The Journalist‐A Media Research Journal

4
ISSN 2231‐2943 / Year‐7, Vol‐2, No‐26

DEFINING CORRUPTION :
APPOSING WITTGENSTEINIAN AND
HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVES
& Aniruddha Pratap
Ph.D. Final Semester student,
Centre for The Study of Law and Governance,
Jawaharlal Nehru University. New Delhi

INTRODUCTION -
The chore of studying the phenomenon of corruption is fraught with
limitations, the foremost being the definitional. There have been
abounding endeavors to conceive a definition of corruption, but
difficulties have been faced in working out an inclusive definition due to
variety of reasons. Mulgan argues that beyond an array of representative
examples such as bribery, nepotism and favouritism it becomes difficult to
define corruption in general terms.1 Blau, on the other hand, believes that,
in general, corruption will imply something moving from better to worse
and since we disagree on what is better and what is worse therefore the
exact meaning of the term will vary.2 Euben evinces that the rudimentary
idea of corruption, which still holds much ground, is related to
identification of some debasing impurity, decay or degeneration that has
obstructed something from its natural development. He points out that of
various meanings given in the Oxford English Dictionary the common
theme appears as “having to do with decay, degeneration, disintegration,
and debasement. Corruption implies decay, where the original or natural
condition of something becomes infected.”3 This appears to be too broad a
delineation for practical purposes of defining corruption. Philip4 believes
that despite disagreements on definitional aspects of corruption there
seems to an agreement on the meaning of the word. According to him the
meaning ‘is rooted in the sense of a thing being changed from its naturally
sound condition, into something unsound, impure, debased, infected’5. He
argues that problem appears to be not with the task of defining corruption

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but with actual application of this meaning to political corruption, and this
is because there is lack of consensus regarding ‘naturally sound’ political
condition that makes it difficult to determine as to what should be
considered as a deviation from such condition.
The word corruption is derived from Latin word corrumpere and
its cognates, which implies to ‘pervert, destroy, deprave or infect’. Among
the contemporary definitions the most oft used is the World Bank’s
definition: “the abuse of public office for private gain.”6 Other popular
definitions include: “abuse of entrusted power for private gain”
(Transparency International)7; “the abuse of public power and influence
for private ends” (Waterbury8; “sale by government officials of
government property for personal gains” (Shelifer and Vishny9;
“Corruption may be represented as following a simple formula: C = M+
D-A. Corruption equals Monopoly plus Discretion minus Accountability”
(Klitgaard)10; “behaviour that deviates from the formal duties of a public
role (elective or appointive) because of private-regarding (personal, close
family, private clique) wealth or status gains” (Nye)11; “efforts to secure
wealth or power through illegal means – private gain at public expense”
(Lispet and Lenz)12. Interestingly the United Nations Convention against
Corruption (UNCC) and Council of Europe Conventions do not provide a
definition of corruption, but do mention various forms of corruption such
as bribery; fraud; extortion; embezzlement; obstruction of justice;
facilitation payment; illicit enrichment; collusion; money laundering etc.
Modern definitions by making use of public/private distinction try
to encompass all corrupt acts as they work on the assumption that in every
transaction capable of being reduced as a corrupt one there will always be
abuse or misuse of the public office for private gains or advantages. And
one would agree that if we take into account just the ‘transaction part’ of
corruption where money or other gains changes hands then such a
definition qualifies to be a useful working definition. But corruption is not
just about the transaction part, in a democracy or a society which strives to
be just corruption can have far reaching consequences on the concerns of
justice, equality, democratic processes, fairness, representation, subversion
of constitutional machinery etc. For example in an institutional set up
where guiding principle is equality before law, i.e. like should be treated
alike or all of those who are similarly placed in a society should be treated
in a similar manner, if a person who pays bribe is treated more favorably,
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or more equally to use an Orwellian phrase, then this is not just abuse of
the public office but also of the principles of equality, justice etc. Similarly
in a Rawlsian setup a person’s ability or inability to pay bribe is a morally
arbitrary factor and if distribution of benefits or disadvantages in a society
is made on such criteria then clearly violates the standards of fairness and
justice. Because of the ability of the corruption to not only distort or
pervert the public offices or agents but also to have such far-reaching
repercussions on justice, equality, democratic processes, fairness
standards, representation processes, constitutional machinery etc., it also
should be considered something which perverts the ‘body politic’ as well.
Hindess13 points out that more recent discussions surrounding corruption
involve “a blurring of the distinction between public and private”14
whereas in the streams of political thought of the Western classical
antiquity the aforementioned context was not invoked to refer to
corruption. Hindess further argues that, “in the political thought of
Western classical antiquity and late medieval Europe, corruption was
commonly understood, as we believe it should be understood, as a
condition of the body politic. Since the late eighteenth century this has not
been the prevalent view held in the West and amongst the international
agencies that the West dominates. In the past two centuries the term
‘corruption’ has been increasingly used to designate problematic
behaviour on the part of one or more individuals, or behaviour that is often
seen as a matter of using one’s public office for the purposes of illicit
private gain”.15 Thus, historically we have moved from corruption being
treated as a condition of the body politic to corruption as behaviour of
individual or individuals using public office for illegal private gains. To
have a better and more informed picture of such evolution we need to
assay such historical development that took place over centuries.
Regarding such transformation historically Mulgan concludes that
“judgments of individual corruption therefore appear less problematic than
those made of whole governments, particularly insofar as they take
existing standards and general compliance with such standards for
granted.”16
WITTGENSTEINIAN DIMENSION -
This change in the meanings of the word corruption becomes important in
a following senses viz. firstly, in a Wittgensteinian sense and secondly, in
a hermeneutical sense. Wittgenstein in his earlier work17 argued that
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language, which has an underlying logical structure, associates or connects
with the world with the help of a picturing relation. Though he later
repudiated this argument in his later work, in favour of the belief that
meaning of a word is its use, it is important to understand the former to
make sense of the later. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein ended up giving
up many of his earlier ideas the dominant theme, which continued through
his work, was the idea that language has an underlying logical structure
and a comprehension of such structure will delineate the boundaries of
what can be meaningfully said and thought. Grayling argues that: “The
importance of this, in Wittgenstein's view, is that what can be said is the
same as what can be thought; so that once one has grasped the nature of
language, and therefore of what can clearly and significantly be thought,
one has shown the limit beyond which language and thought become
nonsense. It is in this realm, beyond the boundaries of sense, where in
Wittgenstein's opinion traditional philosophical problems arise, and where
their arising is precisely the result of our trying to say what is unsayable
the same, in his view, as trying to think the unthinkable.”18 Grayling
presents the main argument of Tractus as: “Both language and the world,
Wittgenstein says, have a structure. Language consists in propositions, and
these are compounds made up of what he calls elementary
propositions, which in turn are combinations of names. Names are the
ultimate constituents of language. Correspondingly, the world consists in
the totality of facts, and facts are compounded out of ‘states of affairs’,
which in turn are compounded out of objects. Each level of structure in
language matches a level of structure in the world. The objects, which are
the ultimate constituents of the world, are denoted by the ultimate
constituents of language, the names; names combine to form elementary
propositions, which correspond to states of affairs; and each of these
further combine to form, respectively, propositions and the facts which, in
a sense to be explained, those propositions ‘picture’. Here, in a crude
preliminary form, is a representation of the two parallel structures:
proposition --- facts
| |
elementary proposition --- states-of-affairs
| |
names --- objects
This representation is crude because it does not show how the vertical and
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horizontal relationships between the two sets of levels work; but it is a
useful preliminary sketch. The correspondence between elementary
propositions and states of affairs is constituted by the fact that the names
out of which elementary propositions are built denote the objects out of
which their correspondent states of affairs are built; the arrangement of the
names logically mirrors or pictures the arrangement of the objects in states
of affairs. It is in virtue of this picturing relation that the propositions
compounded out of elementary propositions have sense. This is the
‘picture theory of meaning’ which lies at the heart of the Tractatus,
constituting the explanation of how language and the world are connected,
and therefore of how meaning attaches to what we say when we use
language correctly.”19 According to this each level of structure of
language has a corresponding level of structure in the world and former
has a denotative link with the later. Thus, there is a denotative link
between names and objects; similarly there is a denotative link between
elementary propositions and state-of-affairs, and propositions and facts.
This link demonstrates that levels of structure in language correspond to
the levels of structure of the world. According to the picture theory the
true essence of language is to depict reality by allowing us to picture
things and this functional purpose is carried out by means of propositions,
as it is a proposition which mirrors or pictures how things are. “It is
essential for Wittgenstein's conception of propositions as pictures of
reality that propositions should be determinate in truth-value; they are true
or they are false, and which they are depends on whether they fit the facts
or fail to do so. There is no question of a partial or fuzzy correspondence
between propositions and facts: the only alternatives are ‘yes’ and ‘no’
either a proposition is a picture of a fact, or it is not…From the basis of the
parallel structures upwards, the relations between them are as follows:
names denote objects, and like objects they are simple and unanalysable;
elementary propositions are ‘concatenations of names’ and they assert the
existence of states of affairs, which are concatenations of objects; and
propositions, the perceptible expressions of thoughts (perceptible because
one can read or hear the ‘propositional signs’ used to express them), are
truth-functions of elementary propositions. This account is wholly formal:
Wittgenstein does not, as noted, give examples of names and elementary
propositions or of what they correspond to in the world; his account is
devoted solely to saying that it is necessary, in order for there to be a
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language-world link, that the structures of both must be like this, whatever
as a matter of fact plays the role of the names, objects, and the rest, as
specified in that account.”20 It is not worth going any deeper into this
discussion as Wittgenstein later21 disagreed with his own views in Tractus
and called them oversimplification and distortion of language. His major
attack was on the idea that language has a single essence which can be
manifested via a predicate logic. Language does not posses a single
essence and “what ‘lies open to view’, Wittgenstein says, is the fact that
language is not one uniform thing but a host of different activities. We use
language to describe, report, inform, affirm, deny, speculate, give orders,
ask questions, tell stories, playact, sing, guess riddles, make jokes, solve
problems, translate, request, thank, greet, curse, pray, warn, reminisce,
express emotions, and much else besides.”22 He called these different
activities language games and a language is a collection of such language
games. He says: “Instead of producing something common to all that we
call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in
common which makes us use the same word for all, but that they are
related to one another in many different ways.”23 In other words language
does not have a single essence but it is rather a collection of language
games and to appreciate its variety is the key to understand its working.
“Once this is clear, in Wittgenstein's view, we see why it is wrong to think
of meaning as he had thought of it in the Tractatus: there the claim was
that the meaning of a word is the object it denotes; here, in the
Investigations, it is that the meaning of an expression is the use to which it
can be put in one or another of the many and various language games
constituting language.”24 Since there can be multitudinous uses of a single
word or expression in various language games of a language which will
imply multiplicity of meanings therefore a single formula or scheme
cannot capture this variety. The seminal insight of Investigations is
following: “the meaning of a word is its use in the language”.25 For our
purposes the above observation becomes important in the context of
meanings and uses of the word corruption not just how the word is placed
or used in different language-games but also diachronically. It has already
been disserted how use of the word corruption in a legal language-game is
different from the use in conversations of common-folk or from use in
institutional vocabulary or in economic lexicon or in a dictionary. This
implies, in a Wittgensteinian setup, a variety of meanings which the term
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corruption may acquire depending upon its use in various language-games
though such meanings may have a common thread connecting them all.
This raises many questions. Variability of meaning of a word in different
language-games is comprehensible but what does diachronic variability
(changes over successive points in time) of meaning of a word will imply?
Not every word will go through such variability, but will those, which go
through such alteration, be taken to be suggestive of anything? In other
words, would diachronic variability in meaning of a word be indicative of
change in the use of that word over that period of time? If we take
Wittgenstein’s proposition that meaning of a word will be how it is used in
a language then it would also imply that a change in the former will
indicate a change in the latter or vice versa. Of course if we analyze a
particular point in history of a word we also need to be cognizant of the
variability crosswise different language-games at that particular juncture.
This means that at any particular point of time a word may have different
uses in different language-games implying a difference in respective
meanings. So which language-game do we pick the word from for the
purpose of diachronic analysis? In other words for a diachronic analysis
the meaning of a word shall be analyzed in the same language-game over
the period of time considering the variability of the meaning in different
language-games at a given point of time. For example the meaning of the
term in a legal or legislative language-game in ancient time cannot be
compared with meaning of the same term in common use in medieval time
or with an economics language-game in contemporary times. There will
be some overlapping but a proper analysis needs to confine itself to the
same language-game. The discussion about meaning of the word
corruption was made earlier in this work and the same can be taken to be a
diachronic analysis of the meaning of corruption in a philosopher/political
thinker language-game. It has already been noted that ancient thinkers
have used the term corruption in a much broader manner when compared
with the contemporary uses of the term. The ancient texts from which we
access these thinkers display the world of their times and are reflective of
the societies and the relation which human actors of those time had with
such societies. Similarly, the meaning and use of the word corruption in
contemporary times is reflective of the relationship between the societies
and human actors of present times. Thus, a diachronic analysis of the
meaning and use of word corruption would be reflective of the bond
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between individual and society in different times in history. In earlier
discussions it has been observed that the bond between an individual and
society has weakened and corruption is no more considered as a condition
of the body politic but more in the sense of individualistic instances of
corruption. An array of reasons can be attributed to the aforesaid change
and some had already been discussed which brings us to an important
question: What do we do about it? Answering this question has difficulties
of its own and risks of giving a normative flavour to this work, but
nonetheless it is worth venturing into. I explore this via hermeneutic
traditions.
HERMENEUTICAL ARGUMENT -
Hermeneutics simply means interpretation or methodology of
interpretation. Mantzavinos argues that: “Hermeneutics as the
methodology of interpretation is concerned with problems that arise when
dealing with meaningful human actions and the products of such actions,
most importantly texts. As a methodological discipline, it offers a toolbox
for efficiently treating problems of the interpretation of human actions,
texts and other meaningful material.”26 But, hermeneutics is more than
interpretation or method of interpretation, it “is the art of understanding
and of making oneself understood.”27 It is also concerned with the
philosophical discipline which analyses the conditions for understanding.
Zimmermann observes that, “the philosophical discipline of hermeneutics,
however, is not a method aiming at a specific practical goal or particular
reading. Rather, hermeneutic philosophers are interested in understanding
as such: how and under what conditions does the understanding happen?
Philosophical hermeneutics as Gadamer himself put it, is concerned with
‘understanding understanding’. As a philosophical discipline,
hermeneutics examine and describe what happens when understanding of
any kind takes place.”28 Zimmermann further states that, “hermeneutic
thinkers argue that understanding is the interpretive act of integrating
particular things such as words, signs, and events into a meaningful whole.
We understand an object, word, or fact when it makes sense within our
own life context and thus speaks to us meaningfully. When we understand
objects, texts, or situations in this way, they become part of our inner
mental world so that we can express them again in our own terms. We
have not understood a poem, for example, when we can merely repeat the
words by heart; rather we demonstrate understanding when we intone the
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words meaningfully and are able to express the poem’s ideas in our own
words. Hermeneutic thinkers believe that in most cases understanding as
this kind of integration happens unconsciously, because we already move
in a familiar cultural environment within which we perceive words and
objects in a pre-established context of meaning. Our modern culture tends
to think that real knowledge consists in quantification, that is, in the
scientific numerical description of things in the world. On this account,
objective truth requires an impersonal, theoretical stance towards things.
Hermeneutic philosophers contend, on the contrary, that our primary mode
of perception is not theoretical but practical, and depends on our current
desires or interests.”29 This becomes important for our purposes because
when we define corruption as abuse of public office for private gains and
divorce its ‘condition of body politic’ aspect it becomes an unnatural way
of analyzing corruption as it mechanically separates the historical
development or the historical context of experience, with which the term
‘corruption’ traversed, from its contemporary meanings. According to
Dilthey we stand in a stream of history which is a continuum comprising
of both past and present. “The historicity of our existence is both the
condition of, but also the limit to, our self-understanding. We can know
what we are by studying the past expressions of life experience in texts,
monuments, and cultural artefacts. We will not, however, find in them any
fixed template of what it means to be human. Who we are is an open-
ended question in the humanities. According to Dilthey, the totality of our
human nature is only history. Let’s say, for example, we want to assert our
human dignity. We can’t take the idea of human dignity from some
timeless storage room of ideas and look at it. Rather, we have access to the
meaning of human dignity through the long historical development of this
idea. Knowing this history gives us a much needed perspective to engage
critically the impacts on human identity by genetic science, for example.
The point is that we don’t do history, as if the past was like an object we
can handle. For Dilthey, we are history, insofar as our self understanding
requires the constant recovery and appropriation of our past cultural
heritage, the mediation of past and present.”30 Thus, according to Dilthey
for understanding to take place we need to be constantly aware of the
historical stream of experience, in other words we need to juxtapose past
with present. In context of meanings “the history of concepts shows us
that their meanings are not simply given but have developed over time and
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can therefore change. The point is that important insights or values can be
attained and lost again. According to Gadamer, it is the task of the
humanities to act as cultural memory by keeping the history of concepts
alive and by guarding important insights for future generations.”31 These
aforementioned arguments present an important insight viz. our current
understandings need to be informed with historical developments of
meaning and for that past needs to be juxtaposed with the present.
Therefore, hermeneutical event of understanding corruption takes place
when ‘abuse of public office for private gain’ aspect of corruption is
juxtaposed with ‘condition of body politic’ aspect of corruption.
Reference –
1- Mulgan, R., Aristotle on Legality and Corruption, in CORRUPTION: EXPANDING THE
FOCUS 25 (Manuhuia Barcham, Barry Hindess, and Peter Lamour, eds., 2012
2- Blau, A., ‘Hobbes on corruption’, History of Political Thought 30:4 (2009), 596-616.
3- Euben, J. Peter. (1989). Corruption. In Terence Ball, James Farr & R. L. Hanson (Eds), Political
innovation and conceptual change (pp. 220–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press at pg.
221
4- Philp, Mark. (1997). Defining political corruption. In P. Heywood (Ed.), Political corruption
(pp. 20–46). Oxford: Blackwell.
5- Id. p. 29
6- World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, World Bank,
Washington DC, (1997), p. 102
7- http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq (accessed on June 17, 2013)
8- Waterbury, J. (1973). Endemic and Planned Corruption in a Monarchical Regime. World
Politics, 25(4), 533-555, at p. 533
9- Shleifer, A., and Vishny, R. W., ‘Corruption’ in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 108,
No. 3 (Aug., 1993), at p. 599
10- Klitgaard, Robert (1991), ‘Gifts and Bribes’, in Zeckhauser, R. (ed.), Strategy and Choice,
Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
11- Nye, J. S., “Corruption and Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis”, American Political
Science Review, 61, June, 1967, p. 419
12- Lipset, S. M., and Lenz, G. S., “Corruption, culture, and markets” in Culture Matters, ed. L. E.
Harrison and S. P. Huntington: 2000, New York: Basic Books at p. 112
13- Hindess, B., “Introduction: How Should We Think About Corruption” in Corruption:
Expanding the Focus, ed. Manuhuia Barcham, Barry Hindess and Peter Larmour (Canberra:
Australian National University)
14- Id. p. 3
15- Id. p. 5
16- Id. at p. 35
17- Wittgenstein, L., Tractus Logio-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. McGuinness
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).
18- Grayling, A. C., Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001, p. 18
19- Id. at pp. 36-37
20- Id. at pp. 45-47
21- Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (Blackwell,
1953)
22- Supra note 19, p. 83
23- Supra note 22, p. 65
24- Supra note 19, pp. 84-85
25- Supra note 22, p. 43
The Journalist – A Media Research Journal, July‐September 2017 34
26- Mantzavinos, C., "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) , URL = < https://plato. stanford.edu/ archives/ win2016/ entries/
hermeneutics/>.
27- Zimmermann, J., Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015, p. 2
28- Id. at p. 7
29- Ibid.
30- Id. at pp. 32-33
31- Id. at p. 43

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