Ronald Beiner

Looking back on that conversation today, I cannot help but wonder whether my more hopeful view of the discipline and its intellectual achievements was just a conceit of youth, and whether it can survive more rigorous critical scrutiny at a later stage of life.

In response, I would suggest that works of theory, not so different from novels, are a way of articulating the lessons of life. Let’s say that both novels and ambitious works of theory are crystallizations of wisdom, so to speak.

It is not a question of mobilizing rationally binding arguments for the simple reason that human beings are not that easy to convince. They will typically have their own counterarguments, digging in their heels rather than deferring to Reason. “Arguments are a dime a dozen,” as Gadamer once put it, glossing Hegel.

Both philosophy and literature are cognitive, but cognitive in a particular way: as crystallizations of wisdom rather than as strictly a deployment of cold argumentative force. This does not mean, of course, that arguments are irrelevant; it just means that one can recognize something as good theory even if the supporting arguments fall short, as they generally do.

–Ronald Beiner