Striving to speak in a human voice: A peircean contribution to metaphysical discourse

TLDR: Whitehead as discussed by the authors argues that philosophy is akin to poetry and offers Charles S. Peirce's categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and indeed basic features (or traits) of being.

Abstract: I A. N. WHITEHEAD SUGGESTS philosophy is akin to poetry. (1) Let me count the ways or, more exactly, identify four facets of this kinship. After touching upon these facets, I will in the second part of this paper focus directly on the relationship between being and articulation, regardless of the form in which being comes to expression (or expresses itself). (2) Then, in the third section, I offer Charles S. Peirce's categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and indeed basic features (or traits) of being. Finally, the last section of this paper considers human beings precisely in their ongoing efforts to give adequate expression to human experience in its broadest reach and deepest import. Philosophers and poets alike struggle to speak in an intelligible, arresting, and acute voice: they would have their utterances stop us, so that we might discern more sharply and attentively the meanings in which we are enmeshed. On the part of both, one observes countless "attempts to escape our humanness," (3) but one also hears deliberate endeavors "[t]o speak humanly from the height or from the depth" (4) of experience. The philosophical no less than the poetic voice has been a distinctively human voice in which a finite, fallible, and mortal animal has given arresting expression to the most telling disclosures of human experience. It is, accordingly, to the kinship between poetry and philosophy that I now turn. One aspect of this kinship concerns the sustained effort to articulate what has not yet been said and indeed what may be in principle unsayable. The language of philosophy is very rarely that of poetry; but the use of language by philosophers, no less than that by poets, characteristically involves what (at least) in effect involves an interrogation of the limits and resources of language) Frequently, some insight, discovery, or experience demands nothing less, and this is nowhere more evident in philosophy than in the writings of metaphysicians. Like poets, metaphysicians are driven seemingly by the very nature of their endeavor to stretch language to the point where it is likely to break, where our very efforts to make finer and fuller sense court the risk of lapsing into nonsense. (6) But the traditional and secure modes of description, explanation, and critique are, for most poets and many philosophers, unduly restrictive and mostly sterile. Like the poetic imagination, then, the philosophical imagination by its own inherent restlessness tends to explode the bounds of established usage and traditional tropes. This is the first sense of kinship. The philosophical imagination can engage in this unending struggle simply in the spirit of irresponsible iconoclasm, (7) but just as often does so in the spirit of deep fidelity to the animating sources of linguistic utterance. (8) Whatever spirit informs and guides this imagination, the outcome tends toward violating established usage and thereby generating novel conceptions. "Metaphor," as Justus Buchler notes, "cannot be avoided if philosophy is to be more than the formal prescription of symbols." (9) Some metaphors are more apt than others; and (what might amount to the same point) some are more fruitful and illuminating than others. Regarding this, Buehler helpfully suggests: "In large measure, what makes the difference between good and bad metaphor, as indeed the difference between satisfactory and unsatisfactory concepts generally speaking, is the relative power of the perspective with which they function." (10) Like concepts, metaphors prove themselves by their contribution to opening a perspective in which fruitful questions can be posed and unanticipated discoveries can be made. The meaning of metaphors is, to quote Buchler yet again, "determined by their role in the perspective consequent upon their articulation"; hence, "their full value in most instances cannot be antecedently determined or gratuitously assigned. …