Читать книгу Narrative Ontology - Axel Hutter - Страница 12

As the introductory reflections have made clear, emancipation of human self-knowledge from the monopoly of object knowledge cannot be achieved simply with the ‘wave of a hand’. This is also evident in how inappropriate the concepts are that have been used thus far, for talk of a ‘subject’ that distinguishes itself from the objects that it knowingly faces is at least prone to being misunderstood. By facing the objects, the subject itself seems to become a ‘special object’ in relation to the other object, so ultimately the I would only be another object, rather than something completely different from an object.

For a human self-knowledge rich in content, it is, then, not adequate to define the peculiarity of the self only negatively, because in this way the I threatens to wither into vagueness, the indeterminacy of which is then once again (out of embarrassment) filled with objective determinations, alienating the I into an object. For this reason, for a human self-understanding rich in content it is necessary that one find in each case a concretization of one’s own selfhood that enables a determinate and concrete self-knowledge without thereby alienating the I into an object.

For this purpose, Schopenhauer’s reflection quoted above contains an important cue, for it mentions – in passing as it were – language as the ultimate limit which humans come up against in their attempt to become comprehensible to themselves: ‘we find ourselves like a hollow glass globe, from the emptiness out of which a voice speaks. But the cause of this voice is not to be found in the globe.’ The question of human self-knowledge thus takes on a more determinate form because it relates to the concrete primordial phenomenon of language: ‘What or who is actually speaking when a voice is speaking in me?’

To be sure, this turn of attention only makes explicit what was already implicitly at work in the considerations up to now – namely, language. In the word ‘I’ that has so far been used as a matter of course, the basic and ineluctable self-consciousness of human being – namely, of being a self or a subject – finds expression in language. Human self-consciousness articulates itself in saying I, for which the ‘I’ performs a linguistic concretization of the I, without thereby alienating it immediately into an object, for the expression ‘I’ does not designate here – as will need to be shown – a graspable being, an object. For this reason, the question is to be specified: ‘Who is actually speaking when I am speaking?’

Turning to language makes it necessary to exhibit the ambiguity of the I (as both the object and subject of knowledge), which has thus far been discussed primarily in epistemological concepts, in an equally succinct manner as a linguistic ambiguity of the expression ‘I’. In other words, if it is true that language offers human self-knowledge an outstanding medium in which this knowledge may articulate itself concretely, then it must be possible for the distinction that has been elaborated thus far between knowledge of something other and knowledge of oneself to be defined in terms of philosophy of language: as a concrete distinction between the use of the word ‘I’ as object and as subject. The fundamental difference between the objects of knowledge, on the one hand, and the subject of knowledge on the other, would thereby acquire support in language and provide a basis for further considerations.

The sought-after difference between an objective and a subjective use of the word ‘I’ is made clear by Wittgenstein in an exemplary manner: ‘There are two different cases in the use of the word “I” (or “my”) which I might call “the use as object” and “the use as subject”. Examples of the first kind of use are these: “My arm is broken”, “I have grown six inches”, “I have a bump on my forehead”, “The wind blows my hair about”. Examples of the second kind are: “I see so-and-so”, “I hear so-and-so”, “I try to lift my arm”, “I think it will rain”, “I have toothache”’ (1958, 66–7).

At first glance, Wittgenstein’s distinction may appear innocuous. It becomes more serious, however, once one brings to mind the following situation in order to clarify the use of ‘I’ as object. Photos of people are shown to me and I name the respective name as soon as I recognize the person: ‘That is P. M.’; ‘That is K. S.’ In this series, I can then also say: ‘That’s me there!’ What is remarkable here is that I can always also be mistaken: ‘That’s me there! – oh no, it is K. S., who looks deceptively similar to me in the photo.’

In contrast to this use of ‘I’ as object that is fundamentally open to error, the use of ‘I’ as subject is distinguished precisely in that the possibility for error towards objects is categorically ruled out. According to Wittgenstein, ‘there is no question of recognizing a person when I say I have toothache. To ask “are you sure that it’s you who have pains?” would be nonsensical. Now, when in this case no error is possible, it is because the move which we might be inclined to think of as an error, a “bad move”, is no move of the game at all’ – in this unique language game, that is, in which ‘I’ is used not as object but, rather, as subject (67).

Wittgenstein does not tire of pointing out that usual speech veils the strong difference between the use as object and the use as subject, since it is primarily directed at weak – that is, ‘objective’ – differences within the world of objects. For this reason, according to Wittgenstein, we should take note: ‘The difference between the propositions “I have pain” and “he has pain” is not that of “L. W. has pain” and “Smith has pain”’ (68). The difference between ‘L. W.’ and ‘Smith’ designates an objectifiable difference (analogous to the difference between two different stones or photos), whereas the difference between ‘I’ and ‘L. W.’ marks in the medium of language the incomparably more radical difference between knowledge of oneself and knowledge of something other.

The fact – which at first glance may seem perplexing – is summarized by Wittgenstein in two sentences: ‘The word “I” does not mean the same as “L. W.” even if I am L. W.’; ‘But that doesn’t mean: that “L. W.” and “I” mean different things’ (67). The first sentence makes once again clear the strong difference between the use of ‘I’ as subject and its use as object: it emphasizes that the meaning of ‘I’ when used as subject may not be confused with the meaning of a name that refers through identification to the I in the objective sense. For this reason, the second sentence warns against misunderstanding the strong difference – between that which the enigmatic meaning of ‘I’ indicates linguistically when it is used as subject and that which can be recognized and identified as an object – as a weak difference between different things or objects of knowledge.

This is the mistake made by the widespread opinion that, for each of us, our I is our closest and most familiar object of knowledge, for it confuses a relative difference within the world of objects with the absolute difference between subject and object, between ‘I’ and ‘L. W.’ That I cannot err in the use of ‘I’ as subject should not be ascribed to a wondrous capacity to never make a wrong move in the game of objectification, but rather grasped as the enigmatic phenomenon that no wrong move can be made because the use of ‘I’ as subject does not even participate in the game of object knowledge.

The I of the individual human being as the subject of knowledge is for this reason not simply a different object of knowledge; in fact, it demands a completely different form of knowledge – namely, self-knowledge. The I cannot be known like a tree or a stone – but also not like a psychological state. Wittgenstein’s decisive place in contemporary thought rests, above all, on the fact that he has renewed for the present age the Socratic idea of philosophy as self-knowledge in an original way in the medium of language analysis. The ordinary understanding of language tends to overlook the enigmatic unique character of the I and self-knowledge, for in language countless distinctions can easily be articulated (white or black, even or odd, he or she), leading one to overlook the incomparably more difficult distinction between weak and strong distinctions, which is itself a strong distinction. At the same time, the circumstance that language threatens to blur certain distinctions can likewise – as Wittgenstein shows – be expressed in language, even if this requires a special effort to articulate and understand appropriately this critique that thinks with language against language.

In the end, Wittgenstein’s critique of language remains faithful, however, to the primarily negative character of Socratic non-knowledge: ‘The kernel of our proposition that that which has pains or sees or thinks is of a mental nature is only that the word “I” in “I have pains” does not denote a particular body, for we can’t substitute for “I” a description of a body’ (74). Yet now the question arises: how is one to recognize the truth of this negative insight, and at the same time move beyond it? While the insight into the intangibility of the I is indeed the indispensable beginning of all genuine self-knowledge, it cannot – for the reasons just alluded to – represent already the whole of a concrete self-knowledge rich in content.