Identifying Presuppositions: The Foundations of Philosophical Dialogue

Analysing Presuppositions: A Fundamental Thinking Skill

Our discourse and our daily interactions, but also our perceptions and decisions, are guided by presuppositions that are themselves shaped by beliefs. Generally we don’t question them; we aren’t even aware of them, so obvious do they seem to us.

Yet without this ability to step back from our presuppositions, could we really philosophize?

If we don’t take the time to examine them, when we exercise other thinking skills such as arguing, objecting, conceptualizing or inquiring, we risk merely reinforcing our beliefs — which is not philosophizing.

We think we are arguing, for example, but we are only justifying opinions we already hold, reinforcing our beliefs instead of questioning them. And even when we criticize or object, we risk remaining trapped inside the same paradigm, the same frame of thought.

Scrutinizing presuppositions allows us to examine the implicit beliefs underlying discourse and judgements.

Following Nietzsche and his genealogical approach, we can understand how these presuppositions were formed, what their historical and cultural foundations are, what they are for, which values guide them and how they influence the way we see the world. This awareness can free us from preconceived ideas and inherited values, giving us the possibility of thinking more autonomously and creatively. By exploring our presuppositions, we discover how these implicit beliefs shape our understanding of the world and the way we act.

We will also be better able to dialogue, because we will understand the reasons behind misunderstandings. The person we are talking with may not share our presuppositions. So instead of objecting quickly, as often happens when we merely react, we can question the other person about their presuppositions. We can also question ourselves: if I held that presupposition, perhaps I would agree with them. Is it their presupposition that I dispute? Or the conclusion they draw from it?

In what follows, I examine the role of the philosophical practice workshop in becoming aware of our own presuppositions, and how this approach can help us know ourselves better, dialogue in a more enlightened way and broaden our perspectives.

Identifying Presuppositions

Unless it is completely incoherent, a discourse always has a form of unity. It carries an intention, itself guided by a set of presuppositions linked to beliefs, ways of functioning, expectations, needs and fears. This is no doubt one reason why we can sometimes recognize the author of a piece of discourse: what they say rests on a set of presuppositions we know them to hold and recognize in their words. In a sentence or a speech, it is possible to identify different types of presuppositions and, depending on the case, the exercise will require a more or less thorough and more or less hypothetical work of interpretation.

Types of presuppositions

• Logical deductions: what can be logically deduced from a sentence.
• Beliefs/opinions: the speaker’s specific thoughts.
• Difficulties: the obstacles a person encounters, which emerge from their statement or question.
• Intention: an inclination that leads the person to ask a question or take a position.
• State: the speaker’s state of mind or way of being.
• Paradigm: a general tendency or worldview.

For example, the sentence “You mustn’t be afraid of happiness” presupposes that:

• Logical deduction (from the grammatical construction of the sentence): happiness can be frightening.
• Beliefs/opinions: fear is negative; it can be avoided through an effort of will.
• Difficulty: the person saying this finds it hard (or thinks others find it hard) to enjoy moments of happiness.
• Intention: the person wants to master their emotions.
• State: the person is anxious and wants to stay in control, since they don’t want to be afraid. But they have noticed that happiness can be frightening (probably because letting go can feel like losing control).
• Paradigm: psychological/existential.

Let’s take a newspaper article at random. Here is a headline from the French daily Le Monde, dated 31 March 2024, quoting the people interviewed: Miniature farm animals increasingly popular: “They’re smaller, more practical, they take up less room, they eat less.”

This simple headline contains many presuppositions, among them: “animals can be popular”, “it is possible to select animals for leisure purposes”, “an animal shouldn’t take up too much room”, “an animal’s size can be practical or, on the contrary, inconvenient”. But we can also read in this headline that the people quoted probably think animals shouldn’t bother them with their bulky size, that they should serve as living cuddly toys, that what is small is cute and what is cute is desirable. Conversely, we understand that they struggle with whatever is bulky, requires care and patience and costs money. This seems revealing of a consumerist relationship to living beings, a need for “cocooning”, a desire to possess. The people interviewed have a rather eudaemonist relationship to the world: they seek a peaceful, comfortable happiness before worrying about moral, metaphysical or existential considerations. Perhaps they need to reassure themselves with small, cute animals? But if they need reassurance, what are they afraid of? (Of course, these questions themselves contain presuppositions whose validity could be questioned.)

In any case, the people interviewed in the article do not ask themselves whether they may use animals as they please, or whether surrounding themselves with small animals might obscure more important goals in life. Their choice to adopt such animals may not be absurd, but it is unlikely they took the time to question its presuppositions. Most of the time, they will simply have followed a whim, a fashion whose foundations they have not examined.

Stepping Back From Our Patterns of Thought

Analysing the presuppositions of this newspaper headline brings out a certain worldview, a certain relationship to things — in this case to living beings. The work of decoding presuppositions therefore allows us to understand not only the meaning of a discourse, but also the being of the person or people producing it.

Most of the time when we speak or write, we believe we are entirely free to say what we say or write what we write. But with Spinoza we might think that we believe ourselves free because we are ignorant of the causes that determine us. In reality, most of the time we are not aware of the nature of our discourse. We think we speak freely, but without knowing why, we merely express a feeling, an urge to say whatever comes into our head, to defend or justify ourselves. It is rarer for us to take the time, before speaking, to ask ourselves why we want to. Generally we don’t really know where we are speaking from, and we are unaware of the presuppositions underlying what we say. We don’t know whether we are decoding the world through a moral, aesthetic, hedonistic, scientific, pragmatic, utilitarian or rather eudaemonist lens, as in the headline above. Generally we have no idea, and we don’t even ask ourselves the question. We just talk without really knowing why.

Stepping Back From Our Ideas and Ways of Functioning

Among thinking skills, the ability to examine presuppositions seems particularly important. Without this work of going back up to the matrix of thought — without this Platonic anagogy — we risk getting lost in the chaotic diversity of the surface, in the meanders of discourse. Being able to identify presuppositions lets us understand where a discourse originates. We then understand that it is possible not to remain trapped in the principles on which it rests, to move beyond the obvious and open up other perspectives. It is of course also possible to own the principles we have brought to light, while being aware that they are not absolute.

To continue with the example of the success of miniature animals, we could avoid locking ourselves into a eudaemonist perspective and question this practice from a moral, aesthetic or existential point of view. Can we do whatever we like with animals? Do we love an animal if we choose it for being small and cute? Can we love a large, heavy, ugly animal like the rhinoceros? Is what is small and cute beautiful? Should we select animals that comfort us? What kind of person needs to be comforted by small farm animals? These questions, and the answers they lead to, might result in giving up the practice, or continuing it more consciously and therefore more deliberately.

Knowing Ourselves

Identifying other people’s presuppositions allows us to understand the foundations on which their thinking is built, to grasp its coherence, possibly to question it, and to distinguish it from our own. But of course it is also important to become aware of our own presuppositions. Before we identify them as such, we believe they are the only possible ones and therefore shared by everyone. In reality they are our own — or, more often, we share them with the group we belong to, without thinking of questioning them. Yet others are not only possible, but just as valid, worthwhile and widely shared. When we are aware that our position is not absolute and has limits, we can change it, perhaps modify some aspects of it, or keep it while knowing that other paths exist.

Even though it is of course possible to move from one paradigm to another, we all have certain favoured tendencies developed since childhood, probably because they helped us feel secure and find our place in the group. Understanding our own presuppositions is a way of knowing ourselves. In this sense, self-knowledge is not only about knowing where we come from, or what our sexual, cultural or national identity is; it is perhaps first and foremost about being able to identify the fundamental presuppositions on which we build our interpretation of the world (shaped by our culture, gender, nationality and so on). To know ourselves is to be able to spot them, not to take them for absolutes, not to cling to them like a lifebuoy — in other words, to leave behind the spirit of seriousness, as reassuring as it is blind.

This may be one way of interpreting the famous maxim inscribed at Delphi and taken up by Socrates: “Know thyself, and you will know the universe and the gods.” If I know myself, I am aware of the matrix through which I decode reality; I don’t set it up as an absolute; I know there are other equally meaningful readings whose sense and coherence I can try to understand. Knowing myself is the condition for stepping back and giving myself the means not to lock myself into a single perspective. This distance from my own patterns of interpretation broadens my field of vision.

It is therefore a path that gives me the possibility of knowing the universe and the gods by multiplying approaches (a knowledge that of course remains a regulative ideal — a goal that guides my search, even though I know it cannot be reached). Some people frame their understanding of things from a rather moral and emotional angle, others from a scientific, utilitarian, spiritual, materialist, pragmatic or aesthetic one. Each of these approaches makes sense and allows us to interpret the world around us. But each also has its limits, and none is absolute. Being able to analyse presuppositions amounts to establishing a form of perspectivism — a Nietzschean concept implying that there is no absolute objectivity.

This does not mean, however, that we are condemned to pure subjectivity or to a relativism in which anything goes. We always read the world from certain perspectives, which can be evaluated according to criteria that themselves depend on perspectives. Nietzsche’s criterion is the celebration of life, the will to power and the affirmative individual. He encourages us to fully embrace our desires and instincts, to overcome conventional moral values and to create our own values.

But we could change perspective and evaluate instead on the basis of renouncing the will, withdrawal and contemplation — a vision closer to Schopenhauer’s, or to Simone Weil’s with her concept of decreation (a process of dispossessing oneself, in which the ego is diminished or erased to make room for God or the divine: for Weil, decreation is an act of voluntary self-dispossession in which the individual seeks to efface themselves to make room for a presence greater than themselves).

Nietzsche on the one hand, and Schopenhauer or Weil on the other: two matrices with opposite presuppositions. Each makes sense; each has produced deep reflection and philosophy — and yet these interpretations, and the presuppositions on which they rest, diverge and even clash.

Understanding Presuppositions to Dialogue Better

During a philosophy workshop I led in Belgium, a moment of tension arose. I find it interesting to question, in a workshop, what is happening in the moment, which sometimes resonates with the content of the reflection. For example, during a workshop where we are reflecting on presuppositions, we can observe, in the course of the workshop itself, our own presuppositions that stand in the way of dialogue.

Philosophy is thus not only a theoretical approach at risk of being disconnected from what we live. Even as we are living through a given experience, it gives us the possibility of not being trapped in it and of stepping back from what we are living.

In this workshop, I presented the rules of dialogue that would allow us to build the reflection together and make collective intelligence work. These rules are easy to state: raise your hand before speaking, and wait for the facilitator to ask a question before answering it. They seem elementary and simple to understand. Participants generally agree to them when I present them. Yet in 99% of my workshops, within the first three minutes, they are not respected. I conclude that they are not so well understood after all.

It is likely that we attach different presuppositions to the simple gesture of raising our hand before speaking. For some people, raising a hand before speaking takes them back to being a schoolchild. If, as children, they were eager to be good students, they replay the role of the one who wants to give the answer the teacher expects — the answer that will earn the reward of recognition. If, on the contrary, they were more rebellious, then even though they accepted the rule at the start of the workshop, they later make a show of not applying it. In both cases, these participants consider that the rule presupposes a power relationship between the knowing facilitator who hands out the right to speak and the learners — a power they see as a source of rewards or punishments.

As the facilitator, I do not presuppose the same thing. Handing out rewards or punishments does not help people think — quite the opposite. When we are primarily concerned with a result and an external reward, or when we fear punishment, we lose the capacity to think freely and risk completely missing the pleasure of trying out ideas. We are preoccupied with goals other than thinking. Besides, to hand out such rewards or punishments, one would first have to know what to think about the question at hand. But the person leading a workshop has no preconceived idea of what to think (or as little as possible — the Socratic ideal being to learn to know nothing, to make oneself as empty as possible in order to question the participants).

In the gesture of raising a hand, I presuppose rather that it is an outward sign of what happens inwardly when we look for an idea. We have listened to a question, we take time to think about it and formulate a hypothesis inwardly, and then, by raising our hand, we signal that we are ready to put it before the others. If the facilitator doesn’t give us the floor because they choose someone else, we also learn to bear the frustration of not saying what we wanted to say. This frustration can be an opportunity to step back, to listen to others, to take an observing stance, to consider ourselves less indispensable to the group’s progress, and to accept patiently that others practise formulating their ideas. And if we judge them less gifted than ourselves, by speaking more than we do they will develop their abilities and, with practice, become stimulating interlocutors.

Thinking back on the tension that arose in that workshop in Belgium, it seems to me that it was caused by this misunderstanding of our mutual presuppositions about the simple gesture of raising a hand. One participant thought she was doing the right thing by raising her hand at every question I asked. True, she was following the rule as I had formally set it. But after a while, I suggested we observe what her attitude was producing in the group. The other participants were in fact rather passive, no doubt relying on this participant, whose attitude was much more active. I then suggested she refrain from speaking for about ten minutes to observe what happened, and afterwards give us feedback on this small experiment in stepping back. After ten minutes, other participants had become involved in the reflection. But when I asked her for feedback, the participant, who had been obliged to stay silent, expressed anger. She had experienced it as a punishment on my part. I then tried to help her see things from another angle. Other participants suggested that this time of silence could be a relief for her: she didn’t have to take it upon herself to carry the group’s activity, and observing others is also very interesting. No argument convinced her. The anger caused by frustration was no doubt too strong in the moment. And for my part, I had not perceived sharply enough the presuppositions implied by the way this participant raised her hand. Had I understood them better, I could certainly have found a more convincing way to ask her to step back a little — perhaps by first helping her see the value of this unusual posture for her.

A Way of Life

In these lines I wanted to show that carefully examining the presuppositions that shape our thoughts, words and actions is essential to philosophical practice. By uncovering and questioning these often implicit foundations of the way we project ourselves into existence, we engage in a deeper dialogue — not only with others but also with ourselves. This approach leads us to recognize the diversity of perspectives and the richness they bring to our understanding of the world. Through the analysis of presuppositions, philosophical practice asserts itself as an ongoing dialogue, an invitation to reflection that goes beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge to become an exploration of human experience in all its complexity. Far from being limited to an academic exercise, philosophy thus reveals itself as a way of life, a daily practice aimed at enriching our dialogue with the world.

Embracing this practice means opening ourselves to the possibility of personal and collective transformation, guided by a search for meaning and a desire to understand beyond appearances.

And to finish, a Nasreddin tale full of presuppositions

Nasreddin is sitting quietly in front of his house when his landlord comes by.

— Peace be upon you, Nasreddin! May this day be kind to you!

— As it happens, I was just thinking about it, and I can assure you you’ll have your money tomorrow!

When Nasreddin goes back into the house, his ever-curious wife asks him who he was talking to.

— The landlord wants me to pay the rent. But I haven’t got a penny!

His wife replies:

— Never mind, you know. I only need that new kaftan for the wedding, in three weeks.

Once Nasreddin has gone out, his daughter comes to find out the news:

— What were you and Dad talking about?

— Your father asked me when I needed the money for the tailor, for my new kaftan. I told him it was in three weeks, for the wedding.

— You know, I’m sure Omar will ask me to marry him. I love him so much.

When Nasreddin comes back and sees his daughter beaming, he asks her why she looks so happy.

— Mum was telling me about my future wedding: we’ll have a big party and a magnificent banquet!

— I’m starting to get really hungry too. I hope lunch will be served soon.

(After a tale of Nasreddin Hodja.)

Should we take what is said literally, or take presuppositions into account?

Why do we project our own presuppositions onto others?

Under what conditions is dialogue possible?