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HORIZON
The word “horizon” refers to that which delimits from outside some finite whole, both in the sense of limiting it and of making it possible. By definition, such items as the Universe, a closed time series, a complete system or the act of being must lack any horizon insofar as there is nothing outside them that limits them. The approach to this topic will be through such contemporary currents of thought as phenomenology, hermeneutics, the life-world, the theory of systems and epistemology. The entry will conclude with some considerations about its ethical and theological implications.
1. Historical Views of Horizons of Knowledge
For Greek Philosophy knowledge is envisioned as a problem of intracosmic movement. The cosmos is often represented as a sphere, whose uniform circular movement is the only per-fect movement, since in it every point is simultaneously a beginning and an end. Greek Philosophy tends to regard a horizon as what sets limits to being, and this notion was only challenged with the arrival of the metaphysical concept of creatio ex nihilo.
Mindful that all human understanding occurs by grasping the form or limits of a thing, the Greeks tend to regard infinity as something suspect precisely because a lack of limits. In contrast, from the perspective of creation the infinite refers to something positive, since the creature, proceeding from nothing, has to be positively sustained by the Creator in order to exist and the distance between Creator and creature is incommensurable: the creature must be continuously brought out of nothing by the Creator.
1.2. Deductive-hypothetical method
Let us see now how modern Science surpasses the Greek horizon too. In the modern era, since Kepler and Galileo, the bases of Greek Science have been shifted. The understanding of the Universe does not consist now of researching the causes of the movements, but of deciphering the mathematical language in which Nature is written. Consequently, ideal conditions for the appearance of phenomena are feigned within a quantitative and homogeneous, general framework, which is indefinitely extendable. The new suppositions of modern Science are the isotropical space and isochronical time, both imaginatively dissociated from the observable movements. Isotropical space means that it extends itself unlimitedly in all possible directions, so that one meter is always the same wherever it is. Isochronical time means that time always flows equally, without becoming faster or slower in its course.
The relational character of modern Science is visible in that it puts certain magnitudes in relation with others according to a function. It is not interested in things as they are, but in functional dependence of some behaviours with respect to others. Newton clearly establishes the difference between mathematical-physical law and fact, paving the way for the experiment in Science. So begins the deductive-hypothetical method.
Euclidean Geometry and Newtonian Physics were the Sciences that drew the horizon of Kantian Critical Philosophy. Space and time as a priori forms of sensitivity satisfy the conditions of the flat geometric figures of Euclid, and categories of intellect, such as unity or causality, are convenient to objectivize corpuscula or points of force with which Newtonian Mechanics is built. Still in Logical Neopositivism the verifiable physical sentences are set up as the paradigm of all scientific sentences.
Again the horizon of Science is broadened with the foundational crisis at the beginning of twentieth century. The first signs of crisis would not affect the validity of the former scientific paradigms, but their exclusivity. With the discovery of the universal force of gravity between all the masses Newtonian concepts like action over distance are abandoned, as is the absolute system of spacetime coordinates of the constrained Theory of Relativity, which is substituted by the curvature of the Universe, determined by gravitational fields. Likewise continuity of space and time, reflected in the uniform and indefinite trajectories of classical Physics, would be affected by the adoption of the quanta as discontinuous physical units. The modifications at macroscopic level due to the Theory of Relativity would be completed by new modifications at microscopic level.
2. Contemporary conceptions of horizon
2.1. Horizon in Phenomenology and Existential Analytics
For Husserl the horizon starts with external perception. What is immediately given to perception are the objective profiles, amassed in the object as its common internal horizon. Analogously, objective determinations are thematized in judgement, while their logical subject is the horizon that gives coherence to the transit from one determination to the others, without being thematized itself as universal concept. And going round all the objects and perceived configurations the world as ultimate external horizon is found, where all the partial external horizons or immediate perceptive backgrounds come together. The world is not given outside the things, but constitutes its continuous horizon or, in other words, the horizon of the horizons. For Husserl world is the indefinitely open and movable horizon, which is co-present with the perceived objects.
But where does the notion of horizon proceed from, if it does not designate an objective feature? Husserl’s answer is precise: it comes from the temporal dynamic presentification by the consciousness, which consists of extending the present by retaining the earlier moments (Retention) and at the same time opening an indeterminate horizon (Protention), which has its replicate in the worldly horizons in continuity.
The next step would be taken, when the subject itself incorporates the differences between foreground and background introduced by the horizons, and not only the dynamism of presentification which opens the horizons. This step is taken by the Existential Analytics of Heidegger. The horizons would have their origin in the differences in the temporality of Dasein once they have been projected upon the world. It is not the consciousness which unfolds in horizons, but for Heidegger the horizons are due to the existential project, and in both cases the subjective origin of these stands out in their junction with wordly facticity.
2.2. Horizons in the Hermeneutics
Existential Analytics is the bridge that will lead us now to the hermeneutical sense of the horizons, which is applicable to texts and historical events, such as Gadamer has expounded. Understanding a verbal utterance, a piece of writing or the work of a writer implies the prior understanding of the linguistic context, of the literary genre where the piece is inserted or of the period to which the writer belongs, that work as horizons with regard to the parts which we want to understand.
With regard to the historical horizons, they purport certain assimilation to the language, but now the explicit intentions of the historical agents stand out on an implicit background of events. Reconstructing a historical period means placing it in the continuous thread of historical antecedents and subsequent events, in such a way that it intervenes as response to the challenges of former events and seeks simultaneously an answer from subsequent events. Gadamer calls this network of events fusion of horizons. The indistinct use of the same terms for language and history is significant: period, posing questions, giving answer…
2.3. The world of life as horizon
A new concept at stake is the world of life. The pragmatic concatenations refer dynamically to the world, as do the social action and the communicative action. In the three cases the world of life constitutes the necessary horizon for their unfolding. Let us examine some examples.
A) Alfred Schutz pays attention to the horizon taken from the world of life and through which we understand the social action. The horizons fit together and mix according to a triple spatial, temporal and social perspective. The spatial fusion of the horizons is what leads various hunters to say “we see the same bird”, when each one sees it from his own angle of vision. Reciprocal perspectives merge in a same space of vision as if there were only one viewer. As for the temporal horizon, it links distinct biographical events and memories of successive generations in a single narrative time, where moments lived, remembered and transmitted are arranged in a ficticious continuous chronological series, notwithstanding the contextual differences of each period. With regard to the social horizons, these are transposed to a single functional network, which is stretched over the complementary nature of the different roles.
B) Habermas transcendentally links the world of life with the communicative action, which is suitable to open it up and unfold it in the course of the communication by virtue of the horizons that appear performatively with the speech acts. Unlike supposing it in the social action, now we are before a word of life that arises constantly and renews itself with the variation of starting situation. Habermas gives the example of the builders who take a mid-morning break to eat. It is the established custom for the youngest of them to go to the nearest shop for the sandwiches. And each time that a break-down in the communication occurs, it is because some of the horizons, which are open up by it, has become blocked –when the boy who must get the drinks replies “why me?” (normative component), when the shop is closed (informative component) or if one of the workmates says he is not hungry (expressive component). In any of these cases it would be necessary to redefine communicatively the horizons of the action.
2.4. Analytical method versus system as horizon
In the Modern Age Mechanics was the prevailing model of knowledge, to the point of somehow impregnating the various Sciences with mechanicism. But the concept of system provides a new key to unify physical, biological and human Sciences and introduces the notion of horizon for the parts. Indeed, not only does the material Universe become more intelligible as an electromagnetic field than with the corpuscular Physics; but also Genetics has replaced the isolated consideration of gens by structured configurations, and Evolutive Psychology has adopted the notion of functional autonomy within the system to account of the learning of higher capabilities.
More problematic is applying the system to man. Although in contrast to the Cartesian Dualism system safeguards the unity of man by coordinating biological and psychical activities through the brain, it shoud be noted that system does not assume the hierarchy of immaterial activity over the sensory acts. The horizon of man is the possibilities of own act of being beyond every closed precint. Reality is the horizon within which man inserts what he encounters outside and what belongs to himself.
2.5. Horizon in objective knowledge
The horizon has simoultaneously something manifest and something hidden; it is what is beyond, but at the same time what stands out in the visible to a certain extent. This has been already expounded. There is horizon in what is perceived, in a fragment of a text or in the historical event, in the pragmatic connections of the world of life and in the functional correlations, as inserted in a system, which is their horizon. Sometimes we can invert foreground and horizon, like in perception and its background or in the historical series, where the same events give account of the previous ones and are explained by these; in contrast, this is not possible when the horizon designates a whole that is contained in another greater whole. But there is a paradigmatic case to show heterogeneity between the horizon and what is delimited by it, without its being a totality: the dichotomy between the general idea and the fact. The object of thought has a horizon what exceeds the thinking –the first sense of the fact– or what remains below the threshold of thought –second sense of the fact.
As for the former, a dog is typified by general ideas: animal, mammal, vertebrate…, but it is always more than the sum of these notes. A single dog behaves as the horizon of all those ideas with which we surround it. According to Husserl’s example, things are typified as tree, bush, bird… and have their horizon of experience which prescribes an indefinite typification of notes not yet experienced, but expected: so, when we see a dog, we see beforehand its way of eating, playing, or jumping. The fact surpasses the ideas by which the mind objectivizes it, and the mind passes from one idea to another by negation: if in a order of gradual generalization I say that Lassie is a dog, it is because there are dogs that are not Lassie; if I say the dog is mammal, it is because there are mammals that are not dogs; if I say the mammal is an animal, it is because there are animals that are not dogs… The operative enlargement of the mind advances with negations. But the fact does not correspond to any these operations, rather it condenses what is not thinkable, but as horizon it surpasses all general ideas commensurate with correlative operations.
Thus this lack of adjustment between the general idea and the abstract ones to which the idea is attributed is what allows the indefinite enlargement of the mind and its stopping in the notion of fact. This does not occur with the divisions in the numbers. Negations in the typs of the numbers do not originate indeterminated cases, but determinations, which perfectly fit operation of denying. In fact from the natural numbers we arrive at the negative ones, if the positive ones are excluded, without the surplus of the case remaining; on the other hand, if we deny that dog is cat, we do so from the general idea of mammal, of which both are cases. If we exclude fractional number from the natural ones, we are before the positive/negative integers…, but in no case does a factual horizon of indetermination appears, in such a way that it is partly irreduceable to being thought.