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Abstract

Michael Della Rocca's project in his bold and iconoclastic book¹ is to reject all distinction and multiplicity: there is only being. He calls this view strict monism.² And, as the title of his book indicates, he sees his project as Parmenidean. There are accordingly references to Parmenides throughout the book, as well as a more focused discussion of Parmenides' views in Chapter 1. This is in line with something on which Della Rocca insists in Chapter 7, in keeping with such monism, namely that we should reject any distinction between doing philosophy and doing its history.

I share Della Rocca's mistrust of that distinction. But I do not share it for the same reasons nor to the same extent. There seems to me a clear sense in which his project is more fundamentally philosophical than historical. Partly I have in mind the fact that his primary aim is simply to defend strict monism. And I think that the philosophical challenges that he thereby presents us with are more significant than any lessons that he has to teach us about where any given philosopher stands in relation to the view.³ My own focus in what follows will therefore likewise be on the issues themselves, though I too will engage with the work of other philosophers to the extent that I think it is relevant to do so.

A preliminary before I proceed. Even the two short paragraphs that I have written so far contain material that is question-begging in this context. An obvious case in point is the very reference to ‘other philosophers’. That is illegitimate in strict monist terms. So too, come to that, are the references to ‘Chapter 1’ and ‘Chapter 7’. My excuse for begging questions in this way is something to which Della Rocca's book itself bears ample witness: anyone who wants to engage seriously with his views has no alternative. One of the issues that we shall need to confront is what this means as far as Della Rocca's own text is concerned. But there is no equivalent issue as far as my text is concerned. True, I would prefer not to beg questions. But, since I am not a strict monist, I feel no other compunction about writing in the way that I have; and I am reassured that I am at least not begging questions against myself.

Della Rocca's starting point is the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or the PSR to use his own abbreviation. This is ‘the principle according to which each fact or each thing has an explanation’ (p. xiv). That this is his starting point straightway illustrates what I said in the previous section. For Della Rocca takes the PSR to serve as a basic principle for Parmenides too. As it happens, here already I have exegetical qualms: passages which, on Della Rocca's interpretation, show Parmenides to be rejecting distinctions that, if real, would involve things that could not be explained seem to me to show Parmenides to be rejecting distinctions that, if real, would involve things that could not so much as be.⁴ But I will not dwell on that. My focus, as I have already indicated, is on the issues themselves.

Della Rocca has much to say about the kind of philosophical work that the PSR can do. But the principal work that he wants it to do is to yield strict monism. This is clearest in Chapters 2 to 6 of the book, which he describes as ‘[i]n many ways… [its] heart’ (p. xv). It is Bradley, rather than Parmenides, who plays the rôle of chief mentor in these chapters: Della Rocca uses the PSR to argue, in a broadly Bradleyan way,⁵ for the unreality of all relations, and thereby for the unreality of all distinctions. The argument assumes different forms in different contexts, but there is a core argument to the effect that any relation must be grounded in its relata, and thereby in the relation of grounding between itself and its relata, and thereby in the relation of grounding between the relation of grounding and itself and its relata, and so on ad infinitum, in a way that the PSR precludes.

Objections to the project fall under three main heads. First, there are objections to the PSR. Second, there are objections to the contention that the PSR yields strict monism. Third, there are objections to strict monism. I shall devote a subsection to each, focusing in the third case on one specific objection to strict monism (that it is subject to a particular kind of self-refutation) which will enable me to segue into what follows.

One implication, clearly, is that we can accept hardly any of the claims, or apparent claims, in the book, since if we did we would be accepting what was illegitimate in strict monist terms. There are two things of which this is reminiscent, each of which is worth considering as a possible model for what Della Rocca is doing. The first is proof by reductio ad absurdum. In the course of such a proof, at least on a standard account, claims are made which follow from an assumption that is ultimately to be rejected as false and which are themselves ultimately to be rejected as false.²⁵ A well-known example is the mathematical proof that there is no fraction equal to √2, which begins with the assumption that there is such a fraction and then derives a contradiction from this. The second thing of which the implication is reminiscent is the thing that I referenced towards the end of the previous section: Wittgenstein's rejection of what he has written in the Tractatus as nonsensical, which, in the same context, he famously likens to throwing away a ladder after having climbed it. Call the first of these the Reductio Model and call the second the Tractarian Model. They are similar. Even so, there are differences between them that look as though they may be important. How does what is rejected in each case serve its purpose? To what extent is it legitimate in each case, when we are commenting on what appear to be claims accepted in propria persona, though they are not really, to adopt the pretence that they are really? For example, if we say that, in the course of the proof that there is no fraction equal to √2, we show that the numerator of the fraction is even, or if we say that Wittgenstein holds pictures to be facts, have we ourselves said something true? How much, in each case, is really what it appears to be, and needs to be what it appears to be for the whole operation to succeed?²⁶ It is not clear that the answers to all such questions will be the same in both cases. And this in turn means that there seems to be a significant issue about which of these models, if either, is the correct model for what Della Rocca is doing.

Concerning the question of how much is what it appears to be, one might think, given Chapter 12 of Della Rocca's book, which contains no main text, and given the rôle that this chapter appears to play in the book (see e.g. pp. xxii and 223–224), that Della Rocca does not want us to construe any of the rest of the book as what it appears to be; hence that he himself is not proffering anything else in the book in propria persona; and that, had he been totally ingenuous and only proffered what he thought he could proffer in propria persona, then he would have written nothing at all.

But I think this would be wrong. For one thing, Chapter 12 is not as radical as it may seem. It has a position in the book, a title, and even a footnote (albeit the footnote includes a concession that what he has done in the chapter is ‘imperfect’—a concession that must apply, in part, to itself, if only because of that reference to ‘this chapter’). As it stands, Chapter 12 is more like an empty frame in an art gallery than, say, the twenty-first painting in an art gallery whose exhibits comprise just twenty paintings. But also, much more importantly, there seems to be nothing wrong, on Della Rocca's view, with claiming that there is only being—or, to pick some reformulations of this claim that he adopts elsewhere, that all is substance or that all is explanation (see e.g. p. 218). True, every one of these formulations involves a multiplicity of words, which may give pause. It is not obvious, however, that this matters as far as the strict monist content of what is being claimed is concerned.²⁷ It is noteworthy that, at the very beginning of Chapter 4, having reiterated his strict monist view that all is being, Della Rocca says that ‘there is… nothing more to say’ (emphasis added).²⁸ And later we find him claiming that we cannot say anything ‘as long as such saying presupposes relations and distinctions,’ (p. 223, emphasis added).

It seems to me, then, that Della Rocca would be happy to endorse a little of what he says in the book; and that all the rest is material that is somehow designed to help us appreciate this little. If I am right, and if we call the little that he would be prepared to endorse the Goods and all the rest the Packaging, then the issue of whether either the Reductio Model or the Tractarian Model is the correct model for what he is doing is primarily an issue about the nature of the Packaging.

It follows, of course, that Della Rocca's view prevents the issue from even arising: in strict monist terms, there cannot be any distinction between the Packaging and the Goods. Nevertheless, the Packaging contains material that is pertinent to the issue. On page 220, for example, Della Rocca describes the arguments that he has been relying on as ‘incoherent or—to use a Wittgensteinian term—nonsense.’ And much earlier, on p. xv, this time in connection with Parmenides, he writes that ‘just as Wittgenstein invokes certain propositions… but also transcends them and rejects them as nonsense, so too Parmenides invokes certain distinctions… but also transcends them and rejects them as unthinkable.’ Della Rocca clearly has the Tractarian Model in mind, albeit he never, even in the Packaging, explicitly says, or for that matter suggests, that it is the correct model for what he himself is doing.²⁹

One thing that helps to show that he has the Tractarian Model in mind is his appeal to nonsense—although it is worth noting that this is not the linchpin for distinguishing between the Tractarian Model and the Reductio Model that it may appear to be. There is a view, with its origins in the later Wittgenstein, whereby a proof of impossibility is itself a proof of nonsense. On this view, the upshot of the proof that there is no fraction that is equal to √2 is that ‘There is a fraction that is equal to √2’ is nonsensical, not false.³⁰ Again, anyone who accepts a Strawsonian view of presupposition will regard claims made on a false presupposition as truth-valueless, not false.³¹ And although there is scope for debate about whether the nonsensicality or lack of truth value at stake in these views is the same as that involved in the Tractarian Model, as of course there is about whether these views are correct in the first place, this indicates that the difference between falsehood and nonsense is not especially critical in this context. In particular, it is not especially critical to the question of whether the Tractarian Model is the correct model for what Della Rocca is doing.

What is critical, and what shows that it is ultimately not the correct model for what he is doing—albeit the Reductio Model fares no better in this respect—is something to which I shall return in the next section, namely the fact that Della Rocca, unlike Wittgenstein, not only repudiates almost all of his own text; he repudiates almost all of what has ever been written or spoken by anyone.

But am I not now overanalyzing? Several times Della Rocca suggests that the whole book is a kind of game, or even a kind of joke (see e.g. p. 223). Moreover, in expending energy on trying to ascertain exactly how to construe his text, am I not forgetting his advice towards the end of the Proem: to ask, not what he is doing, but what we are doing?

Very well. Here is what I am doing. I am trying to make sense of this book. In so far as there is any suggestion on Della Rocca's part that it has nothing to do with truth, that sounds straightforwardly disingenuous to me. And if the book really does have nothing to do with truth—if it is nothing but a philosophical game, or a philosophical joke—then I am sorry to say that I personally find it unrewarding and unfunny.³³ There is a wonderful passage in which Bernard Williams disparages philosophy that is ‘phony, mechanical, unengaged, or kitsch’.³⁴ Unless Della Rocca is trying, at some level, in some way, to guide us to truth, then I do not see how he can resist the charge of phoniness, mechanization, lack of engagement, or kitsch.

Although the previous section was concerned with what follows if Della Rocca is right about what it takes to reach truth, I remain convinced, for reasons given in §3, that he is not right about that. I also remain convinced, for reasons given in the previous section, that, even if he is, this just shows that some things matter more to us than reaching truth.

But so could I. It would be quite compatible with retaining the second conviction to insist that our best state could not possibly be one in which we were cut off from truth in the way described in the previous section. To insist on this would be to take a stance on the very nature of philosophy, since only philosophy is capable of suggesting that we are cut off from truth in that way. It would also have as a consequence that the second conviction bolsters the first. For it would mean that whenever, as philosophers, we find ourselves counting something as true whose truth cannot ultimately commend it to us, then we need to go back to the drawing board: such a thing cannot be true.