Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; Welt als gegebene Tatsache -> Erschwernis eines Verständnisses von G.; Gegebenes: 2 Bedeutungen; donum (do) - datum (gleichsam ohne Geber); Tatsache, Faktum (facio)

Kurzinhalt: The characterization of what is there as given is meant to rigorously exclude any reference to a giver; hence the expression: "It is simply given." ... An epistemology that limits itself to data does not permit the knower to go "behind" ... the given ...

Textausschnitt: II
34a Studies in anthropology over the past century have made available to us an understanding of the meaning of the gift in pre-literate societies. That meaning is still significant for us today, because in its deepest and broadest import it still is capable of functioning in modern life. The prevailing attitude, however, is not favorable to the extension of the category of the gift beyond situations limited to interaction between humans. Giving and receiving is taken to be an affair between humans, except where sentiment extends it to our pets. An older wisdom spoke of "the gifts of Mother Earth," of "gifts from the gods," and of "the gift of life." But such locutions are not easily understood today, and they are likely to be sloughed off as poetic imagery and archaic metaphor. To be sure, religious sciptures may sometimes speak this way and find their voice in religious hymns; but what in them is decorous imagery and what is reality? The chief obstacle to a better appreciation of the category of the gift is a widespread current attitude towards the world; it is the attitude that takes the world as a given fact. Now these two words need looking into, for their joint meaning is not obvious, and there is nothing direct or simple about their common usage. They are a way of understanding what is before us, around us, present to us. They are burnt deeply into the outlook of the so-called "advanced" societies. They provide a primary interpretation of what is evident. They combine to form the first name we give to what we encounter. Moreover, in scientific and learned discourse and in everyday speech as well, this initial name proves ultimately decisive and presides over most subsequent understanding of the world, so that our thought seldom breaks free from this first determination of the things that are. (Fs)

35a We say of something that it is "there." But what do we mean when we say that it is "given?" Do we not say more than that it is simply there? Do we not add something? Do we not add a fundamental attitude towards what is there? The nomenclature and the usage express the attitude. Current English1 usage draws a sharp distinction between most uses of "the given" and "the gift"; and not only English: French distinguishes la donnée from le don; and Latin harbours a distinction between datum and donum. The first members of these pairs (given, donnée, datum) usually serve a learned function in the discourse of the natural and positive sciences and in empiricist philosophy, often in the Latin plural form, data. Indeed, much of the usage comes into English from the technical vocabulary of late medieval Latin, though it is nowadays widely used in technology and in more or less educated popular speech as well. The given (data) has two meanings which are distinct and yet compatible with one another. There is first its hypothetical meaning which has arisen in highly conditioned contexts: in logic, where it is used to designate the basis for an argument, hence: "The premisses being given, it follows that...."; in mathematics, where it assigns a non-problematic status to a postulate for the sake of a demonstration, hence: "Granted that...."; and in navigation, where it denotes the basis for the construction of a position from which a course can be devised. The generic meaning of these is that of "granting, positing, conceding" some item, so that further argument or construction can follow upon it as from a basis and starting-point. It designates what Hegel called a "foundation" (Grundlage) rather than a "source" (Grund). The term "given" expresses some agreement, provisional or otherwise, among the parties relevant to the operation or discourse which is to follow upon the concession. In this its concessive or hypothetical sense, it serves as an agreed upon stipulation, expressed by the term: "If we grant that...." (Fs)

36a But there is a second sense: the evidential meaning of the term. Something is said to be given if it is taken to be the direct yet warranted observation of what is actually the case. The connection between the hypothetical and the evidential meanings seems to be the conviction that what is evident is both the case and also what every "right-thinking" observer agrees is the case. So that the term: "Given that...." refers as much to the thinker addressed as to the matter designated. Moreover, what the evidential and the hypothetical sense share is that both are taken as the basis and starting-point for some sort of progression, either in discourse (an argument) or in actuality (a construction or production). The given is taken to be the starting-point for scientific discourse, for technological advance, and for more general forms of progressive action. The given is accepted for the sake of the use that can be made of it as a starting-point. The cast of mind is towards future development and results. (Fs)

37a A combination of pressures in modern scientific discourse has produced what at first seems to be a paradoxical usage. The characterization of what is there as given is meant to rigorously exclude any reference to a giver; hence the expression: "It is simply given." This closure on itself is mirrored in the etymology of the term. Thus, in the Latin from which the usage takes it origin, the term for gift (donum) is a direct extension of the verbal stem (do, give), whereas the term for the given (datum) is formed from the past participle and thereby suggests a finished state, completed within itself. An epistemology that limits itself to data does not permit the knower to go "behind" or "beneath" the given in search of an ontological cause. The only justifiable reason for returning to the given is in order to reconfirm the basis of the progression, to re-examine the argument at its starting-point, to repeat the experiment from the first step onward, or to refine the method of production: in a word, to verify the development and the result. If the initial given is broken down by analysis, a new given appears; but givenness, that is, the characterization of the evidence as given, does not disappear. The "fact of having been given" monitors the progression. Thus, physics starts with corpuscles, and then passes on the molecules, to atoms, to protons and so on; but each new temporary point of rest is itself characterized as a given. Nor is there any talk of a giver. No doubt this usage reflects a combination of factors in modern discourse: the constructivist temper brought about through the mathematical and experimental tendencies in modern science, the exigency for application animating scientific technology, and the positivist temper of philosophers influenced by these factors, such as Hume, Kant and others. The givenness of the given remains inviolate in such discourse, and admits of no giver within its semantic field. In its hypothetical as well as its evidential sense the term enjoys a certain absolution from the conditions of explanation and inference just because it lies prior to them as their starting-point; it stands free from and prior to them just insofar as it is first. This structure of discourse empiricist and phenomenalist has been challenged recently. I do not think that the controversy of sense-data altered very much, however, since its challenge was directed primarily towards the absurdities of interposing sensa between knowers and the world, while it left intact the structure of givenness. No doubt the linguistic turn taken by the so-called ordinary language philosophers drew attention away from data to agents, as when Austin drew attention to performatives and speech acts. But the more long-range critique has been mounted by the work of hermeneutics in the social and humanistic fields; for it restricts the given to the natural sciences and characterizes its own evidence in other ways.2 Nevertheless, even here the turn is not to a giver in the traditional sense. Moreover, the characterization of the evidence as given still determines a wide range of conventional understandings. (Fs)

39a Turning to the semantics of the term "fact," we are familiar with the phrase: "Given the fact that...." which couples the two terms together. Here the term "given" in its combined evidential and hypothetical sense is reinforced by the term "fact" in its evidential sense. "It is a fact that...." is equivalent to "It is actually the case that....," and to "It is a matter of fact that...." This evidential sense is the common current meaning:
Something that has really occurred or is actually the case; something certainly known to be of this character; hence, a particular truth known by actual observation or authentic testimony, as opposed to what is merely inferred, or to a conjecture or fiction; a datum of experience, as distinguished from the conclusions that may be based upon it.3

39b There are nuances in this dictionary account. The term designates a real occurrence ("actually the case"); it is "a datum of experience;" and it is what is "certainly known." This complex meaning of fact has been shaped within the problematic of human cognition, with attention to how realities can be known. It points, therefore, not only to the matter of evidence, to what is there, but also to the human conditions required to certify it. Hence the authority of the phrase: "It is a fact that...." or "It is a known fact that...." Uncontroverted facts are few, however, and the term has been subjected to more and more analysis by theoretically inclined historians, for whom an historical fact is not simply what is there in the evidence, but rather the product of a long process of selection and discrimination that, along with what is there, includes also the interests of the historian, the professional standards of the historical guild, the availability of testimony, the canons of argumentation, the demands of systematic coherence and the spirit of the times. The use of the term "fact" in history is a methodical disciplined use that draws upon an older sense of the term, according to which a fact is not simply what is there, but is rather something that is somehow fashioned or made (from the Latin: facio: do, make). The somewhat archaic "feat" means "a thing done" (from the Old French: fait). In sum, then, the term "fact" has for its foreground, focus and surface what is actually the case, the evidence; but that evidence comes forward from a background of selective attention guided by an implicit understanding of what is significant for a distinctive kind of discourse. To speak of what is there as given fact is to speak within the circle of a discourse that directs attention to the matter insofar as the matter is capable of satisfying certain conditions that are determinded a priori and in accordance with the demands of objective method; that is, the matter must satisfy the set of conditions by which the evidence can be presented in the form of objects standing over against the human knower and in a state of mutual exclusion. This objective sense of the evidence produces the domain in which the given fact is primary. It is important to acknowledge the remarkable results achieved in this way in the natural sciences, and also in some aspects of the human and social sciences. But it needs to be said that such a domain of discourse is not the only domain; and that such a mode of discourse closes out the more primitive semantic atmosphere that arises before us as we reflect upon the gift rather than upon the given. (Fs)