Autor: Schindler, David C., Jun

Buch: The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: The Catholicity of Reason

Stichwort: Nichtwissen - Anmaßung 1; Sokrates (Paradox: Nichtwissen inkludiert Wissen um ein "Was" u. "Alles"; Beispiel: Gerechtigkeit); zwei Aspekte einer Sache: sokratisches Nichtwissen - Lernen als Erinnerung (Plato)

Kurzinhalt: ... our argument is... that the only way to avoid a closed system is vigilantly to insist on "totality." ... it is not enough to say indeterminately that one does not know, but one needs to have insight precisely into what one does not know ... justice

Textausschnitt: Ignorance and Presumption

22a Insisting on the catholicity of reason might seem out of tune with the ethos of the postmodern age, which has reacted for many good reasons against the presumptuousness of reason that characterizes certain dominant strands of the Enlightenment precisely by cultivating an apparently more self-aware "weak thinking" (pensiero debole: Vattimo). The emphasis on wholeness evokes the "totality" that Levinas associated with the oppressiveness of what we might call the "heterophobia" of closed systems, to which he opposed the "idea" of the infinite that can alone give a certain priority to the Other.1 One of the first and most decisive forms of this self-restriction of reason is no doubt Kant's determination to set limits to reason "in order to make room for faith."2 Such a determination seems eminently reasonable: the remedy for presumption is modesty, and modesty would seem to be best ensured by restricting reason's scope, which would cause it to respect what lies beyond it as genuinely "beyond." But our argument is that setting limits to reason in this way in fact makes modesty impossible, and that the only way to avoid a closed system is vigilantly to insist on "totality." The problem with Hegel, for example, who is typically presented as the very peak of Western rational presumption, is not that he claimed too much for reason, but too little: his system closed in on itself the moment he allowed reason to lose sight of the whole. We will elaborate this argument by reflecting, in a somewhat speculative way, on the nature of Socratic ignorance. (Fs)

22b The most obvious way to interpret Socrates' well-known refrain, "I know that I don't know," is as a confession of radical skepticism: the fact that there is no determinate object to the verb in the relative clause apparently implies universality; what Socrates claims not to know is literally without bounds, which is to say that Socrates is affirming that he knows in fact nothing, not one thing, at all. But of course the claim itself refutes this inference, since it claims at least one thing that Socrates does know, even if this one thing is only that the claim to knowledge extends no further. This reading would seem to be the most radical self-limitation of reason that is logically possible, insofar as it admits under reason's certain grasp only the most minimal content that is required to avoid self-contradiction. So our first question is: How minimal in fact is this content? (Fs)

23a To determine this, we must ask first, What is implied by saying specifically that one knows that one doesn't know, as opposed to saying, with some uncertainty, I think or suppose or believe that I don't know? The question immediately presents a paradox, which in fact turns out to be unavoidable. As Socrates makes clear in a different context,3 to be sure that one does not know, one actually needs to know a great deal: it is not enough to say indeterminately that one does not know, but one needs to have insight precisely into what one does not know. Let us take the classic example of justice. How would I determine whether or not I know what justice is? To begin, I would have to fish around in my soul, as it were, to locate whatever impressions or opinions I might have about justice. Already here, though, before I take this first step, I need to have some idea of what my opinion might be, an idea that guides my search. As Socrates points out in the Meno,4 the search, obviously, cannot be "random": there is a difference between the act of formulating my opinion about justice and simply uttering whatever words happen to be in my head at the moment, even if the resultant content turns out to be indistinguishable. But the next moment is the decisive one: in order to determine whether the opinion, once formulated, is true, I of course need to know what justice in truth is. By the same token, to see that my opinion falls short of the reality, I need to see through the opinion to the reality itself. And note, there is a difference between having some vague sense that one's notion falls short and being able to say, with complete certainty, indeed, with what Socrates calls "knowledge," that it falls short. If even the former case requires some grasp of the reality, the latter requires a sure insight into its truth. There might seem to be a tension, if not a contradiction, between Socratic ignorance and the Platonic idea of learning as recollection, which implies that the soul is already in possession of the truth, and one might be tempted to resolve this tension by separating the skeptic Socrates from the dogmatist Plato, but in fact these two ideas are simply two different ways of articulating the very same point. We said above that knowing that one doesn't know requires knowing a great deal. In fact, the universality of the claims requires that one know everything, that one have a solid insight into the whole. Socratic ignorance represents no minimalist epistemology; rather, it is a claim "than which nothing greater can be thought," as we will see in a moment. (Fs)