Abstract

Weitz claims that humanistic philosophy requires open concepts. Concepts are said to be "neutral intermediaries between words and things". For Frege they must be sharply defined; for Weitz open concepts are sets of criteria that are either nonnecessary or nonsufficient or both in the definition of something, though they may be rejectable or undebatable. Thus he dismisses with Karl Popper "essentialism," and thus also Platonism and Aristotelianism. He finds early suggestions of open concepts in C. L. Stevenson’s "Persuasive Definitions," Friedrich Waismann’s "Verifiability," H. L. A. Hart’s "defeasible contracts," Wittgenstein’s "family resemblances," and W. B. Gallie’s "Essentially Contested Concepts." He asserts "... the discovery of open concepts—not just ambiguous, vague or woolly words, which open concepts and their conveying words are not—throws new light on the whole problem of conceptualization". Real definitions then can be only of closed concepts, such as may prevail in science; while the fruits of open concepts are especially characteristic of the humanities, though certainly not limited to them.