The vanity of dialogue

Traditional wisdom in academia ever from the onset of Greek philosophers' emphasis on logos to Habermasian advocacy of communicative rationality, all have a commonality that distinguishes Athens from Jerusalem: dialogue. The essential reason that logos has been enchanted throughout Western intellectual tradition is how it could be transformed into the basic configuration of disciplines. Linguistically evident to see that the root "logos" constitutes the very fixation of the words that make ordinary activities into institutional discipline: biology, geology, sociology, anthropology, meteorology etc. I have realized the uncanny way in which rationality must be achieved through spoken words-logos, because 1) Greek grammar is rigorously composed by the structure that defines the modality of ancient form of logic; 2) all ideas that are accessible intellectually must be comprehended grammatically, i.e. through the construction of logos. Derrida had belabored elaborately on the same topic by another approach.

But within recent 2 or 3 years I have found hard time reading philosophical working (not necessarily philosophy in institutional definition, philosophy department in American universities deals with boring topics after all). Other than analytical philosophy, major body of continental working relies on assumptions that are not immediately accessible to laymen without reference to encyclopedia. During the process of trying referring to a single clear definition of the notion mentioned, more undefined notions come to untrained mind, the confusion is growing exponentially. Even if the audience is the disciplined subjects, it's very hard to differentiate whether the understanding of context comes from the habitual, disciplined and ingrained comprehension of semantic meaning that presents to them in the way not dissimilar to that the vulgar words appear to lay mind, or, the professional words are comprehended in the mechanical procedure as if brain is operating autotranslation with reference to the terminal dictionary of natural language. Both seemed contrary to ordinary perception, theoretical refutation to both is also not wanting. But the problem is not whether the storage of refutation is big enough to slap back on enemy's face. The problem is serious, the ground of reason to justify is not stable, far less than stable, is trembling once your eyes are open.

What is not justifiable? This very question came in minds first since Nietzsche refused intellegensia but asked for will. In The Use and Abuse of History for Life, the caricature was cast to academia, which teaches people to immerse in contradictory opinions and try to understand each of them for reason's sake. Wasn't this the progenitor of nihilism, which despises and distastes everything after seemingly understanding them by reciting the vague definitions and theorem? In social psychology, Festinger initiated a notion called self-exempting belief. This theory has been applied to vast area of life including most famously smoking, deviant behavior, health etc. It's not uncommon to find academic reports point out ostensible exemptions given by the deviants, who are in turn defined in reference to structural exemptions, are frequently based on complicate and delicate cultural contents, from Buddhism teaching of violence to anarchism. It could be argued that their deliberate linking of idea to action lacks some fundamental bridging part in reasoning. But who is not? From Plato to Hegel, which is free from the slip of a second when applying theory to reality, transferring his text from one level to another, transforming a basic linguistic morph to another word? In Qu'est ce que le parle dire, Bourdieu had mistook Heidegger's concoct of the word Fursorge. It may not be caused by Heidegger's aspiration to ascend his position in the web of language capital, it could all the way introduce a trap for us all: the constant loosing of meaning during écreture, as same as the eternal regression of language. It's not incredible, then, to find everything are justifiable in theory and understandable in moral judgment: as long as you identify with the speaker's volition every time when rupture occurs right between two level of text, two dimension of intentional expression, two area of application etc.

"Sola fide, ego liberta". This will not be took as gullible, this is the stroke to Gordian knot.