

BEING 7 and unconditioned indeterminateness. The complementarity is both finiteness and inexhaustibility.

LOCALITY

There is a systematic way to formulate the nature of finiteness and inexhaustibility at a high level of generality—the categories expressive of their range of application. Given the emphasis of this book, upon human experience in particular, it may not be necessary to develop in detail the more general categorial formulations of inexhaustibility and locality.’ Yet there are important insights to be gained through treating human being as a species of being, the finiteness

and inexhaustibility of human being as manifestations of the finiteness and inexhaustibility of being. The most general expression of inexhaustibility is as finiteness defined as the

complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Yet the latter cannot be categories in a theory of inexhaustibility; rather, the categories express the major forms of determinateness and indeterminateness. They express the ways in which something may be said to be something. A fundamental assumption of the approach to being taken here is that there is no question of being that is not a question of being-something. In this sense, I reject the ways in Being and Time in which Being is contrasted with beings, the apparently unqualified nature of the ‘ontological difference.” *’ Nevertheless, the inexhaustibility of beings seems to me what Heidegger is after, once his theory is stripped of its transcendental arguments.*' To remember the ‘“‘ontological difference’ is to affirm that beings are inexhaustible. What is it to be something inexhaustible? The “something” is an expression of determinateness: the limitations and conditions of any finite being. Yet determinateness and indeterminateness are complementary: to be determinate in certain respects is to be indeterminate in others; to be indeterminate in certain respects is to be determinate in others. To be something determinate is to be located in relation to other beings and constituted by them. Consider the set of all integers. It is infinite in magnitude but not thereby without limits; inexhaustibility is not infiniteness but indeterminateness relative to determination. Nevertheless, the integers are indeed indeterminate in certain ways. One way is given by the rational, real, and imaginary numbers. The integers are closed under addition, subtraction, and multiplication, but not division. The rational numbers are defined by extension from the integers, closing the system under division (except for 0). Such an extension shows the openness of all systems to departure and variation. There is no absolute, unqualified closure, only closure under certain relations. A second form of indeterminateness is given by the metrical applications and exemplifications of integers. However determinate the integers may be

8 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING among themselves, under numerical relations and logical rules, they cannot determine their exemplification. This is true for all universals. The example shows that determinateness is only in certain respects, and is accompanied by indeterminateness in other respects. To be determinate as a number is to be capable of multiple exemplifications that are indeterminate tn their actualizations. Not all numbers admit of exemplification: very large and very small numbers, remote places in the decimal expansion of an irrational number like piore. Very large numbers exist (we may say) only in the system of numbers and are determined by arithmetic and logical rules. But Wittgenstein has shown, ina major contribution to our understanding of inexhaustibility, that rules do not

determine themselves, but are interpreted and applied within social practices.°* What this shows, indeed, is that a rule can have determining force only insofar as it is applied in practice, or related to other rules that are so applied, and practice effectively opens the rule to modification. Thus, beyond a certain point, the decimal expansion of pi is indeterminate to the extent that no canons of determination can be considered permanently settled.*” Such canons

vary with time and social, practical, and theoretical considerations even in so determinate a field as mathematics. Similarly, new axiomatizations may change the character and formulation of certain theorems. It follows that not all the theorems of a given axiomatic set can be said to be true and to be determined as true; some are indeterminate, subject to potentially variable future mathematical practices.” Inexhaustibility is not, then, infinite magnitude but rather a transcendence in virtue of locations and conditions. Now, if we could take the universe, or at least all the manifestations of a being collectively, the set of all exemplifications of the number two, for example, all pairs, it would be impossible for the number two to transcend that set of exemplifications. We may recall that the failure of phenomenalism was that no set of appearances could exhaust a physi-

cal object; we cannot take a// its appearances, for it transcends them inexhaustibly. Analogously, there is no completely determinate set of all numbers,

all the numbers in the decimal expansion of pi, all instances of numerical measure, all the theorems of an axiomatic system, all the beings in a room, all

the truths of the universe. There is no universe, taken as an aggregate, that includes everything whatsoever. Inexhaustibility, therefore, is equivalent with multiple locatedness, where location has to do, not specifically with extensiveness, but with relevance. | shall introduce the concept of a /ocale or locus here to express locality. This locality is constitutive: what locates is a locus; what is located 1s a constituent that constitutes its locale. Every being is inexhaustible because it is located in many different locales and is a function of its locations; because it is a locale itself and a condition or sphere of locations for its constituents; and because it is constituted by its constituents. To be located here is to be relevant. What rele-

BEING 9 vance means is given generically by the categories of locality. Being is inexhaustible in that it is determinate and indeterminate, complementarily, in virtue of the multiple locatedness of every condition. Being is profoundly local. Locality, too, though generic, is local—that is, it is expressible only through manifold local categories that manifest conditions and qualifications. In this sense, being and locality are always profoundly divided, a function of locations and conditions. Nevertheless, locality is not opposed to generality and pervasiveness, but complementary with them: every local condition is generic over some range of subaltern conditions; every generic condition is limited and qualified. No locale takes unqualified precedence over all others. The categories of locality are given by answering the generic question of what it is to be-something-(local) emphasizing the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness, the conditions of every being. A being isa function of other beings, its conditions and locations. We call these other beings its constituents, and it a locus comprising those constituents. Even this characterization is qualified, however, since a being is multiply located with different constituents in every location. It isa constituent itself of other locales as well as a locus of many constituents, differing with its locations. It is a locus relative to certain locales and a constituent relative to others. It is a locale relative to what constitutes it (that locale); it is a constituent insofar as it constitutes another locale. To speak abstractly of a local being, then, without emphasizing its location, we should speak of it as both a constituent and a locus, a “locus—constituent.’’ Nevertheless, every distinction here is local, a function of location. A being is a function of its constituents ina particular location and possesses different constituents in other locations. Multiple location is multiple conditioning: a locus comprises its constituents, but is multiply located, and comprises different constituents in different locations. The constituents of a locus in a particular location are determinate for it; its multiple locations open it to diverse determinations. In a given location, a locus comprises its constituents. Yet not all its constituents comprise it in the same way relative to other locations. Variation in certain of its constituents with some locations does not change the locus into “another” locus. In a given location, then, a locus manifests a unison of constituents that is not affected by variations in its other constituents; its other constituents in that location comprise its ramifications. The unison comprises its unitariness in a given location; its ramifications comprise other constituents of its locale to which it is relevant. Both unison and ramifications are functions of location, and together comprise all the constituents of a locus ina location. These categories directly express the locality and complementarity of unity with multiplicity and unitariness with relatedness. In a location, a locus is defined by its unison and ramifications, but not for all locations. One generic meaning of indeterminateness is given here by the ramifications of a constituent ina location in relation to its unison. The untson

10 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING is transcended by the ramifications in a given location to the extent that the tamifications express variability of relevance within that location. The exemplifications of numbers—pairs in relation to the number two—are constituents of the ramifications of numbers whose unisons are defined in terms of arithmetic rules. These exemplifications are not determined by the particular unisons of numbers in question. It should be noted that numbers can also be derived from their instances, given unison by measure and counting. Nevertheless, not all the standard properties of numbers (given by arithmetic rules, here part of the ramifications of the numbers) are determined by their exemplifications. It is the capacity of numbers to inhabit many ‘‘worlds’’—to be inexhaustible across many locations—that is the mark of their reality. Iam arguing from the equation of being with finiteness and inexhaustibility that beings are multiply located, multiply conditioned, multiply relevant. The categories of locality express this multiple locatedness, and thereby inexhaustibility. To be is to be located, to be a constituent of a locale, many locales. To be is to locate, to be a locale with many constituents. Being here is multiple and complementary, expressed by pairs of inseparable categories. A locus comprises its constituents, is in that sense determined by its constituents. But it is located in many locales, with different constituents relevant in each location.

That is one form of indeterminateness complementary with the determinateness of constitution. The locus is also constituted differently by different constituents: some comprise its unison (what-it-is-unitarily-in-that-location); others, its ramifications (its range-of-relevance-in-that-location). Every locale has inexhaustibly many unisons and ramifications—a consequence of its multiple locations. Unison here is a form of determinateness, complemented by the indeterminateness of other unisons of the same constituent (what-it-isunitarily-in-other-locations) and by the indeterminateness of its ramifications in a given location relative to that unison. Even the pair locus—locale and constituent expresses the same locality and complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness, since a locale is determined by its constituents; but it is multiply located while its different constituents constitute it in different ways. Moreover, every locus is a constituent of many locales. We may describe this theory as a functional theory: a being is a function of its

locations and constituents, multiply. The functionality is equivalent to the notions of conditions and qualifications that are essential to finiteness and inexhaustibility. Functionality and inexhaustibility are the generic conditions of

being, along with the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness that is the pervasive manifestation of locality.

If a being is located at all, it has a unison and ramifications, and these together comprise its constituents in that location. If it is multiply located, it must have many unisons and many ramifications, and these must be interrelated so that zt is multiply located. If the unison of a being comprises what it 1s in a given location, then if it is multiply located, it must possess a superaltern

BEING 11 unison across many locations, subsuming many different subaltern unisons. This unison is the basis of that mode of identity in which we say that a being is the same through many different locations—over time and in different regions, despite undergoing modification. The identification of being with inexhaustibility, and of inexhaustibility with multiple locatedness, entails that even a superaltern unison is a function of location. Where a locus is multiply located, with many unisons, and there is another locale in relation to which many of these unisons are functionally interrelated (as defined by that locale), we have a superaltern unison in virtue of which the locus is “the same” over the many locations. A superaltern unison 1s a unison that functionally “includes” or “subsumes” many other subaltern unisons relative to a particular locale. It is clear that a superaltern unison can subsume many different unisons only in certain respects. A locale ‘“‘the same” over many different locations relative to some locations is not ‘the same’ relative to other locations. This is directly relevant to the problem of endurance through time; a person or physical object is the same through time despite any changes, even massive changes, where functional identification is established. But a person is clearly not the same in all respects throughout his life, not even the same person where that notion is interpreted in terms of character and role _ rather than legal identity. Memory succeeds in establishing personal unity only in certain respects, both because of its own defects and ulterior conditions and because a person inhabits manifold public spheres over which he has only limited control. A star may undergo massive transformations and still be the same—in continuity of location and development—though not the same as source of energy and light for an associated planet. Identity and superaltern unison are functional, qualified notions, in certain respects, relative to certain locations. There is no unqualified, absolute concept of identity. Identity here is a function of superaltern unison, an interrelation of subaltern and superaltern unisons. Where there is a superaltern unison, there is transitivity of identity. But such transitivity does not hold (by definition) where there is no such superaltern unison. If being is inexhaustible, then unison is inexhaustible. This is true in two important respects. First, there is no unison of a locus over all its locations and other unisons, for that would be totalistic and unqualified, and there is no world locus relative to which such a superaltern unison could be defined. An all-inclusive unison entails an all-inclusive world locale, and that is impossible by inexhaustibility. The capacity of things to surprise us, to manifest new properties, is a capacity to function in novel ways, with novel unisons. It follows that a particular locus may have a superaltern unison over certain locations in relation to the unisons relevant there, and another superaltern unison over other locations and unisons, but while the subaltern unisons may overlap, there 1s no all-inclusive unison. (I should also point out that a superaltern unison, with its associated ramifications, will not in general include all the rami-

12 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING fying constituents of a locus in other locations.) All this is required by irreducible multiple locatedness. Nevertheless, second, not only is no superaltern unison all-inclusive, but each such unison itself is inexhaustible, open to modification and variation with changing locations. Unison and superaltern unison are themselves complements of determinateness and indeterminateness, are themselves multiply located. Every unison is a superaltern unison in certain locations; every superaltern unison is a subaltern unison in certain locations.

This conception bears a striking resemblance to Wittgensteins familyresemblance theory of meaning, but on the level of being rather than meaning. It does, however, offer a reply to the question of why a given being (or concept)

has the identity it has: in functional terms relative to a general location.” (In Wittgenstein, our general locations are given by language, social life, and tradition. As broad as it is, his interpretation is far too narrow.”°) Identity and generality here are closely related notions, local and functional. The present discussion is extremely general and could benefit from examples and applications. However, the major field of application is human experience, and it will be the focus of the rest of this book. For this reason, I shall remain on the present level of generality just a bit longer, and consider applications to our understanding of human being very shortly. The approach taken here to being is in terms of finiteness and inexhaustibility, expressed in terms of multiple locatedness. I have sketched a few of the general categories that express our natural understanding of such multiple locatedness, giving us what is located (a locus) in a given location (in which it 1s a constituent with unison and ramifications), its multiple locations (involving many unisons and ramifications), its identity over many different locations (a function of superaltern unison), and the principle that there is no all-inclusive locale. It follows that relative to any unison of a constituent in a given locale, the ramifications are not determinate—for the locale’s constituents are included in those ramifications; relative to any unison, other unisons are not determinate; even relative to a superaltern unison, other superaltern unisons are not determinate. Nevertheless, relative to a given location, both unison and ramifications are determinate; relative to certain locations, a locus’ unisons are determinate; and so forth for superaltern unison. Finally, a constituent of a unison in one location may be a constituent of ramifications in another location, and conversely. This is an important expression of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness, for what is determinate in any categorial sense in one location ts indeterminate categorially in another, and conversely. Moreover, indeterminateness here is not merely a generic lack of determinateness, but is a determinate expression of the multiple locations of relevant loci. Indeterminateness is no less intelligible than determinateness, for it is determinateness in another location. However, every set of determinate conditions is transcended by other locations and conditions. The categories of locale and constituent and unison and ramifications (in-

BEING 13 cluding superaltern and subaltern unisons) express the natural meanings of finiteness, inexhaustibility, and multiple location. Yet inexhaustibility entails that no mode of expression is exhaustive, and there are other categorial expressions of inexhaustibility that, if not entirely independent of the ones mentioned, also display their limitations. There are other ways of looking at inexhaustibility and transcendence. There is not one unequivocal sense of being-(something). One way is from the standpoint of a superaltern unison relative to its subaltern unisons. If there are many unisons of a given locus, and many superaltern unisons as well, with no all-inclusive unison, then relative to certain of its locations, some of a locus’ unisons are functionally subsumed under a given superaltern unison but exclusive of other unisons. IJ call this the way that locus “belongs” to certain subaltern locations defined by the specified subaltern untsons; the relevant locations are its sphere of belonging. Relative to other of its locations, some of the locale’s unisons are functionally incompatible with that superaltern unison, belong to other such unisons. I call this the way that locus “departs” from these incompatible locations and subaltern unisons.”’ Belonging and departing express the finiteness and inexhaustibility of a locus relative

to a given superaltern unison: belonging, the sphere of exclusiveness demanded by superaltern unison; departing, the limitation of every unison relative to certain locations and unisons. Relative to any of its unisons, a locus hasa sphere of belonging and departing (in a location). We may interpret this pair of categories as another expression of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness: belonging, a form of determinateness; departing, a form of indeterminateness. But whatever belongs in one location departs from another, and conversely; that is what multiple location and multiple unisons require. Moreover, each pair of locative categories is a different expression of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. It follows that when a locus is subsumed under a subaltern unison, and belongs to a generic locale, it also and complementarily belongs to many other locales and departs in manifold ways from any generic location.

There is an additional pair of categories that expresses being and inexhaustibility from within the context of a given locus. Given a locus, it is inexhaustible (due to multiple location), in the sense that none of its conditions determines all its relevant constituents (or even its unisons). Such a conception presupposes that some of its conditions do determine some of its constituents. Let us say, then, that where a subset of constituents determines a particular

constituent of a locus in a given location, so that that constituent is in that sense ‘‘settled,” it will be called sztual or a sttuality to refer to the definiteness of its position. Situality here expresses an important sense of dominance as well as

determinateness, one loosely expressible as “factuality”: what, in particular locations and conditions, confronts us unavoidably and irresistibly (but not in other locations). Where a given set of constituents establishes a range of alter-

14 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING natives for another constituent, that constituent will be called available to express multiple relevancies. All the availabilities in a location may of course be destructive and enervating. What is situal in one location is available in another location, and conversely; what is situal relative to a particular subset of constituents is available relative to another subset of constituents, and conversely. Availabilities and situalities express the finiteness and inexhaustibility of a locus from within: its determinateness among its constituents as situalities, its openness to alternatives engendered by other locales as availabilities. There are always alternatives, in every location, however determinate; there are always settled and determinate conditions in any location, however open. Situality and availability are technical expressions for actuality and possibility, central terms in the description of our experience. The most natural practical expression of inexhaustibility is the pervasiveness of alternative possibilities in every location. The most natural practical expression of limitation ts the presence of actualities in every location. Situality and availability are the metaphysical categories that express the most prominent sense we have in our practical activities of the inescapable presence and inseparability of determinateness and indeterminateness.

HUMAN BEING

The question of human being—of what it is to be homan—has had a long and

tired history. I do not mean to deny the often fascinating and illuminating treatment of certain facets of our humanity, but to acknowledge the inadequacy of all our attempts to define our being in terms of one or another of our human properties. Reason, self-consciousness, society, religion, art, language, even our upright postures and opposing thumbs—all have been taken to be definitive of humanity. And because so much is at stake—our very being, who we are—each of these properties has been given detailed consideration,

sometimes leading to important and rewarding results. Yet none of the proposals has been able to withstand careful criticism. The entire approach 1s misguided, as if by looking somewhat harder, we will be able to determine a satisfactory answer. Most of the suggested properties taken to be essential to our humanity are defective in one way or another; many seem somehow misconceived, answers to the wrong questions. Human beings

are frequently reasonable creatures, as Aristotle suggests, but are at least as frequently, and, if Freud is correct, more typically, unreasonable and arbitrary. Moreover, certain limiting forms of rational activity are found among animals. In a modest sense, animals as well as human beings are conscious and even self-

conscious, while in any stronger sense there is no sharp distinction between self and not-self, and few human beings have profound and distinctive knowledge of themselves. If we identify rationality with the capacity to carry on

BEING 15 interrogative activities unceasingly (as I would do), to question and to answer (and Heidegger seems to have such a capacity in mind when he speaks of knowing as questioning’), then while most human beings are capable of some interrogation, some rationality, in some terms, some may not be, due to impoverished circumstances, defective capacities, or extreme bias, and others may be capable of only a few of the many forms of rationality. If we identify humanity with the use of tools, instrumentality, we trivialize the achievements of both science and art, the one because not all inquiries have a direct instrumental value (and might be pursued if they led to truth, even if they were otherwise disadvantageous), the other because many fine works of art run counter to our conventional understanding of utilitarian consequences. No doubt, humanity’s opposing thumb and erect posture are important factors contributing to the use of tools and the development of written language, but they utterly fail

to express what is significant about human being—our spiritual achievements, our capacity for rationality. Religion and art are nearly universal human achievements, but to make the former definitive of human being mocks those who regard religion as a deception, who seek a moral and rational life without supernatural afflictions. On the other hand, while art is a supreme human achievement, to identify humanity with art seems to pay insufficient heed to science and logical forms of rationality. Language is a far more plausible candidate for identification with humanity, except that some modest forms of language appear to be acquirable by animals and many sophisticated forms of language are not acquired by all human beings. Even more important, there are forms of rationality that are minimally linguistic—visual arts and sports, for example. The social features of human being are manifest and important, but there are human beings who live alone. Finally, even Heidegger's analysis of Dasezn as the being who calls being into question suffers from lack of generality. Many human beings do not question being. Some do not do so because all their energies must be devoted to the necessities of life. Some would not do

so if offered the chance. The existentialist view that death, anxiety, and care haunt us even when we take no notice of them is both arrogant and elitist and too absurd to take seriously as a description of life. Questioning being unlimitedly and deeply may be the highest form of human achievement, but it cannot be the essence of humanity, cannot tell us what we are, can only set for us a supreme ideal. Rationality, instrumentality, sociality, and language are among the prominent forms of human being. Why must we choose among them, even in combination, for the essence of human being? Perhaps it is a mistake to seek the essence of humanity—a conceptual error, on the one hand, in that no single cluster of properties can be definitive of what is human; a regulative error, on the other, in that necessary and sufficient conditions are unavailable for a being

of the complexity of humanity. Perhaps human being is to be identified with subsets of the properties mentioned in various combinations, divided by hu-

16 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING man differences. Perhaps there is no essence beyond this of what it is to be a human being except a purely biological definition in terms of genetic codes and organic structures—a definition that may be accurate without being illuminating. Humpty Dumpty’s definition may be as good as any: two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, one under the other. If we look like a human being, we are one. More important, we must give up our demand that some defining properties of humanity serve to characterize both what is essential about humanity and what distinguishes human being from other beings. A cluster of properties adequate to meet the former requirement could not be used to distinguish human beings from animals; a distinguishing criterion would omit something distinctive about our humanity. Yet even these subtler and more complex approaches are somehow deficient.

Wittgenstein’s family-resemblance theory will not quite do in this case. Nor will Humpty Dumpty’s criterion, for it overlooks the fact that something important ts at stake. We could say that what a human being is is what we take a human being to be, and there is no other essence; but we have no difficulty recognizing human beings. Perhaps we are mistaken in supposing that there is an essence that constitutes human being, something besides simply being human. Yet the passions that rage over the question of what it is to be human suggest something deeper than the philosophical assumption that human beings must have an essence to be human. It is an issue not simply of recognizing human being, but of characterizing it in a certain way. What we must do to understand what is involved is to step back from the question of human being to question the question itself. The most natural answer is that we are seeking a straightforward if not simple descrzption of human being. We want to know the truth about human beings. Yet the fact that many plausible descriptions quickly are rejected suggests that something more profound is involved. Why should our kinship with some animals—primates or porpoises—be perceived as a significant limitation? Why should our biological distinctiveness not be sufficient? We want an account that will at least distinguish human beings from other living things, characterize the most remarkable of human achievements, and explain, even justify, our typical regard for human beings as moral agents. The most obvious conclusion is that under such a range of expectations, human being 1s inexhaustible. Human being is inexhaustible because every being is inexhaustible, including human being. Yet this general answer, important as it is, will not do in this particular case. There are two reasons for this. One is that if all being, all reality, is inexhaustible, then human being is not distinctive in this particular respect. But the point at issue is precisely what is distinctive about human being. The second reason is that we are at a different level of generality here, concerned with understanding something in particular about human being. In

BEING 17 this context the similarities between being and human being are not of prime importance. Given our approach to human being, our questioning of the question of human being, we may answer by saying that human being is inexhaustible because we are the beings who question being, and our answers are therefore inexhaustible. Questioning here bears the inexhaustibility of being. This answer is much closer to what we require, and it is close to Heidegger's approach as well. It suffers from the defect that it applies only to human being in the aggre_ gate, not to human beings distributively, since there are human beings who do not question being, whose interrogations are more limited. There are dogmatic, slumbering, thoughtless, and self-centered human beings whose range of questions is deeply restricted, seldom going beyond the scope of their view and never beyond themselves to being or even human being. There are human beings caught up so deeply in the necessities of life that they have little time for

beings. |

more profound questions. There are important differences among human The relationship between human being and indefinite interrogation has two sides, and I have considered only one of them. The association of human being with unceasing questioning and of the latter with rationality is faced with the

difficulry that much interrogation—indefinite and unremitting—is a relatively high-level and rare activity. No one engages in questioning without end, questioning everything done or encountered. It would be absurd to suggest one could. Not everyone engages in significant and far-reaching interrogations at some time during one’s lifetime. We cannot equate human being

with rationality or with unremitting interrogation, of being or of anything else. But we can interrogate human being, pushing our questioning as far as we can, and we must do so if our interrogation itself is to be rational. The question is that of human being. The assumption is that the question is a rational one and requires a rational answer. Rationality is to be equated with unremitting interrogation. It is equivalent with the acceptance of inexhaustibility in being

and in questioning. ,

The notion of unceasing and unremitting interrogation, of questions that call for answers and further questions and answers indefinitely, is an antifoundational view of rationality and knowledge. It is required by the inexhaustibility of being. Foundationalism presupposes a terminus of interrogation, a clo-

sure that establishes an ultimate basis for rational claims. Inexhaustibility entails that inquiry be recognized to be finitely located and locally valid (when valid at all), that every condition can be called into question from some other

local perspective. Every rational conclusion, then, is conditioned by traditions, assumptions, norms, and forms of life. Every such condition may itself be interrogated, but only in terms of other conditions. Inquiry here is rational and conditioned, but it is not the only form of rationality.

18 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Once we recognize the location of rationality within interrogation and vali-

dation, questions and answers, we realize that there are kinds of questions other than those commonly associated with inquiry. We can interrogate scientific conclusions not only concerning their justification and truth, but concerning their usefulness or destructiveness, their elegance and beauty, their logical rigor and metaphysical assumptions. Science is interrogable as a form of social life and as an historical artifact. Indeed, we can reach the covert assumptions of science only by interrogating it from the standpoint of forms of rationality other than its own. Here we need a far more general notion of ra-

tionality than that given by the concept of inquiry. I call this wider notion query, the genus of which inquiry is the species, inclusive of ethics and politics as well as philosophy and art. All define interrogative methods and perspectives whereby any human action or event, object or condition, any being, may be indefinitely called into question. The question of human being is a rational question requiring a rational answer. Introduction of the notion of query permits us to ask whether the questioning of human being need be restricted to inquiry alone. Given the assumption that we are seeking a rational answer, the question becomes: Which form

of query is the most appropriate form through which to interrogate human being? The view that a descriptive answer is the most legitimate suggests that the question of human being is a scientific one: to determine the properties of human beings and their activities by empirical observations and generalizations. Such an answer is inadequate, not because it is untrue, not because science offers no answers to our question, but because science offers only an incomplete answer—incomplete because human being is not a question of facts alone as well as because there are many sciences and no supreme science of sci-

ences. We are approaching the important truth that the existentialists discovered but could not express satisfactorily: that our questioning of human being determines it as it uncovers its properties. It is not true that for human beings alone existence precedes essence, but true that for query, existence and essence are not absolutely separable. Which of the different forms of query, of rational interrogation, is the legitimate form whereby to interrogate human being? Science is clearly an appropriate answer. But equally appropriate, I suggest, is that of ethics. Yet to call a person a moral agent is not simply to describe what that person does and what we do in response, but to indicate that we are prepared to invoke praise and blame. Indeed, we do two somewhat different things in praise and blame, each a form of query: we treat a person as an agent, seeking to produce certain consequences in that person’s actions and in the actions of others, and we construct a

social context in which human beings function with rights and obligations. This latter way of reaching human being, that of constructing it by labels and actions, is of fundamental importance not only in a moral sphere but in any context that involves different human beings. Human being is made by social

BEING 19 action and context as much as it is found within such action and context. To

the extent that human being is social being—and it is so profoundly and deeply— it is created by actions as well as investigated by inquiry.” There is not just one form of query; nor is there a supreme overarching form. Ethics and art, along with philosophy, are forms of query as is science. The question of human being, I am arguing, is a question, not for science alone, but for all the forms of rationality, of query. To call a being a human being, a person, is to levy obligations upon that person and to accept obligations oneself. It is to accept and to impose a system of norms and codes, concepts and structures. It is to be prepared to treat a person in certain ways. Equally important, however, to call a person a human being is to construct a milieu for that person to develop as a rational being, to embark on interrogation and query— a milieu that is designed to function propitiously even where certain human beings fail to exercise their rational capabilities. At a minimum, to call a person a human being ts to describe and to act toward that person in certain ways, but it is also to bring that person and others into a milieu of relations that is partly inherited, partly constructed. In classical terms, I am arguing that the question of human being is one of acting and making as well as one of saying. We treat other human beings as human beings in social contexts, establishing codes and norms that define those and related contexts. In other words, we construct contexts in which human life occurs, and in those contexts we act toward other people in ways that will bring them to act in appropriate ways toward us. Finally—and only at the philosophical level of generality—we interrogate human being as a species of being, recognizing its inexhaustibility. The question of human being, then, is a question that calls human being into question from the differing standpoints that human experience has engen-

dered, including the promise of future perspectives. What we take human being to be is so important because through answering that question (in whatever ways we answer it, including action and social codes, art and philosophy) we construct our surroundings and determine who we are. The reason why we must distinguish ourselves from animals is that the nature of our moral agency is in question, as well as our view of ourselves through philosophy and art. The reason why our biological and historical antecedents are so important is that

we locate ourselves in our conditions in order to understand and determine who we are. The question of human being is inexhaustible—and, thereby, human being is shown to be inexhaustible. The question and the manifestation are realized through the manifold forms of query. The question of human being turns out to include any question relevant to human being, in any of the forms through

which that being can be interrogated—including what we make and do as well as say, but also including profoundly genetic and temporal, sexual and racial perspectives on human being derived from such forms of thought as history and psychoanalysis. Whatever we can discover about the inexhaustibility

20 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING of beings must be expressed in new forms of thought and query, and every new form of query manifests different perspectives on human being. In this way, the question of human being is inexhaustible, not a simple question at all, but one emerging from inexhaustible perspectives in the context of manifold forms

of rationality. | PERSPECTIVE

The most natural approach to human being ts through being itself, regarding human beings as a species of beings, human experience as a sphere of locality. If being is local, then human being is local and human experience is both finite and inexhaustible. This approach to human experience displays its inexhausti-

bility directly, as none of the other approaches can, though it is essential to show that they also entail inexhaustibility. No single approach to inexhaustibility can be entirely adequate; there are manifold and diverse forms of knowledge and rationality.

The location of human loci within surrounding locales gives us the inexhaustibility of human being directly. Yet this relationship is intuitively unsatisfactory. We reach being, locality and inexhaustibility, through the avenues available to us in our experience, and there is no other way. As a consequence, the inexhaustibility of human being cannot simply be derived from the inexhaustibility of being—not without qualification. Being and human being reciprocally condition each other. Human activities always have natural as well as human and social conditions, while our relations to natural beings are always conditioned by our traditions and practices. Nevertheless, this complementary relationship of being to human being is qualified by the principle that human locales do not include all locales. Being is conditioned and qualified by location. We therefore cannot say that any locus is without qualification wider than another; it is wider only in certain respects, relative to certain locations. Being is wider than human being in that there are natural conditions whose unisons do not include human beings as

constituents, but there are no human loci that do not have unisonal natural conditions. Conversely, human being transcends every being outside itself. I include here imaginative fictions and mathematical constructions—numbers and patterns that may be thought but that will never otherwise be exemplified.

In this latter sense, in which being includes any loci, experience stretches being, expands it. In this same sense, being is not without qualification wider

than human being.” Being is locality, finiteness and inexhaustibility: multiple locatedness as defined by the locative categories. We may define categories of human being cor-

responding to these ontological categories—an approach that manifests the

BEING 21 inexhaustibility of human being directly but suffers from important limitations. Regarding human experience as locative, yet restricted to certain locales, we may define a human locus as a perspective. Any locus of which a human

being is a constituent is, then, a perspective. (This definition is inadequate in certain ways: there are loci that include human beings only as natural objects, loci that are therefore not as such perspectives. This distinction will be discussed in greater detail.) All the locales in which human beings are implicated are perspectives as well as loci. Yet human loci are not perspectives rather than loci, but both perspectives and loci. This is a consequence of the species— genus relation, but there is a deeper reason expressive of inexhaustibility. A perspec-

tive is not unqualifiedly a perspective; it is a locus in some locations and a perspective in others. Human beings are (sometimes to be viewed as) biological organisms and physical masses (weights on a rope) in loci that are not perspectives; (sometimes to be viewed as) organisms responding to stimuli without more complex cognitive capacities.”’ Perspectives are human locales and are inexhaustible in the general ways in which locales are inexhaustible. Every locus is multiply located; every locus in human experience is a constituent of many different perspectives; every person is located in many different perspectives. The first consequence may be ex-

pressed in terms of the inexhaustibility of meaning and interpretation. Any event, sign, or creation in human experience may be interpreted in diverse ways by being located in diverse perspectives. The future in this sense is indefi-

nitely open-ended for interpretation and modification. No particular way of understanding or interpreting any locus in human experience has absolute or unqualified priority over all others. There are inexhaustibly manifold forms of query. This is the truth of hermeneutics as a general epistemology. It must be qualified by the other pole of inexhaustibility as finiteness: that although interpretation and meaning are inexhaustible, it is because of their multiple but definite locations, the inexhaustibility of determinate perspectives. Given

, a perspective, a particular interpretation may be quite determinate. Moreover, some interpretations are not valid according to any definite perspectival conditions. Every person is located in many different perspectives, simultaneously and successively. In such different perspectives, a person has different unisons, a different unison for each location. This diversity may be colloquially expressed in terms of the different roles that a person plays in his lifetime, functions of different circumstances and conditions. A person may be a man, father, salesman, tennis player, companion, and so on, often with very different characteristics. Reciprocally, a person has different ramifications in every location, different influences on his surroundings—for example, influencing his children and his fellow-workers in very different ways. Every person plays many different roles throughout the different perspectives in which he is located. Yet he is

22 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING the same person over many different locations. This is a function of superaltern unison. Human beings, like other natural loci, must have superaltern as well as subaltern unisons. Certain corollaries follow for human experience and perspectives from the general theory of locality. Every locus or perspective is constituted by other loci. No locus has an unqualified superaltern unison or identity. No particular conditions can define a person's entire identity, inner and outer. Every unison of a person, every role that person plays, is a superaltern unison and is divisible

, into subaltern unisons—for example, a woman's motherhood over the different stages of her children’s lives. Conversely, while many unisons of a person, many different roles and characters, are frequently to be conjoined under some superaltern unison insofar as he is the same person throughout, no single superaltern

unison can comprise his manifold unisons. A woman may be so different at work and at home as to be unrecognizable as the same person (relative to character). The only obvious way she is the same—in body—may be largely irrelevant to the relevant roles (not to mention striking variations in her dress and appearance). More important, when a person enters history, his roles there may bear no relevant resemblances to his personal life. Persons are interpreted, by themselves and by others. They do not have an intrinsic and unqualified being, subjective or objective. While it is essential to the concept of agency, especially moral agency and responsibility, that an enduring self be implicated in an agent's different actions, and while we frequently have a sense of ourselves and others as consistent and enduring personalities, such a self is but one of the important superaltern unisons relevant to a person, and can be regarded neither as the most comprehensive of his identities nor as his identity without qualification. A person has unisons for the future long after his enduring self has terminated. A person also possesses unisons dispersed throughout collectives and divided locales. Moreover, every unison is divisible into subaltern unisons. Perhaps the most important way of understanding this inexhaustibility of personal being is through the complementarity of unison and ramification and, consequently, of belonging and departing. In every perspective in which a person is located, even marginally, as a ramifying constituent, he has a unison. Some of these unisons are remarkably different, and consequently involve both departings and belongings. If there were a single, overarching, superaltern unison for any person, then nothing in his experience would be a departure relative to it, and it would exhaust his life and experience. Departing here is one of the generic manifestations of inexhaustibility, realized in the limitations of every superaltern unison relative to certain unisons of the relevant locus. The striking ramification of such departing is the dispersion of personal being throughout many different human collectives. Complementarity gives us another important feature of human being, one

profoundly neglected throughout the philosophical tradition. In locative

BEING 23 terms, if a locus is a constituent of another, the latter is a constituent of the first. If a locus is relevant to another, the latter is relevant to the first, at least ramifyingly but sometimes unisonally. Comstituting and being constituted by are complementary, even dimensional, characteristics here, since what constitutes a locus comprises what it is, therefore how it may function, while what a locus

is, including its ramifications, is a condition for its functions. We cannot understand the functions of a locus without understanding its locations, and conversely. Therefore, locality includes constitution in both its poles, complementarily, as dimensional notions. In human experience, every person is therefore inseparably (in Dewey’s terms) doing and undergoing, affecting and being affected by.” These terms are far too practicalistic to carry the full force of complementary constitutiveness.** The terms are not important; what is important is the complementarity of constituting and being constituted by, of locating and being located. Constitutiveness and locatedness are the essential notions, in two comple-

mentary directions. Once the complementarity is acknowledged—and it is a direct manifestation of multiple locatedness—then certain traditional approaches to human experience and life become unintelligible. The priority of inheritance over environment (or conversely) is absurd; each is a form of constituency, a condition relative to the other. Questions of priority are dissolved into questions of kind. How does what is inherited manifest itself in changing environmental conditions? How do environmental conditions modify what is inherited? How separable are environmental and hereditary factors, given that inheritance always has an environment while no environment is intelligible without presupposing prior factors? Environment and inheritance are not opponents but complements; nothing in human life can be understood without the two together, yet the two are not equivalent. What is relevant in any environment is a function of inherited conditions; what is relevant in inheritance is manifested differently in different environments. Similarly, the relationship between determinism and freedom is an example of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Most of the major alternatives and bipolar oppositions in the tradition betray the same defects: complementarity 1s neglected and one pole of a complementary pair is given priority. Where there is social human experience, individuals and their groupings are reciprocal and complementary.” Each constitutes the other.

JUDGMENT

The approach to human being from the side of being has the virtue of emphasizing the locative categories. Locality and inexhaustibility apply without exception to human experience. This approach is satisfactory as far as it goes, and offers an extremely general account of the inexhaustibility of experience. Yet it

24 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING cannot be entirely satisfactory. A natural consequence of locality is that no mode of understanding can be adequate in all respects, including a generic or metaphysical understanding. The principal defect of the approach to human being from the standpoint of locality and perspective is that it defines human being as a species of being, human locales as species of locales, without specifi-

} cally characterizing the bumanness of perspectives. We have here an example of the intrinsic limitations of a metaphysical understanding, which, in virtue of its generality, cannot account for specific differentia in being. Human being is a form of being. Yet so are stones, electrons, sea urchins, governments, and geometrical shapes. The approach to being through its general determinants tells us nothing specifically human about that form of being. The generality of metaphysical understanding 1s effectively irrelevant to the specific characteristics of any particular kind of being. A natural conclusion is that the inexhaustibility of being entails an inexhaustibility of knowing. There is more on heaven and earth than can be known in any or all forms of knowledge, philosophical and otherwise. It follows that there is no single way of understanding human being and no unified totality of human experience. The question of human being is not simply a descriptive question, as if we might find the properties that pertain to human beings and human beings alone. It is a regulative question also, establishing a domain of cultural, moral, and spiritual activities, designating those beings who are to be treated as rational, in the manifold forms of rationality and query, though they may not act rationally in any or all circumstances.” A concept is needed that can serve the different functions of interrogation through query into what it is to be human, but in particular: (1) that is reasonably general over typical human activities, emotional and intellectual, material and spiritual; (2) that lends itself to extension to myriad forms of rationality; (3) that manifests manifold forms and modes whereby inexhaustibility is expressed; (4) that defines a context in which our labeling human beings as persons has a prescriptive force, requiring us to regard them in certain ways and imposing obligations on them to reciprocate; (5) that provides a context critical of every such prescription. The concept that serves this function best, in my view, is the concept of judgment,*° understood as follows: (a) to involve selection; (4) to involve a con-

cern for validation, tests of success or failure; (c) to include many modes of judgment, of which four in particular may be noted: assertive, practical, fabricative, and syndetic. To say a person judges is to affirm that he has produced something that is interpretable as falling under some mode of judgment— many of them—each of which is defined by a unique form of validation. Everything a person does as a human being is a judgment. Another way of putting this is that everything a person does that is interpretable from within a human perspective is a judgment. Moreover, in any perspective, some features of any judgment are settled in relation to other constituents of that perspective; other

BEING 25 features or constituents coexist as alternatives. Settlements and alternatives are

complementary dimensions of judgment corresponding to the categories of situality and availability (actuality and possibility). Without the latitude of alternative possibilities, on the one hand, and settled determinations, on the other, selection and validation would be unintelligible. The concepts of judgment and perspective are inseparable. I have argued that rationality is perspectival. This is because all human judgment is perspec-

tival—located in conditions and determined by conditions. A perspective here is a sphere of relevance involving a person as a judge. Minimally, what this

means is that whatever that person produces in that perspective is interpretable in some other perspective as valid or invalid. Conversely, a judgment is something produced by a person in a perspective that is required in order to validate the judgment. The generality of the concept of judgment resolves the recurrent problem in the determination of human being that the property taken to be definitive — for example, rationality—-is not possessed by anyone all the time or by everyone at any time. We call people “rational” either because we think they are capable of rationality—an interpretation that is on any plausible interpretation false, given our propensity to be overcome by irrationality and bias—or because we define a milieu for treating them as rational agents, persons, by that label. Yet not only is this mode of discourse confusing, but the nature of rationality is obscured. There is a profound and important difference between query and judgment. The latter is interpretable, by the agent and by others, as valid or not, relative to certain relevant perspectives, but its scope of interrogation is limited, both relative to other perspectives and reflexively. Judgment

is not necessarily rational. Query is indefinitely and unremittingly interrogative, demanding invention and the transformation of perspectives. Query, then, is inexhaustibly reflexive as judgment may not be. But judgment ts inexhaustible also, in its manifold perspectivity and in the manifold modes under which it falls. In identifying human being with judgment and perspective, we avoid identifying it with rationality; but query is the interrogative fulfillment of judgment. There are many modes of judgment. I have identified four. Assertive judgment is concerned with truth and falsity, and is frequently based on evidence and empirical tests. Yet, as Peirce notes, there are many ways of fixing belief but only inquiry can be considered rational.*’ All forms of fixing belief, in this sense, where propositions are regarded as opposing and competitive, are assertive judgments, whether based on authority or on evidence and investigation. The clearest forms of assertive validation are to be found in science, where assertive judgment becomes assertive query. Yet courts of law, concerned with factual evidence, historical studies, and various forms of technological problem-solving, are all clear forms of assertive judgment—clear because of the prominence of questions of truth and falsity, not because of the purity of

26 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING the inquiries. As query becomes more complex and sophisticated, it becomes more intermodal. In practical judgment, we do not say so much as do. The deed is the judgment, and it is interpreted and evaluated as a deed. Deliberation here is not practical judgment, though it may be assertive; it is at best a factor in such judgment. Some deeds are clearly unsuccessful, by any standards, for the agent and for others. But all validation is perspectival. There are practical judgments valid for no established perspectives, judgments valid for some but not others (for the agent and not for his enemies perhaps), but there are no judgments valid for a// perspectives. Such a totality would effectively coalesce into one relevant perspective for all judges, and that would be absurd and unintelligible. Practical judgment is faced continuously, as some of the other modes of judgment are not, with the plurality of conflicting perspectival standpoints—in particular, the different perspectives of different persons and social groups. In attempting to alleviate these differences, practical judgment moves from individual spheres of morality and utility to social and political spheres, especially into practical query, ethics and politics. But even less generalized and explicit forms of action are interpretable as valid or not. Fabricative judgment is the making of something rather than the doing of a deed, though clearly one cannot make without doing, and conversely. Yet fabricative judgment is evaluated in terms of what is made, while active judgment is evaluated in terms of consequences. The most obvious examples of fabricative judgments are works of art. Yet we also construct a constitution, social institutions, and a national identity, as well as social and individual styles. Any of these may be judged effective or not in terms of their consequences for individual human beings. But any may be regarded instead as sovereign, distinctive achievements not measurable by their consequences. Style and national identity are made, but not often to utilitarian purposes. They constitute what we are, not what we do. Yet all the modes of judgment interact, for any may be interpreted from the standpoint of the others; perspectives can be found for any judgment relative to which it is interpretable under any mode of judgment. Syndetic judgment is that form of judgment in which comprehensiveness and unification, generality and universality, are paramount. Locality is incompatible, not with inclusiveness, but with a//-inclusiveness. It entails, however, that generality and comprehensiveness are frequently to be achieved, not merely disclosed. Syndetic judgment is the human form of that achievement. Science in its most theoretical work is deeply syndetic, but with assertive validation paramount. Art, in its greatest works, is often syndetic, but its comprehensiveness serves enrichment and distinctiveness. Philosophy, especially metaphysics, is supremely syndetic, and syndesis is perhaps its predominant concern. We are again addressing forms of query, not judgment. Nevertheless,

BEING 27 syndesis is to be found in religion and myth, inall culcures, even in the absence of sophisticated philosophical reflection.

There are many forms of judgment, and they interact, each mode pervasive throughout our experience and our judgments. Human beings here are judges—to be human is to judge—capable under certain conditions of rationality and query, but required to be judges if we are to take them as human. Yet surely, we may note, some of the forms of judgment, if not all, are capaci-

ties of animals, not human beings alone. Animals act, if they do not judge morally. And some animals build complex structures of incredible shapes and

colors. If we are to identify human being with judgment, it cannot be with some or any particular form of judgment, but with judgment in its many different modes. Human beings are—to the best of our knowledge—the only beings who judge in many modes, sequentially and concurrently, any of whose

judgments may be taken and interpreted in many modes if not all modes.” Multimodality is the defining characteristic of human judgment, and therefore of human being, and leads to those forms of critical interrogation that result in intermodal query. In this recognition of the manifold modes inherent in judgment, thereby in human being, we recognize again the inexorable inexhaustibility of human being. For no mode of judgment takes absolute preced-

ence over the others, and there is no all-inclusive mode of judgment under which all the others are to be subsumed.

HUMANITY

The notions in terms of which human being has traditionally been understood are rationality, sociality, meaning, consciousness, instrumentality, agency, and history, as well as the human body. I have briefly discussed rationality in relation to judgment and query. In later chapters I shall discuss knowledge and rationality, language and meaning, individuality and sociality, and consciousness and emotion as characteristics of human being. Here I shall briefly and rudimentarily discuss a few related notions to display their inexhaustibility and complementarity. It is important to recognize that inexhaustibility is manifested in functional complementarity only at a level of metaphysical generality. Locus—constituent, unison—ramification, belonging—departing, and situality—availability are all functional complements. That is the basis of their tnexhaustibiliry. Not all concepts function with corresponding complements; there is no complement to binocular vision or an opposing thumb. What is remarkable—a consequence of the inexhaustibility of human being—is that most of the traditional concepts regarded as definitive of human being are typically given so extended a meaning that they take on a metaphysical character and either must

28 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING become functional and complementary with their associated concepts or else are incompatible with tnexhaustibility. I am thinking particularly of pairs of concepts like subjectivity and objectivity, freedom and determination, final and efficient causation, environment and heredity. Freedom and determination are not opposing, not identical, but functional complements, an expression of the general functional complementarity of indeterminateness and determinateness, openness in relation to conditions. What is determinate in one locus is indeterminate in another (locale or respect), and neither indeterminateness nor determinateness is intelligible without the other. Similarly, final and efficient causation express a particular, temporal form of the general relationship between actuality and possibility. Relative to the past, possibilities prevail for the future (teleologically); but relative to the future, there are always relevant past conditions. Efficient causation alone is incompatible with inexhaustibility. Thus, the relevant complementary relationship is that what is past 1s always relative to a future past, a function of it—that is why we znier-

pret the past in terms of our present, using our own resources—and to the future, while it offers diverse alternative possibilities relative to any present and sets conditions in terms of which the past is to be understood, as leading to that future. The most interesting of these complementary pairs, traditionally, is that of subjectivity and objectivity. I shall discuss it briefly here, along with a few other concepts relevant to human being, and again in later chapters. I shall go into detail here only with respect to concepts that I shall not return to, in particular, the concept of history, and shall discuss only briefly those concepts to which I shall give detailed consideration in later chapters.

Instrumentality The recent Continental tradition, especially in its major critical expressions, from Marx to Heidegger, has been deeply suspicious of the modern forms of instrumentality inherent in technology, of instrumental or technological rationality. These represent forces of oppression and domination, the foreclosure of human possibilities. Human beings are in effect treated as commodities and objects of manipulation. The relevant positions, apparently antagonistic, turn on the liberating possibilities inherent in an instrumental relationship of hu-

manity to its natural surroundings, that is, on whether liberation lies in control of human life and its surroundings or whether such an instrumental view does not diminish the possibilities inherent in human experience.” What is missing is explicit recognition of the pervasiveness and inescapability of inexhaustibility—here of instruments and technology, but more generally, of practical judgment. For we may associate instrumentality with practical judgment, with the immediate qualification that the latter is not the only mode of judgment. Instruments and techniques are valid (and invalid) in the ways appropriate to them, but there is no supreme form of validation, no all-inclusive perspective or locale, not even being itself. There is no independ-

BEING 29 ent perspective relative to which any pervasive form of life or judgment can be evaluated, but only those forms of criticism embodied in established and yet to be established modes of judgment and query. Nor can instrumentality, or instrumental reasoning, any mode of judgment or rationality, predominate over every other form of life and thought. Every pervasive perspective, every form of life, is both divided within itself by indeterminatenesses and departures and located within manifold other perspectives that impose diverse forms

of validation and interrogation. This diversity, within and without, is the basis of query and essential to both interrogation and validation. Instrumentality, like all other modes of being, is inexhaustible. What this means in part is that the way something is used—and this applies to all techniques and instruments—is not absolute or unconditioned, but perspectival, variable with new uses and conditions in human life and determinative of such uses. And we are frequently unable to recognize new uses, atypical uses, for standard instruments, sometimes because we are unable to break out of the confinements of our entrenched perspectives, sometimes because such perspectives impose themselves upon us, exercising power and domination. A person, placed ina room witha string hanging from the ceiling that is to be attached to a pole just out of reach, with nothing else in the room but a table and a hammer, may find it difficult to gain the insight that the hammer can be used as a

weight, turning the string into a pendulum. A hammer has inexhaustible uses, only some of which are standard. A person, in a society that does not enforce democratic practices, may find it difficult to expect to be regarded as the equal of others of higher or lower social status. Instrumentality is inexhaustible not only in the general sense in which all loci are inexhaustible, but in the specific sense of inexhaustible uses and consequences.*” Things may be—we may even say, should be—used in manifold ways. Instrumental being is perspectival being, but no more so than any other

being in experience. Every being, including instruments and materials, is conditional, limited but also inexhaustible. The limits of instrumentality are | given by its relationship with practical judgment. But invention 1s as essential to practical query as to any mode of query, essential to instruments and techniques. This is the basis of practical query and is what makes technology one of the most effective forms of rationality.

The perspectivity and inexhaustibility of instruments apply to technology in both its general and its particular forms. Technology is inexhaustible in that no antecedent or specified uses for technological instruments can be required: new uses, new roles, are engendered by technological means in the course of human experience. Technology not only introduces new roles for instruments as conditions change, but changes the conditions, often in powerful and remarkable ways. With this recognition, we see that technology is not merely instrumentality but an inexhaustible environment for human activities. What we need to recognize as well is that this environment, though inexhaustible, is

30 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING not the only human environment, that practical judgment ts not the only form of judgment. The instrumental conception of technology and language is insightful in certain limited respects, but profoundly deficient in others. Neither language nor technology is merely instrumental; both are imbued with a pervasive character definitive of an epoch in human experience: a life-world. But no such epoch can be more than perspectivally compelling. The question is whether modern technology and instrumental rationality are especially or intrinsically limiting and confining. I am suggesting here, anticipating later discussion, that the frequent repetitive mindlessness inherent in technological reproductions, the commodification of human life and experience, belong less to technology and instrumentality than to the alleged dominance, intellectual and political, of a particular form of rationality over all others, a symptom of a far more general blindness to the openness and inventiveness of every form of rationality. It is a blindness that has pervaded human experience, found in art, philosophy, and morality as well as in science and technology. It is a blindness that has frequently associated a particular form of reason with particular entrenched powers. What is required is that reason be identified with query, with unremitting invention and interrogation, in inexhaustibly manifold forms. Such an identification entails recognition that technology together with other forms of practical judgment be transformed into a form of query by unending interrogations, from without and within. Technology, along with all instruments, is instrumental yet transcendent of

instrumentality, conditioned by utility yet transcendent in defining conditions for going beyond any particular instruments, maybe all instrumentality (in the sense that there are other modes of judgment besides practical judgment). Instruments both delimit conditions and open new possibilities. Like all judgments, practical judgments and instruments depend on antecedent conditions but engender new conditions. Technology determines conditions for our experience and opens possibilities for novel experiences. It is as misguided to emphasize one of these poles over the other as to neglect either of them. The technological nature of contemporary life is both its redemption and its despair. One of the fundamental tenets of pragmatism is that all human judgments are to be regarded as instruments, evaluated in terms of means and ends.*'

There is a profound truth in this view, but it must be qualified. All human judgments are to be regarded as instrumental and utilitarian—but not instrumental and utilitarian alone. Conversely, practical judgments are no more pervasive or primary than assertive judgments. Pragmatism does not collapse the-

ory into practice, as conventional wisdom has it; it rejects the unqualified distinction between them from both sides. Science is to be regarded as an instrument, yet that is not the sole legitimate perspective on science, which also seeks truth in terms of evidence and theoretical comprehensiveness. What is

BEING 31 rejected is any external, unsituated standpoint, for either theory or practice, relative to which any form of judgment and experience may be criticized. Theory and practice here are complementary, functionally related, only together (inclusive of the other modes of judgment and query) expressive of inexhaustibility. Instrumentality is the being of human judgments in perspectives definitive of the relevance of consequences; theory is the being of judgments in perspectives definitive of evidence and argumentation. Theory is a form of practice because instrumental perspectives are relevant to all judgments, including those of science, and science is unintelligible as query without the intermodality demanded by practical perspectives. Practice, however, is equally subject to theory, to those perspectives in which scientific query is prominent. Validation, even in practice, involves tests of truth and consistency, theoretical criteria. Nevertheless, though theory and practice as modes of query require each other, each transcends the other inexhaustibly. Agency

One view of agency is that agents are practical beings who operate instrumentally. On this view, from the side of instruments rather than the agent, agency

is instrumentality, practical judgment, and consequently is inexhaustible, conditioned and perspectival. If instrumentality is inexhaustible in the sense that no particular uses are definitive of an instrument, which may be used in diverse ways, agency as the employment of instruments is similarly inexhaustible, to the extent that no particular uses by an agent exhaust the possibilities of his activities. This is particularly evident with respect to the functional complementarity of practice and theory, for just as practice is inextricable from theory, agency is inextricable from thought, from rationality as science. Put another way: science is one of the major forms of agency, leading to technology as well as to political institutions. Another view of agency is given, not by the instruments of action, but by the presence of human beings as agents. Not unreasonably, we may identify the inexhaustibility of agency with freedom, with the possibilities relevant within spheres of human activity. The freedom and purpose essential to action and control presuppose the openness of spheres of action to alternatives, to the future, through the actualization of relevant possibilities. Possibilities are conditioned by actualities, and conversely, so that freedom and agency are qualified by circumstances. Conversely, all conditions in human experience, however firm, leave room for alternatives, for different courses and spheres of action. Determinateness and indeterminateness, situality and availability, unisons and ramifications, are functional complements. The consequences for agency are that there are always alternatives, in any practical situation, among which agents may select, even without overt choices,

but selections and alternatives are functions of conditions. And changing conditions—sometimes changed by agents’ decisions and actions—shift the

32 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING status of and relations among possibilities and actualities. Commitment to a particular course of action brings with it obligations and unavoidable consequences. Conversely, the emergence of certain questions into practical life transforms the way we live. Agency here is inexhaustible in the ways in which all human perspectives are inexhaustible, absorbing into human activities all the complementary ways in which perspectives are influenced by circum-

| stances yet remain open to modification. Another manifestation of the inexhaustibility of agency is given by its double nature: from the side of instruments and from the side of persons. Both instrumentality and personality are inexhaustible. But there is a more striking

inexhaustibility given by the double nature of agency, for the two poles are complementary. There could be no instruments, as contrasted with physical objects, without agents. And there could be no persons, no judgments, were there no means for their realization. Inexhaustibility in instrumentality enters from both sides: human being and natural being. Agency inhabits the meeting place of three inexhaustible spheres of being, instrumentality, personality, and history. In this meeting place, agency is a functional complement of human perspectives in their finite conditions—human conditions, on the one hand, and natural conditions, on the other, each influencing the other as well as the spheres of human action. Action here is the manifestation of inexhaustibility in natural conditions entering human experi-

ence and of the inexhaustibility of human experience in its relationship to natural conditions. Another way of putting this is that human action, agency, manifests the complementarity of limits and openness that is present in all perspectives, thereby the inexhaustibility of being and human being together. Still another way of putting this is that agency overtly manifests not only the

meeting place of being and human being, the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness relevant to all actions (which we interpret as conditions in the context of freedom), but also the penetration of human being into being, and conversely. There are only circumstantial limits to hu-

man being relative to natural being, not a distinction in principle. In the sphere of agency and practice, being and human being are functional complements, though in other spheres and perspectives, natural being is more pervasive. There are no absolute limits to human action, though there are circumstantial limits. Conversely, all human action is conditioned by circumstances. This doubling of conditions and openness is the inexhaustibility of human action. Agency manifests inexhaustibility at three different levels: (a) in the inexhaustibility of instrumentality and human being; (4) in the inexhaustibility of human being in relationship to practice; (c) in the limits of actions and instruments within human experience. These are not distinct, separate manifestations of inexhaustibility, but display the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness in manifold forms.

BEING 33, Subjectivity and Objectivity

In Descartes’ hands, the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity turned into a dualism, a position deeply flawed by its denial that mind and body are relevant to each other inexhaustibly. In later hands, the dualism established either an imperative to define a fundamental relationship between mind and body—but not an inexhaustible relationship—or a denial that subjectivity and objectivity are distinct. The tradition embodied in the subject—object distinction is very strong, but flawed throughout by the requirement that distinction or conjunction, separation or relation, be unqualified, that a solution to the mind—body dualism be exhaustive and complete. Spinoza is a notable exception in his view that thought and extension are attributes of one Substance, distinct in certain ways (under conception), but not in others, and in his view that the infiniteness of Substance requires infinite attributes for its manifestation. From the standpoint of inexhaustibility, the distinction between subject and object is not unqualified but perspectival. Thus, there are perspectives in which the distinction cannot be sustained and perspectives in which it is essential. But there is no unqualified, unconditioned, or absolute way to regard subjectivity and objectivity, for all perspectives. Common sense tells us that our thoughts influence our actions and thereby influence physical objects. Here the inexhaustibility of agency is relevant, but common sense is no authority. Common sense tells us also that physical events are conditions for our thoughts and actions. These are important but not compelling considerations. Far more important is the fact that consciousness 1s intentional and requires an object, that subjectivity and objectivity are functionally inseparable from the side of the subject. What is thought is other than the subject thinking, though it cannot be shown to be entirely other (as Berkeley argues, cannot be entirely other). As Hegel points out, the subject finds itself in the other. Reciprocally, matter is entirely unintelligible and inert, unknowable and inactive, unless it is granted some of the properties evident in thought—especially powers, perceivability, and connectedness.

Subjectivity and objectivity are not distinct notions, unrelated, but are functionally complementary. Rational interrogation of our surroundings is intelligible only if mind and body can interact. Rationality and experience presuppose that subjects inhabit a world of objects that are conditions for them. Rationality presupposes also that things are intelligible only insofar as they are objects for thought and experience. It presupposes as well that subjectivity and objectivity do not exhaust human being. Our appeal to rationality allows us to return to Descartes, for the cogzto 1s grounded on a method of rational doubt. Yet doubt ceases to be rational when it transcends conditions, and Descartes’ doubt is effectively unconditioned. To

34 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING be intelligible, thought in the cogzto must be conditioned both by the subject

doubting and by the conditions that make his questions intelligible. These conditions are the sphere of objectivity. Reciprocally, matter is not a selfsufficient, inert mode of being, but is doubly conditioned by rational thought: as object thought about, the object of a materialistic theory, and as causal origin of minds and subjects. Subjectivity and objectivity are functional complements in any sphere of rationality or agency. Each requires the other. Even more striking, each can play the role of the other. We can investigate our own subjectivity, treating reason

and thought as objects; we can interrogate matter as the origin, even the equivalent, of mind. Thus, not only are subject and object complementary, they are absolutely distinguishable; what is subject in one sphere may be brought under rational consideration as object in another. This may in part be what Kant means by distinguishing ego in its two aspects, as unconditioned subject and as object of the understanding.*’ But his view of the understanding is unconditioned. The mind—body dualism is generated by presupposing an unconditioned distinction between mind and body, subject and object, and then seeking their conjunction (or denying it). But if there is an inexhaustible union between them, a functional complementarity (as well as an inexhaustible difference), then there is no absolute, only a perspectival, distinction between subject and object, one that requires unterminating interrogation for its determination. The notion of an absolute distinction between mind and body is enforced today by the equation of scientific explanation with materialism.“’ Yet the materialism is simply too weak to express the inexhaustibility of human being. The reply is that both science and matter are inexhaustible. If we ever obtain a satisfactory science of human agency and rationality, it will be no more materialistic than social, psychological, or logical. Matter must be inexhaustible to be so inclusive. Matter is transformed by mind as mind is conditioned by matter where both are regarded at a level of generality in which complementarity and inexhaustibility become paramount. Mind and body are distinct only in a proximate sense, the sense in which we may think about imaginary things and in which there are bodies remote from human life. In the sphere of human experience, human being, bodies are transformed into objects of thought and instruments, our thoughts are often instrumental, human beings are not minds but persons, and mind and body become, if not equivalent, inseparable, complementarily related. The truth inherent in inexhaustibility, however, is not only that subjectivity and objectivity are inexhaustibly interrelated, but that the view that emphasizes their inexhaustibility is itself limited and incomplete. Our thoughts transcend their conditions, in some if not all ways, for all being is transcendent over its conditions. That is part of the meaning of inexhaustibility. Matter is conditioned by our knowledge of it but escapes every knowing. Subjectivity and objectivity are

BEING 35 inexhaustible both individually and together, each functionally and complementarily involving the other, each transcending the other inexhaustibly. What this means, fundamentally, is that every distinction is perspectival, and the inexhaustibility of perspectives, of loci, makes every being and human being inexhaustible. History

One of the implications of inexhaustibility is that there is no comprehensive perspective on either being or human being. Yet there is a perspective on human being that has sometimes seemed to comprehend it, that of history. It ts important, then, to understand its inexhaustibility as well as its limitations. History is transparently inexhaustible, in manifold ways. We discover this inexorably in our recurrent attempts to recover a past that is transformed by our diverse attempts to master it. Some of the ways in which history is inexhaustible are well known, and have been discussed repeatedly. Yet although these discussions are frequently penetrating and insightful, they are misleading, for they tend to locate the inexhaustibility of history in too specific terms, obscuring the far deeper and pervasive inexhaustibility that permeates all historical thought. History, I suggest, comes close to being in our understanding, and being is inexhaustible. Both Hegel and Heidegger exhibit this re-

markable tendency of history to generalization, becoming not merely an aspect of being or a particular way of understanding it, but effectively equiva-

lent with being. The consequence of such an identification of history with being is that being is thereby limited relative to time and experience, obscuring some of its inexhaustibility, while history becomes manifestly inexhaustible in including being within itself. There is an epistemological argument concerning the inexhaustibility of history that has two forms, one quite general, the other more restricted. The general argument is that reason and knowledge are inexhaustible in the sense that there are no absolute and unconditioned foundations of knowledge. To reject epistemological foundationalism—-either in sensation or in @ prior? rational principles—is to emphasize the activities of human beings that constitute the basis for knowledge. But human activities are variable with social and historical conditions. Thus, what we know about events is a function of circumstances and conditions, forms of life. There is, here, no absolute know!ledge, only a finite, perspectival knowledge dependent on historical circumstances. Such a general antifoundationalism may be regarded skeptically or positively. The skepticism, I claim, is fallacious, since it imposes an absolute, unconditioned, non-perspectival skeptical position on a conditional, perspectival theory. Positively speaking, however, history is not one absolute and un-

conditioned form of knowledge, but is conditioned by human experience, changing with human practices. Historical knowledge is a function of history itself, located within history and unable to transcend it. Foundationalism is

36 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING based on the conviction that there is a knowledge that transcends historical location. Historical knowledge, once we abandon foundationalism, is itself conditioned by history. The circumstances of both the past and the present interpretive situation are relevant to any historical understanding. Historical knowledge, now in the double sense of being about history and being located im history, is thus inexhaustible if it is knowledge at all (and certainly it is, however we interpret its nature), to the extent that the locations of the knower are constantly changing while his knowledge of any object, including knowledge of the past, is a function of his irremediably historical conditions. Historical knowledge is multiply located knowledge, zz events. One solution to the dangers of historicism and relativism is to emphasize the fusion of locations—multiple locations—from within history, for there is no viewpoint outside history.“’ As I would put it, it is the endurance of traces of past events through intervening events to the present, taking the multiple locations and characteristics of these events into account, that is the basis of our under-

standing of them.” The argument that knowledge is always from the perspective of the knower, that there is no absolute transcendence of historical and social conditions, is a general argument applicable to all forms of knowledge,”° including the natural sciences, not to knowledge of history alone.*’ There is, however, an argument

concerning the inexhaustibility of history based on its peculiarly temporal character, on the remoteness of past events. Time here is the great divider. Thus, Gadamer and Ricoeur stress the otherness of past horizons, as if time divides us from the past in a uniquely important way.” I find this view of time

implausible, for spatial remoteness—-an event in a distant galaxy, for example—1is no easier to traverse than is temporal remoteness, and it is traversible only through time. Yet this reference to time, though it does not impose an epistemic barrier,

indicates the limitations of the purely epistemological approach to the inexhaustibility of history. From within the epistemological point of view, in terms of our finite understanding of rationality, all knowing is historically located—multiply historically located—including knowledge of the past. History is then multiply historical. But the crux of the epistemological argument is the multiple locatedness of the knower, not the known. We need to understand the importance of the passage of time to history, to past events as well as to present interpretations. Up to this point I have neglected the fact that history is of human beings, of our human past. I have neglected even the fact that historical knowing is by human beings, for J have characterized the multiple locatedness of present perspectives as a function of differing presents, differing situations, rather than differing subjects. This neglect was based in part ona desire to be able to differenti-

ate the argument for the inexhaustibility of history based on subjectivity, on

BEING 37 the bumanness of history, from arguments concerning the temporality and circumstances of history. The argument from subjectivity is stated forcefully by Ricoeur: what history ultimately tries to explain and understand are men. The past from which we are removed is the human past. In addition to temporal distance, therefore, there is that specific distance which stems from the fact that the other is a different man. what the historian attempts to restore through the whole network of causal relations is precisely what other men have experienced. The inexhaustible human character of the past therefore necessitates the work of integral comprehension.”

Inexhaustibility here is specifically human inexhaustibility, and Ricoeur appears not to recognize any other. This prejudice is a major limitation. There are other forms of historical or temporal understanding that, if they are not History, suffer from very similar kinds of complexities. I have in mind here not only archaeology, which is concerned with human beings, but palaeontology, geology, and astrophysics. Historical understanding is certainly inexhaustible because of the roles played by human subjects as historians and as agents. But its inexhaustibility is far more pervasive.

The argument from subjectivity to inexhaustibility is nevertheless an important one, and I shall examine it in greater detail. | have emphasized the inexhaustibility produced by the finite location of historical understanding in history, by the qualifications and conditions of all human practices in historical locations. Here multiple locations produce inexhaustibility. We must be able to transcend history as subjects to know the past exhaustively, and this is impossible. Another argument for inexhaustibility comes from emphasizing the freedom inherent in subjectivity——not a freedom to escape all conditions, to step outside time, but a freedom in conditions to select among possibilities. To the extent that human perspectives allow such opportunities for choice, both past decisions and present interpretations must transcend any system of universal explanation. Perhaps the most effective example of this inexhaustibility is exhibited by the inadequacies of any biography, even an ideal biography, to explain to us the creative achievements of the greatest artists, philosophers, and scientists. No history, personal or social, can explain to us what is important in a supreme rational achievement. The reason 1s that such achievements are inexhaustible, but they are located in history; consequently, history is inexhaustible. Rational achievements belong to history but serve other masters, and the intersection of different standards is the source of inexhaustibility. We may understand such manifest inexhaustibility as a function of subjectivity: great spiritual achievements are produced by subjects but transcend their limitations. This is an argument from freedom. Another way to understand such transcendence is through recognizing that importance is a function of the fu-

38 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ture as well as of the past, while historical explanation cannot include the future; it is a retrospective form of understanding. Still another relevant consideration is that importance is a function of perspectives lying outside the temporality of history, perspectives in which a mathematical discovery must be true and a theorem must be provable. It is not the province of history to give us mathematical truth or logical validity. History cannot rule over the multiplicity of modes of judgment and query. The argument from subjectivity may be expanded relative to the roles of

human beings without history: as agents. A history concerned exclusively with the causes of human events, or with general laws of human behavior, will have trouble with both instrumentality and agency. The former is concerned with wses, and is conditioned both by prior practices and by ends and aims. Since no instrument can be determined entirely by its past, and changes in its

purposes and uses with changing conditions, instrumentality is inexhaustible—and so thereby is history. Agency, similarly, is teleological, from the side of persons rather than things. But teleology calls for justification, not for causation. (This point is equivalent to that above concerning the limitations of an ideal biography.) It follows that one form of historical explanation, locating events in causal succession, is inadequate to enable us to understand the role of instruments and agents in that causal account. One way of interpreting this argument is as an argument for freedom. But a much simpler interpretation 1s that we are interested in human beings in many ways—they are in these many ways—besides those given by causal explanations.” I would add that we are interested in things as well as persons in many different ways—an argument exhibiting the limitations of history—and that history includes many of these other ways, thereby becoming inexhaustible. The philosopher who understood the inexhaustibility of history best was Hegel, and his system displays, it seems to me, that inexhaustibility in striking, if incomplete, forms. In particular, he recognized that historical understanding requires two divergent and incompatible perspectives: from wzthin history, essentially developmental and successive, and from outside history, which is impossible. With Spirit outside history, history becomes entirely rational but loses its developmental principle. Explaining from within history is always retrospective; but there are manifold retrospective perspectives, changing into the future. Another way of putting this is that historical explanation

presupposes a changing future but cannot include that future within itself. Practice presupposes a telos, and a history of human beings presupposes a teleology.”'

This point about the future is only incidentally a point about human beings and subjectivity. It is a point about temporality and historicity, about the past in relation to the present and the future. Not only history but time is inex-

haustible. History shares the inexhaustibility of time, and time shares the inexhaustibility of being. This happens because intrinsically restricted con-

BEING 39 cepts—history and time—breach their boundaries and become generalized. Ricoeur expresses this insight as follows: What is in question in every question, what gives rise to the question—the Bezng preliminary to the questioning—is also the Oze of history; but this Oze is neither a particular philosophy that is allegedly eternal, nor the source of philosophies, nor the identity of what they affirm, nor becoming as an immanent law of philosophical “moments,” nor the “absolute knowledge” of this becoming. What is it, then, if it is none of the above? ”

This One, I would claim, undermines inexhaustibility, in being and in experience. There is no ove question for humanity for all time. But more to the immediate point, Ricoeur forcefully indicates the tendency of history to become all-inclusive—of all events in human experience, including all discoveries about events outside experience. History comes under closure here, thereby becoming equivalent to the world and to being—at least to whatever we may

think about being, including all the conditions and presuppositions of our thinking. Similarly, time becomes the limiting condition for all activity, thereby inclusive of all our knowledge and encounters with being. Human experience is exhausted in the limits of history, on the one hand, and the limits of time, on the other, while they take on the inexhaustibility of human being.

History is frequently given the all-inclusive purview I have indicated. Taken without qualification, as the only or the supreme form of understanding, it would negate inexhaustibility. The temporal horizon would destroy the manifest, if qualified, timelessness of both masterpieces of art and mathematical truth, as if the historian’s understanding could be sufficient. The limitations of such an historicism are expressed by Ricoeur in terms of an unresolvable conflict between history under a timeless regulative ideal of system and the history of singular persons and achievements: a latent paradox in all history . . . is this: we say history, bistory in the singular, because we expect this unique history of mankind to be unified and made reasonable by a human meaning. . . . But we also say men, men in the plural, and we define history as the science of past men because we find persons who emerge as radically manifold centers of mankind.*’

Similar limitations are manifested in Hegel’s recognition that historical understanding depends on a tension between a time-bound location and a location outside of time. History, entirely located within time, presupposes, if it 1s to be a supreme and all-inclusive understanding, a location outside of time. The only locations that can be offered for such an escape from the past where history is all-inclusive are tn the future. The alternative to the pervasiveness of histori-

cal understanding is recognition that there are forms of knowledge that fall outside history: mathematical, physical, even philosophical. They of course fall outside history only in certain respects. Bringing mathematical theorems or physical laws under historical interrogation, though relevant from an his-

40 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING torical point of view, is irrelevant to their authority in their own spheres. That there are such spheres 1s a condition of inexhaustibility. These remarks about history apply almost without modification to time as it encroaches on being, taking on an all-inclusive purview that limits inexhausti-

bility. We do not tend to recognize this limitation in temporality, as contrasted with history, and I think for two reasons. One is that we identify such temporality with history where we accept the all-inclusiveness of historical understanding; the other, that the only alternative commonly taken to historical understanding is scientific, and the conception of time there is apparently all-inclusive. I have criticized the former view; I shall briefly discuss the limitations of the latter. My point is that there can be no privileged way to make past events, events in time, intelligible, that time requires multiply incompatible points of view to be intelligible.“ Events must always be understood from the point of view of their past and their future, and from other points of view as well, mathematical, epistemological, and philosophical. We recall Kant’s great antinomies in the First Critzque concerning the beginning of the world and time: if there were a beginning, we could ask what preceded it; if there were no beginning, there would have been an actual infinite, and that is impossible. In general, these antinomies are regarded as powerful expressions of the limits of rationality and of speculative metaphysics. The reason for this is that only a complete, synthetic account can be intelligible and rational. I know of no view to the effect that oth Kant’s arguments are correct but not self-contradictory. Yet that is the avenue that must be taken to understand the inexhaustibility of time. That is, time is inexhaustible in that no single point of view can provide a satisfactory account of it. We may make sense of the first argument by using the example of a Big Bang, a cosmic explosion at the start of our universe. It is clear that whatever the beginning might be, we may seek to understand what preceded it. Yet the question of precedence is not a single one, for it presupposes two different standpoints, and we cannot take them both together. From within our cosmic universe, within the succession of events under natural laws, we cannot seek an event prior to the cosmic beginning. We must step owtside the universe to a wider and more general temporality for priority. I am not arguing that either of these points of view on time is illegitimate, only that such very differ-

ent points of view are required. The notion of a beginning is intelligible only within an epoch; the notion of a prior event is intelligible only outside every epoch. The second argument can be expressed somewhat more persuasively as that a

past event was once present but could not have receded to the infinite past through time.’ Now, I have never understood how the notion of an actual infinite made the infinite past more unintelligible than the infinite future. Time

BEING 41 is infinite forward in that there will always be a successor. Time is infinite backward in that every event has a predecessor. But, it is said, these predecessors exzst as the successors do not. A double view of time is again required: one regarding events as becoming more past, changing relative to the present; the other, as settled, entirely determinate. From within the perspective of a present, time is a changing succession of events. From outside the perspective of a present, the past is given, determinate. But even the future is yet to come only from within the present. From outside the perspective of a present, the future is as definite as the past. Alternatively, there is no escape from the present—

making knowledge of the past and the future, even the past and the future themselves, unintelligible. One consequence of the realization that a past is always from the point of view of a present is that past events may fade into the recesses of time unrecoverably, irrelevant to every later future. Here is the most poignant and

profound limitation of all historical and temporal being, its insistent finiteness: that where present and future are perspectives on the past, selective and exclusive, past events may be lost forever. Yet we can never come to know this. Here the inexhaustibility and finiteness of history tell the same story of lost traces. J am arguing that multiple views and perspectives are necessary if history and time are to be intelligible. No doubt from within the sphere of scientific explanation of physical events, time and succession can be given a local and legitimate purview. The difficulty arises when time expands its generality, includes human experience and spiritual achievements as well as particles in motion, when time becomes history and history becomes the authority in our understanding of being. Here time ceases to have a single meaning and takes on the inexhaustibility of being. Time, here, is the inexhaustible sphere in which determinateness occurs, in which beings are actualized. History is inexhaustible because being is inexhaustible and history is part of

being. In slightly less grandiose terms, history is inexhaustible because it strives for universality, and encounters the inexhaustibility of multiple locatedness.”’ In still less sweeping or metaphysical terms, history is inexhaustible because it contains the inexhaustibility of human experience, of human beings as knowers and human beings as agents. Most poignantly, history is inexhaustible because within it finite things have but transitory relevance. But the most interesting source of the inexhaustibility of history is the inexhaustibility of

the past, which I have identified with the inexhaustibility of time. The inexhaustibility of the past is manifested by the condition that the past is not simply the past, but includes the future as well, a future of manifold standpoints and perspectives, including thereby all the perspectives relevant to human experience, even those irrelevant to historical location. Logical forms and timeless universals belong to history but transcend it. In their transcendence,

42 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING they are inexhaustible. Because history includes them, it is inexhaustible. The inexhaustibility of history and the past is a consequence of the inexhaustibility of the beings within them.

The Human Body The body is a generic, pervasive condition of human being; it participates in whatever is human, whatever human beings do and are. Moreover, it is not simply body in general, but the buman body. The question is what this “humanness”’ involves.

Several important philosophers, who differ in many other respects, nevertheless recognize the pervasiveness and importance of the body. For Spinoza, “The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, or a certain mode of extension actually existing, and nothing else,”’’’ and this body is the human body. “{I]}t follows that man is composed of mind and body, and that the human body exists as we perceive it” ;”* ‘in proportion as one body is better adapted than another to do or suffer many things, in the same proportion will

the mind be better adapted to perceive many things. . . .””’ For Whitehead, “we feel with the body. . . . the ‘withness’ of the body is an ever-present, though

elusive, element in our perceptions... .”” A more telling passage is found in Merleau-Ponty: Whether it is a question of another's body or my own, J have no means of knowing the human body other than that of living it, which means taking up on my own account the drama which is being played out in it, and losing myself in it. I am my body, at least wholly to the extent that I possess experience, and yet at the same time my body is as it were a ‘‘natural” subject, a provisional sketch of my total being. Thus experience of one’s own body runs counter to the reflective procedure which detaches subject and object from each other, and which gives us only the thought about the body, or the body as an idea, and not the experience of the body or the body in reality. . . . let us look closely at what is implied in the rediscovery of our own body. It is not merely one object among the rest which has the peculiarity of resisting reflection and remaining, so to speak, stuck to the subject. Obscurity spreads to the perceived world in its entirety.°'

We are our body more than we have it, yet it is not unique, not even uniquely human, for what we discover within it belongs to any natural being. What these passages testify to, in different ways and with different emphases, is the inexhaustibility of the human body, though we should not overlook the inexhaustibility of every body and every natural being. To say that physical nature includes all natural beings entails that physical beings be inexhaustible to the extent that every event and condition may be interpreted as material. A further consequence is that “matter” or “physical nature’ is no being, for it would then be “the world.” What prevents such an understanding from becoming widespread is our assumption that our knowledge of material beings ts given entirely by the physical sciences. To the contrary, however, one of the

BEING 43 most obvious manifestations of the inexhaustibility of natural beings is that we understand them in inexhaustibly diverse and manifold ways. Similarly, but far more powerfully, at least for us, the human body is human

in its participation in whatever is human, therefore in consciousness and thought, emotion and understanding, reason and unreason. Like history, it is present in whatever is human and yet not in a// that is human. It is a participant in the least physical of human activities; without the body—and I mean its manifest presence, not simply its concomitance—we could neither think nor dream, could not produce new and fantastic works of art and invention. Yet our thoughts and speculations, proofs and insights, are not in any specific sense ‘bodily’ any more than they belong specifically to time and space. It follows that the human body, like every body but irresistibly for us who inhabit it, is inexhaustible but also local. Its locality lies typically in the restrictiveness of our biological conditions, in our two arms and legs, our size and weight, our diseases and physical achievements (sports and dance are prominent examples), our sexuality. Yet in every one of these cases, the biological limitations exist to be surmounted: technologically in the production of machines that turn two arms into many, that multiply our limited strengths many times, and even more strikingly in the imagination that produces sublime works of dance that carry within themselves both a forceful sense of the bodies we inhabit and an inexhaustible sense of new possibilities of expression and revelation, in new reproductive techniques. Biological limitations exist to be transformed, by adornment and discipline, in any human ways we can devise, in inexhaustible human experience. If history includes humanity, it nevertheless does so in limited ways, for history is both inexhaustible and local. Or, rather, it is inexhaustible because it is local, and conversely; locality and inexhaustibility are complementary. The human body manifests very similar expressions of inexhaustibility; it partictpates in whatever is human, in every kind of human activity and judgment, but locally, in terms of its own finite limits and characteristics. Every local characteristic exists to be transcended, but transcended only locally. Biology and the body share this inexhaustibility and locality, the complementarity of limitation and transcendence. The body testifies to inexhaustibility generally. That is what I take the pas-

sage above from Merleau-Ponty to suggest. Yet there is still another side to | locality and inexhaustibility that is manifested through the human body— “embodied,” so to speak—in profound ways. There are, in any being, unplumbed depths, new and surprising manifestations that may be encountered unexpectedly. There are, in the human body, an inevitable concomitant of its inexhaustibility in human experience, new and surprising connections, revelations of unknown forms of order and connection, hidden forms of awareness and significance. These are inevitably accompanied by the surplus and waste

A4 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING inherent in every being, another profound consequence of inexhaustibility. Multiple locatedness—equivalent to inexhaustibility—entails both new and surprising, significant connections and, frequently inseparably and almost indistinguishably, waste and triviality. Both are consequences of what may be called the “surplus of being”’ that pertains to multiple locality and inexhausttbility, the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Freedom

No question is more fundamental to an understanding of human being than that of freedom. Yet it will be given very little atcention here, and deserves no

more. For the issues that require attention in the name of freedom become, through inexhaustibility, much more understandable and accessible in specific rather than generic forms. In relation to being, where human being is regarded as a species of being, inexhaustibility is a complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. The forms of indeterminateness here express the locative conditions of human freedom: possibility and multiple locatedness. The question is how new perspectives are possible. The answer is given directly by inexhaustibility: new perspectives are always possible in virtue of multiple loci and perspectives, multiple locations. Possibilities are relevant to every locus. In this context, the issue of freedom is misconceived; for to deny the possibility of freedom is to assert the presence of a privileged and all-inclusive locus of

determination, is to be, therefore, altogether foundational. Inexhaustribility entails the repudiation of a world locale, the inexhaustible complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. In this complementarity are the conditions that make freedom possible. In a somewhat less generic sense, freedom depends on the relevance of possi-

bilities, and these are central within a locative theory. Equivalently, freedom requires the two sides of finiteness, given by inexhaustibility and multiple locatedness: namely, that conditions both determine and open, both limit and establish possibilities of new limits. Inexhaustibility here is equivalent to an irreducible multiplicity of modes of determination. These so thoroughly establish a generic basis for freedom, the relevance of indeterminateness to every determination, that no more need be said at this level of analysis. Indeterminateness pervades determinateness, and conversely, so that no determinations exhaust alternative possibilities and the relevance of possibilities is not incompatible with determination. The complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness within inexhaustibility is a function of being, not human being in particular. The question, then, is of the particular relevance of freedom for human experience. But even here, given inexhaustibility, there is little to be gained from discussing freedom itself. Rather, the questions are the practical ones of whether and how human beings can create new perspectives, in thought and action, and how human beings can be liberated from oppressive conditions. The first question

BEING 45 can be divided into whether the establishment of novel perspectives is intelligible, answered by locality and inexhaustibility, and how we are to establish such perspectives voluntarily, answered by the theory of judgment and query.

The second question is one of practical judgment, and is to be answered through the analysis of practical query, especially politics. Freedom in thought is possible because new perspectives are always available within inexhaustibility. Freedom of thought is achieved through judgment

and query by inexhaustible interrogation and validation. But freedom of thought 1s never guaranteed, no matter how hard we may strive to attain it, and may be ineffective where it is possible. Multiple conditions of human life establish a basis for judgment and query, for interrogation and reinterrogation, but may also so confine us that we are unable to transcend particular limits. In this sense, liberation is only a possibility inherent in inexhaustibility, and in no particular sense—especially a normative sense—can it become assured, a settled outcome. That would be incompatible with inexhaustibility. Analogously, political liberation from oppressive social and political circumstances, given the effects of such circumstances on our understanding and ac-

tions, is at best a possibility inherent in conditions that can as thoroughly blind us to novel perspectives as make us cognizant of them.

The question of freedom in human being is none other than the question of multiple conditions amid inexhaustibility, the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Conditions reflect the relevance of limits and the inexhaustibility of any particular limits. The task, in the context of inexhaustibility, is given to query to pursue transcendence of all confining established conditions through interrogation and reinterrogation. Rationality may be regarded here as the most prominent manifestation and pursuit of freedom—rationality as query in inexhaustibly manifold forms. Inexhaustibility is acomplementarity of conditions and transcendence of any particular condi-

tions. In this sense it is the promise of freedom. But, practically speaking, freedom as liberation seeks the transcendence of particular conditions where they confine and oppress us, and within inexhaustibility, there can be no guarantees of such liberation; in fact, every effort is threatened by inexhaustible prospects of failure.

NOTES 1. John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action

(New York: Minton, Balch, 1929). 2. See the Preface, note 9. 3. See my Learning and Discovery (London and New York: Gordon & Breach, 1981), for a detailed discussion of the theory of knowledge and learning in the Meno and its implications. 4. Whitehead comes much closer than Plato to explicitly adopting a principle of

46 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING inexhaustibility, chough his cosmological impulses are incompatible with an adequate theory of inexhaustibility. See my Perspective in Whitehead’s Metaphysics (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1983). 5. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon

(New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 872-88. 6. Aristotle, Physics I, in ibid., pp. 218—36. 7. Spinoza, Erhics I, Proposition XIII, in Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, ed. James Gutmann, The Hafner Library of Classics 11 (New York: Hafner, 1949), p. 51. 8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953). 9g. This is in effect a reply to Chomsky’s innatism. See Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rattonalistic Thought (New York: Harper & Row,

1966), and Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972). See also Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit (New

York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982). 10. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard, The Hafner Library of Classics 14 (New York and London: Hafner, 1966). 11. Especially when we consider the antinomies, not as limits of pure reason, but as manifestations of inexhaustibility (ibid.). 12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common, in The Philosophy of Nietzsche, ed. Willard Huntington Wright (New York: Modern Library,

1937), Pp. 25-325. 13. Derrida, Of Grammatology; Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art.” 14. See, for example, Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art,” p. 61. 15. Polanyi, Knowing and Being, pp. 80, 133. 16. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Quine, Ontological Relativity; HansGeorg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury, 1975). 17. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. (La Salle, Il.: Open Court, 1929), chaps. 3, 4. 8. Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” Basic Writings from BEING AND TIME (1927) to THE TASK OF THINKING (1964), ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 113—41; and “Origin of the Work of Art.” 19. Fora general treatment of the categories of ordinality, see Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes and my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics. See my discussion in the Preface of the terminological changes here to locality in place of ordinality. 20. Heidegger, Beng and Time. See also his An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (Garden City, N.y.: Doubleday, 1961). 21. Foran explicit statement of these transcendental arguments, see Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,” Basic Writings, ed. Krell, pp. 189-242. 22. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper & Bros.., 1958); see also Hilary Putnam, “Analyticity and Apriority: Beyond Wittgenstein and Quine,” in Studies in Metaphysics, edd. Peter A. French and Theodore Edward Uehlin et al., Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979). 23. See Putnam, “Analyticity and Apriority.” 24. This view 1s closely related to Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. See in particular the end of his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1953), pp. 20-46. 25. See my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics, pp. 78-110. 26. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

BEING 47 27. “Prevalence” is Buchler’s term; “departing” is my term here for what I called “deviance” in Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics. 28. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics.

29. See Rom Harré, Social Being: A Theory for Social Psychology (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979). See also L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, edd. Michael Cole et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). See here also: ‘““The chitd mistaken assumption of the classical philosophers . . . is that the question ‘What is man?’ is straightforwardly a request for

an account of man, a theory or principle according to which we can understand why any man is a man and how it is, on what basis, men come to comprise a distinctive kind” (Douglas Browning, “Some Ways of Going Wrong About Man,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 19, No. 1 {Spring 1981], 34). I must note here the neglect of the question “What is woman?” 30. See Dewey, Experience and Nature, pp. 3a—1; in particular, “experience is of as well as zz nature’ (p. 4a). 31. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. See also Richard Rorty in Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, and Hubert L. Dreyfus, “A Discussion,” The Review of Metaphysics, 3.4,

No. 1 (September 1980), 49—50; and Rorty, “A Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor,” ibid..,

44-45. 32. Dewey, Experience and Nature, chap. 1. 33. Buchler, Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment. 34. See Harré, Social Being. 35. We may call this second function of our treating human beings as persons ‘“‘pre-

scriptive’ since it prescribes norms for them and for us. One of the most important features of this prescription is that we undertake obligations toward others and treat them in human ways. We also regulate and impose our rules upon them. The criticisms by Szasz and Foucault of our ways of treating the insane are in effect an acknowledgment—and a rejection—of our repudiation of our obligations toward other people simply by categorizing them as mad. Foucault’s argument is far deeper, since he shows that our view of insanity permeates our view uf humanity, demonstrating the regulative norms inherent in that view (Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard [New York: Pantheon, 1965)). 36. See my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics, Philosophical Mysteries, and Theory of Art; and Buchler’s Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment and Nature and Judgment.

37. Charles Sanders Peirce, ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. V. Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, edd. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 193.4), 88388—410, pp. 248-71. 38. “If it is insufficiently decisive to regard man as the animal that judges, it may

be sufficient to regard him as the animal that cannot help judging in more than one mode” (Buchler, Nature and Judgment, p. 199).

39. Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art,” and “The Question Concerning Technology,” Basic Writings, ed. Krell, pp. 283-317; Max Horkheimer, Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays Since the End of World War II, trans. Matthew J.

O’Connell et al. (New York: Seabury, 1974); idem, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Seabury, 1974); Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Soctety (Boston: Beacon, 1964). Also implicit in Foucault’s writings is testimony to the ways in which power works by regarding human being as something to be worked upon.

40. Dewey understood this truth thoroughly. See esp. Experience and Nature, chap. 4. 41. Horkheimer criticizes pragmatism for its emphasis on practicality, quite fail-

48 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ing to recognize the foundationalism and totalization inherent in his own criticisms, but failing far more deeply to understand the inexhaustibility inherent in pragmatism. See esp. his Eclzpse of Reason, chaps. 1~2.

42. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's, 1965), pp. 328—30. 43. See Quine, Ontological Relativity. 44. Gadamer, Truth and Method. See also Ricoeur, History and Truth, p. 50: “The search for truth, it seems, is characterized by being stretched, so to speak, between two poles: a personal situation, and a certain intention with respect to being. On the one hand, IJ have something to discover personally. . . . on the other hand, to search for truth means that I aspire to express something that is valid forall... .” 45. Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 235-40. 46. See here Peirce’s definition of truth in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” discussed below, pp. 55—56. 47. See here Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. An even more radical antifoundationalism can be found in Paul Feyerabend’s Beyond Science (Atlantic Highlands,

N.J.: Humanities, 1975). 48. Ricoeur, History and Truth, pp. 27-28.

49. Ibid., p. 28. 50. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Alfred Louch, Explanation and Human Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). 51. Ricoeur's formulation is that ‘““History is condemned to use several schemes of explanation concurrently, without having carefully considered them or even, perhaps,

distinguished them . . .” (History and Truth, p. 27).

52. Ibid., pp. 53-54. 53. Ibid., p. 38. 54. McTaggart’s famous argument on the unreality of time expresses this understanding. It is not so much his view of time that is deficient as his view of reality (J. M. E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence 1] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927; repr. Grosse Pointe, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1968), chap. 33. 55. Fritz Wenish, ‘“The Finiteness of the Pasc—A Dialogue,” A/etheia, 1, No. 1 (June 1977), 187-99; and Donald Ferrari, ““A Reply to “The Finiteness of the Past,’”’ ibid., 201—20.

56. As Ricoeur puts it, “history is history only to the extent that it has reached neither absolute discourse nor absolute singularity—to the extent that the meaning of it remains confused and entangled” (History and Truth, p. 76); ‘‘the history of philosophy discloses the fundamental characteristic of all history, showing it to be both a matter of structure and multiple events, only through its peculiar work which destroys historicity. . . . Inasense, every philosophy is the end of history” (ibid., p. 75). Philosophy is the end of history only in the sense that it transcends history—along with mathematics, physics, art, and our other rational achievements. All transcend history while remaining thoroughly located within it. 57. Spinoza, Ethics II, Proposition XIII, in Ethics, ed. Gutmann, p. 89.

58. Ibid., Corollary, p. 90. 59. Ibid., Note, p. 90. Go. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corr. ed., edd. D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), pp. 311-12. 61. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities, 1962), pp. 198—99.

2

THE WAY to human being from being goes from locality to perspectivity to judgment. The finiteness and inexhaustibility of human being here are natural consequences of the finiteness and inexhaustibility of loci, and both human experience and judgment are local. One of the corollaries of inexhaustibility is that no understanding of it or any locus can be adequate without qualification. Adequacy is thoroughly perspectival. There are manifold ways of knowing any locus, including knowledge itself. Corresponding to the inexhaustibility of beings is the inexhaustibility of experience and knowledge. This correspondence moves one way as the specification of being into human being. But it moves the other way in the novel loci that human beings open by their activities, in the inexhaustible inventiveness of human experience. Every being is inexhaustible; similarly, knowing is inexhaustible—limited in every case by the particular forms developed in human history, open in every case to new and valid forms of knowledge and rationality. There are two salient manifestations of inexhaustibility in knowing. One is the incompleteness of every knowing, its limitations and inadequacies. This type of inexhaustibility leads to skepticism, but that, I shall argue, is an error based on a misunderstanding of the nature of inexhaustibility. Inexhaustibility is not simply incompleteness or indeterminateness, but the complementary interplay of determinateness and indeterminateness. Knowing is possible only if there are limits to what can be known and to the procedures whereby it is known, but these must be unceasingly open to invention and modification. Both determinateness and indeterminateness, complementarily, are essential to the possibility that knowledge may be acquired. ' The second expression of inexhaustibility in knowing is manifested in the diversity of kinds of knowledge, the multiplicity of disciplines. No form of

knowledge has any but conditional primacy, qualified authority. Even the natural sciences are limited not only within themselves, so that we can never know everything about anything, but relative to other forms of knowledge. Such a limitation depends on two fundamental principles: that there are many forms of knowledge and rationality; and that many of these forms are jointly relevant to any subject matter or object of knowledge.

50 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING FOUNDATIONS

The epistemological tradition, as Dewey notes, has been dominated by a quest for certainty (or foundationalism).* This has taken two traditional forms. One is the claim that the proper objects of knowledge must admit of absolute certainty, and it entails that ordinary objects are not knowable. Only mathematical forms or privileged contents of sensation afford objects whose knowledge can be unqualified. Even the traditional alternative to these epistemic foundations bears the same absolute character: the totality of all facts in systematic interrelation. In this context, foundationalism postulates a unique as well as privileged epistemic domain in which knowledge becomes secure. Ordinary things, in their diversity and variety, do not admit of secure understanding. This particular approach to foundations may be called “external”: knowledge is secured by the condition, external to any human epistemic activities, that the object of knowledge is absolute. The second form of certainty emphasizes, not the objects of knowledge, but the ways in which knowledge is attained. This is an “internal’’ position; the methods that we employ in our epistemic activities are the basis for whatever properties knowledge may have. There is considerable overlap between the two approaches because the methods that are offered as plausible internal candidates for epistemic certainty lead to the kinds of objects that are emphasized externally: mathematical truths or incorrigible sensory contents. The key to both approaches is incorrigibility: methods that evade any possibility of error or objects that we cannot be mistaken about if we take proper precautions.’ In this context, the skeptic’s argument that there is nothing we cannot be mistaken about is a devastating attack on epistemological foundationalism. The difficulty is that skepticism is incompatible with any effective theory of knowledge. Thus, if we intend to avoid skepticism and its negation of any intelligible epistemological theory, we must avoid construing the grounds of knowledge in absolute terms. Foundational epistemology and skepticism share the same denial of conditions: the one repudiating qualifications in relation to the foundations of knowledge; the other demanding absolutes to knowledge while affirming absolute limitations to any understanding. Plato argues in the Republic that Forms are unchanging and unconditioned. Yet the criticisms he offers in the Parmenides, repeated in part by Aristotle later, are directed at the unqualified identity and individuality of the Forms. If Forms participate in many things, must they not be divided by these things, in some ways or respects? If Forms underlie relations among changing individuals, must they not be related to these individuals, again in some ways or respects? Aristotle argues that if Forms are unchanging and unconditioned, out-

side of time, then they cannot be known. Both criticisms emphasize the inconsistency in the Theory of Forms: that to be known objects of knowledge must be conceived as absolutely unconditioned by what exists in space and

KNOWING 51 time, including our epistemic activities, yet they must nevertheless be relevant to spatio-temporal beings. If the number two is conceived entirely as an intelligible object, knowable a prior: in mathematical terms, its applications and exemplifications nonetheless do not follow from its mathematical intelligibility. The pairs of objects in the universe, the objects and events to which numerical measures apply, do not follow from mathematical properties alone. Knowledge of even an intelligible

Form is incomplete relative to some of its properties. The argument entails that an intelligible object can be relevant to spatio-temporal events and objects only if knowledge of the latter transcends any knowledge of the former. Numbers transcend their numerical relations to the extent and in the ways that they are relevant to something besides other numbers. To generalize: the conclusion is that something can be relevant to something else only if knowledge of the first must be transcended in some respects in knowledge of the second. To generalize further, out of the epistemological context: a being can be relevant to another only if the latter is relevant to the former while each transcends any particular form of relevance. Objects of knowledge cannot be self-sufficient, absolutely self-contained, and still be cognizable, still be intelligible in terms of anything else. This is no more remarkable an affirmation than that something entirely absolute and self-

contained must be unrelated and therefore unknowable. The metaphysical conclusion is that beings inhabit multiple spheres of relatedness, and this multiplicity comprises inexhaustibility. The epistemological conclusion is that we cannot know anything about anything whatsoever except through something else related to it, while the multiplicity of avenues to knowledge is inexhaust-

ible. Both arguments presume to move from what we know about things to their inexhaustibility. Both arguments therefore depend heavily on internal approaches to knowledge even if they begin with external assumptions. From within our human activities, a related but nevertheless quite different argument can be derived. Here we emphasize the human conditions of cognitive activities: the development of rational methods, the relevance of concepts, rules, and natural laws, the importance of language to thought, and so forth. Human activities are social, linguistic, and normative. No activities can entirely transcend their origins in the empirical conditions of experience. Asa consequence, unconditioned knowledge is meaningless and unintelligible. The conditions of every cognitive activity permeate our conclusions. There are, then, no unconditioned objects or facts, only the results of rational activities. Yet both the validations and the conclusions are consequences of the conditions of our finite activities. It follows (a) that rationality is inexhaustible in the double sense that every conclusion manifests its conditions, is conditioned by other conditions indefinitely; and (4) that therefore to justify a conclusion, to consider it the result of rational activities, we must incessantly reexamine the conditions that establish it as well as the conditions of our own

52 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING re-examinations. Justification here is unterminating, not in the skeptical sense in which a regress of justification is destructive, but in the sense that every cognitive result is qualified, requiring inexhaustible criticism and further criticism. Rationality here is equivalent with unending interrogation, with query. There are two levels of understanding of inexhaustibility that enable us to defeat skepticism. Neither provides an absolute and unqualified disproof, for at the level of generality at which skepticism and its inadequacies are addressed, there are no absolutes. One level is given simply by the affirmation of conditions to all knowledge, the rejection of epistemic absolutes. The other, to which [ shall return, is given by a detailed examination of the conditions of rationality, and will be the major focus of this chapter. The first level is that at which inexhaustibility is required for intelligibility. I have argued that being is inexhaustible and that reality is inexhaustibility. This metaphysical level of generality is sufficient to entail that knowing is always qualified and conditioned. Yet the plausibility of the metaphysical principle of inexhaustibility depends on the plausibility of the inexhaustibility of human being, for we find inexhaustibility where we are or nowhere else. The more direct argument is therefore a straightforward rejection of foundationalism. There are no epistemological foundations because (a) no objects of knowledge can be entirely unconditioned and still function epistemically; (4) no methods emergent in human activities can produce unqualified conclusions. The former argument can be strengthened by the recognition that what is unconditioned and absolute would be entirely unintelligible. The essential argument is that we can understand knowing only in connection with rationality, but rationality is inseparable from activities in finite human experience. Rationality is not absolute and unqualified, but the continuing and unterminating process of interrogation and validation. There remains for consideration the other side of foundationalism: whether

the rejection of foundations is tantamount to skepticism. Knowledge and opinion cannot be absolutely distinguished. Yet the skepticism, I have argued, is as unqualified as foundationalism, presupposing foundations only to repudiate them. Indeed, there are two levels of absolutism in skepticism. One is an absolute demand for certainty in knowledge, which the skeptic argues cannot be produced by any human activities. The other is an absolute and categorical denial that knowledge is possible. The former is the more important issue, since it returns us to the need for foundations. The latter is much easter to deal with, for the skeptic must agree that our epistemic activities serve quite well for everyday purposes, conceding that there are contexts and perspectives in which our cognitive methods are adequate. It follows that epistemic activities are deficient only in some perspectives while adequate in others. This perspectival differentiation is the basis of conditions and qualifications. The question remains whether there are perspectives in which it is legiti-

KNOWING 33 mate to demand absolute and unconditioned certainty. This is the question of the intelligibility of foundations and of the finiteness of knowledge and truth. We may move quickly past the argument that epistemic activities would be deficient in all respects if they were not based on absolute foundations. That argument is equivalent to the denial that our ordinary cognitive activities are better in any ways than mere guesswork, and has been countered above. There are perspectives in which our ordinary rational methods serve us quite adequately (in some respects). The more important issue is whether foundations could be intelligible in any perspectives. The foundationalist argues that without foundations we could not distinguish knowledge from mere belief. He means, of course, that we could not distinguish knowledge and belief absolutely, for we can certainly distinguish them locally, under particular conditions. I may believe something on no evidence, on insufficient evidence, or on very strong evidence. Where the evidence is strong enough, or where we are not overly demanding of reliability, we claim knowledge. But, the foundationalist and the skeptic argue, no evidence could eliminate all uncertainty. Thus, they presuppose an absolute criterion of rationality, over all perspectives, for distinguishing justified belief from knowledge. There is a natural internal argument that no methods of acquiring knowledge can be absolute or generalized to all perspectives. The perspectivity of human experience makes knowledge itself perspectival or contextual. There is the corresponding external argument that objects that transcend all perspectives transcend all experience and are unintelligible and inaccessible. The reply to foundationalism is the same as the reply to skepticism: knowledge is finite and perspectival because it is the result of human activities (internally), and leads to knowledge of objects, events, concepts, and ideas that are correspondingly perspectivally located (externally). It does not follow from perspectival location within human activities that we know only human objects, precisely because Joci are multiply located, and their locations in human experience are typically indicative of their properties and conditions in other locations. The reply to skepticism is that there is no absolute knowledge, only qualified knowledge, but such knowledge is legitimate within the perspectives that constitute it. This is also the reply to be given to the foundationalist: there are no absolute foundations to knowledge, but there are qualified and conditioned methods that lead to qualified and conditioned conclusions, and these are as thoroughly justified, in their perspectival locations, as anything could be. Put another way: all determinations and justifications are qualified and perspectival. We cannot escape perspectivity to an omniscient point of view for either skepticism or foundationalism. But justification is legitimate where it is relevant and secured, for relevance and security themselves are perspectival. Perspectivity and multiple locatedness are the basis of finiteness and inexhaustibility.

54 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING QUERY

From an internal point of view, which holds that rationality can be understood

only in terms of the activities that constitute it, knowledge is the result of rational activities satisfactorily performed. This position can be identified with pragmatism, emphasizing the lived practices of human beings. The result is a view of science as an instrument of human practices, rendering unintelligible the notion of truth for its own sake, knowledge as an end in itself. Yet while science is Clearly instrumental, it is not instrumental alone. If theory is dissolved into practice, then practice is equally theoretical, and we are left where we started. Nevertheless, rationality can be understood only in terms of the processes in human experience that comprise it. The only legitimate epistemology is the result of rational activities reflexively interrogating themselves. The external position is that knowledge is grounded in fully determinate and cognizable objects. Against this view we may oppose Plato's suggestion in the Theaetetus that objects of knowledge are indistinguishable in their apprehension from objects of belief. Plato makes this point only for perceptual

objects, and we may imagine that Forms are pure objects of cognition about which we cannot err. Yet the continuing process of dialectic in the dialogues suggests that objects of knowledge and of error do not differ as such. Know!edge and error are always mixed, and we do what we can, as we know how, to eliminate error and to establish knowledge. Rationality here is defined by human processes in human experience, in the ways that lead to reliability, produce truth, and admit of criticism. Rationality here is perspectival, since practice and validation are perspectival, relative to particular locales of judgment. If the distinction between knowledge and mere opinion, between rationality and mere credulity, is not absolute but qualified and perspectival, there is no unqualified distinction between proper objects of knowledge and objects of mere belief, between objects that can be fully known and those that admit of error. It may then appear that there are only internal criteria of understanding and only internal objects of knowledge—rational intuitions and possible experiences, theories and versions without realities. The external point of view dissolves. Such a conclusion is effectively foundational, as if an external view of knowledge required absoluteness, and is shared by foundationalist and skeptic alike. To repudiate an absolute sense of what can be known is always to run the danger of skepticism.

Yet from a thoroughly antifoundational point of view, in which all knowledge 1s perspectival, conditioned by the activities and processes in human experience, the distinction between internal and external points of view is itself local. The external point of view is transformed from a demand for absolutely unique objects of knowledge into a recognition that the internal point of view is incomplete alone and needs supplementation. Knowledge and rationality

KNOWING 55 are inexhaustible along with all other beings, and their inexhaustibility, while manifested by the inexhaustible diversity of relevant perspectives, is incompletely manifested there, transformed into indeterminateness and incompleteness. The other side of inexhaustibility is finiteness. In relation to rationality and knowledge, this entails that we do know what we know, that what we know is true and valid but perspectival, that the objects of which we acquire knowledge we may know truly but not completely. In other words, we must maintain the external movement, conditioned by the principle that being is inexhaustible and rationality is perspectival. Objects of knowledge are loci; and all loci are in principle knowable, at least in some respects, though circumstances may not allow us to know them, for knowing is local. The internal perspective on rationality and knowledge is essential here, de-

rived from the principle that they are located in human perspectives. The external perspective is required by the inexhaustibility of loci and perspectives, for unless beings themselves are inexhaustible, the inexhaustibility of perspectivity has no alternative but skepticism. Thus, skepticism is answered by the internal criterion that rationality is what it can be perspectivally

and by the external principle that beings are finitely known by the rational procedures we employ. The inexhaustibility of rationality entails that beings are inexhaustible. There is a standard objection to an internal epistemology: that our most rational methods may produce errors, that justified claims may not be true and

may then not be known.’ The question is whether a satisfactory distinction between knowledge and justification can be established within human perspectives. The distinction cannot be unqualified and absolute, for an absolute criterion leads directly to skepticism. The answer again is that even skeptical claims must be local, perspectival, though the skeptic presupposes an absolute criterion of truth. This reply to skepticism is the basis of all che answers we may give to the demand for a distinction between truth and justification. The distinction must be perspectival and qualified while the skeptic demands an absolute criterion. What is involved is an adequate understanding of the nature of validation. Validation must be understood in local terms, in terms of the processes of human experience. Even an external perspective is internal epistemologically.

One internal criterion is given by Peirce: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.” ° Peirce presupposes continuing and forceful self-criticism. We may distinguish conclusions valid at a particular time, relative to certain evidence and procedures, from conclusions stable through time, over many difterent times and places. There are justifications within narrower perspectives and

truths over more general perspectives, but no absolute or non-perspectival

56 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING truths. What is required is a superaltern justification over many different perspectives, corresponding to a gross unison over many subaltern unisons, but there is no absolute or unqualified justification or perspective. If no truths are unqualified and absolute, then truth is variable with perspective, and there may be no truths for all perspectives. Peirce’s assumption that there can be stability through time and self-critical inquiry may be too strong. Yet the realism, which takes inexhaustibility to be inherent in beings as well as knowings, provides an answer. What finite beings are (truly) is inexhaustible: they are inexhaustibly many and diverse as a function of their diverse and inex-

haustible perspectival locations. From within an internal perspective, truth and justification are perspectival, and there is no absolute, unqualified truth, for that would be equivalent either to no perspectival location or to an allencompassing locale inclusive of all others. Neither of these is intelligible. To say that being is inexhaustible is to say as well that truth and knowledge are inexhaustible. The distinction between justification and truth cannot be unqualified. It must then be perspectival. The only plausible criterion is a variant of Peirce’s: that which has been subjected to unremitting criticism and further criticism may be distinguished from conclusions valid as the result of estab-

lished practices and methods, based on limited criticisms. Rationality here is interpreted in terms of unremitting and demanding criticism and selfcriticism, instituted in practices that call every assumption into question and demand justification of every justification. Thus, if justification is always perspectival—and so then is truth—rationality, leading to more justified truths, is to be identified with unceasing questioning and answering, especially of the assumptions inherent in more limited perspectives. In other words, justification is always perspectivally located, but there are minimally self-reflexive and self-critical perspectives, and there are perspectives upon perspectives in which criticism constantly probes more deeply. The fundamental point is that interrogations and conclusions are local. The important difference is between terminating interrogations and those that continue unceasingly to be critical and self-critical.’ This is a difference between narrow and wider spheres of locality, which does not sacrifice locality to unqualified generality. Since rationality

cannot be identified with an absolute and unconditioned reality, it is to be identified instead with inexhaustibility—an inexhaustibility in unterminating critical and reflexive methods. Ontologically speaking, reality is locality and inexhaustibility. Epistemologically speaking, rationality is interrogative perspectivity and inexhaustibility. To say that beings are inexhaustible is to say that what they are is a

function of location, and there are inexhaustibly diverse locations for any being. To say that knowledge is inexhaustible is to say similarly that what is known is a function of perspectival location, and there are inexhaustibly diverse locations for any cognitive object, including locales defined by rational interrogation itself.

KNOWING 97 A narrow way to conceive of the inexhaustibility of rationality is to identify rationality with inquiry and knowledge with science. Here the inexhaustibility of understanding is a function only of changing scientific practices and formulations through time, scientific revolutions. Here abnormal discourse is restricted to revolutionary forms of scientific explanation.* Such a view is deficient in two important ways. One is the truth of pragmatism, freed from its overly instrumentalist interpretations. Science is a human activity, and is conditioned by social practices, by traditions, by linguistic norms. But the establishment of such practices and norms is not the result of science alone, even at its most rational. And these practices and norms can be rational in the sense that they involve unremitting and reflexive criticism, even if we cannot reach universal agreement. Thus, a second deficiency is

that inquiry offers a very limited interpretation of rationality, for practice is equally to be considered rational. Science is intelligible and rational only based on criticism from the standpoint of rational perspectives that fall outside (but not absolutely outside) itself. Rationality is to be identified with questioning and answering; this view is shared by both Heidegger and Dewey.” But questions take many different forms, including questioning of the assumptions inherent in any given inquiry. Questions are perspectival, and there are questions that fall within a given perspective and admit of specific answers, questions that admit of only one valid answer in a given perspective, questions that admit of several valid answers but not just any answer, and, finally, questions that address the assumptions inherent in other questions and their answers. '° If we identify inquiry with rationality, science with knowledge, then the practices of science become closed under inquiry, and this ts irrational. The unremitting interrogativeness of inquiry cannot remain within inquiry alone, but opens to practice, to evaluation and decision, to concern with form, elegance, consistency, comprehensiveness, and so forth. Narrowly speaking, science and inquiry are normative paradigms of rationality under restriction. Their own inexhaustibility, a consequence of the inexhaustibility of human experience, leads to other norms, to criticism from the standpoint of modes of rationality other than science. These are the ramifications of epistemic locality. This interpretation of the inexhaustibility of rationality is supported by the plurality of established forms of knowledge. There are natural but also social and behavioral sciences, physical and biological sciences; there are natural and social sciences, but also philosophy, literary criticism, and history. The inexhaustibility of rationality and knowledge is expressed in the inexhaustibility of forms of rational practice—including new forms emergent through time: psychoanalysis, psychohistory, microphysics, as well as astrophysics. Inquiry here is but one of the major forms of rationality, inclusive primarily of the natural sciences, but grounded on a notion of truth and falsity based on experimentation and evidence. The criteria definitive of rationality here, if we

58 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING do not arbitrarily restrict them to science, are unremitting interrogation and validation. Generalizing, we identify rationality not with inquiry but with query in every form that admits of interrogation and validation. That there are inexhaustibly many such forms is one of the most important features of the locality of rationality. There is a negative and a positive side to inexhaustibility, but the tradition, with but a few exceptions, has treated inexhaustibility negatively and skeptically where it has recognized it at all. This has been especially true with respect to rationality and knowledge; inexhaustibility in knowing is regarded as incompleteness, a revelation of limits that display our cognitive inadequacies. Spinoza affirms a positive recognition of inexhaustibility in the absolute infiniteness of Substance with infinite attributes, infinite ways of conceiving of Substance; but adequate knowledge of a mode is nevertheless possible through Substance. Thus, Spinoza seems to recognize inexhaustibility metaphysically

through Substance and epistemologically through the infinite attributes of Substance, but supports a notion of adequate knowledge that is incompatible with such inexhaustibility. Adequate knowledge is limited in his view only by the causal dependence of modes on other modes inexhaustibly, though there is adequate knowledge of any mode through Substance—effectively an external

epistemological standpoint. What is required instead, and it is not entirely incompatible with Spinoza’s position, is recognition that Substance is absolutely infinite and inexhaustible, and thereby conceivable in infinitely many different ways; that finite modes, though finite relative to Substance, are infinite relative to each other, and therefore inexhaustible in two fundamental ways: in their dependence on Substance, which is absolutely infinite, and in their infinite dependence on other modes. If Substance is inexhaustible, it cannot be conceived exhaustively through any attribute, but it can be conceived adequately through an attribute, relative to that attribute (in that perspective), inadequately relative to infinitely many other attributes. If finite modes are inexhaustible, they cannot be conceived adequately relative to other modes or Substance, but they can be conceived adequately relative to a given attribute. Ade-

quacy and inadequacy of conception are complementary here.

The positive side of inexhaustibility in rationality is that reason is not simply limited by inexhaustibility but made possible by it. In Spinoza, the causal dependence of a finite mode on other finite modes is simultaneously both the source of the impossibility of any complete conception of that mode and the basis of any adequate conception of it under a particular attribute. lam arguing that rationality requires a complementary and inseparable relationship between adequacy and inadequacy of conception, that the skeptical emphasis on inadequacy is a distortion of the significance of inexhaustibility and of the nature of rationality. The simplest argument for the indeterminateness of reason is that without the openness of things to cognitive powers, we could never acquire knowledge of them. Completeness is effectively closure, and clo-

KNOWING 39 sure is incompatible with query. A related argument is that knowledge is the outcome of interrogation and evaluation, and questions are intelligible only where there is an opening to resolution. A self-contained reality is effectively closed to interrogation and mind. As Dewey argues, somewhat opaquely, knowing changes things in that it places them in new perspectives by asking new questions of them. '' It may not change the masses and velocities of astronomical objects, but it establishes the concepts of mass and velocity as epistemic centers. (Technically speaking, our discourse and theories are among the ramifications of the concepts of velocity and mass, which change, if only in their ramifications, with modification of language and understanding.) Let us suppose that we have undertaken detailed and complex forms of inquiry into the nature of material particles. Let us further suppose that such particles were once largely unknown, and that we have discovered both their existence—of quantum particles, for example—and their properties. We are supposing here that material nature is open to interrogation and to discovery. We now imagine that we have discovered everything there is to know about nature and material particles. What could such epistemic closure mean? One possibility is that under a particular theoretical description involving certain definite concepts—say mass, velocity, energy—vwe have discovered all the natural principles explanatory of natural events involving those concepts.

Such a closure will be more than arbitrary only tf (a) there is no alternative explanatory system that is superior in any respects whatever and (4) the system of material nature is either closed relative to other systems in definite and determinable ways or all-inclusive. The only way to assure ourselves of satisfying condition (a) is through further interrogation and inquiry. Here we can establish closure only by denying it methodologically. This is effectively the grounding of an external point of view of material nature internally in the interrogative perspectives of inquiry. The second condition either is effectively falsified by the fact that material events are taken to be open to knowledge through social and conceptual analysis, open to rationality and thus incomplete, or requires us to show that material nature includes everything we do as knowing beings. In the latter case, everything that is part of our rational life must be called into account, reflexively and unendingly. Only by unending interrogation, at unceasing levels of reflexivity, can we test the hypothesis that a given system is epistemically closed. Again, we must methodologically deny closure in order to establish its plausibility. It follows that to postulate closure externally is to make ourselves subject

internally to inexhaustible interrogations and investigations. Closure, like truth and knowledge, cannot be meaningful internally, relative to the activities definitive of rationality, and if closed externally must be grounded in inex-

haustible rational activities. Yet the argument does not suggest that what is claimed to be true about material nature is in fact not true. Rather, it points out that two dimensions of inexhaustibility are required for such claims about

Go INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING knowledge of physical events: the continuing activity of scientific inquiry to eliminate arbitrary assumptions and limiting concepts, and the openness of natural events to being known, therefore the capacity of thought to call itself into question. The capacity of thought to call itself into question inexhaustibly is not as such a basis for skepticism, and for two reasons. One is that skepticism itself must be called into question, established by reason; the other is that calling into question need not undermine what we know. Calling into question is itself qualified, from the standpoint of some perspective, and cannot as such defeat the legitimacy of other perspectives. There is a prevailing assumption (at least a tendency) in philosophy to demand absolutes and to embark on skepticism where absolutes are impossible. The negative side of inexhaustibility strongly tends to encourage this tendency; if inquiry and being are inexhaustible, knowledge is impossible. Yet the conception of rationality presupposed here is incoherent. Suppose that we knew whatever was true about material particles. What would rationality be under these conditions? We have presupposed rational activities only to abolish them. This tendency to define a theoretical or practical relationship that is abolished in its success while definitive of humanity in its finiteness is very strong in Hegel and Marx, for whom finiteness is the force driving history that is abolished when history reaches fulfillment. Human finiteness here is regarded as a defect that is eliminated when humanity becomes God. In epistemological terms, the internal activities definitive of rationality are effectively abolished and transformed into an external truth no longer dependent on reason when the latter is successful. Reason ceases to be local. This ts unintelligible. If rationality presupposes openness to new questions and to the means for answering them, the process of rational activity cannot cease without ceasing to be rational, and there cannot then be knowledge at the point at which rationality ends. Another way of putting this ts that whatever means are found to be required in rational activities must be regarded as essential to it, part of rationality. These include further questions to be put to Absolute Spirit in Hegel, which it does not seem to allow, further negations, further actions to be taken within the sphere in which action is transformed into freedom, as if unconditioned, in Marx, and, finally, revolutionary transformations that become part of scientific development. What Kuhn and Rorty call abnormal discourse is no less rational than the following of rules. '* Novel insights, imagination, creative invention, transcendence of prior conditions— all are essential to interrogation and validation. These are the lifeblood of rationality. The reason why knowledge of any subject matter cannot be complete is that completeness is incompatible with rational interrogation. The key to rationality here is the unterminating development of new interrogative perspectives in terms of which older conditions are called into question. Invention and departure are not concomitants of rationality; they are essential to it. The positive side of this relationship is that rationality enriches

KNOWING 61 what is known more than it matches it. Being is inexhaustible in that the identity of every being transcends any established conditions inexhaustibly. Being transcends any knowing, but, reciprocally, knowing transcends any prior con-

ditions by creating new conditions for rational interrogation. It follows that the future of science as well as of other forms of knowledge and practice, of query, is a condition of our present rational activities to the extent that they will transform the nature of reason. Knowledge of any subject matter will never be more than proximally, perspectivally, complete because rationality is

inexhaustible, incompletable, because, being nothing in itself, it is intelligible only in terms of what is done to interrogate and improve it. Knowledge could be complete only if rationality were complete, and such completion would signify the termination of human experience. Two conclusions follow. One is that the incompleteness of inexhaustibility is, not a manifestation of our finiteness as contrasted with the perfection of Being or God, but the basis of our human splendor; we do indeed transcend our antecedents and conditions. Every perspective is local, but locality in-

cludes inexhaustible ramifications, possibilities, and departures. An allknowing God could not be rational, and thereby could know nothing valid about finite beings. I take Spinoza’s absolutely infinite Substance to be unable

to know itself absolutely, since every conception, including God’s, divides Substance into infinite attributes. This means that there is always more to know—not an absolute limitation on knowledge but an expression of the power of reason to transform our surroundings and to enrich our experience. An all-knowing God is incompatible with inexhaustibility. Put another way: there are only finiteness and locality, but these are inexhaustible. The second conclusion is that the interrogative standpoints definitive of ra-

tionality cannot be antecedently determined or arbitrarily limited. Every standpoint that can bring reason under interrogation is both legitimate and required by it. Rationality is what it is because of the inexhaustibility of rational perspectives. These include, at a minimum, every way in which human activities can be called into question, not only by the physical sciences (in their inexhaustible diversity) but by the behavioral sciences, history, philosophy, and even the arts. Every form of interrogation brings before us different ways in which our rational activities are conditioned. It follows not only that a given form of query—scientific inquiry, for example—is inexhaustible within itself in never attaining rational completion, but that there are manifold and diverse forms of query that call each other into question. And there is the continual invention of new forms of interrogation, new kinds of questions and forms of validation. Science may be interrogated within itself as to its experimental rigor or logical consistency, but it may be criticized from the standpoint of related sciences (mathematical, logical, and behavioral sciences, for example) and also from the non-scientific standpoints of philosophy, politics, and art. There are important moral questions that must be asked about scientific prac-

62 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tices, even about science itself. And there are equally important questions about what the greatest works of art reveal about human beings who carry on scientific activities and about the surroundings of human experience in which science makes its way.

Query, then, is at least doubly inexhaustible, in any particular form and among diverse forms with diverse types of validation. Rationality too is inex-

haustible, requiring novel interrogative standpoints within any given form and the invention of new forms that bring established forms under interrogation. Intermodality and multimodality are essential to query. Query expresses inexhaustibility as the concept of inquiry alone cannot, in emphasizing the transcendence of any form of rationality under interrogation by other forms. There are many forms of query. The most obvious are science, ethics, philosophy, and art. Yet even this brief and diversified list is misleading. If query is identified with rationality—and that identification seems to me essential, a

rationality based on unterminating interrogation and validation—then not only are there many forms of query besides those listed, new interrogative forms (history, psychoanalysis, sociology), but there are many diverse forms falling under each of the above labels. Science is not one rational activity; it is divided within itself as the forms of rationality are divided among themselves. Along with being and rationality, science is inexhaustible; it is not a wholly

determinate form of understanding, for nothing is wholly determinate. Art and philosophy are notoriously manifold and inexhaustible. But even science, as it brings any being under its purview, and it is legitimate for it to do so, is

made irresistibly inexhaustible by the inexhaustibility of beings. Two important features of query have been noted. One is that each mode of query—including new modes as they are developed—establishes a sphere of interrogative standpoints for the others. The second is that each mode of query is pervasive throughout human life and experience, applicable (though not always productively applied) to any rational sphere. This means that we cannot

separate the modes of query into disjoint spheres; rationality is inexhaustibly entangled in form. The two principles together are the basis of the inexhaustibility of reason and of query. On the one hand, science has an unlimited

purview, in the sense that any subject matter whatsoever may be brought under scientific interrogation. One the other, science itself may be interrogated both from within, subject to scientific interrogation, and from the standpoint of other forms of query. There is therefore a complementarity of limits and unlimitedness inherent in query that is the basis of both its rationality and its inexhaustibility. Through the principle of inexhaustibility we find it possible to restore intelligibiliry to our surroundings. Reality and rationality alike are to be identified with inexhaustibility, the second in those forms that can be established in human experience through the local means available to human being.

KNOWING 63 The key to understanding query is through interrogation and validation, but especially through the distinctive forms of validation that define the modes

of query. We may note here the traditional distinction between inquiry and ethics, founded on the distinction between arguments based on descriptive premisses and those based on normative principles. The traditional claim that facts and values are entirely distinct is an expression of the different modes of argument or validation in science and in ethics or politics, in inquiry and in practice. The traditional distinction between efficient and final causation ts a similar expression of different modalities. The situation, however, is far more complex. First, there is no one supreme, all-inclusive science; nor is there any but an arbitrary assumption that there might be. There are many and diverse sciences, each with something to say to

the others, thereby opening them to modification. Even in the natural sciences, there are sciences of life as well as of matter, biology as well as chemistry and physics, and geology in which all the sciences (including human sciences) converge insofar as the earth is studied in an historical perspective. Arguments and proofs in mathematics are very different from those in physics, though we expect physics to be expressed in rich mathematical forms. There is a continuing tension in theoretical physics between the constraints imposed by system-

atic considerations, mathematical and logical, and those imposed by experimental evidence. Theoretical physics moves uneasily among the different kinds of norms imposed by the other sciences on which it depends. Yet its uneasiness—its being subject to the very different norms of mathematics, logic, systematic ideals, and empirical evidence, direct and indirect—is the source of its effectiveness. Put another way: physics is the supremely effective science because, not in spite, of its impurity, its ability to make use of contributions from different rational spheres of query. Physics is in this sense inexhaustible, open to whatever can contribute to it from any sphere. A pure physics, based on nothing but empirical evidence, would be an impoverished physics. This is where the logical empiricists went wrong—and it is where behavioral psychologists similarly go wrong.

Continental philosophers often regard the natural sciences with suspicion, as diminishing the richness of experience. They fail to see that the natu-

ral sciences are thoroughly inexhaustible, both from within, in what they make use of in their activities, and from without, in being subject to criticism

from the standpoint of other forms of query. Physics is subject to criticism from the standpoints of biology and chemistry, for example, to the extent that they reveal complex forms of organization that simpler assumptions in

physics cannot explain. Physics is also subject to criticism from the standpoints of philosophy (as inconsistent, superficial, and conceptually confused), ethics (as inhumane), and politics (as the squandering of limited resources). Physics is inexhaustible as a mode of query and inexhaustible as one among

64 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING many modes of query. Rationality is this multiple inexhaustibility in which every interrogative standpoint is queried indefinitely in its own terms and in terms of all other established interrogative spheres. Science is concerned with truth and falsity, but truth is no more confinable than is rationality. There is no one form of truth but as many forms as there are forms of assertive query. There is no one measure of truth but as many measures

as assertive judgment can provide. Mathematical truth is as different from truth in physics as it is from moral goodness. Similarly, the procedures of validation in microphysics and astrophysics are equatable only in the most superficial sense; their systematic assumptions and empirical procedures are very different. It will take a unified-field theory to bring astrophysics and quantum mechanics under a common set of norms, and then only in particular respects. Moreover, were such a theory possible, its form of validation would be very

different from the corresponding forms in its subaltern sciences, the ones it brings to unification. Unification is always limited, in certain respects. Unification in judgment is similarly limited, and produces new perspectives with their own forms of judgment and validation far more than it simplifies many perspectives under a single, uniform perspective. The relationship among the sciences is far more like a loosely-knit republic than like a single, completely centralized government. We can speak of truth so generally that it is relevant to all forms of rationality, though not thereby turning them into sciences. Not only is it reasonable to regard mathematical proof and scientific experimentation as procedures

leading to truth, but there are historical truth, mimetic truth in art, and truths about values and rules. Heidegger insists that poetry can be understood only as an uncovering that is a truth of being, though not a representational truth, since being cannot be represented truly. '’ If we accept so general a view of truth, we must supplement it with two qualifications that indicate its inexhaustibility. One is that if truth is generic over different forms of rationality, it takes a myriad of different forms, expressed through a multiplicity of forms of query. The second is that even in the most generic sense truth is not the only form of validation. That is, every judgment may be interpreted as an assertive judgment to which truth is relevant, and there may be many different kinds of truth, but there are other modes of judgment and validation as well, many of which are mutually incompatible. Science is concerned with truth and falsity; so are philosophy and history, psychoanalysis and theology. The procedures of scientific explanation have fre-

quently been regarded as normative over all forms of rationality, and the hypothetico-deductive method has been treated as the only manifestation of rationality. That such a method is a distortion of even the natural sciences is by now clear.“ But, far more important, truth in even an extended sense is inappropriate to validation in practice—moral and political—and in art, as well as

to many forms of philosophy. Rationality in practice is manifested not in

KNOWING 65 thought, but in deeds. There is a gap between deliberation and practice that must be traversed but cannot be traversed discursively.'? Kierkegaard suggests that rationality is to be transcended by faith, effectively arbitrarily and unconditionedly, but the deeper implication of his analysis is that norms of practice transcend norms of deliberation, calling for another mode of rationality. '° Reason in practice is a form of practice, including deliberation and decision, but essentially something done, with effects and consequences. One must know when and how to act——and one can fail in not acting despite thoughtful delib-

eration. The reason why propositional truth is relevant to practice is that deliberation is a form of inquiry; but morality and politics are forms of practice, deeds, demanding a different kind of query, a different form of rationality. We label validation in practice “rightness” and ‘goodness’ —labels that to-

gether indicate the inexhaustibility of ethical and political rationality. Far , more important, however, is the fact that goodness has no single application or reference. Like truth, goodness is perspectival, a function of contexts and validating activities. What is good under some circumstances, for some ends, is not good for others, and there is no absolute perspective under which goodness is uniform. The movement from narrow to more inclusive perspectives is es-

sential, but it does not dissipate the inexhaustibility of goods and norms in experience, since generality itself is only a conditioned form of value, not absolutely precedent over narrower spheres. What is good for many on the whole is not thereby made good for those who suffer deprivation individually; a greater

balance of good and evil does not eliminate the evil. Indeed, the tension between social and individual perspectives with their corresponding norms is a basic element of our social and political lives. Finally, not only is practice inexhaustible from within, in terms of the manifold perspectives in which practice takes place, but it is inexhaustible relative to other forms of rationality, where

truth and beauty compete with norms of practice—for example, in questions of the allocation of social resources to science and art. Art is also a form of query, or, more accurately, a plenitude of forms of query and rationality. The multiplicity and variety here are so great that art is often denied rationality, but the denial is based on the repudiation of inexhaustibility and an affirmation of foundations. Art is rational because evaluation and

criticism are intrinsic to it. Interrogation is unremitting in art, the center of its activities, both for the artist in his work and for audiences and critics. Art does not easily admit of consensus, but neither, I would argue, do science and politics when the inexhaustibility of relevant perspectives is taken into account. Some claims of physics are consensual, but these are relatively rare and

possibly no more common than consensus on masterpieces of art. What is more relevant is how validation in science is carried on in contrast with valida-

tion in art, which, like practice, is manifested not in thought, 1n logical or empirical tests, but in this case in works. Art is a form of fabrication, and what is valid is a constructed work, an achievement, an addition to our experience.

66 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Art manifests inexhaustibility by enriching our experience, supplementing it by inexhaustibly rich and diverse loci and perspectives.'’ There is an inexhaustible diversity of works, styles, and kinds of art-—inexhaustibility within art as a form of query—as well as an inexhaustibility among the different modes of query in interaction, for works of art can teach us important truths and give us moral insights, can incorporate every other form of rationality into themselves, still maintaining their unique forms of rationality. Science, ethics and politics, philosophy, and art are the major forms of query, each an inexhaustible plenitude of forms. History, psychoanalysis, and art criticism are additional forms of query with unique methods and forms of validation. Query is inexhaustible in any given form, inexhaustible among the different forms in interrelation, and inexhaustible in the development of new forms. Rationality as query ts inexhaustible in its production of definite forms of interrogation and validation that are open to each other inexhaustibly and to the development of new forms out of combinations of the old. Query manifests the two central dimensions of inexhaustibility: the determinateness of methods of validation within a mode of query and the transcendence of any

determinate conditions by other, sometimes new, forms of query. In this sense, rationality manifests inexhaustibility primarily in its new forms and new questions—dquestions that can be given perspectivally determinate and local answers but never final or complete answers, closed to further query.

RATIONALITY

Reason is to be identified with query. It can be identified with nothing else, for

only within query do we find the methodic and pervasive concern with in| vention, interrogation, and validation that rationality comprises. Only within query do we find the reflexive interrogation and unlimited self-criticism essential to reason. Rationality here is unceasing interrogation, a process in which no conditions can be considered settled without qualification; for, recurrently, new perspectives are engendered in which established conditions are no longer valid, and new critical perspectives are developed in terms of which the qualifi-

cations and presuppositions of earlier queries may be called into question. Query here is the process in which questioning rises to the highest level of reflexivity that we can sustain—in fact, are able to sustain only over time and into the future. It is also the process to which invention belongs intrinsically, inventive judgments in response to the interrogations that define its rationality. Query has two complementary dimensions corresponding to the dimensions of determinateness and indeterminateness. Query is always local, qualified by conditions and circumstances, and can establish valid judgments only within and for certain perspectives; but query is also the process in which the conditions definitive of past perspectives are called into question unremittingly, in

KNOWING 67 which new perspectives are engendered by interrogation itself. Thus, the replies to both relativism and skepticism, in their traditional forms, emerge from within query. The fundamental reply is that only through query can any rational answer be given. Either relativism and skepticism are irrational and unintelligible, or they presuppose what they would refute. There is a negative side to this insight, however, for both relativism and skepticism are true with qualifications: every query, every judgment, is fallible, qualified, to be interrogated unceasingly. Conversely, what is locally valid is valid, and there is no unqualified validation. Rationality, then, is but the diverse processes whereby we interrogate our surroundings and ourselves through judgment, developing procedures for validating judgments and for calling them into question at higher or deeper levels and within new perspectives. Only what withstands this process through time and over manifold perspectives can be considered knowledge—though validation itself is perspectival and there can be no judgment valid for all perspectives, without qualification. There are two senses of knowledge relevant here, one much stronger than the other, to be understood in terms of the unceasing nature of query and identified with what withstands diverse forms of interrogation. There are judgments inhabiting our daily experiences on which we act because no better choices are available to us. Within their perspectives, such judgments are valid, but they are not rational, for they have not withstood unremitting interrogation and criticism. Valid judgments may be considered known within the perspectives for which they are valid, but this is a very weak sense of knowledge. In this sense, many judgments are (weakly) known without being rational, without being the outcome of query. In this weak sense, knowledge is to be identified with valid judgment but not with query. In the stronger sense, knowledge is the outcome of query, an outcome sustained through unending interrogation and reinterrogation, criticism and self-criticism, invention and transformation. Knowledge here is the valid result of rational activities, an unending process of interrogation. Nevertheless, no unqualified distinction can be sustained between the strong and the weak senses of knowledge, for no result of query can be valid for all perspectives, under all forms of interrogation. There is no rationality, no insight into its nature, except through query. And query is inexhaustible. Science, ethics, art, and philosophy are the typical, established forms of query, the plural manifestations of rationality. And each of them is inexhaustible. There are many sciences and no plausible master science under which all may be coordinated, though it is an important form of query to attempt such coordination, the form associated with syndetic judgment. It is reasonable to seek to join astrophysics and microphysics in a single | theory, but the result may be no master science under which each is to be subsumed. It is necessary to bring chemistry and physics into conjunction at the atomic level; but in the lifetime of our species the large-scale properties of or-

68 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ganic molecules may not be determinable from atomic properties alone, nor may we expect them to be if structural configurations are essential to organic properties. Biology ts advancing today through microbiology—chemistry and physics. But only some of the genetic properties of complex living systems can be expected to follow from such connections. Mathematics is essential to many empirical sciences, but it also has its own integrity. The most plausible way to regard these different natural and mathematical sciences is that each inexhaustibly transcends its roles in relation to the others, but that there are important and genuine connections among them. In other words, the plenitude of sciences speaks to the inexhaustibility of rationality. This plenitude has the dimensions of inexhaustibility: different sciences are related all along their boundaries, in inexhaustible ways, but each transcends its relations with other sciences and other forms of knowledge. The inexhaustibility of forms of rationality is directly parallel to the inexhaustibility of locality, the manifold relations and conditions of every being conjoined with the manifold transcendence by every being of any of its relations and conditions. There are many natural sciences, each containing within itself manifold forms and expressions. There are also diverse human sciences, each manifest-

ing the inexhaustibility of human being, but manifesting inexhaustibility more strikingly in their plurality. Are all the sciences subordinate forms of a supreme human science? That would be incompatible with the inexhaustibility of human being. Specifically, however, there could be such a supreme human science only if there existed a single perspective on human being that took precedence over all the others. There is no such perspective, not only because of

the inexhaustibility of being and of human being, the inexhaustibility of perspectives and qualifications for judgment, not only because of the inexhaust-

ibility of query in its unceasing interrogation, but because of the diverse modalities of judgment and query. There are many different legitimate and valid ways to interrogate human being through query. Rorty describes these as the different kinds of interests we have in human beings—as moral agents as well as natural objects, for example.'* The point is far stronger: there are no

external criteria for establishing one mode of query as dominant over the others, and each form establishes its own norms. Even more important, comprehensive validation over many different perspectives is a superior value relative only to syndetic judgment, not to all forms of judgment and query. The prevailing tension between public and private interests shows this clearly; there is no unqualified precedence of public over private norms, only a qualified precedence. Indeed, there are perspectives in which private interests are the only valid interests. The value of a work of art for an individual is not always an expression of tts public life, for it may evoke feelings that have only a

private, local history. This principle is especially true for popular and transitory works. Public norms and validation take precedence where they should— in those public, shared perspectives that require appropriate forms of valida-

KNOWING 69 tion,’ and these too are always local. The conclusion is that the different forms of query are interrogable from within other forms of query, but each transcends the others inexhaustibly in its own norms and validations. Not only may we be

interested in human beings and our surroundings in many ways, but rationality requires these ways, since criticism must be taken both from within any given form of query and from the standpoint of other forms of query, and there is no absolutely privileged standpoint for interrogation and criticism. There are many and diverse natural sciences and many and diverse human sciences, each in intimate relationship to some others, but transcendent in relation to them nevertheless. Each is interrogable from within any given form of query as well as from the standpoint of other modes of query, though often we must seek perspectives for interrogation from the standpoint of any par-

ticular mode. Inexhaustibility in rationality here entails intermodality in judgment, and this is one of the most important and overlooked features of rationality. This intermodality is the result of the requirement that interrogation in query be as pervasive and reflexive as possible, including criticisms from any of the other forms of query and including new forms engendered in

the processes of interrogation. Indeed, intermodality is one of the prime sources of new forms of query, though new forms are also engendered by division within an established form. I have identified four modes of judgment: assertive, practical, fabricative, and syndetic. There are established forms of query associated with each of these modes and established forms involving several of these modes in conjunction: intermodal query. Whether each of these forms of query is to be interpreted as engendering a new mode of judgment is not an easy question to answer, but it

may not have to be answered, since the manifestation of inexhaustibility in multimodality and intermodality in judgment are sufficient for our understanding of rationality, however we interpret some of the more sophisticated forms of query. Science is the form of query we may associate most directly with assertive judgment, though we should not overlook such very different forms of assertive query as court proceedings and historical explanation. Assertive judgment

is concerned with truth and falsity; assertive query (science, in particular) is concerned with establishing rational procedures to justify claims of truth and falsity. It is clear, however, that different sciences have evolved quite different procedures: mathematical and logical sciences employ axiomatization and deductive proofs in conjunction with subtle considerations of applicability. Experimental sciences employ complex procedures, often involving sensitive and sophisticated instruments, to justify detailed factual conclusions. Theoretical sciences are far more concerned with systematic considerations, and tend to synthesize procedures drawn from both experimental and mathematical sciences. In all these cases, I suggest, the typical and central concern in scientific query is with reaching conclusions that adjudicate among competing pos-

7O INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING sibilities. Another way of putting this is that scientific query is that form of rationality in which univocity ts the predominant norm, a norm—¥in fact, an ideal—that cannot be realized in any particular case. A true conclusion is incompatible with any competing alternative. Where different judgments are regarded as jointly valid in science, it is because they “say the same thing in different ways.” This procedure, of treating jointly valid judgments in assertive query as equivalent, not simply is a descriptive truth, but exhibits the standard that is definitive of assertive query. This principle of equivalence is an element of practice in science that is essential to its nature and necessary to its SUCCESS. .

Scientific query is predominantly linguistic, though we should not overlook the important forms of practice involved in experimental activities and the

systematic considerations of the theoretical sciences. No doubt, part of the reason for the linguistic nature of science is that language is needed for the detailed precision essential to adjudicating among possibilities and for testing assertive judgments at an increasingly sensitive level of precision. Assertions are not intrinsically linguistic. There are assertive judgments in everyday activities that are not linguistic or even propositional: signals given by gesture, facial expressions, bodily attitudes, tones of voice. There are non-linguistic assertions in representational works of art, in painting and sculpture, even in dance and music.” But these modes of expression are unable to meet the challenge of unceasing interrogation in assertive query, once that challenge has been imposed. Other forms of judgment and query pass into linguistic expression under the pressure of propositional interrogation. Assertive query functions with the essential norm of univocity, of adjudicat-

ing among possibilities, not only in science, but in courts of law and even religion, where controversies are settled by Scripture or authority. Nevertheless, the norms and criteria employed in establishing univocity are both conditioned by historical circumstances and subject to norms from other forms of query——in particular, systematic constraints based on fabricative as well as syndetic norms, experimental norms derived from practice. Science, therefore, predominantly assertive query, is fundamentally intermodal, for it is systematic, synthetic, and a form of practice. Many different modes of judgment play a joint role in scientific query in the service of assertive judgment, to the end of attaining a truth incompatible with competing possibilities. Practical judgment pervades our understanding of human experience—no more so, perhaps, than any of the other modes of judgment, each of which ts pervasive throughout judgment in experience, but more overtly, since it ts natural to interpret whatever we do as an action, including asserting and building. The natural forms of query we may associate with practical judgment are ethics and politics, but we should include what Kant calls “prudence,” which I identify with utility, with a concern for consequences. All practical judgment is concerned with consequences, either directly or indi-

KNOWING 71 rectly, and this is its distinguishing characteristic relative to the other modes of judgment. We can plausibly consider science to be concerned, not with particular consequences in its judgments, not with controlling and directing those consequences, but with employing its activities (with their consequences) to reach empirically true conclusions. Practical query reverses this relationship, for it employs assertions in deliberation, but its concern is with control, with the production of specific events and achievements. Practical query, then, is concerned with consequences at two levels: one addressing the specific practices that produce specific results; the other, the methods for evaluating those results. Ethics is largely that form of query that is concerned with the validation of

the results of practice, distinguished, to the extent that is possible, from the means and practices that produce those results. In this respect, ethics has seemed a propositional or linguistic activity, but this is an error. Practical judgment is not thought or assertion, but practice, doing. The part of ethics that is concerned with principles and norms, as distinct from actions, is deliberation; it is a part of but not identifiable with practical judgment, and is more assertion than practice. It is, of course, deeply influenced by logical and systematic considerations (syndetic and fabricative judgment) and by factual investigations involving means for achieving certain ends (primarily assertive judgment). Ethics is, then, as intermodal as science is, but again to the ends of a specific mode of judgment: control of consequences. Practical judgment is what we do, the actions that produce satisfactory results. I have described ethics as in part propositional, involving deliberation. There is also propositional or assertive deliberation involving the consequences

of particular deeds. The suggestion is that practical query, if not practical judgment, requires propositional and linguistic deliberation to be rational. At some level, or in some ways, this conclusion is legitimate, for there are questions involving satisfactory actions that can only be answered linguistically, propositionally, assertively, even scientifically. An excellent example is found in political deliberations with respect to the expenditure of public funds in capital projects, where detailed information on the consequences of the projects is imperative. But not all query is propositional, and there are forms of practical query that are essentially and predominantly actions—for example, in sports and everyday activities where we train our habits and our feelings by practice and repetition. The tradition of silent wise men and women shows that there can be thoughtful and responsive agents who act successfully without overt deliberation. The obscurity of their utterances does not prove the irrationality of their actions, only the irrationality of their assertions. In the mode of practical judgment, it is actions and results that matter. In collective practical query—politics in particular—it is what is accomplished and how that is fundamental, regardless of the propositional deliberations that may enter into political considerations.

72 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Another extreme though plausible view is that practical judgment is always physical, always explicitly involves the body. A judgment can have consequences only if it is embodied. Here we must note that works of art and scientific theories are among the most consequential of judgments while the ways in which they are embodied frequently are not specifically relevant. While the

wise human being acts without explicit propositional deliberation and linguistic assertion, other human beings act through their words and thoughts more than their bodies, though it goes without saying that they could neither speak nor think without a body. We are again addressing the inexhaustibility of human being, one consequence of which is that we cannot sharply define the differential features of judgment and experience. The human body is one of the most pervasive limiting conditions of human being and one of the most profound manifestations of its inexhaustibility. The rational body is not distinct from whatever else is human, or from whatever else is rational, but shares in the complementarity of finiteness and inexhaustibility that is the condition of every being as well as human being. Like science, practical query is typically intermodal and multiperspectival, for success is conditioned by circumstances and by perspectives, and there are many different perspectives relative to any given course of action. Any successful practice will be unsuccessful in some relevant perspectives—unsuccessful for some agents while successful for others, unsuccessful for some agents under some circumstances while successful for them under other circumstances. If ethics is concerned with the most defensible norms for individuals in relation to other individuals, politics is that mode of practical query in which the conflicting and incompatible perspectives of different persons are in question, in which success and failure, control and disarray, are of predominant concern. Where assertive query has univocity in truth as its fundamental concern, but never quite attains it, practical judgment seeks consensus but is always perme-

ated by disagreement and failure. Practical query cannot produce complete agreement, for the perspectives of practice vary with circumstances and agents, and what is right for one agent may not be right for another (if their capacities are very different, for example). Ethics seeks universal norms of practice, but is

haunted by variation. Politics has no universal norms, though it must be guided by moral ideals, and is haunted by conflicting perspectives. There is no

way in practical judgment to adjudicate among all conflicting choices, only among a few. We may regard practical judgment as that form of query in which rationality functions under the requirement to produce satisfactory results in the context of irreducibly conflicting possibilities. Practical query is haunted by inexhaustibility as assertive query appears not to be—but nevertheless is, in manifold ways. Art is the form of query naturally to be associated with fabricative judgment. I shall postulate here, without defense, that art defines a unique form of query and that, consequently, fabricative judgment is not equivalent with as-

KNOWING 73 sertive or practical judgment.*' Yet the principles I have discussed above that express inexhaustibility in judgment make the distinctiveness of art and the sovereignty of works of art far more intelligible than these commonly are in the tradition, where the distinctiveness of fabricative judgment is too often thought to require its separation from the other modes of judgment. Every mode of

judgment may legitimately be interpreted to be relevant to any judgment, though there are many different modes of judgment with different modes of validation. Each mode of validation ts effectively unintelligible as a form of validation from the standpoint of any other mode, yet the modes are nevertheless conjointly relevant. This multimodality in judgment enables us to understand how art can so frequently be assertive and moral while maintaining its own character. We must add to this multimodality of art its intermodality, for where works of art are profoundly moral or philosophical in character, where they incorporate essential features of other modes of judgment besides fabricative judgment—as in Moby Dick or Antigone—they can become greater works of art, greater because of their intermodality. The natural conclusion is

that art is rational, in its own distinctive ways, and that it is greater as it is more rational, attaining higher and richer levels of synthesis and reflexivity, requiring intermodality as well as multimodality. Artistic query is indefinitely

interrogative; that is its rationality. Where it interrogates our surroundings and experience by its fabricative activities, interrogates its own processes, other forms of rationality, and even query itself, it requires intermodality and attains a remarkable power. Fabricative judgment is making, where assertive and practical judgment are saying and doing, respectively. Science is concerned with truth; practice, with consequences and control. Art is concerned with fabrication, the creation of sovereign works. From the standpoint of truth and control, these works may have something to offer, but their validity as fabrications lies in their being, their novelty, distinctiveness, and sovereignty.” This distinctiveness is a function of the interplay of similarities and differences, rising to higher and higher levels of reflexivity. I have called this interplay ‘‘contrast.”’ Fabricative judg-

ment, especially as art, manifests inexhaustibility through contrast.” This conclusion is a natural consequence of the recognition that the purpose of fabricative judgment is to create novel and distinctive beings. Here assertive and

practical judgments contribute to distinctiveness and intensity of contrast, but do not supplant them. It follows from the association of rationality with query that rationality is practically equivalent with multimodality and intermodality in judgment. The indefinitely interrogative and inventive character of query leads irresistibly to intermodality based on the requirement that interrogation be from indefinitely novel points of view and the condition that there are manifold modes

of judgment. We may consider here philosophy, which is obviously intermodal in many of its forms, though some are associated particularly with asser-

74 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tive and practical judgment. There are forms of logical analysis closely related to mathematics—primarily assertive judgment, but enriched by applications in ethics and ontology. There are also forms of philosophy in which achievement of the good life is of supreme value, and philosophy here is essentially a form of practical judgment. But philosophy seems to me most typically to be associated with syndetic query, with comprehensiveness and synthesis, with breadth and scope. I am speaking particularly of metaphysics, especially in its

most systematic forms, whose primary goal I take to be one of generality. There is syndetic judgment that is relative to science, a concern for system and breadth, but it is subordinate to truth and verification. There is syndetic judgment in ethics, a concern for principles of universal scope, but it is subordinate to the control over events provided by these principles. There is syndetic judgment in art, but it is not necessary to art, even to great art. Only in philosophy, in metaphysics, is generality or breadth a paramount, intrinsic value. There are innumerable other forms of query that emerge from multimodality and intermodality in judgment, from the interminably interrogative char-

acter of query. The constant emergence of new questions and interrogative standpoints generates new methods for answering those questions, new forms of validation. There are new sciences emergent in the intersection of established sciences: biophysics, sociobiology, social psychology. There are new forms of query of even more remarkable character: psychoanalysis, psychohistory, structuralism. Taking just one of these, psychoanalysis, I suggest that we find there a form of query that, despite its early claims to be an empirical science, competitive with behaviorism and gestalt psychology as theoretical alternatives, has taken on a general and synthetic character. Psychoanalysis offers us a comprehensive vision of our entire civilization, a comprehensive perspective on human experience. As recent European philosophers and psychologists have understood, psychoanalysis is not a particular and minor branch of psychology; it has become a theory of human experience, a synthetic perspective on human being.” It offers a distinctive synthesis of assertive, prac-

tical, fabricative, and syndetic judgment. It makes claims, effects therapy, synthesizes our understanding of dreams, art, and rationality under a common network of principles, and extends over all domains of human experience. The power of Freud's vision is not simply that of a science of human being, but that of a remarkably general view of human being from within a particular archaeology of human experience.” Psychoanalysis, in this rich and general sense, is a novel and distinctive form of query. In a similar way, Marxist political economy, stripped of its scientific pretensions, offers a comprehensive and novel vision of human experience and being. Each of these forms of query has tended to become authoritarian, ideological, as have many of the traditional forms. The desire to limit inexhaustibility under assertive query is powerful, but it is both mistaken and in vain. We are forced to reject both Marxism and psychoanalysis as forms of rationality if they

KNOWING 75 would replace every other form. We can acknowledge their truly remarkable achievements if we regard them as alternative forms of query, coexistent with other forms, attained through the synthetic powers of human reason. Each must be criticized unendingly, interrogated unceasingly, especially concerning its fundamental and defining assumptions. Yet each offers a perspective for the unceasing interrogation and criticism of other perspectives. This continuing activity is the essential feature of rationality, and our ability to sustain 1t 1s the greatest achievement of our humanity.

KNOWLEDGE

Rationality is query, and knowledge—1n the strong sense, the only one worth considering here—is the valid outcome of query. That is all that need be said about knowledge from the standpoint of identifying it uniquely and giving its fundamental properties. Yet the epistemological tradition is old and promi-

nent, and it is worth tracing some of the implications of the approach to knowledge through query for some traditional epistemological problems as well as for those typical forms of judgment that permeate experience. Judgments are perspectival. The nature of a judgment is a function of the perspectives in which it is located; conversely, a judgment contributes to the determination of the perspectives in which it its located. I have emphasized two

aspects of this perspectival determination of judgments. One is that judgments are intelligible only from a perspectival standpoint. The other is that there are diverse modes of judgment. Nevertheless, perspectives can be found for any judgment in which it can have any modality, and we often seek to create new perspectives in which a judgment can be given new modal characteristics. It follows that the nature of a judgment is ambiguous, inexhaustible. Sometimes we find it useful to speak of one judgment in different locations. In other cases, we find it more effective to distinguish one judgment into many judg-

ments, depending on location, sometimes different judgments of differing modalities. We are noting here the different unisons, even superaltern unisons, of judgments in different locations. Can we identify scientific knowledge with validated assertive judgment? The most obvious answer, given above, is that we can identify it with nothing else. The basis for a distinction between them must lie within query itself. Thus, either the activities of science justify a distinction between claims made and justified in one perspective, but unjustified (even falsified) in another, or there is no other way within science for that distinction to be made and vali-

dated. (I am for the moment setting aside the intermodality of query.) Here Peirce’s general approach to truth is the only legitimate one.*° The major assumptions in Peirce’s account are that inquiry is unremittingly self-critical, interrogative, and inventive, that only such inquiry can justify a claim to.

76 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING truth, and, finally, that consensus will be reached through time and further inquiry. The first two assumptions are inherent in any theory of query as the basis of knowledge. The last is the point at issue. I have distinguished a weak and a strong sense of knowledge: one, simply valid judgment in some perspective, the other, the outcome of unterminating query. The question is of the relationship between these senses. Properly speaking, the identification of knowledge with the outcome of query is a theory of knowing, not of knowledge. Query is the activity in which reason is constituted and employed, in which questions of all kinds that are relevant to valid judgments are encouraged, and in which methods and perspectives are created both for answering these questions and for developing new questions. Knowing is query; scientific knowing is scientific inquiry. Given the diversity of forms of query, and the diverse modalities of judgment, it is not plausible to offer a single formulation definitive of knowledge. Yet we may distinguish at least the following within scientific inquiry: (a) judgments valid in no established perspectives, though we cannot rule out the possibility that other perspectives may be found in which these judgments may be valid; (4) judgments valid in certain perspectives at one time but invalid at another time; (c) judgments valid in some perspectives but not valid in other perspectives; (¢) judgments valid for all perspectives, at least for all perspectives of a particular kind (for example, all future perspectives, all established perspectives, all perspectives relevant under ongoing scientific inquiry). Peirce’s definition of truth assumes that justification can become stabilized through time and inquiry, can reach consensus. There are certain truths we may plausibly expect every rational person to agree upon eventually: the number of planets, the value of pi—though even in these cases there are controversies that appear to be enduring, for example, whether borderline astronomical objects are planets, the value of some of the remote digits in the decimal expansion of pi. It is by no means obvious that consensus is natural or likely in other forms of query, though there are certain principles we may suppose every agent may agree upon and there may be certain works of art everyone may agree

are masterpieces. An example of the former is that if the consequences of a proposed action are more destructive than any known alternative, while having no other saving value, it should not be performed. An example of the latter is

Don Giovanni, Yet it is not unreasonable to suppose that changes in human conditions may make certain works of art no longer valuable, that members of certain societies may not share our view of disadvantageous consequences. In all these cases, then, the question at issue is how we are to understand the validation produced by query where what is valid in some perspectives is not valid in others, and conversely. We may set aside the two extreme cases as of no practical relevance—judgments valid in no perspectives and judgments valid in all. Both are incompatible with locality. We may always construct perspec-

KNOWING 77 tives in which judgments may be validated; no judgments may be valid in all perspectives without qualification. Suppose, however, we take Peirce’s approach to be definitive and through it distinguish validation through query from knowledge valid in all relevant perspectives. It is certainly possible that we might endlessly carry on scientific inquiries concerning the nature of remote astronomical systems without conclusively settling their fundamental properties. Even worse, we might inquire into certain matters incessantly and continue to err in the same ways. There is a point to skepticism, that no epistemic idea] is reachable in practice. But even skepticism must be located within query to be valid, and its claims about the impossibility of reaching the ideal are unconditioned. If we demand a regulative ideal in which knowledge transcends any justification—and, being inexhaustible, knowledge will always transcend any particular justification— then, practically speaking, there is still only query. The self-criticism Peirce postulates as the basis of inquiry is essential even to the critical position that consensus cannot be reached, a claim that itself must be validated by inquiry. All these cases, then, come down to the single case of different validations in different perspectives—a case particularly forceful in relation to the different modes of query, but of relevance within any particular mode, including science. (I am setting aside the diversity of sciences to be dealt with under the

second form of the question.) We find that science changes through time, changes its perspectives, language, assumptions, and fundamental principles, so that what was valid at one time is valid no longer—but toa greater or lesser extent, conversely, what is now considered valid would not have been considered valid earlier. Scientific validation is a function of experiments and observations, but also of complex activities conditioned by social, linguistic, and intellectual practices, even of assumptions concerning the nature of an intelligible reality. To take an extreme example, previously noted: even the value of pi is a function both of the rules of arithmetic and of our application of these rules (for rules do not interpret themselves) and applications may change over time.*’ Therefore, we cannot say that the value of pi is now determined for all time (beyond the 10,000th, 100, 000th, or 10'’th decimal place, for example). The conclusion is that knowledge as well as query is inexhaustible. But we must not misrepresent the nature of this inexhaustibility. It is a complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness, not indeterminateness alone. In determining that a judgment is valid in certain perspectives, we suggest that it may not be valid in other perspectives—requiring additional query— but we also determine its validity in some perspectives, in the ones in question. On one side of inexhaustibility, knowledge transcends any particular validations and justifications; on the other, validation through query is the only means for producing knowledge. We have here an example of the complementarity of finiteness and inexhaustibility in relation to query; scientific knowl-

78 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING edge is the outcome of valid inquiry but always transcends any particular inquiries. This complementary relationship of determination and transcendence is the nature of inexhaustibility. The conclusion is that we must reject all foundational theories of knowledge because they regard knowledge as completable while being and knowing are inexhaustible; but we must also reject all skeptical theories of knowledge because they ignore the determinateness inherent in infinite inexhaustibility. Knowledge is inexhaustible because being is inexhaustible—though, in the reverse and complementary sense, being is inexhaustible in experience because

experience, reason, and therefore knowledge are inexhaustible. This latter sense is that in which being is reached through knowledge and reason, and must include all the ways in which knowledge is attained. Knowledge is inexhaustible in inexhaustible ways, but each manifests the transcendence of any knowing—of any being—relative to its conditions while they are conditions for it and constitute it. Here scientific knowledge transcends any scientific inquiry, any evidence, any proof, any experimental procedures. The traditional problem of induction is but a particular case of the transcendence of knowledge over any evidential conditions. Empirical knowledge inexhaustibly transcends any particular evidence, partly because new evidence may emerge in the future, because the future comprises new perspectives in which older forms of validation are no longer valid, partly because every conclusion depends on procedures and rules that are themselves questionable in other perspectives, under different conditions of theory-construction, language, regulative ideals, and so forth. But this transcendence of knowledge over its conditions is not re-

stricted to empirical knowledge, as the example concerning pi indicates. What pi is, in its furthest decimal places, what it can be known to be, cannot be settled conclusively by any procedures, since even those procedures are open

to interpretation and interrogation in other perspectives, in the future. The transcendence of scientific knowledge over its justifications is a particular example of the transcendence of any being over any of its conditions, and is by no

means exclusively a regulative condition of the limitations of knowledge. What science tells us is true, when valid, ts true; but it is not the only truth, even in science, and certainly not in other forms of inquiry.

We come, then, to the second issue, to be treated in a similar way, with similar conclusions, of the diversity of the forms of query. Knowledge is inexhaustible within any form of query in that it transcends any validating condi-

tions. But knowledge as valid judgment is also inexhaustible in that every judgment can be given different modalities; therefore, any subject matter can be interrogated from many different standpoints varying with modalities of

judgment and with intermodality. Every mode of judgment is pervasive throughout judgment and experience; therefore, any judgment is interrogable from the standpoint of any form of query. Here the form of validation appro-

KNOWING 79 priate to any particular mode of query is both interrogable from the standpoint

of any other mode of validation and irreducible to that mode of validation. That is, it is unintelligible as a mode of validation from the standpoint of other modes while it is interrogable as judgment in terms of those other modes. Science is a form of human activity, and may be interrogated in terms of its utility and consequences, in the ways it improves or harms human life. Reciprocally, moral principles are pervasive forms of human judgment and are interrogable historically and anthropologically in their functions and variations throughout human customs. In the first case, scientific truth is transformed into a form of utility, accommodating the hypothesis that in some cases error may be bene-

ficial. In the second case, the obligatory force of moral principles is transformed into a social practice whose causal antecedents and consequences are interrogable, but the demands morality imposes on us are unintelligible from any scientific point of view. This difference has traditionally been characterized as a gap between facts and values, and that way of regarding the matter is plausible as long as we emphasize both that assertive and practical judgment, scientific and ethical query, are different modes of judgment and query, and that each profoundly overlaps with the ramifications of the other throughout experience. The different modes of judgment are distinguishable but not separable. Similarly, therefore, fabricative judgment and art, its most prominent form of query, are pervasive throughout judgment and experience, with their own modes of validation. Any scientific theory is interrogable from the standpoint of systematic rigor and elegance, the clarity, power, and even beauty of its

system. Here truth may be viewed as an aesthetic condition, a true theory being more beautiful, more elegant, than a false one. But the truth of a scientific claim is not determinable from within the purview of fabricative query; nor is the beauty of a work of art determinable by scientific inquiry. Syndetic judgment pervades all the modes of query, and we are deeply concerned with the breadth and generality of a scientific theory, the comprehensiveness and range of a novel or poem. Yet such generality is not scientific truth or even aesthetic value, though it is important to them in certain perspectives. Universality is fundamental in our understanding of moral principles, but not in politics or in individual examples of practice; and universality is largely irrelevant in other forms of action such as sports and business, both of which are primarily practical query. Some of the different modalities in query have been acknowledged by tradi-

tional distinctions such as between knowing that and knowing how. The major difficulty with this distinction is its limitation toa single opposition, for if knowing through assertive query or science is knowledge that, and practical query gives us knowledge how, then art gives us knowledge in (the work of art) and philosophy gives us knowledge over (a broad range of human perspectives). Furthermore, each of these may be regarded as a form of knowledge

80 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING about. Asked if he has knowledge about painting, a painter could simply paint, showing something of what he knows about painting, including color and line; yet he could also paint a portrait or a scene to display something of what he knows about a person or landscape. The portrait here is not simply an assertive judgment, though it may be assertive in part, for many equally fine and illuminating portraits could be painted of a given person, and they could all equally be knowledge about that person without a conflict demanding univocal resolution. Similarly, an athlete knows about his abilities, about his body, and about his sport, often without being able to express very much of his knowledge in language. In every case, knowledge in one of the modes of query requires supplementation both by further query within that mode and by further query in other modes. The standard modes of query are therefore multifarious and diverse, inex-

haustible within themselves and in their interrelations. But there are also many forms of query other than the ones mentioned. History may be characterized as knowledge whence: knowledge of the past from the standpoint of the present. Knowledge of the past, like all knowledge, must be from some point of view, some perspective, and the perspective of the time of events takes no absolute precedence over other perspectives; nor can it be historical where given such precedence. But when history includes interpretations in terms of present perspectives and for our present lives, it is not simply assertive query. Psychoanalysis, regarded as a form of knowledge pervading our culture but grounded in individual case histories and with a prominent concern for the transformation of human lives, is, I would say, knowledge toward. So, I believe, are dialectical materialism and other forms of revolutionary politics: knowledge toward a different future through action. The common teleological elements of psychoanalysis and historical materialism underlie the fusion attempted in critical theory.** Ricoeur has described Freud’s theory as offering both an archaeology and a teleology.” The combination of the two promotes something different from merely a form of practice, individual psychotherapy, or a form of science: namely, a comprehensive vision of humanity in terms of which we may interpret everything we do, in some cases becoming more effective agents thereby. Such examples as dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis, with their controversial histories, bring us to another set of issues. The inexhaustibility of knowledge is manifested, I am arguing, within any given mode of query in its

further interrogations and validations and in the multiplicity of forms of query, each applicable to any judgment, including other forms of query. Knowledge is judgment validated through query in the inexhaustible forms of judgment and validation. The question, now, is whether anything whatsoever that purports to be query is query, whether anything whatsoever that purports to be validation is validation. The simplest answer is that claiming validation is not achieving it, that validation requires query if it is to be overt. Thus, the

KNOWING SI indefinite interrogation of query and its judgments by further query ts the only reply to doubts about validation.

In this context, we may ask, given their controversial histories, whether psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism are forms of query, or whether they are permeated by a doctrinal element that is immune to interrogation, thereby making them neither rational nor query. Similarly, we may ask whether religion, with or without theology, is a form of query, rational, or fundamentally doctrinaire and dogmatic. (I earlier raised a similar question concerning modern technology, and shall return to it in Chapter 6.) In all such cases, the critic questions not only the validation of the claims and positions that issue from the activity but the legitimacy of the activity itself.

I have noted that each of the established and legitimate forms of query— legitimate if rationality has any meaning—1is interrogable but, in fundamental respects, is unintelligible as a rational form from the standpoint of the others. Every new form of query will display this same unintelligibility and pervasiveness, for that is what a novel form of rationality means.” If reason is inexhaustible—and I am arguing that it is—then it will take inexhaustibly diverse forms, each of which is unintelligible as a form of rationality from the standpoint of the others. In this sense, further query is the only answer to doubts about validation in a given mode, but such query will be regarded from the standpoint of manifold different perspectives, some of which are engendered by new forms of query, and there is no final resolution. The question of whether a given judgmental activity is rational cannot be given a conclusive answer both because such an answer ignores the possibility that the activity may be enhanced by interrogation to become rational and because the question is part of the interrogation that rationality comprises. Query is perspectival. A given mode of query is intelligible relative to only certain perspectives, and unintelligible relative to others. It may be that psy-

choanalysis, dialectical materialism, and religion are forms of query unintelligible from certain external points of view but validated within themselves. Nevertheless, there is an effective way to criticize them as forms of query, whether they are doctrinaire and dogmatic, whether everything within them can be called into question from some point of view. J question whether dialectical materialism in its traditional forms is a form of query, since its assumptions about historical explanation and the primacy of modes of production are not open to question. But the deeper point is that dialectical materialism claims to be a science while refusing to subject itself to all relevant forms of scientific query. If it is regarded as a systematic view of humanity, from the standpoint of practical judgment and productive relations, it may be able to accommodate all forms of interrogation, but it will not then replace any other form of query. It will supplement the inexhaustible forms of query, taking no absolute precedence over them. Similarly, psychoanalysis can be taken as a science of human behavior competitive with other sciences of behavior. But it also

82 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING affirms a systematic theory of culture, an archaeological—teleological view of humanity, open to all questions and conditions but interpreting them in terms of the development of the individual. Such a generalization may produce a novel form of query—producing what I have called knowledge toward (individual development)—including within its range all facets of human judgment.*' Here again, the rational alternative is that psychoanalysis be taken as a form of interrogation coexistent with manifold other forms of interrogation

and query, without unqualified precedence over them, profoundly and unceasingly interrogated by them and interrogative toward them. The case of religion is more important and more difficult, for unlike psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism, religion has always been with us, in every culture and way of life, more pervasive than science and philosophy and at least as pervasive as art. If religion is a form of query, to be regarded as rational, 1t must be indefinitely interrogable, including interrogation of every Scriptural

doctrine. No established religion seems to be open to such indefinite interrogation. Indeed, I would regard every particular religion as doctrinal, even dogmatic, about certain premisses. Religion as a whole may be another thing, for here the diversity of religious beliefs and practices establishes each to be interrogative of the others. Religion collectively is a syndetic, comprehensive activity, deeply concerned with social practices and individual ways of life, filled with glorious rituals and beautiful forms. If we grant religion a rational purview taken altogether, the next question is whether it is a unique and sovereign form of query, or whether it is but one of the other forms in particular guise—for example, morality on the one hand, philosophy on the other. Perhaps theology, thoroughly interrogated, would be indistinguishable from philosophy. Perhaps the practical side of religious activities is indistinguishable from morality. Perhaps every particular religion's dogma conflicts with some scientific truth. Perhaps when we eliminate all their conflicts, we find religion indistinguishable from art, from richness in style of life.** But religion may also attain a synthetic, intermodal form of vali-

dation unique to it through continual and unremitting interrogation, both from within itself and inclusive of all the other forms of query. If so, then it is an open possibility that religion, as query, may be forced to relinquish its commitments to a supernatural realm, to absolutes, even to God—may be forced, that is, to acknowledge inexhaustibility. Once such an acknowledgment is made, however, a very different possibility emerges. Religion may become guery where sufficiently interrogative. But query, where reflexively interrogative of itself, is no less religious than metaphysical, no less practical than theoretical, no less technological than spiri-

tual, no less ideal than implemented in daily affairs. Here query is human ideality enriching the practical affairs of life. In this sense, there is a religious

side to the metaphysical understanding of inexhaustibility, a spirit without

KNOWING 83 absolutes and ultimates but with profound respect for the inexhaustibility of being and human being. In its traditional affinities, it preserves the historical continuity essential to human identity; in its openness to an inexhaustible future, it affirms the mutability of every temporal being. In the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness there can be found the hope and terror that in the past have led humanity to God. Given the rejection of absolutes and unqualified standards, the creation of new forms of query, how can we recognize dogma and error? The answer ts the only rational response from within query: by engaging in further query. Errors are eliminated by defining tests from within certain perspectives. Certain beliefs are true within the perspectives of everyday life, for example, that the sun

rises in the east and sets in the west. But these judgments are not valid in the more rigorous perspectives of scientific query. Likewise, there are judgments and beliefs that serve us by allowing us peace of mind—the belief, for example, that there is justice in the universe. Those who hold to such (dogmatic) beliefs may be better human beings than those who do not. But there are other, more public perspectives that display the invalidation of these judgments: invalid for other perspectives, invalid in science and philosophy. Perspectivity allows us a resolution of dogmatic questions by emphasizing that certain judgments are valid (if valid at all) only within certain highly restrictive perspectives. We reject not so much the religious judgment as its claims to absoluteness, at least to pervasiveness. Those who would impose a doctrine on their neighbors are to be criticized not for being wrong (invalid) from within some sphere of religious activity, but for being mistaken from the standpoint of other modes—science and morality, for example—and for imposing a perspectival judgment absolutely on others, who hold different beliefs instead. Religious tolerance is an expression and acknowledgment of inexhaustibility. It is unfortunate that it does not go far enough, especially where it intersects with moral obligations. Rationality in query depends on emphasizing not only the perspectivity inherent in validation, thereby confronting the possibility that the most bizarre and erroneous judgments may inhabit some perspectives in which they are valid, but also the inexhaustible interrogations required from other standpoints. The most limiting forms of relativism and dogmatism almost always either deny conditions, claiming universality and absoluteness, or emphasize qualifications as an excuse for terminating interrogation. A final topic should be considered, that of everyday knowledge, acquired

not through query but through memorization, repetition, and authority, through the hodge-podge of activities that constitutes daily experience. Do we not know, when confronted by a tree, that there is a tree before us, know how to tie our shoelaces or express our anger, even know ways of getting along with

our friends? Are not our personal and social styles, our codes of rituals and language, forms of knowledge? Do we not know that there are nine planets,

84 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING that the stars are suns, that our bodies are composed of cells, that atoms are made up of electrons and protons? Part of the issue can be quickly laid to rest. The view that everyday experience is the basis for all our knowledge, in its more complex, rarified, and sophisticated forms—as in science and philosophy— is effectively foundational.

There is no knowledge that is the foundation of all other forms of knowledge. There is no knowledge, of even a minimal sort, that is incorrigible, beyond interrogation through query. We tend not to interrogate pains and sensations as to their veracity in normal experience, but this is not because they are beyond interrogation or because it is senseless to interrogate them, but because they carry so little epistemic weight. Little depends on them. It appears senseless to interrogate them because we do not need to criticize them and have not developed acceptable canons for doing so.*’ But if a particular kind of pain were a sign of a fatal disease, if discrimination of certain sensations were a sign of neurological health or disorder, then interrogation would be both le-

gitimate and required. Perspectivity offers a simple reply to the foundationalism inherent in making everyday experience an authority over all forms of rationality. Nevertheless, there are everyday truths that we appear to know as well as we know anything, though they do not appear to be the outcome of query. Two kinds of answers may be offered to resolve this issue. Suppose we are talking about knowledge that I have two hands and two eyes, that I have one child, that grass is green, knowledge of how to walk and talk, and knowledge of how to sound convincing. We may say two different kinds of things about such examples, depending on whether we take them to be instances of a very wide range of truths or regard them more narrowly as paradigmatic of certain indubitable principles. In the first case, we are led to say that there are a great many types of knowledge, claims and actions, that must be interpreted as cognitive

if we are to understand them at all. But they are not the outcome of query, not the result of indefinite interrogation and validation. Many of these are acquired by imitation and authority. All are transformed in our experience, however imitative and authoritarian their acquisition, by our personal interpretation. Nevertheless, we are talking here of valid judgments that are not validated by query. Judgment here is the general condition of being human, and all judgment is validatable in certain perspectives. Yet judgments may be valid in some or many perspectives without the kinds of interrogation of conditions and implications that query would entail. We may say, I think, without misrepresenting the nature of judgment, that all judgment is cognitive in the two senses that it is validatable and that it offers itself to query. The former

is the crucial notion, for everything in human experience is interrogable through query, but only judgment is validatable. To say that human being is equatable with judgment is therefore to regard all human being as cognitive,

KNOWING 85 and human psychology as a cognitive psychology, where considerations of val-

idation are demanded and legitimate. Cognizing here is distinguished from knowing the way judgment is distinguished from the results of query, as genus

to species. Cognition becomes knowledge through unterminating query. More accurately, judgments do not change into something qualitatively different when they are known, but are located in new perspectives defined by unterminating interrogative query. ™ The second answer to this issue is given by recognizing the difficulty of interrogating the kinds of examples mentioned. Maybe some grass is yellow and in a peculiar case a person may forget who his children are or even how to walk. But were we to try to call all these into question, at once, there would be no standpoint for interrogation. We may say here, not that such judgments constitute an unconditioned foundation of query—for we have called them into question—but that knowledge of this kind is repeatedly and incessantly validated and revalidated; all query presupposes the cognitive abilities required to carry it on. Some judgments cannot be interrogated from within a particular mode of query, for query requires a perspectival standpoint, and we may un-

dermine that standpoint if we question our most basic sensory discriminations, elementary memories, and minimal abilities. The answer here is the answer to be given to the skeptic: that unconditioned rejection of claims to knowledge is unintelligible, though every claim can be questioned from some interrogative standpoint. We must struggle in some cases to establish a credible perspective in terms of which the validation of certain judgments may be interrogated. ’ The credibility of daily experience and of our ordinary cognitive capacities is, not absolute, but deeply qualified. Sensory abilities become questionable when fine distinctions are required. Memory becomes questionable when details are in doubt. Our knowledge of our bodies is often questionable, especially as we grow older. Finally, skills we once could rely on may wane, and we

must face the possibility that we no longer possess them. All these examples and the ones above suggest that knowledge is not an effective concept unless it is taken as given by incessant query. Query calls cognitive judgments into question where that is necessary and establishes them as valid where that is possible. There is little more to be said except to note that validation and inter-

rogation are inexhaustible, along with query, and that knowledge consequently is inexhaustible in any of its forms, in any of its contexts.

The conclusion is that knowledge, in its manifold forms, is the result of query, the validated judgments produced by query. But this knowledge is then

inexhaustible in the ways that knowledge and rationality are inexhaustible, local in the ways that beings are local, transcendent over any of its conditions, manifested in manifold forms, open indefinitely to further interrogation and validation, inextricably mixed with error. All the forms of human spiritual life

86 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING can be rational in this sense, are inexhaustible in this sense. But we must forbear taking one form of knowledge for another, transforming one mode of query into another, reducing all forms of rationality to one.

NOTES

1. I have elsewhere called the manifest inexhaustibility in knowledge and rationality “mystery” and have argued that it is particularly striking in philosophy, though present in all the forms of knowing, including the natural sciences. See my Philosophical Mysteries. See also my Learning and Discovery for a detailed account of knowing as learning, therefore as query; and my Metaphysical Aporia and Philosophical Heresy (A\bany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 2. Dewey, Quest for Certainty. See also Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

3. Hegel is sometimes conceived as holding an external position to the extent that _ Spirit, in which self-knowledge is realized at the highest and most complete level of reflexiveness, is the external goal of historical development. However, the interpretation of Hegel which I favor is chat Spirit is in no sense external to history, but is its internal telos, produced by it. Human activities in history are the foundation of knowledge and self-knowledge. 4. See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, for a detailed discussion and rejection of epistemological incorrigibility.

5. Those examples first described by Edmund Gettier (“Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, 23, No. 6 {June 1963], 121-23) are the most notorious examples indicating the gap between knowledge and justified true belief. Wherever justification is not absolutely conclusive, we can have a case of a justified belief that might be false but is instead true for reasons unknown to the agent. A true and justified belief would then not be known. Nothing can close the logical gap between rational activities (query) and conclusive validation (unqualified certainty). 6. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” $407, p. 268. See above, Preface, note 9.

7. This calling of assumptions into question is inherent in both Derrida’s deconstructive program and Gadamer’s fusion of horizons through bringing prejudgments to consciousness (Derrida, Of Grammatology; Gadamer, Truth and Method). 8. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962). 9. See Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 18: “to know means to be able to learn.” 10. In particular, Foucault’s analysis of the interrelationships of knowledge, desire, power, and discourse in The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith {New York: Pantheon, 1972]}) is a conspicuous example of criticisms that strike at the

core of entrenched forms of knowledge and power. ,

11. Dewey, Experience and Nature, chap. 4. 12. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; see also my “Skepticism, Holism, and Inexhaustibility.”

13. Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), esp. “Origin of the Work of Art.” 14. See Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959); Stephen Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1953; New York: Harper & Row, 1960); Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

KNOWING 87 15. See my The Nature of Moral Responsibility (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973) and In Pursuit of Moral Value (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper, 1974). 16. Séren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Garden City, N.y.: Doubleday, 1954). 17. See my Theory of Art.

18. Rorty, “Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor,” and Rorty, Taylor, and Dreyfus,

“Discussion.”

19. I take this to be what is wrong with Habermas’ notion of “communicative competence.” His interest in developing a universal theory of communicative norms and understanding as a basis for a theory of action is foundational and neglects the perspectivity and inexhaustibility inherent in rationality (Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy {Boston: Beacon, 1979)). 20. Fora strong analysis of the representational and referential qualities of works of art, see Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976). 21. See my Theory of Art.

22. Fora detailed discussion of sovereignty in works of art, see ibid. and my “The Sovereignty and Utility of the Work of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 40,

No. 2 (Winter 1981), 145-54. 23. See my Theory of Art. 24. I have Jacques Lacan and Paul Ricoeur especially in mind. See Lacan's Speech and

Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. Anthony Wilden [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968]}), among others. See also Ricoeut’s Freud and Philosophy.

25. Ricoeur, Fread and Philosophy, pp. 459-551. Ricoeur claims that all understanding of persons requires a teleology as well as an archaeology, even an eschatology. This is a powerful and important expression of his historical view of human being. 26. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.”

27. Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books; see also Putnam, “Analyticity and Apriority.”’

28. See, in particular, Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon, 1966), and Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Soctety.

29. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, Conclusion.

30. This irreducibility and unintelligibility of one mode of query and validation from the standpoint of the others is closely related to what Kuhn (Stracture of Scientific Revolutions) and Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) describe as ‘abnormal discourse.” 31. See, in particular, interpretations of psychoanalysis by Lacan and Derrida. 32. See here Thomas Martland, Religion as Art: An Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981). 33, This is effectively a criticism of the position on pains and sensations Wittgenstein takes in his Philosophical Investigations, yet it is not a criticism altogether incompatible with the thrust of his views. 34. For a detailed discussion of the relationship of knowing to query and of the importance of invention to knowing, see my Learning and Discovery.

3

TWO MAJOR APPROACHES to meaning can be identified in the philosophic tra-

dition, one restrictive, the other more general. The semantic tradition, derived from empiricism, restricts meaning to the sphere of propositional truth. The wider tradition, which I shall call semiotic or hermeneutic after its contemporary representatives, identifies meaning with interpretation, in some cases, more generally, with human significance. ' The former tradition is based on the principle that we must know the meaning of a proposition before we can know or inquire into its truth and falsity. The latter approach 1s closer to common sense to the extent that we speak of the meanings not only of words and concepts but of gestures, rituals, and works of art. We could regard the relationship between these two approaches as one of specificity to generality. Yet one of the most confusing aspects of the semiotic tradition is its professed generality, as if it involves only a generalization from semantic meaning to meaning in general, from propositions to signs. If that were all, then the issues would be trivial and the generalization would be straightforward. However, the issue is not simply one of generalization and specification. There is an uneasy, even antagonistic relationship between the semiotic and semantic approaches, not to be dispelled by accepting a different range of ap-

plications. What is involved in both cases, I suggest, is a neglect of inexhaustibility, one by a restriction to assertive judgment that falsifies multimodality and intermodality and gives us an inadequate view of propositional

meaning, the other by an unqualified generalization that pretends to exhaustiveness while denying finiteness. I shall suggest an approach to a general

theory of meaning through the principle of inexhaustibility that provides a context for understanding the different views of meaning while clarifying their distinctiveness and their relationship.

SEMASIS

I shall begin by introducing a term that distinguishes my approach from the tradition mentioned. It is neither semantic nor semiotic meaning, neither meaning in propositions nor the meaning of signs; it is not even meaning as

MEANING 89 interpretation. The term J shall employ is ““semasis,” the meaning of any “semi-

ate,’ the latter being whatever has meaning, whatever functions semasically. The narrower, semantic notion of meaning can be associated with assertive judgment, and it will be important to discuss the different kinds of semasic functions relevant within the different modes of judgment and query. The more interesting notion of meaning, given our concern with the inexhaustibility of human being, is generic. Our initial question is how locality and judgment have application to semasis generically. It is plausible to identify semasis with judgment, semiates with judgments, except that there are natural loci that are meaningful in the sense that we judge and interpret them although they are not produced by human beings. The ocean, stars, and whales are pervasive and recurrent symbols that we do not produce although they profoundly influence our judgments. They are meaningful to the extent that they contribute to judgment, and they can be turned into symbols by our judgments, but they themselves are not judgments. In this respect, meaning is wider than judgment. The semiotic identification of meaning with signs is too narrow from this point of view, for even in the broadest sense signs are only a species of semiates. Natural beings function semasically when they contribute to human judgment, but they can function in this way without being judgments themselves. Peirce defines a sign as something that is or can be interpreted to stand for something. The sign stands for an object in a triadic relationship with an interpretant.* This is a powerful and effective view of semasis, of enormous generality, but it is misleading in a number of respects. Peirce was too fascinated by triadic relations to recognize the limitations of his view in the absence of an adequate theory of locality. One difficulty, which is not Peirce’s responsibility, is that the interpretant is often taken either in a subjective sense, requiring persons for meaning, or in a sense imposing closure on the world of signs, in that signs are interpreted only by other signs, ad infinitum. The former view, that interpretants are persons, or even judgments, is much too narrow. Words have meanings even when no one is using or interpreting them, and so do literary texts and buried artifacts. The closure of the semiotic field under signs alone is a drastic limitation on a naturalistic theory, and effectively leads to idealism. Peirce himself is not vulnerable to either of these criticisms, for he locates the interpretant first in other signs and second in human life—in particular, in human habits. There is a more serious difficulty, for not all semiates stand for something else. Some—works of art, for example—may stand only for themselves. Perhaps we can resolve this difficulty by allowing signs to be their own objects, though that creates some awkward formulations. But there are semiates—the ocean, the cosmos, death—that are of great significance by being only what they are. They are symbolized by other signs, but have meaning only in terms

90 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING of their functions in human life. Their meaning is a function of relations among other semiates, but it is not always a representational relation. More accurately put: a semiate functions semasically because of its function ina perspective and its capacity to be interpreted in a perspective (usually another perspective); but such a relationship need not be representational, and there need not be an object for which a semiate stands. We may put this in terms of a principle derivable from inexhaustibility: if some semiates are signs, standing

for some object under interpretation, then there will be other interpretable semiates, established by the conditions of interpretation, that stand for no object, but that function semasically. If there is representational semasis, there will be semasic functions that are not representational. Saussure’s notion of linguistic meaning is a useful alternative, though it is restricted in other ways.’ Saussure defines a linguistic element in terms of similarities and differences—primarily the latter—throughout a linguistic field, effectively throughout the entire /angwe. The difficulty here is that similarities and differences are not relevant particularly to language and semasis, but are pervasive throughout locales. Saussure’s approach closes language upon itself, so that meaning is severed from natural relations. His definition makes a naturalistic theory of language impossible; the relationship between being and language, unintelligible. Peirce’s definition ts too representational; Saussure’s is too intra-semasic. Nevertheless, what is clear from Saussure’s approach is that semasis 1s a local concept in the two senses that a semiate, to be meaningful, must be qualified by location, and that semiates constitute a locus or a field, a semasic field.“ Saussure’s definition is too narrow, neglecting the extra-semasic relations that are required for any semasic field to function effectively. By restricting his attention to linguistic differences, he effectively severs language from its sur-

roundings, repudiating its natural conditions.’ Language and meaning are conditioned by forms of social life, by human practices, but also by natural objects, events, and other loci of human activity. Biology is clearly a factor in

semasic functioning, possibly a determining factor of linguistic and grammatical structure, possibly a weaker determinant of syntactic and semantic compatibility. The semasic field includes whatever is relevant to the functioning of a semiate as a semiate. Each concept or word ina language is located in a semasic field that includes whatever is relevant to that word as a linguistic element or sem1-

ate, a field that is constantly undergoing modification.® Included here are other words and concepts whose meanings are close to the given word—such as ‘“‘violet” and “indigo’”—whose semasic fields overlap; and words and concepts in Opposition or tension—such as “‘violet” and “orange,” ““expanding”’

(in Opposition to ‘‘shrinking’’), and ‘‘forget-me-not.” Objects and properties are also included, insofar as they are relevant to the linguistic functions of words and concepts. Though it sometimes does no harm to consider the

MEANING 9! semasic field entirely intra-linguistically, as Saussure would have us do, semantic considerations require us to consider language in its applications to objects, events, and experiences. There are a number of important reasons why such a field theory is required for an adequate theory of meaning. One is that by making the semasic field inclusive of whatever is relevant to semasic functioning, we avoid closing the field of semasis upon itself, idealistically, and acknowledge both reference and representation, essential to a semantic theory, and the natural conditions of semasis, including biological, historical, psychological, and social factors. The former application is essential to locating semasis in nature, giving it an epistemic, rational function; the latter establishes the finiteness of semasis, located in conditions and changing with them. Semiates, including the meanings of words in language, change with time and with our interpretive contexts. A second reason is that by acknowledging the wider sphere of relations in which semiates function, we make it possible to understand polysemasis, multiple meaning, and avoid restricting meaning to propositional meaning alone, as semantic theories tend to do. Thus, third, the dynamic interactions among the different constituents of the semasic field are determinants of both the narrow functions that are essential to assertive validation and science and the richer functions that are essential to figurative language as well as to nonlinguistic semiates in art and practice. In particular, creativity in language depends largely on dynamic and changing relationships at the peripheries of intersecting semasic fields. Such creativity not only is a function of established semasic conditions but also dynamically transforms the relevant semasic fields,

exhibiting the complementarity of conditions and transcendence that is the mark of finiteness and inexhaustibility. In addition, fourth, the complex and dynamic nature of the semasic field manifests the inseparability in semasis of intelligibility and unintelligibility. The inexhaustibility of the semasic field entails that meanings are always divided by manifold cores and peripheries, and that what is intelligible relative to one core is not intelligible relative to another. Conversely, nothing in judgment and experience can be entirely unintelligible. One of the prominent strengths of the semasic field theory as described here is its ability to characterize and explain the prominence of figuration in all our

language, especially in everyday and poetic language, but also in science and philosophy, and the importance of such figuration for invention. It has been claimed that all language is unavoidably figurative, metaphorical. The position may be overstated. The converse position, however, the traditional position, is far worse, for it treats figuration as an aberration, doing so metaphorically.’ I shall argue that metaphor, as paradigm of figuration, is an inescapable semasic function of language. Such a position requires a theory of semasic fields.

The standard view is that metaphor, along with other figuration, is an

92 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING aberration of language. In Hobbes’ extreme but not idiosyncratic view, metaphor is when men use words “in other sense than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others.” For “truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations.”* In Locke’s words, “‘all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats.’”’” Aristotle is perhaps the founder of the standard

view, when he defines metaphor as a “strange word”: “metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.” ’° Yet Aristotle also asserts that ‘‘the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius,

since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” '' The standard view of metaphor is based on four principles, each of which I claim ts false: (1) Propositional or literal language is basic, primary, normal. A corollary is that literal language is independent of metaphor and other figuration. (2) Metaphors are deviant; they involve a change in the meanings of words. (3) The transformation of meaning in metaphor is dyadic: a shift of meaning from one word to another, noun to verb, noun to noun, and so forth. (4) Metaphor is an elliptical simile or analogy. Since the asserted identity cannot be litceral—for example, in ‘“The Church is a rock” —it must be interpreted in terms of likenesses: “similarity in dissimilars.”

Every one of these principles is false, and every theory of metaphor based on

them is false. This includes virtually every theory known. There have been some important and influential theories that have departed enough from the standard view to repudiate one or more of the above principles, but none goes far enough.” The third principle is the most vulnerable, and its repudiation has been the source of most alternative theories of metaphor. I shall argue that an adequate theory requires abandonment of all the above principles, especially the view that metaphor is linguistic deviance.'’ Figurative language is not an aberration, but the articulation of possibilities resident in all normal and complex languages.'* Far more important, only such a view of language can enable us to understand the ways in which figuration functions in poetry and poetry functions in all natural languages. The standard view of metaphor makes poetic language unintelligible. It is based, Iam suggesting, on a foundational epistemology relative to which poetry is largely meaningless. All the above principles are false. The third and fourth do not apply to rich metaphors that manifest an inexhaustible range of significations. In “The camel is the ship of the desert,” none of the words is employed in an abnormal sense. There is no shift of meaning from ship to camel or ocean to desert, but

the function and character of camels in the desert is illuminated while the range of the notion of crossing the ocean is enhanced. We discover something

MEANING 93 new about camels and deserts, ships and oceans. The weakness of the principle of analogy is that we ought to be able to explicate how camels and ships are alike (and unlike), but the range of relevant considerations is inexhaustible.” The metaphor manifests this inexhaustibility explicitly as neither a simile nor a paraphrase is expected to (though, in fact, all language is inexhaustible) in

that we cannot define the limits of what is relevant to a rich metaphor, although it is clear that some limits (albeit flexible ones) are essential if it is to be able to function. Finally, although every word in the sentence is used in its normal sense, the sentence as a whole is not literally true. I agree that metaphors function differently from propositions in important ways. What I deny is that this is a difference in the normal meanings of words. Like things, language is inexhaustible in possessing an inexhaustible wealth of public as well as private lives. Every utterance is open to interpretation and reinterpretation indefinitely (but not unlimitedly). Every such reinterpretation obscures some features of an established interpretation. A semasic field includes whatever is relevant to the selection or interpretation of the relevant semiate in an utterance situation, and is therefore somewhat variable from person to person, situation to situation. I call this the zdzosemic field. It is variable at its periphery—-sometimes more extensively—from speaker to audience, a function in part of different histories and contexts, but also different psychological processes. This is a manifestation of the indeterminateness of every field boundary. Nevertheless, in virtue of a common language and social contexts, fields are normally shared in many relevant respects. There is a (partly) shared field relevant to every semiate, though it too has indeterminate boundaries. I shall call this the consensual semasic field. This field,

I claim, is the “normal” meaning of a word, given by its systematic relations with other words and things. "° The shifting and indeterminate character of semasic fields demands several distinctions. One has been noted. The idiosemic field is person-, context-, and culture-relative. Yet we communicate despite, or because of, differing semasic fields; we expect agreement on the identity of semiates and their meanings. This gives us the consensual semasic field, which I shall now call the full semasic field, although a more accurate picture would require us to recognize that over time and throughout a complex society, there may be no universal consensual fields. A full semasic field for any semiate would, as Wittgenstein suggests, consist of diversely related consensual fields in interaction with a host of partly overlapping idiosemic fields. Nevertheless, although there may be variation in a semasic field from day to day, context to context, such variation does not always engender a different semiate. In one sense, every change ina

semasic field changes the meaning of a semiate, but in two different ways or respects. Some such changes do not affect the identity of the semiate; some do. I shall call the subfield of semiates that defines the semasic identity of a given

94 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING semiate the semasic core. The rest of the semiates relevant to the full semasic field are now the periphery. (This distinction corresponds to the locative categories of unison and ramifications). The core—periphery distinction is an impor-

tant one, and it is imbued with the complexity and variability of diverse semasic fields and related idiosemic fields. Every semiate has cores and peripheries, subfields within its semasic field, and every subfield has its own cores and peripheries. Nevertheless: (a) The boundary between core and periphery is often indeterminate in important ways. Consider the applicability of any grammatical rule undergoing modification over time. (6) Core and periphery are not independent. Changes in the core always entail changes in the periphery, though not every change in the periphery entails changes in the core. Still, where peripheral semiates undergo major modifications, changes occur in the core. Changes in artistic practices lead to changes in the concept of art.

I have noted a third distinction where propositional conditions are established engendering relatively stable truth conditions. Here we have a semantic subfield in terms of which a relatively stable range of implications, logical relations, and satisfying conditions is relevant. I will call this the proposztional or semantic core. Nevertheless:

(2) The propositional core is only relatively stable, since truth conditions also change over time and with context, even in extensional terms. (6) The complexity of the full semasic field permeates even the propositional subfield, since the boundary of this core is also variable and somewhat indeterminate. (c) The propositional and semasic cores are not identical, since what identifies a semiate uniquely is sometimes what are called its connotations rather than its truth conditions. This is true for normative concepts and for mythic and religious semiates. It is especially true for semiates—symbols and structures—specific to individual works of art and to particular artistic styles, to Van Gogh’s striking patterns of brush strokes in works like Starry Night, for example. The semasic-field theory is motivated in part by the demand that we regard poetry and other linguistic arts as thoroughly arts, displaying the complex resonances that are central to the values of art. To consider an example: The word “rook’’ possesses several semantic cores defined by appropriate syntactical and selectional contraints. The rules of chess are included in one of these cores; some of the properties and practices of crows are included in another. Though we might treat the presence of two semantic cores as indicating two words with the same spelling and pronunciation, it ts not necessary to do so. We may regard ‘“‘rook” as one word with two or more propositional cores. Its semasic core will include phonological relations and certain stylistic constraints—the archaism of “rook” as crow, for example, its function in Macbeth. This semasic core includes whatever gives the word

MEANING 95 “rook” its identity: similarities and differences, grammatical and phonological constraints. In addition, however, the word resides in a larger field of sounds and other semiates. ‘““Rook”’ is related to “crook” both by sound and by meaning. The expression “antic rook” possesses vitality because of the different subfields pertinent to “rook” as well as the sound of “crook.” The periphery also includes ravens and scarecrows, turrets and fortresses, gambling and fraud. Finally, an idiosemic field may include special associations and feelings unique

to a single individual: crow dreams, chess defeats, bullies and cheats. This idiosemic vitality is the source of the most powerful and inventive metaphors, provided it is moderated into consensual semasic terms. "’ Each of the fields—idiosemic field, semasic field, semasic core, and semantic core—gives us a different but acceptable construal of the “meaning” of a semiate. There is sermasic meaning, core meaning, and propositional meaning. Nevertheless, none of these is independent of the others, and none is more fundamental (except where specific aims are involved). The field theory therefore bridges the traditional view that denotation and connotation are distinct

and independent—two “meanings”—with a more plausible view that the boundaries between meaning and significance are commonly indeterminate and fluid. Indeterminateness is as much part of every meaning as determinateness, but for certain semiates, in appropriate conditions, the semasic and propositional cores may be quite well defined. The view that literal meaning 1s primary is replaced by emphasis on the semasic field, including the relevant subfields and extended fields defined above. This brief treatment of metaphor and other figurative language as an application of the semasic field theory, as well as one of its justifications, can be extended to other, nonlinguistic semiates to emphasize the inexhaustibility of meaning. Language is inexhaustible, of course, because being is inexhaustible, as are human being and semasis. Yet to understand the inexhaustibility of se-

masis as a consequence of the inexhaustibility of beings is not the same as understanding this inexhaustibility from within the spheres of semasic functioning. Heidegger claims that language is the house of Being." Ifhe means | that language, along with all other semasic fields, is our opening to being, then the inexhaustibility of being would entail the inexhaustibility of semasis. Metaphoric and figurative language express the inexhaustibility directly. But the inexhaustibility is visible even in science, where the public life of a concept brings possibilities of variation, calling for recurrent and inexhaustible inter-

pretations. Inexhaustibility entails that language and being transcend each other inexhaustibly, and that other, non-linguistic semasic fields (painting and music, dreams and rituals) transcend language inexhaustibly. The different subfields constitutive of the semasic field are both expressions of its inexhaustibility and contributions to it. The periphery, semasic cores, idiosemic subfields, and other subfields relevant to particular domains of application frequently coexist and interrelate with great tension and uneasiness.

96 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING In assertive judgment, especially scientific query, emphasis on the semantic cores of a restricted range of linguistic semiates tends to suggest minimal tension and variation. But this ts one of the traditional myths of assertive query, and has been thoroughly exploded. The recent characterization of the advance of science as frequently “revolutionary” shows how tense and uncomfortable the semasic fields of established theories and their fundamental concepts become where there are extensive and important anomalies imposing requirements for conceptual transformation, and no clear sytematic modifications are available. '” We might say that under such circumstances, while the systematic conceptual and semasic relationships among the different fields remain intact, every boundary, core, and periphery becomes fluid, permeable to other boundaries, coalescing into new possibilities and retracting into older forms as we seek a different semasic system. The situation has been described by Kuhn and Rorty as involving abnormal rather than normal discourse, as if the norms and conventions of normal science, of everyday discourse, where stable rules prevail, could eliminate the peripheral relationships in semasic fields and restrict activity to the semantic and semasic cores.“” Yet the presence of these quite different cores, not to mention the idiosemic fields and cores, engenders a continuing and dynamic ten-

sion throughout the full semasic field. Such a tension has both positive and negative implications; for it is the source of the variations and insights that are expressed in conceptual discoveries, in abnormal discourse, that enable us to

realize a conceptual revolution, yet it promotes unending failures in understanding and communication. One of the difficulties with Rorty’s and Kuhn's picture of the relationship between normal and abnormal discourse is that they do not clearly envisage the interaction of the two modes. The notion of a semasic field with associated subfields and cores expresses both the possibility of a restricted (normal) discourse where semantic cores are well defined as a result of social practices and epistemic clarity, and a continual dynamic interaction among diverse cores generating activity (as well as confusion) at the peripheries of semiates in all semasic situations. Another way of putting this 1s that there is no sharp distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” discourse, but a continuing interaction in which activity is emphasized sometimes at the core and sometimes at the periphery, depending on modality and perspective, and all discourse, judgment, and query involve a continual mixture of repetition, invention, and variation. Models and metaphors are as important in science as in any sphere of linguistic query, necessary to its development and modifica-

tion, expressions of the peripheral relationships in which any propositional core must be located in order to function. Even in science, then—I would say, especially in science—restriction to a particular subfield or core, for epistemic and judgmental clarity, can never be unqualified. To the contrary, it is because the needs of science in some phases of query so strongly depend on semasic restrictiveness to the semantic cores that

MEANING 97 powerful tensions are generated throughout the relevant semasic fields and lead to conceptual changes and scientific revolutions. The tensions in science explode in “abnormal” discourse and scientific revolutions, whereas in other modes of query, tensions move relatively freely, continuously and dynamically.

But in all cases, it is only because there is this fluid, shifting, and complex semasic field with diverse cores that novel insights and concepts can be produced. Semasis must be inexhaustible if query is inexhaustible, for it is only within semasic fields that query can be pursued. Every semasic field contains a number of associated subfields. The semasic field contains what is relevant to a semiate as a semiate. It is the perspective or locale of that semiate within some wider field of human experience—for example, within a particular human community. I have somewhat oversimplified the perspectivity and inexhaustibility of semasis in speaking of the full or normal semasic field as a public, social sphere of semasis. Every such field is multiple and complex ina variety of ways, but especially because diverse individuals and societies are involved as semasic agents or ‘‘semasors.”’ For every semiate,

there are many semasic fields defining what it means, what is generically rele-

vant to it in a particular perspectival respect, but there is no meaning that is not perspectival, no semasic field that includes all its subfields without conflicts and tensions. Perspectivity is the basis of the diversity of semasic fields and subfields, and the tension in semasic relations is a function of the diversity of the perspectives relevant to any semiate in human life. If there is a full semasic field corresponding to a particular semiate, it is a function of a society of semasors. Every semasor defines a singular semasic

field, the idiosemic field, for a given semiate. Therefore, there are as many fields for a semiate as semasors, most of them expressions of individual variations, but there are also different fields for different communities. There is no one full semasic field, but fields relative to and functions of different social groups. Every “‘full’” semasic field is local, a function of a local superaltern unison. There is, then, a plurality of idiosemic fields for any semasic field, a plurality of “‘socio-semasic”’ fields for any larger or gross semasic field, and a plurality of semasic fields that only locally constitute one semasic field for any semiate. This multiplicity is a direct expression of the plurality of perspectives

and loci that constitute any being, including semasic being. In this sense, meaning is but a species of being, and the inexhaustibility of semasis is but a

species of the inexhaustibility of being. We must add, here, the additional forms of inexhaustibility that are a function not only of the locales and perspectives of semasis but of the reflexivity of semasis upon itself and other beings, intra-semasic relationships relevant within any complex semasic field. Every semiate inhabits a multiplicity of semasic fields and subfields, in continual tension and transformation, each a sphere of relevance for its semasic

functions, a multiplicity of overlapping fields for different communities, a multiplicity of overlapping idiosemic fields for different individuals. The dif-

98 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ferences among these different fields often produce lack of comprehension and miscommunication, both among different individuals and among different social groups with different codes and norms. The overlapping allows for communication and shared perspectives, for the development of common semasic norms and codes. The differences are the basis of semasic development and the

emergence of transformations in meaning essential to new forms of understanding and query. I have mentioned the view of thought that holds that semiates are acquired by individuals in public but transformed in private experience and returned with variations to the public sphere.*' This picture carries a strong and important sense of diverse semasic fields in interaction, but is oversimplified, for each transition from one form to another involves transformations and variations. In other words, the plurality of semasic fields makes no public field entirely determinate, but variable at its different boundaries; the plurality of idio-

semic fields entails that no individual’s conceptual understanding is quite identical with another individual's or with a public field, but is filled with elements of personal history and interpretation; finally, the public sphere in which individual productions and judgments are interpreted is filled with indeterminateness and variation, functions of its different members and subgroups, but also of its changing future. Like every perspective and locale, every semasic field is a complement of determinateness and indeterminateness, capable of greater determinateness in certain respects and under certain conditions only at the expense of other respects and ways, and conversely. What we call literal language is emphasis upon a semantic core that can be determined and limited in many ways, but always located in a larger field of semasic relations, and frequently related to other cores that create significant tensions for it. What we call figurative language is largely emphasis at the periphery of semasic fields, as they coalesce and modify their boundaries. But the semasic core and semasic fields are not absolute and unconditioned distinctions, and are themselves perspectivally located, relative to certain individuals and communities and to certain forms of judgment and query. Every attempt to define a semantic core rigorously and permanently, entirely distinct from the larger semasic field in which it is located, is foundational and absolutist, incompatible with the inexhaustibility of query and of being. J have discussed up to this point primarily linguistic semiates, literal and figurative language. It is important to widen the scope of the discussion to include semiates from other domains of experience. The most important sphere for this discussion is that of query, in its different modes. I have noted some of the interesting differences among semiates in the different modes, especially the intermodal range of the relevant semasic fields and cores. We may in this connection consider science as dependent on particular social communities for its practice, defining somewhat different semasic fields and subfields for differ-

MEANING 99 ent communities. Thus, very generally, assertive query and science are primarily linguistic fields, sometimes employing unique technical languages. But the ability of scientific query to function effectively depends not only on its languages, but on the natural and social conditions that linguistic semiates are related to and that influence their functions. Scientific semasic fields therefore include natural loci— primarily those enfranchised as relevant over the history of science, but including newly discovered natural loci relevant through local connections and relevance. Scientific semasic fields also include experimental

techniques, instruments, public practices and norms, social conditions, institutional structures, and the like. Science is an intermodal form of query that emphasizes assertive judgment. Its semasic fields emphasize language and semantic cores, but are pervaded by practical and social semiates as well as by semiates involving structural and systematic connections. There are public semasic fields engendered by scientific communities; there are idiosemic fields that are functions of different practicing scientists—an essential source of scientific novelty and development.* Even in science, there are concepts whose semasic cores (which define the concepts) are dependent more on structural and systematic than on semantic relationships—theoretical concepts and rules, for example—so that even in science, the distinction between semasic and semantic cores is very important. Intermodality in scientific query is expressed through the range of semiates relevant within any associated field or subfield and in relations among the different fields. The location of every scientific semiate in many different fields because of different communities and modes of judgment and query is an im-

portant source of the indeterminateness that haunts even the most rigorous scientific activities with prospects of change and revolution, but also a source of invention and change, of the richness of intermodal relationships that enables science to develop. This again is the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness that is the expression of finiteness and inexhaustibility in being, query, and, now, in meaning, that is essential to both the openness of query and the determinateness that enables it to attain validation. In practical query, particularly ethics and politics, the relevant judgments are not primarily linguistic, but acts, including linguistic utterances as deeds.

Here the most important, central semiates are actions and their constituting circumstances, including natural conditions that constitute the field of practice. Where utterances are prominent, as in human discourse, literal meanings and semantic cores are also prominent. But the relevant semiates in practical query are often deeds and circumstances without semantic cores—in sports, for example, where linguistic instruction is sometimes entirely irrelevant or at best a means to bodily improvement, even in human contexts where attitude, posture, gesture, and tone of voice are more important than what is said. Sympathy given to a person afflicted with suffering can be effective independent of any semantic or literal meanings spoken, a function of general demeanor and

100 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING subtle movements. What we do has meaning, is semasic, and its associated fields may function largely without semantic cores—here in terms of relationships among wider fields at their peripheries, the associated idiosemic cores, and the relevant semasic cores (which in this case are very different from the relevant semantic cores). Semantic core relationships are far more relevant to assertive judgment and scientific query than to practical judgment and to moral and political query. Fabricative query, especially art, emphasizes the peripheries of semasic fields. Here the fields are much wider than are relevant in science, for they include sonorous and thematic relationships in figuration as well as semantic relationships. Figurative language functions more at the field peripheries than among the semantic or semasic cores. Idiosemic variation is both prominent and inescapable. In the other arts there are corresponding peripheral relationships of semasis: those transformations in vision, for example, that enable us to view our surroundings in new and different ways, that enable us to perceive shapes, light and shadow, texture and surface, as we have never viewed them

before. In art, peripheral relationships of visual and auditory semiates are of fundamental importance, are emphasized. These sometimes may have propositional and semantic implications, sometimes may emphasize the interaction between semantic and semasic cores and the periphery—as in works like The Brothers Karamazov and Moby Dick, where literal meanings and moral issues are

prominent. Art is deeply intermodal, as science and politics are, expressed in the range of the relevant semasic fields and interactions among the relevant subfields and cores. Philosophy is the syndetic form of query in which generality and pervasiveness are of fundamental importance. Here the range and applicability of relevant semiates is greatly augmented, thereby requiring not only action at the periphery of relevant semasic fields, but interactions among diverse semantic cores. Philosophy is supremely intermodal, with the consequence that the most extraordinary range of interactions among cores and peripheries, among the different but relevant fields, is emphasized. Philosophy is like art in its emphasis on semasic peripheries, like science in its concern for semantic cores; but it is probably concerned most with the interaction between semasic cores and semasic boundaries, with shaping and modifying the relationship between general semasic fields—typically linguistic and conceptual—and their manifold semasic and semantic subfields. These different kinds of semasic relationships are extremely important and very interesting. But we should not be content with so limited a treatment of so complex a subject. For there are very different ways in which meanings have been understood, expressed here in the distinction between signs and symbols, univocity and polysemasis. I have expressed some of this in terms of the distinction between the semantic and semasic cores and the full semasic field. But

MEANING IOI there are domains of meaning——social codes, religious rituals, and psychological processes—that ate worth separate examination. I shall discuss social codes specifically in Chapter 5. Here it is worth noting

only that to function within a society, a person must understand its codes and what they mean. Such knowledge is largely not propositional, even where the

codes are linguistic, but primarily practical and fabricative. Ritual interchanges among people “‘out in public’ —‘‘How are you?” “O.K.”; “Have I the right address?” “Come in’—are forms of social interaction that enable people to get along, differentiate members of different social groups, define milieux for social interaction, and establish relationships of status and respect.** There is clearly an important component of utility in such rituals: achieving certain individual and social ends, attaining goods and producing certain results from the interchanges; but there ts also a profoundly ‘‘expressive’’ element in which forms and patterns are essential, a sense of wholes and parts, places and locations.** Thus, social codes define complex common perspectives in which further interchanges occur. These perspectival conditions are an essential part of communities, and I shall return to them. Language is one of the most important of these social conditions, and cannot then be understood in propositional or instrumental terms alone. The kinds of meaning—the relevant semiates and their semasic fields—that

are involved in such social codes and shared perspectives are remarkable in their polysemy, breadth, complexity, and dynamic tensions.” Social codes are nearly always in tension between public and shared norms and private or 1diosemic variations. Some members of every group work at the margins of its acceptable codes, often producing unintelligibility and confusion. Social mean-

ing, in both its public and its idiosemic variations, is a complex and subtle mixture of language, ritual, gesture, tone, posture, appearance, clothing, and so forth. Indeed, almost everything perceivable within human action—1including components that pass almost entirely unnoticed—can be important components of social semasic fields. Religious rituals may be regarded primarily as social activities, and what I

have said about social codes and their semasic fields would then apply. We must add to any question of religious practices the moral side (religious rituals both express and form moral attitudes that are realized in practice) and the theological side (religious doctrine is expressed in language). But there is another important semasic element in religion as well as in art and psychology that requires separate consideration. Ricoeur has described this element as symbolic, and he includes religious as well as dream symbolism—the symbolism of evil, hope, and destiny; of house, tunnel, and falling.*° Here the symbols not

only are polysemic, as all semasic relations are, but reveal to us the inexhaustibility of being as propositional language cannot. Now where the seman-

tic core is confused with the entire semasic field, inexhaustibility is denied, |

102 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING but that is simply an error, a confusion concerning semasic elements and per-

spectives. The question that Ricoeur confronts us with is whether certain forms of semasis do not manifest inexhaustibility, that of being and of human being, more directly and completely than other forms. Part of the answer has been given. Every semiate, however constrained by convention, inhabits complex fields and subfields, some of which are more restricted than others (in certain ways)—the semantic and semasic cores, for example. In no case is there only a literal, a semantic, core, and in every case

meaning and semasis are inexhaustible. The most obvious way to express Ricoeur's point in terms of this semasic theory is by distinguishing the semantic and the semasic cores. In the case of assertive judgment and science, the semantic and semasic cores closely overlap—though they cannot be identified to the extent that the semasic core includes elements of scientific practice and systematic connections. In art and religion, where more complex symbols are found, either the cores are of marginal relevance, and the entire semasic field is activated, especially at its periphery—this is particularly true in art-— or the semasic core is quite different from any relevant semantic core, includ-

ing a complex array of relevant semiates associated with practice, life and death, the past and the future. These semasic cores extend over the great range of forms in human experience. The same is true in psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism where certain symbols—of sexuality or fear, labor or practice——become paradigmatic of human life generally and universally. In these cases, it seems to me, the distinction between the semantic and the semasic cores becomes very wide, and the latter are extended to include typical elements, but not all semiates, over the full semasic field. Here, then, the predominant tension is, not between the two types of cores, or even between the semantic core and the full semasic field, as in science, but between the semasic core that paradigmatically expresses what is typical throughout human experi-

ence and the full semasic field. The tension between them not only ts the source of the vitality of religious, artistic, and psychoanalytical symbols, but also manifests the limitations of both semasic cores and fields that are an expression of their inexhaustibility. My discussion of semasis has taken a long and somewhat tortuous route to reach the question with which it began, of the nature of meaning. The two traditional approaches are based on the principles that meaning is a precondition of understanding and that whatever functions effectively in experience must have meaning. The narrowness of the first principle can be avoided by generalizing to all the modes of judgment and query, so that meaning becomes the precondition of judgment, in any mode. Only what is meaningful can be judged, but in every mode. Meaning is wider here than judgment, for it includes what contributes to judgment, makes judgment possible, as well as what judgments are about. Things have meaning. Yet we may want to distinguish between what makes a particular judgment possible and what contrib-

MEANING 103 utes to its character, to its validation, as different types of meaning if not a distinction between what has meaning and what contributes to it. To this general sketch we must add the proviso that query is inexhaustible in

that anything may be interrogated indefinitely, and only what has meaning can be so interrogated. Meaning is again wider than judgment because it includes the conditions that make judgment possible, because natural beings may be interrogated even though they may not be judgments, and because anything that may be interrogated must first have meaning. Two conclusions follow: (a) that not everything has meaning at any given time, but only constituents of human perspectives; (4) that anything whatsoever may be a con-

stituent of a perspective, any natural locus of any kind (though not all are constituents of human perspectives at any time). Meanings do not pertain to certain kinds of beings and not others. The semasic-field theory meets the conditions just described provided we emphasize three additional principles: (1) that the distinction between semasic core and semasic field (not semantic core) is fundamental to the distinction between what possesses meaning and what contributes to the distinction between what possesses meaning and what contributes to meaning, makes it possible; (2) that the semasic field is expanded to the perspectival field, the field of judgment, including whatever makes judgment possible and the implications and manifestations of judgment; (3) that the semasic field is always divided by

its many cores and peripheries, entailing that intelligibility and unintelligibility, comprehension and lack of comprehension, are always complementarily related. To the reciprocal relationship between judgment and perspective we may add the semasic field. In the wider sense, the semasic field 1s the perspective for judgment and includes whatever contributes to a particular semiate’s functioning for and in judgment. In the narrower sense, the semasic core 1s whatever is necessary to enable a particular semiate to function as it does. Both are clearly perspectival fields, varying with location. All the modes of judgment and query are relevant, and semasic fields for particular semiates are variable with different modes of judgment and different forms of query. In the widest sense, semasic fields include whatever can be found in human

experience, whatever makes judgment possible—and judgment here is the defining attribute of humanity. Yet the principle that certain events in human life are not judgments, not even contributions to juadgment—molecular events in the body, small events in a person's immediate surroundings—applies to meaning. Certain human events do not have meaning or contribute to mean-

ing because they do not constitute perspectives for judgment (though they may someday constitute such perspectives). Meaning here includes whatever ts

judgmentally relevant, what can or does make a difference to some human perspectives. In a narrower sense, semasic cores include whatever constitutes judgments, whatever is part of the unisons of human judgments. Many events of our lives

104 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING surround us and are connected with what we do and feel, but do not in fact make a difference to the judgments we undertake in certain perspectives. Only some audience reactions affect an athlete’s performance, and almost no reactions of a particular television audience. The way a person reads a speech to a professional audience is a function of far more than the words he uses and the thesis he is propounding, but is not a response to all the members of the audience and their reactions, though they are part of the perspective and semasic field in which he is functioning.

The question of meaning, then, is not a very different question of human being from the questions of judgment and perspective, but requires the distinction between semasic fields and cores as well as acknowledgment of the inexhaustibility of judgment and query. Meaning is inexhaustible because being is inexhaustible, experience is inexhaustible, judgment is inexhaustible, and query is inexhaustible—but especially to the extent that perspectives are local and inexhaustible, that there is constant conflict and variation among different relevant perspectives in judgment, with social context and time, producing a continuing and profound tension among the semasic fields and cores, giving us at least two different but quite ordinary conceptions of meaning. If we add to these two types of fields and cores the particular group of semasic cores that are relevant to the different types of query, we can see in their tensions and interactions the face of inexhaustibility permeating human semasis. Not only are these semasic fields perspectivally diverse, producing opposition and unintelligibility, but the various cores in interaction with the larger fields are the source of those dynamic relationships that make invention, rationality, and knowledge possible and fill human life with meaning. One answer, then, to the perennial question of the meaning of human life is that such meaning is not one but inexhausibly many meanings, that the meaning of life is the meanings in human being.

COMMUNICATION

To the extent that communication is distinguishable from meaning and judgment, it designates something shared, in common. Yet human beings who live ina common society and who are influenced by the same judgments and events may not communicate about them. Traditionally, communication has been associated with common thoughts— ideas, intentions, messages. Yet we say that nature and physical events communicate with us, even that we communicate with nature, and certainly animals and humans communicate with each other. To the extent that we mean something stronger than that these influence each other's perspectives, we are referring to something common, a shared field of meaning. Yet the traditional understanding of what is common seems too narrow and misconceived. Texts and works of art communicate with us, as

MEANING 105 do gestures and acts, though many of them have no messages. Gestures and bodily stances communicate to us important facts about persons inadvertently and unintentionally. We may say that wherever there is communication, there are shared ideas. But such ideas may not be statable or even formulatable to the extent that what is communicated is not linguistic or propositional. “Idea” isa vague and generic word, so that it may be extended to cover all communication. Yet in this form it tells us nothing of what is communicated or of what is involved in such communication. Moreover, we may communicate with our bodies without explicit awareness or intention. To all this we must add the unending sense that communication is filled with misunderstandings. The concept I have associated with human being is judgment: the activity that expresses what it is to be human, in diverse modes leading to query. But we Cannot associate communication routinely with judgment, for animals and events communicate with us though they do not judge, when they do not judge. It would be wrong to say that human beings may communicate whatever does not involve judgment, in part because the identification of humanity with judgment is constitutive, part of our understanding of humanity. In this sense, Communication by and with human beings involves judgments in common, but communication in the wider sense may not—though it is difficult to see how there might be communication with a human being without judgment’s being involved. A preliminary hypothesis, then, is that although there can be communication without common judgments, there cannot be communication that does not issue in judgment. Communication here is paradigmatically human communication, issuing in judgment to the extent that it involves human beings. There is the special case of natural events that we say communicate with us and with which we communicate or commune. The latter case may appear to be but an elegant way of expressing our causal influence upon natural events. Yet communing is at a reflective distance in which we consider our impact upon natural events and their impact on us while detaching ourselves from direct influence. This case is very important, for it indicates that though communication is narrower than meaning, to be distinguished from it (if only as species of a genus), communication is also to be distinguished from mere causal impact. Our sense of communing with nature is a consequence of, a reflection upon, our causal relationship with nature, but arises in a situation in which such relationships are minimized by the relevant judgments. Communication is not mere causal impact. The concept of judgment carries the force of that distinction, though it may be restricted too closely to humanity. Yet we recall that judgment cannot separate human beings from animals,

for animals do judge, but the determining condition of humanity 1s multimodality and intermodality in judgment. It is then more plausible that animals communicate and are communicated with through judgment, not through causal influence, and when we influence an animal, but it does not

106 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING respond to what we do by judgment, there has not been communication. Here natural events are again the difficult case, for we say that they communicate with us although they do not judge. Kant suggests in the Critique of Judgment that we regard beauty in nature as if it were a sign of purposiveness. We could follow his lead to the conclusion that natural events communicate with us only when we regard them as if they were judgments; alternatively, we may conclude that natural events communicate with us to the extent that we judge, that there is a close tie between their influence upon us and our judgmental responses. The immediate question is of the relationship between communication and

judgment. I am arguing that although communication entails shared semiates, it may not involve shared responsive judgments. We may respond to common texts and utterances with very different judgments. But we must respond with judgments. What is communicated is not always judgment, but there can be no communication without issue in judgment. This is effectively the conclusion embodied in our understanding of semasis and semasic cores. There are two natural contrasts of semasis and meaning, a wider one inclusive of what is constitutive of judgments, what makes them possible, and a narrower one expressive of what constitutes the unisons of judgments. Following this lead, we may say that there is a wider sense of communication in which whatever is meaningful, in any sense, is communicated. Here we emphasize community, the full semasic field, and the importance of further judgment. In

the narrower sense, what is communicated must constitute the unison of a judgment in response. In the latter sense, communication involves a semasic core of the issuing judgment, not the full semasic field. The next question is that of commonality: What is shared in communication? We cannot take this simply to be a shared perspective because members ofa given community, who speak a common language, may not communicate. We cannot take it to be a common judgment in response because different persons who understand a given message may respond very differently. The traditional notion of an idea, thought, or message is far too narrow, and expresses a view related to epistemological foundationalism: that communication is repetition, re-presentation. Just as knowledge has no mimetic or representational essence, so Communication has none. There can be communication though no particular judgment or thought is shared. When an anthropologist visits an alien culture and seeks to understand how the people there live, he may find himself largely unable to communicate with

them or to understand their attempts at communication. One requirement that is essential is that he and they share a wider, lived context. Sometimes he may not understand their language or other social customs, yet understand a few simple gestures. Here our common humanity may be sufficient; we can sometimes communicate with other human beings because we are human beings. We can communicate with other animals because we are living beings. A

MEANING 107 shared wider field of social and human life is essential for communication, but does not ensure it. The principle that communication must arise in judgment is a hermeneutic

or interpretive principle: something is meaningful in communication only when it can be interpreted. This claim can be understood in the stronger sense that the interpretive judgment must be constituted as the judgment it is, in its unison, by the semiate in question. Yet an anthropologist may interpret what the members of another society do without understanding it in their terms or being communicated with by them. We may understand what people do in their terms or we may understand what they do in our own terms or in terms of an established theory or model. We have two conditions that separately are insufficient though each 1s necessary. Perhaps together they are sufficient: communication occurs when persons as judges share a wider perspective of life and activity issuing in judgments whose unisons include shared locales. This way of putting the matter 1s clearly inadequate, to the extent that it describes two persons as judges responding separately to a common set of conditions. If we rectify this so that the judgments of one person are responded to by the judgments of another, I believe we reach a satisfactory result. Communication between persons requires a number of shared or common conditions—-a minimum of three. Perhaps this 1s the basis of Peirce’s semiology.*” Communication occurs when two persons share both a wider perspective or milieu in common and a narrower locus of judgment constituted in part by the wider sphere, in which judgments by the one agent are unisonal constituents of judgments by the second. The unisonal relationship here is a judgmental relationship involving modality and validation. The judgments by the second agent are interpretive of the first—a relationship

I call articulation. The loci of judgment but not the judgments themselves must be shared by the persons involved.

When we say that natural events communicate with us, we mean that we and they share our surroundings in common, that the natural events in question, though not judgments themselves, unisonally constitute our further judgments on them not merely as causal antecedents but as objects of judgmental reflection. When we think about a sunset, when we paint it or invent an ode to it, we not simply are causally influenced by it, but regard its properties as open to interpretation and validation—that is, to articulation. Our interrogation of nature is not so very different from our interrogation of human texts, except for the presence of humanity—that is, for the presence of particular judgmental possibilities. Communication in language depends on a shared grammar and lexicon, possibly a shared sound system (though there are languages we know only how to read). Yet we may speak a common language without being able to communicate very effectively and can communicate non-linguistically in any case. Thus, communication in language is a function of wider social and linguistic

108 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING milieux issuing in diverse judgments requiring common, narrower spheres of language-related judgments. These judgments themselves may not be specifically linguistic—for example, where communication is by tone of voice, intonation, or facial expression. In such cases, the question of what is communicated may be as unanswerable as the question of what is known may be in practical or fabricative query. Subsequent interrogations are the only answers

to that question in the latter cases; judgments in response may be the only answers in the case of communication. Messages within communication seem typically appropriate only to assertive judgment and its associated forms of query. Just as the narrower sense of semantic meaning emerges from concern with assertion and truth, science and verification, correspondence and representation, so there is a parallel view of communication in which a thought or idea, a message or information, is what is Communicated. Here the fundamental elements appear to be propositional and assertive, the associated tests of meaningfulness to be grounded in assertive validation. We communicate when we understand common propositions or messages, facts or information. We can be said to understand the message when we know how to use and to verify the claims made. This is too narrow a conception for communication in general, too narrow even for the notion of acommunicated message, for sometimes we are required to take action when we understand a message—not a proposition but a com-

mand or an imperative. It is worth noting here speech act theory in which, effectively, all language and meaning are interpreted as communications, so that the question of what is communicated is immediately forthcoming.* The illocutionary force of an utterance is its communicative function. Up to this point I have largely neglected a fundamental feature of communi-

cation, perhaps its most prominent distinguishing characteristic. Communication involves both sharing and transmission. This notion of transmission is included in the threefold characterization of what is shared in communication: there 1s Communication in a normal sense where two persons share a common

milieu and where the communication issues in further judgment, but there must also be a shared perspective in which judgments by the one agent are unisonal constituents of judgments by the other. This shared perspective of issuing and responding judgments is what we mean by transmission. The judgments that are effective as unisonal constituents of subsequent judgments

are what is transmitted, though they may be, not shared, but related only through articulation. It is the relevant perspectives that are shared, for there can be no transmission unless there are perspectives in common, milieux for such transmission. There can be meaning without communication, but never communication in which shared perspectives and transmitted judgments are entirely separable. A work of art communicates, to the extent that it does so, by functioning as

a judgment for both artist and audience. It can be meaningful for us even

MEANING 109 where we share no relevant perspectives with its maker and his society, but it can be said to communicate with us only where we share important relevant perspectives as human beings. Since every work of art is inexhaustible, what is communicated here is inexhaustible—but not anything other than, located elsewhere than, in the work of art. It follows that wherever works of art communicate with us, they possess inexhaustible meanings that we may find in them that were unknown and even irrelevant to the artist and other audiences, inexhaustible semasic relationships beyond those communicated; and they too are inexhaustible. An historical artifact, a document or a trace, communicates

when we can respond to it by further judgment, shared by the society that produced it and the historian who interprets it. Transmission suggests something more than this, however, not something distinct from the shared perspectives and judgments, but a different way of construing what is common. We may briefly return to assertive judgment and science for an example. I have suggested that where messages and information are regarded as primary in communication, we are emphasizing assertive judgment. We may, however, distinguish three cases. In the first case, we may imagine a scientist taking notes for his own records of his experiments and conclusions, notes that are read and understood by other people without his knowledge and approval. Here there is certainly communication, though we might consider it unintentional. In the second case, we recognize that the scientist’s own review of his notes is communicative: from himself as writer to himself as reader at another time. We communicate with ourselves in rumination, in record keeping, in most activities of consciousness. In many of these cases, what we mean by this communication is that in a wider mileu issuing in further judgment, we understand our prior thoughts and messages. There is nevertheless both communication and transmission of judgment and perspective in each of the examples cited.

There is, however, third, a much stronger if narrower sense of communica- , tion in which we emphasize the public life of a judgment. Here we emphasize scientific communication by pointing to public activities: journals, books, professional meetings, and so forth. Two features must be noted. One is that such communication is intentional, purposive. I do not consider this to be a fundamental element of communication, not because I deny intention where it is relevant, but because in the public arena of judgments and meanings, there are many relationships over which we have no control, which we do not intend to foster, but they occur and are relevant, are part of communication, We may publish a paper intentionally, but do not intend a particular person to read it or the particular ways he will be influenced by it. The inexhaustibility of meaning and communication entails that whatever we intend to communicate, ina

public setting, we will communicate much more (and less) than we intend, and what we communicate without intending it may in some cases be far more

important and influential. The second feature is the fundamental one: our

110 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING publication is predominantly a practical judgment even where what we publish is the report of a scientific experiment. All judgments are multimodal, and every assertion is validly to be interpreted as an action as well as a fabrication. In communication with others, practical judgment rises to prominence, in some cases to prominence over all the other modes of judgment—assertive, fabricative, and syndetic. We must make ourselves understood, sometimes at the expense of accuracy, detail, precision, and subtlety. Thus, considerations essential to science and assertive query may fade in relation to the importance of transmitting the essential features of the relevant judgments to others. Such features of communication are functions of speakers and audiences as they are functions of the relevant modes of judgment and query. In this narrower sense—it is the sense in which communication is to be distinguished sharply from meaning—practical judgment is fundamental in communication. Communication here is transmission of meaning, and transmission is an act. This is a much narrower sense than the one in which we speak of nature or the past communicating with us, for past agents may not be acting so as to be interpreted by us. Nevertheless, we regard what they do predominantly as acts when we interpret them as communicative (a consideration that prevents us from treating intention as primary in communication).

It is the paradigm of communication rather than meaning that underlies speech act theory, effectively the imposition of a single mode of judgment upon the inexhaustible modalities of judgment and query. Meaning is a function of judgment and query in science, but communication is a function of acts and utility, evaluated primarily as successful in transmission and understand-

ing, not in truth or accuracy. Teaching, instruction, and publication are all more communicative than assertive, even where they take place through assertion. To regard a work of art from a remote time and place—the Divine Com-

edy—as communicating with us is always to emphasize what the artist has done, a practical judgment, to make his message effective and clear. An impor-

tant implication of this recognition is that the communicative function of a work of art is largely anaesthetic, and a communicative theory is inadequate

to art.” Important confusions result from not understanding this distinction between knowledge and query, on the one hand, the associated meanings relevant to the modes of judgment and query and the requirements of communication, on the other. Our goal in query is judgment and validation, interrogation and response. Our goal in communication is sharing and transmission—sometimes uninterrogative and repetitive perspectives and judgments. The greatest

confusions come in education, where we are concerned with encouraging others to interrogate and invent, to participate in query. Some forms of query may not be very communicative to some students, and some forms of instruc-

tion and communication may numb their minds and inhibit their powers of

MEANING III interrogation. I believe that participation in query, as agent and as observer, is the greatest encouragement to further query. We learn best by participating in query, next best by example, by witnessing query in action.” Still, even if the goal of teaching is the encouragement of query as a power in students, this is a form of communication more than a form of query itself. In any case, there isa profound and unavoidable tension in education between the goal of participation in query and the activities required in instruction: a tension between the inexhaustibly interrogative nature of query and the practical judgments emphasized in pedagogy. It is a special case of the tension that what is understood and meaningful in one respect cannot be understood in all respects, presenting us with the continual sense that we have not succeeded in making ourselves understood by others. The perspectivity of semasis and communication, especially of interpretation, entails that our most effective forms of communication bear within themselves the deepest obscurities; for what is common ts always accompanied by profound and frequently unknown differences.

A related tension may be noted in connection with science as well as the other forms of query. Scientists must communicate, but for two different purposes. One is based on the fact that science is a public activity; communication enables scientific results to be shared. This is predominantly practical judgment, and is to be realized by the success of the means of communication. Science as query and scientific communication are in tension here, incompatible in important ways. However, it may be argued that science, although it 1s primarily concerned with assertive judgment, depends on a shared community to establish norms and define criteria of validation. Meaning and truth in science here are functions of consensus and commonality. Here communication is essential to science as science, as query.” In this sense, science is a social, not an individual, activity. In this sense also, communication and query are irreducibly interrelated amidst great tension. Communication is predominantly practical judgment, and may be interrogated through practical query, the question primarily being how to communicate better, how to produce more fully shared perspectives and subordinate perspectives. Except for those types of practical query in which communication itself is in question—involving, for example, newspapers and books, ra-

dio and television, information about government and institutional activities—there is no more direct link between the other forms of query and relevant problems of communication and transmission. Interrogation and communication are inexhaustibly related and inexhaustibly different concerns

in relation to judgment. An athlete’s or politician's predominant concern ts with his actions—hitting the ball well, running quickly enough, enacting responsible legislation, and so forth. All such acts may be communicative—1in a stadium or on television, for example—but need not be. What we may conclude is that query is intermodal and that there is an irreducible entanglement of modes of query. Practical judgment is essential to science, both in experi-

112 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING mentation and in communication, but is not equivalent to or inclusive of science. The relationships and tensions between communication and query are inexhaustible, a prominent manifestation of inexhaustibility in rationality. Most of what IJ have said up to this point about communication applies with little modification to philosophy and syndetic query. I shall not go into them save to note that intermodality haunts philosophy, that philosophy’s emphasis on generality makes intelligibility a continuing issue. Thus, the question of whether communication is important to philosophy, whether lack of communication and intelligibility is a weakness or a sign of rigor, is recurrent and unresolvable. Whether philosophic query has norms and standards that transcend its milieux, transcend communication, is always a fundamental and unresolved question, even though such transcendence is effectively a consequence of inexhaustibility. Art provides us with a similar and perhaps more illuminating example; for in fabricative query it is what is made that is fundamental, but influence is an important function of construction. The responses by artists to works of art are often most effectively the production of other works of art. Influence is not only a condition of art but one of the major forms of judgmental response in fabricative query.** Communication in art is very similar. We frequently cannot say what is communicated by a work of art, can neither say nor identify anything other than the work. Not all works of art do or should have messages or inspire deeds. Works may communicate only themselves. The concept that expresses this element of art, so fundamental that it can include whatever is relevant to art and fabricative query, is the concept of style.*? Works of art communicate through style, understood here to include not only the style of an artist but the style of his school and period. Style is what is common over works and artists and, if we are communicated to by a work of art, is what we understand in communication, however dimly. The work of art communicates only in a milieu, and its milieu is a stylistic one. When we understand that a work is poignant, terrible, sad, tormented, we understand also something of how it is this, something about its stylistic realization of its qualities. Nothing other than the work can it be expected to communicate besides its style—in all the complexities of that notion. The concept of style, then, is an inextricable fusion of fabricative query and communication in art. The fundamental reason for this is that style absorbs whatever we take to be relevant to works of art into itself, and is thereby prominently inexhaustible.

LANGUAGE

Two extreme views of language, instructive in virtue of their limitations and differences, are Dewey's view that language is the instrument of instruments ™

MEANING 113 and Heidegger's claim that language is the house of Being.”’ The former position is so obviously inadequate that Dewey could not have meant it as it stands.

Not only does it greatly overemphasize the instrumental character of language, transforming it entirely into practical judgment, thereby confusing language with communication, but it quite overlooks the insight inherent in Heidegger's view that language surrounds us and characterizes our being. In other words, not only is language a vehicle, a means (in communication), it isa generic human perspective, a pervasive locus of our being. Yet language can-

not be the house of being, not only because our being must be wider than language, but because being is a kingdom in which there are many mansions. A view closely related to both of these, sharing their deficiencies but also their strengths, is Foucault’s view of the relationship between discourse and

power. Language is both an instrument of domination and a site at which power and knowledge are inseparably conjoined.*® On the side of power, Foucault's position overemphasizes practical judgment. On the side of discourse and language, it shares Heidegger's overemphasis on the pervasiveness of language, neglects the ways in which human being, meaning, and perspectivity are all wider than language although deeply influenced by it. What all

these positions have in common, however limited their particular formulations, is overt acknowledgment of the complex interrelations among being, human being, meaning, and perspectivity. What Dewey, Foucault, and Heidegger affirm, in different ways, is the inexhaustible finiteness of human being and its complex relationships to language. Three important characteristics of language have been claimed to typify its uniqueness and importance in the semasic domain, characteristics that are important enough to bring it into confusion with judgment as expressive of the singularity of human being. These characteristics are: (a) the systematic structure of all languages, technical and natural, the importance of determinate syntax and phonology in language; (4) the remarkable semantic resources possessed by language; (c) the intimate relationship of language with thought and rationality, especially in connection with the development of our rational powers. It is worth considering each of these in detail, slightly out of order.

(z) One of the most striking characteristics of language is its patterned structure, its recurrent forms, largely characterized by what we call its grammar and syntax, but including phonetic patterns and repetitive semantic relationships. It is important to distinguish a narrower structural thesis—that of transformational generative grammer, for example, emphasizing syntax— from the more general thesis that there are recurrent patterns throughout se-

masis, in all its forms: mythic, poetic, and linguistic. The latter thesis has been the source of some remarkable insights, but it is neither definite enough to give us a specific account of language nor general enough to include all semasic relationships. The narrower structural thesis that language is charac-

114 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING terized by syntax owes a great debt to Chomsky, and in that form gives us an important and effective, if not entirely satisfactory way, of characterizing language.”’

_ The thesis that language is fundamentally grammatical, and that syntax uniquely characterizes it in contrast with other semasic forms, is provocative and important, but finally too restrictive. It overlooks, on the one hand, the

structural patterns of certain myths and religious rituals that are not linguistic, and neglects, on the other, the ways in which daily language encounters are patterned by social rather than grammatical forms.** Much of language is interpretive and ritualistic, the embodiment of social codes that are meaningful in a variety of ways at any given time, at a variety of levels, without being grammatically well formed. Speech—perhaps in contrast with written language, where syntactic constraints are more severe—is tolerable and communicative even where ungrammatical. Ellipsis is one explanation, but incomplete, since we find that audiences filter out grammatical deviance in slang and careless speech to arrive at quite adequate and complete messages. Poetry is similarly syntactically variable, but I have discussed figurative language in general, and need not go into it again. Chomsky’s view of syntactic linguistic competence, what we must know in order to be a competent user of a natural language, would not be as interesting or important as it is without ties to the other two characteristics claimed to be

unique to language. He claims that syntactic competence is the expression of specific and fundamental features of human thought, necessary to rationality; and that such syntactic features, while distinguishable from semantic considerations, are the specific ways in which language ts able to express understanding. (c) The thesis that there is an intimate relationship between language and thought is controversial, and has been challenged in a variety of ways, though it can be found in remarkably different theoretical approaches.” It is important, however, to distinguish two different theses: (1) thought is linguistic in all its forms for a sophisticated language-user; (2) the development of language and of thought is genetically entwined, and the acquisition of language transforms the way we think and reason. Recognition of wider semasic fields entails that even in the case of language, important semasic relationships, which are

essential to thought and rationality, exist on the periphery—for example, sound and associative relationships—-where grammar is often largely irrelevant. Far more important, however, our understanding of the different modes

of rationality and query, the inexhaustibility of interrogation in different modes, some of which involve minimal linguistic embodiment—actions, gestures, social codes, visual arts—indicates that we can restrict thought to lan-

. guage only arbitrarily, that sucha restriction parallels the foundational restriction of rationality to assertion and of meaning to semantics. The developmental or genetic thesis is not so easy to deal with, since access

MEANING a) to the early infant’s mind is difficult, and it is more than likely that the development of linguistic competence changes the ways in which a child reflects.“° There is an important sense in which the genetic hypothesis of language acquisition, that we could not think rationally in the ways we do if our ways of acquiring language were very different, is quite irrelevant to our concerns here. It is irrelevant not because it is false (or true)—for it is almost certainly partly true and partly false. The ways in which human beings develop leave fundamental marks on their later activities. We are profoundly historical creatures. Ricoeur has called this the archaeology of human being: traces of the past remain in any present situation.*' But archaeology is not sufficient to human being. Ricoeur describes history as demanding a teleology and an eschatology.” But the more general point—for teleology alone will not do—is that thought and query include all our spiritual and cultural capabilities and achievements, only some of which can be traced back to genesis and history (or, conversely, that inexhaustibly transcend any history even where it is taken

to include them). History, on the one hand, and thought, on the other, are intimately related through the genesis of the human mind, ontogenetically and phylogenetically. But each transcends the other inexhaustibly: the former including traces that contribute to thought later, that are discovered only af-

terward, not in the marks they leave; the latter in the modes of query that minimize temporality and development—mathematics, art, philosophy, and so forth. Thought is both in and out of time, in and out of history. Language too is

both synchronic and diachronic, in and out of time. Its inexhaustibility 1s manifested particularly by the two conditions that, on the one hand, there are always non-linguistic semasic relationships that constitute the wider field for linguistic semasis, and, on the other, language is capable of expressing any thought, of embodying any semasic connection. Like being, human being,

and meaning, language is inexhaustible: open but local. Its limitations are manifested most profoundly not in grammar but in semantics. Figurative language is as semasically rich as any field of semasis. Yet it cannot achieve the semasic relationships found in visual forms. We also think with our bodies, in our gestures, with our eyes and ears, our hands and postures. These semasic relationships and ways of thinking are not essentially linguistic though they may be expressed through language since anything may be so expressed. Language is not, however, more complete in this respect than gestures or painting, each of which has nothing entirely beyond its powers. (6) The expressive and semantic powers of language are a consideration to which we find ourselves returning again and again. Despite—or in the context of—my discussion of figurative language as functioning more at the semasic

periphery than in the semantic core, I should like to suggest that language may be distinctive, beyond its grammatical structure and general importance for expression, particularly in its semantic powers. The standard view of figura-

116 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tive language, that it presupposes literal meaning, is incorrect in relation to individual semiates, but it may have a larger truth in relation to language in general: namely, that language functions as it does, in thought and rationality, is structured by syntax and phonetics, in order to fulfill its semantic capabilities. I have argued that every semiate is located within an inexhaustible semasic field of which the semantic core is only a subfield. In many semasic relations, in poetry and even in practice, the semantic core may be largely irrelevant and

semasis may function at the periphery of the field, or in interactions among semasic cores and peripheries not inclusive of the semantic cores. In assertive judgment, however, the semantic core is essential. To emphasize the perspectivity of semasis, we may consider the semantic core as the semasic core relative to assertive judgment. Such a view would be correct subject to the understand-

ing that where speaking and utterance are primarily practical judgments, speech acts, semantic cores and practical semasic cores closely overlap but are nevertheless quite different. To promise by uttering the words “I promise”’ is not to assert a proposition.*’ The circumstances surrounding practices are relevant to them and to their meanings as they are not relevant to the associated propositions and assertions. A clearer example is perhaps the difference between the semantic core of a quantum-mechanical concept in its technical con-

text and the same concept or word in a work for popular consumption. The semasic and semantic cores differ for words used technically in science, to make

precise claims, and used to explain such claims to laymen. Rhetorical flourishes and vagueness of application are essential to the latter and irrelevant to the former. Iam suggesting that the semantic function of language, but not that function alone, is essential to it. The tension between the semasic field and a semantic core is what is essential. One of the major deficiencies of Wittgenstein's simple language games——of which he was fully aware though some of his followers may not have been—1is that they do not distinguish propositional from practical functions. The game in which “Brick!’’ means “Give me that brick”

is not syntactically distinguished from the games in which “Brick!” is the name of a brick or is the claim that what I have is a brick. Wittgenstein’s point

is that syntax does not give us function, that semasis depends on the social activities in which the lexical items function.“* Nevertheless, though both practical and assertive judgments may involve an extremely subtle range of distinctions, how these distinctions are made differs in the two cases. We can reply to the wrong brick that it is wrong, too large, too rough, the wrong color. We can also assert that the brick is red rather than white, eight inches long rather than ten, and so forth. However, we may use and reject bricks without being able to say quite why, and we can make measurements too fine to be detected in our actions. If I am correct that many of the salient characteristics of language—its

MEANING 117 structure, grammar, phonetics—are a consequence of its semantic functions, I must hasten to point out that the inexhaustibility of semasis has the consequence that it is because of the restricted semantic core of the semasic field that language has the figurative capacities it has. The price we pay for a rich and effective language is that to function well semantically, it must function well over complex semasic fields. In order for language to function semantically, it must function semasically, for it is at semasic peripheries that conceptual transitions are made. I am suggesting that one expression of the inexhaustibility of language is its inexhaustible transcendence of its semantic functions. It is frequently essential to avoid syntactic ambiguity in assertion; ambigu-

ity interferes with scientific validation. Nevertheless, though minimizing such ambiguity is essential in science, it is impossible to eliminate it, and often undesirable to do so, because science is inexhaustible and scientific semi-

ates inhabit a wider semasic field than their semantic cores. We cannot, regardless of our efforts, restrict semasis to the semantic core. Inexhaustibility of

meaning is one reason, but a more specific reason is that new ideas and insights, connections and associations, come at semasic peripheries. This is why metaphors and models are so important in science. It is essential to minimize multivocity in assertive judgment, in certain important ways, but it is both impossible to eliminate it and undesirable, for it is required for discovery. It is not essential to practice to eliminate polysemy, though it is frequently desirable—but not always (for example, where we carry on social interchanges that depend on vagueness and imprecision). Many of our most useful social codes allow us to act through speaking in ways that are acceptable because they are indeterminate. Even better examples may be found in the rich and complex forms of practice that have importance at a variety of different semasic levels—

for our inner lives, for the past and the future, implications for others in a variety of ways, and so forth. Many interesting and powerful psychological theories suggest that every human practice functions at many different levels at once, symbolically and semasically. To seek to eliminate the polysemasis is effectively to change the practice, to turn it into an assertion. Polysemy is unavoidable in assertive judgment but should be minimized. It is sometimes desirable and sometimes undesirable in practice. It is essential to fabricative judgment and art, though semantic cores are unavoidable, engendering the continual and important tension in poetry between semasic norms

and figurative departures. But in philosophy the tension between semantic cores and semasic cores and peripheries becomes predominant, for in philosophy not only are semantic considerations essential but also generalization over as wide a range of semasic connections as possible. These two conditions, pre-

cision and generality of semasic relationships, make philosophy sometimes predominantly an assertive form of query, sometimes much closer to art, but generally neither of these, committed to generality and universality, to syndetic judgment, through propositional and assertive discourse. The syndetic

118 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING imperative forces philosophy to transcend any semantic cores. The assertive requirements are incompatible with the generality of philosophical endeavors. Semasis in philosophy has the profound characteristic of always transcending any given set of relationships we may establish for it. We may conclude this brief discussion of language with the note that language is inexhaustible in its multimodality as well as in its reference to being and beings, which are themselves inexhaustible. But the most striking feature of language is the predominance of its semantic functions in tension with its other functions—in art, practice, and philosophy, but especially in the intermodality and multimodality of assertive query.

CONSCIOUSNESS

By now it may be clear how our general understanding of locality and inexhaustibility helps us to develop a satisfactory view of human being. In the case

of consciousness, the conclusion is that there is no (one) legitimate way to understand consciousness though there is a legitimate way to understand the question of consciousness. The way to understand this question is that consciousness is inexhaustible because it is intimately conjoined with the question of human being, and human being ts inexhaustible. We give answers to the questions of consciousness and human being in everything we do, inall the modes of judgment and query, thereby determining them further and at the same time opening them to new determinations. The question of consciousness is effectively a form of the question of who we are, and it has inexhaustibly many answers.

J have argued that human being is inexhaustible not only as a species of being, which is inexhaustible, but insofar as the question of human being is answered by all our modes of judgment and forms of query, and no entirely determinate and exhaustive answer can be given to this question. Answering the question conclusively would require a predominant perspective relative to

which the answer would be valid, and there can be no ultimate or absolute perspective on human being. There are inexhaustibly many and different answets to the question of human being as there are inexhaustibly many and different perspectives for humanity, all the locales of human experience, life, and

thought. On the one hand, consciousness partakes of the inexhaustibility of human being insofar as we equate being human with being conscious. Yet higher antmals like cats and wolves are conscious in many of their activities (social and emotional) and human beings are frequently unconscious (where injured or asleep) without being any less human. On the other hand, consciousness ts

narrower than human being without being separable from it. This indeterminateness in the nature of consciousness ts paralleled throughout all its differ-

MEANING 119 ent manifestations and conditions: it is always in danger of irrevocably transcending the boundaries assigned to it in becoming identical with humanity, in becoming the distinguishing feature of human being, yet it is always narrower than and included within human being. It must include the body insofar as it is the mark of human being, but it is inevitably distinguished from the body insofar as the latter is differentially significant. Before considering this relationship between consciousness and human being in greater detail, I shall briefly consider several of the manifestations of consciousness to indicate how the inexhaustibility of human being interacts with the most modest interpretations of consciousness. All these different manifestations are answers to the question of what it is to be conscious. The answer cannot be given—or, alternatively, too many answers are called for—because what is in question is the nature of being human.

Public and Private | An answer with a long tradition to the question of what it is to be conscious is

that consciousness is uniquely private, while our activities in the world— largely if not entirely bodily manifestations—are public. Here the most natural interpretation of what is public is what is observable; thus private life is unobservable, hidden from the gaze of others. Where we take the step of equating consciousness with our private lives, we are faced with the problem of other minds. Here there are several equations, not just one: human being = consciousness = mind = private experience. A natural solution is to deny this equation at least once if not twice, denying that consciousness is entirely private insofar as we exhibit our thoughts to others in what we do or that mind is

private insofar as we realize our being, mental as well as physical, in our bodies. One answer to the problem of other minds then is Merleau-Ponty’s: that our link to the world is a bodily tie, and is not distinguishable into public and private factors.” That there is privacy to certain manifestations of consciousness seems clear: pains, pleasures, emotions, and qualities are experienced by us as conscious subjects as no one else can experience them, at least in part. This is true even though we may fully grant that concepts are public first before they are in-

terpreted privately or that a purely private concept is unintelligible.“° The thoughts we think about others are not known to them and may never be known if they are not overtly betrayed. Yet it is clear that consciousness is not private here in contrast with a public realm, for what we are conscious of, objects and thoughts, is often publicly perceivable by others in our expressions and bodily postures. Recent empiricist discussions of privacy in thought have emphasized pains and pleasures, largely out of concern with epistemological problems. But the

question of whether I can know incorrigibly that I have a toothache is not the same as the question of privacy in consciousness. A query-based, non-

120 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING foundational theory of knowledge makes all knowledge fallible, including knowledge of pains and feelings. But the fact that we can interrogate all claims as to their accuracy and reliability, their evidence, implications, and presuppositions, does not vitiate the singular way in which a person may be aware of his pain. A person can be conscious of his pain as no other person can be. But this peculiar truth does not entail that only the person is conscious of his pain,

that everyone else is unaware of it. Rather—and this is Wittgenstein’s and Merleau-Ponty’s point—the pain is known in different ways; we are conscious of it in different ways. The equation of consciousness, privacy, and knowledge is erroneous all down the line: there is consciousness that is not knowledge and consciousness that is public. There are erroneous perceptions and assertions that, though not knowledge, permeate consciousness. In our fantasy lives and self-awareness, Consciousness is sometimes more a way of being than a way of

knowing. In addition, other people may be conscious of our consciousness, though not in the ways we are. But if we cannot equate consciousness, know]edge, and privacy, we cannot entirely reject the equation either. For privacy in consciousness is a mark of a conscious swbzect, and knowledge in a being withOut consciousness is unintelligible. On the one hand, every being is a public being. On the other, consciousness has a privacy lacking in physical objects. If we mean to deny by this that physical objects have a being transcendent over their public observability, we deny

their inexhaustibility. All beings transcend any particular public conditions. The error of behaviorism is not only its denial that human beings are transcendent, with inner lives, but its identification of certain observable conditions with the entire range of human being. Every being is inexhaustible in that it may manifest itself to us in inexhaustibly novel ways. Human beings surprise us constantly. But so do very ordinary objects, particularly when they are utilized in novel ways. The private character of consciousness neither pervades all consciousness nor distinguishes human being from other beings. Some of our best and most conscious achievements are realized as we accomplish them, having only a public life. Many if not all our conscious thoughts are intelligible only in public demeanor. Some great speeches, performances, even ideas have no antecedent private existence. They of course have antecedent conditions, some of which are unique to particular agents. They also frequently produce consequences within the lives of particular human beings. If this is privacy, every being has a private life. What we are forced to conclude is that the relationship between publicness and privateness is a manifestation of the inexhaustibility of human being: that human beings transcend their conditions inexhaustibly in many ways, one of which is in the private life of inner thought, meaning, and feeling, but others of which are in the public realm. To the extent that mind and consciousness embody our cognitive and rational achievements, our judgments, mind and consciousness cannot be equated with privacy. Private life is

MEANING 121 one way in which we transcend our conditions, but not the only way. And much of private life, in which we achieve our greatest accomplishments, is out of awareness, not conscious in that sense.

Consciousness is both too rudimentary to be equated with human being, even with mind, and too transcendent to be relegated to an epistemic role in human life. It is both private and public, emotional and cognitive, intentional and passive, functional and superfluous, rational and disjointed, attentive and distracted. It is effectively equivalent to human being in all its forms, yet in every case it is narrower than human being. This is one of the pervasive ways in which the inexhaustibility of human being is manifested—an inexhaustibility shared by every being but unavoidable where we reflect upon ourselves.

Mediate and Immediate

Several pairs of complementary concepts express our ordinary and even our technical understanding of consciousness. Together they express the inexhaustibility of consciousness in our inability to understand it wholly. The private side of consciousness expresses our recognition that individual consciousnesses are uniquely reflexive, conscious of themselves. Yet our public lives thoroughly encroach on all our reflections, to the point where consciousness 1s unintelligible from either the public or the private side alone, while the two coexist uneasily insofar as they are regarded as alternatives. Consciousness, like

human being in the larger sense, and like all being, is inseparably public and private, constitutively related to others yet individual, transcendent of al] relational conditions. In trying to capture our inner lives through the notion of consciousness, we falsify both consciousness and ourselves. Yet the innerness of consciousness is unmistakable. Closely related to the complementarity of publicness and privateness in our understanding of consciousness is the complementarity of mediacy and immediacy. The latter may be identified with privacy, but need not be. Consciousness is immediate in direct apprehension of qualities, in feelings, but such apprehension need not be inaccessible to others. There are standard apprehensions—of colors and textures—that are immediate in the sense that we are made aware of them by perception alone, unmediated by other thoughts or beings, but that are public in the sense of being shared by all normal observers. The skeptical argument that all perceptions are ultimately private does not

undercut the distinction between the immediate and the private, but reinforces it; otherwise the skeptical claim would be uncontroversial. The skeptical position may, in fact, be no more than a recognition that even immediate apprehensions and private states are corrigible, that no state of consciousness is self-confirming, self-validating. If one side of consciousness is irresistibly immediate, apprehension of character without intervention or inference, the other side is irresistibly mediate

and functional. It is essential to emphasize the complementarity of these

122 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING “sides” of consciousness, for it is always appropriate to question the functions of immediate apprehensions when even means must have qualities to function in consciousness. Consciousness could function as it does only to the extent that it contains immediate apprehensions. This seems to be Dewey's view, in Experience and Nature, where he argues that all being, but especially all human being, tsa complementary relationship of means and ends, relations and qualities.*’ But consciousness turns out for Dewey to be fundamentally mediate and functional, the locus of meanings in transformation.“ The same refrains keep repeating themselves. We cannot restrict consciousness to a particular range of human being, for the concepts that define it widen inexorably to human being in general. In addition, the concepts that define our understanding of consciousness and thus of human being are doubly inexhaustible, having no unique essence yet functioning in complementary pairs that appear opposed but in fact are inseparable. Consciousness is immediacy of apprehension, but there are unmediated apprehensions out of awareness, implicit in human experience. Conversely, consciousness must have a function; even this immediacy of apprehension must connect elements in human experience—-except that connections are frequently made out of awareness, implicitly as well as explicitly. I am arguing that the search for narrower definitions of consciousness based on particular aspects of human being, for a sharp distinction between what is conscious and what is unconscious in human experience, is based on an error. One reason is that consciousness irresistibly expresses our human being, not simply one of its conditions or manifestations. But a far more important reason is that what is considered unconscious in one perspective is clearly conscious in another. Only an arbitrary line can be drawn between conscious and unconscious human activities. That Freud attempted to draw such a line is one of the reasons why psychoanalytic theory has the peculiar character it has. Yet we may not conclude from this that mind is all of a piece, inseparable into mo-

ments and stages. Such a conclusion would be unqualified. It is the inexhaustibility of mind, consciousness, and human being that makes all these analyses qualified, incomplete. Function and Feeling

The inexhaustibility of consciousness may be expressed in two fundamental ways. One is that there is both an explicit and an implicit character to con-

sciousness, and these, upon close scrutiny, turn out to be inseparable.” In order to be explicitly conscious of anything, we must be implicitly conscious of something else. This is an acknowledgment of the conditions of conscious‘ness, but it is more, an affirmation of the greater breadth of consciousness than either its functional or its immediate character. But, conversely, a wholly tmplicit or unconscious element of human being cannot be part of consciousness unless it has an explicit side. This is so strong a condition that an event in

MEANING 123 human life that had no explicit character—either in the agent's awareness or in events that could be observed by others—could not be considered conscious. (This explicit side of judgment and cognition leads inexorably to physiology, but not to physiology alone.) The second way of expressing the inexhaustibility of consciousness is that it,

like all human being, has two inseparable but opposing sides: function and quality. I have discussed both the public and private and the mediate and immediate factors in consciousness in terms of this more general pair, function and feeling. The concept of feeling is wide enough to include all mind, perhaps all human being. Wherever there is mind, there is feeling, and there can be consciousness only where there are qualities felt. Both Whitehead and Langer make feeling the essential and general form of human experience.” Yet if feeling is generalized throughout experience and human being, then it cannot characterize human events that are emotionless and implicit. Far more important, however, if consciousness is identified with feeling, then either it is functionless or else it has an equally pervasive expression both in how it functions and in feeling. Consciousness is at least as important and distinctive for what it does as for

what it is; or, more accurately, its functions are at least as important as its emotional tone. If consciousness has no particular function in judgment or query, if it plays no important role in rationality and thought, then it is epiphenomenal and unintelligible. On the other side again, there is no function of awareness that cannot be played equally well by human events out of awareness.

The solution I propose to this issue will appear to many to be no solution at all. The complementarity of function and feeling is so great, I suggest, that we should relinquish the notion that any aspect of mind or human being could be

one without being the other. This is one side of the inexhaustibility of consciousness and human being. But the other side is that each factor inexhaustibly transcends the other even where the latter is its essential condition. In the case of consciousness, I mean that if we take it from the side of function as serving judgment and rationality, as making possible explicit connections and new perspectival conditions, then we may argue that feeling serves judgment by rendering it explicit, allowing for more explicit interrogation and validation.’ But if so, then feeling will inevitably display its own inexhaustibility by transcending its functional conditions, taking on a (non-functional) life of its own. In order for feeling to serve its functions, it must be free from total subservience to antecedent conditions and functions. This freedom, necessary to novelty of thought and insight, makes some explicit forms of consciousness functionless.’* Conversely, part of the interrogative quest in consciousness is for the meaning and function of every thought, every explicit apprehension and feeling. But just as feeling inexhaustibly transcends function, function transcends feeling, and there are functions of consciousness and thought that

124 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING have no explicit counterparts. Consciousness transcends both function and feeling taken separately; each of them inexhaustibly transcends the others, yet 1s inseparable from them.

Attention and Inattention A natural connection can be made between consciousness and attention: we are conscious of what we attend to, unconscious of what we do not. The most thorough analysis of attention that I know of is Merleau-Ponty’s and he concludes that our capacity to change the focus of our attention—essential to it—cannot be interpreted in terms of either a passive, searchlight notion or an identification of consciousness with attention.’* We must be conscious of what we do not attend to if we are to be able voluntarily to change the focus of our attention. The distinction between attention and inattention isa foreground—background relation, and cannot be equated with consciousness and unconsciousness respectively if we are to understand consciousness as effective, epistemologically or rationally. Merleau-Ponty’s point may be epistemologically equivalent with Polanyi’s distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge, ™ but its application to consciousness shows that no restriction of consciousness to awareness,

attention, feeling, or apprehension will enable it to function epistemically. Consciousness restricted to attention and feeling is impotent; consciousness extended to what we know includes more than awareness. Merleau-Ponty’s point is far stronger, however, for he is arguing that although attention and inattention, focus and background, are essential components of a cognitive field, they are not absolutely distinguishable. Just as we must antecedently be conscious of (know) what we are attending to in order to attend to it, we must attend to what we do not attend to in order to subordinate it. Ido not want to belabor the paradoxical character of this claim. It is in my view an acknowledgment that the distinction between foreground and background is perspectival and qualified, while we as human beings inhabit many perspectives at any time. The consequence is that consciousness is not a simple thing or state, but is perspectival, varying in function and manifestation with different perspectives. Human being is identical with consciousness in certain perspectives, with the consequence that consciousness is then made equivalent with the widest spheres of human activity. The most obvious cases of this are where morality and responsibility are concerned, where to be human is to be responsible for and conscious of one’s obligations and duties. Conscious and Unconscious

By now the major outlines of the inexhaustibility of consciousness have been made clear. Consciousness can be identified with none of its particular features alone nor with any particular constellation of features, though some of these features are both complementary with and opposed to one another. The conclusion is that no unqualified line can be drawn between what is in and what is

MEANING 125 out of consciousness in human life, human being. Under certain perspectival conditions, consciousness widens to include anything in human being. Under other perspectival conditions, consciousness may have a narrower purview. The parallel with the body is exact: the human body participates in everything human, as does human consciousness, yet in certain perspectives we must distinguish body from mind, matter from consciousness. Both are doubly inexhaustible, in their pervasiveness, inclusive of whatever is human, and in the limitations of even this inexhaustible inclusiveness, since each is distinguishable from the other in certain locations. A consequence of this inexhaustibility is that human consciousness and the human body, along with human being more generally, are inseparably unitary and multifarious. One of Freud’s most difficult problems is that he ascribes purpose and feeling to the unconscious mind, as if our one mind were in fact two (or three), operating together. But an even more striking example is Poincaré’s discussion of the creative act, in which he postulates both an associative unconscious and a judging consciousness, with a filtering mechanism between them.” Two minds are needed to explain one, with a third intelligent system linking them. The dissolution of one mind into many minds makes thoughts, intentions, and actions unintelligible. From the standpoint of locality and inexhaustibility, one mind can in fact be many minds and conversely, for each determination is perspectival. Poincaré and Freud do not adequately recognize the perspectivity and, consequently, the nature of the unity required for their different theories. It is at least as true that only one person is divided into id, ego, and superego as that no mechanism can unify them. Our mind may function sometimes as three, each with intentional characteristics, and therefore each conscious (as purposeful) even where it is not conscious (as aware). Conversely, however, three factors (or quasi-minds) may, and must in some respects, function as one. The point is that the difference between the three and the one is functional, not absolute, and is possible in virtue of the inexhaustibility of being and human being. Similarly, the dis-

tinction between the human mind and body is functional, not absolute, a manifestation of locality and inexhaustibility.

Poincaré is puzzled that the unconscious mind might be more intelligent than the conscious mind, might be able to form creative insights. The puzzle is intelligible only where there are several minds, and cannot then be resolved. But the alternative is that only one mind is involved, but it functions all the time, both implicitly and explicitly, as one and as many. Intelligence is a property, not of consciousness, but of human beings, of persons—and even then, it is not one property but effectively includes everything relevant to rationality. In relation to each other, consciousness and unconsciousness express the inexhaustibility of human being over any overt conditions: we achieve (unconsciously) far more than we can attend to; we are conscious of our surroundings in ways that are unintelligible in terms of causal conditions alone. Together,

126 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING consciousness and unconsciousness express the inexhaustible transcendence of human being relative to any of its conditions.

The identification of human being with judgment gives us a view of the functions of consciousness entirely compatible with the inseparability of consciousness and unconsciousness in human experience. I suggest that consciousness is the factor in human being that permits interrogation to become explicit, and interrogation must be explicit in some ways to be rational. Nevertheless, in virtue of its inexhaustibility, consciousness transcends its interrogative conditions and takes on a life of its own. Just as interrogation can be freed from limits and can pose questions that cannot meaningfully be answered, consciousness frees itself from its functions in judgment and interrogation and attends to things indifferent to outcomes. Consciousness is to be identified no more with this surplus—which is sometimes functionally very important, as our empty ruminations may be fulfilled in novel insights—than with rationality and cognition. More accurately: none of these identifications is unqualified and absolute.

Judgment and Rationality What has consciousness to do with rationality? After this extended discussion, the answer would appear to be “very little!” If we think of consciousness as that focal attention with which we attend to ideas and things, mere awareness, then in such consciousness there appears to be no interrogation and even no cognition. If we think of consciousness as propositional,” then consciousness is inseparable from one form of rationality, inquiry, and a necessary condition of it,

but it is not then relevant to the other forms of query. Each of these ways of conceiving of consciousness is inadequate, but so are all the ways discussed above, singly and together. Mere awareness can be arbitrary and irrational, stream of consciousness. Moreover, there can be rational judgment without awareness. It seems incongruous that we should be rational without consciousness though we are frequently rational without awareness. Yet if we associate consciousness with rationality, awareness becomes largely irrelevant. If we associate consciousness with awareness, rationality may not be conscious. If we associate consciousness with some of its functions, we make the qualitative, felt, immediate character of consciousness irrelevant. If we associate consciousness with feeling, then its

function and its relationship to query become unintelligible. I have suggested two resolutions of this confusion. One, the more general, is to recognize that the confusion is due to the inexhaustibility of consciousness. This inexhaustibility manifests itself not only in the inadequacy of any particular definition of consciousness, but in the ways in which consciousness transcends any functions and conditions. The irresistibility of this inexhaustibility of consciousness, the reason for its manifestness and obtrusiveness, is not that consciousness is more inexhaustible than anything else—inexhaustibility 1s

MEANING 127 not quantifiable—but that because we are conscious beings, we are aware far more poignantly and vividly of the transcendences of consciousness and ourselves than of the inexhaustibility of stones and atoms. To reflect on ourselves is to manifest our inexhaustibility. The inexhaustibility of consciousness reveals itself in the transcendence and supersession of any conditions by consciousness itself. To be intelligible, consciousness must be functional, must serve in judgment and query. But to serve

that function, it must transcend that function—and one form of that transcendence is an immediacy of quality that may have no function. This is not as paradoxical as it may sound, for we are speaking of a power or (open) set of powers, and powers need not be exercised in a particular case to be relevant there. Similarly, consciousness is marked by immediacy of felt apprehension, but once such feelings emerge, they become functional, signs and portents, associations and meanings.

The second resolution of the confusion surrounding consciousness is to abandon any hard and fast distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness in human experience as arbitrary, misleading, and absolute. Consciousness is both functional and qualitative. In any situation or perspective, some aspects of human functioning are on the surface, attended to focally. But the functions of consciousness and even of what is focally attended to pervade minds and judgment. It may be more accurate and productive to identify the functional side of consciousness with mind, and thereby with judgment, reserving the focal side of mind to a transitional and often impotent manifestation of the full complexity of the human person and his judgments. The point, though, is that to be persons, we must be able to reflect on ourselves and our surroundings focally, to interrogate events and things explicitly as well as implicitly. Interrogatior is the basis of query, but interrogation can be satisfactorily reflexive only where explicitly attended to in some of its phases. This principle is the analogue of the far too narrow claim that judgment is authentic only through language. But the moving principle is the same. Query need not be overt and explicit—conscious in that sense—to take place. Interrogation can be habitual and covert. But without explicit and overt forms, query would not be able to confront certain complex and reflexive questions. Attention is not in any case necessary to interrogation and rationality; nor is it sufficient. But it plays an important role in certain reflexive levels of interrogation. This is a strange and somewhat incongruous conclusion. I am suggesting that consciousness is engendered by query and necessary to query while query often occurs without our being aware of it. Yet perhaps the conclusion is not so perverse if we emphasize the inseparability of judgment and human being that [am proposing as an alternative to an overemphasis on focal awareness. Consciousness in the sense of overt and explicit, qualitative judgment is effectively epiphenomenal in any given human situation or perspective in that whatever it allows can be achieved implicitly and covertly. This is true even for proposi-

128 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tional judgment. Yet scientific query is frequently and irresistibly conscious and explicit, though not explicit alone. Consciousness, I am arguing, is the explicit manifestation of a complex process of interrogation, most of which takes place covertly, but which requires explicit production and awareness if certain complex interrogations are to proceed.”’ The conclusion, then, is that human being is indeed to be identified with consciousness in that without it, being would not be human. Consciousness may also be identified with rationality and thereby with knowledge, but only as the explicit manifestation Of more complex processes containing both implicit and explicit forms of interrogation, and situated within a wider field of judgment. Consciousness is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for any particular query or knowing, for any perspective, for any meaning. Yet there could be no understanding, meaning, interrogation, or query in general if there were no explicit forms of consciousness. Are animals conscious? The question is no more and no less than the question of whether animals are rational. The answer is to be found not in feeling or quality but in function and activity. Do animals interrogate their surroundings and their own responses at a complex enough level of reflexivity to be regarded as at least rudimentally rational, on the one hand, and to require explicit manifestations, on the other? The answer lies in all the forms of rationality, for our answer not only describes a functional truth about animals but contrives a milieu that determines how we will regard and treat them. It seems clear enough that cats and dogs investigate and inquire, learn and judge; that birds construct magnificent edifices adapted to terrain and site; that animals develop complex codes of interaction. I am convinced that cats and dogs are aware of impending death and adapt their actions to this awareness. They apparently do not raise their interrogations to the complex and sophisticated levels of reflexivity that some human beings do—some but not all. Language, social codes, traditions, and sensitive forms of explicit awareness appear to be required for such reflexivity. I would hold that animals are rudimentarily rational, not conscious, feel, and think; but their rationality has distinct limits. On the other hand, many human beings are only rudimentarily rational, are conscious in limited and undiscriminating ways, though they feel and think. There are animals who nobly sacrifice themselves for others. We trivialize their deeds to regard them as sub-rational. Our own responses in a crisis must frequently be no less automatic to be successful. We do not improve our understanding or ourselves and our achievements by denigrating the rationality of other creatures. What animals largely fail to do, in my opinion, is to achieve the reflexive intermodality in judgment and query that many human beings achieve, and that requires the full panoply of human social and rational life for its achievement. Of what value is consciousness? In any particular situation, of very little value. In many cases, explicit awareness can become obsessive interfering with

MEANING 129 action and interrogation. But without consciousness, query could never reach the sophistication and complexity it has. Consciousness is a necessary condition of query generally, but not for any particular query. More accurately: what we call consciousness is in large measure the surplus engendered by query in its most complex and reflexive forms. In order to carry on rational activities, reflexive and complex interrogations, we must be capable of inexhaustibly transcending any particular conditions in which we find ourselves. Consciousness in its specific and manifold forms is one of the most prominent manifestations of the finiteness and inexhaustibility of rationality and query.

THINKING

Do we sometimes think and sometimes not? We may say that we acted without thinking. We may answer “Nothing!” in response to the question “What are

you thinking?” We may also claim to be feeling, not thinking, ruminating without thinking, even working without thinking. Often these replies are elliptical, as we may practice the piano without thinking about the exercises, but daydream distractedly, thinking about something else. A tennis player may return a ball automatically, thinking about his shot only after making it. Such a case must be distinguished from that of the distracted pedestrian who steps off the curb without noticing it and stumbles. Even this rudimentary set of examples shows us that, analogous with consciousness, thinking has several opposing meanings expressing its inexhaustibility. Thought in a narrower sense is significant only within diverse binary Oppositions, expressing a variety of contrasts within different modes of human being, different attitudes and activities. Here we distinguish thought and feeling, thought and action, thought and mere existence, reflection and stream of consciousness. But in every case there is tension with a far wider sense in that thinking is human being and equated with judgment, even with query. Thought, like consciousness and meaning, inhabits many levels simultane-

ously and inseparably: one in which it is equated with human being altogether, leading to being; another far narrower, in that it is intelligible only in contrast. Being betrays a similar tension within itself as does human being—-in fact, as does every concept that expresses a general mode of being. This tension is a pervasive expression of locality. On the one hand, being is a supreme genus; on the other, it is intelligible only in opposition.”* Being inhabits at least two levels simultaneously, a generic level inclusive of beings altogether and a differential level in which beings are determinately what they are. Either level alone is insufficient, closing being upon itself and denying inexhaustibility. There are, in fact, irreducibly many senses or modes of being.” I believe that Heidegger's fundamental question of Being—the ontological difference—ex-

130 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING presses this openness and inexhaustibility of beings, but from one side only, so

that being is inexhaustible but beings are not, beings are local but Being is not.” The same conflict of levels of generality and determinateness expressive of inexhaustibility pertains to human being as well as being. Human being is one kind of being among many other kinds, one of the forms of life and reflection inhabiting our surroundings. But it is also inexhaustibly interrogative, in two important ways: interrogating being with its inexhaustibility, as well as inexhaustibly and reflexively interrogating itself, opening being to new modes through its self-transcendence. Human being is no more inexhaustible than any other being, but its inexhaustibility is manifested by its triple inseparability from being: its own being, its interrogation of being, and its production of novel beings through its own interrogation. If being were not inexhaustible, human being would not be inexhaustible. But human being manifests inexhaustibility while being may only ée inexhaustibility. Consciousness and semasis exhibit the same inexhaustibility of levels of generality indicative of the inexhaustibility of human being and being. On the one hand, we sleep and are distracted, are therefore sometimes conscious of what we do, sometimes not. Meanings are sometimes overt and clear, vivid and forceful, so that our wasteful and inadvertent movements seem meaningless, even irrational. But whatever function we assign to consciousness, we find that we are capable of performing it unconsciously; whatever we respond to overtly we may equally respond to covertly. Human being is not to be divided into conscious and unconscious stages or elements, but is rather a continual but shifting union of explicit and implicit features. It is the person who judges, consciously and unconsciously (and inseparably), who recognizes meanings and responds by judgments to other meanings, sometimes covert meanings. Meaning inhabits a narrower sphere in human experience, contrasting with irrationality and absurdity. It also expresses the full range of human being in judgment. Consciousness is similarly to be contrasted with irrationality and purposelessness, distraction and absence of feeling; but it is also expressive of our humanity as human beings, conscious beings, insofar as we judge rather than move. To be human is to be conscious, not inert; to be human is to be responsive to things in terms of their meanings by judgments in perspectives. A related linguistic phenomenon is worth noting. Concepts whose most obvious function is to express a binary opposition—tall as contrasted with short,

heavy as contrasted with light, thoughtful as contrasted with distracted, meaningful as contrasted with meaningless—are assigned a general purview inclusive of the entire opposition. Usually only one of the pair serves this function. We ask how tall a building is, not how short; how heavy an object is, not how light; how thoughtful a person is, not how distracted; how meaningful a statement is, not how meaningless. The phenomenon is called “marking.”’*' The linguistic phenomenon expresses, if only by analogy, the metaphysical

MEANING 131 truth that being and human being are finite and inexhaustible, traits that cannot be portrayed through differentia alone or by universalization and generalization. Generalizations are transcended by differentia; differential contrasts, by generality. Given our general characterization of human being as perspectivity and the

identification of such perspectivity with judgment, it seems natural to interpret all other concepts and properties of human being as differentia, as distinguishing but not generic characterizations of human being. Thought here should be simply one of the kinds of human being, of judgment. Thus, we could identify thought with propositions and assertive judgments. Here we have a contrast between thinking and acting, a natural enough distinction in everyday discourse. But just as the distinction between theory and practice ts

profoundly limited, each involving the other, so the distinction between thought and practical judgment is inadequate. We are forced to deny that agents and artists think when they act and judge; we are even forced to deny that deliberation is thought where it has no propositional, only motivational, force. Worst of all, we effectively repudiate the pervasiveness of the modes of judgment, that every judgment is practical and exhibitive as well as assertive, whether in language, overtly conscious, or not. To tell the truth under inclement circumstances is effectively to affirm the principle that telling the truth is right. Psychoanalytic theory thoroughly depends on the existence and importance of unconscious motives, actions, and assertions (thoughts and beliefs).

The line will not hold. We cannot introduce generic concepts with the expectation that under their purview the differential concepts will be kept in bounds. We cannot relegate inexhaustibility to specific domains, for it pervades being as well as our human being. Among the contrasts and oppositions that differentially express specific relations, particular loci and perspectives, there are always transcendences to other perspectives and locales. We sometimes think and sometimes act, sometimes think and sometimes dream, sometimes think and sometimes feel; but acting is a way of thinking as are dreaming and feeling. I do not mean by this the dualistic view that these are all within our mental world. For one thing, acting may not be mental

rather than physical. More important, thinking is also to be identified with judgment in all its modes and kinds, insofar as it expresses the distinctiveness of human being in contrast with other forms of being (that do not and cannot think). It is not simply that human beings can think while stones cannot. Dogs and cats surely think. It is that we think in whatever we do as human beings insofar as we select from choices and look to validation. Judgment is thought—whatever can be meant by thought generically, given that we are thinking beings. If acting and making can be rational, they must be forms of thought. Legislating a narrower scope to any concept that has so generic a purview does not produce clarity; it merely denies inexhaustibility.

132 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING The solution ts perspectival. Just as being is distinguished generically from beings only within certain perspectives, human being is differentiated or generalized only relative to certain perspectives. There are no unconditioned distinctions, and no unconditioned generalizations either. Unity does not precede difference or conversely; each is the complement of the other, perspectivally

differentiable. Thought is distinguishable from action where modality of judgment is in question, where assertive judgment is to be distinguished from

practical judgment. Thought is distinguishable from distraction where explicitness of judgment is in question. Thought is distinguishable from feeling where differentia are in question, where we may be required to analyze rather than accept. But we can make such distinctions only with qualifications, since

we act when we think and think when we act—a connection that must be emphasized in other perspectives. We also find that our most productive thoughts are often covert, implicit. Moreover, feeling is a form of thought in that it tells us something to which we must pay attention. Finally, in this generic sense of thought, not only do human beings think, but our bodies think insofar as we judge with our bodies.

Human being ts entirely thought but not thought alone—for thought can never be alone, since it inhabits differential contrasts. Human being 1s thought, but also action and feeling; and these are as judgmental as assertion and analysis are. The conclusion is, not that human being ts whole, indivisible, but that it is local and inexhaustible. J have expressed this inexhaustibility of levels and differentia in the notion of semasic fields with semasic and semantic cores, idiosemic and consensual sub-

fields. We may identify thought with the entire semasic field, so that judgment and response are always thoughtful. But we may instead identify thought either with the semantic core or with certain other semasic subfields. To emphasize propositional judgment we identify thought with the semantic core. To emphasize the privacy of thought we emphasize the idiosemic field. To em-

phasize determinateness in thought we identify thinking with the semasic core. But we require all these identifications, in their incompatibilities, to express the inexhaustibility of human being and of meaning.

INSTRUMENTALITY

What semasis is identified with propositional meaning and the semantic core is emphasized, assertive judgment is made predominant. Where semasic relationships are freed as much as possible from the confinement of the semantic and semasic cores, functioning primarily at the periphery of the semasic field, fabricative judgment is predominant. Similarly, unity and generality can be emphasized at the expense of differentia and philosophical generalization raised to prominence. And where meanings are regarded instrumentally, as

MEANING 133 tools and devices, means to some ends, practical judgment and its associated forms of query become predominant. Every mode of judgment is pervasive throughout judgment and experience, including practical judgment. This pervasiveness is the basis for the common emphasis on one mode of judgment at the expense of the others. The error lies

in neglecting the inexhaustibility of judgment insofar as it is manifested in many modes of judgment and rationality; it is not an error to regard a particular mode as pervasive throughout experience. Wherever there is judgment and meaning, there are semantic cores; propositional judgment is relevant, though of marginal relevance in some perspectives and circumstances. But there are also idiosemic and other semasic cores, as well as the full and changing semasic held. Pervasiveness is not incompatible with inexhaustibility, but rather manifests it in the co-relevance in judgment of many modes, each pervasive throughout experience and judgment.

_ Like every mode of judgment, practical judgment is inexhaustible. Two of its manifestations are recurrent in our experience, irresistible testimony to its inexhaustibility. One is the inexhaustibility within practical judgment itself, expressed by Dewey in his principle of the continuum of means and ends.” Action is validated by consequences, and consequences are unterminating. Every act has consequences that are to be evaluated by their consequences. Dewey emphasizes that this means—end relationship is double, effectively inexhaustible, in that every instrument is to be judged by ends in view that are themselves means to further ends and consequences, and that every means is likewise an end, with its own qualities. Nevertheless, means and ends, relations and qualities, are not rich enough concepts to express inexhaustibility. Dewey cannot find room for different modes of judgment and rationality in his theory. Quality and instrumentality become dimensions of experience rather than together constituting one of its many modes. But Dewey does express a rudimentary sense of the inexhaustibility of judgment and query in the inexhaustibility of means as means, leading to ends unterminatingly, and of means as ends, leading inexhaustibly to other means and ends but characterized by their own qualities. Instruments have consequences, and the consequences have consequences. Moreover, the future brings different norms and values to these consequences, for it is changed by practice. Practical judgment is inexhaustible in at least the double sense that no terminus of practice in consequences is ultimate and final,

unconditioned, and the value and meaning of the consequences change as a result of our practical judgments. Practical judgment changes the nature of the conditions that validate it. Practical judgment is inexhaustible in the further sense that it is not the only mode of judgment, although it may be given a pervasive and universal purview throughout experience. Two concepts have in our time brought practical judgment to prominence, overemphasizing its importance and thereby obscuring the nature of its inex-

134 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING haustibility. Both concepts express inexhaustibility, but incompletely. One of these is the public world as against private experience, politics in contrast with individual activities.°’ Practical judgments have a public existence, relevance within a milieu, functions of cultural scale, importance for humanity’s future as well as for any individual life. The relevance of a judgment for public mani-

festation here is to be identified with its instrumentality, for a public upon whom its consequences fall. However, in this respect, practical judgment is no

different from any other mode of judgment; all judgments inhabit a public world, many public worlds. No judgment is owned by an individual alone, by its maker, if it enters a public world, and no judgment can be kept from entering sucha world. Nevertheless, no judgment is altogether public, for it is relevant to different individuals in different and unshared ways. The second notion that has raised practical judgment and instrumentality to

prominence is that of power.” Both these notions—the public, common world of practice and the pervasiveness of power—are descendants of Marx's view of alienation and exploitation: the one closely related to his view of species alienation, effectively a denial that a productive human being acts for himself alone; the other, a direct expression of the view that production (under capitalism) is exploitative, a power exercised on others. But the same concepts can be derived from Nietzsche, for whom practice creates human being and

manifests the will to power. Nietzsche’s repudiation of absolute truth also tends to raise practical judgment to predominance. But the predominance ts the defect of this tradition. The repudiation of absolute foundations for propositional knowledge does not entail that all judgment is practical, does not entail an instrumental theory of truth. Philosophers

after Hegel—from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, Dewey to Wittgenstein—at times appear to recognize no antidote to scientism but instrumentalism, no relevance but social relevance. All judgment may be regarded as instrumental, concerned with power and control. But all judgment may also be regarded as

propositional, concerned with truth and falsity. Each interpretation of judgment is conditioned, perspectival, legitimate in its own locales and capable of intermodal conjunction in still other locales. To reject propositional truth as the only truth is not to substitute another value as the only value; that would be equally reductive. There are no absolute foundations for propositional knowledge and science—and no absolute foundations for practice.” Practical judgment ts inexhaustible, manifested both in practical query and in its relations with the other modes of judgment. Instruments are inexhaustible in inexhaustible ways. Dewey emphasizes the inexhaustible promise of the future in ongoing and unending consequences. Heidegger emphasizes the in-

exhaustible historical conditions of instruments and tools.” A richer view of instrumentality is needed, one that respects the nature of its inexhaustibility. Looking backward, to conditions prior to present conditions, we make in-

MEANING 135 strumentality an historical, temporal mode of being. Yet all judgment is equally historical and temporal, and all judgment is transcendent of temporality, that is, productive of and subject to norms that escape particular temporal locations. Overemphasis on instrumentality and practical judgment is closely related to an overemphasis on time and history. Dewey and Heidegger are prone to such overemphasis. They want to emphasize the relevance of alternatives to any sphere of experience. They seek to enforce such emphasis by

calling our attention to those prior conditions that establish present norms. But with this approach they capture only part of the inexhaustibility of judgment. Judgments are inexhaustible because they are conditioned, because even the conditions and norms are conditioned. But judgments are also inexhaustible because they, like all beings, transcend all conditions, into the future but also into other modes of judgment and rationality. Locality is always multiple. Judgment, including practice, is inexhaustible retrospectively in that every judgment is conditioned and every condition is itself conditioned. Instrumen-

tality is profoundly conditioned by the historical antecedents that define its norms. But judgment is also inexhaustible prospectively. Instruments are not exhausted by their antecedents, for new uses may always be found for older tools.°’ Instrumentality is inexhaustible retrospectively in its prior conditions and inexhaustible prospectively in the consequences and uses that it will help to bring about. In the latter form, the inexhaustibility of instrumentality for the future is double: it cannot control its own meaning for the future, yet it contributes to its own departures, including subsequent norms and uses. None of these forms of inexhaustibility is restricted to instrumentality alone or to instrumentality as such. Science is as deeply conditioned by its prior activities and by social circumstances and standards as politics or crafts. This does not make science any less cognitive or rational, its conclusions any less true. Assertion is no less conditioned by the past than practice is, no less subject to modification and interpretation. To say that science is instrumental 1s not to emphasize more forcefully its social and historical conditions or its susceptibility to modification in the future under different cultural conditions or as a consequence of its own achievements. To say that science is instrumental ts

not to say that truth is really utility, but to emphasize that to any sphere of judgment and rationality, diverse modes of validation pertain. Inexhaustibility is not merely social or historical qualification, not even merely an openness to modification in the future, a relevance of possibilities, but an inexhaustibility of being. No way of understanding any being can be complete, but must be supplemented by inexhaustibly other forms of knowledge.

Science is to be regarded as instrumental when we want to emphasize its consequences for human life and its conformity to norms of practical judgment. It is a mistake to neglect the instrumentality of science, to emphasize the independence of scientific truth from human life. It is equally a mistake to

136 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING overemphasize its instrumentality, as if scientific truth were merely utility. We thereby neglect the manifold differences between scientific truth and utility. It isa mistake to ignore the ways in which technology has shaped our ways of thinking and being. It is equally mistaken to regard technology as a monolithic and all-encompassing phenomenon pervasive throughout and characteristic of our time and ways of being. Certainly technology is a social and cultural as well as a scientific phenome-

non. How we use our instruments, how we think about controlling our surroundings, exercising power over them, is a function of historical events and political practices. Far more important, how we think about ourselves and our surroundings is a function not only of what we know through science, but of our technological means and social institutions of control.°° The technology of

social control exercises enormous influence upon our understanding of ourselves. Questioning technology as a form of power is an important form of interrogation, interrogation of the conditions that make contemporary science possible.® But such questions must be supplemented by questions from the side of science and technology concerning the conditions under which science may be interrogated at its foundations only by questioning its legitimacy. To call the supreme authority of science into question is, not to undermine its perspectival legitimacy, but to attempt to understand and affirm the relevant perspectives in which it is validated. It is entirely inadequate to substitute one supreme perspective—of instrumentality and practical judgment—for another—of propositional truth—-or to impose any supreme perspective on human being. SYMBOLISM

A recurrent theme in many views of semasis is that the narrower concept, restricted to semantic meaning, is inadequate to express the full range of semasic resources that inhabit human experience. Susanne Langer expresses this theme in her distinction between discursive and presentational symbols, between symbols subject to the formal and regulative constraints of propositional discourse and the more complex, synthetic symbols that she takes to symbolize the forms of feeling.” The distinction is sometimes drawn between signs and symbols, discursive and presentational symbols, representational and other referential symbols, and so forth.’’ What is at stake is a distinction between semiates with narrow, largely extensional functions and semiates with more complex functions over a wider range of semasic relationships, often at the price of precision and specificity—more accurately, at the price of certain kinds of propositional specificity and precision, for figurative and symbolic language must be precise in their own ways to be effective. Ricoeur draws a distinction

MEANING 137 between semantic reference and symbolism, with religious symbols as his major paradigms, but including psychoanalytic and artistic symbols that, he claims, do not have the semantic clarity of referential terms, but point to deeper ontological and existential conditions by virtue of their complexity and ramifications. ””

If being and human being are inexhaustible, then language and nonlinguistic semiates themselves are inexhaustible and, presumably, able to express inexhaustibility. Traditionally, however, figurative language has been regarded as suspect, deceptive and misleading.’’ Ricoeur argues that in psychoanalysis, for example, dream symbols as well as psychoanalytic language itself function largely non-propositionally to convey complex connections throughout a person's life, connecting daily experiences and early events, conscious and unconscious intentions and responses.”’ Dream symbols are able, here, if we grant the testimony of psychoanalysis, to convey profound understanding by their complexity and richness, by their departure from propositional constraints. Religious symbolism, Ricoeur argues, has much the same character.”” The essential point of his analysis is that both the symbol and the reality are complex and inexhaustible, and that inexhaustible being requires the inexhaustibility of symbolic expression.”° One of the consequences of introducing a distinction, as Langer and Ricoeur do, between the two semasic modes, discursive and symbolic, is that the latter is taken to be truer and more expressive than the former, truer in asserting the inexhaustible richness of human being. Two major difficulties are then apparent: (1) the semantic clarity that makes discursive symbols effective is regarded as a feature of their inadequacy—a peculiar paradox—while the truth inherent in inexhaustibility is attained in virtue of semasic vagueness and in clarity; (2) we are effectively forced to choose between these two modes, one categorically superior to the other. These difficulties are particularly apparent in

Ricoeur. |

I have expressed the inexhaustibility of meaning in the notion of semasic helds—many fields and subfields. Every semasic field contains many subfields and associated fields, idiosemic fields and semantic and semasic subfields. But, reciprocally, every subfield is located in many other semasic fields, and requires such multiple location to function semasically. Though these different fields and subfields have different ranges of inclusiveness, different ramifications,

none is unqualifiedly richer or more inexhaustible than the others or unqualifiedly clearer or more determinate. The full consensual field is whatever it is, definite though inclusive. What is true is that for purposes of assertion, involving empirical tests and logical rigor, certain kinds of relationships are paramount. These define the semantic or propositional cores. Such subfields are inexhaustible, determinate and indeterminate, and include as promises modifications for the future, changes under different theoretical conceptions.

138 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING

they are embedded. ,

They are subject to semasic pressures throughout the semasic fields in which For certain purposes, in certain perspectives, semantic and propositional relationships are predominant. In other perspectives, those involving figurative language, for example, relationships and action at the periphery are predominant. Neither core nor periphery is entirely independent, though certain peripheral transformations may not affect a particular semantic core (but others may and even the former may have effects through time). Nothing about figurative language or activity at semasic peripheries is true in an absolute sense or more inexhaustible than semantic relations. Both truth and meaning are qualified and perspectival. Nevertheless, only part of the inexhaustibility of semasis and being is expressible within a particular mode of being, within a particular perspective. Inexhaustibility cannot be exhausted by any perspective, even a divided one. The fundamental error in the position that a symbolic mode ts truer than a semantic mode ts the implicit assumption that epistemic privilege implies completeness.’’ Symbolic expression in Ricoeur's sense is not truer, only true and valid in its own local ways. Inexhaustibility entails that multiple modes of semasis are required to express the inexhaustibility of beings and ex-

perience. But this is only a repetition of the inexhaustibility of being and of query. Assertive query, especially science, imposes on the semasic fields surrounding it particular constraints of rigor and economy. Relative to certain semasic relationships at the peripheries where figurative language functions, propositional or semantic cores seem constricted and impoverished, true but diminished. However, semantic cores produce their own semasic connections, wid-

ening the semasic fields in which they are located. Science establishes new semasic connections, discovers new relationships and creates others. Semasic fields are transformed not only by symbolic or figurative relationships but by semantic connections that reverberate throughout the full semasic field. Indeed, propositional language and assertive query may change language and instrumental meanings far more than figurative language, which may suspend peripheral relationships in dynamic interactions without modifying them. In this sense, I would claim semasic inexhaustibility for science expressed through time and an inexhaustible truth that requires time for its achievement. But there are forms of query other than science and assertive judgment, and each has its particular semasic relationships and cores, its particular ways of engendering and transforming semasic relationships. The use of tools both en-

forces and changes their meanings. Practice produces its own connections. There are not only propositional or semantic, but practical and instrumental semasic subfields. Even language is an instrument—though never wholly or merely an instrument, never merely “used.” Dream symbols function in psychoanalysis not only to tell us of early events, but to bring such early events into congruence with our present experiences so

MEANING 139 that we may be more effective agents, to enable us to change ourselves and our actions. These symbols function not only assertively but instrumentally, fabricatively, and synthetically, the former two functions producing a milieu for understanding and action, the latter two-unifying apparently distinct phases of life. But the way such symbols function is not merely successive and aggregative, many functions taken serially, but under a novel mode of interrogation and validation. Psychoanalytic symbols are semasically unique, complex both in their multimodality and intermodality and in their novel synthesis. This uniqueness is shared by all psychoanalytic concepts—repression, censorship, sexuality, id, ego, and the like. Every psychoanalytic concept involves a unique semasic field with unique semasic relationships. That is the mark of the emergence of psychoanalysis as a novel mode of query. Likewise, every new form of interrogation and validation brings forth not only new concepts but new kinds of semasic relationships, produced as a consequence of its novel form of validation. No domain of interrogation is more comprehensive and synthetic, more complex and inexhaustible, than is religion. Yet religion, confronted at every boundary by forms of rationality, may not be a form of query, for it seems required to impose absolute limits on its interrogations. Otherwise it seems vulnerable to dissipation into science, on the one hand, and practical query or

philosophy, on the other. I have suggested that where query became suffciently reflexive and intermodal, it would be no less religious than assertive, though all forms of absolute closure would be abolished. This prospect aside, the semiates in established religions function synthetically and comprehen-

sively, but in the shadow of absolute and unqualified assumptions. There is and must be a semasic core in every religious symbol, often grounded in Scripture and tradition, that establishes its dominant function, but pervasive throughout the comprehensive range of religious expression. Ricoeur's symbolism of evil is a religious symbolism in which human life in general is brought into conjunction with a Christian eschatology, filled with rich and complex associations and relationships, complex and inexhaustible because of the inexhaustibility of human being, limited nevertheless by its particular semasic connections.” To express the distinction between symbols and discursive language, I offer the distinction between semasic fields and subfields. Inexhaustibility of being

requires tnexhaustibility of meaning, the latter expressed within a subfield through time but expressed as well among different fields and subfields, at peripheries and boundaries as well as within subfields, among manifold local semasic cores. Inexhaustibility is not expressed more fully in either form, but requires many forms for expression. Each form alone can repudiate inexhaustibility, by demanding, on the one hand, that all thought be restricted to propositional expression, and by imposing, on the other, an alternative but equally coercive conception of thought and judgment. Human being is inexhaustible

140 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING in that no mode of judgment or interrogation is absolutely privileged, that every mode of query has its function while different forms are demanded by the interrogations of rationality.

HUMAN LIFE

The final question to consider herc is the intimidating question of the meaning of life. It is one I approach with trepidation, in part, because I am afraid that the question is not genuine. I am doubtful whether the meaning of life can be an intelligible subject for interrogation from the standpoint of query, whether life altogether can be said to have a meaning, whether the entire issue is not incompatible with locality and inexhaustibility.

The first question we may ask concerns the life whose meaning is being sought. Is it human life in general or a particular life? A natural reply from within the semasic field theory is that each human life ‘“means”’ whatever judgments are influenced by it and whatever conditions influence those judgments. Meaning is the condition of judgment. Each life is perspectival in its locations and in its ramifications and influences, what it locates; and the meaning of any life is constituted by the manifold spheres of relations in human experience and

its surroundings that influence judgment and that sometimes lead to query. The same kind of answer may be offered with respect to human life in general: the meaning of human life is the range of judgments and conditions of judgment—possible and actual—that are the outcome of human existence. Though this is the only acceptable answer, and has the intuitively plausible ring of the

position that the meaning of any life is what it is, the answer clearly fails to respond to the question posed. For one thing, in response to the question of the meaning of life, we have an inexhaustible answer: many meanings in many lives. If human being is inexhaustible, manifested in the inexhaustibility of

judgment and query, then the meaning of human being is inexhaustible, manifested in all the judgments made possible within and by that being. The request for a particular meaning is incompatible with inexhaustibility, and seems to be derived from a conception of divine purpose realized through human being. How unfortunate is it that there is no meaning to life other than the possible and actual judgments relevant to human lives and the conditions of such judgments? I have argued recurrently that the demand for absolutes and ultimates, for unconditioned and unqualified beings, for epistemological certainty and foundations, is cosmological; is a demand to close the world under some system of understanding that effectively forecloses the range of human possibilities. The very demand for closure, regarded as essential to rationality, is incompatible with query. In this context, the demand fora particular meaning of

_MEANING 141 life is foundational and theological, irrational, incompatible with inexhaustibility. Whatever the meaning of life may be, it imposes arbitrary constraints on human being. But even this response is not adequate to the subject at hand. The question is one of ideals as well as of semasis. I am quarreling with the confusion of these aspects, for to the extent that we narrow meaning to an ideal, the day-to-day qualities of life are sacrificed to something unrealizable. Even the ideal of selftranscendence, a Romantic ideal of personal fulfillment, is inadequate in the context of inexhaustibility. For all being, including all human being, is inexhaustible, transcendent relative to its conditions but always subject to conditions, however novel. To advocate transcendence in the context of inexhaustibility is to advocate certain forms of transcendence, denying others. Those who tend their gardens and keep the peace transcend the narrow scope of their lives by being examples to others, guides to the future. Their lives are no less inexhaustible, no less meaningful, only meaningful in different ways from the lives of committed political agents. The question of the meaning of life seems to presuppose a common and over-

arching ideal for all human beings, all lives, and this is both impossible and unintelligible, incompatible with inexhaustibility. One way to manifest this inexhaustibility forcibly is to interrogate the question of meaning from the standpoint of the different modes of judgment and query. From within the perspective of assertive judgment, it appears that the only meaning of life is what life is and what it makes possible—the answer we have given. To this we must add that many human beings, of very different traditions and cultures, share common aims and values. This commonality can be exaggerated, but it certainly should not be overlooked. Yet even such a commonality, transformed from an artifact to a norm and standard, closes off possibilities for the future and inhibits our recognition of one side of inexhaustibility. The question of the meaning of life is a question for practical judgment, a guide to life, if not that alone. In this context, common norms and our shared humanity suggest certain general ideals. I believe that the most remarkable feature of ideals of life is that they are sharable: life, fulfillment, justice, honesty. Yet this sharability is achieved through vagueness and variability, for rigid ideals promote conflict rather than community. Following this train of thought, we must conclude that if the meaning of life is the ideal of life, sharable by all, then it must be as wide an ideal as possible. Anything narrower would be incompatible with inexhaustibility. Thus, if the ideal is not human life itself—and much of life is destructive and dishonest— it is unclear what narrower ideal will serve. The meaning of life here must be a norm that we can use to live by. I know of no ideal that can be acceptable in this context but rationality in the form of query. The question of the meaning of life is not to be answered through assertive or

142 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING practical judgment alone. It is to to be answered from the standpoint of all the modes of judgment and query, including fabricative judgment and art as well as syndetic judgment and philosophy. I would argue that art does not give an answer to this question but is an answer—an answer that displays to us a rational achievement that need not be useful to be ideal. This is an extremely important and profound insight, for we tend to be overcome by seriousness when facing the meaning of life, and to seek absolute principles and ultimate commitments. Kierkegaard ts correct that a morality of ultimate loyalty must be transcended—not, however, as he seems to suggest, absolutely, but by an inexhaustibility of other forms of value and loyalty. He claims that art is often not serious enough, dissipating values into irony.’ But art shows us that values need not be used to be ideal, that the meaning of life cannot be defined so narrowly as to be serious only, lacking in irony and variations. It follows that even if the meaning of life is generically query, such an ideal is intrinsically local, fragmented into manifold forms and modes, with none given absolute priority. The meaning of life is a philosophic question, and here again we face the dangers of foundationalism. For to the extent that we expect to find an answer in philosophy that will replace all the other answers we may be given, philosophy imposes its mode of thought upon all other modes. There is no meaning to life that is accessible through philosophy and in no other way. The meaning of life is what life makes possible, in all the ways that such possibility is attained. The task of philosophy is to reconcile these diverse judgments and achievements in a comprehensive understanding—one that never will be exhaustive but that nevertheless expands our grasp of ourselves and makes new forms of transcendence possible. The ideal in human life, I have suggested, can be nothing other than query itself, as the embodiment of rationality and the fulfillment of judgment, in its manifold forms expressive of finiteness through inexhaustible interrogation, including the profound limits of every interrogation. The meaning of life, I believe, as an ideal, can be nothing other than such query, the development of novel standpoints and the critical interrogation of every standpoint, leading to

valid but qualified judgments, emphasizing the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness in human experience that query manifests so vividly. Query is the only activity and ideal that does not impose closure on human life; it cannot because of its reflexiveness and self-interrogation, but also because it is driven by the imperative for invention and departure. It is the

only acceptable ideal to which all lives may be dedicated. Yet it is an ideal largely incompatible with the demands that inspire the question of the meaning of life. Eicher this question has no answer——life is what it is and nothing else, including possibilities as well as actualities—or the answer is query in its inexhaustible forms, an answer incompatible with the absolute demands be-

hind the question.

MEANING 143 NOTES

1. I do not want to identify the general approach to meaning entirely with the theory of signs or with the controversial aspects of the theory of interpretation. I shall therefore offer a somewhat different but general approach to meaning in terms of judgments and perspectives, a semasic field theory of meaning. 2. Charles Sanders Peirce, ‘Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs,”’ Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 98-119. 3. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, edd. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959). 4. The concept of semasic field is a direct application of the theory of locality to the held of meaning and interpretation. It is very different, then, despite some interesting similarities, from standard semantic field theories. See detailed discussion in note 6. 5. Such an approach is the forerunner of Derrida’s view of writing and only writ-

ing in Of Grammatology.

6. The closest I have been able to come to a precursor is Saussure’s ““associative field”: ‘‘the French word ensezgnement ‘teaching’ will unconsciously call to mind a host of other words (ensezgner ‘teach,’ renseigner ‘acquaint,’ etc.; or armement ‘armament,’ changement ‘amendment,’ etc.; or éducation ‘education,’ apprentissage ‘apprenticeship,’ etc.). All those words are related in some way’’ (Course in General Linguistics, pp. 123). ‘“Mental association creates other groups besides those based on the comparing of terms that have something in common; through its grasp of the nature of the relations

that bind the terms together, the mind creates as many associative series as there are diverse relations. . . . A word can always evoke everything that can be associated with it in one way or another” (ibid., pp. 125, 126). Taken to an extreme, the position suggests that every semiate inhabits a system of binary contrasting pairs relative to every other semiate in a given language system, generating what John Lyons calls ‘a multidimensional space structured in terms of oppositions” (Semantics | [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], pp. 286— 87). Lyons notes that “‘it is characteristic of the poetic use of language that it tends to blur, if it does not obliterate, the simple distinction of form and meaning in terms of which the structure of language is so often analysed”; and that “we all exploit, to some degree, those resources of our native language which depend upon the properties of the medium in which language is manifest” (ibid., p. 54). The first point speaks to the conception of a semasic range inclusive of medial properties of language as well as the more conventional semantic properties; the second suggests that figuration is more “normal” than conventional theories hold. Lyons argues that field theories suffer from major defects from the point of view of semantical linguistics: “What is lacking so far, as most field-theorists would probably admit, is a more explicit formulation of the criteria which define a lexical field than has yet been provided” (ibid., p. 267). The field theory I am proposing is grounded specifically in a notion of indeterminate boundaries where language is concerned; such boundaries are essential to a theory of figurative language. In this respect, I am following Kant’s view that where art is concerned, the prospects for a precise science are dim. The view that every semiate inhabits a field comprising the entire language-system seems to me not to support the complexity of Wittgenstein’s semasic families and to violate the principle that figurative language can dynamically articulate and enrich different semasic fields. In other words, the normal meaning of a semiate is a function, not of the entire language-system, but of those semiates whose oppositions and simi-

144 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING larities play an effective determining role with respect to the semiate in question. It is essential to the semasic field that fields have boundaries, in dynamic tension, however indeterminate these boundaries may be and whatever changes they undergo under the transformations brought by figurative language.

7. See Jacques Derrida, “White Mythology,” New Literary History, 6 (19741975), 5-748. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan IV, in The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill,

ed. Edwin A. Burtt (New York: Random House, 1939), p. 142. 9. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding III, chap. 10 (ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1894], 11 146). Locke’s metaphor of the mind as a sheet of blank paper is one of the most controversial metaphors in the history of philosophy. 10. Aristotle, Poetics 21, in Basic Works, ed. McKeon, p. 1476.

11. Poetics 22, in ibid., p. 1479. 12. See, for example, Uriel Weinreich, “Explorations in Semantic Theory,” in Current Trends in Linguistics. 1. Theoretical Foundations, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), pp. 395—477. See also Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962). Black, in his interaction theory, argues against the third principle above, and thereby weakens the force of the fourth principle. Where metaphoric meaning ts given by interaction, there is neither a transformation or movement of meaning from one term to another nora mere analogy. An extraordinary range of meanings and significations is present in a powerful metaphor. See Ian Ramsay, “Models and Mystery,” in Essays on Metaphor, ed. Warren Shibles (Whitewater, Wisc.: Language, 1972), p. 76: “A metaphor holds together two contexts in such a way as to generate an unspecifiable number of articula-

tion possibilities.” Philip Wheelwright argues against mere epiphora, transformations of meaning, and emphasizes diaphora, emergent conjunctions and novel meanings in poetic metaphors (Metaphor and Reality [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962]). 13. See Samuel Levin, The Semantics of Metaphor (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Deviance implies normality. Iam arguing that all discourse is an inseparable mixture of normal and abnormal discourse (in Rorty’s terms) and that metaphor is properly to be regarded as normal in many important respects, especially in those ways indicative of natural languages. Normality and deviance are not absolute but relative notions, and figurative language is “normal” in all respects save those which emphasize the epistemic properties of literal meanings. 14. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

15. For a general treatment of the inexhaustibilicy manifested in art, including poetry, see my Theory of Art. 16. The interaction of these two types of semasic fields, consensual and idiosemic,

public and private, corresponds closely to the picture of language and thought found in Vygotsky. The two fields are dynamically interactive to the extent that tdiosemic fields are generally formed by internalization of consensual fields while, after undergoing personal and idiosemic transformations, they are reflected back into, modify, the consensual fields. What is essential to che Vygotskian picture is that each field be capable of development and transformation to some extent independent of the other fields (L. S. Vygotsky, Thought and Language, ed. and trans. Eugenia Hoffman and Gertrude Vakar [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962]}). 17. The field theory is supported by recent developmental work suggesting that concept formation follows a process of overgeneralization: every rule, concept, word,

MEANING 145 and grammatical and phonological principle is extended as widely as possible, and contracted where contradictory evidence is forthcoming (see Breyne Arlene Moskowitz, “The Acquisition of Language,” Scientific American, 239, No. 5 (November 1978), 92—108). The standard argument for innate principles of generative grammar tends to rest on a simplistic conception of inductive generalization in language development (see Noam Chomsky, Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar {The Hague:

Mouton, 1966], pp. 9-10). A hypothetico-deductive model of language development, based on a principle of overgeneralization, avoids the need for postulating intrinsic grammatical components by generating conceptual and regulative fields whose boundaries are always somewhat indeterminate, since they are arrived at by negation rather than inductive augmentation. 18. Martin Heidegger, ‘““The Nature of Language,” On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 73. 19. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

20. Ibid.; Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 21. See note 16 above. See also Vygotsky, Mind in Soctety. 22. See here especially Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957; corr. ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962). 23. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), and Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1972), among others. 24. See Harré, Social Being. 25. Perhaps the most effective writer on the conditions, especially political conditions, of our semasic relationship is Foucault; see, for example, his The History of Sexuality. l. An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), and Madness and Civilization.

26. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon, 1969), and Freud and Philosophy. 27. Peirce, “Logic as Semiotic.”’ 28. John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, edd. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975). 29. See my Theory of Art. 30. See my Learning and Discovery. 31. See Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: New Left Books, 1975); and Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 32. André Malraux, in The Voices of Silence (trans. Stuart Gilbert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953}, p. 281), claims that ‘““when explaining how his vocation

came to him, every great artist traces it back to the emotion he experienced at his contact with some specific work of art. . . .”’ See my discussion of traditionary contrasts in Theory of Art. 33. See my Theory of Art. 34. Dewey, Experience and Nature, p. 186: ‘language, being the tool of tools, is the cherishing mother of all significance.’’ Nevertheless, instrumentality is a dimension of experience for Dewey, and he does not mean to emphasize the instrumentality of language in a narrow sense. 35. Heidegger, “The Way to Language,” On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D.

Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 109-36. 36. Foucault, History of Sexuality; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977); and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon, 1971).

146 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING 37. Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957): Cartesian Lingusstics.

38. Iam referring particularly to Erving Goffman's work, but John Searle has criticized Chomsky in very similar ways. 39. See all the works of Foucault cited; see also Language and Meaning: The Debate Between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), and Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 345-447. Foucault’s concern with the relationship between discourse and power may be regarded as a criticism of too close an identification of thought with language, since power pervades discourse and therefore thought. On the other hand, Foucault may more profoundly be interpreted to display the intimate connection of thought with power, the inseparability of thought from its conditions of power. Such an approach to discourse must be contrasted with the rather extreme and possibly exaggerated emphasis found in Gadamer upon language as the center of both hermeneutical understanding and our ontological relationship to being. ‘“{Llanguage is the universal medium in which understanding itself is realised” (ibid., p. 350); “in language the world itself presents itself” (ibid., p. 408). ““Whoever has language ‘has’ the world” (ibid., p. 411). His overemphasis on language aside, which is derived from Heidegger, Gadamer holds a latent principle of inexhaustibility, unfortunately limited by too strong a principle of world unity: ‘what the world is is not different from the views in which it presents itself” (ibid., p. 406). 40. Vygotsky's thesis of internalization is applicable to language, but also to nonlinguistic semiates—for example, social rituals and interpersonal codes. 41. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy; The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneu-

tics, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). 42. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy. 43. Austin, How to Do Things with Words; John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

44. Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books. It is worth noting that in contrast with my argument that the semantic function of language is essential, yet frequently irrelevant——a consequence of inexhaustibility—— Konner argues in reverse, that the element

of wonder is fundamental in language but frequently superseded by practical and assertive considerations (Tangled Wing, pp. 169-72). The conclusion is that language ts inexhaustible and that any semasic function is transcended by other semasic functions,

inexhaustibly. :

45. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. 46. Vygotsky, Mind in Society; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

47. Dewey, Experience and Nature, chaps. 2-4.

48. Ibid., chap. 8. AQ. The terms ‘implicit’? and ‘explicit’ are natural expressions of the covert and overt characteristics of conscious thought, but they are drawn from Polanyi’s distinction between implicit or tacit and explicit knowledge (Knowledge and Being). He does not, in my view, sufficiently develop the mutual complementarity of those two forms of knowledge and consciousness. 50. Whitehead, Process and Reality; Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (New York: Scribner's, 1953). 51. I take this to be Dewey's position in the passages cited above. 52. This freedom of thought inherent in its capacity to serve rationality and cognition is closely akin to the freedom in the cognitive faculties which Kant associates in the Critique of Judgment with aesthetic judgment. It cannot be relegated to such judg-

MEANING 147 ment alone, however, for it is part of the inexhaustibility inherent in any capacity of thought or feeling. 53. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, chap. 1. 54. Polanyi, Knowing and Being.

55. Henri Poincaré, “Mathematical Creation,” in The Creative Process: A Sympostum, ed. Brewster Ghiselin (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 1952), pp. 22-31. 56. Even Whitehead defines consciousness in such propositional terms, although his view of mind is altogether much wider. See Process and Reality, pp. 206-80. 57. Mead and Vygotsky argue that concepts are formed publicly but “internalized.”’ This insight corresponds to the revised verificationalist principle that propositional claims are intelligible only if testable. Tests, validation, interrogation, all require public, functional, and overt manifestations at some point if they are to serve rationality and query. But there is no fixed point at which such explicit manifestation must occur. Explicit consciousness is inexhaustible in the two senses that it transcends its conditions and is transcended by rational achievements. See references above. See also George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1934). 58. See Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics. 59. I argue that the categories of locality delineate an irreducible multiplicity of modes of being and that there is no more general sense of being than these, though there are the pervasive traits expressed by the local categories as well as by locality and inexhaustibility. See my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics, chap. 5.

6o. Note “Origin of the Work of Art,” where Heidegger strongly suggests that being (the “‘rift’’) must be set into beings for truth. “Truth establishes itself as a strife within a being that is to be brought forth only in such a way that the conflict opens up in this being, that is, this being is itself brought into the rift-design. The rift-design is the drawing together, into a unity, of sketch and basic design, breach and outline. Truth establishes itself in a being in such a way, indeed, that this being itself occupies the Open of truth. This occupying, however, can happen only if what is to be brought forth, the rift, entrusts itself to the self-secluding factor that juts up in the Open. The rift must set itself back into the heavy weight of stone, the dumb hardness of wood, the dark glow of colors” (p. 63). I read this passage in reference particularly to the medium of a work of art. 61. Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh, The Sound Shape of Language (Bloom-

ington: Indiana University Press, 1979), pp. 90-92. | 62. Dewey, Experience and Nature, chaps. 2, 4, 5; and Theory of Valuation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939), chap. 6. 63. See here Hannah Arendt, Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978). 64. See here especially Foucault, History of Sexuality, Discipline and Punish, and Madness and Civilization.

65. Though I believe Marx is in this sense foundational, despite the importance of his contributions to the breakdown of foundationalism, his followers are in many cases

even more so. Perhaps the most striking example is Habermas, whose attempts to establish the foundations of effective communication are complemented by an extraordinarily rich sense of the complexity of human social and political life (Communication and the Evolution of Society).

66. Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” and “Question of Technology.” I shall discuss technology in detail in chap. 6.

148 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING 67. I do not find this side of tools and instrumentality sufficiently emphasized in most Continental chought, from Heidegger to Foucault. It is very strong in Dewey and the other American pragmatists. 68. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, trans. Colin Gordon et al., ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980); History of Sexuality; Madness and Civilization; and Order of Things.

69. Foucault, Order of Things, Introduction. 70. Langer, Feeling and Form. 71. Goodman, Languages of Art. 72. Ricoeur, Conflict of Interpretations; Freud and Philosophy, and Symbolism of Evil.

“{T}he sole philosophical interest in symbolism is that it reveals, by its structure of double meaning, the equivocalness of being: ‘Being speaks in many ways.’ Symbolism’s raison d’étre is to open the multiplicity of meaning to the equivocalness of being” (“The Problem of Double Meaning as Hermeneutic Problem and as Semantic Problem,” trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, Conflict of Interpretations, p. 67). 73. See the quotations from Hobbes and Locke cited in the text at notes 8 and 9. 74. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy. 75. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil. 76. A consequence is that polysemy becomes the normal condition of language. “Polysemy is thus not in itself a pathological phenomenon, nor is symbolism an ornament of language, polysemy and symbolism are part of che constitution and the functioning of a// language” (Ricoeur, “Problem of Double Meaning as Hermeneutic Problem and as Semantic Problem,” pp. 71-72). 77. See in particular Ricoeur's claim that “semantics can indeed be included in linguistics, but at what price? At the price of keeping the analysis within the enclosure of the linguistic universe” (ibid., p. 72). 78. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil. 79. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; and Either/Or, trans. Walter Lowrie (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959).

4

SPINOZA DEFINES EMOTION as “the modifications of the body by which the

power of acting of the body itself is increased, diminished, helped, or hindered, together with the ideas of these modifications.” ' He goes on to say that “If, therefore, we can be the adequate cause of any of these modifications, | understand the emotion to be an action, otherwise it is a passive state.” ° We may find in this profound treatment of emotion important insights that have been neglected in recent thought.

The Body + It would be difficult to think of philosophers of more opposed orientations than Spinoza and Merleau-Ponty. Yet they agree on many things, for both are concerned with the finiteness of individual beings amidst the totality. In particular, they agree on the body as the locus of human activity, the

central meeting ground in human experience of thought and being. In Spinoza, since the attributes of thought and extension pertain to one Substance, they are not independent but perfectly correspond.’ A fundamental consequence for understanding human being, then, is that human ideas are first of all ideas of the body. ‘The object of the idea constituting the human mind ts a body, or a certain mode of extension actually existing, and nothing else.” “ For Spinoza and Merleau-Ponty the body is both the mediating link between thought and the world and the fundamental expression of human finiteness. The question is whether the body does not then become absolute. In Spinoza, for example, the primacy of the body is an expression of the fundamental parallel between thought and extension. We cannot then meaningfully ask whether

all emotions are bodily emotions, or whether there are emotions free from bodily reference. The question may sound absurd, but it is not trivial. Do I mean to question whether, if we had no bodies, we would still have emotions? Almost all views

of an afterlife that maintain that we will retain our personalities, not just our intellects, seem to hold that we will continue to have emotions, at least of grace, love, and the glory of God. Could a disembodied intellect feel? The question of the independence of emotion from the body appears fundamentally dualistic. The fundamental principle of a local, inexhaustible human being ts that it, like every being, is multiply conditioned with multiple identities. The ques-

150 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tion is not of the disconnection of body and emotion, but whether that connec-

tion exhausts both thought and emotion. I have argued that judgment and query inexhaustibly transcend their conditions, that the judgments produced by a human being are not entirely explainable in terms of, traceable back to, a person's life and career. The argument that no ideal biography can be written of a person that will entirely explain that person’s achievements and values is

effectively an argument that what we think and do cannot be traced back entirely to our bodily conditions. I am suggesting that our emotions and feelings—along with every human condition—similarly transcend our bodily

conditions, even though these are pervasive throughout human being and emotion. One implication is that emotions are among the “surpluses” of our human existence that are traceable to no specific antecedent conditions. I have argued that consciousness is sometimes superfluous, without function or utility, a consequence of human inexhaustibility. Similarly, emotions are sometimes superfluous, not always intelligible in terms of prior conditions or functions, simply expressions of our human being. This surplus is a freedom, not

from conditions, but from any particular type of condition. In particular, as consciousness may sometimes be disembodied, superfluous relative to the historical locations of our bodies, so may the accompanying emotions. This surplus is testimony to the inexhaustibility of emotion as the corresponding surpluses testify to the inexhaustibility of consciousness and the human body. The joy we feel in discovering a mathematical truth, in solving a problem, is not a bodily joy, not a joy in which, in Spinoza’s words, “the power of acting of the

body itself is increased, diminished, helped, or hindered.” This subject requires a thorough treatment. Power * In Spinoza’s view, emotions refer to the powers of the body. This is equivalent to the position that emotions are intrinsically features of spheres of practice. Such a view is common and pervasive, but it is mistaken. It is a consequence in Spinoza of the two fundamental modes of location: in relation to Substance and in relation to other finite modes. Emotions are referable to Substance as adequate cause under the guise of freedom. In that context they are

rational actions. But as referred to other modes, other finite things, they are passive, externally determined, and utilitarian. There is no theory of aesthetic emotion in Spinoza, yet art is a natural milieu in which to look for emotions that do not (or may not) have utilitarian func-

tions. Among the most impressive phenomena of artistic experience are the powerful emotional qualities of many works of art. Now, I believe that just because emotion is so common in works of art, some works are produced to be cold and dispassionate. I believe that one of the prominent features of art is to

oppose and challenge our expectations.’ But even so, it will be argued, the most emotionless work of art is somehow emotional. Both these phenomena are extremely important for an adequate understanding of emotion. The sec-

EMOTION 1§1 ond, the emotion present in all experience, sometimes by absence, is a manifestation of the “surplus” of emotion, the emotionality of human being insofar

as it transcends its natural conditions. The first, the uniqueness of artistic emotions, is more important for our immediate purposes. Art is capable of offering, simultaneously and inseparably, standard, common, and remarkably unique emotions. Music is an excellent example, often recognizably joyous, sad, wry, bombastic, even angry, but never emotional in quite ordinary ways. Spinoza has something to say even about this difference, though he couches his view in terms of persons: “The emotion of one person differs from the corresponding emotion of another as much as the essence of the one person differs from that of the other.” ° Emotions differ as persons differ, but also as conditions and embodiments differ. In our practical lives, emotions pertain to our powers of action and control. Moreover, anything we do may be regarded as a practical judgment and the associated emotions may be referred to our powers of action. The emotions of art here express the powers of the artist to reach and move us; the emotions of a scientist express his powers to reach truth. Nevertheless, the emotions that belong to many works of art are better understood as uniquely aesthetic, properties of the work not the artist, and the joy of discovery in science is a joy that truth brings by disclosure even where we are largely passive in relation to it. Again, there is an inexhaustible surplus inherent in emotions transcending any prior material, bodily, and active conditions as well as any functions and consequences. Power is pervasive throughout human experience because practical judgment is so pervasive; but neither exhausts human experience. In the same sense, emotion is pervasive throughout human being but each transcends the

other. Not all of human being can be referred to emotion despite its pervasiveness; nor can emotions be referred to any particular aspect of human functioning. Rationality + There is a third element in Spinoza’s view of emotion that is so different from the contemporary view, and so unlike his predecessors’, that I

hesitate to formulate it without detailed preparation. As I have indicated, human being is referable in Spinoza both to Substance and to other modes. Spinozas epistemological rationalism—which I do not share, since it is incompatible with inexhaustibility—entails that adequate knowledge is possible of anything in relation to God. Where one has an adequate idea, it is both free and active, a power of the person over his surroundings. Emotions in Spinoza are passive where irrational and externally caused, but are rational and selfcaused where based on adequate ideas. The claim is that emotions can be rational. This is an extraordinary notion to contemplate in a tradition in which thought and emotion have been seen as opposed. And it is important to understand the force of the position, for it is not simply that we may be rational about our emotions, deliberating about

152 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING their causes and consequences, seeking to establish conditions that will produce in us the best emotions of which we are capable. No one would entirely reject this latter view, though one might separate thoughts about emotions from the emotions themselves. If we accept the testimony of psychoanalysis that we frequently repress our deeper emotions, deceive ourselves, then such rationality might be far more difficult to attain, but might be possible in principle, under certain conditions. Yet if we take self-deception as fundamental, repression as pervasive, an important consequence follows. We cannot then expect to bring our emotions under the control of thought and deliberation. As a consequence, we may con-

clude that rationality—the control of emotions by the intellect—is practically impossible of attainment. Or we may conclude instead that reason is not a property of the intellect alone, but belongs to the emotions directly insofar as they embody order and design. Analogously, of course, there is reason in our bodily actions, as practical judgments, with or without reference to our conscious awareness or propositional thought. I shall explore in what follows both the inexhaustibility of emotions and their rationality as judgments. In this respect I shall challenge the traditional view that separates rationality from emotion, thought from feeling.

EMOTION AND THOUGHT

The principle that thought and emotion are opposed, at least disjunctive, has several facets. Rationality suggests control; emotions frequently descend on us without warning, and beset us despite our efforts to bring them under control. Nevertheless, thoughts are frequently as little under our control as emotions. A striking feature of reason in action is that while practical judgment seeks to establish control and where successful does so, its means, to be effective, must always be somewhat uncontrolled. A similar openness to variation is essential to every mode of query. It is by thinking widely and openly, by exploring every

likely thought that enters our mind, however it does so, that we are able to reach firm and tested conclusions. The correspondence theory of truth may be in part to blame for too rigid a sense of rationality and the associated rejection of unfettered imagination and speculation. True thoughts correspond to reality and are shown to do so by careful and controlled methods. In this respect, both classical empiricism and rationalism offer far too rigid a conception of rationality. The free play of mind in both thought and emotion— an antidote to such coercive rationality—is then irrational, praised for its freedom or damned for its license. One of the most vivid metaphors in the history of philosophy, contrasting emotion with reason, is Plato's’ charioteer with two steeds, rationality demanding the subjugation of both our appetites and our passions. ’

EMOTION 153 Of all the elements in Plato's dialogues that oppose his emphasis on rationality as activity, as dialectic in process, none is so blatantly incongruous as this view of the soul as intrinsically divided, suggesting that emotion as such has nothing to offer reason while reason may function epistemically without emotion.* Even worse, the supporting metaphor of the Republic in which reason is likened to a vision of the sun suggests a contemplative notion of rationality, dismissing emotion as too variable to be rational. What is needed is to question the two assumptions that rationality is to be associated with control and that control is to be distinguished from instability. There is another opposition in the history of philosophy that has supported a similar view of the irrationality of emotion, this time one closely related to our understanding of consciousness. I am speaking of the traditional opposition of

subjectivity and objectivity, but that distinction carries so much historical weight, is fraught with so many different kinds of implications, that I shall not formulate the issue in its terms. J am speaking of the distinction in consciousness between what is mediate and immediate, public and private, functional and spectatorial. Consciousness as thought is intentional as well as functional, can be evaluated in terms of what it achieves. But it also manifests a surplus that traditionally has been associated with what ts personal or private, what is not publicly available, and this has been in many cases regarded as emotional.

I argued earlier, in the context of the opposition of conscious and unconscious thought in psychoanalysis, that no such division could be sustained. My

argument was, not that consciousness is indissoluble, whole, synthetic and unified, but that we cannot distinguish consciousness from its conditions altogether and absolutely, but only locally. Inexhaustibility affects consciousness in two major ways: one locating the salient and obtrusive features of consciousness so thoroughly in their conditions that its functions and characteristics are pervasive throughout human experience; the other, based on the inexhaustible surplus in consciousness, entailing that many of its most obtrusive features are functionally marginal, virtually epiphenomenal in certain contexts, but never all. The distinction between conscious and unconscious functions and condi-

tions is perspectival, not absolute. The reason is that consciousness is inexhaustible and carries the full weight of human being in certain perspectives.

I am arguing that the distinction between thought and emotion functions similarly. A useful and effective distinction in certain perspectives, it greatly distorts our understanding of both emotion and thought when it is made too exclusive.

A long and established tradition in philosophy has held that the essential function of mind is to think, that ideas are pervasive in consciousness. Here we may take the epistemic functions of consciousness as fundamental, except that they often have been conceived in narrow ways, neglecting practice and emphasizing propositional thought. Both art and practice are diminished by this view, which suffers from a limited understanding of reason. The alternative

154 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING that has seemed most plausible is an equally exaggerated emphasis on the pervasiveness of emotion: art and practice are grounded in pleasures and pains, joys and ennui. At the extreme, we find so complete a generalization of emotion that in Whitehead, for example, prehension or feeling is the generic category in relation to which propositional judgment is a relatively rare species.’ Whitehead claims that it is more important that propositions be interesting than that they be true. '° Yet he does not apply this insight to reach the natural conclusion that interestingness is a form of validation and reason, that propositional truth is a mere species of a wider category of rationality applicable throughout experience. I have argued that no single characteristic or set of characteristics can exhaust consciousness, distinguishing it from what is outside consciousness. Similarly, we cannot distinguish thought from emotion or truth from value, even our bodies from our consciousness, not unqualifiedly and unconditionedly. It is human beings who act and respond, in part consciously, in part unconsciously, but inseparably relative to any important functions. Similarly, it is human beings who think and feel, and who do so together and inseparably. If this is true, then the only plausible conclusion is that emotion is to be classified, not as either rational or irrational, functional or immediate, but as a pervasive dimension, along with body and thought, of human functioning. Consider an athlete preparing for an important tournament. This preparation has at least three parts: general physical training, lifting weights and running, to develop his body and abilities, specific training in her field of performance—running if she is a runner, shooting baskets if a basketball player, serving and hitting groundstrokes if a tennis player; finally, training her mind, attitudes, emotions, training him to concentrate, to be competitive, to do his best under inclement conditions. In short, an athlete cannot win on physical ability alone. At the level of extreme competition, emotional factors are as important as physical factors. And they can be trained. The training is testimony to the cognitive nature of emotions to the extent that we may bring them under control, but seems to suggest that the control is external. We (or others) condition our emotions so that we will become more effective agents. The example may be interpreted to show only that we may be rational about our emotions, may interrogate and even modify them by training and conditioning. We are close here to classical Stoicism. But a point ts involved that goes beyond Stoicism. Emotions are an interrogative, even rational, part of an athlete’s capabilities. Not only is the drive to win, a drive that makes a person more effective rather than less, that brings out a calculated Capacity to achieve higher goals rather than frustration and despair, necessary to athletic activities; it is often the crucial factor at the highest levels of performance. Athletic skill is not physical prowess alone, but includes those emotional reactions that enable more obvious skills to function most effectively when needed most, in the last few minutes of a close competition. I am argu-

EMOTION 155 ing that preparing emotionally for the battle is, not an essential but alien act like tuning up the engine of a racing car, but a form of practical judgment. I have noted the long tradition in which emotion and thought have been divided, due in part to epistemological assumptions concerning objectivity and correspondence. Emotions are qualified by history and circumstances. They are never entirely practical, but are influenced by conditions out of the

agent's control. Yet from the standpoint of a non-foundational theory of knowledge, thought is no less, and no more, conditioned than emotion. Thought is no less successful and adequate for being in part a function of historical conditions. We often regard emotions as largely passive dispositions: we fall in love or become angry whether we want to or not. Yet we often follow trains of thought whether we want to or not, often find melodies and ideas racing through our minds, keeping us awake at night. Voluntariness and involuntariness are im-

portant notions in human conduct, but they are not uniquely applicable to emotions rather than ideas. We think of ideas as freer, more within our control, not because we can control what we think more than what we feel, but because strong and deviant thoughts may have no public existence. We do not suffer blame for what we think, only for what we openly do or feel. If we could keep our emotions covert, if we did not act openly in accordance with

our emotions, we would regard them as falling more within our practical reason.

J have argued that consciousness cannot be unqualifiedly separated from either unconsciousness or our bodies in human life, for consciousness extends

to include our humanity, and thereby becomes inseparable from whatever constitutes our significant achievements. Some of our most important ideas come forth spontaneously from a covert source. Poincaré argues that we cannot make sense of our unconscious mind’s being more intelligent and rational than our conscious mind."' His solution is to regard unconscious thought as purely mechanistic. The solution J have proposed is that we take rationality and intelligence to be inexhaustible properties of inexhaustible human beings, not of minds alone, and recognize that thought and judgment function partly overtly and partly covertly, that inexhaustibility in experience entails a continual surplus of thought and emotion in everything we do and feel. The explicit manifestations of human functions are not the whole of human functioning with respect to any of our important achievements. The opposition of thought and emotion is a legitimate one only tn contexts in which thought is effectively distanced and remote while emotions descend upon us with imminent demands. Yet we cannot think of anything without emotion, without being interested in it enough to give it our attention. Conversely, there are no emotions without content. We feel anger at injustice,

love for a person or object, fear of a threat. Freud’s claim that anxiety 1s global, undifferentiated, and objectless characterizes it uniquely as distin-

156 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING guished from all other emotions; possibly it is not an emotion at all. Even so, its manifestations are always ideational. ' It is not enough, however, to conclude that emotion and thought are equally pervasive and inseparable throughout human experience, as if they were two distinct species somehow conjoined. The question is why, if they are distinct,

they are inseparable. I am arguing that they are no more distinct than conciousness and emotion. Consciousness has both a narrower and a wider purview, a narrower meaning in contrast with distractedness and inadvertence, but a wider meaning in which it includes our rationality and humanity. Similarly, the narrower meaning of thought, in contrast with emotion, requires supplementation by the wider meaning equivalent with consciousness where we confront its inexhaustibility. Human judgment and experience are inexhaustible—manifestly so. One of the most important consequences of this pervasive condition ts that every concept that manifests our humanity is inexhaustible, inclusive of its complement. The opposition of thought and emotion directly entails, through inexhaustibility, that thought includes emotion and emotion includes thought, but more strongly, that thought is emotion and emotion is thought. Yet I am not proposing that they are indistinguishable. I am arguing that in some perspectives each is the other's complement, and that in other perspectives each is equivalent to the other. Similarly, our humanity is complementarily to be found within our bodies and within our minds, each of which is profoundly inexhaustible. Science is a paradigm of objectivity and rationality, yet scientific works are produced under inspiration and intense emotion. '’ Just as an athlete will excel only when his emotions are trained to support his performance, a scientist does not coldly calculate logical implications but is inspired by higher thoughts and driven by emotions. The extensive literature describing aberrant scientific experiments and scientific fraud shows that progress in science is achieved through performances that depend on both words and attitudes, in close connection. Scientific rationality is a complex mixture of vision, inspiration, morality, and technical rigor, individual and collective. In everyday experience, in most ordinary lives, we are often distracted by the intensity of our emotions or feel impotent in the sterility of our ideas. One way of interpreting this is that our thoughts and emotions are not in harmony, but that is an inadequate interpretation to the extent that our thoughts are emotional and our emotions are ideational. Another way of putting this is that we are not rational when our thoughts and emotions are divided, working against each other. Yet that each may transcend the other, even disharmoniously, 1s one of the most important sources of inspiration and vitality. Rationality 1s a function of both thought and emotion, and neither is more rational than the other. I am arguing that emotions are no less interrogative than ideas, no less affirmative than propositions. To follow a course of thought to its own conclu-

EMOTION 157 sion, without interfering out of fear or narrow interest, is to conform in both thought and emotion to its constraints, to acknowledge the power of its rule in our emotions of necessity and commitment. “ Dewey's instrumental theory of inquiry defines the beginning of inquiry ina quality of doubt.”’ Freed from overstatement, his theory is that we sense and feel discordance as much as we think it, that part of thought as inquiry is a sense of emotional qualities of harmony and conflict. Thought without emotion is impotent, I would argue, except that no such separation is possible. Query, in all its forms, requires interrogation and affirmation in all the forms we can bring to it, in all cases including both thought and emotion. I shall conclude this discussion by repeating what I take to be the reason for the view that thought and emotion are disconnected. The reason lies in the surplus inherent in all being, particularly in human being, whereby every judgment transcends its conditions as well as its aims. It is not that thought and emotion are particularly disconnected, but that in every conscious state or

condition, in every human judgment, there are surplus and misdirection. Waste is a pervasive consequence of inexhaustibility. We are frequently distracted, frequently follow several trains of thought at once, only some of which are connected. Our thoughts and emotions frequently go their separate ways. We tend to overlook the positive side of this condition: namely, that some of our greatest inspirations and achievements come from the conjunction of disconnected strands of thought and emotion. Invention and novelty are among the positive consequences of the inexhaustibility in human experience that may equally issue in disorder and disconnection.

EMOTION AND JUDGMENT

I have argued against the traditional opposition of thought and emotion. I am arguing that emotions are as cognitive and rational, as well as irrational, as thoughts and propositions. I mean more than that emotions may be brought under rational control, as Plato suggests in his tripartite view of the soul in the Republic, more than that emotions contain a component of belief,'° but that emotions may themselves be rational. The first question is whether it is plausible to hold that emotions and feelings are to be classified not with judgments—with choices and selections that

manifest our humanity—but with movements and events. Many human events are to be viewed, at least in some perspectives, as only events, not judgments. Osmosis, mitosis, hormonal secretion, are all biological, not human, occurrences. The question of validation does not typically arise. But it may; we may interrogate any bodily occurrence, any biological process, any environmental factors, in relation to human judgments. It is typical in medicine that processes that have no judgmental significance are assigned it when questions

158 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING of health and illness arise. Illness and disability become judgmental when interrogated as part of an agent’s sphere of practice. They indicate features of his forms of action over which he may have more or less control. Unconscious processes are judgments when they are the result of selection and seek validation. Similarly, different cultures emphasize different kinds of emotional reac-

tions.'” Here emotions have cultural and personal functions, and are to be evaluated in terms of their utility. To deny that emotions are judgments is to classify them with biological events, as passive relative to human selection and validation. To fall in love or to become enraged is sometimes to respond so directly and uncontrollably to one’s surroundings that the response appears more biological than judgmental. Even so, and despite the lack of control we often have over our emotions, such responses are not biological rather than human, for our humanity involves our biology. These responses express our personalities, who we are, and must, in this context, be regarded as judgments. I have begun with the extreme view, that some or all emotions may not be judgments, in some perspectives, to show that nevertheless they must be regarded as judgments in other perspectives if we are to be able to form a general notion of human being. Our emotions are among the typical ways in which our personalities are manifested. In this respect, they cannot be classified with bi-

ology and instinct, our thoughts and words with humanity and reason. Who we are, as judging beings, is manifested as directly in our emotions as in any other judgments. Psychoanalysis clearly affirms such an understanding of humanity, despite its generally irrationalistic and archaeological conception of emotions as derived largely from early experiences and generic unconscious conditions; our human nature, individual and generic, is typified in our emotional responses. There is a tradition that regards the body as defective, our emotions as weaknesses. Even this view requires us to see emotions as judgments, since they must be ours to be our weaknesses. Far more important, such views reject all but certain “higher’’ modes of judgment and thereby diminish our rationality. It is through judgment that we manifest who and what we are, as human beings, not simply what we want or ought to be. In this context, emotions are a more compelling and reliable expression of our being than many thoughts or words. The traditions that tend to denigrate our emotional side do so largely to bring it under control. In so doing, they testify to its judgmental character, since the control sought is a human production, not just an event caused by other movements. Even here, then, emotions are both the source of and the objects of practical judgments. My argument is that emotions are irresistibly and unavoidably judgments. Like other judgments, emotions may be voluntary or involuntary, within our control or not. But no judgment is ever entirely unconditioned, devoid of external influences, and no judgment could be entirely involuntary. Every judg-

EMOTION 159 ment is partly settled, is partly pervaded, by alternatives, reciprocally and complementarily. But this is not to deny that in some perspectives we may interrogate any judgments as mere events. If human beings are judges, then emotions are judgments. But they are not ov/y judgments, and they are not located in only one of the modes of judgment. The next step is to relate emotions to the different modes of judgment. Here the most natural interpretation is that emotions are practical judgments, ways in which we seek to establish order amidst disorder. This view is true enough, but as it stands, without detailed elaboration, it is insufficient to manifest the complexity of our emotional lives. Assertive judgments are commonly but not exclusively in words. They assert claims that are to be evaluated as true or false about our circumstances and

surroundings. Three important roles of emotion in such assertive judgment may be noted: (1) inspiration leading to more effective inquiry——a mode of practical judgment in support of assertion; (2) exhilaration at achieving a discovery; (3) affirmation of order or disorder. The first of these, I have suggested, is a function of emotions as practical judgments, moving us (and others) to more effective and dedicated inquiry. Our assertive judgments are mobilized by our emotions, but the two here are distinct. It is important to emphasize that such mobilization and direction provided by emotion are both personal and social, that emotions are an important means of social interaction. In the third role, emotions themselves are assertive judgments testifying to order and disorder, problems and solutions. The resolution of every inquiry is an emotional satisfaction that is both practical in generation and assertive in denying the need for further inquiry. The second role is more complex. It may be classified with either of the others, either what arouses us to undertake investigation or what implicitly affirms order. But it may be a form of fabricative judgment, providing a synthetic unity that conjoins the different stages of inquiry. Dewey speaks of a pervasive quality throughout a situation with a similar function.'* I am suggesting that emotion is capable of promoting order amidst a welter of disconnected inquiries. Besides the specific functions of emotion in connection with assertive judgment, there is the consequence of inexhaustibility that emotions may be superfluous, non-functional in certain locations. The second example may sometimes have this character. Here emotions are the overflow from the dedication that productive inquiry requires. This surplus of emotion is probably what suggests the irrelevance and irrationality of emotion in relation to science. What is overlooked is both the importance of emotion to scientific activities and the equal irrelevance (and irrationality) of many thoughts. There is a continual overflow and surplus in any dedicated activity, in all modes of judgment and rationality. Corresponding to the roles of emotion in relation to assertive judgment are

160 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING similar functions in relation to fabricative judgment. Emotions may contribute to the production of works of art and other constructions as the inspiring force, primarily a form of practical judgment, and may contribute to the social bonds that surround many artistic activities and works of art. In one of the important functions of art, emotions themselves may be contrived, synthetic creations of subtlety and power. Emotions may also be testimony to fabricative achievements. Finally, they are one of the most obtrusive forms of superfluousness in human life, of non-functional transcendence, accompanying our achievements in a distractive role. It is in relation to practical judgment that emotions are most naturally to be understood. Practical judgments are directed toward the future, evaluated in ‘terms of outcomes and consequences. And it seems likely that, if not exclusively, emotions are judgments whose role is defined largely in terms of what they engender, the consequences they bring to pass. I would, indeed, define emotion in terms of practical judgment, somewhat after Spinoza, diminishing his emphasis on the body, which I think if legitimate may be misleading: emotion is that form of practical judgment in which our power over our judgments is in question. The interrogativeness of emotion is the property that ts essential to its rationality. The predominent role assigned to emotion here is the first described above, that is, to inspire and direct our inquiries and creations, socially and individually. Yet the other roles of emotions, as themselves assertions and fabrications, as affirming order and disorder or as producing them, are not neglected. Intermodality entails that in order for emotions to function as practical judgments in relation to other modes of judgment, they must take on the properties and roles of other modes. They can inspire and direct inquiry only to the extent that they incipiently affirm and claim, testify to truth and falsehood. Far more important, emotion interrogates our capacities as agents, and that interrogation inevitably takes on every modality of judgment. We may add, here, the surplus of judgment: works of art whose major purpose is to evoke novel emotional responses and forms of psychotherapy in which emotional responses are the only means we have of expressing claims about our personalities. In the

latter case, emotions serve as both assertive judgments and their objects. Whatever functions we take emotion to serve, it inexhaustibly transcends them to other modes, antagonistically or supportively. Like any judgment, emotions can be interpreted as judgments with any modality, and will inevitably be required to have such modality if they are to serve the practical functions I have defined. The question of our powers and competences, in any mode of judgment, is a question asked in emotion and answered emotionally, even when we employ words and express ourselves conventionally. The words that express confidence do not affirm it as effectively as the radiant conviction of power; the words that express impotence do not con: vey it as thoroughly as does bodily posture (a primary mode of emotional ex-

EMOTION 161 pression). We can understand here the crucial phenomenon of psychoanalysis

that verbal knowledge is often ineffective, that therapy is worked out primarily through transference and countertransference relationships—that is, through the reciprocal emotional responses of patient and therapist in relation to the prospect of change. Psychotherapy is a means to personal transformation, a way of gaining power over and through actions. Emotions here are not simply a part of the process; they are the process, both the means and the outcome. In this sense, to suppose that psychoanalysis offers an irrationalistic view of emotion is absurd. But we are again raising the question of the rationality of emotion, of its relationship to query more than to judgment. When insulted or injured, we frequently grow angry. The anger, lam arguing, has at least a double character. It is a response to what is done to us, an affirmation and interrogation of our impotence or powers, our capacity to take action or our need to submit. Far more important, however, the anger itself is a form of action, driving us to overt deeds and, in some cases, an overt act it-

self. We sometimes train our emotions, and probably should do so more often. I have suggested that athletes do so commonly. Where most effective, emotion is both a source and an expression of power. Anger can blind us to intelligent deliberation or can motivate us to greater intensity. It can frustrate our relationships with others or it can ameliorate imbalance. Anger here 1s a form of action in relation to other people in which we both interrogate our

capacities to relate to them and manifest our powers. The precise form in which anger is expressed is determined by calling in all the modes and forms of judgment. But the employment of language does not change the relevance of the anger.

Our response to the death of our loved ones is grief. Yet we can be so shocked, feel so impotent, that grief may be temporarily foreclosed. It is a commonplace that we can come to terms with the death of a child or beloved only through grief, and this is a profound and remarkable truth. The grief, I would say, is the way in which we act to restore our further capacity to act. The norms of our lives and judgments have been thrown into disarray, and the order

is to be restored, not so much through thought as through grief—that practical judgment whereby we discover our further capacities of life and love. Grief here is not simply an adjunct to action, but the primary form of relevant action. Moreover, it is as much social as personal, in that we both share our grief with others and seek to establish our capabilities as agents in relation to others through our common emotional reactions. It is another commonplace that certain emotions are a response to our capabilities and powers—frustration and anger at our impotence, exhilaration and : confidence at our success. I am arguing that emotions are not simply responses to or accompaniments of our sense of power and impotence, but can be and are frequently a means for modifying it. Unfortunately, whatever means we may employ in practical judgment to bring about desired results can become em-

162 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING bedded in rigid forms that inhibit their results and prevent their realization. This capacity of our emotions is not unique to them; we repeat useless and counterproductive forms of thought and action quite as frequently. Neverthe-

less, the double aspect of emotion is what gives it its importance in the obtrusive contexts of our practical lives: it is both the most prominent and the most pervasive form whereby we interrogate our capabilities as agents and also the most salient form of inexhaustible surplus, of irrelevance and waste, that

permeates our lives. This double role is extremely confusing and debilitating, and we admire those persons who appear to have escaped confusion, either by greater effectiveness in action or by minimizing waste and irrelevance. Against this view, however, is the deeper sense we have that because of inexhaustibility and transcendence all such achievements are only temporary, that failure haunts every aspect of practical judgment and experience. EMOTION AND REASON

I have criticized Plato's image of the soul in three parts, a chariot directed by reason with the two steeds of desire and spirit, as dividing emotion from rationality. Freud’s division of the soul into id, ego, and superego is similarly misleading both where the internal personality is regarded as three and in the claim that all rationality belongs to the ego, that the id, in particular, is entirely irrational. But the image in Plato may be interpreted differently. Reason here is impotent without emotion. I am strengthening this connection to argue that reason is inseparable from emotion, not only in the sense that thought requires emotion if it is to be effective, or even that thought and emotion are always conjoined, but, more important, in the sense that emotions are as cognitive, as capable of rationality and interrogation, as any other generic form of human functioning. The general issue here is the denial, based on inexhaustibility, that there is one privileged and authentic form of reason: propositional thought in particular. A related issue is the denial that historicity and locality are in conflict with reason, that the archaeological nature of emotions makes them intrinsically irrational. To the contrary, all forms of reason are historically situated and local. Emotions are among the major forms of practical judgment, and can become rational where practical judgment becomes practical query. The best example of this is in personal morality, but I shall consider other examples as well. A second important implication of Plato's image, maintained in classic psychoanalysis, is recognition of the reflexive relationship of emotions to other emotions. In Plato, the spirited emotions are to maintain control over the appetites. Both Plato and Freud appear to take for granted the impossibility of appetites to control themselves, the essentially infinite nature of desire. This view has much evidence in its support, and has been maintained throughout

EMOTION 163 the philosophic tradition almost as a first principle, in Hobbes as well as Spinoza, in Durkheim’s view of suicide and in Adam Smith's principles of economy. Individual desires are unbounded and must clash. All the major sins are sins of desire: avarice, lust, self-love, gluttony. J shall argue that this view is mistaken, or at least deeply misleading. It has been the source of some of the most unresolvable difficulties in the history of thought, for if desires are intrinsically irrational and unbounded, they can only be opposed, they cannot be tempered. Thus, it is thought possible for human beings to live in society and to love one another only at the sacrifice of their deepest desires. Though

there is some truth to the picture of conflict given here, it is greatly distorted. The conflicts are unresolvable, not because desires cannot be contained, as if misery is our foregone end, but because of the inexhaustibility of human being. The principle Plato suggests is that emotions can reflect upon and modify other emotions. He apparently restricts this possibility to spirit and desire. The restriction is the key to the claimed irrationality of emotion. What is es-

sential is the pervasiveness of interrogation. If we add to this the pervasiveness of self-deception, testified to by our contemporary awareness of repression and ideology, then there are only two alternatives: to despair of an independent rationality freed from human conditions—nihilism or skepticism—or to emphasize the inexhaustible possibilities of interrogation inherent in manifold forms of judgment. If all query is located and conditioned, then rationality cannot be freedom from conditions but is interrogation inexhaustibly through conditions. There is no resolution to foundationalism except inexhaustibility, interrogation and reinterrogation, a consequence of which is that thought must be interrogable from the standpoint of practice, and conversely. The most obvious form of such interrogation is the interrogation of both thought and emotion from the standpoint of other emotions. We

have traditionally so restricted interrogation to thought and language that the idea of such interrogation seems absurd. Yet it is essential. We may note that in terms of Plato’s image indignation must coerce and restrain the appetites. In psychoanalysis, the superego is the key to personal morality and must function independently of the ego. In more ordinary terms, personal morality is based on conscience more than reason, testimony to the possibility that emotions may govern emotions without the mediation of prop-

ositional thought. If we add, as we must, recognition of the complexity of moral decisions, then in those remarkable human beings whose nobility is a shining example to the rest of us, thoughtful deliberation is frequently absent and clearly unnecessary. Such cases, I am arguing, are to be understood as interrogation through emotion of circumstances in which other emotions are predominant. In addition to cases drawn from everyday and moral experience, there are

other important instances where emotions function interrogatively and ra-

164 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tionally. The most obvious case I have already noted: the preparation of athletes for tournament competition. Beyond a certain level of proficiency, attained by many athletes who compete internationally, attitude is probably the most important element. Here we must include dedication, commitment, concentration, desire to win, hatred of losing, and so forth. Athletes are either habitual, irrational human beings, going through movements unthinkingly, or they must be interpreted to be interrogative, rational beings whose know!edge is emotional and bodily. Similar arguments can be given for scientists and artists. The former case has

been distorted by two prejudices: one, that rationality is entirely propositional, so that the emotions of scientists are irrelevant to their conclusions; the other, that discovery is somehow ineffable, that verification is entirely expressible in propositions. However, not only is scientific discovery an extremely emotional experience—painful as well as pleasant, filled with anxiety as well as exhilaration— but there could be no discovery without emotion.” The weakest connection is the role emotions play in directing activity. Here controlled emotion ts a requirement for rationality but is not itself rational. Yet if we ask what directs the emotions to be productive rather than inhibiting, the truth is

both that we do not know and that wherever that knowledge lies it cannot belong to science. Thus, science requires a certain kind of emotion, essential to discovery and rationality, although science itself does not produce that emotion controllably as it produces propositions and experiments. Psychoanalysis has inspired an extensive literature of scientific personalities in which the natural conclusion is that the greatest scientists have been social misfits, dedicated to science because of their failed desires in everyday experience. The paradox here is a direct consequence of separating emotion from rationality, so that scientific activities, rational as they are, are rooted in a completely irrational foundation. It is, however, far more likely that scientific training is one of soul and spirit as well as mind, that there is a morality in science that is deeply rational in its emotional as well as its propositional forms. Like athletes, scientists learn to function when ill and distracted as well as when at their best. The concept of sublimation ts relevant here except that it shares the irrationalistic suggestion that rationality is based on frustrated desires. To the contrary, I suggest, sublimation must be understood as always judgment and as potentially query: the rational redirection of emotional energies from one set of objects and desires to another. The cases we are considering, of the emotional resources essential to scientific productivity, can be understood only if we grant that scientific training produces controls upon and through emotion as well as propositional thought. The fact that we have few propositional resources to utilize to gain this emotional control is testimony to the fact that it is by and through emotions—emotions upon emotions, interrogating them reflexively—that scientific activities are made possible. Like all supremely effective human beings,

EMOTION 165 scientists learn by experience and attention to direct their emotions in productive ways. We are misled by the fact that so many scientists and athletes are not altogether superior human beings to overlook their emotional powers in the areas in which they are superior.

I am arguing that if science is query, it is rational both in propositional thought, in explicit activities—experimentation and argument—and in emotion. The dedication and inspiration that are required for important scientific discoveries are the result of developed emotional powers. But there is a far deeper and more important emotional factor in discovery: the conviction of and confidence in one’s powers that permits inspirations and intuitions to bear fruit. I have argued that advanced discovery as well as elementary learning are based on the development of insight, that invention is essential to understanding.*' Polanyi has argued that knowledge is personal in the sense that it transcends rules and conventions, depends on the trust and commitment of a scientist in his capabilities.“* Both these views, examined in detail, reveal an emotional basis in insight and conviction. The organizational principles and structural conditions that enable us to function epistemically are no more or less emotional than they are propositional, though, of course, they must yield propositional expression for verification. Put another way: science is a way to knowledge that involves the production of discoveries out of intuitive and emotional resources. Emotion here is interrogative in the sense that the satisfaction required in argument and proof is both terminated in satisfaction and originated in doubt. The requirement that science be so publicly communicable as to involve the propositional expression of premisses and conclusions in contexts of validation marks the profound importance of attitudes and emotions in the practices of scientific discovery and evaluation. Another way of putting this is that propositions do not interpret themselves and hypotheses do not verify themselves. Central to human query are trained and productive emotional capacities. *’

Art has traditionally been closely associated with emotion, perhaps too closely. From the side of production, emotion in art is clearly cognitive, a major factor in the creation of important works. Dewey argues that the expres-

sive element in artistic production is a manifestation of rationality: that art achieves organic unity through controlled emotional expression.”* Goodman argues that “in aesthetic experience the emotions function cognitively.” *’ His position has two points of narrowness, although on the whole he ts asserting the thesis I am defending. His view of knowledge is symbolic and referential; I would deny that emotions in art function exclusively referentially. Perhaps the simplest way of putting this is that Goodman still employs basically a proposi-

tional, at least referential, interpretation of knowledge. I am arguing that emotions in art typically function cognitively as practical judgments, as the revelation of human powers. Emotions function in art to display and interrogate meanings and values. Nevertheless—this is the second point of narrow-

166 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ness—the functions of emotion in relation to art are inexhaustible, for both art and emotion are inexhaustible.

The cognitive and rational roles of emotion in artistic production are unquestionable. Artists not only think in words about their work in progress, but think through emotion as well as perception. Tensions, dissonances, incompleteness, are felt more powerfully and deeply than they are thought—or, as I would put it, are thought through being felt. Since artists produce their work by taking the role of audience as well as that of producer, the cognitive role of emotions in perception and evaluation is assured. But I am making a more general point: that interpretation of a work of art is not only propositional—its major form of critical articulation—but perceptual and emotional. A rational response to a work of visual art, painting or sculpture, interrogates it both by emotion and in words. The education of artistic sensibilities is development of intellectual, perceptual, and emotional responses, especially in their more reflexive forms, wherein we are able to respond emotionally to a work and then respond thoughtfully as well as emotionally to our own responses. A profound

element of the interpretation of art depends, I am arguing, on trained and sophisticated emotional responses and on further responses to our primary re-

sponses. This is a profound, sensitive, and important form of rationality. Nevertheless, no mode of interrogation and rationality can be universally required or appropriate, and there are works in which emotions are relevant by negation, where reflective understanding and perceptual awareness take precedence over emotional insight. A similar case can be made for our functioning as moral agents. If we regard emotion as intrinsically irrational, then either deliberation is the essence of ethical rationality or morality is a function of sensibility and conscience, effectively a product of emotion not reason. We know of human beings of compassion and nobility who serve as prominent examples of wisdom and virtue, but who neither speak effectively nor pretend to be philosophers. If wisdom is cognitive, to be regarded as fundamentally rational, then it must be the product of interrogation and query, but cannot be interpreted as essentially propositional or even discursive. It is, then, in and through emotion that such wisdom is achieved. I would contrast here profoundly the simple indignation one may feel at the thought of wrongdoing, perhaps a consequence of virtuous upbringing, with the subtle and complex interrogation of one’s moral situation through one’s moral feelings, especially in cases of moral conflict. I am not arguing for an emotive theory of morality. Rather Iam arguing that we can and do interrogate moral situations through emotions, and that interrelated emotions, interrogating each other reflexively, are the basis of great moral insights. I have argued that wherever rationality is to be found, in its most conventional forms, emotion plays a rational and cognitive role, not only as a means to other forms of rationality, but as a primary form of interrogation and valida-

EMOTION 167 tion. I shall argue, to conclude this discussion, that common and important emotions can be interrogative and rational, cognitive as well as arbitrary. Emotions such as anger and love are not more or less irrational than everyday beliefs

and ordinary principles. Science emerges as query from everyday assertive judgment; emotive query emerges from everyday actions and emotional responses. Everyday experience is a hodgepodge of judgments, of manifold forms and varieties of interrogation and obstinacy. That everyday emotions should not be rational is no more indicative of the character of emotions than that the irrationality of many everyday beliefs indicates the irrationality of science. I am arguing that emotions as well as beliefs are judgments, are in that sense cognitive, and may become rational where they are the result of interrogative methods. When we have been insulted or injured, we frequently become angry. The anger here is not simply an indication of injury, any more so than words would be, but a judgment, a way of understanding and attempting to exercise power in a complex social interaction.*° Much of our social lives consists in emotional responses and responses to those emotional responses, for they constitute the

most important forms of practical judgment and interrogation. One of the most interesting features of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy is

that they interrogate our emotional and dream lives through words but also emotions, in transference and countertransference. The therapist’s emotional responses to the patient are a primary feature of the therapeutic situation, a form of rational interrogation. The patient’s emotional responses to his dreams and events in his life take precedence over whatever he might think and say

about them; the emotions are the cognitive basis for any interpretation and modification. A recurrent feature of human life is the repetition of similar patterns in love relationships: a woman falls in love recurrently with men who beat her or who cannot hold a job; a man falls in love with aggressive women who make him

despise his own dependence. We can interpret love as passive here, but the recurrence demands that we interpret that agent as acting, as choosing his relationships, as judging and questioning. Love in these cases is a form of judgment, expressed in action, a form of interrogation of who one wants to be and how one will relate to others, especially others important to oneself. I defined emotion as the major form of practical judgment interrogating our powers of judgment. Love is one of the major forms of emotion in both interrogating and determining who we are, what we can do. Those we fall in love with, and the way we fall in love, are among the two or three most important manifestations of who we are as human beings and as judges. To make love rational, as lam suggesting we should do, is not to subordinate it to assertion or to diminish its intensity. That conclusion follows only if

we identify rationality with assertive judgment. Rather, I am arguing that

168 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING emotions can be rational and interrogative as emotions, though of course they benefit as do all the forms of query from intermodality. Emotion is practical

judgment, establishing powers and interrogating means to control them. Politics and morality are frequently emotional forms of life, and they should be, for the three together comprise most of the range of our practical judgments. But we sometimes imagine emotion to be the irrational side of politics and morality. That is a profound error. We find out who we are, and what we will live and die by, only by engaging our emotions interrogatively—that is, refining them and interrogating them at complex levels of reflexivity.

PARTICULAR EMOTIONS

I have defined emotion as that form of judgment in which our judgmental powers are in question. This definition makes interrogation central to emotion, and establishes it as intrinsically cognitive, a pervasive form of judgment. Emotion here ts a form of articulative judgment, judgments interrogative of other judgments, and possesses any relevant interrogative modality. In this cognitive role, emotions not only are means for and contributors to judgment, not only include judgments within themselves, components of belief and evaluation, but themselves are judgments, interrogative, selective, con-

cerned with validation. Thus, the questions of whether an emotion is appropriate, effective, useful, or complete are always relevant wherever emotion is involved. We may begin with some preliminary questions concerning differences between the theory I am proposing and more traditional views. An important and continuing tradition is that emotions are “mere feeling,” largely identi-

fiable as sensations alone. This tradition derives most strongly from Descartes, but it can be found throughout much of the literature. Now, I do not accept the existence of “mere’’ emotions, ‘‘mere” sensations. Feelings and sensations are judgments, with a full range of cognitive properties. The tradition in question is fundamentally dualistic and supports a passive view of emotion in contrast with thought. Far more important, this view entails that consciousness as emotion is entirely distinct conceptually—though not causally—from behavior and the body. I have argued that consciousness and personality are inseparable, that we function both consciously and unconsciously together, sentiently and bodily, inseparably and largely indistinguishably.

A related distinction, from the other side, is the distinction between motives and emotions. The cognitive role I am assigning to emotions is much more commonly assigned to motives: to lie to escape censure, to cheat to acquire wealth. Emotion is clearly an important and pervasive form of motivation.*’ And motives are important components of practical judgments, thereby

EMOTION 169 almost always accompanied by overt emotions. I would distinguish motives from emotions rather loosely, letting the notion of practical judgment carry the important weight. Motives are practical judgments that demand further practical judgments in response, exercising force upon our actions. Motives interrogate circumstances and prospects, but may not reflexively address our Capacities as agents. Emotions are, I am arguing, always reflexive in being directed at us as well as at others or at objects. Two other important questions concerning emotions are their physical basis and the common forms they take in human and other forms of life. I have denied that all emotions are to be traced to or associated with the body. Such an association may be generated by covert materialism or behaviorism, but it neglects inexhaustibility and overlooks ordinary evidence. I am not arguing that emotions are consequently merely mental, returning to dualism. Rather, inexhaustibility entails that human being like every being transcends its conditions, that emotions gain their own identities and transcend their physical conditions. The psychological and biophysical literature on emotions virtually concedes the point, in moving from the claim that the ethological evidence supports a basic pattern of emotional responses throughout living organisms, that particular facial or muscular signs of emotion are common and pervasive, to agreement that in an adult human life, emotions are often mixed and often covert.** The body is an inescapable condition of human life. But emotions,

like thoughts and the body, inexhaustibly transcend their conditions, although these conditions do not thereby ceasé¢ to be relevant. Most emotions have visible physical signs, but in some cases are present covertly even where no physical signs are present. We can learn to mask our joy and anger, our hatred and love, from fear of repercussions or because we gain power by our secrecy. We can also acquire such rigid masks that our capacities as agents are greatly weakened. Similar comments may be made concerning common patterns of emotional expression. We can hardly doubt that the organic conditions of our lives establish patterns within which we live and act. But the patterns are not universal, cannot be coercive in all respects. They are the conditions from which more complex forms of judgment are emergent and in relation to which they are transcendent. Emotions change along with thoughts as we become more rational, more effective agents. The forms in which these are expressed and manifested change as well. The patterns of our biological and emotional lives, fairly rigid in newborn infants, are a challenge to which we respond by judgment and sometimes query. No evidence is more clear as to the interrogative character of emotions than the changes they undergo in our adult forms of ex-

pression and the different forms they take in different cultural and social situations. The most effective case for such interrogation and transformation can be

170 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING made in terms of some specific emotions. I shall briefly consider several, in a few cases developing an extended analysis. Fear and Courage

Perhaps no emotion more directly conforms to the definition I have proposed than that of fear: the overt and practical response to a threat to our person or possessions, a threat to modify, most likely to weaken, our capacities as agents. The greatest threats are to our life and body, clearly threats to our control of our judgmental powers. But threats to our possessions and associates also may be threats to our Capacities, and may also be accompanied by and responded to by fear. Aberrations are no different in this respect; phobias not only manifest a sense of weakened capacities but themselves affect, often inhibit, a person’s judgments. Fear here imposes a demand for action in response to a perceived danger. That fear is interrogative can be demonstrated by comparing it with both fearlessness and courage. There are people who do not fear what others commonly fear. As Plato argues, such absence of emotion is not to be confused with bravery. Fear and courage are not opposites, for fearful people can be brave. Fearless people do not sense a threat where one may exist, and by not responding emotionally effectively deny themselves that possibility of interrogation. Those who do not fear injury and death in battle are not sensitive to their surroundings. As Plato further argues, courage is, not the absence of fear, but knowing what should be feared and what should not. I would add that it is also knowing how to respond to a danger and how to respond through fear, using fear both to question our surroundings and to strengthen our capabilities. It is worth noting that a person may be afraid where there is no danger; emotions sometimes emerge adventitiously, independent of actual circumstances. Conversely, a person may not be afraid where there is much to fear—zin this case clearly a disadvantage, a weakening of power. We may respond to fear in panic, an incapacity, or in heightened awareness and alert control. There are more or less productive and effective forms of fear as there are more or less effective

forms of thought. What I am arguing is that fear both interrogates our surroundings concerning threats to our functioning and is a fundamental means, conjoined with other emotions and judgments, whereby we respond to such threats.” Fear here is not opposed to courage but is its complement; the two

together, with anger, are the interrogative forms whereby we respond to threats to our capacities as agents. Courage and fear are more interrogative than overt deeds; hatred and anger are more overt forms of judgment incorporating interrogation. Nevertheless, distinctions among these different emotions are blurred. Every emotion is conditioned by and a condition of other judgments but transcends them inexhaustibly.

EMOTION 171 Hatred and Anger Sometimes we hate other people, and even objects, for the pain and suffering they have caused us; sometimes, for what appear on reflection to be no reasons at all. There are people who find anger and even hatred somehow satisfying; others feel shame and guilt for succumbing to such violent emotions. Nevertheless, I am arguing that anger functions interrogatively and judgmentally as do fear and courage, that there are forms of hatred that inhibit our capacities

and forms of anger that strengthen our ability to deal with others. But, far more important, we are frequently threatened by other people, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large. These threats are to our persons, sometimes to our bodies, but almost always—where genuine—to our capacities as judges.

Anger, I am arguing, is an essential form of judgment in response to such threats, an interrogation of the ways in which other people threaten our achievements, and interrogative as well of how our responses fare. Certainly we may

hate people for their justice and goodness, even for their kindness, if we are malicious or selfish or tf we are threatened by their generosity. Anger is testimony to whatever we take to threaten our judgmental capacities. Hatred and anger are always interrogative, always practical judgment. But anger, | am arguing further, is a legitimate and important form of judgment whereby we are able to re-establish control in our lives where threatened. | mean to emphasize here not only the use of overt expressions of anger to coerce

other people, but the capacity to employ anger to strengthen our will and to overcome other inhibiting emotions. Anger with ourselves, sometimes with others, is a primary means we employ to prevent actions we consider undesirable. This use of anger to control undesirable emotions and tendencies is emphasized by Plato. It can function reliably and effectively only if it can be made

part of query. Anger is both a form of interrogation and a prominent form of practical judgment, itself to be interrogated by all the relevant means available, and therefore an important component of active query. The maxims of many forms of psychotherapy, that we should be aware of our emotions and learn to express anger, are effectively directed toward the rational control of emotion, toward bringing anger within the scope of query.” Joy

Fear and anger are strong, negative emotions, interrogative against threats to our Capacities and means to more effective achievements. Joy is a positive emotion, interrogative as to what rewards are available through action and judgment and an important means for achieving those rewards. Joy tends to produce joy. We may distinguish, as Plato does, joy from fulfillment. The former is the interrogation and manifestation of satisfaction in action and control in particular judgments; the latter, the fruit of query with respect to what most satisfactorily makes our judgmental capacities effective. What we find, I be-

172 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING lieve, is what Plato claims we find: joys that are essentially external to judgment, passively received, are unreliable and transitory. The interrogation of joy transforms it into fulfillment. The difference between joy and fulfillment is precisely the interrogation of the former through query in relation to our capabilities as judges.

Grief If fear is a natural response to threats to our person, grief is the natural response

to the diminution of our surroundings through irremediable loss—particularly through the death of persons we love. A view of personality based exclusively on self-interest will inevitably conclude that grief is a merely passive emotion. I regard grief as prominent testimony to our fundamental sociality, indication that others are relevant to us as functioning persons and agents. We do not feel grief before a loss, though we may imagine it in advance, so that love is needed to interrogate our dependence and sociality from the other side. But grief is perhaps the deepest expression of our importance to other people and their importance to us, even where we cannot easily admit love. There is a sense of loss, an emptiness in one’s life, that is a profound form of query even independent of a strong and passionate emotion of love. There are destructive forms of grief as there are of any emotion. But generally, I believe, grief can have a profoundly efficacious function, to reveal important facets of our identity in contexts involving other people, making certain conditions of our human being prominent. Furthermore, grief is a prominent means—-in some cases, the only effective means——whereby we restore ourselves to effective functioning. It is one of the ironies of human life that we suffer the deaths of those we love too late in life to learn the most from them, while early grief often has debilitating consequences. Surprise

There are surprises that are inhibiting, astonishments that simply overwhelm us. But I would argue that surprise, the emotional capacity to relish and seek novelty, is essential to query and imminent in human inexhaustibility. No form of judgment or query can be undertaken without the promise (and the threat) of novelty and consequent surprise. Surprise is an emotion upon which all judgment and query, all interrogation, are profoundly dependent. If we cannot make the transition from fear of surprise to relishing and seeking it, we can never become fully rational. On the other hand, if we demand continual surprise and titillation, we may become unable to carry on those forms of interrogation that depend on stability and endurance.

There are two emotions—more accurately, two complex forms of human life closely related to a predominant emotion—that merit extended discussion:

EMOTION 173 love and suffering. Each far surpasses a specific emotion and becomes pervasive enough to be identified with human being—in my view, a particular perspective on human being, but pervasive nevertheless and inexhaustible.

SEXUALITY

Love cannot be adequately discussed without discussing sexuality, though sexuality has its own importance in human life apart from love, and many important forms of love are not sexual. Nevertheless, sexuality manifests inex-

haustibility in such striking and remarkable ways that we cannot help but wonder how so limited, so incomplete a feature of our physical natures can be assigned so invasive a role throughout human life. The biological view of love is a natural one: love is a manifestation of the sexual drive.*' This association is so common that it can be found throughout

the literature wherever love among adults is in question. In his later work, Freud derives Eros from the libido, a far wider and more sweeping notion. But he never entirely escapes the narrower view of sexuality as the foundation of love. Here Reik’s position is important, for he denies that there is a connection

between lust and love: Modern psychology, especially psychoanalysis, considers love to be an attenuated

and goal-inhibited form of the sex drive. I shall try to prove that this view is incorrect and that the origin and character of love cannot be explained this way.”

What pushes us to love is thus an effort to escape from internal discontent. It takes the place of an original striving for self-perfection and is related to ambition. To be in love fulfills this aspiration and is felt as an achievement. *’

For a psychoanalyst, this is an important concession. But even Reik fails to consider the many forms of love together: not only love between adult human beings, but love of children, animals, possessions, God, beauty, and truth, as well as the love of one’s neighbor as for oneself.

It would be far too confusing to take the general standpoint, including all forms of love, from the outset, for the paradigm of love between man and woman might be thought neglected, the separation of sexuality and love a consequence of the approach. I do in fact consider all forms of love related, but I shall make the argument from within the paradigm of love between men and

women, using the example of romantic love as the prominent form. I shall approach the inexhaustibility of love through consideration of the inexhaustibility of human sexuality. We may begin with Foucault’s view of sexuality, for it is extremely important in clarifying the limitations of a purely biological view of human sexuality. It was here {in the seventeenth century], perhaps, that che injunction, so peculiar to the West, was laid down for the first time, in the form ofa general constraint. I

174 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING am not talking about the obligation to admit to violations of the laws of sex, as required by traditional penance; but of the nearly infinite task of telling—telling oneself and another, as often as possible, everything that might concern the interplay of innumerable pleasures, sensations, and thoughts which, through the body and the soul, had some affinity with sex. This scheme for transforming sex into discourse had been devised long before in an ascetic and monastic setting. The seventeenth century made it into a rule for everyone.™

Foucault's interest is primarily political, in the economy of power exercised through manifold forms. The central issue, then (at least in the first instance), is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or whether one refines the words one uses to designate it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all “discursive fact,” the way in which sex is “put into discourse.’’ Hence, too, my main concern will be to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure—all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the “polymorphous techniques of power.” *»

{Plower must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general de-

sign or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies.*°

Even with such an expanded view of discourse, power, and language, Foucault's theory falls short of the thesis J shall propose: that sexuality and human being

are inseparable, almost indistinguishable, despite the fact that there are aspects of human functioning that are not in any overt sense sexual. The tension between our general sexuality and our awareness of its limitations colors our most fundamental understanding of ourselves. In determining what role sexuality will play in our views of ourselves and others, we effectively determine what we take human being to be, and conversely. The explanation of this phenomenon—it is clearly not unique to sexuality—lies in the notion of inexhaustibility. Sexuality is not purely or even primarily biological—Foucault denies it 1s biological at all—despite its unquestionable origin in biology. We must reject entirely the predominant principle of understanding the emotions, found even

EMOTION 175 in Reik, that explanation comes exclusively through origins. To the contrary, like all important and characteristic traits of human being, love and sexuality transcend their origins, in Foucault’s view becoming political, in my view becoming judgments, in some cases becoming sufficiently interrogative to constitute a form of rationality. One of the major ways IJ shall distinguish sexuality from love is by proposing that where sexuality becomes rational it becomes very different from the rationality of love. There is a biological and ethological view of sexuality that stems from its most degenerate forms: the genital responses of decerebrate cats in skeletal flex, the emission of semen under electric stimulation.’ Iam not sure whether such biological responses are to be considered sexual at all—for not every genital response is sexual—particularly where pleasure and pain, fantasy and imagination, are entirely absent.” Still, there is nothing wrong with considering genitality a form of sexuality provided we recognize that sexuality inexhaustibly transcends its biology. Sexuality involves imagination, awareness, consciousness, self-consciousness, dreams, character roles and patterns, mythology, even art and music. The range of sexuality, in our culture especially, is practically without limits; we are assaulted on all sides by sexual images, in television and film, but also in daily experience, our clothing, size and weight, even what we eat and put under our arms—all are permeated with sexual significance. Whether such sexuality is unique to our society, whether there could be a less sexual society, is open to question. The pervasiveness of sexuality suggests that it is not a matter of degree, but a characteristic of being human, at least a characteristic way in which we are human. Considering the constellation of factors of human life that impinge on sexuality——procreation, the future of the human species, our bodies, clothing, personalities, pleasures, emotions, love, intimacy, relations between men and women, virtually every relationship with other people— it is no wonder that sexuality calls our very humanity to our attention. The question to be asked is not how much sexuality is present, but why it has taken its specific forms. The particular technological forms of sexuality in our culture are largely unique to it. Certainly, as Foucault argues, what we take sexuality to be and mean is a social product to the point where its biological origins are virtually irrelevant. One must not suppose that there exists a certain sphere of sexuality that would be the legitimate concern of a free and disinterested scientific inquiry were it not the object of mechanisms of prohibition brought to bear by the economic or ideological requirements of power. If sexuality was constituted as an area of investigation, this was only because relations of power had established it as a possible object; and conversely, if power was able to take it as a target, this was because techniques of knowledge and procedures of discourse were capable of investing it.”

Sexuality is a remarkably powerful and pervasive social construct.“’ No doubt, if we were entirely different kinds of creatures—parthenogenic,

for example—sexuality might be entirely different for us, possibly entirely

176 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING distinct from love, most likely without the differences between men and women that involve power and exploitation. But I believe that Foucault's argument is consistent with the inexhaustibility of human being in entailing that our sexual biology is no more or less fundamental to our humanity than other organic structures and functions: our two hands and eyes, our tongue and palate, our upright posture and size. All are biological conditions that locate our being; all are profoundly transformed by what we make of them. We may find being in or with our bodies;unavoidable, but it is our choice (individually and socially) as to how we will live within our bodies, how we will manifest our sexuality. Sexuality is not simply a physical, biological, or bodily condition for

us; it permeates our highest spiritual activities—literature and art, even mathematics—for we characterize men and women by their different intellectual capacities. Reciprocally, sexuality reveals the inexhaustibility of our physical, biological, and bodily conditions, since they all are transformed by the ways we live through them, in particular, by our sexual forms of life. Sexuality cannot be identified with procreation; each transcends the other inexhaustibly. The expansion of sexuality to pervade every element of human being, a factor of every judgment, is in that respect independent of procreation in the narrow sense. In the wider sense, however, procreation itself is a question of human being, the question of the continuation of our species, the fu-

ture for any human judgment. Every judgment has a public life, largely but not exclusively a social role. Every judgment has a future life, largely but not exclusively a human relevance. To the extent that human being is a species being, not individual alone—and it can never be exclusively individual—to that extent procreation is relevant to every human judgment that has a future. I do not accept sociobiology’s claim that our most characteristic actions are shaped by our genetic drive for immortality. The efflorescence and ornamenta-

tion of social forms—especially involving sexuality—testify to the inadequacy of too strong a version of genetic social determinism. *' I do believe that a

human future is required for our most important judgments to be intelligible and significant. In this sense, procreation, sexuality, and human being are profoundly interrelated but nevertheless distinct, while each takes ona generality pervasive throughout human being and experience. We are sexual creatures but we may repudiate our sexuality, joining convents Or monasteries (though these are differentiated sexually). We may accept our sexuality, but relegate it to a peripheral role in our lives. We may accept sexuality as a pervasive and characteristic feature of being human, but repudiate the standard patterns of relationships involving men and women. We certainly need not associate given biological differences with social differences and patterned role, distinguishing among the vocations and styles of personality considered normal for men and women. There are many different ways of constructing sexuality, not just a few gross and irresistible ways, a product of all the ways in which we manifest our humanity—through imagination, aware-

EMOTION 177 ness, consciousness, and so on. Profoundly implicated here are those forms of social life in which classes of human beings are oppressed, at least subordinated, presented as objects of manipulation by others. The unmistakable and irresistible fact is that we cannot distinguish sexuality and love from sociality easily or clearly. The most superficial expression of the connections involved here is the social preparation of some persons for the sexual exploitation of others. I call it superficial, not to minimize its cost in lives and humanity, but to indicate its shallowness. Far deeper is the realization that we allow sexuality to expand inexhaustibly to become virtually equivalent to our human being, fundamental in judgment, consciousness, and action. This is an achievement that biology cannot explain. The pervasiveness and fluidity of sexuality throughout human life testifies to the inadequacies of many recent philosophic views of sexuality. Thomas Nagel’s reinterpretation of Sartre’s view of sexual desire suffers from too narrow an understanding of sexuality, covertly and inappropriately introducing a normative element. Nagel claims that “All stages of sexual perception are varieties of identification of a person with his body. What is perceived is one’s own or another's subjection to or immersion in his body. . . .”’ This is closely related to Sartre’s description: ‘‘‘I make myself flesh in order to impel the Other to realize for herself and for me her own flesh, and my caresses cause my flesh to be born for me in so far as it is for the other flesh causing her to be born as flesh.’”” This allows Nagel to reach his main point: namely, that sexuality is a reflection of desire upon desire: Desire is therefore not merely the perception of a preexisting embodiment of the

other, but ideally a contribution to his further embodiment which in turn enhances the original subject's sense of himself. This explains why it is important that the partner is aroused, and not merely aroused, but aroused by the awareness of one’s desire.“

He concludes with a view of sexual perversion. “J believe that various familiar deviations constitute truncated or incomplete versions of the complete configuration, and may therefore be regarded as perversions of the central impulse.” *

Such an approach is far too narrow. Sexuality transcends the body, transcends even desire, and becomes a form of manifestation of self. Desire may be augmented and enhanced; it may also be diminished and withheld, depending

on the kind of person one takes oneself to be. What Nagel understands to be the essence of sexuality and desire—the reflection of desire through another's desire—-is also too narrow, for all forms of social consciousness have this character: personal consciousness is invaded by awareness of other consciousnesses. This is clear in Sartre’s discussion. Finally, we may wonder at Nagel’s insistence that any view of sexuality must include a view of sexual perversion. As Foucault puts it, “Power is essentially what dictates its law to sex. Which means first of

all that sex is placed by power in a binary system: licit and illicit, permitted and forbidden.” *° Why, we may ask, is the question of illicit sexuality so close

178 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING to the surface in any consideration of sexuality? Iam arguing that it is because we effectively determine our individual and social identities through our relationship to sexuality. Robert Solomon attacks Nagel and the “‘liberal sexual mythology” for its “tripod of mutually supporting platitudes: (1) and foremost, that the essential aim (and even the sole aim) of sex is enjoyment; (2) that sexual activity is and ought to be essentially private activity, and (3) that any sexual activity is as valid as any other.” *’ Solomon's solution, however, is no solution at all. He makes a remarkable observation: “No one would deny that sex is enjoyable, but it does not follow that sexuality is the activity of ‘pure enjoyment’ and that ‘gratification,’ or ‘pure physical pleasure,’ that is, orgasm, is its end.” “* But instead of abandoning sexual norms, he offers up another norm: that of “interpersonal communication with the body as its medium.” ” Can we not consider sexuality without

defining illicit sexuality? Is there an unavoidable imperative in discussing sexuality to define its essential aim, or may it not have manifold purposes, including ornamental rather than practical ones? Even the liberal and radical traditions, repudiating conventional sexual stereotypes, offer, not an understanding of how sexuality invades our lives and identities, but alternative norms and stereotypes: gratification and androgyny.” Both these norms are naive to the point of unintelligibility. Whatever sexuality ought to be—perhaps mere sensory gratification—it plays an inexhaustible role in human life. We cannot even begin to imagine a society in which so pervasive an element of human being might be a mere pleasure like eating an apple.’’ Far worse, are any pleasures in human social life “mere” pleasures? Or does not social life transform every avenue of pleasure and action with its codes and forms? The recommendation of androgyny is even more unintelligible, not only in offering a solution rather like dyeing everyone’s skin the same color to avoid racism,

but in suggesting that bisexuality might be no sexuality. The question is whether there can be a human identity without a sexual identity. Androgyny in this context is simply another sexual identity. I do not mean to deny that justice may require us to minimize irrelevant sexual differentiations, but to indicate the apparent impossibility of regarding sexuality as humanly irrelevant. Similarly, as Foucault clearly shows, there can be no sexual practices, however private, which are not profoundly political. To make sexuality a pervasive and fundamental human trait ts effectively to make the opposition of male and fernale fundamental in our conception of humanity. (Homosexuality confirms rather than nullifies this.) To do so ts, I believe, drastically mistaken. But a part of it ts irresistible and important: that sexuality is judgmental, not simply biological, a choice or selection, a form of practice and control. In the Symposium, Plato associates sexual love with rationality by making it dependent on love and knowledge of the Forms. I am arguing that sexuality itself can be rational, a form of interrogation, but that time-

EMOTION 179 less forms are not the basis of whatever rationality sexuality may have. Sexuality not only shows who and what we are, as human beings, but is a way of determining who and what we are.

An analogy may be useful. Consider a short person, much shorter than the average. Nothing that we know of can be done to alter this person's height. It is a characteristic of his finiteness and locality as sexuality is a characteristic of ours. But he may flaunt it, make it part of his personal style in dealing with others; alternatively, he may make it peripheral, an accident of circumstances. Biology here is an inescapable condition, but not a determining condition of humanity (even for others who would regard shortness as a deficiency). I do not

mean to. suggest that either alternative mentioned is altogether superior. But while the sheer height of a person is not a judgment, how he manifests it—his shortness or tallness—is thoroughly judgmental. In effect, he acts through his size. Similarly, we act through our sexuality as we act through our bodies. There is something irresistible in sexuality, but how it is manifested and interpreted is judgmental. One of the important claims of psychoanalytic theory is that in the wider sense in which we associate who we are with our sexual identity, our humanity is a function of our early sexual experiences. This may be too narrow a view, too “archaeological” (in Ricoeur's words).”’ But it testifies, as most psychoanalytic literature does, to the ways in which we shape our understanding of who we are to our understanding of our sexual identities. The strongest argument for the cognitive nature of sexuality is based on the sexually differentiated roles and identities typically assigned to children. Our identities as agents, the character and meaning of our actions, are permeated by sexual characteristics. In this sense, sexuality is both a condition for judgment and productive of or a form of judgment. We judge or determine who we are by our sexual choices, by our sexual relations, both publicly and privately. I shall for the moment set aside assertive and fabricative judgment, though the

latter is important for sexuality. I am arguing that an agent is a sexual being both biologically and judgmentally, and the two are inextricable. Judgments are indications and choices of one’s sexual as well as human identity.’ Sexuality

permeates our public performances, our relationships with others, even our private relationships to ourselves insofar as we act in ways shaped by and shaping our sexual identities, not least in our private fantasies and dreams.

Sexuality is judgmental; it is also interrogative and can become rational. This notion sounds bizarre, given the traditional opposition of thought and emotion. Yet we may interrogate sexuality through all the forms of rationality: biologically, sociologically, politically, morally, even artistically and philosophically. Sexuality can be an odzect of interrogation. But it is more than that,

and this larger role contributes to the confused status of sexuality in human life. Let us assume that sexual responses are a biological given; how we act toward others is in part a choice we make that permeates our individual and social lives. For example, a man may relate sexually, if not always overtly, to

180 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING every woman he meets, classifying her as desirable or not, interpreting whatever she does as a sexual response to him, understanding her actions and utterances in terms of how women (as against men) act and speak. Here sexuality becomes not only a pervasive characteristic of every judgment, however propositional, but a typifying or shaping judgment, part of the very nature of utterance, a prominent aspect of personal style. The example I have given sounds extreme, though I suspect it is common for many men and women. The point is that the pervasivenss of sexuality here is implicitly and even explicitly interrogative of the ways in which we relate to other people. As sexual beings, we respond to others sexually and choose how we will display our sexuality. Sexuality is one of the ways in which we determine and manifest our capacities to interact with other persons.” To the extent that we interrogate the effectiveness of a particular style of sexuality relative to our wider needs and capabilities sexuality becomes rational. Biology can pose the question of sexuality for us; it cannot give the answer, though we may choose to establish it as the answer. Moreover, questions from

biology concerning sexuality are no more fundamental or irresistible than those from our social or private activities. Sexuality is interrogative in the three senses that it is a question for us which we answer throughout our different activities and judgments, that it is something we can interrogate through science and other forms of inquiry, and, finally, chat it itself is interrogative of

our identities as human beings. Sexuality is both a question for us and the answer we give in terms of what we are as sexual beings. I deferred consideration of aesthetic matters in relation to sexuality to this point to emphasize the importance of sexuality in human practice. However, contracts between men and women, amplification of their differences, do not appear to be altogether a consequence of exploitative social relations, but can

be an enhancement of sexuality and even love. (Even homosexual practices turn on the contrasts established in male and female terms.) Sexuality and lust are not simply practical concerns and responses, but are profoundly and pervasively aesthetic. The importance of beauty in sexual response makes this clear. It is not biological differences alone that support intensity of sexual responses, but more pervasive and powerful ornamental differences between men and women. Awareness of a common humanity coupled with remarkable differences in thought and emotion is a powerful sexual force. I am classifying it as aesthetic. Vive la différence—often an exploitative and destructive difference to be sure, but also a fundamental component of our sexual responses.”” We may enhance generic differences between men and women by social ornamentation. Here sexual intensity becomes aesthetic as well as a mere appetite, an intensity of contrasts that I consider fundamental to aesthetic value.” I do not mean to suggest that the traditional forms such contrasts have taken, which have largely been oppressive to women, need continue without modification. | am asking whether sexuality could be an intense and pervasive element of hu-

EMOTION 181 man experience if it were not based on fundamental and pervasive differentiations among men and women that are far more deeply social constructions than consequences of biology. It is impossible to discuss sexuality without discussing sexual perversion.

But the important question is not what is perverse (if anything is), but why this question is so irresistible. The general answer, I believe, is the one I have emphasized: that sexuality transcends its biological and sensory conditions and becomes equivalent with our human being in general. Who we are as individuals and as human beings is deeply pervaded and interrogated by our sexual views and practices. The question of sexual perversion is a question of human perversion, and the answer often given, in terms of what is natural as against perverse, expresses a particular view of humanity (a view that I do not share). Alison Jaggar concludes her examination of prostitution with the claim that the issue of prostitution presents a clear example of the futility of that conventional wisdom which recommends that we begin by defining our terms. For the divergence in the competing definitions of prostitution does not result from failing to consult the dictionary or from paying insufficient attention to ordinary usage. It results from normative disagreements on what constitutes freedom, on the moral status of certain activities and, ultimately, on a certain view of what it means to be human.”’

She claims that the three most prominent views of prostitution cannot be reconciled or adjudicated because our view of prostitution depends, “ultimately, On a certain view of what it means to be human.” The three views of prostitution are that: (@) sexual relations are simple gratifications, and prostitution may be regarded as a simple exchange of goods, not a perversion at all; (4) prostitution is a particular form of exploitation analogous to the pervasive exploitation throughout human social and economic relations; (¢) prostitution is specifically the sexual exploitation of women.” Each view taken separately has merits and deficiencies; taken together they testify to the larger question of human being inherent in the relatively narrow question of sexuality for hire. Are there simple pleasures that are separable from other characteristics of our humanity? To what extent are exploitative, abusive relationships tolerable where all the participants are willing? Are sexual differences an important or an irrelevant characteristic of human being? If sexuality is a simple question of gratification, then perhaps we should not only tolerate prostitution but encourage it for both men and women who find sexual gratification otherwise difficult to achieve. If sexuality is a prominent form of human relationship, it may be expected to manifest the generally exploitative and abusive character of much of human life. If women are uniquely and profoundly characterized by their sexuality, then the forms sexuality will take may be expected to manifest the unique forms of oppression women suffer. But sexuality, including pros-

titution, cannot be adequately addressed in the small, separated from the larger, questions of human being. Every effort to interpret sexuality narrowly

182 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING has failed, as shown by the uselessness of laws to control prostitution and the furor produced by the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. We cannot separate sexuality—in the larger sense inclusive not only of genitals but of dress, gender, social roles, child-rearing, family relationships, personal identity, and so forth indefinitely—from any significant feature of our being, even the most spiritual. Every issue touching on sexuality, especially those approaching moral questions and sexual perversions, broaches its boundaries and becomes a question of human being, who we take ourselves to be. Is rape primarily an act of vio-

lence or a sexual act, an act of brutality or an act in which women are degraded?” Both answers are surely correct, and incorrect, for rape is a complex phenomenon with complex causes and significations. Profound questions of morality are implicated, but also of our understanding of the power relationships between men and women, acquaintances and strangers. In rape, sexuality becomes synonymous with brutality, and these become symbols of all hu-

man relationships. The most intimate of human relationships becomes the most brutalized. This tension, between intimacy and brutality in the context of the pervasiveness of sexual responses in all our social relationships, thoroughly confuses our abhorrence of rape, so that quite different views are held by many men and women, reflecting a wider difference in their understanding of sexuality and thereby of humanity. Rape threatens the fabric of all our social relationships, more than most forms of murder, for life and death are not as intimate expressions of human being and emotion as sexuality, in which we choose, individually and collectively, to accept our humanity in certain ways and to shape it in others. Rape is a transgression of our most prominent forms

of intimacy. It need not be, and we need not regard sexual relationships as particularly intimate or private. But if we do, and since we do, rape is not simple brutality, but threatens the very fabric of human life, for both men and women. Ina very similar way, if not as intensely, certain forms of transgression threaten our very being—certain contemptuous forms of violence, the vandalism of our homes and personal property—producing in us a profound sense of personal violation. I do not know if there are sexual perversions to which we should be morally and legally opposed, or whether legal sanctions directed toward relations among consenting adults are almost always worse than what they would control. I tend to be suspicious of legal sanctions where personal injury is not involved, and believe that legal tolerance can accommodate much more expressive moral reactions. I do believe that sexual activities between adults and children are almost always exploitative and abusive. But wherever one stands on the legality of sexual controls, it is clear that what is at stake are humanity, authority,

and individual liberty, not simply certain physical gratifications. The intensity of controversies over homosexuality and abortion—the latter a sexual issue dividing men and women as well as an issue of life and death—is test1-

EMOTION 183 mony to the fact that more than private choice is involved, the nature of human social and individual identity. In this overwhelming context, in which the question of human identity is prominent, the cool technological view of sexuality is deeply refreshing. If we take for granted that simple satisfactions are both desired and acceptable, then techniques for producing them may be devised. So much is at stake in sexuality, defining who and what we are as human beings, that a more limited, essentially technical view of sexual performance may free us from anxiety, enabling us to function more effectively. However, the technological approach 1s profoundly limited by its assumption that the questions at hand are only technical. Technology is one of the most effective means we have for the resolution of human questions. Its limitation is that it is not the only form of knowledge, of rationality, or even of practice. To seek a technological solution to a sexual problem is already to regard it in a certain way, to limit the relevant questions to those of gratification and desire rather than to affirm their inexhaustible relationships to human identity and understanding.

The question to which we come again in conclusion is why sexuality has been given so pervasive a character, why it has been made effectively equivalent to human being, a prism through which we refract whatever we take ourselves to be. Certainly part of the reason is political, as Foucault emphasizes, a means of repression and control—of children, women, even men. The opposition of male and female, pervasive throughout human experience, plays an important part. The importance of sexuality to the human future, to life and death, is also relevant, as is the importance of sexuality in relation to our bodies. But I believe the general answer is more important, that sexuality is not alone in becoming effectively equivalent to human being. Consciousness, subjectivity, emotion, intelligence, reason—all at one time or another are taken to manifest human being in general. Indeed, the inexhaustibility of human being entails that some part of it will be made equivalent to the whole, only to transcend it inexhaustibly. Our choice of which characteristic of ourselves we will take as essential is a determinate choice, not just a discovery, a decision whereby we establish our being, collectively as well as individually. Though sexuality is a prominent characteristic of our biological and cultural finiteness, we need not make it an intrinsic characteristic of our humanity. That we do tells us something important about who we are and what we take ourselves to be.

LOVE

I have discussed sexuality in some detail primarily to be able to distinguish it from love, though each through inexhaustibility tends to usurp the place of the other and become equivalent to human being. Reik’s view of love is worth

184 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING noting here: he repudiates the widespread tendency to identify love with its origins in biology. Love, Reik argues, is a reaction-formation to envy and ag-

gression, is based on the sense that we have met someone superior to ourselves.°° Nevertheless, despite his separation of love and lust, Reik is thoroughly within the mainstream in another respect, regarding love negatively as a response to a sense of our own incompleteness. From Plato to Freud, the standard view is that love is caused by our sense of incompleteness and our attempt to reach fulfillment through another person. A similar view can be found negatively in Sartre, where incompleteness is affirmed but completeness is denied in principle. The difficulties with this view, its profound and severe distortions, are that

it entirely misinterprets the meaning of finiteness and its relation to inexhaustibility. Human beings are finite and incomplete, but so is every being, finite, located, and imperfect, and every being including human being ts inexhaustible. Not only is completeness impossible through love, but completeness is neither intelligible nor possible for any being. Iam not denying that human beings have needs that they often try to meet through other people, sometimes

by abusing them, sometimes by loving them. I am arguing that like every being, but especially important facets of human being, love inexhaustibly transforms itself in its realization. An exclusively need-based view of love denies inexhaustibility in two fundamental ways, with respect to the emotion of love itself and with respect to the inexhaustibility of human being. Reik notes that love is often closely related, in fact and story, with violent

and destructive emotions—envy, anger, hostility. He concludes that such negative emotions are the basis of the love that emerges from them by reactionformation. I would argue instead that all these are forms of practical judgment in which we interrogate our human being, our capacities as agents, producing different but frequently closely related forms of interrogation in the context of different circumstances and conditions. Love is that form of practical judgment in which our capacities as agents are both interrogated and affirmed in relationship to the continuing influence and relevance of others—other people but also things and ideas. To love something is to recognize its importance to us, not simply to notice it but to affirm and pursue it. The precise form such judgments may take, the ways in which other things and people are important to us, vary with persons and circumstances. In some cases, love is an affirmation of our locatedness, of the people who deeply influence our capacities as agents. I am speaking here of the love of children and parents for each other, the former's love acknowledging dependence, the latter’s love acknowledging dependence and reciprocity. The negative, needbased view of love and dependency is closely allied with a purely selfish view of

human relationships, as if parents cherish their children only because they need them. But parents often love their children because the children need them, not the reverse. What is essential is that the human being of the parents

EMOTION 185 is in question in virtue of their children’s dependence on them, and their love is a judgment that they will (or will not) be a certain kind of person in relation to their children. The view of love I am defending here is the only view I know that is applicable to love in general, in all its different forms, sexual, romantic, parental, filial, possessive, and divine. Yet I do not want to argue from the general to the particular, but the reverse. The crucial case is romantic love. Here the sense of need is very strong, and our love is both sexual and possessive, expressing the conviction that we will be saved by another from our inadequacies. Such a love is a clear affirmation of what and who we take ourselves to be, a

weak and incomplete creature who needs another person to function effectively. I subscribe to the maxim that we can love another person well only when we can function effectively by ourselves—a principle that is entirely incompatible with Reik’s view of love. But whether we accept or reject this generalization, it is clear that our love for another person affirms something profound and important about ourselves: who we are, what we need, what will fulfill our capacities as human beings. To say we or our lives will be incomplete without our beloved is to affirm our limitations and capabilities. My claim is that love, like every emotion, is a prominent form of practical

judgment in which our capacities as judges are interrogated. It is natural, then, that all the patterns of practical judgment should be manifested in our forms of love. We may regard love economically, as a form of exchange, as a form of communication and sharing, as a task requiring work, as role-shaping and role-drama, as simple relating, as an escape from solitariness, as a disease or as a cure, as a form of contemplation, as a form of appropriation, as a contrast, or biologically.°' This list is incomplete, for inevitably we will regard love in all the ways we regard ourselves and other human beings as persons, as judges. Even the sexual side of love can be ignored——for example, where we regard love as a wholeness indifferent to its bodily expressions. Similarly, we will take permanence to be intrinsic to love only where we desire stability or regard it as humanly important. What is involved wherever we seek to understand love and ourselves as lovers is interrogation of our humanity and its locality.

That love, along with other emotions, is an affirmation of our human being follows from the judgmental nature of emotion. But I want to strengthen the claim to judgment and rationality: love is not only affirmation but interrogation. Not only do we claim and affirm our incompleteness; we interrogate our relationships to it. Love is that form of interrogation through practical judgment in which our capacities as agents to control our lives are called into question in terms of positive, continuing relations to other persons and things. The answer is given both by further emotional attachment, by greater love, and by our capacities and achievements as human agents. Hatred is the negation of love in affirming that another person inhibits our capacities and achievements.

186 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING But negation here cannot be simple. Love and hatred alternate naturally to the extent that both interrogate our judgmental capacities, but in terms of different assumptions about our needs and powers. Similarly, envy is not so much the source of love as its negative side, the conclusion that our dependence on other people is threatened by their relationships with others or simply by their independence from us. Love normally demands reciprocation (it does not always do so), to the extent that we have recognized our vulnerability and can be reassured only by a reciprocal vulnerability. Love is that form of practical judgment in which we both interrogate and affirm the continuing contributions of other beings to our capacities to control

our judgments. From this point of view, it is natural that there should be manifold forms and styles of love, a reflection of the many styles of human being. Here love can often be an affirmation of unity through another. Love may then be intensely and profoundly positive, an overcoming of disunification and incompleteness. And it need not be sexual or restricted to pairs, for even groups and large families may establish effective units through loving relationships. Love can be possessive and destructive—though Hegel’s and Sartre's point is well taken that too possessive and destructive a relationship ts self-defeating and self-contradictory, since we seek to enrich our capacities through another person, not to manifest our destructiveness. Need and dependence are bound to be major factors in our relationships with other people. But to make them the intrinsic basis of love is to overlook the importance of practical judgment. For the ideal in love, as in all emotion, the predominant question that is to be answered in manifold forms is what persons and objects, what kind of love relationships, will make us more effective human beings. Love here is one of the fundamental forms of practical query in which we interrogate our human being in its relationship to other beings. Wherever there is judgment, there is validation, and wherever there is practical judgment, there are success and failure. Love may interrogate our capacities and conditions as agents, but it may produce failure as well as success. In our complex surroundings, in which our being ts called into question in relation to other beings, persons and things, we will frequently fail, perhaps more often than we succeed. Some of this failure is due to the complexity of our circumstances and our own inexhaustibility, so that we cannot simply discover our needs but must create and modify them. Every love changes us 1n some ways, often leading us away from satisfactions that we might have otherwise achieved, sometimes by reaffirming archaeological forms and recurrent patterns from which we may seek to escape. But there are other fundamental sources of failure in emotions besides the precariousness of our complex and inexhaustible surroundings. One of these is denial of our own inexhaustibility—and consequently denial of the inexhaustibility of emotion and human being. We may regard other people simply as objects to provide us with satisfactions, to fulfill our desires.

EMOTION 187 Here the association of love with sexuality is a fundamental error, but so is the negative view that love seeks completeness and unity in the context of imper-

fection. If love were merely the fulfillment of a need, however complex, it would be impossible to understand how frequently people fail to gain satisfaction from it. It is not simply an object of desire, but a form of interrogation. And what is interrogated is nothing less than who we are, inexhaustibly, in the

ways in which other persons and things are conditions of and factors in our being. Even more complex is the fact that the interrogation is future-directed, as all practical judgment is, directed to what we will become, not simply what we are. Love, then, interrogates our capacities as persons and agents in terms of what the future will bring to us through practical judgment. Wherever we deeply interrogate our being, and I am claiming love 1s such interrogation, the reflexivity of the relevant judgments produces volatility. If love is judgmental and interrogative, it will change us and others in its efhcacy. And it will do so whether or not we address ourselves interrogatively to our own future. For this reason I have suggested that the ideal question 1n love

must be what we will be and become, not what we will get. An ideal loverelationship helps one to be what one wants to be. All too typically, possessive love brings out the worst of people, makes them vicious, destructive, passive, or controlling. It fails doubly, in its estimation of what will prove effective to one’s life and judgments, and in the judgments that such a love brings forth. There is here the basis of the maxim that one can love well only if one is not dependent on love; who we will become and what we will be capable of is more reliable if we are secure agents independent of a particular love relationship. What and who we love are who and what we are prepared to cast our lot with

in expectation that our human capacities will be enhanced. What is wrong with most views of love is not unique to love, but is a reflection of our inadequate view of emotion, as passive rather than interrogative and practical. Romantic love, in which we expect redemption but receive subordination, neglects the interrogative and judgmental character of love, that it is a form of practical judgment. But all too many of our emotions are typically regarded passively, as if they themselves were not primary forms of practical judgment.

SUFFERING

Robert Neville claims that suffering has metaphysical significance.” Sartre appears to agree, though he is concerned more with negativity than with suffering.” What Neville means by metaphysical significance is somewhat obscure

to me, but | take it to pertain to order in the universe and to have particular reference to God. It may be that suffering in the metaphysical sense Neville has in mind is relevant only to cosmic order, to those forms of metaphysics I consider cosmological, incompatible with inexhaustibility. Here the fundamental

188 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING problem is the traditional problem of evil. How, if the universe is orderly and rational, can we understand the nature of suffering? Suffering, here, offers a challenge to all theories of cosmic rationality. The other extreme is that suffering is simply a form of pain. We take the nature of suffering for granted here, so that the question is simply one of causes and effects, antecedents and consequences. What is neglected by such an approach is the remarkable phenomenon I have recurrently noted, traceable to inexhaustibility, that is especially prominent in our awareness of suffering: a part of human being, a part of human functioning, becomes as pervasive as human being. Consciousness and sexuality are two specific facets of human being that thoroughly pervade it. The key to this phenomenon is inexhaustibility. While every being is inexhaustible, manifested in the inexhaustibility of ways of knowing it, human being is irresistibly inexhaustible, manifested in the continual transcendence of every category of human being, particularly in reflexive interrogation and judgment. Human being transcends any of its locations, but, reciprocally, every condition transcends its own limits, manifested in its pervasiveness throughout human being. I have discussed how sexuality, merely a facet of human being, irresistibly pervades human experience. Masculinity and feminity, genitality and physical drives, social roles and individual identity, all reflect a pervasive bipolarity of types and patterns.“ As this pervasive sexuality is to biological and genital conditions, so suffering is to what we may call “mere pain.” Pain is an emotion; consequently it is interrogative: it both affirms a threat and interrogates its consequences and causes. It is interrogative in the double sense that it both signifies what needs further interrogation and can be educated to serve as a more effective form of interrogation. The best examples are sports and other

extreme physical activities like mountain climbing and dance or military training, where pain is both one of the elements that characterize the performance, and often a source of power and vitality. What people do sometimes gives them pleasure. It also frequently causes

them pain. At this level, pleasure and pain are alternatives. But there is a powerful tradition in which pleasure is lifted out of its restricted relationship to human experience and made the basis of practice, even the purpose of human life. Such a generalization is akin zo the ways in which narrower facets of human being such as sexuality and consciousness become pervasive, including not only pleasure but pain and suffering. In this very general role assigned to pleasure in practice, three principles have been widely accepted: (1) some pleasures have destructive consequences (Plato); (2) some pleasures are more desirable than others (Mill); (3) much of human behavior, though directed toward

pleasure, is counterproductive (Freud). |

a This set of principles, taken together, is both a consequence and a manifestation of finiteness and inexhaustibility in human being. Another way of putting this is that pleasure and pain are less the answers to questions of hu-

EMOTION 189 man being and practice than the source of manifold questions of what we should do and what kind of beings we choose to be. Pleasure and pain are per-

vasive conditions of human being, part of human finiteness. Yet if we were beings who never experienced pleasure or pain, we would still have the same questions to answer: What should we do and why? Pleasure and pain, especially the latter, are among the recurrent forms such questions take in human practice. Yet although pleasure and pain are conditions of human being, they are inexhaustibly transcended by other such conditions, by rationality, thought, ideas, actions, consequences, patterns, and structures; by other emotions; by different pleasures and pains. Pain is relevant to practice as a finite condition and a potential answer, but its transcendent inexhaustibility is what make rationality possible—transcended by thought and practice, by all the forms of interrogation. One of the forms that pain can take, both pervasive and invasive of our human being, is that of suffering, vividly described by Dostoievski. Pain in the ordinary sense is distinct from suffering in scale and pervasiveness, the former only a facet of human activity, the latter invading the full scope of our humanity. Similarly, suffering in the sense | am concerned with is not misery, though the sources of human misery are so manifold, its prospects so irresistible, that

we may confuse it with suffering. Nevertheless, like more modest forms of pain, misery is limited in scale in that it serves as a direct means for the guidance of action and is expressive of the need for action. The sense that human beings are born to suffer is altogether different, for it passes from a bleak view of human possibilities to a bleaker view of what hu-

man being is. Suffering becomes equivalent with humanity. It does so, as a minimum, by invading consciousness, so that to be conscious is to be conscious of suffering. I mentioned Dostoievski, but the phenomenon I am describing is more widespread than he describes, and has profound ramifications in both religion and psychotherapy. The doctrine of Original Sin is an expression of the pervasiveness and insistence of suffering, explained and justified by an original lapse from perfection. The archaeological element of psychoanaly-

sis, grounding human life in early experiences, on an intrusive sexuality, is | similar: we suffer because we are born to suffer, unable to overcome our fundamental contradictions. To the pervasiveness and primacy of sin we may oppose the pervasiveness and optimism of hope, but the primary step is the identification of humanity with suffering.” To those who accept the pervasiveness of suffering and its identification with human being, suffering is the primary exemplification of consciousness. Here

consciousness is made synonymous with humanity and suffering is made synonymous with consciousness. Such identifications are inevitable given the

inexhaustibility of human being, but they obscure the other side of inexhaustibility and effectively eliminate all possibilities besides suffering. The principle of inexhaustibility entails that any being, including any condition of

190 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING human experience, can transcend particular conditions and limitations and can become pervasive. But the other side of inexhaustibility is finiteness, determination, multiple location. Human being is not single-valued or singly located, but multiperspectival. To restrict it to consciousness or sexuality or suffering is to impose too limited a range of perspectives on it. If suffering is all-pervasive, many human beings do not suffer in the requisite ways. If consciousness is all-pervasive, many important human achievements originate outside awareness. I believe the most effective way to understand suffering is through the notions of judgment and query. Pain and misery, as well as pleasure and joy, are interrogative emotions characterizing our particular circumstances and available alternatives. But all interrogation can become deeply reflexive and must become so if it is to be rational. Propositional thought not only must interrogate our surroundings through observation and experimentation but must interrogate our capacities and limitations. Misery becomes suffering when it becomes profoundly but incompletely reflexive, where the pain we experience affirms both itself and possibilities of further misery. Suffering, I believe, is the

negative side of emotion in the way that skepticism is the negative side of rationality. The skeptic recognizes the inexhaustibility of interrogation, the limits of knowledge, but only from the negative side. He emphasizes indeterminateness in knowledge and being over determinateness, and affirms our cognitive limitations unqualifiedly. Similarly, the pessimistic view of human suffering correctly recognizes the imminent prospects of failure, of misery, in every human condition and undertaking, but both the skeptic and the pessimist neglect the positive possibilities inherent in those conditions and affirm the possibilities of suffering unqualifiedly, so that they are effectively actualized. The pessimistic view of suffering is a suffering because of suffering. In this respect, suffering actualizes itself as skepticism cannot in practical terms be actualized. I said that I do not regard this view of suffering as explainable entirely in terms of consciousness, though it is clear that to suffer because one is aware of possibilities of suffering is to possess a certain reflexive kind of consciousness. | would rather interpret it as an incomplete manifestation of the interrogation

demanded by query. Query is unterminating interrogation concerned with validation. But it can be rational only if standards of validation are intelligible despite continual modification and development. In the spheres of practical judgment, failure is omnipresent—but it must be coordinate with success if practical judgment is to be rational. The reflexiveness of suffering, in which misery and failure are affirmed as pervasive possibilities, to which we respond by a deeper and more profound suffering, is an incomplete reflexivity, not only entirely from the negative side, but in that it does not call itself into question. Those who suffer in this pervasive sense condemn those who do not. One can

EMOTION I9t be blind to suffering in a way that passes into self-righteousness. Such obliviousness is incompatible with rationality, for rationality demands openness and sensitivity to the dark side of life. But there is a corresponding blindness from the other side, equally incompatible with rationality: to see only the darkness and not to interrogate the limitations of that point of view. Those who take the bleak road are often arrogant, for they claim to see more than those others who deny it. But they are as limited in their understanding and rationality as those

who deny themselves and the dire possibilities of human life. Sensitivity to suffering is only part of the emotional sensitivity required for emotional interrogation. May those who suffer see the other side, as well as those who fail to understand suffering? This question, ostensibly one of freedom, is misconceived. We are always multiply located in conditions that we transcend and that transcend us inexhaustibly. The reply from the side of interrogative query is that no single form of interrogation can be rational; therefore, that no particular mode of query can provide an escape from suffering for those who suffer or an awareness of the dark side of life for those who deny it. Nor can all the modes of query together, in ongoing interrogation, provide guarantees of any particular

kind of resolution. To the vicissitudes of life we must bring all the interrogative resources we possess and can develop through further query, at every level of success and failure. The remedy for pain in human life is manifold, but it is surely a function of advances in medicine and changes in human practices. The remedy for misery is largely unknown to us, and will require all the forms

of interrogation, at every reflexive level, that we can sustain. It will also be realized in manifold and varied forms, including some brought by interrogation itself. Finally, the remedy for suffering, as distinct from misery and pain, can be found only in the manifold forms of query, where success and failure are largely inseparable. No one form of therapy, no one mode of political organization, no one mode, no single way, is the sole way to fulfillment; to propose such

a way is to impose further suffering. One way is, to most people, practically speaking, no way at all. The truth of suffering can be found only where both finiteness and inexhaustibility are prominently acknowledged.

NOTES

1. Spinoza, Ethics III, Definition II, in Ethics, ed. Gutmann, p. 128.

2. Ibid.

3. “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (ibid. II, Proposition VI, p. 83). 4. Ibid., Proposition XIII, p. 89. 5. See my Theory of Art. 6. Spinoza, Ethics II, Proposition LVIL, in Ethics, ed. Gutmann, p. 171.

192 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING 7. Plato, Phaedrus 254, trans. R. Hackforth, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, edd. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series 71 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 500. 8. Plato, Republic IV, trans. Paul Shorey, in ibid., pp. 661-88. 9. Whitehead, Process and Reality, esp. pp. 23-24.

10. Ibid., p. 259. 11. Poincaré, ‘“Mathematical Creation.” 12. I am following Spinoza very closely here in his view that emotions are profoundly associated with ideas. 13. See Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 14. See here Polanyi, Personal Knowledge; Jerome Seymour Bruner, On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962). 15. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, 1938), esp. chap. 6. 16. A cognitive theory of the emotions in the weaker sense described here ts “‘one that makes some aspect of thought, usually a belief, central to the concept of emotion

and, at least in some cognitive theories, essential to distinguishing the different emotions from one another” ( William Lyons, Emotion [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], p. 33). Lyons offers as thoroughly cognitive a theory as can be given within the limitations of his epistemology. 17. See Catherine Lutz, “Emotion Words and Emotional Development on Ifaluk Atoll,” Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1980; ‘““The Domain of Emotion Words on Ifaluk,” American Ethnologist, 9 (1982); and “Situation-Based Emotion Frames and the Culcural Construction of Emotions,” Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Berkeley: Sloan, 1982), pp. 84—89.

Although Konner'’s The Tangled Wing is an explicit attempt to justify claims of the biological basis of human behavior, it is effectively a strong argument for the position that human behavior and emotion are not simply biological, but inexhaustibly transcend biology: “in the real world, the nongenetic sources of variation in behavior may be so large as to swamp any effects of the genes. “This does not mean that the genetic change is not occurring or is without effect. It just means that it is slow and small compared to other forces. . .” (p. 404). In effect, emotions are indeed biological but inexhaustibly transcend biological conditions insofar as emotions are judgments and may be query. 18. John Dewey, “Qualitative Thought,” Philosophy and Civilization (New York:

Minton, Balch, 1931), pp. 93-116. 19. See Carol Tavris, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), for an account of the social psychology of anger and its uses and effects in social and personal interactions. _ 20. This is surely the burden of Polanyi’s argument in Personal Knowledge. 21. See my Learning and Discovery. 22. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge.

23, This isan argument that computers will not be rational until they are capable of emotion. It should be observed, however, that computers have bodies and must be emotional in order to make discoveries and understand. Too narrow a view of emotion leads to both an impoverished view of rationality and a defective view of emotion. More important, no particular form of rationality can be considered necessary without qualification. 24. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch, 1934), chap. 4.

EMOTION I93 25. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 248. 26. See Tavris, Anger. 27. See Carroll E. Izard, Human Emotion (New York: Plenum, 1977).

28. Ibid.

29. Konner’s example of this tension, where people quite peaceful and nonviolent within normal surroundings become violent soldiers, is to be understood both as an expression of a biological capacity for violence (and nonviolence) and a judgmental and even rational response to circumstances (Tangled Wing, pp. 204-206). 30. Carol Tavris’ argument (in Anger) that overt expression of anger is often counter-

productive, repudiating what has become virtually an axiom within most forms of psychotherapy, is entirely compatible with my position, for she is arguing that anger has value and must be interrogated. She does not, however, appear to recognize that anger itself may be interrogative. 31. Konner argues against the drive theory in favor ofa ‘humour’ or state-activation theory. The argument is nevertheless that there is a biological relationship between sexuality and love (Tangled Wing, esp. pp. 102-104, 267—69). I am arguing that there is such a relationship, at least in the case of sexual or romantic love, but that it is inexhaustibly transcended by other dimensions of sexuality in human life and experience. 32. Theodore Reik, “A Psychologist Looks at Love,” Of Love and Lust (New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1941), p. 7.

33. Ibid., p. 34. 34. Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 20.

35. Ibid., p. 11. 36. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 37. D. Stanley-Jones, “The Biological Origin of Love and Hate,” in Feelings and Emotions, ed. Magda Arnold (New York: Academic, 1970), p. 26.

38. Ibid. 39. Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 98. Compare here what feminist policy on the subject of femininity should be: “The answer seems to be to accept, in the first place, that the business of finding out what women and men are really like, and what kinds of social arrangement would make both happiest, is a slow and unending process” (Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Sceptecal Feminist {[London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980}, p. 153). The process is unending because there is nothing women and men are “‘really like”’ independent of the social arrangements and the determination through such arrangements of our personal and social identities. 40. Harré, Social Being. 41. Ibid. See also Goffman, Relations in Public. 42. Thomas Nagel, “Sexual Perversion,” in The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, ed. Alan Soble (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1980), p. 84.

45. Ibid., p. 85. : 43. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, as quoted in ibid., p. 81. | 44. Ibid., pp. 84-85.

48. Ibid., p. 94. _

46. Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 83. 47. Robert Solomon, “Sexual Paradigms,” in Philosophy of Sex, ed. Soble, p. 92.

49. Ibid., p. 95.

50. Ann Ferguson, “Androgyny as an Ideal for Human Development,” in ibid., Ppp. 232—55-

194 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING 51. Nagal sharply distinguishes sexuality from eating (‘‘Sexual Perversion,” p. 84). J would claim that the latter is also part of our understanding of the nature of human being, and we judge a person's character by what he eats and how he eats it, by his culinary style. 52. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy. 53. My position can be formulated in terms of Harré’s distinction (in Soczal Being) between the practical and the expressive: the former concerned with utility; the latter, with social patterns of respect and contempt. Expressive codes are a form of social knowledge, embodied in social patterns and inherent in human responses to the presence of others. Sexuality as a practical and sexuality as an expressive or ornamental component of human life are inextricable, inseparable, almost indistinguishable. That is the point Foucault makes forcefully and persuasively, if always with emphasis on relations of power. 54. See Harré, Social Being. 55. Similar thoughts have been expressed by Hilda Hein, possibly because of her long experience with aesthetic issues: “In principle, ic seems to me that there is much to be said in favor of attending to differences as well as to similarities. A world of homogenized people would be dull indeed’’ (“On Reaction and the Women's Movement,” in Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation, edd. Carol C. Gould and

Marx W. Wartofsky [New York: Putnam's, 1976], p. 263). Yet the danger in acknowledging the importance of sexual differences is that they give ammunition to abusive and exploitative forces. “It is not self-evident that complementarity must be understood as hierarchical— indeed it is logically puzzling. Concave is not superior to convex, nor convex to concave. But when it comes to day and night, to locks and keys,

to right and left, the symmetries often get lost in clouds of association. And so it is with all those mathematical qualities of male and female; different but equal seems to be impossible to maintain’ (ibid.). The only complementarity that is intelligible is one that recognizes that where principles become general, each opposing category involves the other and that both are essential to our human being (see Valerie C. Saiving, ““Androgynous Life: A Feminist Appropriation of Process Thought,” in Feminism and Process Thought, ed. Sheila Davaney

{New York: Mellen, 1981], p. 26). The pervasiveness of sexuality throughout our thinking and acting reflects its necessity to our understanding of and determination of our humanity. That complementarity in sexuality so often means subordination is not only a conceptual error pervasive throughout human thought, but a remarkable indication of what we understand our humanity to be. In this respect, Hein’s further remarks are valuable: “The solution is to abandon the problem. Woman is no more a Nature to be defined relative to Man than Evil is a Nature to be accounted for relative to Good. But there are many things in the world, some of them good, some of them bad, and most of them a little of each” (“Reaction and the Women’s Movement,” pp. 264—65). 56. See my Theory of Art. 57. Alison M. Jaggar, “Prostitution,” in Philosophy of Sex, ed. Soble, pp. 364—65.

58. Ibid., pp. 348-68. 59. For a discussion of some of the subtler aspects of rape to which men are often oblivious, see Sara Ann Ketchum, “The Good, the Bad, and the Perverted: Sexual Paradigms Revisited,” in ibid., pp. 139-57. 6o. Reik, Of Love and Lust.

61. This list was drawn from an article in Psychology Today (October 1981) excerpted from Robert C. Solomon, Love: Emotion, Myth, and Metaphor (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981).

EMOTION 195 62. Robert C. Neville, Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 68. 63. Sartre, Being and Nothingness. 64. I leave open here the question, addressed by radical feminists, of whether such a pervasive sexuality is the source of female bondage and exploitation.

65. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil. ,

)

THE CENTRAL QUESTION sociality poses in the context of human experience is

one of being, how and in what ways being human involves many human beings and their judgments together. The central question of politics, in this context,

is one of power. Politics is a form of practical judgment, typically a form of collective action. Yet far more important is the element of scale: individual actions are of relatively narrow scope; political practices affect large numbers of persons or have importance throughout large territories or over long periods of

time. Sociality and politics overlap so greatly that each exposes the other to important questions that do not emerge naturally from within the perspective of each of them alone. Relative to scale, sociality and politics are two different perspectives on largely the same phenomena, the organization of human beings in groups and institutions with collective forms of regulation and codes of behavior. Two different polarities define the perspectives, one an opposition of individuals and groups, the other an opposition of individual practices and political undertakings. The major concepts of sociality are togetherness, community, and membership (in a social collective). The major concepts of politics are power, control, and regulation. Conceived in this way, the two spheres overlap so thoroughly that they may be said to define two dimensions of human being in conjunctive relationships. A person alone on a desert island or retired to the wilderness to escape temptation is sometimes regarded as a complete and effective human being even in the absence of social or political forms of life. Sociality and politics seem not to pertain to individuals alone, or to pertain only in degenerate forms. The capacity of human individuals to withdraw from society and political regulation—

provided circumstances permit them to do so—seems to indicate that individuals do not need social groups or political regulation. Sociality is not essential in this sense to humanity. Conversely, however, there could be no social group that individuals do not constitute. The natural but mistaken conclusion is that individuals are not constituted by other individuals but groups and collectives are constituted by individuals. To say that societies are composed of individuals is ambiguous. In one sense, groups are indeed composed of individual persons. Similarly, physical objects

SOCIALITY 197 are composed of atoms. Conversely, however, individual atoms do not exist alone, independent, but are always members of some aggregates, constituents of some locales. A similar converse applies to human being: the languages human individuals employ and the activities they undertake are always shaped

by social forms and conditions and are interpretable in relation to them. Wittgenstein has argued that there can be no private language in principle, so that individual thought is subject to public and social criteria even when it 1s not exposed to public view.’ Similarly, individual goals and expectations are shaped by public norms, by a collective milieu, even if a person sets his goals and expectations without social recognition. More important, there are properties of aggregates that are not properties of their members. Structural properties of shaped objects—for example, bridges and statues—are not properties of the individual atoms composing them even though they could not exist without such atoms and their constitutive properties. The most obvious indication of this is that any iron atom might be replaced by any other. The individuality of the atom ts irrelevant. Similarly, there are properties of social groups that are not properties of their individual members—electorates and mobs, for example—and social groups that function as they do quite independent of their particular members and their individual differentiations. Other members might be substituted without changes in certain social properties. In this sense, neither groups nor individuals, neither materials nor their components, are reducible to the others except in certain respects. Individuals and social groups coexist, in complex interrelations, but are neither entirely separable nor entirely reducible to each other. This reciprocity of dependence and independence is a direct expression of locality and inexhaustibility, manifested in the transcendence by every being of its conditions and locations, though it is inexorably if only partly determined by those very conditions. In the context of human social life, groups are composed of individuals who are conditioned by the groups to which they belong, but the groups transcend their constituting individuals in the sense that there are social properties and features that cannot be traced to constituent members except through their social aggregates. Structural properties are a good example, but so are such activities as elections and war. Nations wage war; individuals fight battles. Electorates elect representatives; individuals vote. Societies and institutions have perspectives, related to but different from the perspectives of their constituent members. Similarly, no matter how thoroughly socialized individuals may be, they have ways of behaving that transcend their social and economic determinants. There is a surplus of being and acting that is inexhaustibly transcendent relative to dependence and constitution. In this sense, individual human being and social human being are prominent and mutually determining forms, each transcendent relative to the other but conditioned by it.

198 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING SOCIAL BEING

My argument ts that there is a social being that is transcendent relative to but

conditioned by the ways in which individuals are human. But this general principle leaves open the particular ways in which human beings are social and individual. What, then, is social being? Two major traditions in the history of philosophy, surviving today, have made this question almost impossible to answer. One is the confusion of questions of social being with questions of stability and justice. No doubt, if human beings were not social in any respect—

an unintelligible assumption—political questions would not arise or would have entirely different characteristics. In that sense, social being is a precondition of political practice. Nevertheless, the claim, as it stands, is greatly oversimplified, for there would be questions of a political nature even were human beings solitary creatures, questions involving the coordination of perspectives of different scales. What is true is that in our experience political questions are almost always social in character, though there are political questions of territory and culture that are only indirectly social. This identification of social with political questions has the result that individuality takes on normative force in a social context. There is the danger that

to concede that human being is social is to concede too much to collective norms. Thus, questions of individual rights and liberties, the protection of individuals against collective practices, have traditionally been resolved by a view of human being that begins with individual privacy and independence, and leads only thereafter to collective principles through natural rights and contract theory or through the notion of general welfare. This tradition is so strong, and the principles of analysis have appeared to be so inescapable, that our understanding of social being has been severely contaminated. Thus, the question of whether human beings are social beings, the degree to which sociality is necessary to humanity, has been closely associated with certain political positions, and individuality has been regarded as opposed to sociality by normative principles of justice. Typically, political liberals defend individuality against sociality while moderate conservatives emphasize the collective order and the consequent importance of political principles. Extreme conservatives typically turn the wheel full circle, emphasizing the absolute rights of individuals against collective power, but still within a political spectrum. The question of sociality is a question of being, of human being and social being. The questions of politics are questions of practice and policy. The two

are not independent, for human surroundings include political powers and collective undertakings. Still, we may define a maxim here essential to our understanding of social being: any adequate theory of sociality must be compatible with both political anarchism and collectivism. These forms of political order are forms of collective practice, and it should be possible to distinguish practice from being, however proximately. Thus, even if human beings

SOCIALITY 199 were not typically and strongly social beings, if they were by preference and influence largely solitary, collectivist politics might still be necessary to avoid disastrous conflict in a situation of limited resources and overcrowding. This is the context of traditional political theory, and is appropriate to only one side of the question. For analogously, even if human beings were irresistibly social, the best forms of political organization might be anarchical, the minimization of collective power to protect individuals from abuse by the groups with which they associate themselves voluntarily. The second tradition that has interfered with our understanding of sociality is one in which individuality is equated with privacy. The defects of this tradition are well known, yet it remains largely if covertly in force today. There are perhaps three contributing factors here. One is the factor in consciousness and thought that is immediate, private, consequently not intrinsically public. The second is the epistemological tradition in which knowledge is taken to be possessed by individuals rather than groups. The third is the common-sense fact that individuals may elect to have private lives, may withdraw from social and public life, geographical and political considerations notwithstanding. Might we not, if we choose, withdraw to Walden pond—if it has not been taken over by developers and if others do not choose to do so as well? I have rejected every one of the three factors above as self-sufficient in the absence of sociality. There is an immediate and private element in consciousness and human experience, but it is complemented by—inseparable from and unintelligible without— mediate, functional, and public expression. Knowledge is frequently individual, but it is also social with unique social forms. Individuals are necessary to query, but they do not exhaust or even embody it. Finally, the independence of individual human beings from social activities is only a proximate, qualified independence. Adults may survive a Walden winter alone; infants cannot. More important, the resources and skills essential to individual practices apart from society are acquired in social contexts, though the contexts may be of small scale. More important still, withdrawal 1s not simply an individual act, as if there were no social context, but a social act in that both our understanding and the effectiveness of human individual practices always have a social character.

The general answer to why all these considerations of an independent individuality do not constitute an alternative to sociality is given by the complementarity inherent in locality and inexhaustibility. Individuality and sociality are not opposing notions but complementary in that each constitutes defining conditions for the other, yet transcends the other inexhaustibly. Dewey emphasizes this complementarity of individuality and sociality.* There is a social side, a social perspective, in every individual judgment, even those that manifest independence. It is independence from social conditions, therefore only a particular kind of independence, in certain respects. Walden might have been overrun by other people one hundred years ago. More important, Walden lies

200 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING within socially defined geographical regions and is subject to socially defined political restrictions. I argued above that sexuality has been made effectively equivalent to human being in the remarkable sense that a biological and organic range of responses and activities pervade (and invade) all our judgments, that judgments are pervasively colored by sexual differentiations. Specifically, however, sexuality has a doubly social side, in that it is directed toward others—by either desire or role—and is typified and characterized by social forms. Equally clearly, however, sexuality is an individual matter in personal responses and erotic styles. The concept of sexuality is both individual and social in the very strong complementary sense that every facet of identity and desire is pervaded by individ-

ual and social dimensions. Individuality and sociality are dimensions, inseparably and complementarily related, of the ways in which we function as human beings, of the locales in which we are situated. The point is even clearer if we think in terms of publicness and privateness, for to be a human being (a sexual being here) is to belong toa public milieu and to have private responses; it is furthermore to have (at least potentially) a public identity in one’s most personal responses and to have a personal style in one’s most public forms. Similarly, individuality and sociality not only are pervasive throughout human life and experience, but are reciprocal and complementary dimensions in

the sense that each is unintelligible without the other. Each thoroughly invades the other and modifies its character. One side of this understanding can be found in Wittgenstein’s private language arguments, though they are somewhat obscure and have frequently been misunderstood.’ Wittgenstein argues that there can be no private language, no private concepts. There can certainly be names and concepts that have not been exposed to public dissemination. Wittgenstein’s position must be that intelligibility has an intrinsically public side, that no one can claim to employ language and concepts intelligibly and rationally and claim as well that the relevant concepts cannot be shared, cannot be understood by others. The trouble with this position is that the private side of experience is wholly sacrificed to intelligibility. Wittgenstein does not have

an adequate sense of the complementarity inherent in inexhaustibility. He overlooks the complementarity of publicness and privateness from the private

side, that every concept has a private or personal character, a unique way in which it is understood by any individual. The reply to the solipsist who emphasizes privateness is, not that it is unintelligible, but that publicness and privateness are complementary dimensions of intelligibility. There are a public and a private side to every judgment. The solipsist neglects the one; Wittgenstein neglects the other. Individuality and sociality function complementarily quite like publicness and privateness. Each is required to make the other intelligible. Every locus of human experience has a social character involving other people; every judgment enters a public, social world in which other people interpret it and judge

SOCIALITY 201 it. Every judgment has an individual character derived from the uniqueness of

particular human perspectives. Every judgment is individual in relation to particular judges and social in relation to the judgments of others. Every perspective is located within social as well as individual conditions. There are judgments that are not judged by others—‘“‘private” in that sense. But they then possess a truncated identity and validation, a limited intelligibility. The ruminations a person goes through before committing his ideas to paper are doubly private. Those that are abortive, that are not expressed in public form, will never be known to others; similarly, they may never be (in another sense) “known” to the agent, since they are deprived of social interpretation, of multiple locations. Many private thoughts are barely thought at all, are sometimes deceptive in that we convince ourselves of their great importance but fail to subject them to public validation. In the sense described here, we are not privileged with respect to the validation of our own thoughts. Validation in individual perspectives is no less validation than validation socially, but without multiple validation, social and individual, judgments are not consummated. A woman may leave society, casting herself off on a desert island. But her humanity and language, her thoughts and actions, will be social in the double sense that they betray her social upbringing and are interpretable by others who come upon them. We cannot, as Sartre has expressed so vividly from the negative side, escape the gaze of others—not in principle, at least, but only practically by hiding from them.* But such an escape is a truncation of our humanity, not because we like or need others, but because what we do and

are have only limited character and intelligibility in the absence of other perspectives.

Individuality and sociality are complementary and reciprocal forms of human being, each demanded by the other for its nature and intelligibility. Individuality and sociality are dimensions of human being, complements of each other. But human being is inexhaustible, and dimensions of human being are transcendent relative to each other. Adult human beings can abandon society and can develop a private mode of existence. To call it insane does not alter its character. Similarly, social and collective forms of judgment and order may have no analogues in individual consciousness and thought, only contributions by diverse members to the collectivity. Inexhaustibility entails that individuality and sociality, complementary dimensions, nevertheless transcend each other. It is this transcendence that enables individuals to change society and enables society to bring about new forms of individual consciousness and practice. What, then, is it to be social? One answer, the moral or political, is that every human being has obligations toward and sympathies for others. I see the question of duties as a question of practice, not being, and there are clearly human beings with few sympathies outside themselves. A second answer is that human beings belong to social groups and act in ways that can be under-

202 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING stood only collectively—for example, to gain status and honor in the eyes of others. The trouble with this view is that status is treated not as complementary with practicality and individuality, but as supplementary, as an addition to the individual side of human practice.’ I am arguing for a much stronger relationship between individuality and sociality: that other people, their perspectives and judgments, constitute locations and conditions for individual judgments and perspectives. The nature of individual perspectives and judgments is a function of their locations and conditions, but is also transcendent of them. Reciprocally, individual judgments and perspectives are spheres of fulfillment for social forms and codes, at least in their influence upon individual actions, but even more as candidates for rational judgment. Social being is a consequence and manifestation of the condition that there are manifold forms and kinds of human perspectives, in particular, that there are perspectives that are not intelligible in terms of their individual participants alone but require reference to collectives—institutions and groups. But no perspective is intelligible from an individual point of view alone, or from any single point of view. Inexhaustibility is present in every perspective. Perspectives include objects and structures as constituents, and also include social norms and patterns, codes and judgments. To be human is to judge, and judgment is the modification or shaping of perspectives. But perspectives are then both objects and locales of judgment and a basis for further judgment. And perspectives are constituted by social milieux as well as by individual participants. Judgment is no more and no less individual than it is social. Humanity is no more and no less individual than it is social in that the intelligibility, character, and validation of judgments are always characterized by both individual judges and collective spheres in which judgments are located and validated. The sociality of human being is a natural consequence of the inexhaustibility of human being, for what inexhaustibility entails is that forms of human life constitute irreducible perspectives relative to each other. Social being is transcendent relative to individual human being, in the sense that collective perspectives are legitimate and genuine, that collectives judge and act in ways transcending the judgments of their constituent members—but reciprocally, individuals judge in ways not completely intelligible in terms of the collectives in which they are located. This mutual transcendence is the foundation of the capacity of judgment to open new prospects of validation and query.

SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

We need a way to understand social being more precisely than simply being with other people. A person may be amidst others yet think and act independently, forging her own judgments to the greatest extent she can. A person may

SOCIALITY 203 be isolated from others yet continue to react to his surroundings in socially patterned ways. We need to distinguish social being in the sense of belonging toacommunity, influencing and being influenced by others, from social being in the sense of responding to and acting toward others. We need to distinguish from both of these the being of social institutions, which transform the shapes and purposes of human practices. It is precisely because of the pervasiveness and complexity of our different kinds of relationships with other people that we Cannot extricate human being in any significant sense from social being. Social being and individual beirig are complementary dimensions of human being. I have suggested that the most effective way to understand social being in general, in its complementarity with individual being, is in terms of individual and social perspectives. Perspectives are locales in which human beings are involved as human beings—that is, as judges. Individual perspectives involve individual human beings as judges. Social perspectives, in the most natural sense, involve shared perspectives and judgments. Social perspectives in this sense are essential to communication. The question is whether this natural interpretation is sufficient to include all the kinds of social being of which we must take heed. Beginning with the notions of individual perspectives and judgments appears to make individuality primary, appears not to include the stronger sense of social being constituting those forms of collective practice and knowledge that are not interpretable in terms of individual judgments. The question is what it means to say that a perspective is shared. The way to answer this question is through development of the notion of perspective in relation to persons as judges. In saying that a locus comprises its constituents, we emphasize its conditions. In saying that a locus is a constituent of other locales, we again emphasize its conditions and its complementary relationships. In saying that a locus is multiply located, however, we also emphasize its transcendence of any particular locations and qualifications. These relations, taken together, comprise the inexhaustibility of a locus. Analogously, a perspective is a locus of human being, a locale involving human beings as judges. Every perspective is then composed of its constituents, including human beings and judgments, is located in many other perspectives, and is inexhaustible relative to any locations and conditions. At this level of generality, we may discern a number of different relationships involving perspectives and judgment. To be a perspective, a locale must

include as a constituent a person as a judge. That person is necessary to, a constituent of, the unison of that perspective; other people may be constituents of its ramifications. Thus, a particular perspective may include only one person in its unison and include no other persons in its ramifications. This is a very private and individual perspective—the most individual perspective pos-

204 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING sible. A perspective may instead include an individual person in its unison but many persons in its ramifications; here we have one form of sociality, a perspective shared by many persons for whom that perspective is a common constituent. Finally, a perspective may include many persons in its unison as well as in its ramifications—for example, a factory that produces automobiles requires many different specialists to produce one finished automobile. The factory is a perspective that includes many different workers in different roles. The latter two cases but not the first involve shared perspectives, different

kinds of social relationships. To the first we must bring the question of whether there can be a perspective that is intrinsically private, that cannot be shared.° Yet to the extent that we live and judge among other people, our spheres of judgment will include different persons as common constituents. In this sense, I suggest that no perspective is unshared, restricted to one person as its constituent except to the extent that circumstances make that perspective unavailable to others. Put another way: the question of sharability is itself perspectival, and perspectives are sharable only in certain respects and unsharable only relative to certain perspectival conditions, in certain ways. Is there not an irreducibly individual element in every person's character, personality, and style of judgment that is different from every other person's? Inexhaustibility entails that each person and his judgments transcend any set of locations—aincluding social relations—producing individuality and unshared perspectives. Yet there is a profound difference between unshared and unsharable perspectives, and there is a profound difference between individual uniqueness and unsharability. For the transcendence inherent in a particular person's style of judgment may be a function of constituent membership in inexhaustibly many different perspectives, each of which is shared by some other persons but not all of which are shared by any other person. Moreover, where there is sharing, it is perspectivally limited. This is surely what individuality in the most common and social sense means: not an unsharable, absolutely unique perspective, but a unique range of constituents throughout the ramifications of a particular person's social experiences. Every perspective 1s a relational field comprising constituents located in other perspectives, but every perspective must be unique in certain respects to be the perspective it is, must not share all its constituents with any other perspective. Uniqueness and commonality, identity and relatedness, are complementary dimensions of every locus. Far more important is the distinction between unshared and unsharable perspectives. Analogously, we may ask whether there are loci that cannot belong to human experience, that cannot become perspectival. The answer 1s that the implied impossibility, taken without qualification, is unintelligible, while the qualification entails that impossibility is always circumstantial. Some locales are too remote to be experienced. Similarly, some perspectives are in fact not shared, and not all perspectives can be shared by any two different

SOCIALITY 205 persons. That is what being different means. But no particular perspective can be unsharable in principle. Any perspective that does not include a particular

person in its ramifications may be modified so as to include that person, though we can never modify all perspectives to include any or all persons as their constituents. All this is but an expression of inexhaustibility in relation to human social being. The most inward thoughts and dreams of a person can be made known to another person and may be understood better by him tn certain ways. Psychoanalysis has taught us at least that much. If a person's life and experience are regarded in toto as a perspective, can two

life-perspectives be shared? The answer is that they cannot be shared in all

respects, but they frequently are shared in many respects. Husbands and wives, children and parents, who live together for many years, inevitably share

many perspectives, including their common life-perspectives, in the sense that each is a unisonal constituent of the other's perspective. There will, of course, be many important differences, for they are different persons, and these differences may be sufficient to produce clashes of values and temperaments. The point is that there can be sociality only where there are perspectives in common. By “common” here I am referring to the common constituency of shared perspectives, not to agreement. Different people live, experience, and judge amidst the perspectives of other people, sometimes unisonally and always ramifyingly. In this minimal sense, I am describing that sociality here that is our judgments for other people, the fact that judgments do not have an entirely individual significance. There are judgments that emerge in circumstances that make them of minimal social relevance. A person cast away ona desert island may die, leaving few traces behind. Even such an event may be studied by historians later, so that an important part of our social being is proleptic, fulfilled in future judgments by others. My point is that no judgment is intrinsically private but not social,

not in any and not in all respects, though every perspective will have some constituents that are not shared by others. Intended or not, our judgments have a social character: our judgments are judged by others; our perspectives are shared by others in those respects—and not other respects. Moreover, every judgment that is not judged by others lacks a richness that only other perspectival locations can give it. Thus, the inexhaustibility of perspectives ts enhanced in certain ways within human life by sharing and enhanced in other ways by individual uniqueness. The conclusion is that sharing is as much part of perspectives as individu-

ality or singularity is, that wherever there is sharing of perspectives there is uniqueness and wherever there is uniqueness there is sharability, but in some cases circumstances may prevent perspectives and judgments from being shared in particular respects, and, similarly, conditions may prevent certain perspectives from being assimilated uniquely in particular ways. Individuality and sociality here are mutual and complementary factors in all ordinary per-

206 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING spectives, but circumstances may practically eliminate one or another in certain respects—a natural consequence of finiteness and of the surplus or waste in human being that is a consequence of inexhaustibility. The relationship is closely parallel with the complementarity of publicness and privateness and the inseparability of past, present, and future for every judgment. Judgments must have both a public and a private relevance, a relevance for the past and the present as well as for the future. But if humanity destroys itself altogether (or is destroyed by an unexpected calamity), there will be no future relevance (except by negation). The relevance as well as the extinguishability of the human future are both consequences and expressions of the finiteness in inexhaustibility. The most general sense of sociality as shared perspectives does not seem to address the specific questions of social being. We have a general social being that is the condition that perspectives are composed of many persons. What we want to look at more closely is the social being in which judgment is by and for many persons together. The stronger meaning of social being is not only where perspectives are shared but where judgments by different persons are reciprocally articulative and where groups and institutions judge in ways distinct from the judgments of their individual members. A judgment is for other persons as judges where it is offered to others for judgment and they respond by further judgment. I have called this process articulation.’ There is certainly articulation of a person's judgments by other judgments of that person. And articulation is the precondition of query, for query is ongoing interrogation and judgment, thus one of the most important forms of articulation. Nevertheless, there are forms of articulation that are not query—mindless repetition and unswerving tradition, for example. In the present context, the question is whether articulation always has a social character. I have answered the question affirmatively with qualifications. Every judg-

ment has at least potentially, not always actually, a public, social side, in which it not only has meaning for the person who produces it but may be responded to by the judgments of others. In this sense, articulative judgment is offered with expectations of further judgment, some judgments by some persons. In this sense, articulative judgment—judgment for the sake of further judgment—is fundamentally social in character. We know of scientists, poets, and philosophers who wrote in private and had their writings lost or destroyed. But to write (or speak) is to presume an audience, if only an anonymous, social audience, even if a person is in fact his only audience. Yet I am proposing a far stronger thesis: that every human judgment is social in the sense that every judgment has other people’s judgments as part of its unison (in a given locale). This means, simply, that every judgment would differ in its character, as that judgment, were human social surroundings different, were other people’s judgments different. This is in one sense a simple acknowledgment of the surrounding social milieu: we judge as human beings

SOCIALITY 207 amidst others. Our judgments reflect the language we employ, our shaped sur-

roundings, the past, present, and even future presence of other people and their judgments. This sociality of judgment is not extraordinary, for the character of our physical surroundings is, in certain important ways, pervasive throughout the unisons of all our judgments. For example, our bodies, shaped and effective as they are by our biology, are unisonal constituents of all our practical judgments, possibly of all our judgments. The sociality of our judgments through surrounding milieux, including the judgments of others, is in part a consequence of the humanity of our judgments, our membership in a common species. Our human being is a social being in the sense that what we regard as human is always deeply social, involving continuity with and articulation of the judgments of others. Sociality in the sense being described here is the sharing of perspectives and judgments by different persons as judges. There is no perspective or constituent of a perspective that is not sharable; conversely, it is impossible for any two persons to share all perspectives in common or to share all the constituents of any perspective in which they are both located. Sociality pervades human per-

spectives and judgment, ranging from the modest sociality in which other people are part of the ramifications of one’s judgments (an audience for, influenced by, those judgments) to a perspective whose unison is composed of many persons (here defining a human community) to the even stronger condition in which perspectives as judgments include other persons in their unisons (membership in a common articulative social milieu for that judgment). Practically

speaking, these are the only significant alternatives for understanding relationships among individuals and their social milieux, and all involve important forms of sociality. To be human is to have other people relevant to one’s judgments and perspectives.

SOCIAL JUDGMENTS

Do collectives act independent of their individual members’ actions? The answer must be negative; wherever we have collective actions, we have individuals acting also. Nations make war, but individuals fight battles. Governments enact legislation, but legislators vote. Corporations make profits, but individuals produce goods and determine their prices. These examples demonstrate that there can be no collective practical judgments without individual practical judgments, that collectives can act only to the extent that their members act, but that the actions of collectives and groups are not the same as their members’ actions. In this important sense, societies produce practical judg-

ments above and beyond but not independent of their members’ practical judgments. In the same sense we may speak of the class struggle, of institutional oppression, of the manifold but hidden forms of power. There can be no

208 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING exercise of power that is not traceable to actions of individuals, but power relationships inexhaustibly transcend the judgments of individuals. This im-

portant truth, essential to inexhaustibility, is the unspoken foundation of Foucault's understanding of power. We have here another example of the locatedness and transcendence that are typical of inexhaustibility. Social judgments and individual judgments are mutually conditioned and mutually transcendent. Not only are social judgments conditioned by and functions of individual judgments, though transcending them, but individual judgments are conditioned by social judgments, though transcending them. Nations go to war while armies fight battles and soldiers fire shots. But firing a shot at the enemy is a function of being at war; it is different in its social and political nature from simply shooting at another person. Individual actions when part of a mob are quite different than when undertaken in isolation. In the sense in which individual judgments are always undertaken in a social context, individual judgments are conditioned by (multiple) social locations but transcend them inexhaustibly; social judgments are conditioned by individual judgments but transcend them inexhaustibly. Far more important, assigning a judgment to a person or collective is itself a perspectival judgment; judgments do not intrinsically belong toa particular agent. Every judgment is both public and private, in fundamental respects, as every perspective is individual and social. Emphasis falls upon the sociality or individuality, privateness or publicness, of a judgment or perspective relative only to some other perspective in which it is located. In this sense, then, every perspective and every judgment are social as well as individual in that some of the constituents of their unisons, in some perspective, are both individual and social, that individuality and sociality are functions of perspectival location. Individuals inhabit manifold perspectives that are irresistibly and inexorably social, but individual perspectives transcend what is shared—a consequence of their multiple locations. Social perspectives have manifold consequences and implications that transcend the perspectives of their individual members, but social perspectives are nevertheless always conditioned by individual spheres of judgment. Individual judgments are located amidst social perspectives and judgments, but transcend their locations. Social and collective judgments transcend their members’ judgments and perspectives, but are nevertheless inexorably conditioned by those judgments. These are natural consequences of inexhaustibility, of the complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness, conditionedness and transcendence. We have here an explanation, through inexhaustibility, of how there can be social and institutional patterns and forms, developments and conditions, that deeply affect human life, but that are largely out of the control and even awareness of individual participating agents. We have an explanation as well of how such social conditions and judgments both are conditioned by individual judgments and condition those judgments, where each also transcends the other. Neverthe-

SOCIALITY 209 less, the questions of social being here are frequently swamped by political considerations, particularly concerning those forms of practice, individual and collective, that are called for by particular social circumstances to liberate human beings from oppressive surroundings. The political questions, I shall argue, are questions of action, not of being, but are profoundly complicated by the inexhaustibility inherent in social being and judgment. What of the recurrent question of the unreality of collective judgments and perspectives? What of the question of the authority of the sciences of society? Have I not offered a far too general, unsatisfactory answer to a complex and controversial set of questions? But I have not attempted to answer the question about the effective practices of the social sciences. Inexhaustibility entails that neither individuality nor sociality is to be regarded as ontologically primary, that each is real and genuine, that each may be interpreted to characterize and be located in perspectives as well as in judgment and practice. But inexhaustibility also entails that science is inexhaustible, with the consequence that there will always be many sciences for any domain of interrogation, that any science, however effective and productive, will nevertheless be inexhausttbly transcended by other sciences and forms of query.” Perhaps one of the effective sciences of society will trace all social products back to individual products

and judgments. This mode of understanding will be transcended by the facts about society, but so will any other scientific understanding. All scientific understanding, however accurate, will be transcended by real events and conditions as well as by other forms of query including other sciences. But this ts no more or less true about science than about any other form of query. What is in question here is the nature of inexhaustibility. The underlying question of social reality is a question of ontological primacy, of individuality or collectivity, and is unintelligible from the standpoint of tnexhausctibility. There can be no primary reality. There can be no unqualified standpoint that determines such a primacy. Social reality is real, however derivative it may be in certain respects. Nevertheless it must transcend its individual members’ perspectives in certain ways. The additional question in this context is one of rationality, of the way to understand social reality. Here we may be more tolerant of the claim that we can understand social perspectives only through the perspectives of their members, social judgments only through the judgments of their members, as long as we remain aware of the limitations of any mode of understanding. In fact, however, I believe that we have become aware of the effectiveness of certain forms of social understanding that transcend the understanding of individual members. The consequence of inexhaustibility is that manifold forms of understanding, even scientific understanding, are required for the understanding of any being, but manifestly for the understanding of human being, individual and social. I shall conclude this discussion by noting that there are not only social practices, there are also social fabrications: cities, nations, buildings, and constitu-

210 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tions are all produced collectively. The myth of the individual artist should be

regarded as a striking fiction when we recognize that the most prominent forms in our surroundings are collective forms, the result of individual actions

to be sure, but inexhaustibly different from any individual's plan or undertaking. Any major urban center—New York City, Tokyo, or Paris—is a collective fabricative judgment, of immense significance for its inhabitants and even for those who live outside it, that transcends any individual act, all individual control, any individual's lifetime, and even any individual’s grasp of its complexity and immensity. One of the most prominent forms of transcendence in human life is the transcendence of collective forms and patterns over the individual contributions that make it up and individual attempts to grasp its nature.

SOCIAL QUERY

The only meaning reason can have in the context of inexhaustibility is that of query, in all its modes: unremitting and unterminating invention, tnterrogation, and validation. A consequence of such a view is that reason is profoundly social, that a purely individual rationality is unintelligible. Such a view runs counter to the important strain in the philosophic tradition in terms of which rationality is individual method and one person can be rational amidst hostile

and irrational surroundings. I do not intend to challenge the moral spirit behind this position, that an individual must stand for truth and justice against the hypocrisy and blindness of the multitude. But it must be possible to sustain this principle without denying the pervasive sociality of knowledge and rationality. That query is profoundly social does not entail that it is consensual. There are a number of important ways in which query is and must be social. Many of these have been noted throughout the philosophic tradition, though

recent philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger have had important things to say about them. Science, for example, is social in at least two obvious senses: (1) it is carried on within a social milieu, a community of practicing scientists; (2) because no one person can know everything that science has to offer, scientific knowledge is a social more than an individual condition. There is in addition a third sense of sociality pertaining to science along with every form of reason: (3) the sociality of the future that is required by query. (1) The problems of science are traditional problems, with a history. Even new problems, emergent in the sense that the knowledge, concepts, and observational data required for their formulation were not available before, have important connections with the traditions that inspired them. The division of scientific inquiry into particular disciplines—physics, biology, chemistry— is a function of historical as well as physical relationships. Scientific languages

SOCIALITY 211 and concepts, mathematical techniques, all have an historical and social character. In addition, some of the most important of contemporary scientific experiments cannot be supported or carried on by one person or even a small group. In all these senses, science is a social, a collective, enterprise. Interesting and important hypotheses fade from view where social conditions do not support them. Inquiry is located within social milieux and depends upon both smaller communities of inquiry for its success and larger institutions for its continued encouragement. The body of scientific knowledge established today would be different in both the large and the small had human social history been very different. I would argue on the basis of inexhaustibility that every inquiry is located within many different social collectives and that it 1s this diversity of societies and environments that characterizes rationality, both its conditions and its openness to novel possibilities. But it is unnecessary to pursue this matter further here: we are noting one of the general collective forms that characterize human experience.

(2) We live in an age of specialization. Humanity knows too much, and there are too many different forms of scientific knowledge for any one person to

be master of them all. In this sense, it is humanity who collectively pursues and possesses scientific knowledge. It may be supposed that for any component of scientific knowledge that is socially and publicly available, some individual

or individuals must possess it. I believe this interpretation is incorrect. Implicit knowledge in particular, available in the scientific environment, from which new questions and inquiries emerge, may be distributed widely, over many different individuals, connected by social not individual perspectives. There is important knowledge in the environment, awaiting certain kinds of implementation in new inquiries, that no one in particular may be able to articulate. There are important respects in which science is carried on socially, not individually, though without individual activities it would come to a halt. We have here an example of social characteristics that depend upon individual activities, but that cannot be assigned to individuals as judgments. The scientific community here judges, carries on inquiries, and is rational, along with, and dependent upon, but quite differently from, the judgments of individual scientists. (3) There is an even more important and fundamental sociality in scientific inquiry. It is a consequence of inexhaustibility and the identification of ratio-

nality with query. Rationality is query, unremitting interrogation and invention; knowledge is the outcome of successful query. What this means ts that—again restricting our immediate discussion to science—closure of inquiry terminates rationality and undermines knowledge. Rationality 1s sustained through further interrogation, through new perspectives and inquiries.

It follows that every rational judgment requires its future. Every inquiry promises further inquiry in new social perspectives. Society is needed for the promised rationality in inquiry to be realized, realized in further judg-

212 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING ment and inquiry. Rationality here is unavoidably social, though not social alone, in requiring social conditions for further interrogation. Rationality is also unavoidably individual in requiring individual interrogative judgments. Judgment is unavoidably and inextricably both individual and social, for the two together, complementarily, are dimensions of human being and, consequently, of both judgment and rationality. The process in which judgment leads to further judgment, that is, judgment for the sake of further judgment, I have called articulation. It represents the openness of judgment to public, future, and social conditions. I am emphasizing here the sociality of any judgment that would be rational. There are judgments that pass and are forgotten, that have limited consequences and effects. There are judgments that pass into further judgments, that are articulative. Finally, there are judgments whose articulation is the result of interrogation upon interrogation. This is query, a major form of articulation. Iam arguing that articulation is both proleptic and social. An articulative judgment offers a promise to the future, but a future that must come to pass to realize that promise, a future containing other human beings as judges. Without public relevance, a judgment can be neither articulative nor rational. This is as true for science as for any other mode of query. The essential point

is that without its future—if humanity should destroy itself tomorrow— present science would be defective, aborted. The rationality of science demands future interpretation and validation. The inexhaustibility of science is an Openness to an unknown, yet-to-be-established future and to diverse social perspectives. What ts essential about these perspectives, however, is that they

be different, not that they be collective. The sociality of inquiry is a consequence of the continuing openness of query to future interrogation and query, to the perspectives of future individuals, but it is not necessarily the invalidation of the achievements of past individuals, because it includes the emergence of novel locations and perspectives. If scientific inquiry is social in the three senses described above, all the forms

of query are similarly social, though in some cases sociality may be more prominent than in others. The first form of sociality, the location of query within social milieux and traditions, is a generic condition of query, perspectivity, and judgment. The queries undertaken, the resources available for interrogation, are always in large measure social. This is as true for art and philosophy as for politics and morality. Still, the sociality of political query has

another element to it, since it not only is located within social milieux but addresses them, seeking to transform or perpetuate them. In this sense, there is a deeper reflexivity in the sociality of politics and the various forms of active

query than there may be in other forms. In my view, art always is located within and builds upon its schools and traditions, always reflects upon its traditional and social milieux and its variations for the future, and is therefore

SOCIALITY 213 deeply and reflexively social. Philosophy is a special case I shall consider in a moment. The second form of sociality is a consequence of scale, the limitations inherent in any individual's range of control over human experience. Scientific inquiry is social in the double sense that no individual can know all there is to know, undertake all relevant inquiries, and there are social inquiries that have

no direct expressions in individual judgments. Similarly, there are social trends and patterns that are judgmental but that correspond to no individual judgments. This is clearly true in practical judgment but also in art and philosophy—art especially in urban patterns and geographical structures. There

are long-term and global patterns throughout social institutions that are rational—as practical judgment can be rational, political and juridical— without being exhaustively analyzable in terms of individual rationality. The third form of sociality essential to rationality is the openness of query to

future query, to the interpretation of others. This is profoundly true for all forms of query, but is especially prominent in history (which enters history itself), in the social sciences (which are themselves to be regarded as social institutions), in art, and in philosophy. Art ts produced to enter history, for the future and for human life. Interpretive response to art is as essential to it as its production. The interpretation of works of art is always a public and social form of query. The case of philosophy is somewhat different. There is, I believe, a fundamental concern with inexhaustibility in philosophy, especially in its system-

atic forms, that is a consequence of its generality. There is a multiplicity of philosophic theories, but there is no theory or system superior to all the others in all respects. There is, I believe, a validation in philosophy that is intrinsically social in the sense that it is realized through philosophy collectively — in the works of the greatest philosophers to be sure—that will never be realized in any philosophic theory singly. In this sense—it may pertain to art also—philosophy is fundamentally collective and social, an activity of query but not expressible in any particular outcome or work. No philosophic theory can be superior to all others in all respects. No work of art can be superior to all others in all respects. In this sense, that in which manifold works together are expressive of both rationality and inexhaustibility, art and philosophy are profoundly collective.

COLLECTIVES

There is, in Whitehead’s mature thought, in Process and Reality and beyond, a number of different, sometimes opposing strains.” One of these is atomistic, an emphasis on individual entities as drops of experience, centers of process.

214 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING The other is social or collective, a recognition that individual atoms are located in societies and in societies of societies. A society here is not specifically a human collective but a certain kind of ontological community: “a set of entities is a society (1) in virtue of a ‘defining characteristic’ shared by its members, and (ii) in virtue of the presence of the defining characteristic being due to the en-

vironment provided by the society itself.” Though there are important ways in which Whitehead’s theory is not directly applicable to human sociality, there are insights in his position that I believe profoundly contribute to an effective understanding of human being. Though actual entities are “prehending”’ or experiencing subjects in Whitehead’s theory, they are atoms but are not simple: they are complex and in fundamental ways collective. More important, human beings themselves are not actual entities but collectives of actual entities—-not even single societies, but collectives of collectives. The points I want to emphasize are: (@) that societies are constituted by their

members, and, conversely, societies constitute their members; and (6) that every actual entity and every society belong to many social environments. We have collectives of collectives with social order. If we abandon the ontological priority inherent in the atomism of actual entities and reject the notion of a world order, we come very close to the locative theory's conception of loci and

constituents: every locus is constituted by other loci and constitutes other loci inexhaustibly. '' If we cannot associate the collectives here with sociality (which I am restricting to human collectives), nevertheless, collectivity is a fundamental and pervasive ontological condition of which human sociality 1s but a species. Human individuality, moreover, is not absolute but is a function of the different collectives of collectives in a human environment. The point can be made clearer if we set aside for the moment the irresistible tendency to exaggerate the identity and individuality of human persons, and take as our paradigm a small social group like the family. A family 1s a complex

sphere where many collectives intersect. Individuals in a family interact among themselves in ways that are a function of inexhaustibly diverse social and collective groupings. The adults in the family work, receive wages, and interact in a community of persons and social settings. The work place itself is a complex collective of collectives, in which, for example, there are immediate social environments of co-workers, general corporate activities, relations with other corporations and the public, and so forth. But a typical adult may also belong to a church, a parish, a neighborhood, an extended family, an ethnic and national grouping, and so forth. Children play with other children in the neighborhood, go to school, and interact within the family. They are influenced by cultural media and participate in recreational activities, all of which involve different collectives. What a family is and how it functions, how tts members relate to each other and to their surroundings, is a complex function of many collective activities and norms. The nature and identity of a given

SOCIALITY 215 family is a function of its surrounding collectives and collectives of collectives. Here sociality at complex levels of social interaction is both fundamental and pervasive. There is another lesson to be learned from Whitehead. I have restricted my examples to human social collectives though I do not limit the notion of collectives to aggregates of human beings. In Whitehead’s view, sociality is an ontological category designating any organically related aggregate of actual en-

tities, including physical objects like stones and stars. The corresponding locative generalization is that being is locality and that every being is a locus composed of constituents and located as a constituent in many locales. In this sense, locality includes both unity in the concept of a locus and collectivity in the concepts of constituency and locatedness. Unity and multiplicity here are complementary and inseparable. Human individuality and sociality are particular forms of locality. Collectivity is a generic metaphysical concept. In the immediate context, I am emphasizing that it is not adequate to pose the question of collectivity in human experience entirely in terms of other

people, though that is largely how I have approached it to this point. In Whitehead’s view, other people, other actual entities, comprise environments for any actual entity or society, and every environment constitutes and is located within many other environments of environments, many collectives. Some environments are constituted by other human beings, but most are not, even in human experience. Terrain, climate, geographical factors—all define human roles and activities that are both expressive and variable, essential features of human activity. How a person dresses, how he acts, particular gestures and strategies, are functional responses to the many different environments surrounding him, some of which are particularly social, involving other people, some of which are collective but not particularly social. Recent writers have emphasized the various ways in which persons present

themselves to others in anonymous social environments to attain status.” Imagine, however, a person cast forth on a desert island with a wealth of clothing. The question each day of what to wear might be entirely a practical, utilitarian matter. I suggest that ornamentation and expression are not just

social conditions, but responses to environmental surroundings, and that weather, climate, but also a sense of personal identity and even a spirit of play, would operate in even an isolated setting for many human beings. ’’ Similarly,

social institutions function as environments for individuals influenced by them as much as they constitute milieux for individual interactions and judgments or undertake actions themselves. In this sense, such institutions constitute environments located in other environments, inexhaustibly, with all the complexity of such environmental interrelations. There are, then, three important principles to be gathered from Whitehead’s view of sociality. One is that collectivity and multiplicity are fundamental and generic categories organically complementary with individuality and singu-

216 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING larity. Every individual is complex and collective, multifarious in certain respects. Every collectivity is unitary in certain respects in order to be that collectivity. There ts no absolute or unqualified individuality or multiplicity. Even more important than this conceptual complementarity of unity and multiplicity, the relations among loci and their environments are reciprocal: every locus constitutes the environments in which it is located, is a condition for those environments; every locus is constituted by its environments in virtue of its multiple locations. Environments and members are reciprocal conditions. Nevertheless, each transcends its conditions inexhaustibly.

, This inexhaustibility of transcendence is based on the second principle inherent in Whitehead’s theory but generalized and made fundamental in a locative theory. This is the condition that every being or locus is multiply and inexhaustibly located, in inexhaustibly diverse environments and surrounding loci, with different unisons in every location. We are surrounded by environments and environments of environments, and there is no all-inclusive, total environment. As a consequence, no set of environments can exhaust an individual or a society, which is located in still other environments and loci. Multiple location, added to the reciprocity of organic relations, is what produces inexhaustibility. Collectivity in human life—to return to our immediate concern—is both pervasive and inexhaustible. Every individual and social group are surrounded by manifold collectives, social and environmental. Every tnstitution functions within manifold social and collective conditions. The third principle, then, is that sociality is a species of collectivity. It ts unduly restrictive to define the questions of collective human being solely in terms of other human beings. People act in a variety of different ways because they are located in many different environments—some of which are intrinsically social, including other people. I have noted the claim that human beings act with a concern for expressiveness, for status rather than utility and practice. But utility is not so easily separated from expression, for we must act in the ways shown to function effectively in social contexts. '* In fact, we always

act and function simultaneously in many environments, some of which are characterized by utilitarian considerations, others of which are characterized by status and reputation, including environments in which these functions are interrelated. Social roles are a species of perspectival unisons, a larger category in which what we do is always a function of who we are—but in inexhaustibly diverse, collective locations, some of which involve other people profoundly and deeply, but others of which are more physical than social. My argument has moved from defining sociality in the narrow sense involving many persons in collective perspectives to treating sociality as a species of collectivity, of aggregate surroundings and perspectives. Human being is social being, but social being is a species of collective being or locality. The need for such a generalization will become clear in examination of particular kinds of social collectives, especially of social institutions, but particularly in exami-

SOCIALITY 217 nation of political action. For politics is a function of scale, frequently but not intrinsically social, since it involves territory and geography, resources and structures. But any social category can be adequately understood only in terms of collectives larger than those involving human beings alone. Am I suggesting that there is a fundamental limit to the social sciences, to social understanding? I believe I am, but it is no more of a limitation than that entailed in general by inexhaustibility and query. No particular form of understanding can be complete. No particular view of social life can take precedence over all others. An adequate history of human events must be a history of the earth as well as of human societies. But even an adequate history can never be a complete history, and no history can be the story of humanity, adequate in all respects.

STATUS AND ROLE

I have argued that human perspectives are social in that other people are relevant to individual perspectives and judgments. I have argued further that, in addition to individual judgments, there are social judgments—judgments by collectives, that cannot be understood as judgments by individuals, although

there could not be such judgments if the individual members did not judge (conversely, individual judgments would be impossible without collective judgments, would not even be judgments, interpretable as judgments, without collective judgments and the perspectives defined by them). I have argued still further that there is an organic relationship among collective and individual perspectives and judgments closely akin to the relationship among loci and constituents. To be a constituent of a locus is to be multiply located in many locales, with many different unisons. Similarly, to be a human individual is to

be multiply located, with many different unisons, in many environments, some of which are social loci and perspectives; to be a social locus, an institution or group, is to be located in many loci, social and natural. There are certain kinds of judgments that we may suppose human beings to be capable of, whatever their social surroundings, though the judgments they

produce will differ depending on the surroundings. Human beings will no doubt act and think, will probably construct works of art, in any social setting, even estranged from any immediate social milieu, cast away on a desert island. Hermits are no less human beings who judge and produce despite their tsolation. Sociality provides conditions for and important elements of the significance of such judgments, but these, once derived from social surroundings,

can be regarded as intelligible in the absence of further relevance to other people. I would describe such judgments and perspectives as social in origin and context, but circumstantially involving only one person—the agent. There are, by way of contrast, judgments that are unintelligible in the absence

218 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING of other people, that are in this respect more overtly social. One kind has already been noted, those judgments that are social and not correspondingly individual: the actions of courts and governments, corporations and groups, works of architecture, orchestral music, and cinema. There are collective practice and fabrication, even a collective rationality and inquiry, that are dependent upon but not equivalent with the judgments of relevant individuals. These collective perspectives and judgments are social in a more specific way than that sociality that conditions every perspective and every judgment. These perspectives include the manifold and pervasive influences of social institutions and collective forms in every social and political system. A general feature of human life that has no meaning whatever in isolation from social collectives is concern with and pursuit of social status. An overpowering case has been made for the distinctive ways in which individuals— sometimes in pairs or small groups—display themselves in public in order to gain or preserve status, even in the eyes of total strangers. Such display has been called ‘“‘expressive’ as distinguished from ‘‘practical” activities.'? The ways in which we present ourselves in public are ways in which we seek to gain

or at least to maintain status, to avoid contempt and to attain the respect of others. The notion of presentation here is apparently a form of social practice—practical judgment——and is not wide enough to include all the forms of

judgment. Moreover, the emphasis on practical judgment and presentation tends to blur the distinction between social being and political practice—for I define politics as a form of collective practical judgment, concerned with control, sociality as a form of being. We must, then, to preserve the generality of the notion of social being, interpret the notions of expressive order and social presentation as pervasive, but not all-pervasive, features of social being, of social roles and unisons. Every

individual is located in many social spheres, sometimes in person, bodily, sometimes by reputation and in memory. But among the characteristic features of the unisons of persons and groups of persons in social settings 1s location by status and reputation. It would appear, indeed, that location ina social perspective is always normative. The characteristics that typify a social interpretation of a person's judgments are characteristics that typically carry normative weight. An appropriate analogy would be with works of art that are typically evaluated in every interpretation of their characteristic traits; similarly, actions are typically evaluated by utilitarian as well as moral standards. Estimation is typically part of the understanding of human judgments—and in one sense, naturally, since what we are estimating is the validation of the judgment. Every judgment, in its perspectival locations, seeks validation. Relative to certain spheres of query, judgments are evaluated in principle and theory, validated by further query. In social spheres, however, persons and their judgments are evaluated by norms that produce status and reputation. And even

SOCIALITY 219 the most minimal of actions can have important consequences for status. Social agents when placed in an uncomfortable public situation employ a wide repertoire of gestures and phrases that have the function of avoiding the censure of others. '° I have argued elsewhere that it is a mistake to make estimation and evaluation essential to the understanding of works of art.'’ We effectively transform a work into an act to appraise it instead of seeking to understand it. What a work of art calls for are articulation, interpretation, and further construction. Simtlarly, social judgments are diminished in many ways by being tied too closely

to reputation and status. Here there is a profound tension between the constraints that concerns for reputation inspire, diminishing the openness and inventiveness of our judgments, and the conditions our social surroundings offer to our judgments that enrich them with public significance. This tension is fundamentally political, since it is concerned with coordination among different individual and social perspectives. In the present context, the relevance of social norms is simply to be acknowledged as a feature of social being. Yet we may note, in this context of social being, a characteristic of fundamental political importance: the relevance in every social situation of many societies and subsocieties, of many different roles and unisons. Status is not in fact—though it may in some cases be made so—a monolithic, seamless norm. The reason for this is that there is no one society, no one social group, of which we are all members and whose determinations of status take precedence over all others. We are all members of many societies and groups, and our reputations as well as our unisons vary with our memberships. The issue again is inexhaustibility, permeating our memberships in collectives and our reputation and status. An authoritarian, monolithic, rigid society is one that imposes narrow norms on divided social environments. Totalitarianism is typified by authoritarian standards of social conduct that permeate diverse social groups within a society, but other limitations of personal identity can be found in modern capitalist societies, '° as well as in many tribal cultures and feudal societies. Nevertheless, sociality is always in fact diversified, for we belong to many different, often highly varied societies and groups with very different standards and norms. Human unisons are inexhaustible; social roles are similarly inexhaustible. Family, work place, neighborhood, ethnic group, town, street, city, nation—all have different characteristics and accommodate different unisons and social roles. Sociality, membership in diverse and manifold

social groups, is not a diminution of inexhaustibility but one of its most prominent dimensions. The limitation of social possibilities is a consequence of political restrictions, not social being. Emancipation is therefore a freedom from narrow social and political conditions that enables us to partake more thoroughly of the possibilities inherent in our experience. There is no plausible answer in isolation to the imposition of rigid norms of status on members of social groups. The only plausible answer is through the

220 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING diversity of social memberships, a plurality of social roles, affording different kinds of reputation, often in opposition to each other. A person whose status is low at work may be an effective and loving parent and spouse. People who have no national prominence may have recognition in their town or at work. People who achieve little 1n some social spheres may achieve much in other spheres. The converse tn all these cases ts also frequently true, and high status in some groups is often accompanied by low status in others. It is no ideal to imagine either the abolition of status or the achievement of high status in all one’s social memberships. Social plurality is the only answer to political conformity and narrowness of expectations. It is a possibility only because of the inexhaustibility of social being, the inexhaustibility of diverse social roles and unisons. No political system can abolish the inexhaustibility of human unisons, especially the inexhaustibility of locations in diverse social orders and perspectives. It can impose a largely uniform system upon the diversity of memberships, a relatively uniform set of norms and expectations. That is the danger of political uniformity, a possibility amidst social diversity but by no means entailed

by it. . SOCIAL COLLECTIVES

I shall conclude my discussion of sociality with a brief examination of some of the major social collectives in human life along with some of their most impor-

tant attributes. The scale in terms of which we typically understand social being lies somewhere between the family and humanity. For that reason it will be particularly valuable to consider more extreme collectives along with those factors that define our common understanding of human being.

Humanity Is there a human society, a collective comprising all human beings? If we distinguish humanity from human sociality, membership in the human species from participation in a human society, then it is by no means obvious that to be a human being is to be a member of a comprehensive community, any more than that every citizen of a country is a member of a common society involving mutual interactions. Humanity comprises many societies and communities, intersecting and partly overlapping, but with no all-inclusive community or social union. This complexity of social being and community is perhaps the most striking and important feature of human social being, a natural consequence and manifestation of inexhaustibility. Yet there is an important form of social being, derived from the other side of

inexhaustibility, that pertains to all human beings as such, distinct from membership in a common species. This social being has been recognized among traditional social theorists, though almost always in relation to moral-

SOCIALITY 221 ity, severely limiting our understanding of it. When Hume speaks of our sympathy for other human beings as the basis of our common feelings of approval or revulsion, he is describing more than a species characteristic."” He is describing a sense of belonging toa community as well as a sense of similarity and likeness. It is possible, of course, that a common ancestry may be the basis of this sociality: members of an extended family constitute a community on the basis of inheritance. What is essential, I believe, more essential than the similarities of form and our common species, is the history that human beings share in common. Human society is an historical society. Where there is strong national identity, a common ethnic and patriotic bond, it is based on a common heritage, sometimes On a projected common future. By extension, our vivid sense of our human being as common, shared by other human beings, is far more historical than biological. It leads to the conviction that there is a world development, a world history, in which we are all participants. In its more extreme forms, it leads to an eschatology, the conviction that there is a drama in which human beings play a collective, cosmic role. Even where accompanied by narrower communities defined by divine commandment, a chosen people or a divine army, the chosen army works within a larger social environment that ts typically human. One of the most important links between our general social being and political practice is that the latter occurs within our complex surroundings, human and otherwise, but always influenced by our conviction that we belong, as human beings, to a comprehensive human society. Such a conception of our common humanity has a strongly political character, and the comprehensive human society has frequently been characterized by the rejection, by race or heritage, of many human beings from membership. The wider conception of human being and sociality marks a great political advance. Recent attempts to

expand the range of social being to include animals and other living things have a similarly political character. It is essential nevertheless to recognize the inexhaustibility of human being as manifested in the multiplicity of perspec-

_ tives on human collectivity, that there is no one historical society, no one human tradition, that human history in the aggregate is shaped and constructed as well as manifested and acknowledged. To presuppose the existence of an allinclusive social perspective is effectively foundational, incompatible with inexhaustibility and locality. But the project to establish wider connections and more comprehensive perspectives throughout conflicting and disjoint human

relationships is a manifestation of possibilities inherent in inexhaustibility. History and tradition function here to conjoin what has in fact historically been disruptive and opposed. The historical spheres of human social being, comprehending humanity, function more by location than by influence, as environments more than by interaction, as do most of our larger social institutions. It is seldom humanity

222 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING altogether or abstractly that influences any of our judgments; we are influenced by particular persons and communities. But all human judgments have public as well as private dimensions, and one of the most important forms of public

life is the relevance of judgments within a larger human society. Great actions—especially spiritual achievements—are judgments for humanity, often for posterity, more than they are contributions to any particular community. As such, they shape humanity and posterity as much as they contribute to any narrower form of human community. As human beings, we and our judgments belong to history, to human history, to the collectivity of human beings who regard themselves as human and who share a common set of perspectives. Such a history is not a simple, allembracing perspective, but a collection of perspectives. Human being and human history are to be identified, not with one all-inclusive perspective or society, but with a diversity of intersecting and overlapping locales. There is no history, no community, to which we all belong, to which our judgments contribute, but many wider, overlapping societies. Yet to the extent that a larger human social environment, a history shared by human beings as such, is not

prominent, fades in intensity, to that extent our identities as individual human beings are diminished. In this sense—Marx is one of those who understood this best—our human individuality and our sociality as human beings are intimately conjoined. This reciprocal complementarity is directly manifested in the public and private lives of our judgments. To judge, to produce, is to inhabit common, historical environments inclusive of and relevant to human beings as human, some manifested in actual communal relationships, others in potential forms of collectivity. To equate judgment with human being is effectively to designate some sphere of humanity as a wider social milieu in which our judgments are located.

Culture Closely related to the social environments identified with our historical humanity are those pervasive and historical communities that constitute the domain of human achievements. Culture here has a double meaning, a comprehensive one expressive of our generic humanity and a narrower one expressive of the idiosyncratic forms of human life relevant to a particular commu-

nity. I interpret the former to include all the major forms of articulative judgment that define the public, historical superaltern unisons of human societies—in the large and in the small, including communities and groups. Culture, low as well as high, comprises all these human forms of life, as well as what contributes to and expresses those forms. It is articulative in the sense that it is projected into other judgments, shaping and defining them. It 1s not always query, for it is not always reflexive and self-critical, not always profoundly interrogative. The difference between culture in general and human social history is that the latter includes the waste and accidents that contribute

SOCIALITY 223 to culture inadvertently, while culture is the sphere of productions manifested in further judgment. Hegel’s theory of history is, in these terms, one of history as culture, and lacks explicit consideration of the ways in which history is incurably and importantly filled with accidents and coincidences, with waste and irrelevance. It is furthermore only one—if a supreme expression—of the forms of unification possible in relation to human history. The second meaning of culture focuses not upon humanity in general, but upon differences among forms of life at different periods and in different societies. There is no all-embracing human perspective, and no all-embracing human culture. There are diverse social groupings at any time and throughout time, and, correspondingly, diverse cultures, for different peoples. This double meaning of culture is a direct expression of the complementarity of locatedness and transcendence. Its particular importance here is the associated principle that there is no overarching cultural form of life that is not differentiated by contrasts relative to other forms of life, no unqualified and absolute view of human history or human judgment. Culture is that form of life in which our human being is most distinctly manifested—manifested therefore in irreducibly diverse forms. Culture, in the narrower or wider sense, is closely related to query. Both are differentiated and inexhaustible. Both intimately express the fulfillment of our common humanity, participation in the achievements of our species; together they express the inexhaustibility of human accomplishments. It is possible to relate negatively to humanity and to any culture, but it is not possible to escape our humanity and all cultural locations. Culture is the social expression of the identification of human being with judgment, thereby with social forms of

life in which judgment passes on to other judgments through unending contributions. Public Being

The two widest forms of social being are perspectival locations for human judgment, characteristics of judgment and articulation, but not a sociality of

personal relationships. When we think of the latter, we think of family, friendship, and community. In such narrower social spheres, we act and judge for particular people, and this interaction of judgments upon each other is the expression and indication of personal relationships. We judge in relation to

humanity and culture, even in relation to social institutions—the market, governments and bureaucracies, corporations, the law—largely anonymously; other people are required as judges of our judgments in order to fulfill their articulative potential, but we may not know these others and may not even pay them heed. There is, however, an intermediate level of social interaction. This is our relationship to what J shall call the immediate public society, the sociality involved where we are “out in public.” In some cases, being in public is being among friends and acquaintances. Even one’s family is a public in the

224 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING sense involved, but so is an anonymous social sphere in which we know no one by name or person—traveling by bus or plane, dealing with clerks in department stores. The most common sense of social being is this anonymous but immediately present collectivity in which we relate to other people, often to attain specific practical ends, but also to achieve status, to define our location in the collectivity. I have noted this public, “expressive” mode of being in public—often with others we do not know and shall never meet again.” Certain social expectations define the character of social exchanges—words, phrases, dialogues, gestures.

We present ourselves in public in certain ways—present ourselves, in fact, with our families and friends. One of the ways to distinguish intimate communities from public society is that these communities present themselves collectively toa public. Nevertheless, while this general principle is true for friends

and family, sometimes, in a foreign city, we may find ourselves forced into communities with strangers insofar as we are presented to others as Americans or Europeans, tourists, collectives defined by geographical location, nationality, ethnic background, even common vocation. One of the most perceptive aspects of Sartre’s view of consciousness, despite its theoretical limitations, is his view of the Other.*' One of his greatest weaknesses is that his view of the Other is based almost entirely on anonymous public social spheres while he is largely interested itn personal social relationships in which we have closer ties than public presentation. In community, there is shared judgment and articulation; in public there are articulative judgments, but the shared perspectives are of diminished scope and value. This limitation of social being in the context of limited sharing and articulation is the mark of public social spheres and one of their most oppressive characteristics. We suffer opprobrium and receive honor, but we are not in other ways enriched here by human contact and interactive judgments. Such an anonymous public social sphere is an intermediary in any transitions from personal social relationships to wider social groups, and haunts our deepest sense of personal and human

identity. One of the most striking efforts of political utopianism is to transform anonymous public spheres, by political and social action, into either personal communities or common shared milieux of productive human relation-

ships. One of the weakest aspects of such utopianism is its neglect of the inexhaustibility inherent in human social being. Community I shall interpret the family as the smallest, most intimate social grouping, inclusive of friendship in its many forms as well as sexual relationships and the relationship of parents with children. The presence of children does not seem

| to me essential to the intimate social bondings that are close enough to be | considered family. While procreation is personal it may not be intimate, and the rearing of children may be communal, not familial. Community 1s the

SOCIALITY 225 largest social milieu in which intimacy and personal relationships are predominant. It is, I believe, remarkably rare in contemporary Western societies. I have defined articulation as judgment for the sake of further judgment; I have emphasized the public dimension of every judgment. The personal rela-

tionships inherent in community involve the production of judgments not only for the sake of other judgments—articulation—but for particular other persons. We act and even think for particular other people to respond to with their own judgments. In communities, judgments are articulative relative to particular persons. Such articulation may or may not be accompanied by feelings of intimacy and by love and affection. A torn and disrupted community, in which anger and resentment are prominent, is still a community, with personal responses and articulative judgments even where love and tenderness are in abeyance. Similarly, there can be feelings of intimacy, romantic fantasies, where there is little sharing and deficient community. Community is where life and experience are shared—shared as judgments are brought into the perspectives of other persons who respond with further judgments. There are scientific and artistic communities, but also communities of life, neighborhoods and friendships, enduring and transitory communities—among persons thrown together by circumstances or social procedures (for example, among members of an elected assembly). Among the most striking and intense of communities is the community of war, inclusive of both national solidarity and smaller communities of soldiers fighting together. One of the major differences between very small social groups—family and friendship—and larger communities is that articulation in the former is direct, judgment in response to judgment, while in larger communities, articulative judgments, though personal, come by mediation through other members of the community. Thus, a small town or a working group may achieve shared judgments not by direct personal contact, but through the mediation of other person’s judgments. This may be a source of error and confusion, but also of wider bonding and involvement. It explains the importance in communities of gossip—of talk about other people—since gossip is a prominent way in which personal details are shared throughout a community. Unfortunately, gossip is typically derogatory when most active, which may say something about the nature of community in human life. In a functioning and effective community, what is done by one member becomes known to the others by anecdote and display. The community shares its life together in that what members do is important to, shared by, other members. Judgments here are personally articulative, even to the extent that the

unisons of most members’ judgments are functions of judgments by other members. In a disrupted community, there is gossip and talk, acrimony and resentment, yet there may be the same degree of personal interaction and mediation without constructive contribution to personal judgments. It is often difficult for larger groups to maintain their stability, and the most effective

226 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING intimate social groups may be those in which personal interaction is required, where mediation by others can largely be avoided. This personal interaction is the basis of friendship and families, and suggests that small social groups have an effectiveness and value that no society will ever find a way to overcome entirely. Family and Friendship

It will be regarded as strange that I approach the family by minimizing its most obvious charactéristic: the relationship of kinship and the presence of children. [am concerned with those characteristics of social being that are relevant to human being, to the nature of judgment, and the more important relationships here are those of scale. Where there are extended families, kinship systems consisting of cousins at distant levels of remove, we have a form of

what I have called community—judgments interrelated by the mediation of other members of the family. And where there is no biological kinship there may still be intimacy, between husband and wife, among members of the same household, or close friends. Even sexual love is less intrinsic to the close bonding that I consider essential to the social being manifested in the family than one of its important means and in many cases its expected outcome.

It is also worth distinguishing the form of social being inherent in close bonding, manifested in the family as a social unit, from the political actions and responsibilities frequently taken on by kinship systems. We may again

note the striking bonds produced by military organizations, which on the whole are political units concerned, in wartime, with accomplishing particular goals through action, but which both produce and depend upon very close social bonds. War brings those who fight together into intimate social relationships. It produces a remarkable sense of social cohesion and community, in part based upon common, shared goals, essentially a political form of practice, but also, among soldiers who live and fight together, an extended family relationship in which each member responds to the actions and thoughts of others and is similarly responded to himself, largely without the mediation of other members of the group. A company of soldiers is bonded by proximity, a common goal, common authority, and social structure into as close a social bond as human beings may be capable of. The property I am taking as definitive here is the articulative reinforcement of judgment that a small and stable social group enjoys. In a conventional nu-

clear family, there is a microcosmic sphere produced by the fact that each member, who belongs to many social groups, brings his different memberships to the family where they become part of family life and character—and of course reciprocally. The bonding I have described is the articulation of judgments by other members of the family or group and even by the family unit asa whole to the extent that it produces above and beyond its members’ produc-

tions. The articulation is judgment in response to judgment without the me-

SOCIALITY 227 diation of other people, or where that mediation is relatively reduced (for it can never be eliminated). The ways in which articulation occurs in a small group

are inexhaustible: not only responses to words and thoughts by words and thoughts, but emotional interactions and reinforcements, a host of ways in which each member identifies himself and what he does, profoundly a function of his family relationships. If psychoanalysis is to be taken as testimony of any social and human truths, it is that the actions and reactions of members of a family are profoundly indicative of and influential upon the character of each of them, but especially

the children. The identities and characteristics of parents are overpowering shaping forces upon the personalities and actions of their children, throughout the rest of their lives. If Marxism is to be taken as testimony of any social and human truths, it is that the actions and reactions of members of a family are profoundly reactive to (but largely not influential upon) the wider social milieux to which these members belong and in which they work and produce. The family here constitutes a meeting place in which large-scale social forces interact intensely as a result of the social bonds and articulative judgments among members of the family.*” The family here is not a haven from a wider social world, but has its special character in the mutual articulative judgments of its members. Such bonding may be inhibitive and disruptive, but when successful and restorative, permits family members to gain powers from each other that make them far more effective agents than they could be alone. Many small communities—and some larger ones—have the same capacities of reinforcement. But they do not on the whole have the intensity of relationships in which articulation is without mediation by others. This is in part why many larger social groups have at their center a core that is essentially an extended family unit constituting the leadership, whose core judgments inhabit an immediate articulative and reinforcing sphere. The presence of children in a family offers to it a promise for the future that no alternative form of social bonding can provide, though there are political alliances and institutional forms that offer both a projection into the future and the greater stability and endurance that one’s personal descendants can promise. In this very important sense, involving the future, there is a side of family life and articulative relationships, throughout time, that is defective without children or other forms of future projection. It is one of the most remarkable features of human social and cultural life that there are such other forms and that they may be very effective (for example, in religion and art). The closeness of the ties in a family unit—in the directly responsive social group I have described—can be either profoundly reinforcing or deeply disruptive. It is also greatly dependent on the wider social milieux in which the unit is located, and is a function of the personal identities of the unit’s members. This reciprocity of personal and group identities, a function of the immediacy of articulation of judgment, is the distinguishing feature of the smallest

228 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING social unit, and one of its most important characteristics. In this sense, there are extended families—religious communities, extended households, neighborhoods—where personal identity and development and group identity and interaction are largely inseparable. This is the most coherent sense of social being, not necessarily the most effective or pervasive, and marks the strongest sense in which sociality is a function of human being rather than a form of action. Included here are intimate friendships. Friendship is, I believe, one of the most important avenues to incorporating the personal judgments of others into our own judgments.

Work ,

To this point I have discussed those forms of sociality in which other people and their judgments engender important human relationships, realized in the articulation of judgments in social contexts and the production of collective judgments. Social being here is a function of individuals and collectives as judges. There are other, somewhat different social relationships, of great tmportance, that inhabit the middle ground between social being and political judgment, and are to be understood as collectives more of judgment than of persons, as environments more than spheres of personal relationships. Institutions, businesses, governments, and technology all have many participants but are characterized more by impersonality than by personal interactions. In this form of social being, the relevant judgments and properties are aggregative and collective far more than personal, though they have enormous influence upon individual human beings. Work, especially the differentiation of vocations and of roles within a given vocation, is a primary source of impersonal collectives. I do not mean to deny that the work place often engenders intimate communities, or that work in smaller, tribal communities may function largely to define roles and communal relationships, but to emphasize that the general characteristics of work in modern society are not to be found in community, in interactions among individuals. They are collective and distributive, a function of role and type more than person. This is one of the greatest insights of Marxist theory, that the means of production in modern industrial society are generic, largely impersonally but profoundly influential upon the lives of individual human beings, indifferent to their particular identities and judgments and productive of even greater anonymity and impersonality. Work and its associated institutions— corporations, businesses, bureaucracies, the market place—are collectives with collective products, judgmental in ways that in general cannot be traced to individual and personal judgments. Marx’s claim that human beings under capitalism become mechanized, replaceable indifferently by other human beings, is not so radical a conclusion if we understand that what is involved is nothing other than the authority and legitimacy of collective judgments and products in relation to which individual judgments are peripheral.

SOCIALITY 229 The collectivity and sociality of work and its associated institutions are not personal and consequently not communal. Work and means of production differentiate humanity, society, and even culture by stratifications that have little to do with personal interactions. Marxism’s claims to the primacy of collective production and to its own authority over the future may be extreme and implausible, but its characterization of the social and institutional qualities of human life in contrast with community and personal interactions is an important contribution to social theory. How human beings in an industrial society work, what they produce and the techniques they employ, stratify societies into groups whose members belong together by identity and production but whose personal interactions are of marginal effectiveness. In the tradition, property and labor belong together. But the tradition also presupposes a rights theory of value. The issue here is political: how ownership and production should be distributed in society to maximal benefit, however that is defined. It is clear, however, that property is a social construct in the double sense that one person’s ownership entails that others cannot also own the same property, and that communities are required for the legitimization of property. Property is like marriage: neither could be intelligible in the absence of social and political relationships, though both involve relationships that transcend their social conditions. Property and the distribution of goods are forms of social being; economic practices that enforce a particular distribution are political acts. But labor and property, largely collective and social, differentiate the collectivities quite differently from more personal social relationships, family and community. The utopian assumption—still within the domain of politics—-is that there is a harmony among different collectives that allows them to be reconciled in humanly ideal ways. In this context, Marx was no less utopian than his predecessors.”’ In social terms alone, in relation to capitalism but setting the political questions aside, the claims of dialectical materialism are that there are inexhaustibly diverse and complex forms of collectivity in human life, of enormous influence, that are largely remote from what individual human beings do and produce. Social—institutional spheres—economic, bureaucratic, and legal— take on lives of their own along with and in competition with the other social forms of human being. Marxist theory offers profound testimony to the inexhaustibility of human being, social and collective being, though it does not adequately face the implications of this inexhaustibility for collective forms of

political action.” | Work is not more important than, not more primary than, other forms of social and collective human being, though it is remarkably influential throughout human life. Its most remarkable character is that it defines very different collectives from other forms of social being. What we may say, I believe, is that work forcefully manifests the inexhaustibility of human collective being, presenting an impossible challenge to collective forms of action. Here

230 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING industrialization, technology, the rapidity of change in contemporary life, the transformation and destruction of the environment, urbanization and urban decay, all are manifestations of the inexhaustibility and uncontrollability of human collectivity, of human social being. The implications for utopian or ideal political theory are disastrous.

Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, and Nationality Among the manifold spheres of relationships with other people in which most human beings find themselves located, and in which they play different roles with different unisons, some are of a scale and character that seem largely perverse, in conflict with most relationships characteristic of human being. I have suggested that work in modern industrial society defines a wealth of public and social spheres that offer neither community nor personal development to most of their members. Yet there are genuine communities in many work places, and work is an important form of judgment, even of query, thereby a manifestation of what is essential to human being. In this respect, Marx’s identification of human being with labor and production embodies a profound insight, except that he does not use a sufficiently generic characterization of human production. Still, the intimate relationship of work with our humanity, conjoined with its impersonality and the coercive effects of economic necessity, produces an incompatibility of scale for most human beings, who are forced by time and role to define themselves in terms of what they do and produce, while work is regarded as an essentially alien activity performed from necessity, not from choice. Similar pervasive incongruities inhabit many other socially defined categories, some of which are of great importance in contemporary life. It is almost impossible to separate the sociality of these categories as forms of human being from the political forms that support them, but it is important to attempt to do so, for whatever political resolution we come to, it is likely that these types of social classification will continue to function as categories definitive of human being. It may well be that the prominence of social identities characterized by race, ethnic group, sexuality, or social preference, even nationality, 1s the more profound political and social issue, far more than more abstract questions of justice and equality. The fundamental incongruity is that none of these social classifications represents a form of community, or even a genuine form of social interaction. Nationalism is one of the most powerful of contemporary forms of social cohesion, a suprapersonal force that, to many who commit their loyalties to their country or ethnic tradition, offers an effective sense of identity and an organizing system within which their different projects may be given significance and importance. But, equally, many members of an ethnic and national group are coerced to join and are assigned social identities by location and birth, not by voluntary association. The political issue is one of freedom, the choice of group

SOCIALITY 231 to which one will give one’s allegiance. But the point here in the context of social being is that every person is a member simultaneously of manifold social

groups, some large and some small. Ethnic and national identities rise to prominence by effectively diminishing the relevance and significance of other

social allegiances and identities. Such coercive prominence is political, grounded most often in authority rather than effectiveness. I am arguing that whatever its political value, it is socially arbitrary, and almost always impersonal and unjust. The political manifestation of the incongruity is that assignment to a na-

tional or ethnic group by others is nearly always oppressive, unjust, and inegalitarian. Yet allegiance to such a group is an important form of social being and personal identity. There is this two-faced character of social being in

all the cases I have discussed. It is a function in large measure of the exclusiveness of social membership. If one belongs to a group, then those who do

not belong are Other—blacks, Jews, Italians, or women. The presence and intersection of many overlapping social groupings produces competing loyalties for reputation and status even in the absence of overt injustice and oppression.

Thus, ethnic and racial identity is nearly always divided between proud affirmation of a common heritage and purpose and awareness of common oppression and political impotence. Coupled with this is the assignment by other social groups of persons to racial membership. Thus, social identity is almost always divided within itself in relation to other social groups by different identities and reputations, and inevitably has coercive effects upon individuals who would choose other social and communal alignments. It seems impossible to discuss the kinds of social identities involved here without discussing coercion and freedom of choice. This is partly because of the political nature of the history of these social roles, but it is also acknowledgment that social relationships are almost always power relationships. The point in any case is that these social groupings inevitably compete with other social and individual roles and identities, creating great tensions and conflicts. If racial, ethnic, and national identities were only oppressive, they would not be so difficult to understand. But they are also forms of social identity of great importance to their individual members. One of the clearest examples manifesting this tension is social identity by sexuality. Feminists argue that women have systematically been treated unjustly, particularly at work but in many other social contexts as well. Feminists

also argue—quite like blacks, and with equal legitimacy—that there is no escaping feminine (or black) identity, not at least in wider social and political environments. Some feminists have argued for androgyny, a neutral sexuality. In the meanwhile, ethnic identification is rapidly increasing, and many feminists have found that women’s identity groups are essential to their political programs. For women do identify as women, and have much to gain by greater

23,2 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING identification. The tension, I believe, is unresolvable, for women belong not only to the class (not society) of women, but to humanity, to ethnic groups, to families, and to other communities. Similarly, blacks and Jews belong not

only to their races and traditions, but to their countries and families, to smaller and larger social groups and communities. There is enormous injustice, exploitation and oppression, in relation to the social groupings being discussed here, and I would be the first to argue that political measures are required for the political problems and injustices. (I would argue, however, that there are no political “solutions,” only continuing

political efforts conjoined with unceasing and penetrating criticism.) The question in the context of social being, however, given the inexhaustible wealth of social relationships, some of which are chosen and others of which are

assigned, but all of which are important for personal and human identity, is whether we can reasonably expect the coexistence of many groupings, each defining reputation and identity, each conflicting with other groupings and identities, to be resolvable without fundamental conflicts. If human beings were all the same in some specifiable respects (color of skin, religion, ethnic tradition), there would still be important and widespread social differences (by sexual identity, size of family, location, and so forth). It would appear that only total homogeneity of social being could diminish oppressive social conflicts— a homogeneity that would be disastrous for human life but also incompatible with inexhaustibility. This fact of social being poses a problem for political resolution, and requires measures that will minimize injustice and oppression. However, the resolution of the political issues at the level of justice will not

eliminate the conflicts and tensions in human life that are a function of inexhaustible and manifold social being. Love and Other Emotions I have discussed emotion primarily in the context of practical judgment. Such an approach has clear advantages over beginning with emotion in the context of social relationships, particularly because there are no emotions that cannot be directed toward impersonal features of our environment. We grow angry at machines and the weather as well as with ourselves. We may love possessions as well as persons, may be proud of what we own as well as what we can do.

In addition, the ways in which emotions can be shaped rationally and in which they shape our surroundings and character are important features of our rationality. Nevertheless, emotions pervade and inhabit our social environments and take on the character they do in terms of social norms and expectations. We may find it unacceptable to display certain forms of anger where such displays are considered unacceptable. Yet we should not imagine that society’s role in relation to our emotions is always negative, for by social interactions we may

SOCIALITY 233 come to understand how particular emotional displays and actions can be more effective than others.” There is an important tradition in which emotions and social relationships are intertwined, primarily in connection with the emotion of love. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I would question whether everyone in contemporary life loves himself without qualification, enough to be the paradigm of social bonding. But, far more important, I consider this view of social bonds completely in error. Can one love humanity? Ivan Karamazov claims that he cannot, implying that the notion is absurd. Yet clearly he is defective in Dostoievski's eyes, and Christian love must be conceived to be embracing and impersonal. I have explained my view of love and why I take for granted that there are manifold forms of love, sexual and parental, communal and religious. What I object to is the identification of social bonding with love of any kind. No doubt there are families and friendships—very small social groups—where love and affection are predominant and reciprocated. But the characteristic feature of even these groups is the direct articulation of members’ judgments by the judgments of other members. It is a form of direct interaction. There are families where love has soured yet where there is intimate interaction. Conversely, there can be great affection and passion but also distance and little effective articulation. Social bonding, as I see it, is the reciprocal interaction of individual and collective judgments through articulative judgment. Human being is social being because what human beings do ts characterized by collective judgments, and conversely. In large social groups, individuals interact through the mediation of others, not necessarily face to face and not necessarily out of love. Love and altruism can be important in face-to-face encounters, especially where moral concerns are prominent, but are not necessary to morality or appropriate to large-scale social bonds. There are people who will help an injured stranger, and others who will not. We can have no reservations about whether it is better to help a stranger who needs help, only whether altruism and generosity must be functions of love. They may, I believe, be functions of many different kinds of social bonds. We may help others out of charity, love, generosity, or sympathy, but also out of duty, responsibility, a sense of common humanity, even from a sense of honor, reputation, or personal integrity. The question of why we would help another cannot be given a uniform answer. The more important question is whether we should and under what circumstances. The questions, then, are moral and political, questions of practical judgment not emotion. Emotions interrogate our Capacities to act, but we must be able to act effectively even against our clashing emotions if they are not adequate to our circumstances. There is all the difference in the world between fear and cowardice, similarly all the difference in the world between not loving another and refusing him aid.

234 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Perhaps we would all be better and more admirable persons if our emotions were compatible with our duties in every case. Yet I think this notion is naive, even unintelligible, and betrays a simplistic view of both emotions and obligations. We may recall the example of the athlete whose emotions are trained for tournament competition. Clearly he must be able to play well even when he is not at his best—not at his emotional or physical best. The idea that our emotions could be entirely or even largely compatible with our duties and aims is

both perfectionistic and incongruous with their epistemic character. For if emotions are interrogative and cognitive, they will be confused and mistaken a

good deal of the time. They cannot be interrogative and yet be (or give) the correct answer all the time. Love is a form of practical judgment in which we interrogate and judge our capabilities as practical agents. In order for love to be judgmental and interrogative, it must be able to pose questions where we do not have answers or have the wrong answers. There must then be a tension, even a conflict, between our love for others and, on the one hand, what we feel capable of doing for and with them, and on the other, our capabilities and our absence of feeling when it ts lacking. This tension is the basis of the interrogativeness of our emotion of love, and is essential if we are to be able to modify our feelings in accordance with circumstances. Thus, we try to act as our emotions tell us to do, though we often feel impotent, and by acting we learn to become more effective and more charitable. Similarly, if we act from duty, perhaps from sympathy, toward others whom we do not love, we may become less fearful of caring

for them, able to trust our emotions and our capabilities. Just as practical judgments occur amidst inexhaustibly complex demands and requirements, emotions compete with other practical judgments amidst complex circumstances, and complete congruence between our feelings and our deeds would be unintelligible, entirely incompatible with inexhaustibility. Love cannot be the basis for satisfactory practical judgments in all our dealings with others any more than any form of practical query can bring guaranteed results. To the contrary, failure is the natural prospect in practical query, and love, interrogating what we can and ought to do toward others, constantly flirts with failure in our never knowing what its consequences will be. We may love everyone, and treat them with good intentions, only to do them irreparable harm. We may love those whose emotions are in irreconcilable conflict so that our love renders us impotent. Finally, we may not love others but may esteem and honor them, and may act charitably toward them seeking their love and our consequent enhanced capacities of love. Love here is less the basis of social bonds than the conviction that we are able to be effective in our dealings with others, that we are important to them and that they are important for and influential upon us. In any case, love is less a form of being than a form of practice. That is why it would be inappropriate for it to provide the bonds of social being.

SOCIALITY 235 NOTES

1. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. 2. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Gateway, 1946). 3. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. 4. Sartre, Bezng and Nothingness. 5. Harré, Social Being. 6. See here Buchler, Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment, p. 114: “Perspectives, then, can be shared by different proceivers, just as objects can (though not a// perspectives are sharable)... .” See also: “To say that different proceivers share the same perspective is to say that the order in which each is related to a class of procepts is one and the same order. But some relations or orders are unique and unrepeated, even though they are, in part, of acommon and repeatable character, and an instance of such an order would be the proceptive

domain itself” (ibid., pp. 124-25). 7. See ibid., p. 46: “If utterance is the realization or fulfillment of discovery, articulation is the realization of utterance. . . . more fundamentally, there is no reason why all products whatever may not be said to be susceptible of articulation. Articulation is the manipulation (and the implied proceptive deliverance) of products as ends

in themselves, that is, as subjects of communication for the sake only of further communication.” 8. Any other conclusion is foundational and is incompatible with inexhaustibility. This includes such positions as Habermas’ conception (in Communication and the Evolu-

tion of Society) of ideal communication, essentially a foundational notion. But it includes as well all social scientific theories that would provide an exhaustive perspective on human experience, especially social life, and all political theories that would derive a program of action from theoretical principles of social being. 9. See my Perspective in Whitehead’s Metaphysics, for a detailed discussion of White-

head’s theory and, in particular, of the fundamental conflicts in his theory between what I call the “principle of perspective” and the “cosmological principle.” 10. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 89. 11. See my Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics and Perspective in Whitehead’ Metaphysics for a detailed discussion of perspectivity in relation to Whitehead’s theory. 12. Goffman, Relations in Public; Harré, Social Being.

13. We may note here Australian aboriginal art, which is often produced on the interior surfaces of temporary dwellings that are then abandoned with seasonal changes. The ornamentation here appears to play a far more profound human role than any utilitarian interpretation can sustain.

It is nevertheless interesting to note that Kant explicitly denies that an isolated individual would concern himself with ornamentation: ‘““A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he grow plants, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only

in society that it occurs to him to be, not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others and who is not contented wich an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others” (Critique of Judgment, 841, trans. Bernard, p. 139). Kant's primary concern is with the sociality of an empirical interest in beauty, and is compatible with my analysis here, but it does greatly diminish the role of beauty in human life to be restricted entirely to community and collectives. I4. See note 12.

236 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING 15. Goffman, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Relations in Public, and Forms of Talk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981): Harré, Social Being. 16. Goffman, Relations in Public. 17. In Theory of Art. 18. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. See also Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society.

19. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), Part III. 20. Harré, Social Being; Goffman, Relations in Public. 21. Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

22. This insight into the confluence of social forces within the family is one of the primary contributions of critical theory, as expressed by Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas, though the last is apparently more interested in the combined epistemic and normative paradigms of Marxist theory and psychoanalysis than in the combination of social influences that characterizes family relationships. 23. Moreover, utopianism is a form of foundationalism, and is incompatible with inexhaustibility. In the context of inexhaustibility, politics can have no ideal resolution. This is the major concern of the discussion in the next chapter. 24. No social theory can entail a program of political action, can establish the means to or norms of emancipation, not simply because values are distinct from truths but because political action inhabits the inexhaustible reaches of human social life that theory can clarify only in part, in certain respects. 25. See Catherine Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988) for an anthropological analysis of the social-constructive character of emotions.

6

POLITICS I HAVE DISTINGUISHED sociality from politics, have argued that sociality 1s a

mode of being and politics a mode of judgment. Human being is social in the sense that the locales in which humans function are collective and social as well as individual and material. Political questions—of welfare and justice—are questions not of being but of practice. The view that social being is the foundation of political activity is deeply misleading with respect to both social relationships and political judgment. The history of political theory, including the twentieth century, is replete

with confusions, thoroughly obscuring our understanding of politics. The most prominent distortion consists in so misrepresenting the nature of politics as to repudiate the integrity of collective activities. The most influential West-

ern theoretical position is contractarian,' and defines politics in terms of an original condition—the state of nature—that is not political at all, neither collective nor public. Its most influential alternative, utilitarianism, acknowledges the importance of collective norms but assumes that they are derivable from individual interests. The possibility that public and private norms may be profoundly incompatible appears to jeopardize the intelligibility of political judgments. Such a view of intelligibility depends on antecedent, unconditioned principles and is foundational. We can understand the natural-rights theory in its historical context, a concern for the legitimacy of individual rights against the power of the monarchy and the Church. How can one establish the rights of individuals in the context of entrenched collective powers? But the traditional solution is no solution at all. If there are only individual rights, if individuals’ interests are the only legitimate interests, then established collective powers are intrinsically illegitimate. The fundamental political question, of adjudication among conflicting spheres of activity, especially among locales of different scale, individual and collective, fades into unintelligibility, transformed into a question of balance among individual rights. Politics is transformed into morality; and collectives, into aggregates of individuals without collective sovereignty. The fundamental errors of traditional political theory are to interpret the spheres of politics so that they have no legitimacy, transforming politics into morality, and to regard collectives as but a sum of individuals, effectively denying the reality of collective being. The mistakes are parallel and mark

238 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING foundationalism in political theory. To begin with the state of nature is to postulate a completely apolitical condition. Yet the first truth of politics is that we are always immersed tn locales of conflicting relationships, that political practice is always preceded by political circumstances, consequently, that every

political project is impure. There can be no insight for political practice derived from apolitical assumptions. Similarly, there is no individual human being antecedent to and independent of human social relationships. If human being is always social being, then human interests are always collective as well as individual. There is no individuality in the absence of a social context; there is no state of nature that can intelligibly be the basis of political authority, as if

collective authority derives from a noncollective sphere. The fundamental principle of politics is that one form of political practice is always the basis for and milieu for another.

I have defined sociality as a prominent form of human being, politics as a prominent form of practical judgment. It is that form of practical judgment that we are required to undertake in the context of inexhaustibility— particularly, practices required by the intersection of human loci of different scales. One of the important reasons for separating social being from political judgment is to understand those aspects of politics that are not traceable to sociality. For example, discussions of sociality frequently lead directly from the presence of other persons to the authority of the state.’ I consider this as serious an error as the two described above. Political judgment is concerned with adjudicating conflicts and tensions among the spheres of judgment of different persons. But it is also concerned with adjudicating tensions among spheres of differing measures where social relationships are largely absent (for example, involving territory, environment, and resources). It no doubt seems plausible that the concerns of political authorities with locales of great scope are always at least indirectly social, that we are concerned with territory and environment because of their consequences for human beings. While it would be absurd to deny this position altogether, it is misleading as to the nature of political judgment. Imagine the existence of a single person, all other human beings having died in a plague, but with most technological resources intact. It is sometimes claimed that a person alone cannot even appeal to moral principles, for they necessarily entail social relationships. Such a view seems absurd when we consider the obligations such a person would have to himself. Perhaps he will commit suicide or take refuge in pleasure and comfort; but such a decision has a clear moral character. What must

be meant is that in the absence of competing points of view, an agent may simply do whatever he wants to do. Yet this view also seems wrong, for there are always competing alternatives, even for a single agent, between which he must choose. Even alone, a person is faced with large-scale as well as local demands. Should one concern oneself only with comfort and pleasure, with the

POLITICS 239 suffering of animals, or with preservation of human artifacts for some other beings in the remote future? The latter two are political judgments at a different scale from private or moral judgments. We can neglect political concerns, believing we are impotent; we can neglect them because we give precedence to our own pleasures. Both are political judgments, about priorities and powers. Politics is practical judgment concerned with human locales of great scale. We may comsider these loci “public” if we do not too casually identify them with sociality. I have spoken of “‘collective” spheres to make this distinction: individual spheres in which consequences of action are relatively confined and restricted, collective spheres in which actions have far-reaching consequences.

All practical judgments may be regarded as political, since no absolute line may be drawn between individual and collective spheres. Such a conclusion ts correct to the extent that moral ideals and principles continue to be relevant within collectives. I shall argue that there are no uniquely political ideals, only human ideals, that there is no political morality that is not an individual morality. Politics is the sphere of practical judgment where compromise and adjudication are required. Moral or individual spheres allow us to consider the possibility of following principles and ideals without compromise, primarily because relatively little is at stake. Politics is practical judgment concerned with intersecting spheres of different scales, incompatible measures, some of which are collective in nature. Politics presupposes collective perspectives and community, though its pur-

view is wider than that of social being. It is inescapable in that we find ourselves constantly immersed in conflicting spheres requiring political judgment and adjudication. I have noted the two fundamental confusions of politi-

cal theory in seeking an understanding of politics in essentially apolitical terms: assumptions concerning a prior, noncollective state of nature or concerning individual interests in the absence of collectives. It is an equal error to

suppose that questions of social being are essentially questions of political judgment, that the fundamental question of sociality is of the legitimate authority of the state. The state, indeed, is not the sole agent—-or even a necessary agent—-of political undertakings. The two confusions I have discussed pervade political theory. Similar confu-

sions can be identified in the political literature. Several can be found in Rawls's A Theory of Justice.’ Rawls’s theory is contractarian, and his originalposition argument is no better in seeking to derive a political theory from apo-

litical assumptions than the natural-rights theories discussed above or the impartial-observer theories he criticizes. Rawls defines not a political theory of justice—replete with compromise and complexity—but a moral theory. All theories of justice that seek to give it norms and ideal principles, unqualifiedly, are moral, not political. Rawls claims that:

240 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.‘

This claim betrays his essentially apolitical view of justice, for politics can have no inviolable norms. In addition, there are some clear differences between the

way truth functions in assertive judgment and the way justice functions in politics. However complex and perspectival it may be, truth is the defining condition of propositional thought; justice is only one among many criteria definitive of politics. Rawls himself acknowledges this: Some measure of agreement in conceptions of justice is, however, not the only prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability. Thus the plans of individuals need to be fitted together so that their activities are compatible with one another and they can all be carried through without anyone's legitimate expectations being severely disappointed.’

Justice as fairness competes with stability, coordination, and efficiency. There are many societies in which fairness is sacrificed to stability, and many controversies over whether a fair society that diminishes efficiency and productivity would be desirable. Rawls’s view that justice is to be defined independent of other political considerations betrays the apolitical nature of his views. Rather, I would say, the question of political justice is how we are to attain a satisfactory resolution of the competing collective requirements. A similar limitation can be found in Habermas. He affirms the immersion of political judgments in political circumstances, but defines an apolitical notion of rationality to resolve the theoretical question of how a true consciousness can emerge from such immersion—a rationality founded on “norms of undistorted communication.” He argues, for example, that psychoanalysis can

postulate the development of ego strength in therapy only by postulating an ideal of rationality: “it becomes clear that psychoanalysis also singles out certain personality structures as ideal. When psychoanalysis is interpreted as a

form of language analysis, its normative meaning is exhibited in the fact that the structural model of ego, id, and superego presupposes unconstrained,

pathologically undistorted communication.”° He defines such undistorted communication in terms of tacit validity claims. Speaker and hearer can reciprocally motivate one another to recognize validity claims because the content of the speaker's engagement is determined by a specific reference to a thematically stressed validity claim, whereby the speaker, ina cognitively testable way, assumes with a truth claim, obligations to provide grounds, with a rightness claim, obligations to provide justification, and with a truthfulness claim, obligations to prove trustworthy. ’

POLITICS 241 Habermas is correct that communication and judgment presuppose norms of validation, but his assumption that these can be defined antecedent to the process of validation is foundational. Far more important, the assumption that there are such undistorted, unconflicted norms is antithetic to any genuine political process, which is thoroughly immersed in political conditions and derives its norms from political practices. Habermas’ fundamental concern is to establish a social and political theory with emancipatory intent. However, due to its foundational elements, the theory is effectively apolitical, at least in part. His view of communicative norms must be replaced by the norms of query, emergent in its ongoing, interrogative, and self-critical activities, and emancipation must be realized as the fulfillment of “‘real” needs defined by local political practices. There is no substitute in politics for politics itself. Marxists and their followers, including the critical theorists, fail in some respects to acknowledge this sobering truth. The failure is somewhat ironic, since they deserve full credit for bringing the pervasiveness of ideology and immersion in social conditions to our attention. It is appropriate here to return to Plato, for the Platonic arguments cover the field of politics far more thoroughly than do those of his followers. The Republic has been criticized for many faults—autocracy, totalitarianism, disregard for

human rights, and so forth. It does indeed suffer from fundamental defects, though I am convinced that Plato was aware of them and J do not identify his position with Socrates’. More important, however, justice is not defined tn the Republic as a virtue independent of political and social order, but requires construction of an entire society for its intelligibility. I interpret this to indicate that Plato’s understanding is political in the best sense, that he recognizes that political questions are questions of collectivity, of authority, power, coordination, and interaction. Justice is a principle necessary for collective order. It is true that the Republic assumes a harmonization of interests and concerns, assumes that a perfect balance can be attained among the ends of different individuals and different classes, including the requirements of the entire society. Ic has been suggested that the Republic sacrifices far too much to the overriding concerns of justice.” But if so, if that is the purpose of the Republic, to make us

see the limits of carrying even justice to an extreme, it is in the context of an awareness of the comprehensive ramifications of political judgment. Moreover, there are recurrent signals that Plato (or Socrates) is aware of the sacrifices that he is demanding of his citizens. Nevertheless, even Plato asks us to understand political and collective judgment in the context of a society designed de novo, though it is a social and collective design. The profound and inescapable truth of political judgment is that it always occurs in an established collective

context from which it cannot be separated.’ Locality is the insistent truth of politics. All judgment is perspectivally located and depends on established conditions. Yet in most spheres other than the political, there is a relevant tradi-

242 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING tional ideal that would transcend conditions. Truth is perspectival yet looks to unlimited generalization and extension. Moral principles and ideals transcend

their originative conditions. Works of art and philosophical theories offer themselves as timeless and transcendent, though their historical locations are

essential to their intelligibility and accessibility. But if all these different spheres of judgment and rationality are complementarily transcendent and located, there must be a form of judgment that is transcendent not by escape from conditions, even by suggestion, but for which conditions are the basis of rationality—a form of rationality responsible for confronting conditions without external recourse. Politics is that form of judgment, practical judgment, concerned with reconciliation among the multiple and incompatible locations of human beings, the inexhaustibility of human conditions and perspectives, the establishment of order within incompatible spheres. This inexhaustibility threatens every political sphere with failure, but it offers as well the continuing promise of alternative possibilities. Every political and social sphere, every tradition, is profoundly divided within itself, the source of political conflicts but also of the alternatives that politics requires to be effective and rational. I have rejected the identification of political judgment with social being. [ have argued that questions of the legitimacy of collective authority, especially that of the state, are important to but not definitive of politics. I have emphasized the collectivity and scale of political judgments, so that arguments about justice and natural rights are to be regarded as far too often apolitical. There are other interpretations of politics that are more generic than the ones I have discussed. I have in mind the identification of politics with power and with

policy.” The former is very important but fails to accommodate the scale essential to politics, so that power in the sense of control and judgment is blurred between individual and collective spheres. Power is general enough to be identified with practical judgment altogether. Here power is not restricted

to authority over persons, but includes control of things and machines, of whatever we may regard as an instrument. The difficulty is that this view of

politics does not distinguish it from other spheres of practical judgment. I would identify practical judgment with the exercise of power, but such a definition does not emphasize the disparity of scales and conflicts essential to politics. The identification of politics with questions of policy follows naturally from the level of generality of political judgment, for policies mediate among disparate and conflicting spheres of practice and control. Nevertheless, practical judgments are not just rules and policies, but themselves actions, and must include those undertakings—in war and peace—that establish control even where they deviate from policy. Policy is to politics as practices are to moral-

ity: essential and prominent, but not identical with the relevant practical judgments. The central feature of politics is its constant confrontation with failure due

POLITICS 243 to inexhaustibility. Utopian politics is in this sense no politics. Marx understood this truth as no other political philosopher has, though he does not entirely escape the weaknesses of utopianism. Utopian theories presuppose precisely what would make political practice unnecessary: a perfect resolution of all spheres of individual, social, and collective character. Politics is that form of practical judgment that is necessary because of locality and inexhaustibility, while all attempts to define ideals of justice and harmony presuppose an absolute limit on inexhaustibility. Locality is the fundamental condition of being and human being, a complementarity in every location of determinateness and indeterminateness, conditions and transcendence. But whereas in assertive and fabricative judgment, inexhaustibility and transcendence open rationality to novelty and invention, providing the exhilaration of discovery, to rational interrogation upon interrogation, practical judgment, which seeks control, 1s inescapably haunted by threats of failure and prospects of disorder. Politics is that sphere of judgment in which failure is not only probable but unavoidable in some locales. Utopianism here is apolitical in presupposing an ideal harmony of concerns, a supreme order of differing perspectives. Politics, as I see it, is that sphere of judgment where inexhaustibility produces unresolvable conflicts. A utopian and ideal politics is in this sense self-contradictory. To define politics in terms of scale and mismeasure in judgment associates it closely with inexhaustibility; it is the face of inexhaustibility manifested through practical judgment. Yet traditional views of politics largely fail to acknowledge its inexhaustibility. Politics is not equivalent with public morality—though every public morality is of political importance—because there are administrative facets of political practice that are of minimal moral relevance. Similarly, the view that the central issue of politics is justice, as Rawls claims it is, overemphasizes the moral side of political judgment, neglecting the importance of conciliation, diplomacy, and communication—all political as well as administrative virtues. A just government might well be administratively inept, unable to accomplish what its moral ideals demand. An authoritarian government might be administratively effective, accomplishing beneficial results for its citizens despite the inequity of its standards. The association of politics with the establishment of policy is similarly inadequate, neglecting the administrative side of political agency. Too many traditional views of politics attempt to explain it by denying its nature, denying both sociality and publicity. Thus, the contractarian theory of politics is both asocial and apolitical, effectively ignoring the ways in which individuals belong to social groups and are affected by them, ignoring as well the public nature of all human judgments. We cannot develop an adequate theory of politics from individual interests, not only because interests are socially influenced and conditioned, not only because most human beings share interests in common and have interests directed toward other people—two important forms of social being and locality——but because such interests are

244 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING the merest part of the disparate perspectives that constitute the foci of political judgments. Politics is as concerned with allegiance, commitment, patriotism, loyalty, reverence, and social bonding as it is with goods and benefits.

Politics cannot be equated with government and the state. The claim that the fundamental political question is that of legitimate authority——why should I obey the state?''—-is misleading in at least two important ways. One is that the state is not the sole agency of political practice; indeed, in many ways it is but a minor agency. Economic and social institutions are often of far greater political importance. The state is only the most visible form of political agency, employing the most visible forms of coercion. Its very visibility may make it less powerful than more covert forms; its very coerciveness may make

it more vulnerable than more subtle forms. In addition, the state is not the only agency that wields power and has authority. All states wield power and employ violence. Yet to regard these as essential to politics neglects the remarkable and pervasive ways in which institutions accomplish political tasks without coercion.'* Power and influence are subtle matters, and the most pervasive forms of political agency may be most covert. The most important relationship of the state to its powers is not that it is more coercive than other agencies, but that its coerciveness is more visible. The visibility of power is required by considerations of justice, but also by the expectations we have of the functions governments are to perform. Nevertheless, however visible certain forms of power and coercion may be, they represent the merest fraction of the ways in which political actions occur and exert their influences.’ There is a final traditional meaning of politics that is so remarkably misleading, yet thereby so indicative of how we commonly misunderstand the nature of political judgment, that it is worth detailed consideration. lam referring to the meaning of ‘“‘political” that is contrasted sharply with “moral” or “dispassionate,” where we say that a dispute is political racher than a matter of fact or law, where personal or group loyalties have become predominant. The primary meaning of political here is “arbitrary or irrational,” and I consider it an altogether destructive view of both politics and rationality. It must be noted further that this view of politics applies to divisions both by faction and by person. What is implied is that rather than employing dispassionate canons of persuasion and argument, appealing to evidence and common norms, a politicized conflict divides by enmity and bias. Politics here is contrasted with rationality. This meaning is somewhat different from that of the political or electoral process, but the meanings are too closely related for their similarities to be overlooked. Are political decisions irrational in the sense that strong and different loyalties and allegiances make rational agreement impossible, or are the different group loyalties precisely what the political process must find a way to reconcile—rationally? There is an important if very partial truth inherent in

POLITICS 245 the restricted meaning of politics as irrational: namely, that a dispute is political where no consensus obtains for resolving it, where objectivity and univer-

sality of norms is in question. It is indeed true, by definition, that what is political always involves conflicts of points of view and the absence of an over-

arching point of view. Politics is that form of practical judgment in which locality and inexhaustibility pose unavoidable questions of disparity and incompatibility. What is mistaken is the suggestion that political judgment is any less rational than any other form of judgment or query. Here rationality ts equated with consensus and agreement, an identification that is alien to query and incompatible with inexhaustibility. To the contrary, political query is a microcosm of all query, rational through interrogation and further interrogation without expectation of a comprehensive and permanent resolution. Even worse for the view that a political dispute cannot be rational is the fact that consensus by norms and standardized procedures is always in part a political achievement. The agreement to let certain facts decide is a political decision, a consensus that cannot be coercive except by collectivity. Scientific rationality is operative and legitimate only within a political collective. In this sense, political query is a precondition for other forms of query, though it is also conditioned by its natural and social surroundings as well as by the results of other forms of query. We may now understand the plausibility of viewing politics in terms of divergent individual interests despite the fact that the concept of interests and benefits is too limited to represent the scale of politics or human being. Indi-

vidual interests are understood here to be fundamentally disparate, intrinsically opposed. That assumption is what makes politics relevant. Politics is the rational process in which intrinsically disparate perspectives and judgments are to be reconciled through practice. POLITICS AND SOCIAL COLLECTIVES

Sociality is a form of being; politics is a form of practice. The prominent questions of social being are how perspectives are shared and how judgments are interrelated. The prominent question of politics are what can and should be done to bring order into disorder, and conversely. The relationship between sociality and politics 1s no closer than this: social spheres are among the prominent locales that political judgments are required to coordinate. For politics is as concerned with non-social as with social locales to the extent that they have no common measure, and inexhaustibility entails that there will be inexhaustible disparity among any circumstances and conditions. Concern for the environment and for the future are political concerns even where social differences are largely irrelevant. Nevertheless, social being is both the most pervasive and prominent form of

246 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING irreconcilable disparity among human perspectives that political judgment must confront and also its most powerful form of reconciliation. The state is only the most prominent and visible instrument of political agency, largely unable to overcome disparity because of its visibility. It follows that we have both the most to fear from the state—its coerciveness—and least—for it works overtly. It is the covert forms of political agency, distributed throughout social life, that most threaten our human diversity and individuality. “

In the last chapter, I briefly discussed a number of forms of social being, social collectives of different scales. All have important political features, some of which may be useful to sketch in contrast with the essentially social characterization I have given them to this point.

Humanity There is a social—collective identity possessed by human beings that is a manifestation of acommon humanity. Though its nature is always in question, our humanity is both a common attribute and a source of community. Yet there ts no common polity throughout humanity, and its absence is important. There

exists no world government and no immediate promise of any. The pervasiveness of human identity in no way overcomes human locality. Many people believe that there should be a world government. Moreover,

without political coordination among nations, modern life would be impossible. Other people, possibly the majority, tend to favor Hobbes’ position that relations among states are largely uncontrollable by law; there is no supreme power to bring international relations under common principles of justice. I suggest that the breakdown of government at the international level 1s a sign both of the limits of government as a political means and of the limits of politics as a comprehensive form of practical judgment. It is the task of politics to find a satisfactory accommodation among the conflicting pluralities of interests and perspectives throughout human life. Such a task may be impossible of ideal fulfillment, and the collapse of international government may be the most obvious sign of that impossibility. The ways in which our humanity is common among us do not offset the ways in which we and our social groups are different, local differences that are the source of continuing political disunion.

Culture ,

Within a given society there are many subsocieties and groups. Across different national social groupings there are many different kinds of social collectives. Some of these are associated with the notion of culture. In an anthro-

pological sense, culture represents the totality of life forms and practices within a given society. In modern life, however, political and national units do not coincide with cultural units. Many nations cohabit uneasily with the many subcultures that they comprise. Many cultures cross national boundaries. Cul-

POLITICS 247 ture comprises both an inexhaustible plurality and a human possibility of synthesis that transcends the capacities of any political system. A untform culture may be the basis of a more secure collectivity than political coercion, yet it may, as cultures divide, be the source of violent political unrest. Relative to any state, social groups and cultural units transcend its politics inexhaustibly. Relative to any community or culture, politics transcends it inexhaustibly.

The Public I have noted the conditions of anonymous social life that are not typically associated with community, with acquaintance and intimacy, with mutual judgments. We act in public to present ourselves as deserving of status. This social

milieu, the anonymous public, is largely the locus of politics and law. It 1s certainly the locale in which relationships of power and domination are most pervasive and least observed. It suffers, as it must, in contrast with every form

of community, yet its influence may be far greater than any more intimate communal bonds. On the one hand, such anonymous social and power relationships deeply affect every community and family, producing the tensions in

social and political life that characterize the inexhaustibility of public locations. On the other hand, one of the most profound and ineradicable tensions in political life is between the anonymity demanded by justice and equality and the bonding of communities where friendship and kinship produce more intimate relationships. Society (and, consequently, politics) requires communities for strong social bonds, but is faced with inequity and injustice wherever such bonds lead to unjustified privilege.

Community

If there is a promise of an ideal political order, it lies for many people in its connection with the bonds of community. Perhaps only communities in which

every member is related in important ways by direct or indirect judgments with every other member can attain a satisfactory political union. Yet every community suffers the disadvantage of limiting the range of opportunities of its members, even while deepening their experiences. Community and opportunity are largely antithetic, expressed at the political level by the tnterrelationships of different communities, the prospects offered their members to join other communities. Utopian polities are almost always communities— effectively an apolitical, social mode of political order. Family and Friendship

Every judgment and every community has a public, collective side. In this sense, every judgment and relationship has a political dimension. But to make all practical judgments political abolishes the moral sphere. Such an abolition seeks in vain to overcome locality. Where such efforts occur, we have the most

248 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING oppressive of political regimes. It follows that every sophisticated political system will recognize the legitimacy of private relationships to which political controls are largely irrelevant, may even seek to enforce the autonomy of such

private locales. '’ These relationships commonly are of family and kinship, sometimes of very small communities. One of the most misleading features of the classical political tradition has been to consider the central tension in politics to be between collective and individual spheres. It is far more a tension between public collectives and private communities. Association is essential to a social human life, associations that can be effective outside the domain of politics, but that contribute to the complexity and unresolvability of political judgments. Work

J have noted the unique social character of the work place. Beyond that, the importance of work is largely political. The reason for this is clear: work is a form of production, and is to be associated less with social and personal relationships than with products and consequences. Except for some exceptional cases, where work may be safely regarded as private, in the home, of limited consequences, work as production is a major form of practical judgment and, where public, a predominant form of political agency. By work we shape our environment, produce goods (some of which endure), and characterize ourselves as producers. Work is a primary form of human identity—frequently, too prominent a form. In any case, what human beings produce and how they do so is one of the fundamental concerns of all political activity. It is, in fact, construed broadly, political activity itself. That is, I believe, Marx’s profound insight, though he does not give it a broad enough construal and neglects other forms of judgment and query. Work is one of the local forms of human activity that is widely pervasive without losing its limitations. Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, and Nationality I have noted several forms of social being that are prominently political in having been characterized by public forms of control. These social forms inhabit the anonymous realm of sociality, togetherness without community, without interactive judgments. Social classifications imposed by others are political measures, practices with collective consequences. Moreover, any re-

sponse we propose to such forms of social being is a political judgment, whether characterized by relations of force or by improved community. These several political categories show more than any of the others I have considered the tension between social being and political judgment, since what could be simply a way of being human is irresistibly transformed by classification into ways in which people are treated in relationship to others. Classification here ts a form of political practice.

POLITICS 249 Emotion

I have discussed the rationality of emotion and its importance in social relationships. In the present context, it is worth emphasizing that emotion is one of the primary forms of practical judgment, interrogating our capacity to control our judgments. It follows that emotion must have profound political implications, both in generating diverse communal bonds that interact in political spheres, and in the sense that emotion is one of the most important of political means and one of the human characteristics that differentially inhabit human spheres. Patriotism and communal loyalty are not simply accompantments of effective political practices, but frequently the primary forms of such practice and major expressions of its effectiveness.

The political characteristics of these forms of social being show that while such

being is to be distinguished from political judgment, sociality is thoroughly invaded by political considerations, a consequence of the incommensurateness produced in social being by the presence of inexhaustibly local perspectives and judgments. The interaction of social being and political judgment ts one of the irresistible manifestations of inexhaustibility in human experience.

POLITICAL JUDGMENT AND QUERY

Practical judgment is judgment as practice, where validation is establishment of control, and where control is the establishment of order within the interplay of order and disorder. Practical query is unterminating interrogation and validation in practice, exercising power throughout human perspectives. Such practical query has two major forms, ethics and politics, that are similar in many respects. The most prominent way in which they differ, however, is of enormous practical importance because of differences of scale. In particular, ethics is at a level sufficiently manageable that principles can be followed largely without exception, though rationality requires that they be unceasingly interrogated; the scale of politics imposes exceptions upon every principle, however ideal. Practical judgment is practice, not thought (or is thought in practice), con-

cerned with power, not truth or accuracy. Thought is, relative to practical judgment, a means of influence, except where thought itself is practice—for example, where freedom of mind ts called into question. Like every mode of validation, control is pervasive throughout judgment, applicable to all judgments and perspectives, yet distinct from and irreducible to other modes of validation. In short, practical judgment and query occur in a context of in-

250 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING exhaustibility. This inexhaustibility is fundamental to the nature of political query. Inexhaustibility is a pervasive condition of human being and every being. It

is certainly a condition of science and art as well as philosophy, not simply a condition for practical judgment. But the way in which inexhaustibility func-

tions in the other modes of query is in important ways different from its functions in ethics and politics, largely due to the requirement of control. Practical judgment ts haunted by the threat of failure, a prospect quite different from the way inexhaustibility threatens other forms of judgment. Science, for example, is pervaded by error and inaccuracy. We do not know everything,

not even about anything in particular. That is a direct consequence of inexhaustibility. Yet inexhaustibility also makes it possible for us to acquire knowledge where we lack it. In this sense, falsehood, error, and ignorance do not threaten science, though they pervade it, but rather are challenges to further inquiry, positive as well as negative features of scientific rationality. Science is not threatened by ignorance, undermined by the indeterminateness of inexhaustibility, because science maintains a distance, through inquiry, from the practical consequences of failure. The point is theoretically trivial, but practically of great importance. The risks of failure in human terms are absorbed in science into technology and politics, the risks to human beings of ignorance and error. To be wrong in science is not a practical but a theoretical risk; it is, 1n this respect, only a challenge to further inquiry. It does not follow that science has no political significance. To the contrary, science is of enormous human significance in terms of control and failure relative to practical judgment, but not from the standpoint of assertive validation. Art, similarly, is not haunted by the threat of failure, of lack of control, but rather enjoys inexhaustibility and manifests it through invention. '° There is an important sense in which control is necessary to art, its practice and technique, as control is necessary to science. In both cases, science and art are practical activities, practical judgments as well as assertive and fabricative judgments. But it is only as practical judgments that they are subject to threats of failure.

Among the diverse modes of judgment, only practical judgment faces the threat of chaos and lack of control, therefore alone is haunted by the dire con-

sequences inexhaustibility portends for human life. The overlapping pervasiveness of the different modes of judgment entails that every judgment is interpretable as a practical judgment, with practical implications for human life and experience—but not only as a practical judgment. This conjunction of distinctiveness and diversity of modes of judgment with their pervasiveness throughout judgment is an important manifestation of inexhaustibility. Inexhaustibility can be an open challenge to new forms of interrogation and achievement, but it also threatens us with insecurity and disarray. It is in practical judgment and query that the implications and consequences of inexhaustibility for human life and experience have their most obvious relevance;

POLITICS 251 in other modes of judgment, only insofar as they are practical judgments themselves.

Practical judgments are actions and have consequences. A narrow view of this mode of judgment appears to entail a utilitarian theory: actions are to be evaluated by their costs and benefits. Such a view neglects the demand of query for interrogation at diverse levels of reflexivity. Not only do we interrogate the consequences of practices; we also interrogate the norms and standards for the evaluation of practices. There are no absolute and unqualified norms of human

practice, and every theory that presupposes such norms (pleasure and pain, benefits and costs, gratification and dissatisfaction) fails, despite its intricacies and subtleties, to reach query. Morality becomes ethics when it faces by interrogation and practice the possibility that traditional and conventional norms are inadequate, when it faces the locality of every ideal and every interrogation. Interrogation of transmitted values by further query leads to principles and ideals of conduct and life as well as procedures for interrogating those principles and ideals. Practical judgment is concerned with consequences and outcomes; active query or ethics is concerned with outcomes grounded in unceasing interrogation of ideals and norms. The ethical life is in this sense a life of incessant practical query, and no absolute and unqualified ethical principles or ideals can be accepted in the context of practical query. '’

Practical judgment is rational, is query, to the extent that it is unceasingly interrogative, deeply reflexive; it is practical to the extent that it produces actions and is evaluated by the order and disorder it establishes. The continuing threat that inexhaustibility poses is that established controls will break down, that painfully achieved resolutions will be successful only temporarily and will produce new forms of conflict and opposition, that practical judgment is inexorably local. Every situation in which practice is called for is permeated not

only by unknown factors and unpredictable resolutions, but by conflicts among principles and ideals. Practical query is a process of interrogation in which we cannot escape fundamental conflicts among principles (benevolence with self-interest, sacrifice of one person's happiness to another's), perspectives, and even persons, but in which we are required to make decisions and to act,

unavoidably. What must be added is that the inexhaustibility of every prac-

tical sphere provides not only the burden of incommensurability but the promise inherent in oppositions and alternatives. Locality is both burden and promise. In the formal sense just described, ethical query is not different from political query: both are faced with complex, overlapping perspectives with no allembracing perspective, no supreme resolution; in both, diverse perspectives conflict and the future threatens us with unknowns. Moral and political dectsions alike are faced with complex perspectives upon perspectives and with conflicts among fundamental principles and norms without prospect of a final resolution. The difference between them is one of scale. I suggested earlier that

252 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING there are no uniquely political ideals or principles, that all relevant ideals are moral. Life, liberty, equality, fraternity, justice, are all moral ideals in that they represent how human beings are to be treated humanely in our actions toward them, collective or individual. Political practices do not introduce new ideals —for example, of justice—but new problems of scale, social and administrative rather than personal justice. Politics confronts the mismeasures of large-scale localities. All practical ideals are moral ideals; all regulative practical principles are moral principles. It follows that moral ideals and principles have a fundamental role to play in political query. Practical query is the same kind of interrogation and validation in individual, moral spheres of judgment and in collective, political spheres. The difference is one of scale. Politics is beset by the complications that inexhaustibility introduces into norms and principles by mismeasure of scale and perspective. This distinction must be regarded with caution, since it has profound consequences for moral query. One consequence is that practical query is to be regarded as fundamentally political in nature, that no distinctively moral spheres exist. This amounts to a denial that there are intrinsically private spheres of practice. Now, there are no wholly private spheres, for every judgment has a public face. In addition, the determination of private spheres is not simply theoretical, but political with practical consequences. In this very important sense, political query is the heart of practical query, while moral query is a species of political query allowed by political decisions. One of the most urgent political questions of contemporary life is to

what extent we will (or can) allow private spheres of activity to continue largely untouched by political measures, whether, in fact, there are any private spheres (relatively) unaffected by public activities. Yet there are important differences among common practical judgments that correspond to the differences in scale between ethical and political query. I define ethical query as occurring in perspectives and circumstances of diminished scale, with consequences of importance for relatively few people. I define political query as involving practical judgments of larger scale, with important consequences for many people or over long periods of time, throughout territories of great range. Both forms of query are unavoidably local. The ques-

tion of scale is quantitative, collective in the large and in the small. Rules, laws, and policies are all of political importance because of their generality of application, but the crucial différence is one of magnitude. To take some examples: the decision by a woman to have an abortion or to counsel another to have an abortion is a moral decision, affecting only the individuals involved and their intimates; the decision to regulate abortion by law is political, with consequences, actual and potential, for great numbers of people. The decision to pass a law regulating any activity is different in character from the decision made by a private citizen to undertake or refrain from that activity. The ideals

POLITICS 253 may be identical—respect for life and personal liberty—but adjudication by law and by decision are different kinds of judgments, with different kinds of consequences. Those who would regulate private morality by law fail to understand the difference between moral and political scales, but that is a failure that pervades political theory and, moreover, an expression of a fundamental tension in political judgment. To take another example: a psychotherapist is told in confidence by a patient that he is planning to commit acrime. The decision is a moral one to the extent that the therapist must adjudicate between the principle that crimes should be prevented and the confidentiality of her profession. The decision is a political one to the extent that it sets a precedent defining the nature of confidentiality among psychotherapists, with implications for the entire community of therapists and patients. The universalizability of moral principles is not the same as the general measure of political judgment. Universalizability is a principle of distribution case by case, and is neither aggregative nor collective. Political judgment is fundamentally collective. Moral decisions are left to individuals, though we may insist that what is right for one is right for all. Political decisions are actions taken by and for many if not all.” All practical query is confronted by inexhaustibility in its imminent threat of failure. But political query confronts inexhaustibility also in conflicts of scale, individual and collective, private and public. Moral query seeks control through practical judgment in the context of conflicts of perspective. Political query is a more complex form of reflexivity and interrogation, produced by issues of collective control. It addresses the limitations and locality of even the widest locales in human life. In this sense, criticism and interrogation, at constantly new levels of criticism and interrogation, are the heart of political

query. An important dialectic is involved here: practical query involves both | politics and ethics together in order that they may be distinguished from each other, public and private spheres of practical judgment. We should not make too much of this dialectic, for it neither ts progressive nor corresponds to historical development. Yet we may gain some insight into the nature of political query if we survey the movement from the rudimentarily moral to the sophisticatedly political. In practical judgment, we are concerned with control, with organizing perspectives in which we live and act to our satisfaction. In rudimentary moral judgment, we define satisfaction in terms of established norms, including principles and ideals, commonly inherited from a social and political tradition, thereby displaying connections among moral and political concerns. In more sophisticated and interrogative ethical query, we bring the conditions of practice under interrogation as well as

the principles definitive of value, thereby subjecting political traditions to moral rejection. A natural political response from the standpoint of collective query is that all human life has a public face, collective consequences and col-

254 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING lective traditions; that chaos will result if individual decisions, however ethical, are left uncontrolled; and, therefore, that universality in moral judgment and the imperative of collective control lead inevitably to political uniformity. There is, however, a further political response, that such measures of collective control are counterproductive, diminishing the ends for which control is sought—individual satisfactions and powers. There are no unqualified, absolute collective norms, and a uniformist political system produces tensions and dissonances that weaken it; its measures undermine its legitimacy. Uniformity and stability are not definitive of control but only part of its measure. Disorder is as much fulfillment of control as order is. Political and collective control is adjudication of inexhaustibly diverse and competing considerations: justice, equality, stability, efficiency, liberty, morality, satisfaction, and so on. Political query confronts the locality and inexhaustibility of human being directly. And inexhaustibility entails that no supreme collective resolution of disparate spheres, perspectives, and judgments can be attained, that political query is a constant and unceasing movement among conflicting norms and imperatives, with no expectation of alrogether satisfactory resolution. This, I believe, is the only view of politics that is compatible with locality.” It entails that all the forms of political life, all the concepts definitive of politics, all the forms of political protest and criticism, be regarded as instruments of political query— instruments that come to have a life of their own, as all collective perspectives do, but no absolute authority or legitimacy. This includes individual rights and justice as well as state power and law. A consequence of this view, a manifestation of the proximity of tnexhaustibility to politics, is that political query be regarded as a form of reason in which criticism and further criticism, at continually deeper and more reflexive levels, practically and theoretically, be demanded over as wide a scale of relevance as can be maintained. One of the striking features of the modern state is that it ascribes to itself sole legitimacy in the use of violence. But every state exercises power and employs coercion. Closely related to this central role of power and coercion is the peculiar importance of the rule of law: the principle not only that states must

regulate their activities through law, but that laws may be disobeyed only under extraordinary circumstances. The state demands fealty by custom and imposes fealty by coercion. Against this prevailing view there is the tradition

in which political authority is legitimated through voluntary agreement.” The striking feature of this latter position is that it is not political. Its most extreme version 1s anarchist: no coercion is legitimate; all collective measures must be voluntary to be justified. Closely related to this position is the classic market view of humanity: that each individual person is subject to unbridled desires, that collective measures exist to bring conflicting interests into accord. The anarchist and classic economic views share a remarkably antipolitical view

POLITICS 255 of politics, effectively seeking to define political practices that are not thoroughly pervaded by collectivity and power. The classic question of political obligation asks us why an individual citizen should obey the state.*' The question ignores the political fact that we will inevitably follow someone or something, by fiat or influence. The more legitimate question is, given my political circumstances, what should I do? This ts no other than the question asked by all practical query, political where collective concerns are prominent. Here we must acknowledge not only state and government powers (law and police) but subtle influences and the powers of various collectives, corporations and social institutions, as well as the effects of

the environment. To oversimplify politics—to imagine that political questions address governments only—is effectively to eliminate it, for political query is practical query with an increased complexity due to scale. Thus, the state cannot claim sole legitimate coercive authority, for there is coercion throughout every society. Nevertheless, there are forms of state violence that individuals cannot and should not condone. Social and political stability require police coercion and a rule of law, but revolution is a legitimate political consideration. The anarchist position that no collective coercion can be legitimate is apolitical, but it is a necessary position in a political context, for an enduring possibility is that the only defensible political institution is one that abolishes itself. We may never be able, because of conflicts in human life and experience, to eliminate coercion, but we must constantly be alert to the possi-

bility of doing so. Anything less would limit the interrogation of political query and effectively undermine its rationality and legitimacy. Because of its restrictiveness, we are frequently able, in moral query, to seek the right thing to do and in many cases are able to achieve it. At the collective scale of political query, there is no unqualifiedly right thing to do, only one compromise after another, along with further judgments and criticisms, unendingly. For this reason, politics must always, as part of its query, face the possibility that it may abolish itself. It must, that is, confront the possibility that it may be transformed by ideals into morality. In this extremely important sense, moral and utopian ideals are a fundamental part of political query, es-

sential to its interrogativeness. As soon as politics becomes entrenched, it ceases to be query. The waning of criticism and interrogation in the context of authority or conformity is a diminution of politics as query. In this sense, i1n-

exhaustibility and locality haunt political query in the realization that ideal resolution is impossible, that political query is necessary, but that the faults of political and collective practices, necessary as such practices may be, almost always outweigh the benefits they achieve. Political query may be the most sublime of human achievements, not only because of its complexity and arduousness, but because there are no ideals outside it as a basis against which to measure it, yet it achieves rationality in its own ways. We can admire those

256 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING who participate in political query for their achievements without expectation that they will be altogether successful, for there is no secure standard that could be total success. POWER AND COERCION

The simplest, most informative principle that describes the use of violent measures by political agents and institutions is that in every political system known or imagined, coercion is always present, always necessary, and always unjustified. It is the destiny of politics to face unresolvable questions of coercion and reconciliation. Yet the principle is extreme, overstated in each of its parts. By analysis of its defects we may understand a bit more about the nature of politics.

Always Present : Every state known or imagined, every political system, employs coercion and methods of violence. No doubt anarchists would protest that they have proposed entirely voluntary forms of collectivity. Whether such imagined collectives could succeed, given the ways in which human beings function together, is quite unclear. But far worse, we are addressing the wrong question. Overt coercion is not the only form of coercion. Overt violence is not the only kind of violence. Power permeates every collective as a means of aggregation and reconciliation. An important understanding of power can be found in Foucault's writings

on social institutions, in connection, for example, with madness, punishment, and sexuality. The central issue, then (at least in the first instance), is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or whether one refines the words one uses to designate it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all “discursive fact,” the way in which sex is “‘put into discourse.” Hence, too, my main concern will be to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceived forms of

desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure—all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the “polymorphous techniques of power.” ” Power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on

POLITICS 257 the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general de-

sign or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies. *?

Foucault expresses here a rich and profound sense of the complexity of relationships of power, for example, how institutions with remedial and positive social functions come to have repressive effects. The reason, in terms of the theory of politics being developed here, is that institutions are political agents as well as social collectives, and as agencies act in ways that influence people’s lives. All

political undertakings become part of the problem for future political undertakings to resolve. Power, along with discourse and knowledge, often works covertly and unnoticed. Thus, between the already ‘“‘encoded” eye and reflexive knowledge there is a middle region which liberates order itself: it is here that it appears, according to the culture and the age in question, continuous and graduated or discontinuous and piecemeal, linked to space or constituted anew at each instant by the driving force of time. . . . This middle region, then, in so far as it makes manifest the modes of being of order, can be posited as the most fundamental of all: anterior to words, perceptions, and gestures, which are then taken to be more or less exact, more or less happy, expressions of it (which is why this experience of order in its pure primary state always plays a critical role); more solid, more archaic, less dubious, always more “true” than the theories that attempt to give those expressions explicit form, exhaustive application, or philosophical foundation. Thus, in every culture, between the use of what one might call the ordering codes and reflections upon order itself, there is the pure experience of order itself and of its modes of being.”

The alleged purity and primacy of this middle region are incompatible with inexhaustibility, but the existence of such a region, and of indefinitely many other covert, largely invisible regions in which power and order are constituted, is a natural concomitant of inexhaustibility. Coercion and violence are means of control. And wherever there is a public

collective, there is the requirement of control. The question of coercion, power, and violence is not how to eliminate or even minimize them, but the more general question of what political actions to take. We are always juggling with other men’s fates, whether intentionally or not; for our lives are always entwined with the lives of others in an ecology no less precariously balanced than nature’s. This may not, it is true, be self-evident to the philosopher; but it is the starting place for all political theory.”

Political theory may derive sustenance from hypothetical history, but it always confronts real history as a given; which is to say, it begins with the subjugated dependent rather than the free hermit—with historical men already the victims of illegitimate coercion, blind force and arbitrary power. The significant political question is thus always how to render coercion less illegitimate, force less blind, power less arbitrary. . . . our wishes notwithstanding, we do by virtue of our

258 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING plurality and our dependency exist for one another, and it is this reality from which politics emerges.”

Coercion is always present because wherever there are collectives there are political undertakings. Certainly some means of control are superior to others, and anarchists may be correct that covert influence is superior in all important respects to overt violence. But they misrepresent the political situation when they imagine that purely voluntary associations might be noncoercive. If all land were controlled by collectives, how could an individual voluntarily secede? Whatever conditions pertain, whatever collectives are established, sacrifices will be involved for some people, deprivation of goods and powers they would otherwise have had. Even if they voluntarily choose to accept their lot, they will inevitably have been influenced to do so. It is by no means obvious that the achievement of social and political stability by covert and unknown influence is superior in any way to overt suppression of dissidence by force. There is, of course, Hobbes’ sense that stability is the supreme value. But even Hobbes is apolitical here. Politics can have no absolute priorities, for it is the process in which conflicting priorities are reconciled. Always Necessary : It is remarkable how many attempts have been made in the history of political chought to abolish politics and to derive collective principles from apolitical, even antipolitical assumptions. Voluntary associations do not exercise power and coercion less than other collectives, only in different ways, taking different forms. Perhaps many social forms of coercion are forms of influence more than violence, but influence fades into manipulation and violence must be resorted to where necessary. Can we imagine a society without police, prisons, even courts of law?——-only by postulating a social collectivity that exercises power covertly. There is no avoiding violence and power where human loci meet and conflict. Politics is that form of practical] judgment in which conflicts among incompatible concerns and perspectives are reconciled and resolved. No doubt there are many other forms of reconciliation besides overt violence and repression, but we must not suppose that the unresolvable and incompatible perspectives are really compatible. In order to make plausible the possibility of entirely voluntary collective associations, we must assume a moral utopia: generous resources, space separating independent individuals, sufficient technological capabilities, and so forth. And even such utopian assumptions neglect the differences in perspectives that constitute the arena of political activities. [ have rejected the classic economic view of humanity based on infinite and conflicting interests. This view is too antisocial, too impoverished a view of

humanity. There are bonding and community as well as competition. The Classic theory has the virtue of presupposing conflict, in that respect alone offering a genuinely political understanding. Nevertheless, too economic a

POLITICS 259 view suggests a quantitative resolution while human beings differ in many ways—in religious and moral beliefs, points of view, values, perspectives, and emotions to name just a few. Every formula for political judgment is an abrogation of its nature. Formulas in politics as a basis for its rationality are no more plausible than are equivalent formulas of method or verification in propositional thought. Both betray foundational views of rationality. What must be added is that formulaic political practices exercise power and are coercive. Coercion and violence are necessary in politics because there are genuine conflicts, and the strength and intensity of the conflicts are expressed in violent ways. There is a paradox of violence here, faced by every revolutionary, a direct expression of the irreconcilability of political conflicts. The absence of a willingness to revolt is a sign of political acquiescence, while violence is an indication of political failure. The dissident must use violence, at least overt coercion, to indicate his refusal to accept the established political order, yet the violence displays his own political inadequacies, his inability to produce political reconciliation. Violence is necessary because there are genuine political differences that can be resolved only by coercive measures. It does not follow that every form of coercion is as legitimate and effective as any other.

Always Unjustifiable * Political practice is practical query in its most complex and forbidding forms. Coercion and violence are present in every political context, at least as possibilities, but they are always wrong, always unjustified, in the sense that some legitimate ideals are essential to political query. There is yet another tendency to de-politicize political judgment, this time by denying the relevance of moral principles. If politics is regarded as entirely ‘“‘realistic,”’ where this means not the tempering of moral principles by circumstances and consequences, but rather the complete denial of the relevance of ethical ideals, then politics becomes formulaic, a quantitative calculation of benefits. But politics inhabits that region where those principles definitive of benefits conflict, where different kinds of benefits, for different individuals and groups, cannot be reconciled and adjudicated by formula. Political practice is where inexhaustibility threatens us most terribly with prospects of failure. We may understand here the continuing tension found in most political cir-

cumstances between the Hobbesian position that stability is the supreme value, to be attained at any individual cost, where coercive measures are justified by public considerations, and the natural-rights theory of liberal politics, where individuals are the absolute standard and collective measures are always immoral. The natural-rights theory is not political, but neither is a position that holds that collective concerns are absolute and unqualified. Violence in politics is always unjustified because its presence is one of the tests of political failure. It is unavoidable and omnipresent, but always wrong. Nevertheless, since political acts will always fail in some ways, for some persons or groups, resort to violence may not be worse than any other known alternative.

260 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING We have come to what J believe is the only plausible view we can take on violence in politics. It is a repetition of the principle that I have been discussing: violence in politics is always present, always necessary, and always a sign of failure. This conflict, close to paradoxical, is inherent within political judgment. Violence is not unique in politics, but has the character it has because it is employed and because it is abhorrent. Were we to relish violence, it would not face us with political choices. It is because we despise it morally but cannot avoid it that violence betrays its profoundly political nature. It does not help us in this context to distinguish violence from coercion, coercion from power, power from authority, or coercion from manipulation. Each of these marks the local limits of human collectives, marks them, that is, as of extreme importance. To the extent that we find a means to collective order

that we take to be altogether satisfactory—habit, custom, public relationships, propaganda—to that extent we eliminate political concerns and replace them with a social morality that masks profound local incommensurabilities. Politics is that form of rationality in which moral principles and ideals are in unresolvable conflict. Habits and customs can be diminishing and stultifying, confining the range of possibilities in human life. Violence is wrong except when it is just; authority must be legitimate, by origin or allegiance; manipulation is essential, but only where beneficial and limited. Every one of these concepts has both a moral and an immoral side, requiring reconciliation in collective contexts by political query. There ts no ideal resolution of such conflicts, only the proximate resolutions brought by query leading to further query, unterminating interrogation and criticism. The only alternative to violence, to the immoral and unjustifiable side of politics, is to strengthen the reflexive and critical side of political query, directed both toward established powers and injustice and toward the use of questionable means as remedy. Only politics as query can break the stranglehold of entrenched powers upon human sensibilities, always involving the threat of violence as the only rational response to arbitrary power. We come in conclusion to the importance of violence in politics, if only asa possibility, a promise. The issue is one of revolution, of violent protest against state oppression. The state cannot arrogate all legitimate violence to itself, both because there is violence and coercion elsewhere in society and because violence ts only one of the state's coercive means. The revolutionary must employ violence in a context where nonstate violence is condemned. He must employ violence at the risk of injuring others, that is, at moral risk. And the violence is unavoidable since it is politically necessary. The adjudication involved here is a reaffirmation of the political nature of revolutionary practice. Political query is the establishment of collective coordination among conflicting norms and perspectives. Revolution is a political project that seeks to abrogate one political system by violence and to replace it by another. Each component of this triad requires political justification, and the difficulty of providing

POLITICS 261 such justification is what makes revolution difficult to defend or undertake. It risks destruction of one order without assurance of producing another, better order; it employs political means that are always suspect. But the possibility and threat of revolution are necessary to every political system, a sign that it is indeed engaged in politics where all assurances are to be called into question.

GOVERNMENT AND LAW

Every society with which we are acquainted has a government (or the equivalent) to make the decisions required for collective undertakings. Every government with which we are acquainted exercises coercion and claims legitimate

authority to do so. Every government operates under a rule of law (or the equivalent), enforcing regulations with widespread applicability. Many of these features and their variations are functions of the collective nature of politics. Coordination throughout complex societies could not be achieved with-

out centralized procedures for collective projects; nor could such projects be achieved without general regulations whereby decisions are distributed throughout society. Politics is practical judgment with ramifications of great scale. I have defined this scale quantitatively, ramifications for many persons or throughout large territories and institutions. Such a definition gives only a rudimentary understanding of politics, yet refinement of the conception cannot but be political, at least in part, for scale across social groups and institutions is a function of political undertakings. The determination of the range of applications

of political measures, the persons to which they apply, the territories over which they range, is in part a political determination. Nevertheless, we cannot understand the forms that political structures have taken without refinement of the notion of the scale of politics. I have denied that politics is exclusively a function of sociality. Yet the moral and administrative sides of politics are fundamentally social, for political agents frequently judge and act in concert. To refine our understanding of the function of government, we may begin with the most intimate of social groups, the family and, by extension, kinship groups and associations by friendship. Here the distinguishing mark of sociality is the interaction of members in articulation. Because such groups are so

clustered in their judgments, it is reasonable to expect that they can make decisions collectively. A sufficiently small family or kinship group can achieve a participatory union in which political activity is in harmony with social intimacy. Yet the model breaks down as soon as we leave the realm of utopia, for several reasons. (24) While some families as we know them function harmoniously and resolve conflicts collectively, others tear themselves apart when conflicts of interest and questions of injustice emerge; still others impose conformity and diminish individual variations. (4) Large families operate by tra- _

262 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING dition and develop communal leadership. When there is disruption of leadership, there frequently are disharmony and injustice, especially when traditions cease to be effective. (c) Different families interact in larger social groups, to which the family model cannot be extended. Conversely, family relationships are greatly affected by wider social and political relationships. Size is clearly relevant to the nature of politics, though I am arguing chat it is not so much size as the nature of the relevant conflicts and resolving judgments. Disruptions among persons and groups requiring political coordination are not always a function of conflicting interests and limited resources, but may be of a moral, religious, or political nature. The family seeks to resolve such disputes by face-to-face interactions, though the disruption in contemporary family life suggests that the effectiveness of such measures is not very great. In communities, which J have defined as social groups whose members interact, at least indirectly, in that their judgments are responded to by other members’ judgments, resolution is mediation. There may be community of leadership, mediators like priests and rabbis, a communal or town government. Nevertheless, mediation can succeed only where the disputants accept either the need for reconciliation, resolving conflicts by minimizing their importance, or the authority of the mediator. Politics is avoided here by social pressure, by tradition, by members of the community being prepared to resolve conflicts before they become unresolvable. I put it in this truistic form to emphasize again that politics is that form of practical judgment in which individual and communal perspectives are so different that no other method of collective interaction is possible.” It is not that politics is grounded in human evil and immorality, that were we all better beings we would not need the compromises and sacrifices of politics. Rather, we regard as moral those disputes that can be resolved on principle or by tolerance and agreement. Political issues are those where there 1s no common measure but where collective judgments must still be undertaken. Politics is necessary because our locations differ from the locations of others, because our unisons differ with our locations and from the unisons of others, because we perceive our roles in different groups differently from the way other people perceive us—in short, because of our locality. Politics is a function of diversity and plurality, a function, that is, of the variability and incommensurability in being human. Politics is a consequence—frequently the darker side—of some of the most positive features of human being. Human beings inhabit diverse and ramified collectives that are neither family nor communal groups, sometimes by choice and sometimes in fact. We inhabit a single planet, and there are consequences of many groups’ actions for people in other groups. Iam speaking of international developments, exhausting natural resources, polluting the environment, acid rain across a countrys borders. The other side of inexhaustibility, inseparable from it, is finiteness and locatedness, the determinate limits of our circumstances and conditions.

POLITICS 263 All judgments have a public side; because our judgments affect others, often very widely—far more than by communal interaction—we need public systems of accountability and resolution. In larger societies, there is frequently nothing common throughout except tradition and history, possibly government and territory. Government then becomes the mediator that offers the possibility of communal resolution. But the disparities among different persons and communities, the co-presence of diverse collectives with different understandings and values, entail that mediation have only very local success. If there is to be collective resolution of genuine disputes, it must be by coercion (at least promised, if not enacted) and by law. The free market must be regarded here as merely an alternative mode of mediation, subject to the same kinds of criticisms as governments, not as a magical system for overcoming inexhaustibility. This view of governments regards them as responsible for coordination of collective projects that have the fewest communal features, where there are the least judgmental interaction and the most strenuous local conflicts. Yet governments function in most cases where there has been a common history and major traditions. There are other political and social institutions that play a similar role, large-scale social institutions, corporations, schools, and social agencies. In all these cases, the fundamental feature of large-scale judgments is that there are practices and policies of wide scope where there is not and cannot be community and shared judgment. I believe that plurality in human being ts both a defining feature—closely related to inexhaustibility—and a positive value. Homogeneity throughout social groups is a diminution of human possibilities. Politics, then, in its explicit governmental forms or through established social institutions, is required by diversity and by unresolvable differences. It must resolve through practice what cannot otherwise be resolved. That is why politics creates institutions, why governments take on a life of their own: namely, to bring into congruence what cannot be coordinated by any other social or judgmental measures, and to define opportunities for differences to flourish. Diversity of perspectives is a fact of human being. Politics is faced with the practical requirement to resolve this diversity where there are conflicts, and can do so only by defining new forms of collective being. This political fact of government is the basis of its sovereignty and of the legitimation of its use of force. We have here a third fact of politics that the classic liberal tradition fails to acknowledge. The first is this tradition’s denial of a collective public in judgment, as if only individuals judge and act. The second is that moral ideals are the only practical ideals there are, and pertain to politics as much as to any practical judgments. The third is that governments are novel collectives with novel powers, new forms of human being. We may believe that they should be abolished, though their functions must clearly be performed, and their equivalent appears to be necessary to human life. We certainly cannot regard them as

264 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING simply the aggregate of their members. Governments can succeed only by defining new collective perspectives—through law, coercion, and influence—in which differences relative to other perspectives are resolved. Some of the most repellent features of governments and official institutions are a consequence of this fact of collective being. The authority and sovereignty of government are functions of its use of force and of its manipulation of its subjects’ attitudes. But they are also functions of the being of governments, a consequence of the fact that governments are collectives created for collective judgment, that they can be effective only where they possess authority they would not be given in entirely voluntary circumstances.** Nationalism and patriotism not only manifest common sentiments that are political rather than communal, but also are forms of manipulation by governments. The classic tradition—liberal and conservative—regards gov-

ernments as created by individual purposes, appraisable entirely by these purposes. But governments cannot be restricted to any set of determining conditions, even in origin but certainly not in function. This principle is a consequence of inexhaustibility, one we have recurrently confronted in other contexts. To be is to transcend any particular conditions. If there are collectives, and there are political judgments of a collective nature, then the structures and institutions for collective political judgment will become real with characteristics of their own, transcending their conditions. The most prominent consequence of this principle is that political measures, collective and public judgments, enter public realms and become part of the milieux to which further political judgments are relevant. This understanding of the ramifications and reflexiveness of political query offers us a rich and complex understanding of the nature and inexhaustibility of politics. The scale of political query is that of the widest possible spheres of collective practical judgments. To the extent that we can restrict the scale of

collective judgment by interpersonal relationships, we are concerned with community and morality, not politics. Governments are the institutions that ordinarily undertake collective measures throughout a national collective, but there are always regional and planetary concerns that demand political resolution, even issues of an extraplanetary nature and those that go beyond any particular time. Recent discussions have addressed the duties and responsibilities we may have to posterity, essentially a moral concern about rights and obligations.” But politically there is no question that posterity defines collective spheres that must be reconciled with any present course of action. Practical judgments always have a future for future persons and collectives. That our present undertakings will influence the future, even the remote future, and how they will do so, are unavoidable considerations in political query. I have spoken to this point primarily about political judgment—collective practical judgment—with only occasional references to political query. But my major concern is to emphasize that politics can be query, can be rational.

POLITICS 265 Indeed, politics may be the most prominent and paradigmatic form of rationality in the context of inexhaustibility and locality, since it is constantly threatened with failure in the context of unresolvable conflicts, but must still, by interrogation and reinterrogation, find means for both reconciling and enhancing differences in public projects. The crucial factor is again that of unending interrogation and reinterrogation, possible in virtue of these very differences. Here we find another way in which the classic tradition is apolitical. In practice, of course, the apolitical assumptions of classic political theory have been a powerful means of criticism of the excesses of governments. But the foundational attempt to establish political theory on moral issues and individual interests is thoroughly antipolitical and even antirational. Political judgment can be rational only where every facet of collective life is subjected to rigorous and unswerving interrogation and reinterrogation, where collective life is acknowledged to be permeated by profound divisions and oppositions.

Government is the most prominent and explicit institution for political undertakings. Yet there is nothing about government as such, or about political judgment, that demands representative democracy. Hypothetically, there could be a benevolent despotism with sensitive procedures for determining the interests and concerns of its citizens. Nevertheless, political query requires not only responsiveness but constant interrogation and reinterrogation. These, |

suggest, can be achieved in practice only by elections (or the equivalent), which interrogate the coordinations achieved by collective practices, and by unswerving criticism of the assumptions of representation. Majority rule, in particular, is one of the major sources of injustice and coercion in a democratic

society. Political query requires not only representation, but constant reexamination of the legitimacy of any given representation. There is no known substitute for the responsiveness to political measures inherent in public elections, but elections themselves must be subject to scrutiny and evaluation, and we must not forget the enormous differences between political candidacy and political effectiveness. Election and representation are necessary forms of po-

litical interrogation, but deeply flawed as means to collective resolution of major conflicts or even as tests of effective resolution. Representation in political democracies is as necessary to interrogation as coercion is to political practices; both, however, are the source of as many conflicts and problems as those they are necessary to resolve. From the standpoint of political query, government is the explicit agency of

political practice and a primary means for the interrogation of collective projects. The use of coercion, the exercise of force, the imposition of violence,

manipulation through propaganda and other political measures, control of public information, are all requisites of political practice. All are faced with the fundamental paradox of politics, to confront the unresolvable conflict of moral ideals, the only ideals there are, with questionable practices. Every political measure, when it is successful, has an immoral as well as a moral side.

266 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Governments are interrogative in what they do, in their practices, in the proc-

ess of legislation, but, most important, in evaluation of their own projects through time. Political query demands that all public practices be subject to criticism and remedy by other public practices in the future. But even here there is the paradox of politics: for query demands that no tradition or law be immune to criticism and modification, while political projects can be successful only through tradition and law. Law is essential to political stability, and stability is one of the political virtues. It is not the absolute virtue, however, contrary to Hobbes, for changing conditions may require a changeable politics. Law is among the most public, most overt forms in which political practice is manifested and thereby evaluated. It projects those measures and practices that we may take to be the implemented forms of justice and injustice, and includes both legislation and administration. We may, indeed, correctly regard law as the most prominent form of interrogation in political query, for there is overt interrogation in both legislation and interpretation of law. It is tempting to imagine a political system based on law in which government only administers, while the legislative process embodies the processes of political query. But that would neglect the ways in which politics requires rapid actions and immediate considerations. The application of law and the administrative side of government are as interrogative as the legislative side, and can be as rational, though they are not as

explicit, not subject to the same kinds of public scrutiny, legislation, and review.

Just as governments must gain authority and sovereignty to function, and transcend any antecedent grounds for the evaluation of their activities, law takes on a life of its own, and possesses authority and sovereignty above and beyond the authority of its government. Should we always obey the law while seeking to change it? An answer to such a general question in political query has several parts, at different levels of reflexivity. First, governments and law can function effectively only to the extent that they are granted authority and legitimacy (or acquire them by force) beyond ordinary differences of opinion. Unless a person is less willing to disobey the law than to fight with his neighbor over their disputed property, the law cannot resolve their differences. Second, the exercise of the law becomes a political fact, a public reality, like

political coercion, and a person will inevitably respond to law differently from the way he responds to anything else. In this sense, it is more difficult to disobey the law than to disobey one’s neighbor, but also sometimes more necessary and more important. For, third, political query entails that laws be subject to interrogation and reinterrogation, and such interrogation will sometimes demand disobedience. Legislation contains interrogation within it, as does public administration and interpretation of law. We may respect these forms of query and obey a law with which we disagree, provided we are satisfied that the political process involved is legitimate. Nevertheless, passage of a

POLITICS 267 law is very different from promulgation of a moral principle, and politics often achieves collective resolution best by legislating least. Obedience to law and disobedience, conformity and revolution, are but different forms of political judgment and, where profoundly interrogative, of political query. Once we recognize that the question of obedience to law is simply a repeti-

tion at another level of the general question of political query, then disobedience to law and revolution become options we cannot afford to discard. Political query requires constant interrogation and reinterrogation, recognition of collective concerns and also of individual and communal differences. Only where differences are constantly in view, constantly brought back within the political process, can political query be made satisfactorily interrogative. The further paradox of political judgment is, then, that collective undertakings can be legitimate only when accompanied by strident and unceasing criticism. This is the strongest argument for freedom of speech and the press: namely,

that they are essential elements of the interrogation necessary to political query. But it is an argument also for political challenges to authority and law, sometimes leading to revolution. The solution to questions of revolution and disobedience is to recognize that

these are explicit political acts, and that the agents who undertake them undertake collective responsibilities. So, similarly, are any collective practices of major scale—the free market, for example—political practices subject to

political considerations. The fundamental tension of politics emerges here again, for the test of political measures is a function of the moral judgments of the members of society, who must challenge the government in order to interrogate its claims to resolution, but who also risk disruption of political processes by such challenges. The solution is to recognize that every person is both a moral and a political agent, inextricably, responsible if indirectly and incompletely for the collective success of political projects. In this context, revolutionaries may be overt political agents engaged in query; those who disobey the law on personal grounds are not. Nor are terrorists who use violence solely to disrupt. (Both are, of course, implicit political agents, and the covert forms of political agency may be most effective over time.) The claim that those who disagree with a law should disobey it quietly and go to jail is absurd, apolitical,

a form of manipulation within the established order. Nevertheless, under some circumstances—as in Gandhi's India after the Second World War— peaceful disobedience may have far greater political effectiveness than any more overt form of opposition. Moreover, forms of opposition that would sacrifice established morality to political concerns are themselves subject to strident criticisms, and are to be strenuously opposed where they curtail interrogation and limit human possibilities. On the other side, however, political activities and resistances frequently work most effectively covertly. There is no way to simplify the inescapable complexities and terrible risks involved in political undertakings.

268 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING The use of violence in political acts is extreme, and can almost never be mor-

ally justified though sometimes it may be politically necessary. The threat of violence, of disruption, is another matter, for only by protest can political failings be made evident where established powers become entrenched and coercive. All these extremely difficult matters, in all their terrible untidiness, are the elements of political query. We can have no undivided relationship to po-

litical undertakings, but must respond to our surroundings with continual criticism in terms of our moral ideals and to our own responses with further criticisms. If we regard terrorists as irresponsible political agents, we nevertheless cannot dismiss what they do and what their actions signify. Our finest

ideals and most effective institutions can take us only so far in political activities.

JUSTICE AND MORALITY

The standing tradition in political theory holds that the fundamental question of politics is the question of justice. It is a tradition that goes back to Plato. In the Republic, justice is that collective order throughout society, corresponding to the internal order among the faculties of the soul, that enables every individual, every class, and, correspondingly, the society as a whole to maximize its fulfillment. Plato suggests that there is a harmony of purpose among indi-

viduals and the society as a whole that, if we only came to know it, would enable us to create an ideal social and political order. There is, here, an identity between moral and political standards.

I have argued that the only regulative principles and constitutive ideals of practical judgment are moral, that in this sense—and this sense alone— politics is founded on morality. Nevertheless, in politics, tensions and conflicts among inexhaustible spheres of action are unresolvable in principle, while morality both permits and encourages resolution by principles and ideals. As a consequence, an ideal theory effectively substitutes morality for politics. Applied public moralities—in medicine, business, and government—are moral, as distinguished from political, in seeking to determine regulative principles in relation to particular social and institutional roles, but are political in the double sense that the consequences of public undertakings are of a political scale and that the possibility of a public morality is a function of enabling political conditions. Domains of public ethics are as much political in this sense as they are moral. Politics tidied up, by principles or personal relationships, is morality, and no longer politics. I wish to suggest now that a traditional expression of this apolitical approach to politics has been manifested in the role it assigns to justice. I have noted Rawls’s claim at the beginning of A Theory of Justice that:

POLITICS 269 Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an individuality founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. . . . Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising.”

He is well aware that other political considerations must be coordinated with justice: “There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability. Thus the plans of individuals need to be fitted together so that their activities are compatible with one another and they can all be carried through without anyone's legitimate expectations being se-

verely disappointed.” * , The situation, I suggest, is very different for truth and justice, for we may

reasonably say that truth is the only standard of propositional thought, that invention, imagination, richness, and comprehensiveness are all mere means to new truths. Justice competes directly with other norms and standards and cannot be the sole basis of political judgment. Truth is the mode of validation that defines assertive judgment and propositional query. Justice is only one of the criteria definitive of large-scale control. How could Rawls have so exaggerated the claims of justice? One answer is that he must have a greater respect for justice than other people do, for most, I suspect, would prefer an abundance of food distributed unfairly but lavishly to a shortage of food distributed equitably. Rawls recognizes this choice of values, and attempts to incorporate it into his view of justice. What he does not satisfactorily allow for is that human beings will often not choose justice, even for themselves, in certain circumstances. What is fundamental here, I believe, is that the ideal of justice is not the operative concept in political query; the operative norm is zmjustice. The value operates by negation. This will require further discussion. There is another reason for Rawls’s extreme emphasis on justice, one that betrays his fundamental orientation: he is defining, not a political, but a moral theory. We may compare a somewhat different though still exaggerated view of justice: Justice by itself is not enough. It does not make a man happy or fulfilled, and is no guarantee of salvation in this world or the next. There is no justification by justice alone. Nevertheless, it is not to be despised. It may not be everything, but it is something. It is a virtue, an important virtue, one of the cardinal virtues; for it is the bond of peace, which enables the individual to identify with society, and brethren to dwell together in unity.”

The view is that justice is a fundamental and necessary factor in politics. Instead of seeing justice as a simple static assignment of benefits, responsibilities and burdens, we should see it as a dynamic equilibrium under tension, wanting

270 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING to treat the individual as tenderly as possible, yet being prepared, for sufficiently compelling reasons, to take a tough line. . . . this is why justice is the bond of society. It enables the individual to identify with the actions of society, even those that are adverse to him or to someone else, because such actions are taken only if they are required by individualized reasons into which the individual can enter, and whose force he cannot, if he is reasonable, help acknowledging.”

Justice here is no ideal but is a factor necessary to all legitimate political undertakings. Rawls’s apolitical orientation is betrayed by his assumption that we can derive a political theory from apolitical premisses: namely, that individuals can be thought to choose justly only when ignorant of their actual circumstances. He offers a version of a contractarian, state-of-nature theory, an ideal interpretation of impartiality. Aside from legitimate disputes over whether rational agents will, under Rawls’s assumptions of an original position and veil of ignorance, choose as he claims they will, the main difficulty is that impartiality from outside a political situation is of little relevance to genuine political deci-

sions. Could a man facing torture unless he betrays his comrades gain any insight from imagining he does not know his circumstances, or must he not face his particular strengths and his particular situation? Rawls must reply that the original position and veil of ignorance are not political assumptions but premisses from which political principles can be derived. Yet it is a fundamental fact of politics that premisses we may think we accept may in fact be false because of subtle implications and complex circumstances. In short, Rawls’s assumptions make the decisions and actions of political agents unintelligible; he substitutes deliberation on ideal principles for genuine political undertakings. It follows, as I have indicated, that utopian politics is no politics, since it assumes an external standard for political actions that can be given only interior validation—that is, actions by agents enmeshed in political circumstances. Here Marxism and its descendants offer the only well-known systematic theories in which political judgments are conceived in their full complexity, located in political circumstances. The class struggle at any time is a function of both its past and its future as well as of dominant productive relationships and inherent contradictions and tensions. There is nevertheless an element of utopianism and foundationalism in Marx’s assumption that the dialectic of historical materialism will of necessity resolve the internal contradictions of capitalism. If we relinquish that unjustifiable notion, and relinquish with it the assumption that there is a progression through history, then politics is precisely the struggle, within any productive circumstances, for the development of more effective and humane political relationships. ™

Plato's Republic can be read as utopian in the sense that it is based, not on genuine political circumstances, but on an imagined society. It offers, in this sense, a moral view of society, an ethical standard of justice. But in one very

POLITICS 271 important respect, the Republic is thoroughly a political work. It recognizes that justice is inseparable from a functioning polity. Socrates claims that he will construct an ideal society to display justice ‘writ large.”’ But allowing for irony, what he shows is that justice cannot even be “writ” except in political terms. This insight is a complete answer to Rawls and the tradition that would found politics on individual norms of justice. This tradition asks what kind of polity, what kinds of political judgments, are legitimate from the standpoints of independent, apolitical agents. The first fact of politics is that agents are not independent, but collectivized, not wholly private but always located in public. The complexity of political judgments is profoundly diminished by contractarian theories, in thoroughly misleading ways. The consequence is that there is no independent standard of justice to which political action must be dedicated; justice is, rather, one of the central and inextricable components of political query—one of them, but not the primary constituent, for there can be no unqualified primacy in political query. Political judgment is the form of practical judgment that is concerned with control amidst inexhaustible spheres of human life and experience in which no supreme, overarching perspective can be established. In other words, where there 1s a supreme collective order, political judgments are unnecessary and illegitimate. Other forms of communal and social interaction may suffice, especially ideals and principles of a moral and religious nature. Thus, a pervasive and effective religious community in which divine standards were accepted by everyone without conflict would have no politics, though it might cede decision to some authority. Nevertheless, Christ’s maxim to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God's expresses the important insight that in politics, different spheres interact with different norms and obligations. We need only add that these locales are frequently indistinguishable and we have established the necessity of political judgment to adjudicate what cannot on principle be reconciled—in contemporary terms, God and Mammon. It takes extraordinary communities and persons, in extraordinary circumstances, to make political judgment, with all its entanglements, unnecessary. It takes, that is, extraordinary political measures to establish social institutions that obviate the need for continuing political as against moral and administrative judgments. And all such establishments are local. Political judgment is action in collective contexts concerned with control amidst diverse and conflicting requirements. Political query is the continuing and unremitting interrogation of spheres of control by further actions seeking control. The promise and relevance of the future are a continuing source of interrogation and an unavoidable source of political query. In this sense, posterity imposes on us both the requirement of political judgment and an inexhaustible arena of interrogation and validation. But the fundamental assumption of political query is that rational interrogation and control can be effected in the context of inexhaustibly conflicting perspectives, can be affected, more-

272 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING over, because of such conflicting perspectives. Rationality here is not to be equated with ideality or timelessness. There is a truth, a partial truth, to historicism, that all judgments, all rationality, begin in history and become part of history. Similarly, all political judgments begin in diversity and contribute to diversity. Reconciliation is never complete and can never be ideal (in all respects). Politics is that form of rationality concerned with inexhaustible diversity and inexhaustible prospects of failure as well as success. This fundamental truth of political query has two consequences for understanding justice. One is that to take justice as an ideal imposed on all political action is effectively to transform political query into moral query, to repudiate

its political nature. It is an attempt to rationalize politics in terms outside itself, on the basis of principles alone.” We recognize this truth in times of crisis: justice is but a marginal value in wartime, in emergencies, in circumstances offering only dire alternatives. Starving people want food, not equal starvation. Soldiers must fight or be killed; they may protest unfair treatment after the battle, if they survive. lam not suggesting that ina crisis, it is everyone for himself regardless of morality or justice. Iam suggesting rather that the crisis calls for action in the context of conflicting ideals and principles, that principles alone cannot serve to replace political judgments. The second consequence of emphasizing inexhaustibility in political query is that we cannot separate justice as a norm from the other values and ideals of political query. I do not mean by this to suggest that justice is unintelligible, but to emphasize that it contains within itself the inexhaustibility of political query. This is clear in the Republic, not only in Plato’s approach to justice through the development of a complete functioning polity, but in the range of considerations recognized to be relevant to justice. Justice here is the ordering principle of society. It is, then, nothing less than a comprehensive expression of the aim of political query. It transcends its political limitations and becomes equivalent with politics altogether. It ceases to be a narrow norm competitive with others in political judgment, and becomes equivalent with political validation itself. Justice is nothing other than treating persons (and collectives) as they should be treated, as would be fair and right taking who and what they are into account. It is nothing other than the summary norm of political query. In this sense, as Aristotle tells us, it is regarded as the supreme virtue.” There is, however, no supreme virtue or ideal, for human being is inexhaustible. The assumption that there is such an ideal is, relative to active query, analogous to foundationalism in inquiry. What there is instead is political query, rational procedures for seeking and establishing control amidst imminent failure. Justice plays two roles in this interrogative process: one, a local ideal competitive with other ideals, of fairness and order; the other, adjudication among unreconcilable perspectives that constitute the arena of political judgment. Justice in this latter sense is not one among many ideals, even the supreme ideal, of politics, but the tenuous and uncertain outcome of complex

POLITICS 273 yet successful political queries. Political query is transacted not only among individuals as persons and groups as communities, with their own norms and authority, but with other collectives, organic and inorganic: with the environment, the past, the immediate and remote future. It addresses nothing less than the most far-reaching of collective spheres of human life from the standpoint of practical judgment. Justice, here, is not an ideal of fairness as against efficiency, but effectively validation in political query, the ordering and disordering among competing and conflicting considerations, including welfare and efhciency, individual rights and satisfactions. All the historical terms in which justice has been addressed—equality, fairness, welfare, efficiency, productivity, rights, and virtue—are the terms in which political query is transacted. Due to its inexhaustibility, justice is simultaneously merely a part of political query, competitive with other, equally valid considerations, and equivalent with the overall norms of political query, inseparably and inextricably. This multiplicity itself is enmeshed within the requirements of political activities, so that we may both appeal to ideals and abandon them in the name of justice and the struggle against injustice. I suggested above, in my criticism of Rawls, that many people, especially in a crisis, would sacrifice justice to productivity. In terms of the wider sense of justice, that kind of sacrifice would be unintelligible. In a crisis, political query may require us to sacrifice certain ideals to others, even to achievements that we would not in other circumstances consider ideal—sheer survival, for example. Just.as truth is the outcome of valid assertive query, justice in this larger sense is the outcome of valid political query, establishing that our decision, collectively, was the best it could be, taking what we could into account. Justice here is effectively equivalent with the aims of political query in its inexhaustible complexity. So, similarly, are any norms that can be realized only through political query itself—for example, realization of a true as against a false consciousness and of real as against manufactured needs. In politics, ante-

cedent norms are foundational and apolitical. Alternatively, there are only those ideals that are both realized and sustained by political query itself.”’ This is an appropriate place to consider the typical form political disputes have taken in modern Western society, between ‘“‘liberals’” and “‘conservatives.” It is, in terms of the theory presented here, a dispute between moral not political positions. Conservatives assert the ideals of community and property, of certain kinds of natural order, as effectively absolute; liberals accept the absolute ideals of equity and compassion. Justice is fairness to them both, interpreted relative to their dominant ideals: fairness relative to property and stability; fairness as equality and elimination of suffering. What is striking about this dispute, beyond its essentially moralistic and ideological character, is that each party would abolish the localities and incommensuratenesses of politics and replace it with ideal principles of order, while politics is the rational activity in which incompatible claims and ideals are adjudicated, dynamically

274 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING and unceasingly. It is particularly notable that this liberal—conservative dispute should be the characteristic form of political interrogation in our time. Political query is the rational effort to reconcile the unreconcilable, to square the circle we may say. We may also say that justice is the goal of politics. But the prospects and certainty of failure in political query entail that justice ina narrow sense cannot be the operative norm—pursuit of some ideal of distribution and balance—while the generic sense of justice refers to the entire political process, including the abandonment of ideals where necessary, and the promulgation of differences. The operative concept of politics from within is injustice. From the standpoint of political query, no ideal of justice is intelligible or possible, but for us, as agents, injustices, where severe, must be challenged and fought. There is an enormous middle ground where strenuous measures 1n Opposition would be worse than tolerance. And there is the profound and uneliminable tension between the moral and political perspectives, between seeking justice and appealing to general norms and recognizing their inadequacies within local political circumstances. Political query is that form of rational action in which conflicting concerns of vital importance in human life are at stake no matter what we do, in which we must attempt to attain the most valid, most satisfactory, most just outcome. Justice here is not a state, but a dynamic, changing result. We may recall the words above: “Instead of seeing justice as a simple static assignment of benefits, responsibilities and burdens, we should see it as a dynamic equilibrium under tension. . . .”** In the generic sense, political query defines justice, while avoidance of injustice is one of the driving imperatives of political query. This double nature of justice is a striking manifestation of its inexhaustibility and locality. Similarly, no outcome of political query can be altogether satisfactory, from every relevant point of view. Political query calls for further political query, unceasingly and inexhaustibly.

TECHNOLOGY

If politics is practical judgment concerned with control in human contexts of great scope and importance, technology, especially modern technology, is one of the prominent forms of political judgment and even query. Marx was therefore correct that productive relationships are among the prominent conditions of human being and political practices, subject to the qualifications that: (a) economic and productive conditions cannot be the ultimate conditions of human practice, for there are no ultimate conditions, but they are among the most prominent and pervasive means whereby human life is shaped and directed; (4) technology can be rational, a form of query, even in capitalist societies. From this point of view, to regard politics as the art of government, of citizenship, 1s a severely restricted sense of politics, and is the source of many

POLITICS 275 of the confusions surrounding political theory. Not only do the loci of politics

include economic, productive, technological, and social relationships and practices, but the means of political practice are far more often economic, institutional, and technological than legislative or administrative. The pervasiveness of technology in contemporary life has been noted with alarm by many philosophers and social scientists. The sources of criticism often have roots in Marxist theory, despite important reservations.” This theory has the enormous advantage of offering a general framework in terms of which we can understand the pervasiveness and influence of economic and

technological relationships without capitulating to pure historicism. The catastrophic effects of modern technology, the even greater threat of the destruction of our planet, have been impetuses to strenuous criticisms and important movements, unfortunately largely from a moral rather than a political perspective. The ideals in terms of which environmental discussions are carried on, of conservation of our planetary resources or transformation of our planet for the benefit of human beings, are admirable standards but quite unintelligible from the standpoint of both technology and politics. I shall have more to say about this topic later. Another important voice critical of technology, sometimes appearing to be critical of science as well, is Heidegger's: What now zs, is marked by the dominance of the active nature of modern technology. This dominance is already presenting itself in all areas of life, by various identifiable traits such as functionalization, systematic improvement, automation, bureaucratization, communications. . . . the step back out of metaphysics into the essential nature of metaphysics is the step out of technology and technological description and interpretation of the age, into the essence of modern technology which is still to be thought.*

I am arguing that the essence of modern technology is to be the most prominent form of political judgment in the context of inexhaustibility. The question is not whether technology is good or bad—it 1s surely both— but how we are to understand it, particularly in relation to human possibilities and inexhaustibility. On the one hand, industrial civilizations tend to promote uniformity, of persons as well as goods. On the other hand, such civilizations are frequently permeated by incessant change. There ts an unresolvable paradox here: if we acknowledge the power of industrialization and technology over human life, we call our own acknowledgment and criticism into question. What is involved is the nature of inexhaustibility. We must distinguish two quite different questions. One is whether modern industrial life is in fact regimented, uniform, automated, and limited, whether modern technology diminishes the possibilities of human development. I do not share the extreme view, largely—to repeat the paradox—because I regard technology as more effective than this view allows. Technology is the major form in which we act in public upon our surroundings, shaping them, and is

276 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING one of the most forceful ways in which we interrogate our being, by deeds instead of words. It is essential to inexhaustibility that many diverse and irreducible forms of rationality intersect and coexist, each opening the others to novel interrogations. I believe that the threats today to new forms of understanding do not come from science and technology as forms of reason, but are traceable to the far more pervasive and enduring maladies of absolutism and foundationalism, the conviction that only one mode of understanding and truth is legitimate. Heidegger shares my distaste for this malady; what I am arguing is that he inadvertently also shares some of its features, expressed in the negative side of his view of technology. Nevertheless, the fundamental issue here is not the question of the value of technology. There is a different, deeper question, of the possibility that industrialization

and technology might overcome inexhaustibility. Could there be a way of living that so completely overwhelmed inexhaustibility that human life became one-dimensional? *' Could there be a way of thinking that eliminated all other ways of thinking? If we accept an affirmative answer, as we must, do we not acknowledge a limit to inexhaustibility? Could we not, at least in principle, eliminate all significant forms of indeterminateness from human life, turning it into a restricted sphere of repetition and conformity? What makes this issue profound in the context of Heidegger's view of Being and my view of inexhaustibility is that the only possibilities relevant within

a location are conditioned by that location; there are no pure possibilities. What, then, guarantees openness in human life? Inexhaustibility, | am arguing, must be understood in terms of multiple location. No view of inexhaustibility grounded ina single sphere of locations, however indeterminate or open, can resolve the paradox that acknowledgment of conditions for interrogation threatens the legitimacy of interrogation. What is required is a view

in which beings are understood always to be situated multiply, in relation to other beings as well as human beings. Indeterminateness is a function of the multiplicity of locations, not reducible to or synthesizable into one allencompassing location; determinateness is similarly a function of multiple locatedness.

In every condition, there are possibilities due to multiple location, but all the likely ones may be destructive. Every being is qualified inexhaustibly by its locations, but all the relevant qualifications may be oppressive. Every being is qualified by openness and variation, but in some cases with few prospects of fulfillment. Multiple locatedness is the essential condition of inexhaustibility,

but multiplicity is not always opportunity. Even death does not eliminate inexhaustibility, since what the future will make of the lives of the dead is open and indeterminate. But that may be of little solace to the person facing oblivion. To repudiate inexhaustibility is not to eliminate it; some of the most remarkable of human achievements have been directed toward cosmic closure.

POLITICS 277 Every achievement enters a public world in which it takes on novel identities.

Conversely, accepting inexhaustibility does not guarantee a novel point of view. Even affirmation of inexhaustibility can provide its own closure, particularly when guarantees of its effectiveness are sought. Incessant interrogation,

by word, deed, and work, is the only legitimate embodiment of rationality, but it cannot guarantee any particular kind of success. Demanding a guarantee of our inexhaustible openness to the future is either foundational or nihilistic in the absence of foundations. Even worse, it neglects the other side of inexhaustibility, the conditions in which we find ourselves that determine our prospects. To the extent that inexhaustibility entails transcendence, both within human experience and without, we may oppress ourselves within surroundings of infinite promise or create openings 1n oppressive environments. The simplest way to eliminate inexhaustibility in human life would be for us to destroy ourselves completely. That would not, could not,

eliminate inexhaustibility, not even in human perspectives. We cannot increase or decrease inexhaustibility. What we can do, by word or deed, 1s to acknowledge inexhaustibility by interrogation and further interrogation. Alternatively, we can so define the conditions of our lives that interrogation is greatly inhibited. I do not believe there could be a human life in which interrogation could cease to be inexhaustible. It would be inexhaustible although it might have curtailed ramifications. I do believe that the richest human life is the most interrogative life—in all the forms of rational interrogation. I believe that only such multiple and reflexive interrogation can be taken to embody rationality: inexhaustible interrogation in novel perspectives. Yet human life will always be threatened by those who prefer closure to interrogation, authority to rationality, by those who prefer to deny inexhaustibility rather than to face its risks and demands. This tendency to closure is one of the pervasive conditions of human existence.”

Three fundamental aspects of technology are directly derivable from the Marxist view. All are present in Heidegger's view of technology. One is that industrialization and technology are not just instruments and means of practice and control, but prominent locales of human life and practice. Technology shapes our surroundings as much as it is shaped by them. Second, technology is the most powerful and effective means we have for bringing our lives under our control. Third, then, and this is again the paradox of politics in relation to technology, industrialization and technology are as much part of the problem as they are means of solution. I have argued that Marxist theory can take us only so far in understanding social, economic, and political relationships, and

this is the point at which it must be rejected. For these three properties of technology and industrialization are not unique to them, but essential to all forms of political judgment. Politics is that form of practical judgment that in its activities confronts this triad of conditions. Political judgment is practical

278 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING judgment in the context of conditions of such wide ramifications that it itself is a major factor in the difficulties it seeks to resolve. This principle is true of all

practical judgment, but it is especially true of political practice due to its scale. Politics is the means to change but also the source of problems requiring change as well as of institutions that resist change. Politics, inclusive of social

and economic institutions, technological capacities, and government, is as much part of the conditions calling for resolution as it is capable of providing resolutions. In this respect, politics is like history and most of the human sciences. Historical understanding itself enters history.*’ That is the remarkable truth that historicism captures but distorts. For historicism assumes that understanding and practice belong only to history, that history is the supreme perspective for understanding and transforming itself. Inexhaustibility entails that alchough all historical understanding, all understanding and practice, belongs to history, history is but one of the perspectives in which human being is located. Similarly, politics, large-scale practical judgment, both has responsibility for transforming conditions to improve the circumstances of human life and is among the most forceful and prominent contributions to those conditions.

| Two fundamental aspects of inexhaustibility are implicated in this situation; politics, like all being, is both located and transcendent. Political judgment is located in and a function of prior political and technological developments. Political achievements, especially political and social institutions, transcend any particular conditions and develop identities of their own, inexhaustibly. This latter truth is what makes historicism finally unacceptable.

I am arguing that technology is to be understood most prominently as a form of politics. Like all practicalities, all forms of control, it passes into history and life, takes on an identity and characteristics of its own, and thereby ceases to be a mere means, becomes a condition of future judgment and the source of what we may do and what we must modify through future practice. Technology is inexhaustible, like all being and human being, but especially in

having this double character of being the source of many of our most impenetrable problems and the basis also of many of our most powerful solutions. Technology is one of the dominant forms of political judgment, and is both competitive with and co-present with other forms of political judgment through legislation and governmental action. In this sense again, it contributes to the inexhaustible complexity of political practice but is also the form of such practice that may have the most powerful effects upon our future. I want to go further than this, however, to argue that technology as we know it is not merely political practice and judgment, but itself a form of political

query, perhaps the dominant form in contemporary life. It is so whether tntended to be query or not, whether intended to be political or not. There ts an insight of profound importance here not only for technology but for query. Heidegger suggests that technology is not able to be critical of itself, that,

POLITICS 279 compared with philosophy and poetry, it is monolithic and uniformitarian. I will forbear pointing out in detail how restrictive and closed many schools of philosophy are, and how poetry appears to lead only to more poetry and some

criticism, not to a different world. It is enough to note that without technology neither philosophy nor poetry could be of political moment. My point, however, is much stronger. Technology—if there is something that can be so characterized, rather than simply manifold technological forms of practice and control— is generically a form of query, of unending interrogation and rationality. What I have called the contribution of technological instruments to the problems as well as the solutions may be characterized as the formation of both institutions and needs. Despite the claims of the classic contractarians, we have no independent standards for testing political practices

and social institutions against individual satisfactions, both because individuals do not exist independent of these practices and institutions and because

human needs are shaped by political measures. The error of Marxist and neo-Marxist theory is to take history and development as the sole legitimate perspective on society. Institutions and needs are shaped by society and by technological diversity, but then take on characters of their own, inexhaustibly. Technology in this sense sows the seeds of its own interrogation, and is thoroughly and generically a form of articulation and query. Its form of interrogation, of course, is practical and fabricative: What new technological possibilities are possible, given past technological conditions? Technological achievements are validated not only in terms of their consequences for human life and satisfaction but in terms of what they contribute to all the forms of judgment and query. In this context, Heidegger's further words are striking: “Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth.” “* But we need not accept his view of a “higher” power. The coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve. Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time

kindred to it.”

What is required is the understanding that technology is indeed judgment and frequently query, but is not the only form of query; query has manifold forms

and every tradition is profoundly divided. What technology may be is the form that threatens contemporary human life with the greatest transformations, the form that inspires the most strenuous forms of criticism. In this sense, it calls for all the forms of query to interrogate it. “Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and

280 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING decisive confrontation with it must happen ina realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.” *°

In a thoroughly technologized society, every social and institutional configuration poses questions that call for technological resolution. Every such technological resolution produces changed economic and institutional relationships, new means of production and distribution, new forms of language and understanding, and new forms of governmental control. It therefore poses questions that call for resolution through all the forms of judgment, but especially in practice. Technological changes in factory production have led to legal measures affecting property and the rights of corporations. Technological advances in biology and medicine have transformed our understanding of human being. Technological changes in the dissemination of information have changed the character of public life. Technology, in this massive and social sense, both poses questions and answers them, through action and production, unendingly. That engineers and technicians may not intend to solve social problems, to shape society, may simply be seeking their own enrichment, is no more rele-

vant to the rationality of technology than the desires of scientists to win the Nobel prize. That technology is often employed in mindless, repetitive ways is no more relevant to the interrogativeness of technology than repetition in daily activities. Technology is collectively interrogative and validative, in the large, a collective form of knowledge and rationality, with only partial exemplifications in the rational activities of particular individuals. Query need not be intentional to be rational and effective; nor need it be reducible to individuals.

Rationality is a public, social, shared, institutional, and historical process. And technology is one of its most powerful public, anonymous forms. The limitations of technology are that it is only one of many forms of query, a major form of practical query, and that it does not overtly acknowledge the presence and legitimacy of other forms. It participates in intermodality, but its enormous powers tend to overwhelm possibilities inherent in other forms of judgment. All forms of rationality are inexhaustible, requiring both acknowl-

edgment of other forms of rationality and the interrelationship of different forms through intermodality. Rationality requires the continuing development and expansion of technological measures and related institutions as a pre-

dominant form of political practice, the continuing coordination of technological and industrial configurations with other forms of political query, governmental and social, and, moreover, the critical interrogation of technology itself as just one of the forms of practical judgment from the standpoint of other modes of query and rationality—science but also philosophy and art, morality and history. The limitations of any particular form of query can be satisfactorily interrogated only through further query, not relative to any absolute standpoint. The

POLITICS 281 manifold and inexhaustible forms of rationality as query do not altogether escape the paradox that every solution becomes part of the problem, for there is no total escape. But neither is there unqualified paradox. The paradox would be destructive only if it expressed the sole legitimate perspective on reason. But there are always other rational perspectives, and the problems that technology produces for the future are not the problems it resolves in the present. Technology, then, cannot eliminate or even limit inexhaustibility; nothing can. Moreover, it is one of the most forceful and prominent forms of rational interrogation. Its major defect is that it does not readily accommodate within itself acknowledgment of other forms of rationality. Inexhaustibility is the generic condition of beings that makes them interrogable: their multiplicity of locations and identity, a complementarity of determinateness and indeterminateness. Corresponding to this inexhaustibility of beings and locations is an inexhaustibility of interrogations, questions replacing questions indefinitely, questions addressing the presuppositions of apparently settled questions, unendingly. The inexhaustibility of interrogation is a double function of the inexhaustibility of beings, generically in their determinateness and indeterminateness, specifically in the conditions established

for particular interrogations. There may be questions we might ask if we could, but will not be able to. Such questions will never be relevant. And there are questions we ask because of our singular circumstances that would not be asked in other circumstances. All these conditions are consequences of locality. Whatever else is true about our technological achievements, they are located amidst finiteness and inexhaustibility, capable of effectively preventing us from asking certain kinds of questions, but equally capable of calling forth certain questions that would not otherwise emerge. We cannot extricate the openness of inexhaustibility from the qualifications of locations. What we can do is to recognize that it is only by inexhaustible interrogation that our humanity is fulfilled, and that such interrogation is possible only because of the inexhaustibility of experience and being.

WAR

Of the forms of political practice that demonstrate to us unmistakably how complex political query is and how unavoidable political failure, no matter what courses of action we undertake, the most prominent is that of war. On the one hand, we have the nearly universal ideal of peace as well as the pacifist position that we should never, on pain of immorality, participate voluntarily in war. We should never kill or assist in wounding or killing other human beings. On the other hand, the testimony of human experience is that war has been among the most important of political activities. The history of humanity, especially in the West, has largely been shaped by war.

282 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Whether we like it or not, the evidence is clear that for close to three thousand years, down to this very moment, Western civilization has been the single most war-ridden, war-dominated, and militaristic civilization in all human history. This is not to say that war and militarism are the essence of Western culture, nor to argue that our basic ideals, our systems of morality, art, and literature, and our culture in general have all been predicated upon or suffused by military values. Such a statement would be mindless calumny. Much of what has been engendered by Western thought and morality, far from being governed by basically military values, has been in the forefront of efforts throughout the world to abolish war once and for all. But this said, it is still crue that there have been more wars in Western civiliza-

tion during the past three thousand years, more preparations for war, more armies, more battles, a greater toll of human life as the direct result of war, more physical devastation in consequence of war, and more governments established or toppled by means of war than in any other civilization in recorded history.*’

There is a subtle if covert reason for the pervasiveness of war, an important and pervasive way in which it has political effects. Why has war exerted this deep and lasting effect upon so much of Western thought and action? The answer does not lie, surely, in the carnage and devastation of war, those aspects of the military that are commonly considered repugnant. It lies, one cannot help thinking, in some of the moral values associated with war. After all, valor, heroism, courage, and sacrifice are admired by us all, and it is in time of war that these qualities are likely to be vividly manifest. . . . There is, however, another and, I believe, more compelling factor in the appeal of war to a great many Western people, lay citizens as well as philosophers and statesmen. This is the lure of the kind of community that can be created

by war... .

Under the spur of danger ahead, of dangers and hardships faced communally in the past, of the fruits of victory won in common effort, and of the moral! exhilaration that comes from achieving objectives in concert, the feeling of community can be very intense indeed. One need only ask any soldier who has ever experienced the growing together of individuals in squad or platoon, the submergence of egoistic identity in the identity of the larger group, when life itself is depend-

ent upon this process. . . . But the sense of community inspired by war can go well beyond the military organization itself. . . . We may hate war and its carnage and its devastation of culture and landscape, but no one who studies World War Iand World War II can be oblivious to the deep sense of moral unity, of collective purpose, and, with these, of national community that came over the civil populations of the warring

powers. ... If war were uniformly and unmitigatedly a thing of ugliness and hardship, brutality and carnage, it would surely be more easily ended once and for all than would appear to be likely. Hateful though the idea may be to most of us, war can

bring—on the evidence has brought—things the West has cherished: liberty, democracy, socialism, social welfare, civil rights, technological and scientific progress, and, perhaps above all else, the feeling, however temporary, of membership in a collective, communal crusade.*

War has been one of the most remarkable and effective means to community and order, an instrument of social policy and a form of social bonding.

POLITICS 283 The immorality of war, conjoined with its political effectiveness, suggests that only an extreme and abhorrent view of war as the last political resort can be defended. The pacifist view of war is the only moral view, expressive of a deep human ideal: that of peace. War is destructive, ugly, vicious, cruel, disruptive, brutal, and almost always unjust. We should avoid war at any cost. But it is the nature of politics to be faced with questions of control where moral

ideals cannot serve alone, in their purity. As a consequence, war should be viewed as a political action zm extremis, the last resort of a just society where no

lesser measures will serve. Here the bonds of community in war are to be regarded not as advantages but as temptations to be avoided. The purpose of war is peace. That politicians may use war to arouse their dissident populace to unity through patriotism is not a political virtue but a moral threat. War 1s

always the sacrifice of individuals to the state, to national purposes, and a prominent indication of the failure of a political system. I have for many years held the view just stated: peace is better than war; war is immoral, corrupt, and destructive, a last resort. However, I am no longer prepared to defend that view, for it seems to me to be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of political query. Similarly, one would be forced to

relinquish virtually all possibilities of revolution, even under unjust, repressive governments. The pacifist position substitutes morality for politics. It defines a position essential within political query, but not the conclusion of such query. Political query is that form of practical query in which different spheres of control are in conflict, including conflicts among fundamental ideals. Suppose one country were divided into two by a minority who controlled the police and army, and by force relegated the majority (of a different race perhaps) to the least desirable land, without mineral resources or agricultural productivity. Is war here clearly the worse of the two evils? Would it be better to suffer the injustice than to fight against it? Suppose that there were no history of injustice by force, but of two adjacent countries, one had all the resources while the people of the other starved? Again, is war the lesser of the two evils? It is clearly morally wrong in the latter case, but morality is not the last word where survival is in question. Let me be quite clear: I consider war horrible, morally and circumstantially. But I consider many conditions of peaceful life horrible also. It is the business of politics to confront the dark as well as the luminous side of human experience, sometimes without rendering it more lovely.

Political query is that rational activity in which important practical questions are resolved, questions involving projects of great moment with consequences for many people and based on the highest of human tdeals—but ideals in conflict, unresolvable in their own terms. Excessive morality is one moment in political query, but not without qualification the most effective, intelligent, or rational. At best it may represent a goal for which we may strive in our more complex political activities. And even here, there is the continual risk

284 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING that what we take to be moral serves covert forms of oppression. I have suggested that a legitimate political response to the moral ideal of peace is that war be regarded as the last resort of political query. But the notion of a “‘last’”’ resort establishes an unqualified ethical norm within a projected political activity. Political query cannot function rationally, cannot be intelligible, without ethical values, ideals, and principles. They are the only ideals available to

it. But it has the responsibility for reconciling diverse and conflicting alternatives of action and control. Iam not suggesting that political query should ignore or oppose moral principles, for it can be intelligible only where such ideals are taken seriously. Expediency is not the political substitute for moral principles, for it itself is only one form of political judgment, to be interminably interrogated within political query from the standpoint of all available norms, including and especially ideals of justice and peace. Nevertheless, politics can accept moral ideals without reservation only where there are straight-

forward means of resolution, where politics may be set aside under given circumstances.

It follows that war cannot be regarded, from the standpoint of political query, as never justified or even as the course of action of last resort. Both these views effectively deny the legitimacy and rationality of political query, deny that it is rational to temper moral ideals by particular circumstances and conditions. What can be concluded instead is that it is no wiser in political query than in everyday morality to take unjustified risks, and war is an extreme and

perilous risk: But the nature and extent of the risk are functions of circumstances. Wars almost always cause maiming and death, deplete economic resources, and involve individual sacrifices to the group. But to the extent that individual sacrifices are ever justified, war may also be justified, at least from the standpoint of the scale of political considerations.“ There have been limited wars over territory and influence that may have been the most effective of all the political courses of action available. But circumstances change, and political query must acknowledge changes where they occur. Modern warfare ts different from wars in the past, not only in its effects on military participants, but in its destructiveness to civilians and in the threat it poses to the entire planet. The threat of nuclear destruction, the annihilation of humanity, of all civilization, even of the patterns of life on the surface of the earth as we know it, is so great today that it must influence every political course of action that might have the consequence of war. There is the additional point that war ts a test of our reverence for life and for persons, therefore of our humanity, and can be undertaken only at the risk of diluting those moral ideals that represent our most profound sense of our own value.

Limited wars have been a major factor in political actions throughout the history of human life. Even today, limited wars have important political functions. While I am writing, there are several wars going on, some quite active,

POLITICS 285 others sporadic. Even limited wars are brutal and virtually always unjust, and in almost (but not quite) all cases manifest the sacrifice of individuals to the greater glory of the state, perhaps the most prominent form of political injustice—but again, not the only such form. Just as members of an unjust society must reserve to themselves the right to revolt, governments must reserve the right to go to war, in one sense only as a last resort, but in a more accurate sense, as a political action justifiable under local circumstances. The other side of this observation, however, is that as conditions and circumstances change, the nature of war and its justifications change also. What might once have been justifiable may no longer be. If limited war was at one time politically effective, wholesale war no longer can be, for the future of the world is at stake. There is even here another side, which has played a continuing role in discussions of nuclear war. If nuclear war threatens the destruction of humanity, then no one can contemplate it as politically justified. But if it is then impossible, because it is a genuine threat to humanity, then two levels of paradox are engendered. One is that nuclear war is impossible only to the extent that it 1s possible—to the extent that the destruction of humanity is a genuine threat. Otherwise, a limited nuclear war would not be altogether impossible. The second contradiction is that if we agree that total nuclear war is impossible, then the threat of escalation from limited wars to nuclear war evaporates, and limited wars become possible once again. Such paradoxes ought to signify the ab-

rogation of rationality in political thought, but they do not.” Rather, they manifest the intrinsic nature of political query, to determine rational forms of

thought and action amidst conflicting and incompatible norms and goals. Nevertheless, there is one conclusion that does follow for political query from our present circumstances: that failure in political judgment not merely 1s a matter of the violation of some ideals, the destruction of some human beings,

but threatens all humanity and the entire planet. Where the risks of certain courses of action become so great, political query must respond in kind, and we must be assured that it has done so. The greatest failure of contemporary political life is that governments have been unable to give assurance to their people that they are in control of the terrible risks they are taking. It is precisely the risks of catastrophic failure in political query that allow us to demand that certain dangers be completely avoided. If war is sometimes necessary in the context of political judgment, despite its immorality, what are we to say of peace? There are, I believe, two different senses of peace, corresponding closely to the two senses of justice. One is the alternative to war, the contrast that enables us to understand the risks of war and what it threatens. Peace here is the test of war, essential in our evaluation of every major political undertaking. It is an ideal without which political ac-

tions cannot be intelligible or rational, but to which they cannot conform without qualification.

286 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING There is, however, another sense of peace—or, rather, Peace; a supreme human value. Here peace not simply is a way of life that is superior to war, but signifies the hope that turmoil and suffering, conflict and enmity, may be forever laid to rest. Peace here is a sublime ideal, but it is moral and utopian. It is, effectively, the hope that politics may no longer be necessary, that human actions may no longer involve disastrous failures. It is, in this sense, incompatible with inexhaustibility. I would like to believe that peace (in the first sense) is also a supreme human ideal, for war brings death and destruction while peace allows for reflection and care. Yet it is clear that for many human beings war is more exciting than peace, and risks are more satisfying than security. It is also true that some relatively peaceful societies are oppressive and inhumane to the point where violence is both necessary and justified to transform them. It is the responsibility and nature of politics to resolve the conflicts inherent within the inexhaustibility of human life, in some cases by accepting war or its equivalent. The need for and threat of war testify to the most important and prominent truth about politics: that nothing can replace it, not ethics or community, and that in political query, failure is unavoidable—for some if not for all. This is not a truth about political query alone, but about practical judgment and human life. Inexhaustibility offers us a challenge and a vitality based on an open future, a challenge to science and an inspiration to philosophy and art. In political query and practical judgment, inexhaustibility offers a possibility of change from inclement conditions, but it also threatens us with the dangers and insecurities of a world that cannot be brought entirely under our control and to whose evils we are major contributors.

THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

It is the nature of human action to affect the future, though the future ts also influenced by conditions and events outside human control. More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that practice also changes the past, though we tend to overlook this in our understanding of history. The past is the future’s past and changes with every present. Political query cannot neglect this fact of practical judgment, for among the most important of political concerns is the identity of a people based on its understanding of its past. Thus, we must include the

interpretation, the shaping, of the past as a major component of political query.

We tend, however, to think of action as directed to the future, although the future we have in mind is quite limited. The question I am concerned with here is of the larger future, our posterity, the future of humanity and of our planet. To what extent may and should we consider posterity in our practical

POLITICS 287 judgments, our moral decisions? Corresponding to our capabilities of destroying ourselves in a nuclear war, we have the capacity to destroy our planet, to make life unendurable for our descendants. In one sense, the question and its natural answers are not peculiarly political, but are implicated in the very nature of judgment. All judgments, I have noted, have a public as well as a private side, though the public side may not be

enduring. We tend to think of immortality when we think of posterity, though it is unlikely that our descendants will endure forever or that the greatest works of humanity will always be relevant. At best, we may hope that our finest achievements—the works of Shakespeare or Plato—will always be relevant wherever there are human beings. But only a religious assurance of immortality is possible, and relative to God’s perfection, even Shakespeare and Plato may be thought trivial.’ The more important and general point is that history offers no assurance of perpetual relevance, suggests instead that every

judgment will be transitory. Immortality is therefore not the answer to the question of the future. Instead, we must return to the public side of judgment. Judgment has no grounds for the expectation of immortality; it does, however, have a legitimate expectation of articulation, in some cases of query. There are many judgments,

perhaps the greatest number, that pass without articulation, that are not produced for further judgment. But most explicit judgments are articulative, are produced in the expectation of further judgments in response. Some of these are interrogative and validative, and call for future interrogation and validation in query. These latter two forms of judgment are projected into the future, in some cases into an indefinite and remote future. One of the ways human beings are said to seek immortality is through their children, though, clearly, our descendants cannot provide perpetuity. What they do provide is articulation, for the ancestor—descendant relationship is a realization of personal identity. We may reasonably expect that our personal

descendants will pay attention to their ancestors, but, more important, we know that what we have done will be articulative in what they do; we will have

contributed, in this small way, to the history of humanity. To be human is to judge, and judgment and action leave traces that are articulated by others who leave their own traces. We remain relevant, at least for a while, in our descend-

ants and friends. If we produce works of philosophy and literature, even of science, we enter public history and our works endure in future articulations. Thus, I suggest, aside from religion, we are to understand our interest in the future as an interest in articulation, that what we judge and how our judgments are judged are the most prominent feature of human life. If to be human is to judge, then it is by articulation that we share our humanity. Articulation in this role is a social, not an individual, mode of being. An individual can articulate his own judgments, can interrogate them and project

288 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING them through query. But upon his death, he can no longer play that role, can have it played for him only by others. In a most profound and fundamental sense, then, articulation and query are founded on human sociality, for only by others now and in the future can that side of judgment be realized. Humanity can be humanity only insofar as it is social and articulative. We must include here those pathological forms of sociality that Sartre emphasizes—sadism, in particular—for they too are, if degenerate, forms of articulation.” If practice can change both the past and the future, nevertheless articulation and query have a temporal direction: only later judgments can articulate earlier judgments. In this sense, human being is unavoidably temporal. And, in this sense also, human being is concerned with the future. If we return now to the question of the relevance of the future to our present judgments, it is given

entirely, I believe, by the role of articulation. All judgment here depends, in this articulative dimension, on the future and on the future’s future. To judge is, where articulative, always incomplete without future judgment. Of course, judgment is never articulatively complete, for judgment is inexhaustible and articulation can never be finished. Still, whatever we desire and intend, articulation is a future projection, for only other judgments in the future can articulate the present. If all articulative judgment requires a future, and the future's future, it is the task of political query to adjudicate among the requirements of different futures and the demands of the present and the conditions of the past, to exercise control over inexhaustibly competing concerns. Judgment inevitably interrogates the future if it is articulative. But it is political query’s responsibility to ask what we must do for the future, for posterity. Here we may note the total misunderstanding involved in thinking that the question of posterity is a question of duties and rights—essentially moral, not political considerations. The

claims of the future, the possibilities for future generations, are among the predominant claims and forms of being among which political query must act. But in the sphere of political query, no ideals can be absolute, no rights can be ascribed that cannot be abrogated. What is true is that persons and communities are among those modes of being that political query must bring under its survey and that provide the interrogative tests of its validation. What we must do, if we are to understand the claims of the future upon us, the relevance of future being to us and conversely, is to give up two related

assumptions that have been the basis of traditional theory but that in fact render it unintelligible. One is that society and politics are to be understood in aggregative terms from individual interests, as if groups have no interests or claims and as if individuals’ interests do not include other people. I have ar_ gued that sociality is part of human being, every human being. Relative to the

future, articulation is a dimension of human judgments, of all those judgments with a claim to rationality and significance in human life. The future

POLITICS 289 then exercises a claim upon us as judges, and we conversely exercise a claim unon future generations to articulate our judgments as their fulfillment. The second assumption that makes politics unintelligible, that makes political query for the future meaningless, is that human desires are infinite. Infinite desires in the present render the claims of the non-existent future trivial. Infinite desires of the group in power make the claims of those out of power trivial. If political query is possible, it presupposes that diverse claims of different persons and groups, different forms of human being, can be adjudicated, at least in certain, even unknown, respects, so that desires and claims cannot be regarded as unlimited. Only if desires are finite—at least in relation to other desires, other claims—can political query be possible and rational. Inexhaustibility entails that every being is finite but also open inexhaustibly to other beings. That is also the status of desire. The desires that appear to have no limits—for wealth and power, among others—are unlimited relative to only certain conditions, and are limited and finite relative to others, though no less inexhaustible. It has been argued that the extinction of humanity is altogether different from the death of any person or persons distributively.’* I have, I believe, through the notions of articulation and inexhaustibility, explained the ways in which this position is correct. No particular death can abolish the articulative future for human judgment, but the abolition of humanity would abolish one fundamental dimension of judgment, thereby of human being. We judge for the future; we judge for future generations, for future humanity. Only they can articulate our judgments and give them a public life. Without our future, both rationality and human being would be profoundly truncated and diminished. Yet the claims of the future are not unqualified and absolute, for no claims can be so. Judgment and rationality are always local. Someday, we may take for granted, humanity will come to an end. Political query can be restricted by no absolute standards and ideals, but must be guided by whatever ideals we have

established, and the demands of posterity, of the future of humanity, are among the strongest ideals and imperatives that we can imagine or act upon. Although we will be diminished by the total destruction of humanity, the extinction of our future, nevertheless we cannot hold the present hostage to that threat, for we may then be diminished in greater ways by present injustice and exploitation. There is no answer to this kind of question that is anything other than the continuing activity of political query. To deny the claims of the future is to abrogate one side of political query. To make the claims of the future absolute is to restrict political query from the other side. Politics is that sphere of practical judgment in which diverse and conflicting perspectives must somehow be reconciled, though reconciliation in any but a temporary or incomplete sense is impossible. There is no alternative but query and more query, in all its

290 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING forms, including its most political, most frustrating forms. The future of humanity, with its essential role in articulation and query, is one of the most important spheres for political consideration. We overlook it or trivialize it at our peril. NOTES

1. In “Deconstituting Politics: Robert Nozick and Philosophical Reductionism” (in The Frontiers of Political Theory, edd. Michael Freeman and David Robertson {Brighton: Harvester, 1980], pp. 23—46), Benjamin R. Barber criticizes Nozick for essentially apolitical reasoning in his Anarchy, State, Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) for beginning with a non-public, non-conflicting sphere of norms and relationships of power. 2. See, for example, Robert Nisbet, The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought (New York: Crowell, 1973). 3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).

4. Ibid., p. 3. 5. Ibid., p. 6. 6. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, p. 70.

7. Ibid., p. 65. 8. John Herman Randall, Jr., Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), chap. 12. 9. This insight is often ascribed to Marx, but it surely is fully recognized by Hegel and is one of his most important contributions to political theory. The trouble is that it is obscured in Hegel’s theory by his essentially retrospective understanding of rationality. 10. See Foucault, all the works cited, but especially Power/Knowledge, for generalization of the notion of power throughout human society; see George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government (New York:

Scribner's, 1951), p. 164, for the identification of politics with matters of policy: “what relates to policy and to polity—to the purposes of human cooperation and the constitution of society” rather than concern with ‘the zmstruments of policy only, as for

instance. . . the form of government or. . . the persons who shall carry it on.’’ See also Beth J. Singer, The Rational Society: A Critical Study of Santayana’s Social Thought

(Cleveland: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1970). I must point out that Santayana’s political theory is close in many ways to the one developed here, particularly insofar as, in Singer’s words (p. 4), his doctrine of the domination of powers “leads Santayana to an acceptance of diversity itself as the only legitimate political aim.” This follows directly from the recognition that politics is query. 11. See, for example, Polztical Philosophy, ed. Anthony Quinton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 9: “The problem of political obligation—why should I, or anyone, obey the state—has always been the fundamental problem of political philosophy. ” 12. I have recurrently made reference to Foucault’s work, for he offers penetrating

analyses of subtle ways in which social and political policies permeate society, discourse, and our understanding of ourselves and the world. 13. An exception is Foucault’s view of power, so generic that it manifests the scope of politics in its interplay with resistance. 14. See Foucault’s works again.

, POLITICS 291 15. In this sense, totalitarianism as described in such works as Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973) is effec-

tively an irrational politics, irrational in seeking to destroy the distinction between publicness and privateness upon which the nature of politics depends. Totalitarianism is to political query what foundationalism is to science and philosophy, its negation by extreme. Nevertheless, as Foucault has shown, the inseparability of knowledge, discourse, power, and desire effectively diminishes any distinction between public and private spheres in modern society. The oppressiveness of modern industrial societies is then also a function of the diminution of the autonomy of private spheres. What is essential is the realization that both the diminution and the enhancement of private spheres of

life is a political determination. ,

16. See my Theory of Art. 17. This is Dewey's view of evaluation in human experience. 18. Ihave argued, in discussing ethics as query, that moral and ethical decisions are

unceasingly interrogative, that principles and ideals, practices and customs, must be subjected to unremitting interrogation to be rational. In this sense, ethical and political query are indistinguishable. They are different only to the extent that consequences in politics are of such a scale that principles are called into question in a much more intense way, effectively transforming their regulative capacities. See my Moral Decision: An Introduction to Ethics (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper, 1972), Nature of Moral Responsibility, and In Pursuit of Moral Value. 19. See my In Pursuit of Moral Value for a similar discussion of this view of politics as query. 20. See here Rawls, Theory of Justice; and Nozick, Anarchy, State, Utopia.

21. See note II.

22. Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 11.

23. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 24. Foucault, Order of Things, p. xxi. 25. Barber, ‘“Deconstituting Politics,” p. 36. 26. Ibid., pp. 42—43. 27. I must again note how Habermas’ notion of undistorted communication not only is foundational, but misrepresents the nature of politics. Politics is not required where there are unqualified norms, but enters where qualifications in action are essential, due to scale. Nevertheless, Habermas’ notion of communicative norms is on the side of theory, not practice, an odd distinction in the context of his position. His view of practice is thoroughly political. See below, note 37. 28. This self-creation of political agencies to achieve their casks is both a primary source of their abuse of power and an important factor in their legitimation, a consideration largely neglected by most political theorists. See, however, Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1975). 29. See Responsibilities to Future Generations, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1980). 30. Rawls, Theory of Justice.

31. Ibid., p. 6. 32. J. R. Lucas, On Justice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), p. 263.

33. Ibid., p. 18. 34. In this respect, Habermas’ view of the evolution of mankind as a movement toward emancipation and a truer consciousness is effectively another attempt to transform politics into theory that is characteristic of some of the most implausible strains in Marxist theory. The ‘‘problem”’ of ideology is thought to require a “solution.” It is

292 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING not a problem and there is no solution. Politics itself, in all its messiness, is a form of rationality.

35. I have sharply criticized Habermas for his view of antecedent norms of undistorted communication; I would similarly criticize any view of the permanent conditions of rationality, or of “real’’ as against “false’”’ needs which can be determined apart from political practices and conditions. (See especially Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason.) Nevertheless, despite such strains of theoretical foundationalism in his work, Habermas is important for his understanding and support of the first principle of politics: that political judgment is always immersed in political circumstances (see note 37 below). 36. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1130, in Basic Works, ed. McKeon, pp. 10031006. 37. This is another version of my criticism of Marxist theory and its descendants, including Habermas’ version of critical theory. Habermas’ major difficulty appears to lie in his tendency to separate theory and practice, as strongly as he argues they must not be separated, for he also claims that: “the demand to act dialectically with insight is senseless. It is based on a category mistake. We only act within an interrelationship of systematically distorted communication as long as this interrelation perpetuates itself because it has not been understood in its falseness by us or anyone else. Therefore theory cannot have the same function for the organization of action, of the political struggle, as it has for the organization of enlightenment. . . .’”” He adds, however: “That the strategic action of those who have decided to engage in struggle, and that means to take risks, can be interpreted hypothetically as a retrospection which is possible only in anticipation, but at the same time not compellingly justified on this level with the aid of a reflexive theory, has its good reason: the vindicating superiority of those who do the enlightening over those who are to be enlightened is theoretically unavoidable, but at the same time it is fictive and requires self-correction: in a process of enlightenment there can only be participants” (Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel { Boston: Beacon, 1973], pp. 39—40). 38. Lucas, On Justice, p. 18.

39. I have in mind especially the critical theorists Theodore Adorno, Jiirgen Habermas, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. See, in particular, Marcuse’s OneDimensional Man.

40. Heidegger, “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics,” in Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 51-52. 41. See Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. 42. See my Philosophical Mysteries for a detailed discussion of rationality as query, ongoing and unterminating interrogation concerned with validation. See especially chap. 6 for a discussion of the rational imperative toward unending and reflexive interrogation, based on the inexhaustibility of beings and promoting an unavoidable mystery in rationality and understanding. 43. See Nathan Rotenstreich, Between Past and Present: An Essay on History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958). 44. Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology,” p. 294.

45. Ibid., p. 315. 46. Ibid., p. 317. 47. Nisbet, Social Philosophers, pp. 11-12.

48. Ibid., pp. 13-16. 49. This, I take it, is what Clausewitz means, in his widely quoted remark that “We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other

POLITICS 293 means’’ (Karl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. J. J. Graham, rev. ed., 3 vols. [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949], UI 100. 50. See Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982), for a detailed discussion of these issues and paradoxes though without an adequate recognition of the nature of political rationality. 51. It is worth noting that in Process and Reality Whitehead seeks to establish not only ‘“‘objective immortality”—the enduring relevance of events to the infinite future—but “‘everlastingness” through God. 52. Sartre, Being and Nothingness. 53. Schell, Fate of the Earth.

7

Life and Death IT Is BOTH APPROPRIATE AND DESIRABLE to conclude this discussion of human

locality and inexhaustibility with the subjects of life and death. If locality and inexhaustibility are important for human being, then they should have important implications for how we are to understand our lives and deaths, even for how we ought to live and die. And I believe that they have such implications, of a far-reaching nature. In this sense, my concluding remarks will bea return, refracted through the intervening discussions, to the earlier question of the meaning of life. I do not believe that there is a single or unified meaning to life or a particular significance that death ought to have for all human beings. Nor could there be such meanings in the context of inexhaustibility. There is, on the one hand, a demand for the meaning of life that is essentially a quest for ultimacy. I consider it incoherent, incompatible with inexhaustibility. There is, on the other, the omnipresence of death, a continuing movement toward extinction against which we seek solace. There is a continuing concern in all rational thought for how we should live and how we should die. To think ts to live, eventually to die—and, except for tense, conversely. In this sense, all rational interrogation

gives answers to the questions of how to live and die, but not universal answers.

In this spirit, I shall discuss in this concluding chapter a few of the ways in which locality and inexhaustibility affect our relationship to life and death. There is, I believe, a kind of solace but also a kind of terror that an adequate understanding of finiteness and inexhaustibility can bring.

DEATH

We must expect to die, each of us personally and all of humanity collectively. Death is the end. So complete a termination haunts us, more intensely as we ourselves approach it. In response humanity has developed remarkable myths

of everlastingness and immortality, from dramatic renditions of beatitude and damnation to eloquent expressions of timelessness and eternity. The most remarkable treatments of immortality that I know of are Spinoza's and Whitehead’s, for each, in the context of inexhaustibility, follows Plato in seek-

LIFE AND DEATH 295 ing to establish some form of everlastingness for finite things. In Spinoza, despite the finiteness of every person, “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal.” ' The extraordinariness of this view is revealed in his implausible claim that “He who possesses a body fit for many things possesses a mind of which the greater part is eternal.”’* For Whitehead, actual entities become and perish; nevertheless,

they are both forever relevant—objectively immortal—and everlasting in God.’ From the standpoint of inexhaustibility, all these myths are based on a fundamental error, for they would avoid what they take to be the closure of death by a closure in eternity or everlastingness. Locality and inexhaustibility are a complement of determinateness and indeterminateness, conditions and openness. There can be no absolute closure or absolute openness. Death then cannot be unqualified extinction; nor 1s it resolved by or through eternity, for nothing can be eternal or everlasting in all respects. The generic concept on which locality and inexhaustibility are based is that of relevance: how beings are relevant to each other and to themselves. But relevance is always conditioned and qualified, determinate and indeterminate. Even death transcends its conditions inexhaustibly, and we transcend our own limitations in death. Death does not, however, transform itself into eternity or everlastingness. Personal Death The death of human beings and organisms is a personal death. Yet not even in

this respect is death absolute and unconditioned, for human beings inhabit manifold spheres of relevance. If we are haunted by the prospect of our total annihilation, we have largely misunderstood the inexhaustible nature of our being. For death is not annihilation or extinction in all respects, but only in certain respects. Many people fear death, possibly because, as Hamlet suggests, they fear that bourne from which no traveler returns. They do not know what will become of them. Others fear death because they fear nothingness. Yet there can be no unqualified non-being, and nothingness is nothing to fear. There are important ways in which personal death is momentous and awesome, not least because it is irresistible, unavoidable. Yet when we contemplate not death alone, but suicide, personal death as the outcome of choice, we cannot help but understand death very differently. For what is notable about suicide is not extinction but continued relevance in the lives of those who remember. The same is true for most personal deaths—the mark of death resides in the living. There is nevertheless this important reflexiveness to death, that the living are aware of it as death. From the standpoint of inexhaustibility, death cannot be absolute, for a person continues to be relevant after his death. I do not suggest that this wears an air of paradox. It is rather a consequence of the nature of relevance. Human beings are above all and fundamentally judges, and all judgments have both a

296 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING public and a private life—in particular, a relevance to others and a relevance to the agent. What a person has produced during his lifetime lives on in the lives of others, in traces he leaves on the surface of the earth. (Perhaps the greatest

human tragedy is that there are lost souls who leave only marginal traces among the living, who have virtually no larger relevance.) The list of continued relevances is inexhaustible: in one’s children and their children’s children; in one’s works, memory, history; in what one has made and what one has done. Moreover, these are not all to be classified as relevance to others, for the future ts relevant to a person's reputation, as an ancestor or as a producer. The discovery by a future generation of a lost artist changes reflexively the relevance of his work to him as a result of changes in the relevance of that work to others, to the future of art and humanity. The public and future life of a judgment, its changing relevance for the future and for others, are not separable from features it possesses in the present,

but complementary with them. In this respect, who and what a person is changes with the adventures of his works and memory. We cannot say that with his death a person no longer thinks or judges——despite the obvious sense

in which this is true—for his judgments and thoughts, his works and deeds, change with the changing future and their changing spheres of relevance. Innocent acts become culpable if they are forerunners of disaster. New interpretations of older works change the character of the thoughts and insights embodied in them. From the side of judgment and human perspectives, personal death changes nothing of importance, for the judgments and perspectives continue to be relevant and may even expand their relevance into new locations.

However, the other side of this condition is not immortality or everlastingness, for the continuing relevance of a person and his judgments for the future is qualified and finite. All lives and judgments are open to other perspectives and the future, but not indefinitely, not everlastingly. Any past event may cease to be relevant in some future. This is a profound truth of history. Every judgment is suspended between the past and the future, but never an unqualified or absolute future, for that is incompatible with locality. Every life, then, is inexhaustible, but only in particular ways, never in all ways, and, especially, never for the indefinite future. Every life is conditional and local. Every life, every temporal being, eventually comes to an end and will no longer be relevant to any further future. With his death, a person does not cease to be relevant to the future. Nor, when a person is alive, is he relevant to everything in his present or relevant to some things in all ways. A person may not be among us in the flesh, but his actions may remain relevant, and we may have recordings and photographs of his voice and body. What, then, is terminated with death? From the standpoint of relevance, nothing in particular ceases. The reason for this is the im-

LIFE AND DEATH 297 mersion of every judgment in natural events, passing into the future beyond a person's death. We cannot even say that a person's sphere of relevance constricts with his death, for in some cases his relevance may expand. What happens ts

that the relevant perspectives undergo modifications, but they are also in transformation during a person's lifetime. We cannot say a person ceases to act after his death, not without qualification, for his actions may continue to develop new ramifications. We cannot say

that he ceases to think, for his thoughts may develop new implications and relationships. We cannot emphasize the termination of his bodily powers, for the most important of these powers may have waned to the vanishing point long before his death, and consequences of his bodily acts may continue after his death. For some, certainly not all, very old people, infirmity brings a death of powers long before personal death, and in some of these cases death is a release from the tragedy of irrelevance. The death of the body is not the end of the body or of its ramifications, any more so than is the death of the mind or of the person and his judgments. Finiteness and inexhaustibility force us to a position on death that wears a striking air of paradox. Yet what is involved is not paradoxical, but rather ex-

presses the complementarity of being and non-being inherent in locality. There is no non-being, not even death, that is separable from the determinations of and relevance to being. All the ways in which a person is alive—all his

judgments—have a larger relevance that may continue after his death. Yet, conversely, his judgments have a relevance to him as judge that cannot continue after his death. It is natural here to suggest that personal death 1s cessation of the inner, private life. Yet by complementarity the private is not separable from the public, the inner from the outer. Personal death is surely death of the body, which, like human being in general, inhabits both public and private milieux, inseparably. One of the prominent implications of inexhaustibility is that every being indefinitely transcends any of its locations. I have been emphasizing one side of this transcendence in pointing out that a person transcends both his life and his death in his relationships with others and throughout human experience. Reciprocally, however, a person transcends any of his relationships to others in his private imagination and awareness and in his relationship to his own body. We may then note that after his death a person can no longer transcend his external relationships in certain ways that we regard as definitive of personality, though they are replaced in the future by other forms of transcendence. But there is a

deeper point from the standpoint of finiteness: that being—even being after death—is a mobile and dynamic interrelationship of location and transcendence, that forms of relevance are always limited, that new forms are constantly emerging while old forms are constantly terminating.‘ Death is a powerful expression of the generic conditions of locality—the

298 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING emergence of new forms and the cessation of old forms, the complementarity of relevance and irrelevance. Some people’s deaths leave behind a relatively narrow sphere of relationships; others’ deaths are followed by enriched relationships and an expansion of relevance. The death of a young person or a person with great powers in middle age brings home to us poignantly the limitations of human being, a sense of possibilities never to be realized. Yet far more important than the particular ways in which death is a termination for all living

beings, including young and old, vital and infirm, is the transformation of relationships brought by time. For while there can be no absolute and unqualified cessation, there can be no absolute and unqualified continuation. Relevance is transformed by future judgments, and our importance is a function of the future, even when it is a constricted importance. Inexhaustibility offers a certain solace, pertinent more to some people than to others, of not having lived in vain, for one’s judgments continue to be relevant. Moreover, remaining alive would not fundamentally alter this situation, for one would still not be relevant in certain prominent ways. A person is relevant to himself and to his surroundings, of course, but that relevance is a function not of endurance but of being. Living longer does not guarantee us longer relevance. Only living forever could guarantee continued relevance, at least to oneself, relative to one’s own perspectives. And even here, one is not guaranteed greater relevance than Shakespeare or Socrates. There is, then, no absolute value or importance to enduring life, only those forms of relevance pertinent to certain aspects of judgment. Complementarily, locality offers a profound threat that no mythology can overcome: the threat of irrelevance. If there is no absolute termination, in a specifiable respect, there can be no unqualified continuation and relevance. Past events and persons may vanish into history, entirely unrecoverably, irrelevant, except in passing, to the remote future. Life has no absolute boundaries; nor can it be altogether abolished except by extraordinary measures. Extinction may come through time, incrementally, so that beginning with some future, we will no longer matter, in any way. Even this irrelevance is for that future, not for the present or earlier futures. And no one can be relevant for all presents, all human events. Even here, then, the two sides of finiteness and locality are relevance and irrelevance, and personal life and death offer no absolute constraints upon inexhaustibility. When I die, I shall thereafter no longer know who I am and respond to my surroundings. I shall, that is, be unable to modify certain of my unisons, superaltern or subaltern, certain of my locations, although they may be modified in other ways, and other unisons and locations will certainly change. We may then interpret the desire for immortality as a desire for unlimited relevance, which is incompatible with inexhaustibility and locality, and unintelligible. Relative to inexhaustibility, we transcend any particular locations inexhaust-

LIFE AND DEATH 299 ibly, but we are always located, finite. Taken symbolically, death is a powerful reminder of finiteness, of one side of inexhaustibility. Yet limitation and irrelevance are unavoidable, irresistible; we can change only the forms of our limitations and establish new kinds of relationships. We cannot by choice achieve irrelevance. Even immortality depends on limitations and conditions, and is not equivalent with a freedom from qualifications. It is intelligible to desire longer life and wider relevance in certain ways, but unintelligible to desire the abolition of all locations and conditions. Infirmity and illness may make us almost as unaware as death; some people, in good health, are unaware of some of the most important qualities of experience, Death is not the supreme or final condition of life, but one among many, a terminus only in certain qualified

respects, but symbolically and powerfully expressive of the inevitability of conditions, of finiteness. However, the other side of inexhaustibility is no less inevitable: that momentarily or enduringly, every person transcends his death.

Personal death is less extinction than it is like no longer being young—a change of state, a loss of certain powers, sometimes a gain of other powers. Nevertheless, in an inexhaustible universe, we will someday cease to matter altogether. Conversely, however, we once mattered, in some perspectives, and can never cease to matter in all perspectives. Locatedness cannot be abolished.

The Death of Others More devastating than one’s own death, I believe, is the death of others, espe-

cially those we love or respect. Here there is no question of cessation altogether, for we grieve over others’ deaths while remembering them and considering them important. We may regret a young person's death because he did not achieve his goals, did not accomplish what we expected. Yet our grief for our aged friends and loved ones cannot be based on a similar regret, for they may have accomplished everything that could have been expected. We cannot even regret the irreversible nature of death in particular, for aging is similarly inevitable and irreversible, though typically not accompanied by grief (unless the aging is premature). It is tempting to be a dualist, though that is incompatible with inexhaustibility. The subject or ego has vanished forever. Yet we share the consciousness

of others along with their achievements and judgments; we are conscious of their consciousness. And where they are aged or ill we must regret the loss of their powers quite as much as where these suddenly dim. The death of another person is for us not so much an absolute juncture in the fabric of the world, an absent subject, as the cessation of established conditions. We grieve when our aged parents die, and when people who have contributed immeasurably to humanity die, in celebration of their contributions to our lives—a contribution that as living persons they may no longer have been making. We grieve, that is, on one side of inexhaustibility, over the reality of limitations and locations,

300 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING of determinations and specificity, brought home to us in this case in time. This

side is genuine, and merits our grief, but it is also necessary to the reality of beings. To be is to be finite, located and conditioned. To be is also to be inexhaustible. Grief at death and celebration of humanity are very close. We grieve at the limits we encounter, not necessarily in death but in loss and over vanished possibilities. But from the standpoint of inexhaustibility, limits are essential to being and there is no unlimited being. Moreover, limits are essential to our humanity—our consciousness and rationality. On the other hand, every being, including human being, transcends any locations inexhaustibly. In this sense, our grief is empty unless supported by memory and historical awareness in which we preserve and understand the relevance of past persons for the future. Far more effectively than theology and religion—except as these are fundamentally historical—our historical awareness, memory, and articulative judgments are our rational responses to the limits of human being. Grief signals the possibility of the fulfillment of the past through further judgment. But articulation and query are required to fulfill the promise of grief. From the standpoint of inexhaustibility, death is no absolute juncture in the fabric of the world, but a powerful exemplification of conditions and transcendence. In the death of other people, in our memory of them and in our grief, we define and express the conditions of human being that make life worth

living. We may grieve or celebrate the deaths of others, but only through judgment and further judgment, articulation and query, do we face life and death rationally and fulfill the promise of inexhaustibility in our rational experience.

THE END OF HUMAN BEING

Human beings are located in time, live and die amidst the flow of events. Judgments are also located in time, but, like human and other beings, do not belong to time unqualifiedly. To say that all being is temporal being, including numbers, mathematical theorems, natural laws, and works of art, is a version of historicism, locating all beings in one order of succession, and is incompatible with inexhaustibility. Inexhaustibility is the condition that beings are multiply located, in diverse locales and perspectives, with diverse constituents and identities. History may be regarded as one of these loci, a particular location in relation to ongoing events and consequences. Alternatively, history may be regarded as an arena of multiple locatedness, in which case it is inexhaustible and comprehensive without being all-inclusive. Similarly, human being is to be identified with judgment, and judgments are located in history and time, projected from the past into the future, in their production and articulation. A reasonable interpretation is that judgments are insistently temporal as practical judgments, but not as assertive, fabricative,

LIFE AND DEATH 301 or syndetic judgments. The long tradition in which truth and beauty were regarded as timeless has been thoroughly dissipated by non-foundational epis- ) temologies. But the latter cannot establish the unqualified temporality of all judgments. The dependence of a theorem on axioms and rules of inference is not temporal, though its validation and interpretation are. The structure of a novel or painting, the possibilities inherent in a novel’s plot or a painting's

spatial balances, are not temporal, though the experiences associated with them are. Validation and articulation are dependent on multiple locatedness. ’ Temporal location is both inexhaustible and incomplete. Valid assertive judgments are temporal in certain fundamental respects, especially relevant to their production, articulation, and validation, and nontemporal in others, in the sense that certain of their constituents are not subject to temporal variation. This non-temporality is a manifestation of the transcendence by every being of its locations, therefore by every judgment of its temporal or historical conditions. Thus, certain mathematical truths are unaffected by the passage of time. Similarly, works of art transcend their productive and cultural locations, becoming timeless in certain ways in virtue of their multiple temporal locations. Even practical judgments, political events, transcend their times and places by becoming part of canonical history—for example, the Golden Age of Greece or the Middle Ages, periods that are relevant to every human present, thereby losing their particular temporality. Nevertheless, as practical judgments, projected into their future in terms of results and consequences, such events are intrinsically temporal. Moreover, no particular features of any judgment can be regarded as immune to temporal variations without question. It follows that judgments are not unqualifiedly temporal, but temporality, including the future, is essential to them in fundamental ways, part of their locality. In particular, the articulation and validation of judgments occur in time, in the future, and every judgment has such a future projection as well as temporal conditions of production. This temporality of judgment ts essential to pragmatism, though pragmatism does not give us a complete view of judgment. Judgments are inexhaustible, temporally and non-temporally, but insofar as they are produced, insofar as they are practical judgments, and, especially, insofar as they are validated and articulated, they are intrinsically and

locally temporal. Query is, in relevant respects, always temporal, though, analogously, not temporal alone. Judgments and rationality transcend temporality inexhaustibly, but are also finitely in time, part of history. Those aspects of judgment that are temporal are irresistible, especially those that involve the future, for validation, articulation, and query all project into and require the future. Without a future, there can be no validation or interrogation. In this sense, human being as judgment demands its future, and in this sense, extinction is the dissolution of rationality. Nevertheless, judgment and query do not in general require particular persons, so that personal death is

302 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING not relevant to rationality and knowledge. These are social, not in the sense of an established community, but in relation to persons located in time who are the judges of past judgments. What is suggested by this is that the death of humanity is something very different for human being than the aggregate of individual deaths, for it effectively terminates judgment and query. Judgments require the future for validation and articulation, for interpretation and interrogation. In this sense, the extinction of humanity would be a disaster without precedent. We live today in a time and political climate in which we possess the power to destroy ourselves and our planet, and with that destruction, all judgment would cease, all query would terminate. The unending interrogation essential to rationality would come to an end, and it is the only way in which such interrogation can be terminated. There is only one way in which inexhaustibility can be closed relative to human being—and only in

certain ways—and that is for us to close off our future by exterminating ourselves. °

Two qualifications must be noted. One is that, whatever we do, we may expect that someday we will perish altogether, that humanity’s tenure in the universe is limited. All our judgments and rationality will someday come to a close, if only when the universe runs down. I do not entirely foreclose the possibility of eternal recurrence or that the universe may be everlasting, including the even more remote possibility that humanity may somehow extend its tenure indefinitely. In that case, rationality would be inexhaustible in still another manifestation, for interrogation would never come to an end. But it is more reasonable, and consonant with locality, to expect that human being will someday be extinguished, extinguishing with it all interrogation and rationality. The second qualification is that humanity with its judgments and rationality cannot altogether be extinguished, only in certain ways and respects. As of a certain time, there may be no human future, but such an absence does not extinguish the past. In a sense, this is the truth of the principle that it is better

to exist than not to exist—not, however, better, but different. What once existed was relevant; that is what existence and reality mean. To have been relevant is just that: to have had a location, inexhaustible locations. Nevertheless, as of a certain time there may be no additional locations for a given being or perspective. This is an argument about the finiteness of time, for the future is only one of the locations relevant to any being. In one essential and important sense, the death of humanity, of all human beings, means the termination of interrogation and rationality, effectively the cancellation of the promise inherent in query. In another, equally important sense, rationality plays its role by promising its future, but cannot guarantee it. The extinction of humanity is not simply an aggregate of many individual deaths, but the extinction of the future of judgment and query, of rationality. Our humanity is invested in our future in an altogether different way from our

LIFE AND DEATH 303 investment in ourselves. As I have noted, it is the obligation of politics to confront this problem, one that today threatens us with catastrophic resolution. We stand, in this respect, in a relationship to our future different from any in which humanity has ever stood before, which makes political questions the most pressing of all the questions facing us. But then, politics always faces us with the most urgent questions of human being.

THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

We may expect that the universe will come to an end, and if so, our role in it will have been the merest glimmer upon its surface. Here I believe it essential to take two opposing points of view, one human and one cosmic. The cosmic view is that finiteness amidst everlastingness has no significance whatsoever. However, the cosmos has no point of view, does not reflect upon itself, and, in particular, cannot interrogate its own judgments. All interrogation and rationality belong to us, or to similar beings. Thus, the second point of view is ours, inherent in rationality, that reflection requires its future. We cannot take the cosmic view without self-denial; the cosmos cannot take its own point of view.

It follows that the position that the death of the universe entails the meaninglessness of all human life and interrogation, all value and knowledge, is effectively self-contradictory, imbued with the irony that only through us (or similar beings) can the universe judge itself. The death of the universe is the death of reason, and no rational being can consider that without sadness. We are, as rational beings, caught in the continuing tension inherent in finiteness, that we make all the difference to a non-reflective universe in our continuing reflection and interrogation, but that such interrogation cannot be expected to make an infinite difference amidst inexhaustible events. There is, however, another way of understanding this. Inexhaustibility is finiteness conjoined with multiple locality and determination. The universe, though it may end, expresses only one form of limitation. Events and beings are inexhaustible decause they are finite, and temporal extinction cannot be extinction in all ways and respects. We stand, in relation to the temporal cessation of events, in the same relationship in which we stand to every being: facing the complementarity of locality and inexhaustibility. If we cannot extend the endurance of events through time and history, we can nevertheless extend and expand the richness of beings through our rational activities. We may consider here the prospect that beings are inexhaustible and that we play a unique and important role in reflecting upon and manifesting that inexhaustibility. This is a profound and remarkable role for human beings to play amidst the course of finite events.

304 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING LOCALITY AND INEXHAUSTIBILITY

We may conclude with reaffirmation of the two extreme positions we may take toward locality and inexhaustibility. To live is to confront finiteness both as a

natural being and through the inexhaustibility of judgment and query. Life, then, poses both the challenge and the obstacle of inexhaustibility. But everlasting life would not enrich us absolutely, make us more rational or more inexhaustible. We are in fact limited in time, but we must be finitely located in some ways to be inexhaustible. Everlasting life and judgment at a lower pitch of rationality and interrogation have no unalloyed superiority compared with the intensity of a short, productive life—that of Mozart, for example, or Keats. Short, productive lives are no worse on any meaningful scale than long, unproductive lives, not less fulfilled or even less enjoyable. They are simply

different: located and transcendent in different but inexhaustible ways. In whatever rational life we live, we are confronted by inexhaustibility and may interrogate it and enrich it inexhaustibly.

Inexhaustibility is the challenge and the promise of human being, the source and the possibility of unending interrogation and validation. It is, as finiteness, also the basis of the incompleteness of every being, every judgment,

and we may find such incompleteness a terrible affliction. These two great poles of inexhaustibility are the most general conditions of human being, the conditions of our greatest achievements and of our most profound sense of our limitations and incompletenesses. The tragedy of suffering of human life but also its finest accomplishments are manifestations of these two dimensions of human being. There is no resolution of this opposition, and only one response is rational: to seek to enrich human life and its surroundings inexhaustibly.

NOTES

1. Spinoza, Ethics V, Proposition XXIII, in Ethics, ed. Gutmann, p. 268. 2. Ibid., Proposition XX XIX, p. 277. 3. Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 345-46. 4. This may be what Dewey means in saying that “wherever one thing begins something else ends . . .”” (Experience and Nature, p. 98). 5. Gadamer, Truth and Method. G. See Schell, Fate of the Earth.

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A priori, 3, 35, 40, 46, 51, 87, 239 Allegiance, 231, 244, 260

Abnormal discourse, viii, 57, 60, 87, 96-97, 144 Alternatives, xiii, 14, 23-25, 28, 31, 37,

Abortion, 182, 252 39-41, 44, 50, 55, 59, 67, 70, 72, 74-76,

Absolute, vii—ix, 1, 3-4, 6-7, 11, 18, 21, 27, 82, 90, 92, 106, 119, 121, 125, 127, 131, 29, 32-36, 39, 48, 50-58, 60-61, 65, 69, 135, 139, 153, 159, 163, 178-79, 188, 190,

80-83, 85-86, 98, 118, 124-27, 134, 199, 207, 227, 237-38, 242, 251, 259-60,

138—40, 142, 144, 149, 153, 198, 204, 214, 263, 272-73, 277, 284-85, 289, 300; see also 216, 223, 239, 243, 251, 254, 258-59, 266, Availability, Possibility 273, 276, 280, 288-89, 295-96, 298-300, Altruism, 233

304 Ambiguity, vii, 75, 117, 196; see also Polysemy

Absolute spirit, 3, 60; see also Hegel American philosophy, vii, 145, 148, 192, 224

Action, ix, 18—19, 22, 26, 31-33, 44-45, 48, Anarchy, 198-99, 254-56, 258, 290~—91 60, 70-72, 76, 79—80, 84, 87, 99-101, 108, Androgyny, 178, 193-94, 231 IIO—11, 114, 116, 125, 128-29, 131-33, Anger, 83, 151, 155, 161, 167, 169-71, 184,

138-39, 149-52, 158, 161-62, 167, 192-93, 225, 232

169~—71, 176-78, 180, 189, 196, 201, Animals, 14-16, 19, 27, 47, 104~—106, 118,

207-10, 215, 217-19, 222, 224, 226-29, 128, 173, 221, 239

233, 235-36, 239, 242, 244, 251-53, 257, Anthropology, 79, 106—107, 236, 246

262, 264, 266, 268, 270-72, 274, 278, Antifoundational, 17, 35, 48, 54

280-87, 291-92, 296—97; see also Practice Antigone, 73 Activity, vii, ix, xii, 14-15, 17-18, 20, 24, 26, Antinomy, 40, 46 29, 31-32, 35, 39, 43, 49-54, 57, 59-93, Anxiety, 15, 155, 164, 183 65, 67, 70-71, 73, 75-77) 79; 81-83, 86, Apolitical, 238-43, 247, 255, 258, 265,

90, 96, 99, IOI—102, 105, 107, 109, III, 267—68, 270-71, 273, 290 115-16, 118-19, 122, 124, 128-29, Appearance, 8, 22, 101 134—35, 138, 142, 149, 151, 153-54, Apprehension, 54, 121-24, 127 159-60, 164-65, 171, 176, 178, 180-82, Arbitrary, 14, 58-61, 63, 65, 114, 122, 188—89, 193, 197, 199-200, 211-15, 218, 126-27, 141, 167, 231, 244, 257, 260 225, 230, 237, 240—41, 248, 250-52, 254, Archaeology, x—xi, 37, 48, 80, 82, 86, 115, 158,

258, 261, 266—69, 272-73, 275, 277; 162, 179, 189; see also Foucault

279-80, 283-84, 289, 303 Archaic, 257

Actuality, xii, 5, 8, 14, 25, 28, 31-32, 40-42, Architecture, 218 140, 142, 149, 170, 190,206, 214-15, 222, Arendt, H., 147, 291

252, 270, 295; see also Situality Argument, vil, 1x, Xill, 2, 5-7, 10, 19, 25, 31, Adjudication, 69-70, 72, 181, 237-39, 253, 33, 35-38, 40-41, 47-53, 58-59, 63, 65,

259-60, 273 80~81, 86, 91-92, 106, 111, 116, 118,

Administration, 2, 243, 252, 261, 266, 271, 275 I21—24, 128, 137, 140, 142-47, 150,

Adorno, T., 236, 292 153-58, 161-73, 175-76, 178-79, 194; see also Art 211-12, 216-17, 219, 231-32, 237,

Aesthetic, xi, 79, 87, 146, 150-51, 165, 180, 184-85, 192-93, 197-98, 200, 202, 209,

Afterlife, 149 239-42, 244, 262, 267-68, 275-78, 282,

Agency, 16, 18-19, 22, 25-27, 31-34, 37-38, 288-89, 291-92, 302 41, 68, 71-72, 76, 80, 86, 97, 107-108, Aristotle, x, 2, 14, 46, 50, 92, 144, 272, 292 LIO—I11, 120, 123, 131, 139, 141, 154-55, Arithmetic, 8, 10, 77; see also Mathematics

158, 160-62, 166—70, 172, 179, 184-87, Art, xi, 6, 14-15, 18-19, 26, 30, 37, 39, 43,

201, 208, 217, 219, 227, 234, 238-39, 46—48, 61-62, 282, 286-91, 296, 300-302 243-44, 246, 248, 256-57, 261, 263, 265, Articulation, 92, 107-108, 143-44, 166, 168,

267-68, 270-71, 274, 291, 296 206—207, 211-12, 219, 222-28, 233, 235,

Aggregate, 8, 17, 139, 197, 215-16, 221, 228, 261, 279, 287—90, 300—302

237, 253, 256, 264, 288, 302 Artifact, 18, 89, 109, 141, 239

Agreement, x, 52, 55, 57, 72, 76, 93, 149, 169, Artist, 37, 65, 73, 94, 102, 108—10, 112, 131, 187, 205, 240, 244-45, 254, 262, 285; see also 137, 145, 150, 225, 296

Consensus Assertion, 24~26, 30, 64, 69-75, 79-80,

“AA OEta, 6, 48; see also Truth 88-89, 91, 96, 99~100, 102, 108-11, 114, Alienation, 106, 134, 155, 230, 245 240, 243, 250, 269, 273, 300-301

All-inclusiveness, viii, 11-13, 26-28, 39—40, Assertive judgment, 25, 30, 64, 69-71, 74-75, 44, 59, 63, 216, 220—22, 300; see a/so Totality 80, 88—89, 96, 99~100, 102, 108-109, 111,

3414 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Assertive judgment (continued) Biography, 37-38, 150

116-17, 131-32, 138, 141, 159-60, 167, Biology, 16, 19, 21, 43, 46, 57, 63, 68, 90-91,

240, 269, 301 157-58, 169, 173-81, 183—85, 188,

Astronomy, 59, 76-77 192—93, 200, 207, 210, 221, 226, 280 Astrophysics, 37, 57, 64 Biophysics, 74, 169 Athlete, 80, 104, 111, 154, 156, 161, 164-65, Bisexual, 178

234 Black, M., 46, 144, 231-32

Atom, 67-68, 84, 127, 197, 213-14 Blame, 18, 152, 155; see also Moral

Attention, 44, 90, 124, 126-27, 132, 135, 155, Blindness, 30, 45, 161, 191, 210, 257

165, 175, 181, 241, 287 Body, 22, 27, 33-34, 42-43, 70, 72, 80,

Attribute, 3, 33, 58, G1, 103, 149, 220, 246 84-85, 99, 103, 105, 115, II9, 125, 132, Audience, 65, 93, 104, 108—10, 114, 166, 149-52, 154-57, 158, 160, 164, 168-71,

206-207 174-76, 177-79, 183, 185, 192, 207, 211,

Austin, J., 145-46 218, 295—97; see also Embodiment

Authenticity, 127, 162 Bonding, 160, 195, 221, 224-27, 233-34, 244,

Authority, xil, 3, 25, 33, 40-41, 49, 70, 74, 247, 249, 258, 269-71, 282-83; see also

53-84, 136, 182, 209, 219, 226, 228-29, Sociality 231, 238-39, 241-44, 254-55, 260-62, Boundary, 4, 39, 68, 93-96, 98, 100, 119,

264, 266—67, 271, 273, 277 139, 143-45, 182, 246, 298; see also Limit Autonomy, 248; see a/so Freedom Bravery, 170 Availability, xii—xiii, 14, 20, 25, 27, 31, 45, 62, Brothers Karamazov, The, 100; see also Dostoievski

67, 96, 153, 171, 190, 210-12, 284; Brutality, 182, 282-83, 285; see also Violence

see also Possibility Buchler, J., xii, 46-47, 235

Axiom, 8, 69, 193, 301 Business, 79, 193, 228, 268, 283 Background, 124, 224 Calculation, 154, 156, 259

Barber, B., 290-91 Canon, 8, 84, 244, 301

Battle, 155, 170, 197, 207—208, 272, 282; Capitalism, x, 134, 219, 228—29, 270, 274

—- see also Conflict, War Care, xi, 14~15, 114, 150, 152, 177, 286

Beauty, 18, 65, 79, 82, 106, 173, 180, 235, 301 Catastrophe, 275, 285, 303 Beginning, 40, 51, 88, 157, 168, 173, 178, 181, Category, xii, 3, 7, 9-10, 12-14, 20, 23, 25, 198, 203, 232, 235, 238, 257, 261, 268, 272, 460-47, 52, 94, 137, 147, 154, 188, 194,

290, 298, 304 215-17, 230, 248, 292

Behavior, ix, 38, 57, 61, 63, 74, 81, 120, Cause, 18, 28, 34, 37-38, 58, 63, 79, 105,

168—69, 174, 188, 192, 196, 256 107, 125, 149-52, 158, 168, 171, 177, 182, Behaviorism, 169 184, 188, 190, 261, 284

Being, vii—ix, xi, xiil, 1-48, 51, 54-96, Celebration, 299-300 61-62, 68-69, 72-74, 83, 85, 89, 95, 97, Censor, 139 103—106, 109, 113, 115, 118, 120-21, Censure, 139, 168, 219

124-25, 127-32, 135-36, 138, 140-41, Center, ix, 6, 17, 39, 59, 65, 139, 146, 168,

147, 149-50, 154-55, 158-59, 163-67, 213, 219, 227

173, 177, 179-81, 183-86, 189-90, 196, Certainty, 1-2, 45, 50, 52—53, 86, 140, 274

198—201, 203, 206, 209, 212, 214-17, Chance, 15

220~—22, 226, 228—30, 232-34, 238-39, Change, vii, xi, xii, 2, 8-9, 11-12, 23, 29, 31, 242-43, 246, 248, 250, 252, 256-57, 259, 35-36, 38, 41, 46, 50, 57, 59, 76-77, 85, 262, 269, 275-76, 281, 285-87, 289, 292, 91-94, 97-99, 115, 117, 124, 133,

294-95, 298, 300, 302-303 137-39, 143-44, 161, 169, 186-87,

Being and Time, vii, xi, xiii, 7, 46 I91~92, 197, 201, 230. 235, 266, 274-75, Belief, vii, x, 4-5, 25, 53-54, 80, 82-83, 86, 278, 280, 284-86, 288, 296, 298-99

107, LI1, 129, 131, 141—42, 147, 150, 157, Character, vii, vili, ix, 8-9, 11, 16, 21-24, 27,

167-68, 172, 176-78, 181-83, 190, 192, 30, 30-37, 43, 48, 50, 71, 73-75, 79-80,

209, 211, 213—14, 217, 221, 225, 228-29, 91-93, 96, 103, 108, 113-14, 116, 118, 232—33, 239, 246, 248, 254, 259-60, 263, 120-26, 131, 133, 136-37, 143, 146,

. 269, 276-77, 282, 285—86, 288-89, 294, 153-55, 158-59, 161, 167, 169, 173,

303 175-77, 179-81, 183, 187-88, 190, 194,

Belong, ix, xti, 13, 22, 27, 30, 37, 41-43, 66, 198—202, 204-207, 209, 211, 214, 216,

92, 151-§2, 162, 164, 197, 200-201, 218—19, 221, 223-24, 226-36, 238, 243,

203~—204, 208, 214, 219, 221-22, 226-27, 246-49, 252, 260, 264, 273-74, 278-80,

229, 231-32, 243, 278, 300, 303 291, 296

Benefit, 12, 168, 229, 244—45, 251, 255, 259, Charity, 233-34

269, 274-75 Chemistry, 63, 67-68, 210

Berkeley, G., 33, 48, 147 Children, 21-22, 84—85, 115, 161, 173, 179,

Bias, 15, 25, 244 182-85, 205, 214, 224, 226-27, 287, 296

Binary opposition, 129-30, 143, 177 Chomsky, N., 46, 114, 145-46

INDEX 315 Christianity, 139, 233, 271 58—63, 85, 88, 90, 94-100, 104—105, 108,

Church, 92, 214, 237 112, 116-17, LIQ, 121-23, 129-31, Circle, 198, 274 156, 158, 164, 168, 178, 192, 194, 196, 200,

Cinema, 218 133-34, 137, 139-40, 143-45, 147, 152, Clausewitz, K., 292-93 210-11, 214—16, 221, 235, 240, 245, 261, Close, viii, 4, 6-7, 12, 17, 35, 42, 45—46, 57, 269, 274, 295

59, 66, 74, 86—88, 90, 102, 105—106, 113, Condition, vii-—viii, ix, xi, 1, 3-5, 17-23, 25,

11G—17, 121-22, 134, 243-45, 254, 260, 27-45, 49-55; 57; 59-61, 65—66, 68, 70, 263, 279, 282, 285, 290, 300, 302; see also 72-73, 76-79, 82-85, 90-91, 94-95,

End 98—99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 112, 115, 117,

Closure, vili, ix, 7, 17, 39, 58-59, 89, 1IQ—23, 125-29, 133-37, 140-41, 139-40, 142, 211, 276-77, 295 145-58, 163, 165, 169-70, 172, 176, 179,

Clothing, 101, 175, 215 181, 184, 186~—92, 197-99, 201-12, 178, 194, 196, 202, 257 250, 253, 262, 264, 266, 268, 274, 276-79,

Code, 16, 19, 83, 98, 101, 114, 117, 128, 146, 214-19, 229, 237-38, 240-43, 245, 247, Coercion, 139, 152, 163, 169, 171, 230-31, 281, 283-86, 288—8 9, 292, 295-97,

244-47, 254-61, 263-66, 268 299-301, 304

Cognition, 51-53, 56, 58, 84—85, 120-21, Conduct, 155, 219, 251 124, 135, 146, 154, 234, 240; see also Conflict, x, 26, 39, 72, 80, 82, 130, 141,

Knowing 146-48, 162—63, 166, 199, 221, 230-32,

Cognitive psychology, 85 234-35, 237-39, 242-46, 251, 253-55, Coincidence, 2, 223, 246 258-63, 265, 268, 271-73, 283—86, 290

Collective, 8, 71, 82, 182, 196-99, 201-203, Conform, 135, 157, 170, 220, 255, 267, 276, 285

207-11, 213—22, 224, 228-30, 233, Confusion, 25, 48, 63, 88, 96, 101—102, II0,

235-43, 245-48, 252-65, 267-68, 113, 126-27, 141, 162, 170, 173, 179, 182, 271-73, 280, 282; see also Sociality 189, 198, 225, 234, 237, 239, 275

232 Conscience, 163, 166

Color, 27, 80, 116, 121, 147, 174, 178, 200, Connotation, 94—95

Commitment, 5, 32, 82, 117, 141-42, 157, Conscious, ix, 14, 27, 33, 43, 86, 109, 118-31,

164—65, 201, 230, 238, 244, 253 137, 146-47, 150, 152-57, 168, 175, 177,

Commodity, 28 183, 188-90, 199, 201, 224, 240, 273, 291, Common, 18, 40, 73, 106, 111, 141, 159, 161, 299—~ 300

168, 170, 204, 244, 248, 253, 282 Consensus, 65, 72, 76-77, 93, 95, III, 132,

Common sense, 33, 88, 224 137, 144, 210, 245; see also Agreement

Communication, 87, 93, 96, 98, 104-14, 147, Consequence, 1, 6, 10, 15, 18, 20—22, 24,

178, 185, 203, 235-36, 240-41, 243, 275, 26-27, 29, 31-32, 41-42, 44, 49, 51, 57;

290-92 65, 70-73, 76, 79, 85, 95, 105, 112, 117, Community, 97-99, 101, 106, 111, 141, 196, 120, 124-25, 133-35, 137, £39, 146, 203, 207, 210-11, 214, 220—30, 232, 235, 148-52, 156-57, 159-60, 163—64, 166, 239-40, 246—48, 253, 258, 262—64, 271, 169, 172-73, 180-81, 186, 188—85, 198,

273, 282-83, 286, 288, 290, 302 202, 206-13, 216, 219—20, 229, 234,

Compassion, 166, 273 238-39, 247-54, 257, 259, 261-62, 264,

Competition, 25, 65, 69-70, 74, 81, 87, 268, 271-72, 279, 281-84, 291, 295, 297,

[14—15, 154, 160, 164, 181, 229, 231, 234, 300-301 238, 240, 254, 258, 269, 272-73, 278, 288 Conservative, 198, 264, 273 Complement, vii, ix, 4-7, 9-10, 12—13, 20, Consistent, xii, 22, 31, 57, 61, 176 22-23, 27-28, 31-35, 43-45, 49, 58, 62, Constituent, xii, 5, 8-10, 12-14, 20—24, 27, 66, 72, 77-78, 83, 91, 98-99, 103, 121-23, 91, 103, 107-108, 197, 202—205, 207-208, 132, 142, 146—47, 156, 159, 170, 186, 194, 214-15, 217, 271, 300 199-206, 208, 212, 215—16, 222—23, Constitute, 5, 7-10, 22-23, 35, 42, 53-54, 76,

242-43, 281, 295-98, 303 78, 95, 99, 103, 105-107, 121, 148-49,

Complete, x, 1-3, 5, 8, 33, 40, 55, 58, 60-61, 174, 177, 181, 196-97, 199, 202, 210, 66, 72, 78, 86, 102, 114—15, 135, 138, 154, 214-16, 222, 256-57, 268, 272, 290, 292 164, 177, 184, 187, 196, 217, 233-34, 238, Construct, vii, xii, 3, 18-20, 26, 65, 76, 78,

259, 271-72, 276-77, 285, 288, 294, 301 112, 128, 160, 175-76, 181, 192, 217, 219, Complex, xii, 15, 37, 46, 94, IOI, 112, 127, 221, 225, 229, 236, 241, 271 129, 137, 143, 147, 159, 163, 186, 203, 210, Context, vill, 13, 17-20, 24, 32, 44-45,

215, 220, 239, 255, 257, 267, 270-71, 278 50-53, 65, 72, 81, 85, 88, 91, 93-94, 99, Comprehensive, 22, 26, 30, 35, 57, 68, 74, 104, 115-16, 140-41, 150, 153, 155, 158, 79~80, 82, 139, 142, 220-22, 241, 245-46, 162, 165, 172, 178, 182-84, 187, 196-99,

269 206, 208-10, 215-17, 219, 224, 228-29,

Concealment, vii, 3, 6 231-32, 236-38, 241, 249, 251, 253, 255,

Concept, vili, x, xii, 1, 3, 8, 11-13, 15, 19, 22, 259-60, 264-65, 267, 271-72, 275-76, | 24~—25, 27-28, 30, 33, 39-40, 46, 51, 278-79, 285, 291, 294

316 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Continental philosophy, 28, 63, 148 Deed, 7, 26, 65, 71, 99, 112, 128, 161, 170,

Contingent, 2, 4 234, 276-77, 296; see also Practice

Contract, 145, 198, 237, 239, 243, 270-71, 279 Define, vil, 1, 4, 6-7, 9-11, 13-16, 18—22,

Contradict, 40, 145, 174, 186, 189, 243, 257, 24-25, 27, 30-31, 33, 39, 41, 48, 54,

270, 285, 303 56-57, 59-61, 66, 70, 72, 75-77, 83, 85,

Contrast, xi, 3, 7, 32, 40, 61, 65, 73, 87, 106, 89-90, 92—99, 101, 103, 111, 113, 122, 114, 119, 129-32, 134, 143-46, 152, 156, 126, 135, 137, 142-43, 147, 149, 157, 160, 166, 168, 180, 185, 191, 194, 217, 223, 229, 167~—68, 170, 178, 181, 183, 191, 194, 196,

236, 244, 246-47, 285, 291 198-200, 207, 214-18, 220-22, 224-26,

Control, 11, 28, 31, 71-74, 109, 134-36, 228—30, 232, 237-43, 245, 252-55, 259,

151-55, 157-62, 164-65, 167-68, 261-64, 269, 274, 283, 297, 300

17O~71, 174, 178, 182-83, 185-87, 196, Deliberate, 26, 65, 71-72, 131, 151-52, 161, 208, 210, 213, 218, 242—43, 245, 248-51, 163, 166, 270 253-54, 256-58, 265, 271-72, 274, Democracy, 29, 265, 282

277-80, 283-86, 288 Denotation, viii, 95

240 117, 135, 137, 142, 224

Controversy, 70, 76, 80-81, 114, 143, 182, 209, Depart, xii, G—7, 13, 22, 27, 29, 47, 60-61, 92,

Convention, xiii, 15, 30, 96, 102, 143, 160, Dependence, x, 3—6, 30, 35, 39, 44, 49, 51-52,

165-66, 178, 181, 226, 251 58, 60, 63, 75, 78, 83-84, 91, 96, 98—99,

Conversation, 3—4, I2—14, 20, 23, 25-~26, 107, 111, 117, 131, 143, 156, 165-67, 172, 30-32, 43, 67, 75-77, 91, 98, 115, 122-23, 177-78, 181, 184-87, 197, 211, 217-18, 125, 132, 155, 163, 170, 175, 196-97, 207, 226-27, 237, 241, 258, 282, 288, 291, 299, 214, 217, 220, 233, 262, 277, 288—89, 294, 301

297, 299 Derrida, J., vii, xi, 3, 6, 46, 86-87, 143-44

Coordinate, 67, 190, 198, 219, 240-41, Descartes, R., 33, 168

245-46, 260-63, 265, 269, 272, 280, 289 Description, 14-16, §9, 177, 275 Corporation, 73, 207, 214, 218, 223, 228, 255, Design, viii, 19, 24, 104, 147, 152, 174, 215,

263, 280 222, 241, 256-57

Corrupt, 283 Desire, 1, 36, 74, 86, 117, 161-64, 174, 177, Cosmology, 4, 46, 140, 187, 235 180, 183, 185~88, 200, 240, 254, 256, 280, Cosmos, 89, 303 283, 288—89, 291, 294, 298—99

Cost, 177, 251, 259, 283 Despair, 1, 6, 30, 154, 163

Countertransference, 161, 167 Destruction, 14, 18, 52, 76, 141, 172, 180, 184,

Court of law, 10, 25, 70, 218, 220, 230, 232, 186—88, 230, 244, 261, 275-76, 281,

258, 262, 283; see also Law 283-86, 289, 302

Creation, 21, 73, 83, 147, 160, 165, 175, 192, Determine, vii—vill, ix, 1-10, 12—14, 18-19,

291 21, 23-25, 28-32, 34, 38, 41, 44, 49,

Creative, 37, 60, 91, 125, 147, 195 53-54, 59, 61-62, 66, 68, 75, 77-79, 83,

Crime, 253 90-91, 95, 98-99, 105, 113, 118, 125, Criticism, 2, 14, 27-29, 31, 40, 47-48, 50, 52, 128-30, 132, 137, 142, 144, 150, 161, 167,

54-57, 61, 63, 65-67, 69, 75, 77, 80-81, 174, 176, 178-80, 183, 190, 193—94, 197, 83—84, 86-87, 89, 142, 146, 162, 166, 222, 207-209, 219, 240, 243, 252, 256, 261-62, 232, 236, 239, 241, 253-55, 257, 260, 263, 264-65, 268, 276-77, 281, 285, 291-92,

265-68, 273, 275, 278-80, 290, 292 295, 297, 300, 303

Critique of Judgment, 46, 106, 146, 235; Develop, x, xii, xiii, 2, 4, 7, I1, 15, 19, 38, 49,

see also Kant 51, 60, 62, 66-67, 76, 82, 84, 86-87, 96,

Culture, 24, 27, 80, 82, 93, 106, 115, 134-36, 98—99, 113-15, 118, 128, 142, 144-46, 141, 158, 169, 175, 183, 192, 198, 214, 219, 154, 165-66, 170, 190-93, 199, 201, 203,

222-23, 227, 229, 236, 282, 301 208, 221, 228, 230, 240, 243, 253, 257, 262,

Custom, 79, 106, 254, 260, 291 270, 272, 278-80, 290, 294, 297

Deviance, xii, 6, 47, 92, 114, 144, 155, 177

Dance, 43, 70, 188 Dewey, J., viii, xi, 1-2, 6, 23, 45-47, 50, 57,

Danger, 36, 54, 119, 142, 170, 194, 198, 220, 59, 86, 112-13, 122, 133-35, 145-48, 157,

279, 282, 285-86 159, 165, 192, 199, 235, 291, 304 Dasein, vii, 15 Dialectic, 2-3, 6, 54, 80-82, 102, 153, 229, Death, 15, 89, 102, 128, 161, 170, 172, 253, 270, 292

182-83, 205, 238, 276, 284, 286, 288-89, Dialogue, 54, 153, 224

294-303 Difference, vii, viii, ix, xii, 3, 6—13, 16, 18,

Deception, vili, 15, 92, 137, 152, 163, 201 20-27, 31—32, 34, 36-38, 40, 42, 51-52,

Decision, 31, 37, 57, 65, 163, 183, 238, 55-58, 61, 63-66, 68-70, 72-73, 75, 244-45, 251-54, 261, 270-71, 273, 287, 77-85, 88-91, 93, 95-104, 106—107, 109,

291 ILI—12, 114-20, 124-25, 129, 131-37,

Deduction, 64, 69, 145 139-41, 143, 146, 151, 153, 158-59, 162,

INDEX 317 168—70, 172, 175-76, 178-82, 184-86, Election, 197, 265 189, 192, 194, 196-98, 200, 203-208, Element, 3, 42, 65, 70, 80-81, 85, 90, 98,

210-17, 219-20, 222—23, 225-26, IOI—102, 108—109, 112, 122, 146, 151, 228-33, 235, 237-42, 244-47, 249-53, 153, 164-66, 176-78, 180, 188—89, 204,

258-59, 262—67, 269, 271, 275-76, 212, 217, 267-68, 270 279-80, 283—85, 288-89, 291, 295, Elite, 15

302—304 Ellipsis, 114

Dimension, 23, 25, 47, 59, 66, 68, 133, 143, Embodiment, viii, 29, 33, 43, 72, 102, 106, 145, 1§4, 193, 196, 200-201, 203—204, II14—15, 120, 142, 151-52, 174, I77, 194, 212, 219, 222, 225, 236, 247, 276, 288-89, 199, 230, 257, 266, 277, 296; see also Body

292, 304 Emergence, 32, 39, 52, 57, 67, 74, 78, 82, 98,

Discipline, 43, 49, 145, 147, 210 108, 127, 139, 144, 167, 169—70, 184, 196,

Discontinuity, 210, 257 205, 210-12, 240~41, 258, 261, 267, 272,

Discourse, viii, xi, 25, 48, 57, 59-60, 65, 86— 281, 298 87, 96-97, 99, 113, 117, 131, 136-37, 139, Emotion, ix, 24, 27, 43, 118-19, 121, 123, 144, 146, 166, 174-75, 256-57, 290-91 145, 149-95, 227, 232-34, 236, 249, 259 Discovery, vii, ix, xili, 18-19, 35, 38-39, 42, Empirical, 18, 25, 51, 63-65, 68, 71, 74, 78,

45, 48, 59, 86-87, 92, 96, 99, 115, I17, 235 138, 145, 150-51, 159, 161, 164—65, 174, Empiricism, 3, 46, 88, 152 183, 186, 192, 243, 256, 296 End, ix, 6, 11, 21-22, 30, 36, 38, 60, 65, 71,

Disorder, 84, 157, 159-60, 243; see also Order 76-77, IO1, 118, 122, 133, 172, 178,

Disparity, 242, 244-46, 254, 263 224-25, 227, 235, 241, 248, 254-55, 276,

Disruption, 221, 225, 227, 262, 267-68, 283 279, 282, 287, 293, 298—99, 303—304;

Dissonance, 166, 254 see alsa Close

Distinguish, xti, 16, 19, 34, 48, 52-33, 55-596, Endurance, x, 11, 22, 36, 76, 172, 225, 227,

71, 75-77, 79, 85, 88, 102, 104-105, 248, 255, 276, 287, 293, 298-99, 303 108—10, 113—~14, 116, 119-20, 124-25, Energy, 11, 59

129, 131-32, 153-54, 156, 169, 171, Enlightenment, 292

175-77, 183, 192, 194, 198, 203, 218, 220, Environment, 23, 28—30, 157, 211, 214-17,

224, 226-27, 237, 242, 249, 253, 260-61, 219, 221-22, 228, 230-32, 238, 245, 248,

268, 275 255, 262, 273, 275, 277

Diversity, 2, 9, 20-21, 28—20, 31, 35, 43, Envy, 184, 186 49-50, 55-56, 61-63, 66—69, 75-78, Epiphenomenal, 123, 127, 153

80—82, 93-94, 96—98, 100, 104—105, 108, Epistemic, viii, 1-2, 4-6, 21, 35-36, 40, 135, 142—43, 201, 211-12, 214, 216, 219— 50-60, 75, 77, 84, 86, 91-92, 96, 106, 199, 20, 222~23, 229, 246, 249-51, 254, 262- 234, 236, 301; see also Knowing

63, 271-72, 276, 279, 284, 289-90, 300 Epoch, 30, 40

Divide, 9, 15, 29, 35, 45, 50, 61-62, 91, 103, Equal, ix, xi, 18~19, 29, 31, 54, $7, 62, 79-80, 125, 130, 138, 153, 155-56, 162, 182, 219, 123, 130, 134-36, 139, 154, 156-57, 159,

231, 242, 244, 247, 279, 283 182, 186, 191, 194, 230-31, 239, 247, 252,

Divine, 110, 140, 185, 221; see also God, Religion 254, 272-73, 281, 302 Divisible, 7, 22, 69, 153, 162, 210, 244, 265 Equivalence, viii, xii, 4, 8, 10, 17, 34-35,

Doctrine, 3, 81-83, 101, 189, 290 38-39, 44, 52-53, 56, 70, 72-73, I12, 121,

Document, 109 124, 150, 156, 177, 181, 183, 189, 200, 218, Dogma, 17, 46, 81-83 243, 259, 261, 263, 265, 272-73, 286, 299 Doing, 23, 26, 71, 73, 84, 158, 166, 234, 255 Eros, 87, 173; see also Desire

Dominate, vili, 13, 28-30, 50, 113, 139, 247, Erotic, 200

270, 273, 275, 278, 282, 290 Error, 15, 49-50, 54-55, 71, 79, 83, 85, 102,

Don Giovanni, 76 120, 122, 133, 138, 168, 187, 194, 225, 233, Dostoievski, F., 189, 233 237-39, 250, 279, 295

Drama, 42, 185, 221, 290, 294 Eschatology, 48, 115, 139, 221

Dream, viil, 43, 74,95, 101, 131, 137-38, 167, Essence, x, 15-16, 18, 46, 106, 122, 151, 166,

175, 179, 205 177, 275, 279-80, 282

Dress, 22, 182, 215, 253; see also Clothing Estimate, 187, 218-19, 235 Dualism, 33—34, 131, 149, 168—69, 299 Eternity, 3, 39, 294-95, 302

Durkheim, E., 163 Ethics, 18-19, 26, 46, 48, 62—63, 65-67, 7o-

72, 74, 79, 99, 166, 191, 249-54, 259, 268,

Earth, 24, 63, 217, 284, 293, 296 270, 284, 286, 291-92, 304; see also Moral Economy, 74, 138, 163, 174-75, 181, 185, 197, Ethnic, 214, 219, 221, 224, 230-32, 248

229—30, 240, 244, 284 Ethology, 169, 175 Efficient cause, 28 53, 59-60, 71, 74, 76, 80, 90-91, 103-107,

Efficiency, 63, 240, 254, 269, 273 Event, vili, 18, 21, 33, 35-36, 38—42, 48, 51, Ego, 34, 125, 139, 162-63, 240, 282, 299 122—23, 127, 136-38, 157-59, 167, 205,

318 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING

Event (continued ) 173-77, 183-84, 186-87, 199, 204-206,

209, 217, 286, 293-94, 296-98, 300-301, 209, 215—16, 219-21, 224, 226, 232, 240,

303 244-45, 248, 251-52, 254-56, 262—66,

Everlasting, 293-96, 302—304 269-71, 274-75, 278-80, 282, 284, 286,

Everyday, 52, 70-71, 83-84, 91, 9G, 131, 145, 288, 291, 304 156, 163—64, 167, 174, 236, 256, 284 Facts and values, 63, 79 Evidence, 25, 30-31, 33, 53, 55 57> 63, 78, Faculty, 146, 268 120, 145, 162, 169, 194, 244, 257, 268, 282 Failure, 1, 8, 15, 19, 24, 45, 47-48, 63, 65, 72, Evil, 65, 101, 139, 145, 148, 188, 194, 262, 96, 113, 128, 140, 162, 164, 173, 181-82,

283, 286 186-87, 190-91, 201, 234, 241-43,

Excess, 265, 283 250-51, 253, 259-60, 263, 265, 268, 272,

Exchange, 181, 224 274, 281, 283, 285-86

Existence, ix, 1, 18, 48, 59, 120, 129, 131, 134, Fairness, 240, 272-73 140, 150, 155, 168, 201, 221, 238, 257, 277, Faith, 65

302 Fallible, 67, 120

Existentialism, 1, 15, 18, 137 False, 3, 25, 57, 59, 64, 69, 75, 79, 86, 88, 92,

Expediency, 284 115, 121, 134, 159—G60, 250, 270, 273, 292;

Experience, vii, ix, xi, xii, xiii, 1-3, O-7, 12, see also Truth 14, 19-24, 27-35, 37; 39, 41-44, 46-47, Familiar, 177 49, 51, 53-55, 57, 61-63, 65-67, 70, Family, 12, 16, 182, 214—15, 219-21, 223-27,

72-75, 78-79, 83-86, 91, 97-98, 229, 232, 236, 247-48, 261-62 102—104, 118—19, 122—23, 126-27, 130, Fantasy, 120, 175

133—38, 140, 142, 145-47, 149—SI, Feeling, 68, 71, 95, 120-32, 146-48, 150, 152, 153-58, 162—65, 167, 175-76, 179, 181, 154, 157, 166, 168, 193, 221, 225, 234-35, 183, 188—90, 192—94, 196, 198—200, 282; see also Emotion

204-205, 211, 213, 215, 219, 225, 235, 247, Feyerabend, P., 48, 145

249-50, 255, 257, 271, 277, 281-83, 291, Fiction, 20, 210

297, 299-301, 304 Field theory, 64, 91, 94—95, 103, 140, 143—44;

Experiment, 156, 164—65, 190, 211 see also Semasis

Explanation, 1x, 4, 34, 37-38, 41, 48, 57, 59, Figuration, 91-92, 95, 98, 100, 114-17,

64, 69, 81, 114, 174-75, 208 136-38, 143-44

Explicit, vii, 2, 26, 28, 45, 72, 93, 105, Final, 12, 15, 19, 57, 65, 76, 85, 93, 95, 98,

122—28, 130, 132, 143, 146-47, 155, 165, 114, 132, 1§4, 160, 180, 191, 199, 204, 212, 180, 192, 223, 235, 257, 263, 265—67, 287 234, 278 Exploit, 134, 143, 176-77, 180-82, 194-95, Final cause, 63

232, 289 Finite, vii, xii, 1-7, 10, 13-14, 17, 20—21, 32,

Express, vii, xXli, 2-5, 7-10, 12-15, 18, 20-21, 35-37, 41, 43-44, 48-49, 51-53, 55-59, 24, 28, 31, 34, 39-40, 43-44, 48-49, 57, 58, 60, 150, 179, 183-84, 188-91, 206, 61—64, 68, 70, 73, 80, 83, 95-97, 99-102, 262, 281, 289, 294-304 105—106, 108, 112, 114-15, LI7, I19, First principle, 102, 163, 292 121-23, 125-26, 129-34, 136—39, 142, Fixing belief, 25 146-47, 149-51, 158, 160-61, 164-65, Flesh, 177, 296; see also Body 167, 169, 171-72, 177, 181-82, 185, 189, Focal attention, 126; see also Attention

193—94, 197, 199, 201, 205—206, 213, Forbidden, 177 215-16, 218, 222—24, 236, 249, 253, 257, Foreground, 124 259, 268, 271, 276, 281, 283, 294, 297, Forget, 84, 90, 265; see also Memory

299 — 300; see also Meaning Form, vil, Vill, ix, X1, Xl, 1-5, 7-8, 14-21,

External, viii, 5, 31, 50-51, 53-55, 58-60, 68, 24-32, 35-41, 43-45, 48-52, 54, 57-59, 81, 86, 150-51, 154, 158, 172, 242, 270, 61-71, 73-76, 78-86, 88-91, 96-98,

297, 302 IOI—103, 105, 108, 110-18, 121, 123,

External relation, 297 126-31, 133, 135-44, 146-47, 151, 153, Extinction, 289, 294-95, 298-99, 301 ~ 303; see 156~—58, 160—64, 166-82, 184-87, 189,

also Death IOI, 193-94, 196-203, 206—13, 215, 218, 221-25, 227-33, 235-36, 242-46,

Fabrication, xii, 24, 26, 65, 69-74, 79, 248-52, 254-59, 261, 263-67, 271, 274, 1OO—IO0I1, 108, 110, 112, 117, 132, 139, 142, 276-81, 284—85, 287-90, 297-99 160, 179, 209—10, 218, 243, 250, 279, 300 Form of life, vii, 5, 17, 19, 35, 130, 168—60,

Fabricative judgment, xii, 24, 26, 69-74, 79, 176, 196, 223

100-101, 108, 110, 112, 117, 132, 139, 142, | Foucault, M., vii, xi, 47, 86, 113, 145-48,

160, 179, 210, 243, 250, 279, 300 173-78, 183, 193-94, 208, 256, 290-91

Fact, 1, 13, 15-16, 18, 23, 25-26, 33, 36-37, Foundational, 1-4, 17, 35-36, 44, 48, 50,

45, 50-51, 59, 63, 65-66, 69-71, 79, 52-54, 78, 84, 87, 92, 98, 106, 114,

90-91, 93, 104-105, 108, ILI, 119-23, 141—42, 147, 163, 221, 235, 237-38, 241, 125-26, 129, 147, 154, 157, 164-65, 259, 265, 270, 272-73, 2760-77, 291-92

INDEX 319 Fraud, 95, 156 Gossip, 225

Free market, 263, 267 Government, 24, 64, 111, 207, 218, 223, 228,

Freedom, x, xi, xiii, 3, 6, 23, 28, 31-32, 243-44, 246, 255, 261-68, 274, 278, 37-38, 44-45, 47, 60, 123, 146, 150, 163, 281-83, 285 181, 191, 219, 230-31, 249, 267, 299 Grammar, xi, 46, 86, 90, 94-95, 107, 113-15, Freud, S., xiii, 14, 48, 74, 80, 87, 122, 125, 117, 143, 145

145-46, 148, 155, 162, 173, 184, 188, 194 Grief, 161, 172, 299-300 Friend, 83, 223—26, 228, 233, 247, 261, 287, Gross unison, 56

299 Ground, ix, 3, 33, 50, 54, 57, 59, 80, 108, 139,

Fulfillment, viii, 25, Go, 126, 141-42, 171-73, 143, 149, 154, 189, 228, 231, 240, 251, 262, 184—87, 191, 202, 205, 223, 235, 241, 246, 266-67, 274, 276, 287

268-69, 276, 281, 289, 300, 304 Group, 23, 26, 97-98, 101, 104, 143, 186, Function, vii, viii, x, 5-6, 8-13, 18-19, 196-97, 199, 201-202, 206—207, 211, 214, 21-24, 27-28, 31-38, 44, 47, 52, 56-57, 216-20, 222-33, 243-44, 246-47, 259, 65, 70, 72-73, 75; 77, 79, 89-104, 261-63, 273, 282, 284, 288-80; see also 107~108, 110-12, 115-18, 121—28, 130, Socialitry 132, 134, 136, 150-51, 153-56, 158-60, 162-66, 168, 170-72, 174, 176, 179, 183, Habermas, J., 87, 147, 235-36, 240-41,

185, 188, 191, 197, 199-200, 202, 204, 208, 290-92

210, 214-17, 219, 221, 225, 227-28, Habit, 71, 89, 127, 164, 260 230-33, 237, 240, 244, 250, 256-57, Hanson, N., 192 261—64, 266—68, 270-72, 275-76, 278, Happiness, xi, 251

281, 284, 291-92, 298 Harmony, 145, 156-57, 229, 241, 243, 261,

Future, vii, x, xi, 4, 6, 8, 19, 21-22, 28, 31, 268

38—41, 61, 66, 76, 78, 80, 83, 98, 102, 117, Hatred, 164, 169-71, 185-86, 193, 282

133-35, 137, 141, 175-76, 187, 205-207, Health, 84, 158, 299 210-13, 221, 227, 229, 239, 245, 251, 257, Hegel, G., 3, 6, 33, 35, 38-39, 60, 86, 134,

264, 266, 270-71, 273, 276-78, 281, 186, 223, 290

285-91, 293, 296-98, 300~—304; see also Time Hegemony, 174, 257 Heidegger, M., vii, xi, xiii, 3, 6-7, 15, 17, 28,

Gadamer, H-G., 36, 46, 48, 86, 146, 304 35, 46-47, 57, 64, 86, 95, 113, 129,

Gandhi, M., 267 134—~35, 145-48, 210, 275-79, 292

Gender, 182; see a/so Sexuality Hermeneutic, 21, 88, 107, 146, 148

General, viii, ix, xii, 3, 7,9, 11-12, 15-16, Hierarchy, 194 18—19, 21-30, 34-36, 38-43, 46-47, Historicism, 36, 39, 272, 275, 278, 300 51-53, 55-56, 58, 64-65, 74-75, 79, 82, History, ix, xii, 2,5, 14, 18-19, 22, 25, 84, 88-89, 99-100, 102-103, 108, 112-18, 27-28, 35-43, 48, 57, Go—64, 66, 68-70, 122—23, 125-26, 128—32, 139-41, 79-81, 83, 86, 91, 93, 98—99, 109, 115, 143-45, 147, 154, 158, 162, 166, 172~74, 134-36, 144-45, 147-48, 150, 152-53, 181, 183, 185, 188, 194, 198—99, 203, 206, 155, 162—63, 193-94, 198, 205, 210-11, 209, 211, 213-18, 221—24, 228, 235, 242, 213, 217, 221~23, 231, 237, 242, 253, 252-53, 257, 261, 266—67, 274-75, 282, 257-58, 263, 270, 272-73, 275, 278-84,

287, 290, 297, 301, 304 286-87, 291, 296, 298, 300-301, 303

Generalization, ix, 18, 26, 35, 39, 51, 53,58, Hobbes, T., 92, 144, 148, 163, 246, 258-59,

82, 88, 102, 117, 123, 131-32, 145, 154, 266

185, 188, 215—16, 242, 290 Homogeneity, 194, 232, 263

Generative grammar, 113, 145; see also Chomsky Homosexual, 178, 180, 182

Generic, 154, 158, 162, 180, 212, 215, 222, Honor, x, 202, 224, 233-34 228, 230, 242, 274, 279, 281, 290, 295, 297 Hope, x, 83, 101, 189, 286-87

Generous, 171, 233, 258 Horizon, 36, 39, 86

Genetic, 3, 16, 19, 68, 114-15, 176, 192 Horkheimer, M., 47-48, 292

Genius, 92 ger, Language

Genital, 175, 182, 188; see a/so Sexuality House of Being, 95, 113; see a/so Being, Heideg-

Geography, 199-200, 213, 215, 217, 224 Human body, 27, 42-43, 72, 125, 150

Geology, 37, 63 Human science, ix, xi, 63, 68, 278 Geometry, 24; see also Mathematics Hume, D., 221, 236

Gesture, 70, 88, 99, 101, 105-106, 114-15,

215, 219, 224, 257 Ideal, ix, 6, 15, 37-39, 63, 70, 72, 77-78, 82, God, 61, 271, 287, 295 89, 91, 141-42, 146, 150, 177, 186-87,

Goffman, E., 145-46, 193, 235-36 193, 220, 229-30, 235-36, 239-40,

Good, viii, xi, 64—65, 87, 101, 148, 165, 171, 242—43, 246-47, 249, 251-53, 255,

181, 193, 207, 229, 244, 248, 258, 275 259-60, 263, 265, 268-75, 281-86, Good life, 74 288-89, 291 Goodman, N., viii, xi, 87, 148, 165, 193 Idealism, ix, 6, 89, 91, 146

420 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Ideology, 74, 163, 175, 241, 273, 291 180, 192, 210-13, 218, 250, 272; see also Ignorance, 250, 270 Query, Science

Illegitimate, 40, 237, 257, 271 Insight, xi, 7, 29-30, 39, 43, 60, 66—67, Illicit, 40, 177-78, 237, 257, 271 96-97, 113, 117, 123, 125-26, 142, 147,

Illness, 158, 299 149, 154, 165-66, 214, 228, 230, 236, 238,

Illocution, 108 248, 253, 270-71, 278, 290, 292, 296 Imagination, ix, 3, 7, 20, 34, 43, 54, 59-60, Inspiration, 112, 142, 156-57, 159-60, 109, 152, 168, 172, 175-76, 178, 215, 220, 164-65, 210, 219, 279, 282, 286 232, 238, 255-56, 258, 266, 269-70, 289, Instinct, 158

297 Institution, 26, 31, 99, 111, 136, 174, 196-97,

Immanence, 39, 174, 256 203, 206—208, 211, 213, 215-16, 221, 223, Immoral, 259—60, 262, 265, 281, 283, 285 227-29, 240, 244, 255-57, 261, 263—65,

Immortal, 176, 287, 293-96, 298-99 268-69, 271, 275, 278-80

Impartial, 239, 270 Instruct, 99, 110—12; see a/so Learn Imperfect, 184, 187 Instrumental, vili, 15, 27-32, 34, 38, 54, 57,

Implicit, 122, 125, 127, 180 101, 132—36, 138—39, 145, 148, 157 Implicit knowledge, 124, 211 Integer, 7; see also Arithmetic

Inclusive, vili, ix, 11-13, 18, 26—28, 31, 34, Integrity, xii, 68, 233, 237 39-40, 44, 56-57, 59, 63, 65, 82, 91, 106, Intellect, vii, 24, 30, 77, 149, 152, 166, 176 112, 116, 125, 129-30, 137, 143, 156, 182, Intelligence, 125, 155, 161, 183, 283

216, 220-22, 224—25, 278, 300 Intelligible, x, 1-2, 4, 6, 12, 23, 28, 33-34,

Incommensurate, 249, 251, 260, 262, 273 40-41, 45, 50-51, 91, 103, 112, 120, 127,

Incomplete, vii, 2, 4, 6, 18, 38, 49, 51, 54-55, 129, 140, 147, 150, 176, 183-84, 190, 194, 58-59, 61, 113-14, 166, 173, 177, 184-86, 200-202, 217, 229, 237-38, 241-42, 274,

190, 267, 288-80, 301, 304 283-85, 299

Independent, vii, 1, 4, 13, 28, 92, 94-95, 99, Intention, 33, 48, 104—105, IO9—10, 121, 125,

135, 138, 144, 149, 163, 170, 172, 176, 137, 153, 280

186—87, 193, 197-99, 202, 207, 238, Interest, 38, 68-69, 87, 148, 154-55, 157,

240-41, 258, 271, 279 172, 174, 224, 235-37, 239, 241, 243,

Indeterminate, 2—10, 12—14, 23, 28-29, 245-46, 251, 254, 258, 261-62, 265,

31-32, 44-46, 49, 55, 58, 66, 77, 83, 286-88 208, 243, 250, 276, 281, 295 154, 167, 211, 235, 286

93-95, 98-99, 117-18, 137, 143-45, 190, Interesting, 28, 41, 89, 98, 100, 114, 117, 143, Individual, 2, 23, 26—27, 35, 50, 65, 68, 72, Intermodal, 26~—27, 31, 62, 69-75, 78, 82, 88, 79~—80, 82, 94-95, 97~—98, 101, 111, 116, 98-100, 105, 112, 118, 128, 134, 139, 160,

121%, 134, 149, 158, 160, 163, 174, 176, 168, 280 178-79, 181-83, 188, 196-219, 222, Internal, 50-51, 53-56, 59-60, 86, 144, 228-29, 231, 233, 235, 237-43, 245-46, 146—47

248, 252-56, 258-59, 262—65, 267-71, International, 164, 246, 262 273, 279-80, 282-85, 287-88, 302 Interpret, 2~—3, 8, 12—13, 21, 25-28, 32,

Indivisible, 2—3, 132 36-38, 42, 57, 64, 69-70, 73, 77-78, 80, Indubitable, 84; see a/so Certainty 82, 84, 86-87, 89-93, 95, 98, 107-11, 119, Induction, 78, 145 124, 131, 134-35, 143, 146, 148, 154, 156, Industry, 228—30, 275-77, 280, 291 15§9—G6o, 162, 164-67, 179-81, 190, 197,

Ineffable, 164 200—201, 203, 209, 211-13, 217-19, 222,

Inexhaustibilicy, vii, vili, ix, xi, xii, 1-14, 224, 235, 240-42, 250, 266, 270, 273, 275, 16-17, 19-25, 27-46, 48-49, 51-53, 286, 292, 296, 298, 300-302; see also Her55-69, 72-75, 77-78, 80-83, 85-93, 95, meneutic, Meaning 97-99, 1OI—104, 109~—27, 129-35, Interpretant, 89 137-42, 144-47, 149-53, 155—-57,* Interrogate, 15, 17-19, 24-25, 29-30, 33-34, 159-60, 162—63, 166, 169~70, 172-78, 39, 45, 52, 54, 56-70, 73-75, 78-85, 103, 183-84, 186-94, 197, 199-206, 208-17, 107-108, I10—11, 114, 123, 126—30, 136, 219—21, 223—24, 227, 229-30, 232, 139-42, 147, 154, 156-72, 175, 178-81, 234-36, 238, 242-43, 245, 247, 249-55, 184-91, 193, 206, 209-12, 222, 233-34, 257, 259, 262-65, 268, 271-81, 286, 241, 243, 245, 249-53, 255, 265—67,

288-89, 291-92, 294-304 271-72, 274, 276-77, 279-81, 284,

Infer, 121, 301 287-88, 291-92, 294, 301-304

Infinite, 7, 33, 58 Intimate, 1, 5, 69, 113-15, 146, 175, 182,

Inherit, 19, 23, 89, 221, 253 222-26, 228, 230, 233, 247, 252, 261 Injustice, 155, 231-32, 247, 260-62, 265-66, Intuit, 54, 92, 140, 165 269, 273-74, 283, 285, 289 Invent, ix, 6, 25, 29-30, 43, 49, 60-62,

Innate, 145 66-67, 73, 75, 87, 91-92, 95-96, 99, 104, Inquiry, 2, 15, 17-19, 25-26, 57-63, 65, 107, I10, 142, 1§7, 165, 210—11, 219, 243,

75-79, 88, 126, 128, 157, 159-60, 175, 269

INDEX 321 Invisible, vii, 257 259-61, 263, 266-67, 269-71, 276-77, Involuntary, 155, 158 279, 281, 284, 287, 290-91

Irony, 1-2, 142, 172, 197, 241, 271, 303 Lexicon, 107 Irrational, 8, 25, 67, 71, 126, 130, 141, Liberal, 178, 198, 259, 263—64, 273-74 151-54, 157-59, 161-64, 166-68, 210, Liberation, x, 28, 44—45, 209, 257

244-45, 291 Liberty, 182, 252-54, 282

Irrelevant, 22, 24, 41, 79, 99, 109, 114-16, Licit, 177

126, 146, 159, 162, 164, 175, 178, 181, 197, Life, vii, ix, Xi, I, 3, 5, 11-12, 1§, 17-19,

223, 245, 248, 297-99 21-23, 28-30, 32, 34-35, 45, 59-60, Its other, 9, 33, 118 62-63, 68, 74, 79, 82-83, 85, 89-90, 95, 97, 102—104, 107, 109, 118~21, 123,

Jaggar, A., 181 125-26, 128, 130, 134-35, 137, 139-42, Jakobson, R., 147 145, 147, 150, 155, 160-61, 167-70, Joy, 150-51, 154, 169, 171-72, 190 172-73, 175-79, 181-83, 187-89, 191,

Judgment, xii, 3, 23—32, 38, 43, 45-47, 49, 193-94, 196-97, 199-200, 202, 205, 208, 54, 64, 66-85, 88-89, 91-92, 96, 98—100, 210, 213, 216—18, 220, 222-23, 225-27,

102—13, 116—18, 120, 123, 126-36, 229-30, 232-33, 235-36, 246-48, 138—43, 146-47, 150-52, 154-65, 250-55, 260, 262-63, 265-66, 271, 167-72, 175-80, 184~—88, 190, 192— 273-80, 282-91, 294, 296-300, 303-304

93, 196, 199-213, 215, 217-19, 222— Limit, vii, viii, xii, 2, 4-7, 11, 13-14, 16-17,

28, 230, 232-35, 237-55, 258-65, 21-22, 45-46, 49-50, 56-58, 60-64, 72, 267-75, 277-80, 284-89, 292, 295— 74, 78-79, 83, 89, 93, 98, 101, 102, 112,

304 125-26, 128, 131, 139, 142, 146, 153,

Justice, 141, 171, 178, 198, 210, 230, 232, 237, 173-75, 183, 185, 188—92, 199, 201, 204,

239-44, 246-47, 252, 254, 266, 268-74, 209, 212-13, 215, 217, 219, 221, 224,

284-85, 290-92 240-41, 243, 245-48, 253, 255, 260, 262,

Justify, 4, 16, 18, 38, 51-53, 55-56, 69, 267, 272, 275-76, 280-81, 284-86, 289, 75-77, 86, 189, 192, 240, 254, 259-61, 292, 295, 297-300, 302~304

268~—69, 284-86, 292 Linguistic, 15, 46, 51, 57, 70-72, 77, 90-91, 94, 96, 98—I01, 105, 107—108, 113-15,

146, 235, 270 Meaning

Kant, I., xil, 3, 34, 40, 46, 48, 70, 106, 143, 130, 143—44, 146, 148; see also Language,

Kierkegaard, S., 65, 87, 134, 142, 148 Literal, 92-93, 95, 98—100, 102, 116, 144

Kindness, 171 Living, xi, 15-16, 22, 32, 42, 54, 65, 68, 80,

Knowing, vil, 1X, Xl, 1-5, 14-17, 20, 24, 27, 93, 103~—104, 106, 117, 119-21, 140-42,

34-37, 39-42, 45-47, 49-88, 91-92, 101, 144, 151, 156, 159, 161-63, 167-69, 171, 104, 106-10, 113—14, 119-20, 124, 128, 176-79, 185, 199, 204—205, 210—I1, 134-30, 141, 145-47, 151, 155, 161, 221—22, 226-29, 253, 257, 276-77, 164-66, 170, 175, 178-79, 182-85, 188, 294-96, 298-300, 302, 304 190, 192, 194, 199, 201, 203, 205-206, Locale, xii, 8-14, 20-21, 24, 28, 44, 54, 56, 210~11, 213, 223-25, 234, 250, 256—59, 90, 97~98, 107, 118, 131, 134, 197, 200, 261, 265, 268, 270, 275, 278, 280, 284, 287, 202-204, 206, 215, 217, 222, 237-39, 243,

291, 294-95, 298, 302—303 245, 247-48, 253, 271, 277, 300 Knowing how, 79, 170 Locality, vill, ix, Xil, X1il, 4, 7-14, 17, 20-24, Knowing that, 79 26, 28, 41, 43-46, 49, 53-58, Go—62, 66, Kuhn, T., 60, 86—87, 96, 145 68-69, 76, 85, 89-90, 97—99, 104, 107, 115, 118, 125, 129-31, 134-35, 138-40,

Labor, 102, 229-30 142—43, 147, 149, 153, 162, 179, 185, 197,

Lacan, J., 87 199-200, 202—204, 206, 215—17, 221—22, Lakoff, O., 144 237-39, 241, 243, 245-49, 251-55, 260, Langer, S., 123, 136—37, 146, 148 262-63, 265, 271-74, 277, 281, 285, 289,

Language, ix, xi, 5-6, 12, 14-15, 27, 30, 46, 294-98, 300-304 51,59, 70, 77-78, 80, 83, 86-87, 90-93, Locke, J., 92, 144, 148 95, 98-101, 106—108, 112-18, 127-28, Locus, xti, 8-14, 20-23, 27-29, 44, 49, 53, 131, 136-39, 143-48, 161, 163, 174, 193, 55, 66, 89-90, 103, 107, 113, 122, 149, 200,

197, 200-201, 207, 210, 240, 280 203-204, 214-17, 238—39, 245, 247, 258, Langue, 90 275, 300 Law, 38—40, 51, 174, 182, 240, 252, 254, 266, Logic, xiii, 7-8, 15, 18, 34, 38, 41, 46, 58, 61,

269, 300 63, 65, 69, 71, 74, 86, 94, 124, 137, 143,

Learn, 45> 86-87, 92, I11, 128, 145; 164~-65, 145, 156-57, 176, 192-94, 240, 292

169, 171-72, 192, 215, 234 Logical empiricism, 63

Legitimate, 3, 5, 18, 30, 41, 54, 61, 68, 71, 73, Loss, ix, 4, 172, 299-300 75, 81, 84-85, 118, 134, 155, 160, 171, 175, Love, x, Xi, 149, 155, 158, 161, 163, 167, 169,

202, 237, 239-40, 244-45, 254-55, 172-73, 175-78, 180, 183-87, 193-94,

322 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING

Love (continued) Metaphor, 91-93, 95—96, 117, 144, 152-53,

220, 225-26, 232—34, 283, 292, 299 194 Loyal, 142, 230-31, 244, 249 Metaphysics, xi, xii, 3, 14, 18, 24, 26-27,

Lust, 163, 173, 180, 184, 193—94; see also Love, 40-41, 46-47, 51-52, 58, 74, 82, 86, 130.

Sexuality 147, 187, 215, 235, 275, 292

Lyons, J., 143, 192 Method, vii, xii, 3, 18, 33, 46, 48, 50-53, 55-56, 59, 64, 66, 71, 74, 76, 86, 145-46, Machine, 6, 43, 232, 242 152, 167, 210, 256, 259, 262, 304 Madness, 47, 145, 147-48, 256 Methodology, 3, 59

Magic, 263 Metric, 7; see also Measure

Magnitude, 7—8, 252 Microbiology, 68

Majority, 246, 265, 283 Microphysics, 64, 67

267 297

Making, 19, 26, 41, 73, 81, 84, 91, 111, 123, Middle region, 257

129, 131, 166, 172, 178, 299, 303 Milieu, 19, 25, 101, 107-109, 112, 128, 134,

Malraux, A., 145 139, 150, 197, 200, 202, 206-207, 210-12, Manipulate, 28, 177, 235, 258, 260, 264-065, 215, 217, 222, 224—25, 227, 238, 247, 264,

Many, 149-51, 153, 157-60, 164-65, 167, Military, 188, 226, 282, 284 I71, 173, 176-77, 180, 182, 186—87, 190, Mill, J. S., xi, 188 194, 196, 201, 203-207, 2090-11, 214-22, Mimesis, 64, 106

226-28, 230-33, 240-41, 243-44, Mind, 15, 30, 33-34, 37, 42, 46-47, 59, 83, 246-47, 249, 252~53, 255, 257-59, 87, 110, 115, 119-23, 125, 127, 143-47,

261—62, 265, 272-76, 278-80, 282-83, 149, 153, 154-56, 164, 187, 206, 242, 249,

286—87, 290, 295, 299, 302 280, 282, 286, 292, 295, 297

Marcuse, H., 47, 87, 236, 292 Minority, 283

Margin, 22, IOI—102, 133, 153, 229, 272, 296 Mirror, viii, xi, 45-46, 48, 86-87, 145 Marx, K., vii, x, 28, 60, 74, 134, 147, 194, 222, Misery, x, 163, 189-91 227-30, 236, 241, 243, 248, 270, 274-75, Mismeasure, 243, 252

277, 279, 290-92 Mistake, x, 15-16, 47, $0, 74, 83, 135—36,

Mask, 169, 260 150, 163, 178, 196, 219, 234, 237, 245, 292; Mass, 11, 21, 59, 146, 280 see also Error Material, vii, vili, ix, 3, 24, 29, 34, 42, 59-60, Moby Dick, 73, 100

80-82, 151, 169, 197, 229, 237, 270 Mode, ix, xil, 4, 11, 13-15, 24-31, 34, 38, 42, Mathematics, 8, 20, 38—40, 48, 50-51, 61, 44,47, 57-58, 62-66, 68-73, 75, 77-81, 63—64, 68-69, 74, 115, 147, 150, 176, 192, 83, 85-87, 89, 95-99, 102-103, 105, 107, ' 194, 2461, 300—301; see a/so Arithmetic IlQO—1}!, 114-15, I17—19, 129-31, Matter, x, 6, 33-34, 42, 45, 48-49, 60-63, 71, = 133-35, 137-42, 144-45, 147, 149-52, 77-79, 107, 125, 175, 180, 197, 200, 211, 158—G61, 166, 173-74, 189, 191, 198, 201,

215, 240, 244, 268-69, 274, 281, 290, 207, 209-10, 212, 219, 224, 228, 230, 237,

298-99 240, 246-47, 249-51, 254, 256-57,

McTaggart, J., 48 261-63, 269, 273-76, 280, 284, 287

Mead, G., 147 Modification, vil, 8, 11-12, 21, 32, 40, 49, 99,

Meaning, vii, 2, 13, 51, 59, 88—147, 165, 244, 63, 90, 94, 96, 112, 135, 137, 149, 167, 180,

289, 294, 303-304 190, 202, 266, 297

Meaning of life, 104, 140-42, 294 Moral, 15—16, 18-19, 22, 24, 26-27, 30, 61, Meaningless, 2, 51, 92, 130, 289, 303 64-66, 68, 72-73, 79, 82-83, 87, 100-101,

Means, 203-206, 211, 220 124, 142, 156, 162—64, 166, 168, 179, 181-

Measure, 8, 10, 26, 51, 64, 116, 129, 212, 82, 201, 210, 212, 218, 221, 233, 237-39, 231-32, 238-40, 245, 248, 252-56, 259, 242-44, 247, 251-55, 258-65, 267-75, 261-67, 271, 274, 279-80, 283, 298 280, 282-84, 286-88, 291; see also Ethics Mechanical, 64, 116, 125, 155, 175, 228 Motion, 41

Mechanism, 125, 155, 175 Motive, 94, 131, 161, 168—69, 240

Mediation, 121~23, 149, 153, 163, 199, Movement, vii, 6, 55, 65, 100, 130, 144,

225-27, 233, 262-63 157-58, 164, 253-54, 275, 291, 294 Medicine, 157, 191, 268, 280 Mover, 2, 4

Member, 76, 98, 101, 104, 106—107, 196-97, Multimodal, 27, 62, 69, 73-74, 88, 105, 110,

201-202, 204, 206—209, 214, 216-17, 118, 139

219-21, 225-27, 229-31, 233, 247, Multiple, viii, xii, 7-14, 20-21, 23, 36—38,

261-62, 264, 267, 282, 285; see also Collective 40-41, 43-45, 48-49, 51, 53, 64-65, 80,

Memory, 11, 85, 218, 296, 300 91,97, 135, 137-38, 147-49, 190-91, 201,

Meno, 2, 45 203, 208, 213, 215-17, 221, 242, 273, Merleau-Ponty, M., vii, 42-43, 48, 119-20, 276-77, 281, 300-301, 303

124, 146-47, 149 Multiple location, 8—13, 20, 23, 36-37, 41, 44,

Message, 104—106, 108-10, 112, 114 53, 137, 190, 201, 208, 216, 276, 301, 303

INDEX 3.23 Music, 70, 95, 151, 175, 218 153, 155, 158, 160, 169, 171, 175, 177; 179,

Myth, vili, 94, 96, 113-14, 144, 175, 178, 186-87, 196-97, 202, 215, 233, 235, 245,

294-95, 298 282, 293, 295

Objective, 22, 282, 293, 295

Nagel, T., 177-78, 193-94 Obligation, 18-19, 24, 32, 47, 79, 83, 124,

283 Past

Name, 44, 92, 116, 200, 224, 259, 270, 273 174, 201, 234, 238, 240, 255, 264, 271, 290,

Nation, 26, 48, 57, 64, 197, 207-209, 214, 303

219-21, 224~—25, 230-31, 246, 248, 264, Oblivion, 191, 194, 276, 282; see also Memory,

Natural law, 40, 51, 300 Obscure, xii, 3, 6, 25, 35, 42, 71, 93, I11, 133, Natural right, 198, 237, 239, 242, 259 187, 189, 200, 237, 290 Natural science, 36, 49, 57, 63-64, 68—69, 86; Ocean, 89, 92-93

see also Science Omniscience, 53

Naturalism, ix, 6, 89-90 One-dimensional, 47, 236, 292 Nature, ix, xi, xii, 2, 7, 19, 25, 30, 32, 36, 42, Ontological difference, 7, 129 46—49, 55, 58-59, 61, 67, 70, 75, 77-78, Ontological priority, 3, 214

84, 86-87, 237-40, 243-44, 246, 250, Ontology, ix, xi, 3, 7, 20, 46, 48, 56, 74, 129,

252-53, 256-57, 259-60 137, 146, 209, 214-15

Near, 15, 101, 174, 231, 281 Openness, vii, viii, 4-7, 14, 28, 30-32, 58, 60,

Necessity, xii, 4, 6-7, 15, 17, 37; 41, 67, 70, 83, 99, 130, 135, 152, IOI, 211-13, 219, 74, 85, 94, 96, 103, 107, 114, 123, 126-29, 276-77, 281, 295 154, 192, 194, 198—99, 203, 212, 228, 230, Opinion, 52, 54-55, 128

233, 238-39, 241, 243, 250, 255-56, Opposite, 23, 79, 90, 104, 129-31, 143, 153, 258-63, 265-71, 274, 285—86, 300 1§5—57, 170, 178-79, 183, 196, 220, 251,

Need, viii, ix, xi, 18, 24, 29, 36, 44, 52, 54, 60, 265, 267, 274, 304 70, 75, 84, 90, 96, III, 121, 125, 127, 134, Oppress, ix, xi, 28, 44-45, 177, 180-181, 207, 142, 145, 153-54, 159, 161, 172, 176, 180, 209, 224, 231-32, 248, 260, 276-77, 284, 182—~—89, 196, 201-203, 211, 216, 233, 286, 291

240-41, 258, 262—63, 269, 271, 273, Opprobrium, 224

279-80, 282, 286, 292 Order, viii, xii, 92, 188, 220, 235, 257, 272, 279

Negate, viii, 1, 3-4, 6, 39, 50, 58, 60, 67, 96, Ordinality, viii, xi, xii, 46-47, 147, 235 145, 166, 171, 184—87, 190, 201, 206—207, Ordinary, 50, 53, 85, 104, 120-21, 151, 156,

223, 232, 250, 269, 276, 291 163, 167, 169, 181, 189, 205, 264, 266

Neighborhood, 214, 219, 225, 228 Organic, 16, 21, 68, 165, 169, 174, 176, 196,

Neville, R., 187, 195 199—200, 215, 217, 226, 230, 253, 256, 273, Nietzsche, F., 3, 46, 134 282, 292, 295 Nihilism, 4, 163, 277 Origin, ix, xi, 1, 34, 46—47, 51, 86, 147, 165,

Nisbet, R., 290, 292 173-75, 177, 184, 189-90, 193, 217, 237, Non-being, 295, 297 239, 242, 260, 264, 270, 291 Non-science, 61 Ornament, 148, 176, 178, 180, 194, 215, 235

Norm, vii, viii, 6, 17, 19, 45, 47,51, 57> Other, vii, viii, ix, xi, xii, 4-42, 45-53, 55-84, 63—65, 68-72, 84, 87, 91-94, 96-99, 101, 87—98, 100, 102-104, 106, 108-15, 108, 111-12, 117, 121, 133, 135, 141, 117—21, 123-26, 128-46, 148-51, 143-44, 148, 161, 176-78, 181, 186, 193, 153-54, 156, 158-64, 166-72, 174-94, 197-98, 202, 214, 218—19, 232, 236—-37, 196-97, 199-209, 212—17, 219-35,

239-41, 244-45, 251-54, 260, 269, 238—51, 253, 255, 257-67, 269, 271-73,

271-74, 284-85, 291-92 275-78, 280-83, 285, 287-89, 292,

Normal, viii, 57, 84, 91-93, 96-97, 108, 121, 294-301

143-44, 148, 176, 186, 193 ° Overcome, 25, 142, 171, 186, 189, 226,

Nothing, viii, xiii, 22-24, 29, 42, 50, 61-63, 246—47, 263, 276, 298

66, 75, 86, 91-92, 105, 112, 115, 129, 138, 142, 149, 153, 175, 179, 187, 193, 195, 228, Pacifism, 281, 283; see a/so Peace 235—36, 263, 265, 272, 279, 281, 286, 293, Pain, 70, 80, 84, 87, 95, 107, 115, 119-20,

295-96 154, 164, 166, 171, 281, 301

Novel, x, 6, 11, 30, 45, 49, 60, 62, 73-74, 79, Painting, 70, 80, 95, 107, 115, 166, 301 81-82, 97, 99, 120, 123, 126, 139, 141, 144, Panic, 170 157, 160, 172, 211, 243, 263, 276-77, 301 Paradox, 124, 127, 260, 285, 293, 297

Nozick, R., 290-91 Parent, 5, 184-85, 205, 220, 227, 233, 299

Nuclear, 226, 285, 287 Parmenides, 2, 50

Number, viii, 7—8, 10, 20, 51,76, 89,91,97,107, Participate, 2, 6, 42-43, 50, L1O-11, 125, 208, 144, 196, 203, 210, 213, 246, 252, 287, 300 214, 220, 223, 256, 261, 280 Particle, 41, 59-60

Object, 8, 11, 18, 22, 28, 32-34, 36, 42, Particular, vii, 2,5, 7, 9-11, 13-14, 16, 49-56, 59, 76, 89-91, 107, 120, 130, 149, 21-22, 24, 26-32, 35, 38, 44-47, 49-51,

324 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING

Particular (continued ) Phaedrus, 192

53-54, 59, 62, 64, 69-71, 73-74, 77-79; Phenomena, 8, 150, 196

82, 84—87, 89-91, 94-99, 102-104, Phenomenal, 8

106—107, 109, 113, 115, 120, 122-24, Phenomenology, xi, 48, 130, 136, 146—48, 161,

126—29, 131, 133, 135, 137-40, 146-51, 174, 182, 188-89 157, 162, 168—69, 171-73, 175-76, Philosophy, vii, viii, ix, xi, xiii, 1-2, 16, 18-19, 180-82, 185, 187-88, 190-92, 197-99, 22, 24, 26-27, 30, 37-40, 42, 45-48, 57,

201-205, 208-11, 213, 215-17, 220, 60-64, 66-67, 73-74, 79, 82-84, 86-88,

222~—23, 225-26, 228—29, 231, 233, 235, QI, 100, 112, 115, 117-18, 132, 134, 139,

238, 240, 249-50, 264—65, 268—70, 142, 144-46, 148-49, 152-53, 163, 166, 274-75, 277-78, 280-81, 284, 288—90, 177, 179, 192-94, 198, 206, 210, 212-13,

292, 294, 296, 298-301, 303 235, 242, 250, 257, 275, 279-80, 282,

Passive, 121, 124, 149-51, 155, 158, 167-68, 286-87, 290-92

172, 187 Phonetic, 113, 116-17

Past, x, 4, 28, 35—42, 48, 53, 80, 83, 102, 110, Physical science, 42, 61 115, 117, 135, 206-207, 270, 273, 279, 282, Physics, 46, 48, 57, 63-65, 67-68, 210, 275 284, 286, 288, 292, 296, 298, 300, 302; see Physiology, 123

also Time Piaget, J., 146

Patriot, 221, 244, 249, 264, 283 Place, 8, 29, 32, 46, 55, 59, 65, 77-78, 81,

Pattern, ix, 20, 94, 113-14, 169, 175-76, 1O1, 110, 127, 173, 177, 183, 193, 219, 227, 185—86, 188, 192, 194, 202—203, 208, 210, 230, 257, 273, 301

213, 284 Planet, 11, 76, 83, 110, 262, 264, 275, 284-87,

Peace, 83, 141, 193, 242, 267, 269, 281, 302

283-86 Plato, 2, 45, 50, 54, 152-53, 157, 162-63,

Peirce, C. S., 25, 47-48, 55-56, 75-77, 170-72, 178, 184, 188, 192, 241, 268, 270,

86—87, 89-90, 107, 143, 145 272, 282, 287, 290, 294

Perception, 16, 42, 48, 54, 92, 120-21, Pleasure, 119, 154, 174-75, 178, 181, 188-90, 146-47, 166, 174, 177, 224, 256-57, 262 235, 238-39, 251, 256 Perfect, 92, 149, 173, 189, 234, 241, 243 Plenitude, 65—66, 68 Perform, 54, 76, 104, 120, 130, 154, 156, 179, Plenum, 193

183, 188, 230, 244, 263 Plural, viii, xt, 26, 39, 57, 67-68, 97-98, 220,

Periphery, 91, 93-96, 98, 100, 102—103, 246-47, 258, 262-63

114—17, 132, 138—39, 176, 179, 228 Poetry, xi, xii, 3, 64, 86, 91-92, 94, 113-14,

Petson, x, 11, 18—19, 21-26, 29, 32, 34, 116-17, 143-44, 206, 279

37-39, 47-48, 72, 76, 80, 83-85, 89, 93, Poincaré, H., 125, 147, 155, 192 98—99, 101, 103-109, 120, 125, 127, 130, Point of view, 4, 36, 40-41, 46, 53-54, 59, 137, 141, 144-46, 150-51, 153-55, 158— 79-81, 80, 143, 186, 191, 202, 245, 274,

64, 168, 170-72, 175-77, 179-80, 182, 277, 303

184—87, 192—94, 196-97, 200-208, 210— Polanyi, M., xi, 46, 124, 145—47, 165, 192 Il, 214—18, 220, 222—34, 238, 240, 242, Political judgment, 228, 237-46, 248—49, 253,

244, 248, 251-54, 259, 261-64, 266-60, 259-60, 264-65, 267, 269-72, 274-75, 271-73, 275-76, 284, 287-90, 294-302 277-78, 284-85, 292 Personal identity, 182, 228, 231, 287 Political science, 253, 268

Personality, 22, 32, 158, 160, 162, 164, 168, Politics, xi, 18, 26, 30-31, 45, 61, 63—66,

172, 175-76, 204, 227-28, 240, 297 70-72, 74, 79-80, 99-100, 111, 134, 136,

Perspective, viii, x, Xi, xii, 17-22, 24-26, 141, 145, 147, 168, 174-75, 178-79, 183, 28—36, 38, 41, 44-46, 49, 52—61, 63-60, 191, 196, 198-201, 208-209, 212-13,

72, 74-81, 83-85, 87, 90, 96-98, ror, 217-21, 224, 226-33, 235-93, 301-303 103—104, 106—11, 113, 116, 118, 123-25, Polysemy, 91, 100-101, 117, 148

127, 130-34, 136, 138, 140-41, 143, 153, Popper, K., xiii 1§6—59, 173, 190, 196-97, 199, 201-209, Possess, 2, 9-10, 25, 42, 85, 93-95, 103, 109,

211-12, 216-25, 235, 239-46, 249, 113, 168, 170, 173, 185—87, 190, 199, 201, 251-54, 258-60, 262-64, 271-72, 211, 232, 240, 246, 264, 266, 269, 295-96,

277-79, 281, 289, 296—300, 302 302

Pervasive, 9-10, 14, 27—30, 32, 35, 37, 39, 42, Possibility, viii, x, xif, 3, 14, 25, 28, 30—32, 37,

62, 66, 69-70, 72, 78-79, 81-83, 89-90, 43-45, 49-50, 52, 54, 58-59, 61-62, 64— 100, 113, 121, 123, 125, 129, 131, 133-34, 65, 69, 71, 76-77, 81-83, 85, 90-92, 95-96, 136, 139, 147, 150-54, 156-57, 159, 102~104, 106-107, 117, 123, 125, 132, 162-63, 168-69, 173, 175-78, 180-83, 135-36, 140-42, 144-46, 151-52, 156-57, 188—90, 194-95, 200, 203, 207, 210, 163-64, 170, 174-75, 184, 189-91, 194, 214-16, 218, 222, 228, 230, 241, 244-50, 204, 207, 210-11, 219-21, 223, 237, 239,

271, 274-77, 282 242, 246-47, 250-51, 255, 258-65, 267-68, Pessimism, xi, 190 298, 300-302, 304; see a/so Availability Perverse, 127, 177, 181-82, 193-94, 230 270, 274-76, 279-81, 283, 285-89, 295,

INDEX 325 Power, ix, 29-30, 33, 40, 43, 47-48, 58, 61, 93, IOI, 128, 144, 146-47, 153, 157-58, 73-75, 79, 86, 89, 95,97, LIO—I1, 113, 161, 174, 192-94, 206, 212—13, 235, 241, 115, 117, 127, 134, 136, 144, 146, 148-51, 244-45, 251, 256, 258, 266—67, 272, 274,

157, 160-61, 165-66, 169-70, 174-77, 280, 282, 292-93, 304

180, 182, 186, 188, 194, 196, 198—99, Procreation, 176, 224 207—208, 227, 230-31, 237, 239, 241-42, Produce, 18, 24~25, 37, 43> 52, 5455» 64,

244, 246-47, 254-60, 263, 265, 268, 275, 71-72, 76, 82, 85-86, 89, 97-98, IOI, 109,

277-80, 282, 289-91, 297-300, 302 III, 120, 131, 138-39, 150, 152, 156, 164,

Practical judgment, 26, 28-31, 45, 70—74, 79, 166, 171, 182, 186-87, 204~207, 210, 213,

81, 100, LLO—11, 113, 116, 131-36, 216—18, 222, 226-27, 229-31, 243, 141-42, 151-52, 155, 158-62, 165, 247-49, 251, 253-54, 259, 280—81, 287, 167—69, 171, 184-87, 190, 196, 207, 213, 296, 301 218, 232-34, 238-39, 242-43, 245-53, Progress, 156, 166, 253, 270, 282

258, 261-64, 268, 271, 273-74, 277-78, Promise, 19, 45, 116, 134, 137, 172, 211-12,

280, 286-87, 289, 300-301 227, 242, 246-47, 251, 260, 263, 271, 277,

Practice, vii, X, Xi, xii, 2-3, 5-6, 8, 14, 20, 300, 302, 304

23—24, 26, 28-32, 35, 37-38, 44-45, 47, Proof, 4, 43, 63—64, 69, 78, 165; see also

54, 56-57, 60-65, 69-74, 76-77, 79-82, Argument

90-91, 94, 96, 98—102, 108, 110-11, 113, Propaganda, 260, 265 116—18, 129, 131-36, 138-39, 141-42, Proposition, 25, 48, 70-72, 88, 91-96, 146, 150-55, 158-63, 165, 167-71, 175, 1OO—101, 105, 108, 116-17, 126, 128,

178, 180-81, 183-91, 194, 196, 198-99, 131-34, 136-39, 147, 152-54, 156-57,

201—203, 206—207, 209-10, 213, 215-16, 162—66, 180, 190-91, 240, 259, 269, 304 218, 224, 226, 229, 232—34, 237-39, Prostitution, 181—82, 194

241-43, 245-55, 258—68, 271, 273-75, Prudence, 70 277-80, 283, 286, 288-89, 291-92, Psychoanalysis, x, 19, 57, 62, 64, 66, 74,

300—301 80-82, 87, 102, 122, 131, 137-39, 152-53,

Pragmatism, viii, 30, 47-48, 54, 57, 148, 301 158, 161-64, 167, 205, 227, 236, 240;

Prehension, 154, 214, 300 see also Freud

Prejudgment, 86 Psychohistory, 57, 74

Prescriptive, 24, 47 Psychology, 34, 63, 74, 85, 91, 93, 101, I17, Presentation, 106, 136, 145, 218, 224, 236 169, 173, 192-94

Preserve, 83, 218, 239, 300 Psychotherapy, x, 80, 160—61, 167, 171, 189, Presuppose, 13, 17, 23, 31, 33-34, 38-40, 193, 253

52-53, 55, 60, 66—67, 85, 116, 120, 141, Public, xi, 11, 68, 71, 83, 93, 95, 97-99, IOI, 221, 229, 239-41, 243, 251, 258, 281, 1OQ—11, 119~—21, 123, 134, 144-45, 147,

289 153, 155, 165, 176, 179, 193, 197, 199-201,

Primacy, vii, 49, 81, 149, 189, 209, 229, 257, 206, 208, 281-14, 218-19, 222—25, 230,

271 235-37, 239, 243, 247-48, 252-53, 257;

Principle, vii, x, xi, xii, 2—3, 6, 12, 20, 32, 35, 259-60, 263~66, 268, 271, 275, 277, 280,

38, 45, 49, 52, 55, 59, 62-63, 68, 70-71, 287, 289-91, 296-97 73-74, 76-77, 79; 84, 88, 90, 92-93, Pure reason, 46, 48

102~—103, 107, 127, 131, 133, 142-47, 149, Purpose, ix, 26, 31, 38, 52, 73, 11, 125, 130,

152, 163, 165, 167, 174, 184-85, 188-89, 137-38, 140, 151, 160, 178, 188, 203, 231, 194, 197-98, 201, 205, 210, 215—16, 218, 241, 264, 268, 282-83, 290 223-24, 235, 237-39, 241-42, 246, 249, Purposive, x, 106, 109 251-54, 256, 258—6o, 262, 264, 267-68,

270-73, 276, 278, 284, 291-92, 302 Qualify, 4, 9-11, 20-22, 28, 30-31, 33, 37,

Prior, 3, 6, 21, 23, 35, 38, 40, 51, 60-61, 109, 39, 49-50, 52-55, 60, 64, 66—68, 77, 83, 134-35, 142, 150-51, 214, 239, 258, 278 85, 90, 122, 124, 132, 135, 138, 142, 155, Private, xi, 68, 93, 98, IOI, 119-21, 123, 134, 192, 199, 203-204, 206, 233, 251, 254, 274, 144, 153, 178-80, 182-83, 197, 199-201, 276, 281, 283, 285, 291, 295-97, 299, 302 203, 205, 222, 237, 239, 248, 252-53, 271, Quality, 282, 299

287, 291, 296-97 Quantity, 127, 252, 259, 261

Private language, 197, 200 Quantum mechanics, 64

Privilege, 40, 44, 50, 69, 138, 140, 162, 201, Query, xii, 18-21, 24-27, 29-31, 38, 45,

247 52-54, 58-59, 61-87, 89, 96-100,

Probable, 100, 143, 159, 161, 164, 217, 243 102—105, 108, 110-12, 114-15, 117-19, Problem, viii, 2, 11, 25, 75, 78, 111, I19, 125, 123, 126-29, 133—34, 138-42, 147, 150, 148, 150, 159, 183, 188, 194, 210, 232, 235, 152, 161, 163-69, 171-72, 190-92, 199, 240, 252, 257, 265, 269, 277-79, 281, 202, 206, 209-13, 217-18, 222—23, 230,

290-92, 303 234, 241, 245, 248-56, 259-60, 264-60,

Problem-solving, vill, 25 271-74, 278-81, 283—92, 300—302, 304; see Process, 2, 48, 52, 54-55, 60, 66-67, 69, 73, also Rationality

326 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Quest for certainty, 1, 45, 50, 86 Reflexive, 25, 54, 56-57, 59, 66, 69, 73, 82,

Question, vil, 2-4, 14-15, 17-18, 23, 25, 32, 86, 97, 121, 127-30, 139, 142, 162, 164, 34, 39, 44, 560-57, 59-62, 65—66, 71, 74, 166, 168-69, 187-88, 190-91, 212-13, 76, 78, 81-83, 85, 104, 118, 126-27, 136, 222, 251, 253-54, 257, 260, 264, 266, 277,

142, 158, 167-69, 180—83, 188-89, 196, 292, 295-96

198, 206, 209, 211, 216, 229-30, 233-34, Regime, 248, 275

237, 239, 241-42, 245, 252, 255-56, Regress, 4, 52

260-61, 265, 267, 275, 280—81, 283, 294, Regulate, 24, 39, 47, 77-78, 136, 145, 196,

303; see also Interrogate; Query 252-54, 261, 268, 291 Question of being, 7, 129, 198 Reik, T., 173, 175, 183-85

Quine, W. V. O., viii, xi, 46, 48, 87 Relation, vit, vill, ix, 4-11, 17, 19-21, 23-24, 27-29, 32-33, 37-38, 44, 50-51, 55, 58,

Race, 155, 178, 221, 230-32, 248, 283 60, 64, 68-69, 71-72, 76-78, 81, 87-91,

Ramification, x, xii, 9-12, 21-23, 27, 31, 57, 93-94, 96-101, 103-107, 109-22, 59, 61, 79, 94, 137, 140, 189, 203-205, 207, 124-26, 131-34, 136-40, 143, 145-46,

241, 261, 264, 277-78, 297 150-51, 154, 157, 159-62, 166-67, 169,

Randall, J. H., Jr., 290 172, 174-76, 178-88, 193-94, 196-97,

Rape, 182, 194 201-208, 210, 214, 216-17, 220-33,

Rationality, vii, ix, xi, 1-2, 7, 14-15, 17-20, 235-38, 244-49, 256-57, 260, 262, 264,

24-25, 27-31, 33-38, 40, 45, 48-49, 268, 270, 274-77, 280, 287, 289-90, 294,

51-69, 71-76, 81-83, 85-87, 91, 104, 297 — 300, 302-303 112—16, 120—21, 123~—29, 131, 133, 135, Relative, ix, xi, 1, 4-5, 7, 9-14, 17, 20, 22—

139-42, 146-47, 150-69, 171-72, 175, 23, 25-26, 28-29, 31-32, 35-36, 38, 41, 178-80, 183, 185, 188-93, 200, 202, | 46, 48—49, 51, 54-55, 58-59, 65, 67-68, 209-13, 218, 232, 240, 242—45, 249-51, 71-72, 74, 78, 81, 83, 91-94, 97-98, 116, 255, 259-60, 264-66, 270-74, 276-77, 118, 126, 132, 138, 141, 143-44, 150, 154, 279-81, 283~—85, 288—94, 300—304; 158, 180-81, 194, 196—98, 201-204, 208,

see also Query 218, 220, 223, 225, 227, 239, 247, 249-50,

Rationalism, 151-52 252, 264, 272-73, 280, 286—89, 298, 302

Rawls, J., 239-40, 243, 268-71, 273, 290-91 Relativism, 36, 67, 83 Real, viii, x1, 5, 7, 10, 16, 18-19, 22, 32, Relativity, xi, 46, 48 41-42, 48, 52, 54-56, 59, 62, 70, 77, 82, Relevant, vili, 2, 5, 8-14, 22—23, 25-26, 28, 86, 96, 101, 111—12, I19—20, 135, 137, 31-33, 36, 38-39, 41, 44-45, 49, 51, 53,

140, 144, 146-47, 152, 162, 177, 184, 55, 64-65, 67, 72-73, 76-77, 81, 89-91, I9I~93, 200, 211-13, 228, 235, 237, 241, 93-95, 97-105, 108-12, 116, 125-27,

248, 255, 257-59, 261, 264, 266, 273, 133—36, 140, 161, 164, 166, 168—6o9, 279-80, 287-88, 291-93, 298-300, 302, 171-72, 176, 183-84, 187, 189, 200,

304 205-207, 212-13, 217-19, 222, 226, 228,

Reason, vii, ix, Xi, 4-5, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 24, 231, 239, 241-43, 245, 250, 252, 254, 259,

29-30, 34-35, 37, 39-40, 43, 47-48, 58, 262, 264, 270-72, 274, 276, 280-81, 60-62, 64—67, 70, 75-76, 78, 81, 86, 91, 287-88, 293, 295-302

112, 114, 117, 122, 126, 152-54, 157-58, Religion, 3, 15, 27, 70, 81—83, 87, 94, 162—63, 166, 171, 183, 187, 210, 219~20, 1O1—102, 114, 137, 139, 189, 227-28,

232, 235, 238, 248, 254-55, 257, 261, 232-33, 259, 262, 271, 287, 300

269—70, 276, 281-82, 287, 290, 292, 296, Repetition, 3, 30, 71, 83, 96, 106, 110, 113, 300, 302—303; see also Query, Rationality 138, 167, 206, 260, 267, 276, 280; see also

Reciprocity, 20-21, 23-24, 33—34, 61, 79, Similar

103, 137, 159, 176, 184, 186, 188, 197, Represent, 3, 6, 28, 55, 64, 70, 87-88, 90-91, 200-202, 206, 216, 222, 226-27, 233, 240, 106, 108, 136, 197, 212, 230, 244-46, 252,

297 265, 283-84

Recollection, 2, 20—21, 23-24, 33-34, 61, 79, Repress, 139, 152, 163, 183, 257-58, 283 103, 137, 159, 176, 184, 186, 188, 197, Republic, 2, 50, 64, 153, 157, 192, 241, 268,

200-202, 206, 216, 222, 226—27, 233, 240, 270-72

297; see also Memory Reputation, 216, 218—20, 231-33, 296

Reconcile, 142, 181, 242, 244-46, 254, 256, Resemble, 12, 16, 22

258—Go, 262, 264-65, 271-74, 284, Resistance, 267, 290

288—89 Resource, 28, 63, 65, 143, 164-65, 191, 199,

Recur, 2—3, 25, 35, 66, 89, 95, 112-13, 133, 212, 217, 238, 258, 262, 275, 283-84 136, 140, 167, 186, 188-89, 209, 241, 264, Responsible, xi, 22, 87, 89, 111, 124, 226, 233,

290, 302; see also Repetition 242, 263-64, 267, 269, 274, 278, 284, 286, Redemption, 30, 187 288, 291 Reference, 36, 65, 87, 91, 118, 136-37, 147, Reveal, 5-6, 62—63, 101, 127, 148, 165, 172, 149, 152, 165, 187, 202, 240, 264, 290 176, 279

INDEX 327 Reverence, 244, 284 Self-validation, 2, 121

Revolution, 57, 60, 80, 86—87, 96, 99, 255, Semantic, 114-15, 117, 143-44, 148

259-61, 267, 283 Semantic core, 86, 91, 94-104, 106, 115-18, Rhetoric, 2, 116 132-33, 137-39, 227 Ricoeur, P., x, xiii, 36-37, 39, 48, 80, 87, Semasic field, 90-91, 93-104, 106, 114, IOI~102, 115, 136-39, 145-46, 148, 179, 116-17, 132-33, 137-40, 143-44

194-95 Semasis, 88-91, 95, 97, 100, 102, 104, 106,

Right, viti, 18, 65, 72, 92, 101, 131, 182, 191, LI, 113, L15—18, 130, 132, 136, 138, 141 194, 198, 229, 237, 239-42, 253-55, 259, Semasor, 97

264, 272-73, 280, 282, 285, 288; Semiate, 89-91, 93-103, 106-107, 116,

see also Moral 136—37, 139, 143-44, 146

Rigor, 18, 61, 79, 83, 98-99, 112, 137-38, Semiotic, 88-89, 143, 145

156, 265 Settlement, xii, 2, 8, 13-14, 24-25, 41, 45, 66,

Risk, 250, 260-61, 267, 277, 283—86, 292 70, 78, 159, 281; see also Situality

Ritual, 82—83, 88,95, 101, 114, 146 Sexuality, 102, 139, 145, 147-48, 173-83, Role, 5, 11, 21-22, 29, 34, 37-38, 68, 70, 187—90, 193-95, 200, 224, 230-31, 248, 121, 123, 127, 144, 159-60, 162, 164, 166, 256, 291 168, 173-76, 178-79, 182, 185, 188, 200, Shakespeare, W., 287, 298 204, 215-21, 228, 230—32, 235, 252, 254, Shame, 171 257, 262-63, 268, 272, 285, 287—88, 290, Sharing, 38, 43, 50, 54, 57, 68, 72, 76, 93, 98,

302-303 IOI, 104-109, III, 113, 121, 139, 14], 151,

144-45 299

Romantic love, 173, 185, 187, 193 161, 164, 181, 200, 203—208, 214, 221-22,

Rorty, R., viii-xi, 45-48, 60, 68, 86-87, 96, 224-26, 235, 243, 254, 263, 275-76, 287, Rule, vii, 3, 8, 10, 38, 51, 60, 64, 76-78, 94, Sign, 2, 15~17, 21, 43-44, 58, 61, 70, 84,

96, 99, 144, 157, 165, 174, 242, 252, 88—90, 92, 95, 98, 100, 106, 112, II9, 127,

254-55, 261, 265, 301 129, 136, 143-45, 155, 158, 169, 175-76,

Russell, B., 192 182, 187-88, 203, 205, 207, 210, 217, 219,

230-31, 241, 246, 250, 257, 259-61, 268, Sacrifice, 56, 128, 141, 163, 200, 240—41, 251, 276, 285—86, 288, 294, 300, 303; see also

258, 262, 267, 273, 282-85 Semasis Sadness, 6, 303 Significant, 15-17, 43-44, 58, 88-89, 95, 98, Santayana, G., 290 119, 129, 145, 155, 158, 175-76, 182, 187, Sartre, J. P., xiii, 177, 184, 186—87, 193, 195, 203, 205, 207, 210, 217, 219, 230—31, 250,

201, 224, 235-36, 288, 293 257, 276, 288, 294, 303

Saussure, F., 90-91, 143 Similar, vii~ix, xiii, 3, 8, 17, 23, 28, 49, 56,

Saying, 5, 17, 19, 72-73, 203, 304 63-64, 73-74, 78, 80-81, 90, 92, 95, T12, Scale, 67, 134, 189, 196, 198-99, 213, 217, 114, 125, 127, 129-30, 132, 143-44, 146, 220, 226-27, 230, 233, 237-39, 242-43, 150, 152-54, 156, 158-60, 162, 164,

245-46, 249, 251-55, 261, 203-04, 166-67, 169, 17879, 182, 184-86,

267-69, 278, 284, 291, 304 189-90, 194, 196—97, 200-201, 204-205,

Science, ix, 18, 36, 42, 49, 57, 61, 63—64, 212—13, 215, 217-19, 221, 225-26, 230,

67-70, 74, 77, 81, 86, 91, 209, 278 232-34, 238-40, 243-44, 249-50, 263,

Science of science, 18 267, 272-74, 276, 278, 283, 291-92, Scientific revolution, 57, 86-87, 97, 145 299-301, 303; see also Repetition Scientism, 134 Simple, 4, 16, 18, 20, 24, 34, 38, 40-43, 47, Scope, Xtl, 5, 17, 25, 74, 98, 131, 141, 171, 49, 52, 58, 63—64, 70, 74, 76, 80, 84, 88,

189, 196, 224, 238, 263, 274, 290 92-93, 102, 106—107, 116, 122, 124, 131,

Scripture, 70, 139 143, 145, 150-51, 158, 161, 165—67, 172, Sculpture, 70, 166 176, 178, 180-88, 192, 199, 202, 206, 208,

Searle, J., 146 214, 219, 234, 236, 238, 248—50, 252, 256, Self, 2, 4, 14, 17, 22, 34, 40, 51, 55-56, 59, 264, 267, 269, 274, 277, 279-80, 286, 302,

66—67, 75, 77, 86, 120-21, 130, 141-42, 304

145, 147, 151-52, 163, 171-73, 175, 177, Situality, x11, xlil, 13-14, 25, 27, 31

184, 186, 191, 194, 199, 222, 236, 241, 243, — Situation, 31, 36, 48, 63, 93, 96, 105, 115,

251, 257, 291-92, 303 127-28, 159, 166—67, 199, 219, 236, 251, Self-centered, 17 258, 269-70, 278, 298

Self-conscious, 14, 175 Skepticism, xi, 1, 4, 35, 49-50, 52-55, 58, 60, Self-criticism, 55~56, 66-67, 75, 77, 222, 241 67, 77-78, 85-86, 121, 163, 190

Self-deception, 152, 163 Skinner, B. F., x, xiii, 47 Self-evidence, 194 Smith, A., 48, 163 Self- knowledge, 86 Social being, 19, 47, 145, 193-94, 197-99, Self-sufficient, 2, 34, 51, 199 202-203, 205-207, 209, 216, 218—21,

328 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING

Social being (continued) Subalrern, 9, 11-13, 22, 56,64, 298

223-24, 226, 228—39, 242-43, 245-46, Subject, vii, x, 4, 8, 22, 28, 31, 33-34, 36-38,

248-49 42, 49, 56, 59-63, 70, 78, 81, 89, 100, 116,

Social bond, 160, 224, 226-27, 233-34, 244, 119-20, 135-36, 138, 140—41, 153, 177,

247, 271, 282 183, 193, 197, 200-201, 214, 235, 250,

Social code, 19, 101, 114, L17 253-54, 263—67, 274, 291, 294, 299, 301

Social construct, 175, 181, 229 Subjugate, 152, 257

Social institution, 26, 136, 213, 215, 218, 221, Substance, xii, 2—4, 33, 58, G1, 149-51

223, 240, 244, 255-56, 263, 269, 271, Success, 21, 24, 38, 40-41, Go, 70-72, 278-79 I1O—I1, 128, 139, 152, 1§5, 161, 186,

Social practice, 5, 8, 57, 79, 82, 96, 209, 218 1QO0~—QI1, 211, 227, 251, 256, 263, 265-67,

Social psychology, 74, 192 272-73, 277, 300

Social science, 57, 209, 213, 217 Suffer, xii, 5, 15, 17, 21, 37, 42, 65, 99, 143,

Social status, 29 1§3, 1§5, 171-73, 177, 181, 187-91, 224, Sociality, ix, 15, 27, 160, 172, 176-77, 192, 239, 241, 247, 273, 283, 286, 304

196-239, 243, 245, 248—49, 261, 282, 288 Suicide, 163, 238, 295 Society, X, 14, 29, 47, 76, 97, 101, 104, 107, Superaltern, xii, 10-13, 22, 56, 75, 97, 222,

109, 145-46, 163, 175, 178, 196-97, 199, 298

201, 207, 209, 211, 214-17, 219~26, Supernatural, 15, 82

228-30, 232, 235, 240-41, 246-47, 255, Supersession, x, 127 258, 260-61, 263, 265, 267—74, 279-80, Supplement, vii, ix, 54, 64, 66, 80-81, 135-36,

283, 285-86, 288, 290-91 156, 202 Sociobiology, 74, 176 Suppress, 258

Sociology, 62, 179 Surplus of being, 44, 150, 197

Socrates, 241, 271, 298; see also Plato Surroundings, vii, ix, 5, 19-21, 28, 33, 62, 67,

Solipsis, 200 69, 73, 90, 100, 103—104, 107, 113, 116, Solomon, R., 178, 193-94 125, 127-28, 130, 136, 138, 140, 151,

Soul, 2, 153, 157, 162, 164, 174, 268, 296 158—6o0, 170, 172, 186, 190, 193, 198, 203, Sovereign, 26, 73, 82, 87, 237, 263—64, 266 206-207, 209-10, 214—17, 219, 232, 268,

Space, 43, 50, 143, 257-58 275, 277, 298, 304; see also Environment

Spatio-temporal; 51 Symbol, 89, 94, 100-102, 117, 136-39, 145,

Specialize, 211 148, 165, 182, 195, 299 Specific, vil, viii, ix, 8, 13, 24, 29, 35, 37, Sympathy, 99, 201, 221, 233-34

43-44, 49, 57, 68, 71-72, 88, 94-95, 101, Symposium, 178 108, 113-14, II7, 129, 131, 136, 143, 145, Syndesis, 24, 26-27, 67-71, 74, 79, 82, 100, 150, 154, 159, 170, 173, 181, 188, 200, 206, TIO, 112, 117, 142, 301

214, 218, 224, 240, 281, 298, 300 Syntax, 90, 94, 113-14, 116-17, 146

Speech, 120 159~60 Speech act, 108, 110, 116, 146 System, viii, 6—8, 19, 37-39, 50, 59, 63-64, Speculative, 40, 43, 152 Synthetic, 40, 70, 74-75, 82, 136, 139, 153,

Spinoza, B., 3-4, 33, 42, 46, 48, 58, 61, 68-71, 74, 77; 79, 81-82, 93, 96, 99, 102, 149-51, 160, 163, 191-92, 294, 304 107, 113, 125, 140, 143, 174, 177, 213, 218, Spirit, vii, xi, 3, 6, 15, 24, 37-38, 41, 46, 60, 220, 226, 230-31, 240, 247-48, 254, 256, 82, 85-86, 115, 162—64, 176, 182, 210, 260-61, 263, 266, 269-70, 275, 282—83,

215, 222, 294 292

Spiritual, vii, xi, 15, 24, 37, 41, 82, 85, 115, Systematic, viii, 6-7, 50, 63-64, 69-71, 74,

176, 182, 222 79, 81-82, 93, 96, 99, 102, 113, 213, 231,

Sport, 15, 43, 71, 79-80, 99, 188; see also 270, 275, 292 Athlete

Stability, 56, 76, 172, 185, 198, 225, 227, 240, Teaching, 66, 110-11, 143; see also Instruct

254-55, 258-59, 266, 269, 273 Technology, 3, 25, 28-31, 43, 47, 81-82, 136,

Standard, 3, 10, 26, 29, 37, 55, 70, 80, 83, 147, 175, 183, 228, 230, 238, 250, 258,

QI-92, 112, 115, 121, 135, 141, 143, 145, 274-82, 292

151, 176, 184, 190, 218-19, 243, 245, 251, Teleology, x, 28, 38, 48, 80, 82, 115

256, 259, 268-71, 275, 279, 289 Telos, 38, 86

State, 2, 37, 121, 130, 149, 238, 244, 246, Temporal, ix, 2, 19, 28, 36—41, 83, 115, 135, 254-55, 260, 282-83; see also Government 288, 296, 300-301, 303; see also Time

State of nature, 237-39, 270 Tension, 2—3, 39, 63, 65, 68, 90, 95-98,

Status, 29, 32, 101, 179, 181, 202, 216-20, IOI—102, 104, I11—12, 117-18, 129, 144,

224, 231, 247, 289 166, 174, 182, 193, 219, 231-32, 234, 238,

Stoicism, 154 247-48, 253-54, 259, 267-70, 274, 303 Style, 2, 6, 26, 66, 82-83, 94, 112, 176, Territory, 196, 198, 217, 238, 252, 261, 263, 179-80, 186, 194, 200, 204 284

INDEX 329 Terror, 6, 83, 267-68, 294 Trust, 165, 234, 240

Text, 5, 89, 104, 106—107, 144, 274 Truth, vii, xiii, 3, 5, 8, 15-16, 18, 21, 25,

Texture, 100, 121 30-31, 34, 38-39, 46-48, 50, 53-57, Theaetetus, 54 59-60, 64-66, 69-70, 72-76, 78-79, 82, Theology, 3, 64, 81—82, 101, 141, 292, 300; 84, 86, 88, 92, 94, 108, r10-11, 116, 120,

see also Religion 128, 131, 134-38, 146-47, 150-52, 154, Therapeutic, 167 236, 238, 240-44, 249, 269, 272-73, 270,

Theorem, 8, 38—39, 300-301 160—61, 163-64, 173, I9I, 208, 210, 227, Thinking, xi, 28, 33, 39, 115, 129, 131-32, 278-79, 286, 296, 301-302, 304 136, 152, 194, 276, 282, 288

Thought, ix, xi, xii, 2, 17, 19-20, 29, 31, Ultimate, 17, 37, 55, 83, 118, 121, 133, 140,

33-35, 42-46, 51, 60, 65, 71-73, 86, 98, 142, 181, 274, 294

104, 106, 108—109, 113-16, 118-21, 123, Unchanging, 2, 50 125, 129-32, 139, 141-42, 144, 146-59, Unconceal, vii, 3, 6, 279

161-66, 168-70, 173-74, 179-80, Unconditioned, 4, 6-7, 29, 33-35, 50-53, 56, 189—90, 192, 194, 197, 199, 201, 205, 213, 60, 65, 77, 85, 98, 132-33, 140, 154, 158,

226-27, 240, 249, 258-59, 269-70, 275, 237, 295 282, 285, 287, 290-91, 294, 296-97 Unconscious, 118, 122, 124-26, 130-31, 137, Threat, 3, 45, 155, 170-72, 182, 186, 188, 143, 153-55, 158, 168 242-43, 246, 250-51, 253, 259-61, 265, Undergoing, 11, 23, 90, 94, 144 268, 275-77, 279, 283-86, 289, 298, 303 Understanding, vii, ix, xi, xil, 2-5, 8, 12,

Thumb, 14-15, 27 15—16, 19, 21-24, 34-45, 47-50, 52,

Time, vii, xi, xili, 2, 6-8, 11, 17, 25, 35-43, 54-55, 57, 62-63, 69-70, 73, 76, 79, 84, 46, 48, 50-51, 55-57, 66-67, 76-77, 80, 87-88, 91-92, 95-96, 98, 102, 104-10, 88, 91, 93-94, 103-104, IOQ—I10, L14-15, 112, 114, 116, 118, 121-22, 124, 128, 118, 124-25, 131, 133-36, 138-39, 153, 135-37, 139-40, 142, 144, 146, 149-51,

173, 179, 183, 196, 201, 223, 227, 230, 234, 153, 158, 161, 165—67, 174, 177-80, 242, 252, 257, 259, 264, 266-67, 270, 272, 182—83, 185, 187-88, 190-92, 194, 274, 279, 282, 285, 292, 294, 297-98, 198—200, 202—203, 207-10, 214, 217-21, 300-304; see also History, Memory, Temporal 228, 231, 233, 237-39, 241, 245, 253, 256,

Tool, 15, 133-35, 138, 145, 148 258-59, 261, 263—64, 272, 275-80,

Totalitarian, 219, 291 285-88, 290, 292, 294-95, 300, 303; see also

Totality, 1, 4, 11, 24, 26, 42, 48, 50, 123, 149, Knowing 216, 218-19, 232, 246, 256, 281, 285, Unification, 3, 24, 26, 39, 64, 153, 223, 294

288-89, 295 Uniform, 64-65, 220, 233, 247, 254, 275, 279, Toulmin, S., 86 282

Trace, vii, ix, 6, 36, 109, 115, 145, 150, 169, Unintelligible, 1-2, 4, 23, 25~-26, 31, 33,

188, 197, 205, 208, 296 40-41, 51-54, 67, 73, 79, 81, 85, 87,

Tradition, vii, ix, 1-2, 5-6, 12, 17, 20, 22-23, 90-92, 101, 103-104, L19—21, 123,

27-28, 33, 50, 57-58, 63, 67, 71, 73-75; 125-26, 141, 178, 198-200, 204, 209-10, 78-79, 81, 83, 88, 91, 95-96, 102, 104, 217, 234, 237, 270, 272-73, 275, 288-89, 106, 119, 128, 134, 137, 139, 141, 145, 298—99

151-53, 155, 157-58, 163, 165, 168, 174, Unison, xii, 9-13, 20-23, 27, 31, 56, 75, 94, 178-80, 188, 198—99, 206, 210, 212, 97, 103, 106-108, 203—208, 216—20, 222, 220-21, 229-30, 232—33, 237, 242-44, 225, 230, 262, 298 248, 251, 253-54, 262-66, 268, 271, 279, Unitary, xii, 9-10, 125, 216

288, 301 Unity, 2-3, 9, 11, 125, 132, 146-47, 159, 165,

Training, 71, 141, 154-57, 161, 164—66, 188, 186—87, 215-16, 269, 282-83

234 Universal, 8, 15, 26, 37, 41, 72, 74, 79, 83, 87,

Transcend, vii, ix, xi, 1, 5, 7-8, 10, 12-13, 20, 93, 102, 117, 131, 133, 146, 166, 169, 245,

30-31, 33-37, 41, 43, 45, 48, 51, 53, 253-54, 281, 294 112, 115, 117-21, 123-24, 126-27, 187-88, 299, 302-303

60-62, 65-66, 68—69, 77-78, 85, 91, 95, Universe, vii, ix, xi, xiil, 4, 8, 40, 51, 83, 148,

129-31, 135, 141-42, 146-47, 150-51, Univocal, 70, 72, 80, 100 156-57, 160, 162, 165, 169-70, 175-77, Unjust, 75, 231, 240, 247, 256, 259-60,

181, 183, 188-93, 197-99, 201-204, 269-70, 283-85

208-10, 216, 223, 229, 242-43, 247, 264, Unlimit, 15, 62, 66, 93, 242, 289, 298, 300

266, 272, 277-78, 295, 297-301, 304 Unmoved mover, 2, 4

Transcendental, vii, 7 Unqualified, vii, 1,5, 7,9, 11, 21—22, 30, 33,

Transference, 161, 167 50, 52, 54-56, 67—68, 82-83, 86, 88, 96,

Transgression, 182 122, 126, 137, 139-40, 154-55, 190, 209, Translation, viii, 46 216, 223, 239, 251, 255, 259, 271, 281, 284, Triadic, 89, 260, 277 289, 291, 295-96, 298, 300—301

330 INEXHAUSTIBILITY & HUMAN BEING Use, viii, 15-16, 18, 29, 31, 38, 48, 63, 75, 90, Vulnerable, 2, 89, 92, 139, 186, 244

92-93, 104, 108, 114, 116-17, 135-36, Vygotsky, L. S., 47, 144-47 138, 141-43, 153, 162, 168, 171, 174, 179,

182, 192, 230, 246, 254, 256-57, 259-60, War, 47, 120, 144, 152, 194, 197, 207-208,

263—65, 267-68, 283 225-26, 242, 272, 281-87, 292-93

Utility, 15, 26, 30, 70, 79, 87, 101, 110, Waste, 43-44, 130, 157, 162, 206, 222—23 135-36, 150, 158, 194, 215-16, 218, 235, Wealth, ix, 93, 168, 215, 230, 232, 289

237, 251 Welfare, 198, 237, 240, 269, 273

Utopia, 224, 229-30, 236, 243, 247, 255, 258, Whitehead, A. N., xi, 42, 45-46, 48, 123,

261, 270, 286, 290-91 146-47, 154, 213-26, 235, 293-95, 304

Whole, 37, 65, 82, 93, 101, 132, 153, 155, 165,

Validation, ix, 2, 4, 18, 24-26, 28—29, 31, 45, 183, 185, 226~27, 240, 268—69, 279, 285 51-52, 54-55, 58, 60-69, 71, 73-87, 91, Will, xi, 4, 42, 62, 181, 192, 200, 252, 259,

99, 103, 107-108, I1O—11, LI7, 121, 123, 266, 271, 292 131, 133, 135-30, 139, 147, 154, 157-58, Will to power, 134 165, 167—68, 186, 190, 201-202, 210, Wisdom, 30, 166, 181 212-13, 218, 241, 249-50, 252, 269-73, Wittgenstein, L., vii, 3, 8, 12, 16, 46, 87, 93, 279-80, 287-88, 292, 301-302, 304 116, 120, 134, 143, 146, 197, 200, 210, 235

Valor, 282 Women, 22, 167, 173, 175-76, 180-83,

Value, 15, 63-65, 68, 74, 76-77, 79, 87, 94, 193—94, 231-32; see also Sexuality 128, 133-34, 141-42, 150, 154, 165, 180, Word, viii, x, 4, 19, 55-56, 68, 72, 88-95, 190, 193, 205, 224, 226, 229, 231, 236, 251, 98, 104-105, 113, 116, 143-46, 150, 156, 253, 258-59, 263, 269, 272, 276, 282, 284, 158—G6o, 166-67, 174, 179, 192, 224, 227,

286, 291, 298, 303 256-57, 271, 274, 276-77, 279, 283, 290;

Variation, vii, Xll, 2, 5—7, 9, 12, 22, 72, 79, 93, see also Language 95-98, IOO—I101, 104, 142, 152, 192, 212, Work, 15, 21, 26, 43, 47, 62, 65-66, 68, 70,

261, 276, 301 72-73, 76, 87-89, 94, 100, 104, 109, 112,

Verify, 74, 108, 147, 164-65, 259 129, 146, 150-51, 156, 160-61, 165-66,

Violence, 171, 182, 184, 193, 244, 247, 204, 213-14, 217-19, 221, 225, 228, 242,

254—60, 265, 267-68, 286 246, 248, 257, 287, 290-91, 296, 300-301

Virtue, 5—6, 9, 11, 23-24, 44, 92-93, 112, Work of art, xi, 15, 26, 43, 46-47, 62, 66, 68, 125-26, 137, 153, 166, 169, 175, 177, 185, 70, 72-73, 76, 79, 86-89, 94, 104, 108—10,

193, 214, 216, 240-41, 243, 257-58, 112, 145, 147, 150-51, 160, 166, 213,

265-66, 269, 272-73, 283, 285, 296, 301 217-19, 242, 300-301; see also Art

Visible, vii, 2, 95, 169, 244, 246 World, xi, 10, 134

Vision, 27, 74, 80, 100, 153, 1546 Writing, vii, 15, 46—47, 109, 114, 143, 145,

Void, 91, 178 150, 206, 215, 256, 271, 284, 292

Voluntary, 45, 124, 155, 158, 199, 230, 254, Wrong, 14, 47, 63, 83, 87, 92, 105, 166, 187,

256, 258, 264, 281 234, 238, 250, 256, 259—G0, 283; see also Vote, 197, 207 Moral

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