The Beginnings of Metaphilosophy: Heinrich Struve vs. Morris Laserowitz

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Introduction

Metaphilosophical research is becoming increasingly widespread; the boundaries of the subject field, conceptual apparatus, focal problems, and possible methods of discussion and resolution are being clarified. Several basic understandings of metaphilosophy have emerged. For Timothy Williamson, metaphilosophy is a philosophy of philosophy: “It is just more philosophy, turned on philosophy itself. We have the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of economics, the philosophy of history; we also need the philosophy of philosophy.” [1. P. 5–6]. Christopher Daly believes that metaphilosophy is primarily a list of philosophical methods [2]. The understanding of metaphilosophy represents a somewhat different version as a philosophical methodology [3; 4].

The number of publications devoted to metaphilosophy and metaphilosophical research has seriously increased. Despite many controversial issues, divergent opinions, and sometimes contradictory arguments, another branch of philosophical knowledge has been formed. Let us turn to Google Books Ngram Viewer. It is easy to see an increase in English-language books devoted to metaphilosophy from about the mid-1940s up to a sharp peak in 1988, then a drop and a sharp increase in their number again by 1998, and a drop again about ten years later. Since 2008, there has been a severe and new expansion of the subject area of metaphilosophical research, an understanding of the connections between metaphilosophy and philosophical methodology, and the definition of its modifications depending on the philosophical tradition (analytic, continental, pragmatic, or other) within which it is developed. Naturally, the number of  publications – in English and other languages – is expanding, and the established points of view are changing. One meaningful change of this sort is related to the origins of metaphilosophical research; this aspect is the focus of this article.

Metaphilosophy as an “Outside” View:  Morris Laserowitz

It is generally believed that the book by Curt John Ducasse [5] – although its author did not mention metaphilosophy in it – was the impetus for discussing the problems now classified as metaphilosophical and even for the very appearance of the term. The term metaphilosophy appears in a note by Carl Gustav Hempel [6] and a year later in a review by Morris Laserowitz [7] of Ducasse’s book in Mind. Hempel begins his note with the following words: “This stimulating study in meta-philosophy falls into two major parts: first, a critical discussion of some recent characterizations of the nature and method of philosophy; and second, an exposition of the author’s own view that philosophy is a science dealing with a subject matter different from that of any other science, namely with, appraisals – logical, epistemic, ethical, and other” [6. P. 159] (keeping in mind the specifics of the journal, Hempel further limits himself to only the logical aspects of the book). In his broader review, M. Laserowitz writes: “...one might very well say that the most important philosophical question is: “Why are no philosophical disputer ever settled?". It is with this “metaphilosophical” problem and the further problem of correcting this situation are central to Professor Ducasse’s book” [7. P. 284–285]. The use of such a term to name the works devoted to the nature and methods of philosophy was to some extent facilitated by the appearance of other similar notions in philosophical circulation at that time – “meta-language,” “metasystem,” “metascience,” and “metalogic.”

When the first issue of the Metaphilosophy journal was published in 1970, it was Laserowitz who introduced this new concept, proposed its explication, and set the tone for further discussion, as well as the strategy of editorial policy. According to the recollections of his wife, Alice Ambrose, Laserowitz’s proposal to write such an article was entirely unexpected. He probably did not suppose this notion had become widespread and widely used over the past three decades. It cannot be said that the notion of metaphilosophy was not sporadically encountered before the references mentioned earlier. However, this article by Laserowitz laid the foundations of the tradition of metaphilosophical research.

In the mentioned article, Laserowitz defines metaphilosophy as “the investigation of the nature of philosophy, with the central aim of arriving at a satisfactory explanation of  the absence of uncontested philosophical claims and arguments” [8. P. 91]. A year later, Laserowitz characterizes metaphilosophy as “the investigation of philosophical utterances, with the special aim of reaching a satisfactory understanding of what in their nature permits the intractable disagreements which invariably attach to them” [9. P. 1]. In other words, metaphilosophy is a study that goes beyond philosophy proper, making it possible to avoid getting bogged down in the philosophical disagreements Laserowitz focuses on investigating.

The starting point for Laserowitz is the claim that traditional philosophy is an “anarchic dialectic” in which no agreement is reached. Equally, strong arguments support positions in opposition to each other. “The actual situation <...> in the whole of reasoned philosophy, is best given by comparing  it with an imaginary situation in mathematics, one in which every piece of mathematical reasoning was countered by another equally cogent piece of mathematical reasoning, each having its convinced advo cate. What is only a wild fantasy about mathematics is a sober report on the actual condition of philosophy” [10. P. 1].

Philosophy needs a method to provide specific solutions to philosophical problems to get out of the current situation. There have already been proposals of such methods – among examples, Laserowitz points to Descartes’ method of systematic doubt, which Russell described as precisely the procedure that represents the essence of philosophy, Bradley’s method of consistency for determining the truth values of answers to questions, and the method proposed by Moore, which Laserowitz calls the method of ‘ostensive definition.’ Hume and Kant offer other examples. The truth is that in a number of points, these (as well as other) methods have not yielded the desired results, and this leads Laserowitz to a claim that deserves special attention and can be considered one of the tasks of metaphilosophical inquiry. The lack of results may indicate “whether methods are really what they appear to be” or whether “the philosophical problems they [philosophers] investigate are indeed what they appear to be, and whether philosophical answers contain claims of the kind they [philosophers] appear to make” [10. P. 5]. Since philosophical positions are not empirically supported, they are nothing more than the results of philosophical analysis, by which Laserowitz means the analysis of concepts: “Analysis as a method applicable to concepts is, in the opinion of many very able philosophers, capable of doing a wide variety of jobs. By its use not only are concepts explicated and clarified, but the non-existence of some phenomena is established, the existence of certain objects is demonstrated, and the nature of many things is disclosed. Undoubtedly other implied claims about its use are to be found in the works of philosophers. However that may be, the method, although its various findings lack the desired conclusiveness, is remarkably flexible” [10. P. 8].

Philosophical statements are a priori statements, which can lead to errors since the consequences of this state of affairs are hardly acceptable to most philosophers, who believe that what is more important for philosophy is not the  

dichotomy of “a priori – a posteriori” statements, but the dichotomy of analytic and synthetic statements. From Laserowitz’s point of view, however, synthetic judgments, if they are a priori, are no more related to actual content (to the “world”) when compared to analytic a priori judgments. A priori truth “is unconditionally true, and this is not related to conditions, actual or theoretical, which make or would make it true. What prevent a tautology from having factual content is just the fact than it is logically necessary or is true independently of conditions, and this also prevents a synthetic a priori proposition from having factual content. A proposition which is true independently of what the world is like, is true no matter what it is like, and this has no use to convey information about what there is or about what there is not” [9. P. 9]. Laserowitz’s conclusion is obvious: a priori judgments in the ontological mode of speech express relations between the meanings of expressions.

Using a priori judgments, the philosopher, in the words of Laserowitz,  “is covertly changing language under the illusion that he is revealing to us the content of the cosmos” [9. P. 15–16]. This is what the practice of philosophy is all about – it changes the use of expressions exercised in an ontological mode of speech. Although Laserowitz does not pass by the fact that philosophers make judgments about the nature of the world and that philosophy uses abductive reasoning, he believes that philosophers formulate their judgments in “amateur” language in violation of the requirements of scientific methodology.

The above reasoning of Laserowitz, which concerned the relations of priori judgments with logically necessary and logically impossible ones, find themselves in no small web of fallacies. Thus, for instance, he had to prove  that logically necessary judgments do not point to any reality since  they are unconditionally true; in other words, they do not have any conditions  of truth that may or may not hold. This leads to the fact that such judgments  say nothing about the world. In this case, it is impossible to assert their  truth, although logically necessary judgments are valid both in the given world and in all possible worlds. The analysis of Laserowitz’s reasoning leads to a rejection of his claim that metaphilosophy is outside philosophy, and this is due to some extent to different understandings of the prefix “meta,” which can be interpreted in the sense of “about” (metaphilosophy is “about philosophy”), or in the sense of “beyond” (metaphilosophy is that which is beyond, outside of philosophy).

According to Laserowitz’s assumption, metaphilosophy is supposed to go beyond philosophy proper by interpreting philosophical statements with  ordinary language, as if “dissolving” philosophically sophisticated language.  The analysis of the methods of philosophy and the treatment of the very understanding of philosophical analysis in Laserowitz is carried out in the same  

way as it is usually realized in philosophy itself; in other words, it cannot be said that Laserowitz’s analysis is outside philosophy. In other words, metaphilosophy is the philosophy of philosophy and is a philosophical discipline, although,  in its treatment by Laserowitz, it has a very modest explanatory power.  However, an essential characteristic of Laserowitz’s approach is understanding metaphilosophy as “following” a “systematic” philosophy or, if I may say  so, a particular set of such philosophies. “Following after” is another  expression for characterizing metaphilosophy as being outside philosophy, but his research demonstrates that his metaphilosophy represents a position “within” philosophy itself. There is no reason to claim that Laserowitz saw this opposition between his statements concerning the status of metaphilosophy and the position he realizes.

This tradition is neither first nor original if we consider metaphilosophical works published in other languages and, most importantly, at an earlier time. Thus, there are indications that the original date of the appearance of the term “metaphilosophy” should be sought around the late 1920s [11]. In content, the emergence of this term is associated with some remarks in the letters of Jacques Maritain, in which the adjective “metaphilosophical” is used [12].

Another pair of examples are the works of Polish philosopher Jerzy Kalinowski and Russian philosopher T.I. Oizerman. Thus, Kalinowski, in his work [13], proposes a variant of metaphilosophy modeled on the creation of metatheory in formal sciences, following the approach of Alfred Tarski in analyzing the concept of truth in the languages of deductive sciences. Kalinowski argues that for philosophy to have a scientific character, it should do as Tarski did, that is, formulate a specific set of methodological rules, following which is an indispensable condition for philosophical cognition. Somewhat later than Kalinowski, but earlier than Laserowitz’s “program” article, Oizerman, in his article [14], discusses the conditions of legitimacy of posing and meaning of the question “What is philosophy?”. First of all, Oizerman believes, in this case, it is necessary to disentangle the options – whether the question is about historical changes in the answer, whether the question implies thematic, methodological, functional, or, perhaps, substantive grounds of the question. It is not a question of who, when, and how answered the question “what is philosophy?” Rather, who, when, and on what grounds asked such a question.

Philosophica, or “a Critical Analysis of Philosophy by Philosophy Itself”: Heinrich Struve

Let us discuss the priorities of setting and discussing the status and subject of metaphilosophy. In that case, we should point to the works of Heinrich Struve, published more than 50 years earlier than Laserowitz’s works, in which both the basic understanding of metaphilosophy as a philosophy of philosophy and the content of this philosophical discipline are presented in a detailed form. Struve’s works The Distinctive Features of Philosophy and Their Significance in Comparison with Other Sciences [15] and Introduction to Philosophy [16], published in Warsaw in 1872 and 1890, respectively, can be considered the first metaphilosophical studies.

In the 1872 work, Struve formulates the main research tasks based on the nature of philosophy. First, it should be realized that the subject of philosophy and the “determination of the real method of philosophy” should be classified as questions requiring “special research.” No less essential is the requirement to these tasks that research and proposals for their solution should precede  all philosophical work properly, both research and didactic: “Philosophy  in its essence requires that the very designation of its subject should be the result of preliminary consideration, the result of independent thinking and philosophizing. The same should be said about the definition of the real method of philosophy...” [15. P. 5].

Drawing attention to the fact that the numerous definitions of philosophy are expected to be the characteristics of philosophizing of each thinker, Struve calls it the independence of thinking and the desire to form a common worldview.  Put differently, philosophy is the philosophizing of individual independently thinking philosophers united by the aspiration to form something familiar. Indeed, such a statement forms a very stable model of philosophy and its history: it is possible to speak of philosophy as something definite and integral and, simultaneously, of the philosophies of individual thinkers. Presumably, in this approach, philosophical directions, philosophical schools, movements, or even traditions are created by combining these two characteristics. Thus, the existence of independent, separate, and different points of view (philosophies) is, in his own words, “not only possible but even necessary” [16. P. 350] for the existence of philosophy.

Having singled out independence and striving for a standard view as descriptive features of philosophy, Struve immediately seeks to eliminate misunderstandings of his point of view and the grounds for singling out these characteristics. “First, independence ... is not arbitrary, for it is limited both by the laws of the philosophical mind and the nature of the subject... Second, speaking of the independence of philosophical thinking, we have not yet resolved the question of the proper method and development of philosophy. All these are questions that require special research”^[1] [15. P. 6]. This remarkable study should be the work of philosophy itself, provided that it can prove the viability of its research and the scientific validity and significance of its essential properties and features.

Eighteen years later, Struve published a work [16], which, according to his plan, should open the “Encyclopedia of philosophical sciences and trends in connection with the introduction to philosophy or philosophy of philosophy”. The tasks of the introduction to philosophy are clarification and analysis (parsing, as the author says) of the subject, tasks, method, and descriptive features of philosophy (these features are best revealed in comparison with other “phenomena of mental life,” by which the author means religion, art, and science. On the other hand, the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and Philosophical Trends should consider the scientific organization of philosophy and the various attempts to solve philosophical problems. “This is the real philosophical problematics (from πρόβλημα = proposed, problem), the doctrine of philosophical problems. Only on this basis it is possible to proceed to the resolution of philosophical problems...” [16. P. 51].

Introduction to philosophy is intended for professional activities in philosophy and for independent study of philosophy or didactic purposes, i.e., for teaching it. Struve sees the need for such an introduction in the present state of affairs – the diversity of philosophical opinions and points of view, the fruitless disputes that take place, and even the misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy. All these and other negative features “can be gradually eliminated only with a conscientious study of the beginnings of philosophy in general based on a historical and critical examination of the present nature of philosophy, its tasks, and the attempts to resolve them that have appeared so far” [16. P. 7]. His proposed philosophy of philosophy is inconceivable without the inclusion of the history of philosophy: time after time, Struve emphasizes that the development of philosophy is possible only based on a critical study of the process of the historical formation of its beginnings: “...the analysis of philosophy’s past constitutes a necessary condition for consistent progress in the development of philosophy as a science. Without such an analysis, the thinker cannot reach a clear understanding of philosophy itself, cannot use the experience and results of research of previous generations, and as a consequence, cannot achieve neither a critical nor a complete and comprehensive worldview” [16. P. 317].

Nevertheless, the historical beginnings of philosophy are only a part of the philosophy of philosophy, which “cannot replace the basic science of the beginnings of philosophy” and which, in addition to them, includes factual and theoretical beginnings – the combination of these factors gives it the  necessary methodological completeness. The list of “beginnings” includes an explanation of the subject of philosophy, its task, aim, aspirations, and method; sometimes, the relation of philosophy to other “phenomena of mental life” is added to this list. As for the methodological completeness itself, the methodological “method of analysis” includes three main points – “psychological analysis of the cognitive activity of the mind and its views of the world, or criticism of the mind,” consideration of the results of special sciences from the point of view of how important they are for philosophy, in other words, “philosophical criticism of special sciences” and, finally, “historical criticism of philosophy itself” [16. P. 317].

While familiarizing the reader with the current state of philosophy, the study of the beginnings of philosophy presents a basis for independent research, independent “philosophizing.” What precisely this study is, Struve describes as follows: “The science of this ... can be called philosophy of philosophy or philosophizing. Taking into account the commonplace notions of philosophy, it considers these notions comprehensively, excludes from them any contradictions, explains their content from a historical and critical point of view, and thus reaches conclusions about the essential beginnings of philosophy, its heterogeneous tasks, as well as the significance of attempts to solve them” [16. P. 11]^[2].

The structure of the Introduction in Philosophy is adequate to Struve’s establishments. In the beginning, “definition and characteristic features of philosophy” are offered: the subject of philosophy and the essence of its name are considered, and it is emphasized that its features are criticality and aspiration to a common worldview. This part is followed by a description of philosophy’s relation to other “phenomena of mental life” – psychology, science, creativity, life in general, and “worldly wisdom,” in other words, the ethical problems dealt with in “practical” philosophy. The conclusion of the introduction to philosophy is the study of philosophical methods and – which should be emphasized in particular – the content and role of philosophical education. Speaking about the tasks of education – not only special-philosophical but also general – Struve emphasizes that in order to achieve the general goal of education, it is necessary to “familiarize a maturing young person with the general beginnings of philosophy as the basis for critical knowledge of things and a scientific worldview,” and “philosophical propaedeutics as a subject of teaching ... should be reduced to the presentation of the general beginnings of only those philosophical sciences that can be explained and illustrated by accessible ... scientific material and that can adequately combine this material. To such philosophical sciences, in our opinion, belong only logic, psychology, and ethics” [16. P. 378]^[3].

Although it is not the task of this article to consider Struve’s very presentation of the tasks, goals, and methods of philosophy, that is, the most positive content of philosophy of philosophy, we can only do with at least a brief overview. Thus, Struve defines philosophy as a science engaged in “the study of the universal principles of knowledge, mental and object, to explain the private phenomena of being from the point of view of these universal principles” [16. P. 58]. In other words, the subject of philosophy is the study of the principles and laws of “the mental process of knowledge” and “universal principles of being,” the combination of which leads to the explanation of “private objects of knowledge, that is, private phenomena of being ...” [16. P. 58]. The characteristic features of philosophy are, as it has already been noted, the critical independence of thinking and the desire to form a common worldview; the mental beginnings of philosophy are associated with the criticism of the mind and cognitive processes – philosophy becomes “the theory of cognition, the science of science” [16. P. 72]. The same dictates the consideration of the attitude of philosophy to science as a theoretical activity of man, to creativity as his artistic activity, and to life as a practical activity.

As for the relationship of philosophy to science, in addition to considering the scientificity of philosophy itself, Struve pays special attention to the role of philosophy, which it plays in the activities of the scientist – it expands  his horizons, gives him the concept of general and special tasks of research, determines the importance of “special research to clarify the basic views  of the world” and, perhaps most importantly – “it brings him to a critical  self-knowledge, to a clear assessment of the basic principles of his specialty”  [16. P. 125].

The last point – philosophical education – requires a commentary related primarily to the structure of Struve’s book. Each section consists of three parts. First, the reader is presented with a short text, an essential position (one or more theses), followed by a relatively broad commentary in the form of notes to this text; the third part is an annotated list of references. An essential part of the presentation is extensive quotations and extracts from the works of various philosophers, among whom Struve pays special attention to Kant, Hegel, Comte, Spencer, and Wundt. However, the list of all the names mentioned is extensive and includes those widely known to the modern reader and known only to a narrow circle of specialists.

One of the questions that different points of view collide in the contemporary discussion of metaphilosophy is whether it is a philosophical discipline, with the option of linking its philosophical status to one of the available options for understanding it, or whether this status is asserted/denied in either option. Struve has an unambiguous answer to this question. Philosophy of philosophy is a philosophical discipline not so much by its name but because it is a science that “must constitute the starting point for all philosophizing in general, for all resolution of special problems of philosophy” [16. P. 8]. It is difficult to imagine a situation when the starting point of any research is outside it; moreover, the starting point often determines the whole further course of work: “the direction of all further philosophizing... hence the nature of its further conclusions – all this is closely connected with the study of the general foundations of philosophy as philosophy” [16. P. 8], Struve emphasizes. Philosophy of philosophy is generated by the reflection of philosophy (philosophers) on its nature (philosophy), the result of philosophizing over philosophy, “the critical parsing of philosophy by philosophy itself” [16. P. 11]^[4]If, for example, philosophy of science or philosophy of religion is considered a philosophical discipline, philosophy of philosophy cannot have any other status.

Conclusion

This presentation makes it possible to draw attention to the following. To a certain extent, metaphilosophical research is (implicitly or explicitly) a reaction to the situation of “scandal in philosophy” that Kant spoke of. For Laserowitz, metaphilosophy is a way of finding an answer to the lack of indisputable positions accepted by all philosophers. For Struve, the elucidation of those characteristic features (beginnings) of philosophy will allow us to overcome the negative features of the diversity of viewpoints. Despite Laserowitz’s striving to view philosophy’s nature as if from the outside, his metaphilosophy ultimately represents no more than a part of philosophy. For Struve, on the other hand,  such an understanding of philosophy is an initially consciously asserted point of view. True, there are some differences. Laserowitz’s metaphilosophy is a study of the nature of philosophy post factum, i.e., a study based on some schools, traditions, and trends. For Struve, it is a kind of philosophical propaedeutics, preliminaries to various “philosophies” that nevertheless strive to form a “common worldview.”

Describing in his autobiography his impressions of his visit to Warsaw in 1930, Rudolf Carnap notes: “I expressed my regret that this comprehensive research work of Lesniewski and Kotarbinski was inaccessible to us and to most philosophers in the world, because it was published only in the Polish language, and I pointed out the need for an international language, especially for science...” [19. P. 31]. The same regret may well be expressed about Struve’s work –  if it had been published in English, which would have made it possible to familiarize not only Laserowitz but also other philosophers whose  interests include metaphilosophy, the situation described on the first pages of this article would have been quite different. Works devoted to metaphilosophy would then begin with the phrase “it is generally believed that the founder of the philosophy of philosophy is H. Struve...” and the study of metaphilosophical works of other mentioned philosophers could help to see a serious historical tradition.

_{¹ Here and further italics by the author of the article – K.S.}

_{² It is appropriate to quote here the words of G. Moore, written by him a little after the publication of Struve's book: “as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. <…> At all events, philosophers seem, in general, not to make the attempt...” [17. P. 37].}

_{³ It should be noted that from the beginning of universities, the education process began with the trivium – logic, rhetoric, and grammar.}

_{⁴ Other Russian philosophers hold similar views. For instance, twenty years later, V.F. Ern emphasizes: “... truly critical thought must begin philosophizing with the investigation of its nature and its being” [18. P. 155].}

About the authors

Konstantin D. Skripnik

Author for correspondence.
Email: kdskripnik@sfedu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2150-1571
SPIN-code: 3272-4907

DSc in Philosophy, Professor, Professor, Department of the History of Foreign and Domestic Philosophy

References