The dignity of man as a mythological concept

Human Dignity as a Mythological Concept

Thomas [email protected]

Research center Erkenntnis, University of Oldenburg, Germany

The future of human dignityOctober 11-13, 2016

University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Thomas Wachtendorf

Human dignity: Meaningful concept or empty formula?Opponents say:

• Human dignity has no meaning, because there is no object it refers to

• It is a solely rhetorical concept

• It is a religious concept

Proponents state:

• Human dignity has a explicable meaning

• It is a regulative concept

• It is transcendental necessary and therefore irreducible

1. Empirical or conventional

2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors

5. Dignity as Absolute

Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf

The underlying question is:

Are ethical sentences empirical or merely

conventional?



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

A: Empirical sentences

„That I am a man and not a woman can be verified […].“ (OC §79)


2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf


B: Grammatical sentences

„Example: ‚Every rod has a length.‘ That means something like: we call something (or this) ‚the length of a rod‘—but nothing ‚the length of a sphere.‘ […] But the picture attaching to the grammatical proposition could only shew, say, what is called ‚the length of a rod‘“. (PI, §251)


2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf



C: Regulative sentences

„The propositions presenting what Moore ‘knows’ are all of such a kind that it is difficult to imagine why

anyone should believe the contrary. E.g. the proposition that Moore has spent his whole life in close proximity to the earth. – Once more I can speak of myself here instead of speaking of Moore. What could induce me to believe the opposite? Either a memory, or having been told. – Everything that I have seen or heard gives me the conviction that no man has ever been far

from the earth. Nothing in my picture of the world speaks in favour of the opposite.“(OC §93)


2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf




D: Empirical, but not yet verified sentences

„As children we learn facts; e.g., that every human being has a brain, and we take them on trust. I believe that there is an island, Australia, of such–and–such a shape, and so on and so on; I believe that I had great–grandparents, that the people who gave themselves out as my parents really were my parents, etc. This belief may never have been expressed; even the thought that

it was so, never thought.“ (OC §159)



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf




D: Empirical, but not yet verified sentences{

Mythology

„The propositions describing this world–picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely

practically, without learning any explicit rules.“ (OC §95)

„An entire mythology is stored within our language.“ (RGB 133)

➡Mythological sentences either can’t be doubted nor validated (A) or to doubt them would be completely strange, because they are either not used as empirical sentences or are self-evident (B, C) or they are awaiting validation (D).



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

This mythology constitutes a world-picture

„That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those

turn.“ (OC §341)

„At the foundation of well–founded belief lies belief that is not founded.“ (OC §253)

„That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.“ (OC

§342)

„What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.“ (OC §225)

„But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I

distinguish between true and false.“ (OC §94)



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf




Where is the place for ethical sentences?

Ethical sentences:• can be doubted (∉ B)

• are no empirical sentences (∉ A ∧ ∉ D)


• are not self-evident (∉ C)



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf




Where is the place for ethical sentences? In a subset of C!

Ethical sentences:• can be doubted

• are no empirical sentences


• are not self-evident

C1: Ethical sentences



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Something more about mythology

Wittgenstein claims that mythology, in spite of itself not being true or false is „the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.“This mythology has a certain structure which can – in part – be described as metaphors.


2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf

Preliminary remark:George Lakoff and Mark Johnson pointed out (in: Metaphors we live by, 2003) that beyond their rhetorical and poetical functions metaphors have the ability to illustrate fundamental cognitive structures. Those metaphors influence the way we act and think.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

In this sense Hans Blumenberg claims that this mythology is structured by metaphors which influence the way one thinks:

„Metaphorology seeks to come on the substructure of thinking, the underground, [...], but metaphorology will also make comprehensible, by which ‚courage’ the mind is ahead of itself when using certain pictures and how by having courage to make certain assumptions its own history develops.“

(Hans Blumenberg, Paradigms for a metaphorology)



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

A specific kind of metaphor is called Absolute Metaphor, a term invented by Hans Blumenberg in 1960 in his Paradigms of a metaphorology.Absolute Metaphors while lying on the bottom of our world picture thereby constitute reality, because they make us see the world in a certain way.

The other way around, metaphors inform us about a human’s lifeworld (his reality).



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

What are Absolute Metaphors dealing with?

Absolute Metaphors aim at existential questions.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Existential questions can not be answered by science, because they reach beyond science’s theoretically structured cognitive capacity (science and theories are finite as well as humans are. Existential questions aim at the infinite).Absolute Metaphors say something about what science can not explain.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Absolute Metaphors answer:

• Questions of totality, e.g.: What is time? What is the meaning of life?

• Questions of orientation, e.g.: How to deal with murderers? How to find out what is true?

Absolute Metaphors "structure a world, they represent the whole of reality, which neither can be experienced nor overlooked. Their content determines behaviour like a landmark one is guided by." (Blumenberg)



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Thus, Absolute Metaphors deliver answers where science fails to do so. This is why they are a sufficient pattern of explanation in an important sense.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Explanations come to an end somewhere – as Wittgensteins says –, because all explanations must rest on some ground, which itself cannot be explained. Otherwise there would be another explanation explaining this ground and so on. A circulus vitiosus would be the consequence.Absolute Metaphors take over the role of such a ultimate grounding. They in this sense represent a world picture.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

To be justified to call a concept an Absolute Metaphor three conditions must be fulfilled:

1. The concept needs a content (intension)2. This content must aim at a totality3. The concept must be suitable to give

orientation



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

The concept of human dignity fulfills all of the three conditions:1. The concept has a content2. The concept tries to say something about what

humans are (thus aiming at a totality)3. The concept thereby works as a guideline how

to deal with people

Therefore, human dignity can be considered as an Absolute Metaphor. Absolute Metaphors are transcendentally necessary for organizing social coexistence. They are necessary for pragmatic reasons and they affect our attitude.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Ethics as Attitude

„It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and

hard ones became fluid.“ (OC §96)

Accepting certain (ethical) sentences changes one’s attitude and also one's world-picture:

„The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river– bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river–bed and the shift of the bed itself; though

there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.“ (OC §97)

„And the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or

deposited.“ (OC §99)


2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas Wachtendorf

Attitude and Seeing-As

The world-picture influences the way we see the world:

„You only ‚see the duck and rabbit aspects‘ if you are already conversant with the shapes of those

two animals.“ (PI II 207)

„The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.“ (TLP 6.43)

This is why:



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Attitude and Seeing-As

„The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.“ (TLP 6.43)

This also leads to the conclusion that the world of a man whose world-picture contains the concept of human dignity is different from that of a man whose does not.



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor

Thomas Wachtendorf

Conclusion

A world-picture rests on mythology and because of ethical sentences being part of this mythology, each world-picture also has a ethical foundation.To accept or to decline certain sentences, influences this mythology.Ethics, thus, is not just discussing ethical questions, but rather changing one’s way of seeing the world – as we go along.To be ethical in this sense means to adopt a certain attitude by taking ethical sentences into consideration and to accept or decline them.Arguing for human dignity helps keeping this concept alive!



2. Classification

3. Mythology

4. Metaphors


Metaphor


Thomas [email protected]

Research center Erkenntnis, University of Oldenburg, Germany

The future of human dignityOctober 11-13, 2016

University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Documents

The dignity of man as a mythological concept