Keywords

1 Points of View

1.1 Common Reader’s Receptivity

For a common reader, Dascal’s book, Mashav HaRuah, is an account of a reality disposed on two fronts: in the foreground stands the academic life and activity, carried on in Tel Aviv University, more precisely in the Faculty of Humanities, an ample dynamics which is focused on the dean’s managerial commitment, during his tenure of office for 5 consecutive years, 1995–2000; simultaneously, the reader’s attention is caught by a large, agitated, and conflicting image of Israeli life displayed in the background. The book sums up the speeches uttered by the dean of Humanities, invited to open several scientific meetings and official ceremonies – symposiums, colloquiums, and other manifestations – that took place in the Tel Aviv Campus during his tenure of office.

After finishing his work as Dean of Humanities, Marcelo Dascal, professor of philosophy, much involved in the activity he had run through, reflected upon his experience, both as a person and as a philosopher, reexamined all the speeches he had uttered, realizing their unitary character, their argumentative value for the/his pragmatic research, and decided to publish them in a book.

In the new form, it becomes obvious that the speeches, thematically organized, are of a less-official style as usually expected. Therefore, the book counts as a collection of essays about the most controversial problems characterizing the Israeli society. The image of the “reality” it presents is much deeper than it seems at first sight. The diversity of issues in debate and the way the subjects were organized in the book allow the reader to grasp the things.

1.2 A Book of Confession

The book starts with the author’s confession (the introduction) regarding his professional and moral concerns before entering the office, the need he feels to put order in his mind. By visiting all the departments that belong to the Humanities, by inquiring about the work performed by the people there, he becomes progressively more empathic with his academic colleagues and more aware about his future duties.

The confession in the afterword is more likely a professional exposition. The speaker’s reflective consciousness is able to establish and share a conceptual synthesis of his experience with listeners/readers.

A trained reader can consider the problems presented both in the introduction of the book and in its afterword, the frame within which the entire book should be interpreted. Responsive to such a point of view, the reader’s interest will be increased, being able to find relevant details for the speaker’s meaning in the collection of speeches.

From the perspective emphasized above, Dascal’s book can be placed within the literary genre of confessions, the author becoming actually conscious, self-enlightened about one’s own (philosophical) choice. The book is a confession of faith – the author’s philosophical testimony.

A confession is a very intimate narrative, but, in this case, the “intimate” matter the reader uncovers is an intellectual concern, sometimes extremely tense. The reader may be confused by the double game the speaker/writer plays, the superposition of the roles he keeps up: the dean’s social and philosophical commitment.

1.3 A Pragmatic & Beyond Point of View

In what follows we will embrace a pragmatic & beyond point of view. Starting off with the idea that the book Mashav HaRuah is a confession, our present study will be focused on the concept of the speaker’s meaning Footnote 1 – an important interpretative tool in Dascal’s pragmatic philosophy.

With the intention of using this concept for a better understanding of the author’s voice as it is heard in his book, we will establish three differentiated levels of approach:

  1. (a)

    The speaker’s meaning – what the speaker intends to say and is actually saying (the speaker’s discursive intentionality, respectively, the speaker’s point of view)

  2. (b)

    The speaker’s meaning – the speaker’s reference to contextual facts (the speaker’s referentially selective attitude)

  3. (c)

    The speaker’s meaning – icon of the speaker’s social, scientific, and moral identity (who stands behind the speaker’s words)

Once we have said that our commentary will follow a pragmatic & beyond point of view, our intention is to pursue pragmatic and hermeneutic inquiries. In our interpretation, “pragmatic” means setting up the author’s discursive strategies and the meanings they carry. “Hermeneutic” means the transubstantiation of meanings into axiological values, respectively, the meaning constitution of axiological concepts, those relevant for Mashav HaRuah (author)’s persona.

2 Pragmatic Inquiry

“Comment extraire de ce qu’un discours quelconque dit et de ce qu’il montre celui de ses sens possibles auquel ce discours est censé nous diriger” represents – says Dascal (1996: 1375) – the main problem of pragmatics. The quoted paragraph is formulated by Dascal in an assertory way. It resumes the pragmatic thesis regarding the discourse comprehension: to know how (how language is used), as opposed to know what (what language makes reference to).

The same paragraph formulated in interrogative form will direct us “vers un sens privilegié” (1996: 1376) – the speaker’s meaning – the “sense” in which we should read Dascal’s book, Mashav HaRuah. While inquiring the speaker’s meaning, we should establish who the speaker is in Dascal’s book.

2.1 Game Parameters

By referring our problem to the same text quoted above, Game in language, we may find some considerations useful to begin with our commentaries: “Faire l’exégèse du texte … l’exégète doit exhiber sa comprehension, en poursuivant comme il faut le jeu (ou les jeux ?) exemplifié(s) dans le texte” (1996: 1373).

Our exegetic strategy proposes an extremely general game scheme,Footnote 2 in conformity with which we shall establish: the role of the author, how many “voices” or parts he plays, his discursive strategy and commitment, his identity, and the identity of the other “players” in each interaction (if there are more than one), the dialogical distance between players.

Mashav HaRuah is a book written in the first person. The author is the speaker, who performs his speech acts on two registers. First, the author of the book – which is a collection of public speeches – addresses himself to the large public, an undetermined, undefined “interlocutor,” including the exegete. Then, the author calls the reader to “witness” an embedded interaction – the dean’s/author’s speeches addressed to his academic colleagues, interlocutors with a well-determined identity of scholars, their professional power and horizon of perception being more or less presumed by the speaker.

The discursive identity of the author depends on his discursive strategy which is differently oriented in each of the two interactions described above. In spite of the two strategically different targets, the polyphony of the author’s voice is maintained: the voice of the human person, his consciousness with psychological and spiritual concerns; the dean’s voice, the author’s social and professional commitment; and the voice of a scholar, the author’s cognitive identity, his cognitive concerns and experiences, his theoretical arguments and conclusions. It stands in the “interlocutor’s” power of judgment to detect the loudness of each voice and the direction it comes from. Given the discursive formula of this book – that of a confession – it is equally important what the common “interlocutor” says about the author’s identity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, how the exegete establishes the speaker’s identity by finding some limits to his interpretative acts. Due to his conceptual tools, the exegete has a privileged status. For him, the author’s identity is a dynamic joining of parameters, an interpretative construction, derived from the speaker’s discursive strategies, namely, from the speaker’s referential and intentional attitude. All interpretative acts are projected by the exegete on an extended background, co-textually and con-textually increased.Footnote 3

2.2 The Author’s/Speaker’s Discursive Strategy

Since Professor Marcelo Dascal has realized that the publication in a book of almost all speeches he uttered in the occasion of opening academic ceremonies could engender public interest, he has become much more determined to inform the readers about the academic life and also to exhibit the seriousness with which academic research approaches the conflicting reality of Israel. Under the literal meaning, the reader uncovers the author’s real intention, that of offering a key for understanding the Israeli reality, in order to improve it. Usually, such a collection of public speeches displays rhetoric relevance, but in this case the author has had in view an updated “document”.

The embedded structure of interaction, in which the book has been conceived, compels us to establish more than one level of interpreting the speaker’s/writer’s/author’s meaning. The embedded speeches, which constitute the main matter of the book, represent the authoritative arguments used by the author in order to justify his choice of being an auteur engagé.

Engagé in which sense? Is this a professional, a social, or a moral commitment?Footnote 4 We will begin with the first aspect; the two others will be analyzed in the third chapter.

An exegete familiar with Dascal’s philosophical activity may judge the relationship between the speaker’s meaning, in the book Mashav HaRuah, and the whole scientific work of a scholar who has been contributing to the foundation of the theory and meta-theory of pragmatics and controversy. From the first glance, by reading the book’s table of contents, the speaker’s meaning becomes obvious. The philosophical emphasis laid on each opening speech is “translated” by the titles of the chapters under which the respective speeches are reproduced. Leader of the theory of dialogue interpretation, Dascal, being a philosopher, pushed the communicative theory in the direction of the new epistemology, that of cognitive studies regarding a truth governed by soft rationality, namely, the truth searched in conformity with the principle of tertium datur. Specialist in Leibniz’s philosophy, much influenced by him, professor Dascal extended the principle of “soft rationality” with two ideas borrowed from Leibniz: to consider not only your own desires but also those of the others – Leibniz’s principle of charity – and to put yourself in the position of the other, la place d’autruy (Dascal 2000: 27–28). Involved in a comprehensive project of publishing Leibniz’s opera completa, Marcelo Dascal discovers another Leibniz, Leibniz the polemist and the theoretician of controversy.

Led by the German philosopher in his effort to establish the cognitive fundaments of controversy, Dascal finds many similarities between his project and the old Talmudic tradition. By casting a philosophical glance upon the writings of the Masters of Jewish dialectics, he was able to realize an original synthesis and to found his own philosophy of ars disputandum.Footnote 5

The speaker’s meaning in Mashav HaRuah cannot be rightly interpreted without reference to the theses of cognitive pragmatics and epistemology, developed by professor Dascal. In accordance with Leibniz’s metaphysics and Talmudic dialectics, Dascal’s epistemological strategy is other-oriented. It emphasizes the importance of public debates, during which the confrontation of contrary arguments is not a competitive fight, but a creative opportunity for each intervention to contribute in solving a problem, for the benefit of the “growth of knowledge” (Dascal 2000). Multi-perspectivism, cultural pluralism, interdisciplinarity, the will for dialogue, and the balance of reason Footnote 6 are the main issues in Dascal’s philosophy of controversy. As these concepts are frequently mentioned in his opening speeches, they make explicit the sense in which one should explain the speaker’s meaning, for instance, “to know how to use language” (p. 72); “the process of de-dichotomization” (p. 83); “ego’s strategies” (p. 105); “opening the dialogue beyond ideological and linguistic borders” (p. 112); and “argumentative strategies” (p. 133).

Although the author is the speaker in both interactions, the speaker’s strategy in opening speeches with the occasion of academic ceremonies is different from the speaker’s strategy of the entire book. The speaker’s/author’s strategy in opening speeches should be judged as far as it is part of the speaker’s meaning of the book. In both conditions we hear the dean’s and professor’s voice modulated by the author’s consciousness.

The way the speaker is addressing his words to his academic colleagues is equivalent to a form of captatio benevolentiae, formulated in theoretical terms. The speaker dean tries to establish a common language between different specialties, a bridge for cooperation. A more powerful (speaker’s) intention is to make the “interlocutors” (his academic colleagues) familiar with the theoretical methodology of a debate, in order to diminish the dialogical distance between conflicting parts.

On the other hand, the reader is informed about the degree of the scholars’ commitment to problems which are of current interest and he, the reader, is “initiated” in the way the specialists approach the problematic reality. The strategy of taking the reader to “witness” vital questions is frequently used in television talk shows. By judging the book from the perspective of the common reader, we discover that the “didactic” reason prevails over the informative one. By bringing all the theoretical issues in “public debate,” the author rejects the taboo of scientific language and emphasizes the rational relevance these issues have in understanding the current life. Everybody is involved in trivial or serious polemics. The didactic-oriented strategy of the speaker explains why there are numerous repetitions, why the author makes use of well-tempered scientific language. It is difficult to put a complicated matter in a simple way, and the author, who masters this cognitive operation, follows the reductive strategy with the intention of being part in the process of the general emancipation of the people’s mentality.

2.3 The Author’s/Speaker’s Referential Strategy

The referential aspect of a discourse – “ce qu’un discours quelconque dit et … ce qu’il montre” – is part of the speaker’s meaning, the “sense” in which we should read Dascal’s Mashav HaRuah. Footnote 7 The narrative of the book follows a strategic plan, in conformity with which the author transforms the embedded academic interaction (the dean’s illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, performed in opening speeches addressed to his academic colleagues) into a referential field for his confessions. Dominated by a perlocutionary intention (the speaker’s meaning), the “content” of the book has got selective structure. Consequently, we see no reason not to call this aspect the speaker’s referential strategy.

In what follows, we shall first present the referential background and after that the way the author/the dean uncovers the reasons of his selective points of reference.

2.3.1 Comprehensive Image of Israeli Reality

In the way the dean addresses his words, the reader gets indirectly a comprehensive image of the conflicting reality of Israel, becoming witness of the academic research and the degree of academic implication in problems largely debated: The Murder of Yitzchak Rabin, the Grief and Beyond; Europe and the Peace in Middle East; The Web of Violence; Shoa and the Evil; Racism and Anti-Semitism; Orientalism or Epistemological Pluralism in Israel?; Historical Truth or National Myth; The Tanaims and the Importance of Dialectics; Arabs and Jews in Israel, Dynamic Perspectives; Germany–Israel: a Culturally Multidimensional Web; Linguistic Pluralism; The Cryptic Meaning of the Scrolls, etc. – and these are only some examples.

2.3.2 Le tour de la chose

The book, Mashav HaRuah, is not a simple collection of public speeches, but a unitary complex of problems, the matter to which the book “refers.” The embedded matter in the dean’s confession is relevant for the author’s referential strategy. Professor Dascal wants to share his theory of controversy, with his colleagues from different departments. Simultaneously, the dean’s speeches explicitly emphasize those problems which, important for the theory of controversy, have public relevance: The Weight of Rationality in Conflict Settlement; Dialogue without A priori Conditions; Multistratified Identity; The Polyphony of Polemic Texts; Hermeneutics and Science; Three Prejudices about the Prejudice; Descartes: a Permanent Polemic; Relevant Philosophy, etc.

In published form, the referential management opens a new door toward the speaker’s meaning. Addressed to common readers, the author’s confession makes public his intellectual concerns – “the literal meaning.” He “presents” his speeches addressed to his colleagues with a demonstrative intention. By the many references to theoretical issues, he shows how the conflicting reality might be judged rationally, less impulsively.

In front of his colleagues, the philosopher presents a theoretically simplified program. His affirmations, his ideas, are submitted to a test of theoretical resistance, challenging reaction, looking for an approval. While reading the book, having a global view, the academic public may better judge the social frame (context) within which their debates have taken place, and they may judge the theoretical design formulated by the author (co-text). The confession in the afterword – the last chapter – is particularly addressed to them. On the occasion of a colloquy on a geographical topic, the author, having the intention of finding himself on a common ground with his colleagues, opens the debates by an exposition regarding “geographical metaphors in scientific language”, for instance, ground, territory, and beyond (pragmatics).

By deciding to publish this book, the author himself is able to approach the whole matter more critically. As he gives the same opportunity to his colleagues, they can make “le tour de la chose” together (in Leibniz’s words, quoted by Dascal 2000: 33). The published form of the speeches facilitates the step toward objectivity.

3 Hermeneutical Inquiry

The speaker’s meaning is the icon of the speaker’s social, scientific, and moral identity. In certain kinds of discourse, when the interpretation of the speaker’s meaning regards problematic issues, beliefs, and ideas that concern the person who stands behind the speaker’s words, the following question arises inevitably:

Who is the speaker? This question, in our particular case, cannot be avoided because our exegesis is dealing with a book of confession, in which the speaker, becoming conscious of what he is doing, tries to define himself. The speaker’s meaning in a confession is to express what is most profound in the speaker’s mind – his beliefs. What in French is called “Une prise de conscience” becomes a confession of (intellectual) faith – a moral commitment.

In order to give a complete account of the speaker’s meaning in Dascal’s book, Mashav HaRuah, the interpretation leads beyond the pragmatical frame, beyond questions regarding the players’ identity, beyond the polyphonic problems regarding the “voices” that are heard in the speaker’s meaning, but not so far as to search a metaphysically absolute speaker.Footnote 8

The speaker’s meaning is a cognitive parameter, pragmatically defined. If this parameter acquires a moral dimension, the cognitive load is increased, requiring axiological determination. From this point onward, the interpretative exegesis steps beyond pragmatical border and begins a hermeneutical inquiry.

From our point of view, hermeneutics represents the constitutive procedure of an alternative to epistemic truth, the doxastic truth, or the truth of beliefs. Doxastic truth objectifies the content of beliefs in language, by dialectically displayed interpretative movements.Footnote 9 Because beliefs are subjective acts with cognitively poor relevance, the hermeneutic procedure is more than a semantic interpretative tool; it represents the way the “semantic truth” of beliefs could be validated. Two cognitive stages prepare the validation: the belief’s content should be assumed by consciousness and the belief’s content should be referred to a principle of transcendence. These remarks are necessary in order to put a new accent upon the cognitive steps our exegesis is prepared to take. As our hermeneutical inquiry examines the author’s moral concerns, it has no ontological implications.

By making a synthesis of the pragmatical analyses – as professor Dascal proposes – we obtain the hermeneutical answer to the question Who is the speaker? In this answer, two perspectives converge: that of the speaker himself, who assumes his professional and social commitment, and that of the reader/the interpreter/the exegete, who, being interested in establishing the moral significance (relevance) of the speaker’s words, “translates” the pragmatically defined meanings into their axiological correspondents.

3.1 The Speaker’s Own Image

From Dascal’s assertion: “Hermeneutical theses can be rephrased as pragmatic principles (and vice versa)” (Dascal 1989: 240), we choose the “vice versa” alternative: Pragmatic theses can be rephrased as hermeneutical principles.

Hermeneutics is a cognitive procedure applied to beliefs which have no other reference than the meanings extended in consciousness.

The cognitive functions of consciousness are governed by two principles: the principle of opposition and the principle of transcendence.

The inner dialogue of a confession is the best example. The first step in consciousness is done by the speaker who commits himself morally. Une prise de conscience, as we define Dascal’s Mashav HaRuah, represents a complex act, both cognitive and self-evaluative. Once the moral commitment is confessed, the speaker submits his own sense of self-determination to the other’s judgment. In Dascal’s book, the author confesses his professional and philosophical dilemma. The reader finds the dean’s concerns regarding his responsibilities both as a dean and as a humanist; his promise never to make a conventional speech, but to speak about issues that have matter in them; his care for maintaining a comprehensive look upon the academic activity in the Tel Aviv Campus, upon issues that could bring new light for his research.

Once uttered, the personal, intimate troubles are contrastively judged and objectified. The speaker is ready to receive the reader’s/interpreter’s verdict. A confession of faith is meant to “challenge” the interlocutor, in a virtual dialogue. The hermeneutical mechanism is triggered and organized due to the two principles that govern the cognitive functions of consciousness: the principle of opposition and the principle of transcendence.

The cognitive themes of dialectics – the contrast, the confrontation, the principle of charity, being in the position of the other, etc. – evince the importance of the principle of opposition and its cognitive gain. The dialogue is not only the way of convincing or persuading the other but the way the speaker wants to become conscious of the question that troubles himself. Frequently, Dascal mentions the retroactive character of dialogical interventions, but in a different perspective than ours.

A more important cognitive function of the other is that of introducing the principle of transcendence. The subject of beliefs shares with his opponent, with the other, in dialogue, the same need of making possible the validation of a truth which has semantic roots and a spiritual (moral) object of reference. In our opinion, the complex philosophy of the other – to which professor Dascal has an important contribution – is inherently placed in the field of value. The question is how to conceptualize it?

3.2 The Reader’s Interpretation of the Speaker’s Meaning

An act assumed by consciousness stands in the incidence of an axiological category.

The author’s intellectual confession renders explicit his choice of reaching a clear-cut conceptual form of expression. The conceptualization supplies a cognitive gain, by raising the issue from an empiric to a paradigmatic level. In our case, at this point, the personal voice of author’s consciousness interferes with the voice of the scholar. The way professor Marcelo Dascal, the philosopher of controversy, conceives of the conceptualization of a problematic matter is dialectically displayed: an open-to-critics inventory of facts and, then, preparing the theoretical synthesis.

We speak about a confession of faith, which has a value in itself, being a moral act. A confession of faith is performed in a virtual dialogue with an “interlocutor”/the reader upon whom lays the responsibility of the evaluation.

The reader’s interpretation of the speaker’s meaning in confessions should go further than pragmatically explaining the speaker’s discursive intentions. An evaluation of the speaker’s meaning is absolutely necessary, in order to appreciate the authenticity of the confession. From the two principles mentioned above, the principle of transcendence is the most active. The evaluative interpretation performs a semantic transfer, from the empirical facts to the higher-ordered position of values. This operation can be equated with Grice’s argument concerning the metaphysical transubstantiation, a procedure for redistribution, but not the invention of properties. For example, properties accidentally meant for humans become properties of a new psychological type, called persons, as essential ones (Grice 1991: 114).

When the confession is focused on intellectual themes – philosophical, ethical, aesthetical – the interpreter (both the speaker himself, with a higher power of self-determination, and the “interlocutor”) tries to reach a correct conceptualization.

For instance, how to evaluate the dean’s concerns? Are they proofs of a professional or a moral commitment? Do the dean’s words mean only that he assumes all the difficulties his social/pragmatic duty require, or can one see the intellectual responsibility of an open-minded humanist in an old to new world through them?

The hermeneutical steps toward conceptualization represent reflective acts, quite creative, that follow the “dialectical program” established by Dascal in his ars disputandum.

4 Instead of Conclusions

Two questions:

  1. 1.

    In an explicit way, we adopted for our exegesis a pragmatic & beyond point of view. Consequently, how to define hermeneutics as against pragmatics, an extension, or a higher theoretical movement?

    When beliefs represent the previous step in the dialogical way to episteme, the process of their critical analysis belongs to pragmatics.

    When beliefs represent acts in consciousness, hermeneutics is the specific procedure of their “rational” interpretation. Hermeneutics is the field inside which the disputed “truth” has semantic nature.

  2. 2.

    In the last chapter we have made the affirmation that any act/fact assumed by consciousness inherently stands in the incidence of an axiological category. Consequently, is the axiological conceptualization that any belief requires part of the process of “transcendantalisation de la pragmatique” (Dascal 2000: 1376)?

    Given the limits of our present exegesis, the answer is negative. In spite of the fact that the axiological determination of the speaker’s meaning activates the principle of transcendence, the hermeneutical inquiry maintains its controversial character, on the higher level of the axiological metalanguage, without a “tournure kantienne de cette question” (2000: 1376).