Philosophical communication

The world transforms under the instance of the person into a world of relationships, into a human world, which clearly distinguishes itself from the world of experience.

— Martin Buber, I and Thou

Philosophical communication, or the way of communicating philosophical thought, is a specific aspect of communication, that is, the typically human activity through which contents are made available, shared, and generated between two or more people.

The problem in ancient philosophers

And so, whoever thought they could pass on an art through writing, and whoever received it believing that from those written signs they will be able to draw something clear and solid, must be full of great naivety and must truly ignore the prophecy of Ammon, if they believe that written speeches are something more than a means to recall to the memory of those who know the things the writing is about [...] And once a speech is written, it rolls everywhere, into the hands of those who understand and likewise into the hands of those who care nothing about it, and it does not know to whom it should speak and to whom not.

— Socrates:

Among the first thinkers in history, there were authors who wrote their works in the form of verse poems; later, philosophy was predominantly written in prose, thus emphasizing the distinction – later theorized by Plato – between poetry, as a plausible imitation of reality, and philosophy, which tends towards formalization and the expression of truth or the Idea. In this way, however, philosophy renounced the artistic form that made its reading more attractive.

In Greek antiquity, the preferred way to express any type of knowledge was the spontaneous use of oral communication. When written transmission appears, it takes on the function of synthetically fixing and making memorable new content of knowledge. Until the 5th century, when the sophists, masters of the techné (technique) of rhetoric, appear, poetic expression was certainly superior to prose, which was more suitable for expressing abstract thoughts. However, even later, as in the Hellenistic and Late Roman Empire ages, the use of verse is not entirely abandoned, as evidenced by the Stoic Cleanthes in the Hymn to Zeus.

Another widely used genre in philosophical communication of the ancient period was the epistle, generally addressed to an acquaintance or friend of the writer, and therefore often initially of a private nature. However, the ancients were reluctant to publish letters concerning their private and intimate sphere, and thus the epistle gradually assumed the value of bringing one's philosophical considerations to external readers.

In Aristotle's school, this literary genre was used for philosophical and scientific writings. Initially, the epistle was a response to a specific recipient who had raised doubts and objections to the official doctrine; subsequently, it became a true form of communication to the public, in the form of fictitious recipients, of philosophical problems. An example of this latter type of philosophical communication is Epicurus' "Letter to Menoeceus"

Plato's solution

Plato in Letter VII seems to support positions similar to those of his master Socrates on the limits of writing, but he even seems to anticipate certain interpretations of the value of existential communication in Kierkegaard when he says that he will hide his intimate convictions about "the things he gives thought to" because they are difficult to understand except in an existential dialogic contact rather than in writing. "This, however, I can say about all those who have written or will write claiming to know the things I give thought to, whether having heard them from me or from others, or having discovered them themselves: in my opinion, it is not possible that they have understood anything of this subject. There is no writing of mine about these things, nor will there ever be [...] For this reason, no one who has sense will dare to entrust their thoughts to such a means of expression, to a motionless medium, as indeed are the words fixed in the characters of writing"

Plato's solution was to maintain prose expression in philosophical discourse but at the same time recover the artistic aspect by introducing the dialogic literary form and especially the use of myth. Plato will try to recover poetic wisdom within philosophy, while for Aristotle, breaking all ties with poetry, philosophy will be exclusively rational and specialized.

The prevailing problem from Socrates onwards was not so much whether to give philosophical thought an artistic form or not, but whether communication should take place orally or in writing.

Plato was actually in disagreement with his master Socrates, who had never wanted to present his thoughts in writing because for him the written word is like "a bronze that when struck always gives the same sound". In other words, writing did not respond to the interlocutor's questions, and this nullified the value of the philosophical dialogue where the two interlocutors seek truth together, with mutual questions and answers. A truth that, moreover, must always be questioned, and this is only possible with dialogue, in oral form, since what is written does not change.

Thus, two needs are opposed: that of Socrates, who aspires to an open and continuously evolving philosophizing that leads to the conviction of the interlocutor, but which remains imprecise in colloquial language and in its poorly defined terms, and that of Plato, who adopts a closed system of doing philosophy that does not allow immediate replies since what is stated has been long meditated and fixed in the certainty of the written word, and especially because immutable truths that come from the "world of ideas" are communicated. Plato's way of philosophizing is more accurate but, in a sense, static. It is no coincidence that in Platonic production, the Socratic dialogic form of his writings, present in his early works, is gradually abandoned in maturity: the figure of Socrates loses more and more relevance, and the dialogue is reduced to being a monologue, a dialogue, as it has been said, of the soul with itself.

Philosophical communication in 20th-century thinkers

Emmanuel Mounier

Communication in 20th century authors takes on particular importance in the existentialist and spiritualist current as one of the fundamental needs of man; without it, the self loses itself: thus in the personalist movement of Emmanuel Mounier, communication becomes a "natural" fact for the subject: "The primitive experience of the person is the experience of the second person. The you and the he in us precedes the I, or at least accompanies it... Thus it is by nature communicable, and it is the only one to be so. When communication relaxes, the I corrupts or loses itself".

Karl Jaspers

On the same line of ideas is Karl Jaspers, for whom without communication not only truth but even the awareness of existence would not be possible: "Everything that is not realized in communication does not exist (...) Truth begins with two": "In communication, I become manifest to myself with the other person".

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev

For Berdyaev, the Russian philosopher, scholar of Kierkegaard and interpreter of religious existentialism, communication as it has been understood so far is still something superficial and exterior; he prefers to speak of "communion" where true communication occurs, a relationship, a spiritual participation of the "I" with the "you" in the "we": "There is an essential difference between communication and communion. Communication between consciousnesses always implies disunion and dissociation". "Communion is distinguished precisely from communication by its ontological realism; communication being symbolic, uses only conventional signs"

Ludwig Feuerbach

Outside of spiritualism, the theme of communication takes on particular importance in Ludwig Feuerbach, as an anthropological criterion of truth: "Ideas arise only from communication. Of what I see alone I cannot help but doubt: only what the other also sees is certain" (L. Feuerbach, "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future": Italian trans. Turin 1946, pp. 126 – 127)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

For Maurice Merleau-Ponty, within the framework of an existentialist conception, communication has so far been understood as the insertion of the individual into an abstract, not well-defined community. To communicate means instead to engage oneself – see in this regard the polemic on "engagement" (commitment) with Sartre – in a system of life made up of concrete historical and social relations (cf. "Phenomenology of Perception", Paris 1945; "Humanism and Terror", Paris 1947).

Sartre and Heidegger

In Sartre and Heidegger, communication, understood as a relationship with the other, requires overcoming oneself, renouncing one's own existential characteristics, one's own individuality to generate mutual "conflict" and the annulment of one's individual consciousnesses.

Gabriel Marcel

Finally, in a rejection of de-individualization is the conception of Gabriel Marcel, according to which it is senseless to think of negating one's own individuality to remove any difference between me and others, there being a common essential spirituality: "When I treat another as a "you" and not as a "he", I penetrate more deeply into him, I grasp in a more direct way his being and his essence" (G.Marcel, "Diary", Modena 1943, p. 83)

The ontological and gnoseological aspect

From an ontological point of view, communication poses as an ineliminable condition the recognition of being both in myself and in others as an appropriation of being, recognition of one's own subjectively constituted person and not fallen to crude material objectivity. To identify oneself, therefore, in one's own spirituality, in being oneself. For this aspect, communication with oneself does not differ from that with the "other", and it is from this second that the awareness of one's own individuality deepens, it is from the communicative confrontation that my self-knowledge is born: "the wonder of the we is that by mediating my relationship to myself, it allows me to find myself in the other, even better than I find myself in myself, and to discover my most personal self"

For epistemology, communication is brought back to the ancient sense of the Socratic dialogue: as a conquest of a common truth: "the cooperation of spirits in intellectual research and their union through truth, the value of knowledge, ensures among them that familiarity of thought that allows the infinite renewal of communication" (R. Le Senne, ibidem, p. 68)

Ethical and religious consideration

From the ethical aspect, the recognition of reciprocal human value makes communication take on the different meanings of friendship, love, benevolence, collaboration for the good in view of each other's spiritual progress.

To recognize oneself in the common value of humanity, as subjects united by this same value that is not exhausted in us but that pushes us towards each other as part of an infinite movement, is the religious sense of communication as Jolivet understands it: "It is value that makes us emerge from the world of objects to constitute us as subjects and persons, they orient us towards the Infinite... I communicate with the other only when I find him in the movement that pushes him above himself and in which I must participate myself: the value of values" (Jolivet, Op. cit., ibidem p. 42)

A final reflection on communication, in its meaning of the "dialogue of the soul with itself", finally makes us understand as communication even silence itself: "Silence, far from abolishing communication, abolishes only its testimony; but when it is more perfect and deeper, testimony becomes useless"

Bibliography

• Louis Trolle Hjelmslev, "Prolegomena to a Theory of Language". Edited by Giulio C. Lepschy. Turin, 1975
• Martin Buber, "I and Thou", trans. Bianquis, Paris 1938, pp. 20 – 21
• Gabriele Giannantoni [ed.], "The Presocratics, Testimonies and fragments" , Rome-Bari 1993
• Margherita Isnardi Parente,"Works of Epicurus", Turin 1974
• C. Mazzarelli in "Plato, Complete Works" edited by Giovanni Reale, Milan 1991
• Emmanuel Mounier, "Personalism", Paris 1949
• Karl Jaspers, "Introduction to Philosophy", Zurich 1950
• Karl Jaspers, "Philosophy", II, Berlin 1932, Italian trans. in the vol. "My Philosophy", Turin 1946
• Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, "Five Meditations on Existence" Paris 1936, Italian trans. "The Self and the World", Milan 1942
• Ludwig Feuerbach, "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future": Italian trans. Turin 1946
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology of Perception", Paris 1945;
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Humanism and Terror", Paris 1947
• Jolivet, "Journal of Metaphysics", Paris 1950
• Louis Lavelle, "Speech and Writing", Paris 1942
• F. C. Manara, Notes on philosophical communication, in Research community and initiation to philosophizing, Milan, Lampi di Stampa, 2004, pp. 125–155.