Why should anyone be interested in concept variation? Because concepts are philosophy’s most important tools and they enshrine our perspectives.
In fact, they are our perspectives.
Many years ago, I read a quotation from the novelist D H Lawrence. I have never been able to find it since, but it went like something like this: “Our perspective begins as a wide starry sky. It then becomes a mansion, then a house, then a hovel and finally it becomes an umbrella pulled down tight over our heads.”
Why do I like it so much? Because it captures the fact that one’s concepts and philosophy, if not refreshed, can as easily be a prison as a liberation.
A corrupt concept can be a prison. The concept “racism” has become so corrupted today that in most contexts it functions as an anti-concept and traps anyone who buys it. It is now held to subsume any negative judgment about a non-Western ideology, even a religious ideology like Islam.
But such an ideology is a matter of ideas. It is to be judged on its objective merits, independent of the race of its originator. Will someone, who doesn’t know you can change a concept, enter debates, get accused of “racism” and accept the accusation without recognizing how devalued the term is in that context? Very possibly.
But the reverse also holds true. A once corrupt concept can be redeemed. And you can be stuck in a prison of the past if you don’t understand that.
When The Political Compass website made the observation that the telling distinction today is between authoritarianism and libertarianism, I was struck with its justice. And I realised how much the concept of “libertarianism” had changed since Ayn Rand so vehemently rejected it. But I wonder: do Objectivists know it? Or is their perspective on libertarianism acting as an umbrella pulled down tight over their heads?
If they don’t know that concepts capture perspectives, will they be able to escape their umbrella? Will they be able to adjust their perspective to embrace this new one and use it to build bridges with other lovers of freedom? I doubt it.
And do they understand that if Ayn Rand had not widened her perspective on capitalism, we would not have the concept today that gives us the wide starry sky of her vision? Or that if she had not narrowed her perspective on selfishness to exclude all its irrational instances our own view of selfishness might be as confused a prison as it has been for centuries?
There is something deeply selfish—in the best sense—in thinking and being master of one’s thought. How can you master your thought if you can’t change your perspectives when you need to? Conceptual stuck-in-the-mudness is a denial of self.
Reason is the only absolute in philosophy. And to follow reason one must be willing to change the concepts that capture one’s perspectives when necessary. And that, dear reader, is a great adventure.
Copyright © Tom Minchin 2016