Interview With Tugendhat

ethic@, Florianpolis, v.5, n. 1, p. 1-6, Jun 2006.

I WOULD CONSIDER MYSELF TO BE A NATURALIST

An interview with ERNST TUGENDHAT

by Darlei DallAgnol e Alessandro Pinzani

Ernst Tugendhat is one of the most important living German philosophers. He was born in Brno(former Czechoslovakia, nowadays Czech Republic) in 1930 to a Jewish family. In 1938 the Tugendhatshad to leave the country because of the threat represented by Nazi Germany. They emigrated first toSwitzerland, then to Caracas, Venezuela. After classical studies at Stanford University (California),Ernst Tugendhat moved to Germany in order to study philosophy in Freiburg and Mnster (amongothers with Heidegger). He became an assistant professor in Tbingen (where he made hisHabilitation) before getting a professorship in Heidelberg. He worked at the Max-Plack-Institut zurErforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt (which at that timewas co-directed by Jrgen Habermas), spend some years in Chile and was a professor at the FreieUniversitt Berlin till his retirement. He was and still is visiting professor in universities in Europe aswell as in North and South America. Among his many books: Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in diesprachanalytische Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976; Selbstbewusstsein undSelbstbestimmung, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1979; Probleme der Ethik, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984;Vorlesungen ber Ethik, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1993, and Egozentrizitt und Mystik. Eineanthropologische Studie, Mnchen: Beck, 2003.

ethic@: Could you please tell us why youchose to study philosophy?

Tugendhat: For no special reason. I had a friendat school in Venezuela, also a German emigrant,who started to get interested in philosophy and as it often happens I started to get interested inthe same thing. But then something strangeoccurred: I found this book, Being and Time byHeidegger, and as soon as I had read this book and I read it immediately twice, when I was fifteen there was no question anymore about what Iwas going to do in my life. At that time, a fewmonths after reading this book, I went to Stanfordfor my undergraduate studies, but while leavingVenezuela I told to myself: as soon as it will bepossible it was 1945 Ill go to Germany tostudy this kind of philosophy. It was only muchlater that I then took distance bit by bit fromHeidegger. I am considering the possibility of givingagain a course on Heidegger in order to see whatreally in my own opinion has still value in this bookand what not. If you ask me now, I wouldnt beable to give an answer.

ethic@: What impressed you so much at thattime in Heidegger?

Tugendhat: I had the impression that somehowhe was drawing up a completely new picture ofwhat human existence is like, and that fascinatedme.

ethic@: In recent years you showed astronger interest for Anthropology, yet not forCultural Anthropology. Could you please tellus why you think that Anthropology couldrepresent a sort of philosophia prima? Doesit still make sense to speak of a philosophiaprima nowadays? And why should this rolebe played by Anthropology and not byPhilosophy of Language, instead?

Tugendhat: To begin with your last question, Iconsider philosophical anthropology andphilosophy of language to be closely tied up toeach other, and I believe that it would be dogmaticto claim that all human understanding could bereduced to linguistic understanding. Beside, Ibelieve that we are interested in clearing up someessential features of human existence and Im notso sure that this could be done simply throughanalysis of language.As for your first question: perhaps we could speak,instead of Anthropology, of human understanding.

TUGENDHAT, E. I Would Consider Myself to Be a Naturalist

ethic@, Florianpolis, v.5, n.1, p. 1-6, Jun 2006.

2

Furthermore, I feel quite sure that the way in whichwe understand ourselves, the others and the worldin which we live, is the basis of all our philosophicalquestions. When I first developed this thesis, whichI presented in an article in Spanish contained inmy book Problemas [Barcelona: Gedisa, 2002],it was somehow an attempt to say that we, asphilosophers, have to do with fundamentalquestions and it is not very sensible tocompartmentalize what we do in philosophy intodifferent subject matters. Such a case ofphilosophical compartmentalization can be seen(very clearly, in my view) in what they callPhilosophy of Action. I think Philosophy ofAction should be closely tied to the way personsfeel about themselves and the connection seemsto be obviously an anthropological connection.

ethic@: Which is the relationship betweenethics and Anthropology as you define it?

Tugendhat: Well, I claimed that there is such arelationship in my lectures on analytical philosophy[Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in diesprachanalytische Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M.:Suhrkamp, 1976], more precisely in the seventhlecture, and it did not quite work out. But it certainlyseems rather plausible that it cannot be somethingwhich is just in the air. Rather, it has to do withhow we relate ourselves to each other. If ethicshas a purely anthropological foundation, this hasto do with the fact that in it we ask what isnecessary for people in order to be able to coexistwith each other and this would be ananthropological question. I mean: in all these cases be it aesthetics, be it ethics I always tend toask what relation these interests have to myfundamental interests, and when I say my I mean:as a human being.

ethic@: Which is your current position withregard to justification in ethics? In somerecent works you mention symmetricalcontractualism: could you explain thisapproach?

Tugendhat: I must confess that I will probablynot be able to explain it well. To begin with the

term contractualism, I think that the basis ofmorality must be in some sense contractarian, andthis simply means that in order to convince anotherperson that he should consider himself a memberof a social community, you have to show him thatthis is in his own interest. Since this is somethingthat you can show to everyone else, this result in acontractarian position. But this is not the wholequestion, in my opinion.We could make reciprocal contracts in which oneperson would be less considered than anotherperson. I believe that this leads to the question:where does justice arise and where does equalityarise? My present position on this matter is thefollowing: When people do something together, wehave to deal with something which we dont findin other species, namely the fact that each personhas a will. The will has something to do with whata person considers to be good for her. And thenthere are, I think, two polar possibilities (I saypolar possibilities because there can be inter-between possibilities). The first one is that one ofthe people making the contract be it two or morepersons or a group among them will decide howthe cooperation has to take place. The otherpossibility is that everybody decides and thatmeans that there is a symmetric relationship incommanding and obeying. Lets consider theexample of a couple, of two people: what does itmean that they live symmetrically? It means thatneither one subordinates the other, nor the othersubordinates him- or herself, and so they aresymmetrical as far as demanding and obeying areconcerned.I think this happens whatever we do together. Letsconsider a group of friends which is doing anexcursion. Well, it seems obvious to me that eitherwe have a structure of power in which one personsays what it has to be done, or it is considerednatural that everybody contributes equally in thedecision making. It would be strange to say thatsome of them just do not contribute, unless thereare some special reasons (like if they are ill orsomething similar) for the fact that they do notcontribute or contribute less. But I believe that thereare fundamentally two possibilities for commonhuman action or enterprise: it is either power orwhat I called the symmetric element. That leads to



3

equality and then, of course, problems of justicearise, because as soon as it doesnt work smoothly,or when the people assume that nobody has theabsolute power of deciding, they will start tocomplain and to ask: why not me? or: why me?.This is true only on the premise that everybodycontribute in the same way, and so I wouldnt saysimply that everybody has to contribute in the sameway, that there has to be equality (it is always betternot to use categorical imperatives of the sort:something has to be in a certain way), but thereare surely two possibilities. The first one: if onebelieves that he is able to acquire absolute power,then let him go ahead and let the others be slaves.But there is another possibility, which is not justcontractarian. If we have a normal contract, likein the easiest case of two people, for each peoplethe question is: it is better for me to enter thecontract or not? Their only question is: What isbetter for me? But in the symmetrical relationshipthe question is not only: Do I gain by entering inthis contract? The alternative is not between: Whatis going to be my condition if I enter the contract?versus I dont enter the contract, but there is asort of interpersonal comparison of the kind: Ifhe gets more than I do, Im going to be unsatisfied,Im going to call it unjust, Ill enter the contractbut with the conscience that it is an unjust contract,and there enters this aspect called symmetry, whichhas to be added to the idea of simplecontractarianism.

ethic@: In your symmetricalcontractarianism, is there a concept of thegood, and if yes, which one?

Tugendhat: Well, I discussed this in my article onhow we are to understand morality [Wie sollenwir Moral verstehen?, in: Aufstze 1992-2000,Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001, 163-184]. Mystarting point was a general conception of what ischaracteristic for any kind of morality. I believethat every morality has some conception of themorally good, and I took my definition of what itmeans morally good from Rawls: we consider aperson to be morally good when she acts as wewish she would act. Now, this seems to me to bea general conception; in the special case in which

we have a non-traditionalist morality, and thatmeans for me a contractarian morality, we need(in my opinion) a somehow absolute concept ofthe good and that simply means a grammaticallyabsolute concept, i.e., Im not simply speaking ofwhat is good for me or what is good for him, butof what we want from each other, and the questionis how to define it. In this case, in which we have asymmetrical contractarian position, my definitionis the following: morally good is what is equallygood for everybody.You have here to do firstly with two terms: one ismorally good, while the other term appears inits definition as contractarianism offers it, and thatis good for. But then, another term enters thestage: equally good for everybody. I have beencriticized for this equally; my critics ask: whatdoes it mean? Well, it is not the best word to beused, but with this word I try to do justice to thefact that in this moral contract the persons do notonly compare what they get out of it with whatthey would get if they would not make a contract,but they rather compare their position within thecontract to the position of the other people. Andhere comes in this word equally, because if youjust had the contract without any kind of equalconsideration, we could say that if a person comesbetter off with than without the contract, then theother person too comes out better off with thanwithout the contract, but then Id have just acontract, with no reference to justice. This is whyanother element must come in, in order to takeseriously the aspect of justice: I have to refer toequality, and this happens when I define the morallygood as being equally good for everybody.

ethic@: Does all this imply a sort of ethicalnaturalism?

Tugendhat: I would consider myself to be anaturalist, and to be a naturalist doesnt mean thatone is able to apply simply some generalities whichexist in other species to our species, but it meansthat whatever happens in human action is ultimatelybased on our genetical constitution. We arespeaking, nevertheless, of the genetical constitutionof human beings and not of any other animal. Thatis why, for example, I think that when we ask what



4

is the central aspect of human beings we shouldbe aware of another question: if there is a centralaspect, in one way or another it must have beenthat aspect which made it possible for this speciesto advance within biological evolution. Where thisspecific aspect of predicative language comes in,I can immediately say what advantage it has forsurvival, while for example, if we take the conceptof liberty (and if liberty is not defined in any morecomplex way, if it just means that we are able todo one thing or another), it certainly doesnt helpsurvival. The consideration of biological questionscomes in unnecessarily, I believe, in philosophicalreflection, and it comes anyway somewhere at theborder. I believe that certain facts are fundamental,and when I claim this, I must be able to say andI think that it makes sense to say it that this aspectcame up in biological evolution (of course we dontknow how) and was responsible for a large partof what we consider to be human characteristics.

ethic@: If we understood you correctly, youare not a methodological naturalist: you dontaccept that one can reduce philosophicalmethods to empirical science, sinceconceptual qualification is important forphilosophy and for ethics.

Tugendhat: Yes.

ethic@: Do you think that socio-biologicalstudies may have relevance for philosophy ingeneral and for your moral theoryparticularly?

Tugendhat: I must admit that in the moment I donot feel very competent to answer this question. Ihave written an article on this subject about fouryears ago and re-reading it I am not very happyabout it, but one thing seems to me to be clear:both in humans and in other species we havealtruistic action, but we cannot come to anyconclusion from the way this altruism works in otherspecies to the way it works in the human species,because it works in very different manners. I makea further distinction between what I call anormative altruism (and I think that in thediscussion with biology this kind of altruism should

have precedence) and what we may callspontaneous altruism. But both in my opinionare quite different in their functioning.In the case of other species, altruism simply meansthat an animal does something which is not in itsown interest, but in the interest of others, and thequestion is how this is to be explained. Well, atleast with regard to other species it seems to beexplained by their genetical constitution. In the caseof human beings this obviously doesnt work,because it has to be explained in part (at least whenwe have normative altruism) by this whole systemof learning and justifying what we call moralnorms, and this for example presupposeslanguage. We have to understand imperatives andone characteristic of this is that we can always alsonegate the imperative, whereas this kind of libertydoesnt seem to exist for other species.

ethic@: Did you follow the recent polemicbetween Habermas and some neuroscientistsabout the freedom of the will, with Habermasclaiming that this kind of studies were denyingthe freedom of will? What do you think aboutit?

Tugendhat: With regard to the discussion whichis being carried on (I think more in Germany thaneverywhere else), Id describe the situation as thefollowing. There are some American physiologistswho did find out that there is a sort of physiologicalprecedence when a person decides to dosomething, but this is a very small insight, even if avery interesting one. Then we have, especially inGermany (I dont know the situation in the USA),some professors of brain physiology who madevery large claims, consisting mainly in saying that,since brain physiology is a normal scientificenterprise, and since every normal scientificenterprise presupposes determinism, determinismis true and therefore free will cannot exist. On thispoint they believe to have found something new,but they are just at the level of 19th centuryphilosophy. In the meanwhile there has already beena long tradition, more in the Anglo Saxon worldthat in the German world, about what has beencalled compatibilism, i.e. the idea that determinismand free will are not incompatible.



5

Here comes in a purely philosophical distinctionconcerning the criteria of what we call responsibleaction (I prefer this term to free action, becausethe word free is highly ambiguous), i.e. the criteriaof what allows us to make reproaches to otherpeople and also to ourselves. I think you can makehere a purely phenomenological distinction and thisis a task of philosophy. Therefore, there is not reallyany serious discussion between the clarification offree will offered by philosophy on one hand andwhat scientists claim on the other hand. Scientistsdo not have any alternative conception.I think that there are open problems in the way inwhich philosophy clarifies free will and it is still animportant question to find out what is thephysiological counterpart of the fact that we areable to suspend our wishes in relation to otherswhich we consider as rational and it would bevery interesting if one day, let say in fifty or hundredyears, physiology will be able to contribute to thisdiscussion. But the present debate is completelymisleading because the physiologists do not basetheir argument on anything which they have foundout as scientists, but simply on an old-fashioneddogma which says that if there is determinism, thenthere cannot be free will. Therefore I consider thisdiscussion between Habermas and some Germanphysiology professors a pseudo-discussion.

ethic@: In the last decades bioethical issuesbecame a major topic in the philosophicaldebate. Which place do these issues have inyour moral thinking?

Tugendhat: You should specify what youunderstand under bioethical issues? Because theword bioethics is used in a rather lose sense. Ifwhat you mean by it is the application of ethicalquestions to certain marginal cases like death,some kinds of illnesses, or how we should behavetowards embryos or animals well, that would beone conception of bioethics. Now, if you ask mehow this relates to ethics, you indeed put your fingeron a question which for me is difficult, because Ihave a conception of morality as a mere system ofreciprocal demands, and if this is all we can do,then the great question is: how are we going tobehave in all those cases in which the subjectscannot reciprocate?

In some recent papers I have tried to show that anethics of compassion as it has been developed bySchopenhauer (and in a way Id say utilitarianismis close to it because in both positions we have anon-reciprocal conception of morality; but let mestay with Schopenhauer) the question simply is: inwhich way does compassion enter a morality whichis primarily contractarian, even if symmetricallycontractarian?Ill make first a distinction between the person whoacts (the onlooker) and the person who suffersthe action (the outlooker). The onlooker willalways have an interest in that the others do notact badly, that they act morally, and that includesas a main point: altruistically. Now, there is asecond source of altruistic action, namelycompassionate action. When we praise altruisticactions done out of compassion, we can praisethem from the point of view of ourcontractualistically based morality. We also praisethe fact that each person develops her own capacityof compassion and as we do that from a moralpoint of view. We are not going to praise someparticularistic act of compassion, like the one I dofor my cat, for example, but a generalizedcompassion. And in this way compassionate actionmay play a role in a morality which has asymmetrical contractarian basis.This leads of course to certain contradictions. Thegreat problem with a purely compassionate ethicsis that it is not general: people are compassionatebut they may be also cold, so we cannot leave itjust to their good judgment of when to do what.But once compassion enters, once we have a moralinterest in compassion, then the compassion whichwe are like to foment, will be a generalized one,and to me this seems to be essential: compassionethics only works when compassion is generalized.Once this happens, an element of generalizationcomes in, which is more universal than thegeneralization in normal ethics, becausecompassion is also related to beings which cannotreciprocate. This leads to difficulties between apurely contractarian conception and this otherconception which arises out of contractarianismbut has its main source in compassioned actionwhich is now to be generalized and could include,for example, animals. Therefore we havecontradictions: how should we behave when we



6

have a human interest to kill animals and otherwisewe have altruism towards animals. I think this is adifficult problem which cannot just be solved in asimply way.

ethic@: What is your position in the debateabout eugenics? There is an idea that if westart to modify the human genoma, we couldmodify the nature of human beings as moralbeings

Tugendhat: Well, this is a discussion thatHabermas has made. We have to start with thosequestions which are in the foreground. The firstthing that biogenetics is going to do is try to get ridof inherited diseases, and you have to change thegenoma in order to achieve this goal. Then youget in a difficult situation in which you act onqualities, which cannot be clearly considereddiseases, so that you rather try to improve certaintraits. One could say: Why not improve capacities?But then another problem arises, which Habermasdoesnt have touched: the problem of justice. Whoare the first people who are going to be treated inthis way? This could create social injustice. Therecomes in a quite normal problem, i.e. a problemof justice. I believe there is one point which shouldbe forbidden by law, and that is when parents are

not interested in an improvement, but rather in achange according to their aesthetical preferences,for instance, if the child should rather be musicalthan intelligent, if he should have blue eyes insteadof brown eyes etc.There is book by Bruce Ackerman, that I admirevery much, which was published in 1980, SocialJustice in the Liberal States [New Haven /London, Yale University Press, 1980], and has avery nice chapter on these problems and I thinkhe gives a solution which seems plausible to me.Those parents, or whoever decides on the changeswhich are going to be made, must think about howthe person who is going to be changed will reactto this change once she gets rational capacities andshe can talk to those who changed her. What willshe say to those people? If the answer of theparents would be well, we just liked it, then theintervention would not be justified. If they say well,we wanted you to have greater advantages in thefight for life, the answer will arise questions ofjustice perhaps but is not wrong in itself. What isbad is that a person can simply decide about thequalities of other persons, and if the ultimatejustification he can give to the child is just well, Iliked it more, and not well, I thought that wouldbe better for you, then it has been a wrongdecision.

Documents

Interview With Tugendhat