There is a lot said about “tradition”, but very little by way of explaining what “tradition” denotes. The dissident right and many self-described traditionalists like to talk about “traditional values” or the now memed phrase “return to tradition”, but few give a descriptive account of tradition. Something else the dissident right, or at least segments of it, likes to talk about is Martin Heidegger, but they do not often talk about his philosophical children. So, to inaugurate this blog, I will touch on what tradition is and to do so I will look to Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of Heidegger’s children, and see what he has to say.
“The real force of morals…is based on tradition. They are freely taken over but by no means created by a free insight or grounded on reasons. This is precisely what we call tradition: their ground of validity…tradition has a justification that lies beyond rational grounding and in large measure determines our institutions and attitudes.”[1]
The above passage is the closest that Gadamer comes to defining tradition. There are three things said about tradition here: that of being freely taken over, not being created by free insight, but has a justification which lies beyond rational grounding, and that of being the grounding of our institutions and attitudes. Morals, or at least their “real force”, are based in tradition because they are “freely handed over” and are not “created by a free insight or grounded in reasons.” Tradition, from the Latin, means “that which is handed over.” What of being freely handed over? If I were to hand over my truck to a friend, how would this be different than if I were to freely hand over my truck? Two possibilities present themselves: first, that my handing over of the truck was done volitionally; second, that I handed over the truck without first requiring something of my friend. In the former case, I might have crashed the truck five times and thus, having shown myself unable to drive, I was forced to abdicate ownership, I was forced to hand over the truck. In the latter case, I might have given my friend the truck in exchange for his old car and thus making it a conditional handing over. To freely hand over, then, means to hand over volitionally and unconditionally. When tradition is handed down, the recipient did not force the initiated to initiate her into the tradition, and so it is free in the first sense, and she is handed the tradition without condition, and thus it is free in the second sense.
The second thing said about tradition is that it is “not created by free insight”, it is “not grounded on reasons” and has “a justification lies beyond rational grounding.” Tradition is not Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, to put it differently. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals is the attempt by Kant, through his free insight, to establish an ethical system grounded in, and justified by, pure practical reason. Kantian ethics can be traced back to the ruminations of Immanuel Kant and is thus the creation of his free insight. Tradition, however, is historical, but never reducible to the thoughts of one man nor is ever the creation of one man; tradition is less of a creation and more of a handing down, a handing down which involves reformulations and adaptations but never creation. Aristotle handed down, with reformulations and adaptions, the deposit given to him by Plato, who in turn handed down, with his own reformulations and adaptions, the deposit given to him by Socrates, who in turn handed down the deposit given to him by Parmenides, etc. Nowhere in this tradition is creation by free insight, there is instead a handing down that involves development—but development is not creation in the sense that Kant created Kantian ethics.
Since tradition is not the creation of free insight, it is neither grounded in nor justified by reasons. This is not to say that tradition is irrational or is divorced from reason. Aristotle, Plato and Socrates all used reason, and Aristotle was the first person to formalize the science of logic. How, then, is tradition not grounded in nor justified by reasons? Keeping with the example of the Greeks, the value of the Aristotelian tradition is not that it was based upon some apriori principle or that a list could be made of all the reason why it is valuable. Rather, the value of the Aristotelian tradition is in the ways it developed the ideas of Plato, Socrates and the pre-Socratics, how it overcame the challenges Plato, Socrates, and the pre-Socratics faced. If there is a base, rather than multiple bases, to the tradition, it would be fidelity: fidelity to what came before, and a fidelity expressed by a dual attitude of reverence and a critical examination that gives birth to development, reformulation and adaptation. If a justification of the tradition were to be given, it would look more like a story, a telling of how the tradition overcame various challenges and how it fared better than its rivals, than a syllogism.
The third thing said about tradition in the passage above is that tradition “in large measure determines our institutions and attitudes.” Institutions vary in age and specificity. Some institutions have only existed for a generation and are specific to a particular region of a particular country, others have exited for thousands of years and are found almost everywhere across the world. It will be the later—consisting of the university, the state, the Church, and the family—which will be of focus here. Institutions, like tradition, exist by being handed down from one generation to the next. The birth of a generation inaugurates the coming to be of new professors, new sovereigns, new bishops, and new families. As Aristotle continued the legacy of Plato and Socrates, so too do institutions persist through the generations.
What animates institutions, what moves them to be handed down, is the tradition grounding them. There is, broadly, the educational tradition that is comprised of educators as diverse as Hugh of Saint Victor and John Dewey, and this tradition, this handing down of educational wisdom, is what animates the university. Giving breath to each sovereign is the long tradition of politics, the long story of Man wrestling with questions of justice.
Since our attitude are, to a large degree, influenced by institutions, it would follow from what has been said about that the attitudes we hold are grounded in tradition. Most people cannot explain why they have the attitudes they have, and to give reasons for each attitude would, in some sense, not adequately explain why people hold the attitudes they do. To understand our attitudes, we need to understand their place in the tradition we are apart of. The inclination towards tolerance, for example, is understood when looking at how it fits within the liberal tradition from John Locke to today. To understand the aversion to polygamy requires looking at the Christian tradition from Abraham to today. Traditions are stories, and as historical beings, as beings living out stories, our attitudes only make sense when understood within the tradition we are a part of.
Thus, we have looked to Gadamer and found how he answers the question “what is tradition?” In the upcoming posts, I will look at two other thinkers and how they define tradition. Which thinkers? You will just have to wait and see!
[1] Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Truth and Method. Continuum Publishing. New York: New York. 2004. 282