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Arrogance of power [is] a psychological need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger, better, or stronger than other nations.

J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Hubris

The Fall of Icarus (Lantern console, Utrecht, NL)

In my last blog, I described how Idomeneo, King of Crete, opposed the will of a god and the forces of the cosmic order in order to save his son’s life. I explained that Idomeneo’s behaviour exemplifies the behaviour of the present world leaders, especially the older ones, who, like Idomeneo, ignore the obligations imposed on them by the human and cosmic order. After having written this blog, I realized that the ancient Greeks had a word for such behaviour: Hubris (also hybris; Greek: ὕβρις). It was one of the biggest crimes that a Greek citizen could commit. In Athens, you could be severely punished for it. But what actually is hubris?
At school, I learned that it had to be translated as overconfidence or haughtiness. However, I was told that it was a complex, much wider concept. And indeed, it is. Not only has hubris a much wider meaning than just overconfidence or haughtiness, but it’s meaning changed also through the ages. “In ancient times”, so Britannica, it meant “the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade. The word’s connotation changed over time, and hubris came to be defined as overweening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.” (my italics)
Hubris was often seen as extremely arrogant behaviour towards other persons, for example by Aristotle in his Rhetorics 1378b. However, I think that disregarding the cosmic order is at least so important as the personal aspect, if not the most important aspect, of hubris. But the personal aspect doesn’t need to exclude the cosmic aspect. Actually, the former is a manifestation of the latter, and that’s why it was considered a crime. Indeed, “some poets—especially Hesiod (7th century BCE) and Aeschylus (5th century BCE)—used hubris to describe wrongful action against the divine order”, so Britannica.
However, as Sjoerd van Hoorn explains, hubris isn’t only a violation of the divine or cosmic order as such, it is also a psychic attitude. For Pindar and Theognis (Greek poets, 6th century BCE) hybrid was a psychic concept. “Hybris is … an excess of confidence or too great a happiness that does not suit a person … A human who possesses practical wisdom is one who keeps measure, while immoderation can end in crime on the one hand, but on the other hand it can amount to what we still refer to in Dutch as ‘request the gods’ [= tempting fate], act in such a way that you ask for problems, as it were”, so van Hoorn (my italics)

Above I have explained that hubris is a complex, wide concept that, through the ages, had different meanings for the ancient Greeks, or at least different connotations. Nevertheless, I think that we can say that the concept of hubris has the following characteristics:
- Arrogant behaviour and contempt for the other, accompanied by humiliation, insolence, and the like.
- Violation of the human, divine and cosmic order; if not disrespect for this order. Instead of divine and cosmic order, most of us today would say the natural order. The human order includes the legal order.
- Immoderation, intemperateness if not excessiveness.
Hubris is an old Greek word. If you would ask me for a modern word or expression that covers its meaning best, I think that disrespect is a good choice; or even better, disrespect based on a sense of superiority. To my mind just this idea excellently sums up the behaviour of the leaders of the major world powers and of the people around them. It’s not difficult to fill in names. They all try to strengthen their positions and to glorify themselves at the cost of others by disrespecting and taunting these others and by discrediting their integrity. In doing so they go against the cosmic order that forces us to take care of problems like climate change, war, poverty, depleting human resources, etc. In Athens hubris was a severe crime. In Greek mythology and in Greek dramas hubris was always punished, as it was in Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, too. Why would it now be different? Hubris goes before a fall.

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The phenomenon of something happening to a person’s mental stability when in power has been observed for centuries … Perhaps the most profound, though non-medical, study of this was made in the ancient world. The Greeks developed the notion of hubris to characterise and explore it. The most basic meaning was simply as a description of an act: a hubristic act was one in which a powerful figure, puffed up with overweening pride and self-confidence, treated others with insolence and contempt.

Lord David Owen (1938-), British politician and physician, Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979.

An eternal drama

Idomeneo, King of Crete, (Daniel Behle) and his people receiving the applause  after the 
performance of Mozart's opera "Idomeneo" The National Opera, Amsterdam, 15 February 2025

After the Greeks had conquered Troy and had destroyed the city, they could finally return home, after ten years of fighting. However, the gods that had supported the Trojans were still against the Greeks, and for many the journey home became an arduous undertaking. We all know that it took Odysseus ten years to reach his dear wife Persephone in Ithaca. Also Idomeneo, King of Crete, didn’t have a safe passage. Almost got home, Poseidon, the god of the sea, made him get into a severe storm. Idomeneo’s ship foundered and he could save his life only by promising Poseidon to sacrifice him the first person he would meet, if he would safely reach Creta. This first person was his son Idamante.
This is the background of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, King of Crete, which I have seen two weeks ago in Amsterdam. It is the moment when the opera begins and the story develops. The essence of the drama is the conflict between the love of the father for his son on the one hand and his obligations to the gods, and in general to the forces of the cosmic order, on the other hand. As always in a Greek drama, it is impossible to escape fate and the forces of the cosmic order and certainly not the anger of a god who had been promised a sacrifice he didn’t get. In the original libretto Mozart’s opera was based on, in vain Idomeneo tries to escape his fate to offer his son and he kills him in a fit of madness. Mozart decided to give the opera a happy end: Other gods intervene, and Idomeneo abdicates the throne and is succeeded by Idamante. However, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the director of the present performance in Amsterdam, decided to go back to the original version of the story in which Idomeneo kills Idamante. As a consequence Idomeneo stays the ruler of Crete. Just this change by Cherkaoui makes this opera relevant to what happens in the world today, more than ever.
In order to understand why Cherkaoui decided to return to the original story of the drama, let’s listen to what he says about it. (the figures refer to the sources below) “I’d love to believe in that happy end,” so Cherkaoui “but the real world shows that it’s often not the case. These days, the young are fighting for their future and combating all kinds of oppression, but they are facing a cynical minority who don’t want to relinquish their privileges.” (1) Cherkaoui “sees an almighty king who refuses to give up his throne, even if he runs the risk of having to sacrifice his own son. He recognized our own times of crisis, in which political leaders are increasingly empowered and in which the future of the next generations is threatened by the political decisions of their predecessors.” (2) The gods and the monster in the opera “teach us that there are invisible, unwritten laws and that we expose ourselves – and the generations that come after us – to the risk of disaster, if we break them. The attacks and bombings we see in the world today are no less monstrous. The ancient Greek myths follow the principle of action and reaction, and teach us that what we do always has consequences.” (2) In the opera, Idamante, who represents the younger generation, falls in love with the Trojan princess Ilia, who stays as a prisoner in Crete. But it is a forbidden love. In this way, the past of the Trojan War with its massacres “are pressing on the present in the form of unprocessed trauma. The younger characters are trapped in a history that is not theirs.” (2) Therefore it is not realistic to give the opera a happy end, as Mozart did. By giving the end a dramatic turn, Cherkaoui wants to express his concerns about “the news, where we face revenge, egocentrism, armed conflict and bombings. Idomeneo warns against autocratic power without compassion for the people.” (2)
Indeed, when we see what is happening around us today, it is not difficult to recognize the drama depicted in the opera Idomeneo. Old leaders in the major powers of the world, don’t give up their power, but use it to perform their own actions of revenge. They betray the people who elected them, and block the new generations, that should replace them. The old leaders keep themselves busy with the traumas of the past (the war in Ukraine is a case in point) instead of the problems of the future (by neglecting or denying environmental problems, for instance). They try to strengthen their positions by spreading lies. In doing so they go against the cosmic order that forces us to take care of the problems that are ahead of us and not of those that are behind us. There is a saying that the revolution eats its own children. Here we see something like that, in the sense that the leaders destroy the people who have chosen them.
Interpreted in the way Cherkaoui has done, Idomeneo holds up a mirror to us. It’s a pessimistic interpretation but also a realistic interpretation in view of what is happening in the present world. Nevertheless, I don’t want to completely reject the possibility of Mozart’s interpretation of the drama, for the future is still open.

Sources
(1) Simon Hatab, “In gesprek met Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui”, in Idomeneo. re di Creta. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nationale Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam; pp. 13-15. https://www.operaballet.nl/en/online-programme/idomeneo
(2) Jasmijn van Wijnen, “Interview. Choreograaf en regisseur Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui over Idomeneo”, in Odeon. Magazine van De Nationale Opera, jaargang 31, nr. 136; pp. 9-10.

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Boredom results from being attentive to the passage of time itself.

William James (1842-1910) 

When are you a philosopher?

Baruch de Spinoza

In his book Es musste etwas besser werden …(It had to get a little better)  – in which Jürgen Habermas is interviewed by Stefan Müller Doohm and Roman Yos – Habermas tells us (p. 14): “I have always suspected myself not to be a ‘real’ philosopher; not one, if you will allow me the cliché, who starts from contemplating one’s own life situation and strives for deep, metaphysically valid insights. I recognized my motives more in Marxism and pragmatism. I consider the desire to make the world a little better or even to help stop the ever-threatening regressions to be an entirely unblemished motive. Therefore, I am quite satisfied with the term ‘philosopher and sociologist’.”
When reading this, I was a bit surprised, for Habermas started his academic career as a philosopher; that is, he wrote his PhD thesis The Absolute and History about the development of the concept of the absolute in Schelling’s work against the background of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Isn’t this a real philosophical theme? Only after having written his thesis, Habermas switched to more sociological themes. Moreover, aren’t Marxism and pragmatism philosophical movements? Or at least, aren’t they also philosophical movements? And thirdly, if you are a philosopher and a sociologist, does the fact that you are also a sociologist make you a less real philosopher? Does it make you an inferior kind of philosopher? Nevertheless, I can understand Habermas’s feeling, since I have a bit the same “problem”, but then the other way round. I studied sociology and later I switched to philosophy and then I wrote my PhD thesis on a philosophical subject (in the field of action theory). Since then, I have written mainly on philosophical subjects (although I must admit that over the years my themes have become more sociological again). So there are reasons to call myself a philosopher. Nevertheless, I hesitate to do so. Why? Actually I am a philosopher and sociologist in the sense explained by Habermas. That’s okay, isn’t it? Then why should I hesitate to apply these designations to myself?
However this may be, I think that Habermas’s words betray a German view on philosophy; a view that he wouldn’t have expressed in this way, if he were an Anglo-Saxon philosopher. In his view, a philosopher – as a philosopher! – should deal with “deeper” ideas; he or she should answer “deeper” questions; so with questions about the Absolute, the Being, the Good, Reason, etc. In this view, questions like what actions are and what makes them different from behaviour (Davidson) are not philosophical; just like questions about the right political system (Spinoza); or what meaningful language is (Dummett); what the distinction of science and non-science is (Carnap); etc.; so, questions that refer to the practice of life, methodological questions, and many more. These are questions especially studied by Anglo-Saxon philosophers. Understand me well, Habermas doesn’t object to them. Also according to him, they make sense. Even more, Habermas studied them, too, and he tried to find answers to these questions. Nevertheless, if I understand well his words quoted above, in his heart Habermas thinks that such questions are not to be studied by a Philosopher as a Philosopher (so a philosopher written with a capital P).
Apart from the question whether Habermas would defend this “German” view on philosophy – and I think that he would not and that, when asked, he would give a much broader view of what philosophy is; but here I am just interpreting the hidden view behind the quotation above – I think that many people have such a “Habermasian” view on philosophy as a vague and woolly activity. As we have seen above, this does not correspond to philosophical practice. But what then does a philosopher do? If you would ask me, I would say: A philosopher studies questions that are not empirical (or theological; but here I want to ignore the question what makes philosophy and theology different). So a philosopher studies all questions that cannot be empirically tested (and that are not theological). Okay, there are also so-called experimental philosophers, but they do not experimentally test philosophical views as such, but they test whether philosophical intuitions and justifications are generally shared. For example, if a philosopher says “This statement is intuitively true”, an experimental philosopher is interested in the question whether this intuition is generally shared and not in the truth of the statement.
Questions like the difference between action and behaviour, or what the right political system is, etc., may not be “deep” questions, but they are relevant for the practice of daily life. For example, whether we interpret a crime as an action or as a piece of behaviour makes whether we send the perpetrator to prison or to a psychiatric hospital. Such an interpretation is, at least for a part, philosophical. In case a practical question cannot be solved by an empirical test, we can try to solve it by thinking it through. And for that we need a philosopher or someone who thinks philosophically.

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Texts offer their resistance to the reader, philosophical texts even more so.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-) 

Poisoning the well

In old times, it was an often-used method to poison the wells of your enemy. Actually, it’s not only a method of the ancient past. In March 1917, during the First World War (1914-1918), the German army decided to shorten their lines on the Western Front in Northern France in order to make them stronger and they left extended areas to the French and the British armies. The Germans devastated these areas with scorched earth tactics and they poisoned the wells there as well. I am convinced that this method is still applied in the present wars in the world, although I have no evidence. This is already bad enough, but when in medieval Europe an epidemic broke out, often the false myth went around that Jews secretly poisoned wells and drinking fountains used by Christians and that this was the cause of the epidemic. Often this created a gulf of antisemitism if not violence and injustice against Jews. Certainly in those days it was difficult for the Jews to refute such false allegations.
Poisoning the well – in reality or confabulated – is not only a method of fighting, it has also become the name of a fallacy, so a mistake in our way of thinking. It belongs to the category of ad hominem fallacies or “playing the man”. The essence of the poisoning the well fallacy (PTW) is this: “PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre-emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense or in defense of her point of view.” This will make the audience – and maybe the speaker as well – prejudiced against the opponent with the effect that the audience will interpret the opponent’s claims “as ‘fulfilling’ and ‘confirming’ the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap.” (Ruiz, p. 196) In other words, the opponent is already put in a bad light before she has had any possibility to react, with the possible effect that she isn’t taken seriously or that her reaction is seen as a confirmation of what the speaker said about her, anyhow. For example (from “Poisoning the Well”):

“Tim: Boss, you heard my side of the story why I think Bill should be fired and not me. Now, I am sure Bill is going to come to you with some pathetic attempt to weasel out of this lie that he has created.
Explanation: Tim is poisoning the well by priming his boss by attacking Bill’s character, and setting up any defense Bill might present as ‘pathetic’. Tim is using this fallacious tactic here, but if the boss were to accept Tim’s advice about Bill, she would be committing the fallacy.”

As Nelson Todd explains: “The reason [PTW] is a fallacy is that it, like other fallacies, operates on the basis of little or no evidence. As such, it is prone to yield erroneous conclusions because it is not an orderly, objective way to reason through an argument.” The argumentation of the speaker is only based on the defamation of the opponent and then already before she got a chance to speak. It is not based on what the opponent really says. Moreover, besides that the other person is defamed, it is quite possible, even if the defamation generally is true, that it is not true in this case. If you say or think that John is a pathological liar, it is still possible that in this case he speaks the truth.
Poisoning the well can be an intentional tactic to “win” your case. It is often used as a tactic by politicians in order to get the voters on their hand. However, it is also possible that the speaker really believes what she says. Then PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning but also a kind of prejudice in the head of the speaker. If so, PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning that influences what others do but also your own actions. To take an example of Nelson: If “a patient in alcohol or drug rehab … encounters a therapist who has never had any alcohol or drugs themselves[, the] patient might think, ‘There is no way this person will ever truly understand what it is like to be an addict – therefore, I am not going to listen to anything they have to say.’ ” But maybe the therapist has much experience with treating addicts and has become the best expert in this field. The patient is prejudiced against the therapist. Since every person has prejudices, everybody of us should be aware that he or she can fall into the PTW trap. For instance: “I think that he is such and such a person, so therefore he’ll react in X way”. But is he really such and such a person? Isn’t it a bias in your head? Beware, for often we don’t poison the wells of our adversaries but our own wells.

Sources
- Nelson, Todd, “How ‘Poisoning the Well’ Hurts Everyone”, op website https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/us-and-them/202310/how-poisoning-the-well-hurts-everyone
- “Poisoning the Well”, op website https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Poisoning-the-Well
- Roberto Ruiz, “Poisoning the well”, in Robert Arp; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 196-200.

Random quote
As a single, self-contained person, man can only exist by drawing breath from the space of meanings and reasons shared with other speakers, that is from the linguistic infrastructure of his "world" - but at the same time intersubjectively shared - life.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-)

Culture and clashes

Edward Sapir is especially known for his contributions to linguistics. During his work as a linguist, he studied Native American languages. This made that he became interested in anthropology as well. So, his Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays (see my blog last week) contains besides linguistic studies also anthropological articles. One, “Cultural, genuine and spurious” (pp. 78-119), describes what culture is, and, though written a century ago, I think that Sapir’s classification of types of culture there is still relevant in the present world; a world characterized by migration flows that bring people with different cultural backgrounds into contact with each other on a large scale. Some (notably Samuel P. Huntington) think that this will lead to an increase of conflicts in the world, even to that extent that they speak of a clash of civilizations or cultures. Although I think that the origin of the present conflicts and those that can be expected in the near future is more complicated, this seems to me sufficient reason to go into the question what actually culture is.

According to Sapir there are three wa=ys that the concept of culture is used. Firstly, “culture is technically used by the ethnologist and culture-historian to embody any socially inherited element in the life of man, material and spiritual. Culture so defined is coterminous with man himself…” (p. 79) In this sense, culture is every human material and non-material product, but in a material product not the product as such is important for seeing it as cultural, so not the “hardcore” or “stuff” is important, but the way humans use it and have produced it. For instance, not that we eat cauliflower as such is cultural, for humans need to eat, like all animals. But it is cultural, because we prepare this vegetable in a certain way; because we eat it in a certain way, which is different from culture to culture (if people elsewhere eat cauliflower); because the present cauliflowers are the result of an age-old cultivation process; etc. In this view, culture is what makes a material thing a social product. Since as a child I read already anthropology books, I am very familiar with this use of the concept of culture, but most people don’t see it this way.
“The second application of the term is more widely current”, so Sapir. “It refers to a rather conventional idea of individual refinement, built up on a certain modicum of assimilated knowledge and experience but made up chiefly of a set of typical reactions that have the sanction of a class and of a tradition of long standing.” (80-81) It is the concept that makes that we call something sophisticated, or that we call a person so, because he or she knows how things are or should be done, especially in the intellectual field. We call such a knowledgeable person a “cultured person”, but, so Sapir adds, “only up to a certain point. Far more emphasis is placed upon manner, a certain preciousness of conduct which takes different colors according to the nature of the personality that has assimilated the ‘cultured’ ideal.” A negative expression of this kind of culture is snobbishness. (81)
The third type of culture is most difficult to describe, Sapir says. It is vague but undeniable and all-penetrating. It “shares with our first, technical, conception an emphasis on the spiritual possessions of the group rather than of the individual. With our second conception it shares a stressing of selected factors out of the vast whole of the ethnologist’s stream of culture as intrinsically more valuable, more characteristic, more significant in a spiritual sense than the rest.” This cultural conception “aims to embrace in a single term those general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of civilization that give a particular people its distinctive place in the world. Emphasis is put not so much on what is done and believed by a people as on how what is done and believed functions in the whole life of that people, on what significance it has for them.” (82-83). This type of culture is often ascribed to nations, also to groupings within nations, and sometimes it unites people that are separated by borders. In this way we can talk of the Dutch culture, American culture, Kurdish culture, Scandinavian culture, Catalonian culture, and the like.
To this threefold use of the concept of culture I want to add yet another application. Briefly, it refers to what we could call the works and practices of intellectual, and in particular artistic, activity. Music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film are types of practices of this idea of culture. Especially, it refers to the “higher” versions of these practices. I think that this fourth type of culture is what most people think of, when they think of culture. Many countries have a Ministry of Culture that deals with and tries to stimulate culture in this fourth sense.

This now fourfold use of the concept of culture makes clear that it is a multidimensional concept. When we talk about culture, at first sight it may not be clear what we mean by it. It is a thing that must be clarified, explicitly or implicitly, before we can go on. A certain use or “dimension” of the concept is relevant only in the right context. In the context of a political discussion and practice in which migration, ethnic diversity and integration are important themes, the first and third uses are most important, so the ethnological use of the concept of culture and the use that stresses general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of nations and peoples. For just these cultural dimensions lead to and form the values, norms, customs and habits of peoples that are often mutually not understood and that can lead to large-scale frictions that surpass individual irritations. Just cultural differences created in this way are often misunderstood and belong to the factors that make that some want to kick out the newly arrived.

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We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

Language and life world. Edward Sapir

About 100 years ago, a group of philosophers, the so-called logical positivists, tried to develop a system which should make it possible to reduce all scientific statements to logic. Especially Rudolf Carnap tried to do so in his 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). It failed. The problem was that these philosophers considered language as something objective, a mere instrument. What they forgot or ignored was that each objective scientific language is based on the ordinary language of daily life and that there is a close connection between a language and the life world of its speakers. In other words, there is a close connection between language and culture. We can never define the basic terms of a scientific theory in a purely objective manner, for in the end, we must always fall back on the colloquial language in order to describe these basic terms. Logical positivists could have understood this, if they had been open to the language theory of one of their contemporaries, Edward Sapir. Sapir, didn’t study the relationship between scientific language and ordinary language and life world, but he gave the tools that can be used for such an analysis.
Edward Sapir (1884-1939), a Polish born American, worked both in the field of anthropology and in the field of linguistics. He is especially known for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which he developed together with his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). This hypothesis says that the way someone perceives and conceptualizes the world is determined by the language he or she speaks. We can find the essence of this thesis in Sapir’s article “Language”. In the first place, so Sapir states there, language is “a system of phonetic symbols for the expression of communicable thought and feeling.” (p. 1) This means that a language is not merely phonetic, so a combination of sounds, for these sounds refer to something in the world, which makes that they have a meaning. “In all known languages, phonemes [sets of similar speech sounds] are built up into distinct and arbitrary sequences which are at once recognized by speakers as meaningful symbols of reference.” (4-5) Such phonemes are combined into words. These words can be combined and structured in a “complicated field of … formal procedures which are intuitively employed by the speakers of a language in order to build up aesthetically and functionally satisfying symbol sequences …” Together these formal procedures constitute the grammar of a language. (5)
A language doesn’t have only these formal characteristics, but it has psychological characteristics as well. First, language is felt to be a perfect symbolic system for handling all references and meanings of a culture, both useful for communication and for thinking. (6) Second, as a way of acting, language does not “stand apart from or run parallel to direct experience but completely interpenetrates with it.” (8) Reality and language are often felt as two sides of the same coin. Thirdly, since we grow into language from our birth, it is, “in spite of its quasi-mathematical form, … rarely a purely referential organization. It tends to be so only in scientific discourse, and even there it may be seriously doubted whether the ideal pure reference is ever attained by language.” (10; my italics) Given the expressive and communicative function of language plus the fact that language refers to the world around us and that in this way it gets a symbolic content, we can say that, in Sapir’s view, language is a reflection of our life world, and is often felt to be the world itself.
Though “the importance of language as a whole for the definition, expression, and transmission of culture is undoubted”, so Sapir, “it does not follow … that there is a simple correspondence between the form of a language and the form of the culture of those who speak it. … There is no general correlation between cultural type and linguistic structure.” (34) For then grammar and culture should develop in a parallel way, which is clearly not the case. But though we cannot see the influence of the general form of a language on the culture where this language is spoken, we can see such an influence of the detailed content of this language: “Vocabulary is a very sensitive index of the culture of a people and changes of the meaning, loss of old words, the creation and borrowing of new ones are all dependent on the history of culture itself.” (36) It is in the words and distinctions made in languages that we can see the impact of a language on a culture. Moreover, his view on language implies that language can be influenced by culture, such as that new inventions lead to new words. The essence is – and that is what the logical positivists ignored and what led to the failure of their approach – that language refers to the world; not to the world as such but to culture. Culture gives language its meaning while language gives culture its views. One implication is that we cannot develop an objective language with no connection with our culture, and by that with our life world.

Blog written on the occasion of Edward Sapir’s birthday (26 January) and the anniversary of his death (4 February).

Source
Edward Sapir, “Language”, in Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays. Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1956. The page numbers after the quotes in the text refer to this edition.

Random quote
The network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which expresses that civilization.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

How to end war

Käthe Kollwitz, "Grieving Parents". 
Roggeveld German Military Cemetary, Vladslo, Belgium

“While nations go to war expecting quick decisive results they habitually find themselves mired in protracted conflict.” (source)

It is almost three years ago that Russia invaded Ukraine, and although Russia expected a quick victory, also in this case the statement just quoted proved to be true: The war has reached a stalemate and, despite slowly moving front lines, no end of the fighting is in sight, nor seems a quick solution possible. Nevertheless, US president Trump thinks that he can end the war within one day. At least, so he said during his presidential campaign. Although this statement doesn’t seem realistic, nevertheless it is a good moment to think about the question how to end the Ukraine-Russia War (and isn’t any moment a good moment for this?). Here I want to mention some problems that make a solution of the conflict difficult, and that certainly will make it difficult to lay the basis for its end in one day.

- No war of this type ends without a truce as a first step to peace. But making a truce is not simply a matter of calling each other and saying “We are both fed up with this war. Let’s stop fighting tomorrow at ten o’clock.” The fighting parties must agree on demarcation lines (what is in my hands, what is in your hands; what if my troops are located behind your troops; etc.). Soldiers must be informed about the truce. Front lines must be disentangled. And certainly in this Ukraine-Russia War, we need a mediator.
- Which country or organisation or person can take the role of mediator? The USA/Trump? The USA is a party in the conflict, but Trump as a person seems to distance himself from the war. Will he really do? Is he acceptable for Russia/Putin? Most likely, he is not. Who will then be an acceptable mediator? China? But till now China has chosen – more or less – the side of Russia. Turkey? But Turkey is a NATO member and supports Ukraine, but on the other hand the country behaves itself often in quite an independent way. Another option is India. India seems to be acceptable for both parties and president Zelensky has asked unofficially India already to play this role.
- Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago. That is, then the present phase of the war started, but actually the war began already with the occupation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the fighting in the east of Ukraine and the “independence” of the region since then (followed by its annexation by Russia). As a consequence, there is great distrust between the two countries, especially from the side of Ukraine. So, what we need are so-called confidence-building measures. What should they involve?
- Once negotiations have started, what should the parties talk about, besides of a vague “bringing peace” or “ending the war”? In view of the present military situation, what Russia probably wants is keeping the regions conquered, the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops from Russian territory, and turning Ukraine into a vassal state. On the other hand, Ukraine will want to have its territory restored, if possible including the return of the Crimea. Moreover, it will not want to have to give up its future membership of NATO and the European Union, which it sees as essential for its security.
- This, security, is maybe the key word of the peace negotiations. In order to avoid another invasion by Russia in future, Ukraine will ask security guarantees. What must such security guarantees involve? That Ukraine will become a NATO member? (unacceptable for Russia) Foreign peacekeeping forces? If so, from which countries? Only a treaty saying that Russia and the USA etc. will guarantee the inviolability of Ukraine’s territory will not be enough. For didn’t Russia, the United States and United Kingdom sign the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, in which these countries formally recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty within its then-existing borders and undertook not to violate them? Even more, they promised to “respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine.”

This short list – and certainly more points can be added, like about the war damage and the war crimes – makes clear that this war cannot be ended in one day and also that it must end in a compromise at the negotiation table. And then, how often hasn’t it happened that such a compromise has been the prelude to a new war. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World and was followed by the Second World War, is a case in point. Nobody is waiting for a new Big European War, which certainly be a Third World War.
As Thania Paffenholz, an expert in international relations, remarks in an interview: “The war goes on until one party feels, ‘If we continue, we will weaken our position’ – or rather ‘What we want is now better achieved at the negotiating table.’ When a conflict reaches this point, we call it ‘ripe for resolution.’ ” The question is: Have we reached that point already? If we would ask the people of Ukraine and Russia, without a doubt the answer would be “yes”. Even more, the war would never have started. However – adapting Ms Paffenholz’s words a little bit – “The current system allows those in power to act like kings in the Middle Ages sending their peasants to war.”

Random quote
The principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country whether it is in the East or in the West.

Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor 

Who I am not

Image by Chat GPT (see note below)

Sometimes I am curious to know who I am according to AI. As far as I know there is not much about me on the internet, though I guess, that there is more there, than I assume. So, what would AI say about me? Therefore, I asked ChatGPT to write a text about me as a philosopher. Here is the result. I have added a few comments between square brackets:

“Henk bij de Weg (1919-1991) [False. I am still alive and I am also not from 1919] was a Dutch philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam [Fake]. He is best known for his work on the philosophy of language [Fake] and the philosophy of action. His work was heavily [No: a little] influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and he was an important figure in the development of Dutch analytic philosophy. [Fake] Bij de Weg was an advocate of logical positivism [Quite the contrary] and argued that language should be used as a tool to clarify and sharpen thinking. [Hmmm] He believed that language was a tool to express and uncover the underlying structure of reality and argued that our understanding of language should be guided by the principles of clarity, consistency and economy. He was also a proponent of the view that philosophical problems should be solved through careful analysis and argumentation. [Some] Bij de Weg's work has been widely influential in the development of Dutch analytic philosophy [Fake] and has been cited in many scholarly works. [I wish it was true] His work has been used to address topics such as the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of action. [?] He is remembered as an important figure in Dutch philosophy and his legacy continues to influence philosophical thinking today. [Fake]”

IT’S ALL LIES

Now, because I have published this blog here, when you are going to ask ChatGPT who the philosopher Henk bij de Weg is, probably you’ll find something like the text above, for it will find this blog text about me on the internet and think that it’s true, just because it is on the internet. Then, because AI has written it, maybe you think that it is true. However, it’s all lies.
In another version, ChatGPT made me “a renowned Dutch philosopher who has been a leader in the field of moral philosophy. He is best known for his views on the ethical implications of technology and the implications of modernity on our daily lives….” etc. Also this is all lies. Why cannot AI not give the simple human answer “I don’t know?”

Note
I asked ChatGPT, in Dutch, also: “Create an image of the famous philosopher Henk bij de Weg. This is what ChatGPT said, before presenting the image above (note that my last name can be translated in English as “by the road”, or something like that):

“Henk bij de Weg seems to be a fictional name, so I will make an image of a philosopher named Henk who is thinking along a rural road, surrounded by nature. He has a philosophical appearance with a long coat and glasses, and has books around him.”

Again, ChatGPT goes wrong. “bij de Weg” is a real, though, rare, Dutch family name. Moreover, I have published several books and articles under this name and I have several websites under this name (see the columns left and right on this blog page). Why then does ChatGPT say that it is a fictional name? So, ChatGPT could have found my real me simply via this blog website.

Random quote
You cannot outsource the assessment of a question to computers. There is no objective or detached criterion for it; a good question is always a good question for us.

Marjan Slob (1980-)

Paths of freedom

I think that everybody knows them, those unplanned, spontaneous tracks and paths through lawns, open grounds, ruderal terrain, etc. that we call desire paths, elephant paths, or how you like. They are used as shortcuts in parks, between roads, between paths, etc. Maybe a shortcut is used only once by someone and then it will fade away. If only this person uses it regularly, it is a kind of private shortcut. If also other persons are going to use the same shortcut regularly, it will gradually wear out. Then, what once was a hardly visible trail becomes a clear path, although an unofficial one; a path that has come into existence by habit. It came there because the users desired there to go; because so they were faster where they wanted to go; or because walking there was easier than on the official path or road. Once it is there, people may come to see it as an official path; as a real path. What once was a trail or only a casual shortcut has become institutionalized by habit. In an older blog I preferred the name “elephant path”, but here I want to call it a “desire path”, because this fits the present blog better.
Desire paths can be seen as self-willed, if not stubborn, reactions to the infrastructure made by planners. A desire path is a kind of re-interpretation, or personal interpretation of the spatial structure designed by city planners. City planners have filled in the space in a certain way and they have given it a certain meaning in terms of spaces to be used as paths or streets; or as sidewalks; or as lawns; and so on. The meanings given to these spaces are sometimes clarified if not ordered by traffic signs, information panels and signs with texts (“Don’t walk on the lawn”, “No dogs allowed”). They make the interpretation of the structured space clear to its users, especially if these meanings don’t follow from generally known customary standard meanings. (That also standard meanings are not self-evident or objective and usually are culturally dependent, becomes often clear when you are travelling around in another country. Then such meanings often are not so obvious to you as they are to the locals.)
However, people frequently don’t follow the official or accepted interpretations. Often they give structured spaces their own meanings. A desire path is such an alternative interpretation. By making or using a desire path, the user doesn’t see, for example, the lawn as a piece of nature to be protected or as a playground, but (also) as an open space that can be used as a shortcut to go from A to B, instead of following the official paths or roads. The maker or user of a desire path gives the official structure of the space a personal interpretation or re-interpretation. Sometimes city authorities follow such a re-interpretation, when they provide the desire path with a pavement; sometimes they take countermeasures by putting a barrier there in order to stop the use of the desire path or they put there a sign forbidding the use; or they simply ignore it.
Such an explanation of desire paths in terms of how planners and users interpret and re-interpret structured space is not far from an interpretation in terms of power. Roads and paths constructed by city authorities are ways to organise public life and to guide streams of traffic (walkers, cyclists, cars …). They are means to force passers-by, with a gentle hand or with a hard hand, to follow pre-determined roads and paths according to the preferences of those authorities. Such constructed passages are means to exercise power. This becomes explicit, if preferred routes are indicated by direction signs and traffic signs, and even more if not following the signs can be fined. Then the passer-by doesn’t only simply “actualize” the preferences of the city authorities, as Michel de Certeau would call it, but he or she is forced to do so. In other words, city authorities construct spaces, called roads, paths, etc., to guide and control the movements of the citizens. If less important, such spaces are merely spaces preferred for a certain use by the city authorities, but if necessary its use can be forced by signs, fences and fines. So, even in our seemingly banal, insignificant everyday movements through the city, we are constantly under pressure of forms of power. (see Lauren Daran) “I have to go here and not there, because there is no passage there” or “… because there the road is blocked” or “… because there it is forbidden.” This is what a passer-by constantly must think.
If we can see roads and paths and all officially structured city spaces (and the same for such spaces outside the cities, of course) as constructed power structures for guiding people in the right way, then we can see desire paths as ways of opposition against this power. Seen this way, desire paths are acts of resistance or at least of disobedience to the power structures that organize and construct the public spaces and that have been imposed by the authorities. Desires paths don’t follow the preferences and desires of the authorities, enforced or not by signs, fences and fines, but the preferences and desires of the users. By flouting the rules, desire paths are not just personal shortcuts but paths of freedom.

Random quote
If we do something good in a dilemma, we automatically omit something good in such a case and thus do something morally wrong.

Markus Gabriel (1980-)