Responding to One’s World: On the Language of Philosophy, the Idiom of the Artwork, and Conversation

Abstract

I need to thank my friends Claudia Baracchi and Jim Risser for their generous remarks that have somehow magically made my work sound more interesting than it is. The care with which they have treated my work and me reminds me why I have always thought that Aristotle was right when he said that we find the clearest mirror of the best of ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Our friendship and conversations have lasted for decades now, and they have both formed and shaped my understanding of what it is that we do. My debt to each of them extends far beyond the wonderful papers that they have written and to which I hope to do justice in my response. Their remarks take up a wide range of themes: conversation, writing, words, images, tragedy, the language of philosophy, the presumption of a bond between philosophy and ethical life, their remarks speak about art and the challenges that philosophy faces in this present historical moment. Given the sweep of their remarks I cannot respond as I ought, but I will try to address what I see as a common question that drives both of them. Doing this gives me the occasion to ask if there has been any real coherence in the work that has been at the centre of my life for so long. I have discovered that this is a difficult task and I am grateful to my friends for their help in this effort. In the end, it is this remarkable experience of thinking in language and with others, and of the ethical sense that such thinking and sharing cultivates that I would like to respond to today. It is this experience that Plato and Gadamer – two figures that both Baracchi and Risser enlist in their own reflections – find as at the heart of what constitutes the activity of philosophizing. It is precisely in conversations such as these that we help one another better understand our worlds – and ourselves.