Clarity (philosophy)
The word clarity is often used with a specific meaning in the philosophical context; in the early modern period roughly in the sense of clearly recognizable .
Early modern age
René Descartes speaks in a similar sense as scholastic authors in 1637 of clare et distincte (clarity and distinctness). Clarity and clarity are a criterion of truth :
- Then I generally considered what belongs to the truth and certainty of a sentence […]. Because because I had just found someone whom I recognized as true and certain, I thought I should also know what that certainty consists of. Now I had noticed that in the sentence: "I think, therefore I am" there is nothing more that convinces me of its truth than that I see very clearly (très clairement; manifestissime) that in order to think, one is to be must. That is why I thought I could accept the proposition as a general rule: that the things which we understand very clearly and very clearly (fort clairement et fort distinctement; valde delucide et distincte) are all true; but that therein lies some difficulty in noticing what are the things which we clearly understand.
According to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , the clarity of an idea is a measure of its correspondence with reality. He wrote under the heading Of the clear and dark, distinct and confused ideas :
- “Our simple ideas are clear when they are exactly like the objects themselves from which they are received […]. If memory preserves them in this way, then in this case they are clear ideas, and to the extent that they lack this original accuracy, or they have, so to speak, lost their first freshness and have become cloudy and withered over time are, to the extent that they are dark. "
20th century
In Critical Rationalism , clarity, along with simplicity, is a property that belongs to statements that make these other people easily understandable. The falsifiability of statements is particularly promoted through clarity .
Hans-Joachim Niemann specified some criteria that can apply to clarity in scientific discourse (but not only there):
- Always keep an eye on the problem, don't get lost in language problems
- Avoid ambiguous words and meaningless statements
- Strive for brevity and simplicity
- prefer easily refutable sentences
- find concrete examples
- convey the effort to understandability to the reader. ( Karl Popper wrote about Schopenhauer: "He was a sincere thinker; because he did everything to make himself understandable.")
As a contrast to clarity and simplicity, Hans Albert uses the term imposing prose for the inflated style of some philosophers.
literature
- Gottfried Gabriel: Art. Clearly and distinctly. In: HWPh , Vol. 4, 846-848
- Bernhard Asmuth: Art. Perspicuitas. In: HWRh (Historical Dictionary of Rhetoric) , Vol. 6 (2003), 814–874
Web links
- Art clear , clarity. In: Grimm: German dictionary
- Rudolf Eisler : Art. Clarity (lucidity). In: Dictionary of Philosophical Terms , 1904.
Individual evidence
- ^ G. Gabriel, lc, 846
- ↑ René Descartes: Treatise on the method of the correct use of reason and the scientific research into truth (Discours sur la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences), 1637, translation by Kuno Fischer, 1863
- ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: New treatises on the human mind . Chapter XXIX
- ^ Hans-Joachim Niemann: Lexicon of Critical Rationalism . Tübingen 2006, p. 177
- ↑ Hans Albert: Critique of the pure epistemology . Tübingen 1994, note 56