Making injustice explicit: The externalist approach to reciprocal elucidation

Abstract

Genuine dialogue seems to require sincere commitment to reciprocal questioning. This view is reinforced by the idea of reciprocal elucidation, which tempts us to see it as binary: both engage, and understanding flows; one refuses, and nothing happens. This makes it seem that real dialogue depends on the other's ethical choice. I challenge that intuition. Instead, I propose that by adopting an externalist view, we can see that dialogue reveals the character of its participants, regardless of intent. Thus, rightly understood, reciprocal elucidation isn’t confined to ideal cooperation—it can expose injustice and asymmetry, even when one party manipulates or withholds meaning. Its power lies beyond mutual consent.

Is the work of reciprocal elucidation strictly optional? This may seem to be a rather odd question. After all, it seems obvious that genuine dialogue requires the participants to sincerely commit to the game of questions and answers at the outset. This intuition is reinforced by the picture that the concept of reciprocal elucidation provides us with. It is tempting to imagine that the conditions of the concept are binary. If both parties sincerely follow the rules, they experience a “creative and mutually self-transformative interchange” (p. 104). In this case, the circuit is complete and both parties are illuminated. Whereas if one refuses, the circuit of reciprocal elucidation is left in the off position and thus nothing happens. If we adopt this binary understanding, then it seems that the challenge posed by an agent who uses the techniques of false dialogue (whether strategic or legislative) can only be met if they somehow or other choose to see the light. Those who defect from the rules of genuine dialogue, either by refusing to mean what they say or claiming the authority to stipulate the meaning of our words, seem to have the advantage. If our only option is to clearly catalogue the dangers of false dialogue and articulate the necessary pre-requisites for genuine dialogues, we can only make progress if our programme is accepted.

This narrow understanding of reciprocal elucidation is dangerous, as it makes it seem that we have committed ourselves to a kind of moral entrepreneurialism that only stocks products for those who have already achieved moral enlightenment. In other words, we seem to have set out on the doomed endeavour to market the milk of human kindness to angels. If we encounter agents who are unwilling to take the ‘ethical step’ and instead stubbornly opt to preserve their parochial self-understanding, we have little choice but to move on (p. 104). While much of Tully's work in D&D is focused on dialogues that are ‘oriented to mutual understanding and the generation of dialogues of equals’, he is careful to stipulate that this is not the only possible use of genuine dialogue (p. 104). Rather, he notes that we can use dialogues of reciprocal elucidation to perform other actions such as ‘exposing’, ‘prodding’, ‘disrupting’, and ‘contesting’ the claims of ‘recalcitrant opponents’ (pp. 104, 160, 163).

The source of the concept of reciprocal elucidation is, as Tully reminds us, in an interview that Michel Foucault did with Paul Rabinow in 1984. Foucault uses the concept to respond to the question of why he does not engage in polemics. As Foucault puts it, ‘In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion’ (Foucault, 1997: 111). The ‘some sense’ here indicates an ambiguity that can, in my view, be thought of in terms of degree that extends from mere response to full-blown mutual recognition. The upshot being that the game of questions and answers does not require mutual understanding at the outset. In fact, any response counts, as it indicates an awareness that the other is an agent in the space of reasons (we do not bother to reject the agency of chairs or other middle-sized dry goods). In addition, the game is not limited to just the players who are directly engaged – it includes those who witness the exchange in the broadest sense of the term (i.e. reading an exchange is sufficient). The social context of the game is important because it means that the criteria for success cannot be limited to mutual understanding, and, following this, what is brought to light is not limited to the minds of the participants. I want to try and bring this wider sense of the practice of reciprocal elucidation into sharper focus. Given that Tully has provided a detailed account of the requirements for mutual understanding, I will focus on the ‘assertive, disruptive, non-cooperative, and truth-speaking’ uses of dialogue (p. 160).

My aim is to counter the intuition that the transition from false to genuine dialogue is subject to the choice of our interlocutor to take the ‘ethical step’. Instead, I propose that we adopt an externalist approach to understanding the concept of reciprocal elucidation. To paraphrase and repurpose Putnam, elucidation is not in the head (see Putnam, 1975). While we can understand the metaphor of illumination as an inner light (which I will refer to as the internalist conception of reciprocal elucidation), this is as confusing as thinking that meanings are in the head. Rather, we should understand that what is brought into the light in dialogue is the character of those who are speaking. This is important because it shows us that the work of reciprocal elucidation is not limited to the ideal conditions of voluntary participation in mutual self-understanding. It can be used to expose unequal and unjust social relationships, and this exposure is not held hostage by the acceptance or refusal of our adversary. In other words, I argue for an externalist conception of elucidation, asserting that dialogue can illuminate truths regardless of the interlocutor's willingness to participate in good faith. Taken in this sense, we can understand that the light cast by Hamlet's mousetrap – which is nothing more than a factual reenactment of his uncle's crime – does its work without the active and willing participation of the King. This is because what is illuminated is not understood to be his self-understanding, but his character. The light source is external, and it involves adversaries and bystanders. After all, they bear witness to the King fleeing the play in search of the light.

To try and develop this point further, I will consider an example of the work of reciprocal elucidation in relation to a participant who refuses to take the ethical step. My example will be Alice's dialogue with Humpty Dumpty from Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. I will also use Plato's dialogues to help us understand Alice's use of dialogue as an example of the Socratic method of the elenchus. I will then conclude by considering how the distinction between the destructive and constructive uses of Socratic dialogue could help us better understand the concept of reciprocal elucidation.

Humpty Dumpty's semantic claim

The exchange I want to focus on occurs midway through Chapter 6, where Humpty Dumpty discusses the meaning of words.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all” (Carroll, 1976: 214).

The claim to exclusive semantic stipulation exhibits two related problems. First, there is the difference between natural and artificial languages. While the latter may have a strictly stipulated semantics, the former are characterized by their holistic structure and constitutive openness – by this I simply mean that prior uses of a concept cannot determine the correctness of future application. When it comes to the semantics of natural language, the possible future applications of a concept extend ‘like rails laid out to infinity’ (Wittgenstein, 2009: §218 in Brandom, 2000: 90). Even if Humpty Dumpty was attempting to construct an artificial language, his method of stipulation would only be functional if other agents accepted his definitions. Secondly, the concept of mastery is inapplicable to natural language. Alice's question rightly identifies this problem. While words can be used to mean many things, they cannot be redefined willy nilly. As Davidson helpfully explains,

Humpty Dumpty is out of it. He cannot mean what he says he means because he knows that ‘There's glory for you’ cannot be interpreted by Alice as meaning ‘There's a nice knockdown argument for you’. We know that he knows this because Alice says ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”’, and Humpty Dumpty retorts, ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you’. (Davidson, 2005: 98)

How does Alice respond to Humpty Dumpty? She uses the game of questions and answers to make the structural problems that are implicit in Humpty Dumpty's claims explicit. When he makes use of his semantic machinery, she simply asks him, ‘Would you tell me please, what that means?’ (Carroll, 1976: 214). And when she finds his response unhelpful, she asks him to demonstrate his method by telling her the meaning of the Jabberwocky poem (p. 215). This leads him to develop an interpretation of a nonsense poem that is curiously more meaningless than the poem itself. In other words, inviting him to continue his own use of his method undermines its claim to meaning. He manages to transform the nonsensical language of the poem into an unintelligible idiocy. What is left is simply the impossibility of private language.

When the dialogue ends, Alice says, ‘Good-bye, till we meet again!’, and Humpty Dumpty responds, ‘I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet […] you’re so exactly like other people’ (p. 220). He experiences no elucidation – he is blind to individuality. But we cannot say that this dialogue has not given us a reciprocal form of elucidation. Light has indeed been cast, and we see things more clearly, regardless of Humpty Dumpty's attitudinal dispositions towards his beliefs.

Alice's dialogue with Humpty Dumpty bears some resemblance to Plato's Sophist. The Visitor aims at distinguishing what identifies the character of the sophist. He explains that the sophist denies the very possibility of false speech because whatever is possible in speech must somehow share in being. This unlimited form of speech is used to make things ‘appear smaller [or larger] than they should’ or make something similar appear dissimilar, so that it seems like anything goes (Plato, 1993: 23). In effect, the sophist uses language to undo the connections between words and the world that allow us to distinguish between true and false claims. The Visitor concludes the dialogue with a portrait of the sophist's character.

Imitation of the contrary-speech-producing, insincere and unknowing sort, of the appearance-making kind of copy-making, the word-juggling part of production that's marked off as human and not divine. Anyone who says the sophist is of this ‘blood and family’ will be saying, it seems, the complete truth (p. 65).

With this portrait clearly in view, how can we use dialogue to determine whether we are dealing with a word-juggling sophist? The Visitor's suggests using ‘refutation’, which is, in his view, ‘the principle and most important kind of cleansing’ (p. 17).

What does this practice of refutation look like? When we are trying to help others identify false beliefs, we can get rid of them by considering how others work to correct them.

They cross-examine someone when he thinks he's saying something though he's saying nothing. Then, since his opinions will vary inconsistently, these people will easily scrutinize them. They collect his opinions together during the discussion, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects in relation to the same things and in the same respects. The people who are being examined see this, get angry with themselves, and become calmer towards others. They lose their inflated and ridged beliefs about themselves that way… (p. 17)

This social practice of refutation through dialogue has value regardless of whether the individual under cross-examination accepts responsibility for their false beliefs or refuses to. All that is needed is for us to remember that when we are attempting to determine whether we are dealing with a sophist, we must consistently follow what is being said and scrutinize it step by step. As the Visitor explains,

When he says that what's different is the same in a certain way or what's the same is different in a certain way, we should understand just what he means, and the precise respect in which he's saying that the thing is the same or different (p. 54).

Alice does exactly this when she is playing the game of questions and answers with Humpty Dumpty; she doesn’t add anything, she simply asks him to explain and demonstrate. This exchange has value even though he does not accept the responsibility for what he says – it allows us to identify him as one of the ‘insincere and unknowing’ word-jugglers that the Visitor warns us of.

Socratic dialogue and reciprocal elucidation

Let's start with a clear articulation of Socratic dialogue. As Gregory Vlastos helpfully describes it,

Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by question-and-answer adversary argument in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own belief and is regarded as refuted only if its negation is deduced from his own beliefs (Vlastos, 1993: 4).

The elenchus can be understood as an adversarial procedure, but the Greek word has a variety of uses. As Vlastos notes, it ‘may be used to mean “refutation”, but may also be used to mean “testing” or, still more broadly, “censure,” “reproach”’ (Vlastos, 1993: 4). When this method is consistently deployed, there is no philosophical sleight of hand—Socrates does not cheat. Rather, as Vlastos explains,

Plato wants us to see Socrates as he is – as a man who has a one-track way to pursue truth, the method he practices with fierce devotion, without making any of those concessions to his opponent's weakness which magnanimity or compassion might dictate. If what we are looking for is generosity to a befuddled adversary, Plato makes sure that we shall be rebuffed…Plato makes sure that we shall see Socrates giving [his interlocutor] not less than he deserves. Enforcing on him to the letter the rules of dialectical disputation, Socrates leads him relentlessly to ‘bring witness against himself’, without ever deliberately misleading him (Vlastos, 1991: 156).

I think that this articulation of the elenchus helps us understand precisely how an internalist conception of reciprocal elucidation (the notion that enlightenment is somehow or other in the head) is mistaken. Rightly understood, reciprocal elucidation is not optional – it works even in adversarial contexts. When we strictly follow the rules of the game of questions and answers, we may not succeed in convincing our interlocutor that they are mistaken, but we can lead them to bear witness against themselves. This may function as a step towards the possibility of achieving mutual understanding, but it retains its social value regardless of the attitudinal disposition of our interlocutor.

If we use Socrates' practice as an exemplar, we could say that the work of the gadfly is related to, but distinct from, the midwife. In the Apology, Socrates states,

If you strike at me, who am given to you by God, you will injure yourselves more than you will me. For if you kill me you will not easily find another, who, like a gadfly, attached to the city, which is a great and noble horse and is tardy in its motions owing to its very size, awakens it and persuades and reproaches it (Plato, 1997a: 30e).

The gadfly thus attaches itself to the city or state and works to prod, reproach, persuade, and awaken (Plato, 1997a: 30e). Whereas the midwife relates to those who choose to associate with Socrates – it requires a form of mutual recognition to proceed. In Theaetetus, Socrates explains, ‘I am myself barren of wisdom… but those who associate with me, all, if the god is willing, make astonishing progress, as is clear to many and to themselves’ (Plato, 1997b: 150c–d). The upshot here being that both are forms of Socratic dialogue, but they are, as Vlastos maintains, part of a two-in-one argumentative strategy (Vlastos, 1993: 10). If we conflate them and assume that the only true form is the positive form (the midwife who uses the elenchus to help others in their search for truth), then it could well seem that the fact that Thrasymachus does not concede defeat indicates that his position remains viable. Whereas if we distinguish the destructive form (the gadfly who uses the elenchus to test and refute), we can appreciate that contradictions that are implicit in Thrasymachus claim that justice benefits the rulers are exposed and thus the fact that he is unpersuaded does not mean that the dialogue fails (Vlastos, 1993: 4). While it is doubtlessly unsatisfying when an interlocutor refuses to take responsibility for their words, the work of scrutinizing their claim step-by-step still has value – it does, after all, cast light on the moral character of Thrasymachus or any other word-juggling sophist for that matter.

In conclusion, reciprocal elucidation is not an optional add-on available only when both parties willingly engage in a mutually transformative dialogue. Initially, it seems intuitive that genuine dialogue requires both parties to sincerely engage in mutual understanding. But this view leads to a binary understanding, where if one party refuses to participate ethically, nothing happens in the dialogue. However, reciprocal elucidation can also be used to expose unjust social relations, disrupt false beliefs, and contest the claims of opponents, regardless of their willingness to engage in good faith. Even in adversarial or insincere exchanges, dialogue can externally illuminate truths and expose the character of those involved. This externalist conception of elucidation demonstrates that the process of refutation and questioning – whether it serves to disrupt false claims or reveal deeper social injustices – is an inherent and indispensable feature of genuine dialogue, independent of an interlocutor's willingness to take the ethical step.