failures of communication 3
William James writing to Victoria Welby on May 9, 1908: “The chief reason why philosophic discussion is so nugatory is that the disputants understand words quite differently and often oppositely”. Writing to Shadworth Hodgson on October 3 the same year: “The power of mutual misunderstanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows discouraging.” [1] This seems to be so. It’s part of the reason why genuine mutual understanding in philosophy can be so moving. But Bradley, writing to James in 1897, is too pessimistic: “Please do not think I want to lead you into a discussion. I have always myself found such things useless. One may, where an objection is not a mere mistake, profit by it when one reconsiders the matter as a whole, but otherwise I fancy never. So do not trouble yourself to reply to what I say.” [2]
What’s my own greatest failure of philosophical understanding? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s my inability to understand why there’s supposed to be a problem about the relation between universals and particulars. Perhaps this failure stems from the fact that I was never exposed to the debate when I was starting out (my undergraduate career in philosophy—‘Moral Sciences’—at Cambridge was only 6 months long).
When someone says something like this, about not understanding a supposed problem, they’re usually being disingenuous. What they really mean is that there isn’t any deep problem, and that they can see that this is so. This is what I’m doing. I agree with Johan Huizinga (in his book Homo Ludens) that the particular-universal debate is at bottom a form of agonistic play, a game played, like so many games, with intense seriousness. [3]
[1] James, W. (1908/2004) The Correspondence of William James volume 12, April 1908-August 1910, ed. I.Skrupskelis and E.Berkeley (University of Virginia Press), pp. 13, 99.
[2] Bradley, F. H. (1897/2000) The Correspondence of William James volume 8, April 1895–June 1899, ed. I. Skrupskelis and E. Berkeley (University of Virginia Press), p. 307.
[3] Huizinga, J. (1938/1949) Homo Ludens (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 156.