El error And failure constitute a primarily epistemological aspect of failure. However, in the analysis that follows, we will attempt, through etymology and a conceptual approach to the meaning of these notions, to address it in a more general way, within the framework of a theory of “failed action”.

In Greek, two main verbs express the opposition between success and failure: tynchano/hamartano. To err, to fail, is understood at this level in opposition to the verb of success and good fortune. There are different semantic levels in this regard. Tynchano is, in Homer, the quintessential verb of encounters. Initially, and primarily within the IliadIts context of application is the battlefield. It is therefore part of military vocabulary and designates the contact between a weapon and the enemy's body, or their armor, as a result of an attack or throw. The encounter is localized in space and is characterized by its explicit concreteness and the immediate consequences it triggers: generally death or injury. The fundamental meaning of the verb in military vocabulary lies not so much in the teleological or fortuitous nature of the encounter—success or failure—as in the plural expression of contact between a specific course of action (to attack, to throw) and a state of affairs (a body, a part of a body), as well as the resulting situation. Depending on the different constructions in which these verbs appear, the encounter is defined either as contact with a pursued and achieved objective (success) or as contact with an unpursued but achieved objective (error, failure, misfortune).

Beyond the examples confined to the battlefield, there are other significant instances where the encounter takes place within the playful context of a contest, competition, or hunt. In these contexts, the structure is virtually identical to that of military vocabulary: tynchano designates the resulting state of an action, such as the meeting or mis-meeting between the weapon and the target. Hamartano (ἁμαρτάνω), the verbal form from which the noun hamartía (ἁμαρτία) derives, expresses the failure more clearly. Success implies victory and, therefore, the attainment of prizes. Likewise, in the case of hunting, both terms are limited to designating the accuracy in the weapon's trajectory against the prey or the contact with a point on its body. Both in the case of war vocabulary and within the athletic, hunting and recreational context, the appearances of tynchano and hamartano in the Iliad show a predominance of the spatial, physical and concrete dimension of the encounter.

In Thucydides, its recurrence is common, and in Plato and Aristotle, it begins to take root with specifically moral meanings. In Plato's case, epistemological uses of error or error (Cf. Crat. 420d; Car. 171e7, Lg. 660c7; 668c8) sometimes linked to ignorance or technical error. However, in moral texts such as Gorgias (525c5) and even in Laws (627d3), ἁμαρτία is assumed to be an error that must be addressed through penalty or punishment, with a retributive and exemplary purpose. In Aristotle, three fundamental uses are identified: the tragic error, which is found in Poetics, as a fatal error that determines the character's fate; some again epistemic references in moral texts (as in EN 1142a21; 1142b10, referring to "deliberation", bad judgment, error in calculation) and, in other texts, the use that already shows a marked moral character: in EN 1148ab3 it is distinguished from vice as a minor "fault".

In Latin, to err is expressed by two verbs: firstly error, as, avi, Tuna, are which directly refers to getting lost, wandering, but also to hesitating and wavering. As we will see later, this meaning remains very present in the metaphorology of error In modern times, through the image of the lost path. The second verb to refer to failure is failure, is, fefelli, false, Featureswhich originally means “to make fall” in two senses: one more drastic, “to knock down,” and another more gradual, “to make slide.” This root is preserved in German. fallen and English caseThis difference in the way error is conceived affects two aspects of its figurative meanings: on the one hand, it is "to deceive," "to lead into error," but on the other, it is "to simulate" or "to disguise," "to pass off as," "to disappoint." Thus, for example, fault is “deceiving oneself”, fallentia It is the set of deceptions and spes fallere It is to betray someone's trust. In this sense of "deceiving oneself," it is necessary to recall, due to its great philosophical impact and its well-known developments in the Cartesian cogito, Saint Augustine's "si fallor, sum" (if I fail, I am). In his De Civitate Dei (Lib.

The past participle of the verb, “falsum”, introduces a clear superiority of the epistemological aspect of error (which continues in German) error) on morality. This also exists, which incidentally affects terms like the Spanish "felón" (felon).

Another important issue is to consider where the Latin word comes from etymologically. fall: some dictionaries state that it comes from Greek sphalein (to cause to fall) and in others of phelos (false or deceitful, referring to a person). A third theory argues that it comes from Sanskrit. sphal (to hesitate, to be about to fall).

In this sense, it is necessary to highlight the agonistic, warlike component inherent in error (that is, the fundamentally epistemological aspect of failure), especially if we focus on the past participle. In this regard, Heidegger, in paragraph 3 of his Lessons on Parmenides, from 1942-43, points out that after the Greek truth as unconcealment in Rome the word is imposed as fundamental imperium, power, which affects the conception of truth based on the understanding of precisely of false: which is false because fallitBecause it falls, it is seized by the victorious adversary, who is therefore the possessor of the truth. This agonistic conception of error is fundamental, although it does not exhaust the entire semantic field of the Latin term.

In light of everything said regarding the etymologies studied, it can be seen that error is deeply related to three paradigms: encounter, straying, and fallThe latter is probably the most decisive. As we have seen, the former is perhaps the most decisive, and has often been understood, metaphorically, as the encounter between a weapon and its target. As mentioned at the beginning, based on this metaphor, it is possible to formulate a general mechanism for understanding the attribution of error to an action.

The path to finding a mechanism that allows us to reliably attribute the term "error" can begin with the search for a criterion to detect which events are likely to become, or be designated as, errors. If all failure is the failure of an action, then errors, specifically, are failures of a type of action that unfolds in virtually all areas of human life: attempts.
Every attempt is a goal-oriented action. This does not necessarily imply intentionality, since such actions can exist without intentionality, yet be goal-oriented in a functional sense. Furthermore, attempts are characterized by the way they are evaluated and carry with them a characteristic normativity, which can be called telic normativity.

Understandably, given the etymology we have studied so far, the archer's example is used as a paradigmatic case to illustrate these actions. In this sense, based on what has been explained above, it seems inevitable to outline a theory of failed actions starting from the definition of success. The action of shooting an arrow, carried out by an archer—that is, by someone trained and in an appropriate context—can be subjected to an evaluation that unfolds in three dimensions (according to the theory developed by Ernst Sosa within the contemporary epistemological framework):

-Success: The action is successful when the arrow hits the target. This can happen because luck has smiled on the archer, or because the shooter is a skilled person who has practiced enough and knows how to aim the shot to hit the target accurately.

-Competence: whether the archer is a capable and competent person in the practice of shooting arrows with a bow. How we measure this competence is entirely open to interpretation, and there are different approaches to considering this issue. It is in this dimension of evaluation that the diversity of possible errors or failures becomes clear.

-Aptitude: an action is apt when the arrow has hit the target because The goalkeeper was competent. This is the dimension that links the two previous ones: it occurs only when success is directly related to competence.

With this evaluation scheme in mind, we can state that the error occurs whenever the action is not suitable (there is no success) but there is competence, that is: the agent, the subject, has the ability to achieve success, but this has not been achieved.

As attempts, these actions carry with them their own set of rules, which include intuitions such as: "success is better than failure" or "an attempt is a better attempt if it is competent than if it is incompetent."
Competence is an evaluative dimension that is measured differently depending on the area in which the attempt occurs, and the criterion for measuring this dimension will be decisive in categorizing the types of error.

From this perspective, we can affirm that the label “failure or error” can only be attributed to telic normative actions. Regarding the attribution mechanism, we clearly detect the distinction between the objective evaluative dimension (the very fact of not having achieved the goal), which is decided in terms of success, and the subjective dimension: what criteria we use to decide whether the subject was capable of achieving success. This evaluation is carried out by the subject themselves, but also from outside: by their community, by an institution or by society as a whole, by a historian, or by a wide variety of other entities.

Thus, it seems possible to detect a mechanism that determines how to apply the term "error," but this mechanism includes an unavoidable normative dimension that requires observing every failure in its own context and that makes possible the complex diversity of uses of this concept throughout history and in all its areas: cultural, social, professional, economic, military, religious…

Thus, a characterization of a fact of the world in which the subject passively participates could be outlined, insofar as this characterization of "failed action" seems to be unequivocally determinable. However, the explicit evaluation of an action as failed, the very moment when a subject considers their action a mistake (or more generally, a failure), or when their own community consensually labels the action or the subject as failed, proves decisive in any attempt to rigorously address the study of the concept. Thus, the term "failure" acquires a performative function regarding the experience of failure. This distinction between the failed action and the experience of failure is fundamental, because only by encompassing both dimensions is it possible to address the reversibility of this concept and its historical significance.

For a failure to occur, it is not enough to simply meet the criteria for attributing the label formally analyzed above: the very fact of being experienced as such is essential. It is essential to grasp this dual dimension: on the one hand, the failure as a fact of the world, a fact in which the subject is implicated as both agent and trigger; on the other hand, the explicit evaluation of an action as a failure, the very moment when the subject considers their action a failure, or when their community consensually labels the action or the subject as such.

This attribution can be made for various reasons—political, social, economic, etc.—due to the significant axiological potential of the notion of failure (here expressed as error or mistake), which, given its negative connotation, establishes asymmetrical and vertical relationships of domination, exploitation, discrimination, stigmatization, marginalization, and so on. Furthermore, as we noted earlier, the term "failed" acquires a performative function on the subjective experience of failure itself, creating a feedback loop between the failed action and the narrative of failure (both self- and hetero-evaluation by the subjects) that is crucial for any attempt to rigorously study this concept.

In modernity, the main object of study of this GlossaryThere is a long tradition of propaedeutic writings in the sense of "medicina mentis," aimed at eliminating the human intellect's inclination toward error. In this sense, works such as Regulae ad directionem ingenii Descartes, the Tractatus de Intellectus Amendmentatione Spinoza, the Essay on human understanding Locke's or the Phenomenology of Spirit de Hegel They constitute the “pars destruens” of their respective systems, to eliminate wrong or one-sided points of view and to be able to achieve knowledge, truth or a consensus among human beings (according to the philosopher in question).

According to the classic study Regarding the error According to Victor Brochard (1879), in modernity there are three fundamental attitudes toward understanding error. The first corresponds to Spinoza and is, in a way, inherited from the Poem According to Parmenides, error, strictly speaking, is not possible because Substance (God or Nature) is all that exists. The second view, corresponding to Leibniz and Cartesianism, understands “a false thought [as] the appearance in the actual world of a fragment of those possible worlds to which the divine will has refused existence” (Brochard, 1926, 246). The third way of understanding error would imply some form of “relativity” of truth: there would be different levels or realms of reality that would therefore admit a multiplicity of points of view: consider the multiple dualisms of the Kantian system or the functioning of Hegelian dialectics as a progressive overcoming of points of view. prima facie opposites, but reconcilable through a return to the common foundation of both.

From the perspective of the metaphor of failure, in addition to the paradigm of blindness, predominant in the classical world, in modernity the image of the lost path (often within a forest) takes on special importance for representing error—besides the image of the archer and the arrow, already discussed above. This tradition undoubtedly begins with Dante:

“In the middle of our life's journey 
I found myself in a dark forest, 
since the straight path was lost. 
Oh, what can I say, how difficult it was and is 
this wild, harsh and rugged forest, 
that renews fear in thought.” 
(Alighieri, 1915, Inf. I, 1-6).

The tragic experience of modernity is the realization that, by establishing the primacy and autonomy of the subject, by making man the foundation of truth, the possibility of miracles has been shattered. The price to be paid for anthropocentrism is that no Virgil will ever be sent from heaven to help us out of the dark wood. From Descartes onward, and later the Enlightenment, it is true, as Heidegger said, that “man understood as a being with reason is no less a subject than man who understands himself as a nation, who desires himself as a people, who raises himself as a race, and who finally grants himself the power to become master and lord of the planet” (Heidegger, 2003b, 89). But no one will come to rescue him from the dark wood, for he must find his own way; it is not simply a matter of relying solely on his own effort to reach the goal, for this is already present in Saint Augustine’s “by my own soul I will come to you.” The fact is that there is no longer just one way to get out of error, to get rid of failure. 
 
As already stated, the Discourse of the method Descartes's work is an introduction (in this case, to three major scientific treatises): Meteorites, Dioptric y Geometry) in order to achieve a certainty free from all possible failure. In this sense, it is a guide for lost travelers: that methods teaches the allThe path. It is above all in his “provisional morality” that Descartes engages with Dante’s metaphor of “wandering,” of getting lost in the wood, with a (weakly) prescriptive teaching: “My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I could, and to remain as constant in the most doubtful opinions, once I had resolved to them, , the If they were absolutely safe, imitating in this the travelers who, lost in some forest, should not wander aimlessly going around this way and that, much less stop in one place, but always walk as straight as possible towards a fixed point, without changing direction for minor reasons, even though in principle it was only the scolding The one who determined them to choose that course; for in this way, if they don't arrive precisely where they want to go, at least they will eventually arrive. somewherewhere it is reasonable to think they will be better off than in the middle of the forest (Descartes, 2002, 88). This long quote is invaluable. Always walking straight ahead may be good advice for getting out of the forest, but this reliance on chance is not characteristic of philosophy that aims to be teachable, discursive, and conceptual. Someone who leaves the forest without quite knowing how, solely through the force of their impulse and decision, is not a philosopher, but a genius, as we read in fragment 235 of Human, all too human“Someone who has completely lost his way in the forest, but who with tremendous energy strives in any direction towards the exit, sometimes discovers a new path that no one knows: thus are born the geniuses whose originality is celebrated” (Nietzsche, 2001, 155).  

Heidegger, the self-proclaimed overcomer of modernity, understood and compiled some of his writings as “forest paths.” But in another short work, Country roadHeidegger describes what happens when the path of life approaches the forest: “Passing along its edge, one greets an old oak tree beneath which lies a roughly hewn wooden bench. On it, from time to time, one would find some writing by the great thinkers, which a clumsy youth would attempt to decipher. By the time the enigmas piled up and no way out was in sight, there was always the country lane” (Heidegger, 2003a, 17). Thoughts spring forth from the forest like echoes of the philosophers trapped within it; the path of life, the country lane, does not enter the forest, but, Heidegger says again, “in the forest there are paths, generally half-hidden by undergrowth, which abruptly end in the untrodden. It is these paths that are called forest lanes. Each one follows a different route, but always inside from the same forest. Many times they seem as if they were the same, but it is a mere appearance. The lumberjacks and forest rangers know the paths. They know what it means to find oneself on a path that disappears into the forest” (Heidegger, 2003b, 9).
 
The epistemological experience of the consummation of modernity lies precisely in beginning to suspect that There is no way out of the forest and that the boundaries between error and success become blurred. To put it in Latin: non potest non errareTherefore, philosophy should not imagine escape routes and dream of the afterlife that awaits us outside the jungle, but rather explore the forest using those paths that never leave it, and make it more welcoming, habitable, which is precisely the task of the woodcutter and the forester. The forest (lucus) is our place (loci), our home, this is the ecological translation of “we live in times of misery,” and “the gods have fled.” This should not lead to resignation, but to the serene understanding that we are nobody (nemo) without that forest (nemus), we are transfixed and united to it as if we ourselves were a tree, like Pier delle Vigne, Dante's tree-man, or Tolkien's endearing Treebeard, so all escape is useless, impossible. But then it becomes necessary to condition, change, improve the inhospitable places of the forest, radiating this transformative action from the center of that very special tree to which Descartes alluded in the Principia“That tree whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches sprout from this trunk are all the other sciences, which are mainly reduced to three: namely, medicine, mechanics, and morality” (Descartes, 1995, 15). If we cannot avoid making mistakes, let us at least try to do so in a suitable forest.

Bibliography:

Alighieri, Dante (1915), Divine Comedy, ed. by Giuseppe Campi, Turin: Unione Tipografica Torinese.

Brochard, Victor (1926), De l'erreur, Paris: Berger-Levrault.

Descartes, René (1995), Principles of Philosophy, Madrid: Alliance.

Descartes, René (2002), Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Madrid: Tecnos.

Heidegger, Martin (2003a). Country road, Barcelona: Herder.

Heidegger, Martin (2003b), Forest paths, Madrid: Alliance.  

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2001), Human, all too humanMadrid: Akal.

Index of illustrations:

Fig. 1: Paul Gustave Doré, Illustration from Dante's Inferno, Canto One1861, engraving. Public domain: https://archive.org/details/dantesinferno00dantuoft/page/n33/mode/2up  

Fig. 2: Paul Gustave Doré, The Bleeding Bush, Illustration from Dante's Inferno: Thirteenth Cantoor, 1861, engraving. Public domain: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8789/8789-h/images/13-137.jpg