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F ACULTY OF H UMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN D EPARTMENT OF MEDIA, COGNITION AND COMMUNICATION P HILOSOPHY Master's thesis Eirik Gjerstad B EYOND THE L IMITS OF L ANGUAGE Silence as a concept in negative philosophy of language Supervisor: Søren Gosvig Olesen Turned in: 01/05/2014 Translated from Danish to English by the author
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Beyond the Limits of Language - Silence as a concept in negative philosophy of language

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Page 1: Beyond the Limits of Language - Silence as a concept in negative philosophy of language

F A C U L T Y O F H U M A N I T I E S

U N I V E R S I T Y O F C O P E N H A G E N

DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA, COGNITION AND COMMUNICATION

PHILOSOPHY

Master's thesis

Eirik Gjerstad

BEYOND THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE Silence as a concept in negative philosophy of language

Supervisor: Søren Gosvig Olesen

Turned in: 01/05/2014

Translated from Danish to English by the author

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Abstract: This thesis seeks to establish a concept of silence in the context of negative philosophy of

language. Negative philosophy of language concerns the limits of language and what lies beyond

these limits, i.e. what language is not, and what cannot be communicated in any language, natural or

artificial. This thesis does not concern what cannot be communicated as a matter of contingent fact,

as a result of the given social, grammatical or logical rules applying to our languages, or as a result

of our given physical constraints in time and space. This thesis discusses what cannot be

communicated in any possible language. Even though often conflated, a distinction is upheld

between what cannot be communicated and what subject matter cannot be the subject of

communication, i.e. between the inexpressible and the unfathomable. This thesis addresses the

former; given that had it addressed the latter, this thesis would in and of itself be self-contradictory.

From positive philosophy of language differing accounts and definitions of the core concepts of

language and also of language itself are taken into consideration. Prominent thoughts regarding the

inexpressible in both the history of philosophy as well as contemporary philosophy are examined,

from the divine and religious, over particularity, ethics, aesthetics, mysticism, philosophy of

consciousness, haecceity, specificity, and type-token theory. A concept of silence is put forth to

unite what is considered certain core aspects of the illinguistical and the inexpressible.

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Contents

1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 5

2. Concepts, delimitation, problems ..................................................................................................... 7

2.1 Positive and negative philosophy of language as an extension of a conception of sign and

language............................................................................................................................................ 7

2.2 Tacitness and silence ................................................................................................................ 11

2.3 The limitless language .............................................................................................................. 13

3. Themes of the inexpressible ........................................................................................................... 17

3.1 The divine ................................................................................................................................. 17

3.2 Repetition and perishment [forgængelighed] ........................................................................... 21

3.3 Particularity: Individuum est ineffabile .................................................................................... 24

3.3.1 The metaphysical and epistemological particularity ......................................................... 24

3.3.2 The existential particularity .............................................................................................. 27

3.3.3 The parallel between Hegel/young Hegelians and Heidegger/deconstruction ................. 30

3.3.4 Criticism ............................................................................................................................ 30

3.4 Wittgenstein: Keeping language at bay and letting the mystical show itself ........................... 34

3.5 The incommunicability of the good ......................................................................................... 38

3.6 The incommunicability of beauty............................................................................................. 40

3.7 The relation of primacy between language, tacitness and silence ............................................ 43

3.8 The linguisticality of thought ................................................................................................... 48

3.9 Longing, personification [besjæling] and linguistification [sprogliggørelse] ......................... 55

3.10 The inexpressible as the higher and the exceptional .............................................................. 58

3.11 Haecceitas ............................................................................................................................... 63

4. Silence ............................................................................................................................................ 65

4.1 Ontological, epistemological and phenomenological implications .......................................... 65

4.2 What cannot be communicated, and what there cannot be communicated about .................... 66

4.3 Negation and silence ................................................................................................................ 67

4.4 Specificity, materiality and the type-token distinction ............................................................. 69

4.5 'This' ......................................................................................................................................... 73

4.6 This ........................................................................................................................................... 74

Bibliography....................................................................................................................................... 79

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1. Introduction

Negative philosophy of language concerns the limits of language and what lies beyond these: What

is not linguistic, and what cannot be communicated in any kind of language. Negative philosophy of

language, therefore, does not concern what contingently cannot be communicated or expressed as a

consequence of our given, limited and currently available natural and artificial languages, or as a

consequence of the social, grammatical and logical rules connected with these. Negative philosophy

of language concerns what escapes any possible language.

The inexpressible, unsayable, or incommunicable can seem both too banal or mystical

for serious philosophical scrutiny: If it does not exist, there is nothing worth mentioning about it,

and if it does exist, there is inherently nothing to say about it, why it regardless is of no interest to

philosophy. If it does exist, and yet is mentioned or treated, then this can only be inconsistent

obscurantism and mysticism, none of which belongs in serious philosophy.

This relies on the erroneous conflation of that which cannot be communicated and

what subject matter supposedly cannot be the subject of communication, i.e. a conflation of the

incommunicable and the unfathomable.

To write a thesis on the incommunicable could seem paradoxical. The apparent

paradox in a thesis concerning what cannot be communicated consists in the thesis itself being

communication. Yet, a thesis concerning the incommunicable does not necessarily have to be any

more paradoxical by virtue of its self-referentiality than any thesis in epistemology, semantics, or

the like, which (as a minimum indirectly) also concerns what it itself is, does or presupposes. A

philosophical thesis concerning how any knowledge is possible also concerns how the thesis' own

knowledge is possible of how any knowledge is possible. In other words: How is the theory of

knowledge known according to itself? A thesis about what constitutes knowledge does not

necessarily contradict itself by laying claims to knowing what constitutes knowledge, or knowing

what constitutes that which is not knowledge.

There is no paradox in this thesis either since this thesis communicates about or

concerning that which cannot be communicated, and does not seek to communicate that which is

incommunicable.

For this purpose there will be put forth a concept of silence [stilhed] as the illinguistical and

incommunicable in this thesis, which differentiates itself from language as the – obviously –

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linguistical and communicable, but which also differentiates itself from any form of signifying

tacitness [tavshed], or any signifying apparent absence of signs. Silence is a concept of the

unsignifying, that which is not sign-like [tegnmæssig] or linguistical.

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2. Concepts, delimitation, problems

Before language and what lies beyond language can be discussed, there is a number of fundamental

concepts and problems that must be explained and dealt with, and which will constitute the

premises from which this thesis will depart.

2.1 Positive and negative philosophy of language as an extension of a conception

of sign and language

In this section some of the problems related to a thesis like this is addressed: How negative

philosophy of language relates to positive philosophy of language, a notion of the relationship

between sign and language, and what it means for something to not only not be linguistical, but

unconditioned by any form of language or linguisticality.

The term 'negative philosophy of language' hints at and draws on the negativity understood by

negative theology, where one seeks to approach what the Christian god or the divine is by

approaching what these are not. As philosophy concerning what is not language, and what cannot

be communicated, any negative philosophy of language must also always (as a minimum indirectly)

concern what is language and what can be communicated. It likewise follows, that all positive

philosophies of language also always have been and will be (as a minimum indirectly) philosophies

concerning what is not language and what cannot be communicated. Any set not only delimits and

marks what falls within this set, but also what falls outside of it.

For the purpose of this thesis the disputes among philosophers of language about, e.g.,

how language refers, are irrelevant. For the purpose of this thesis it would only be relevant to note

that the philosophers of language agree that language – among other things – refers. Whether a

reference, for instance a proper name, is tied to its referent via some label-like function, a

semantically hidden definite description, or a causal "chain" going back to an original baptism,1

does not concern the subject of this thesis. In the same way, it is also irrelevant that there might be

1 As it was proposed by Mill, Russell and Kripke respectively. For a short overview of the plethora of reference-theories

(incl. theories that view the very notion of reference as problematic), see Reimer, 'Reference'.

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semantic differences in how proper names refer, or how natural classes refer, or verbs, body

language, images or even music might refer.

For negative philosophy of language a philosophical notion of what language is and

can is of importance, and not why or how it is what it is and can what it can.

There a many varying understandings of the concepts 'sign' and 'language' and how they relate to

each other. This thesis will use a concept of sign, where a sign can only be understood as a sign,

given some or other signification-giving con- or pretext, which will be called language. A sign

thusly always occurs in a language, and there is no sign without some presupposed linguisticality.

In semiotics there are at times some notions of sign and language, which entail that a sign may very

well not be linguistical, since language is considered to be systems of arbitrary signs.2 Smoke as a

sign of fire hereby distinguishes itself from 'dogs' as a sign of dogs, in that smoke as a sign is not

arbitrary, whereas 'dogs' is, which can be seen from the differing signs for dogs found in natural

languages like English, French, or Danish. This thesis uses a broader concept of language as

entailing all that is signifying, including those signs which could be argued to not be arbitrary, like

indexicals, pictograms or icons.3 This is motivated by no sign ever having isolated and prerequisite-

free signification, such that it could be understood without some presupposed signification-giving

context and prior understanding, which will here be designated by linguisticality or language.4 The

following absence of light on an otherwise light background: 'sun', would not be a sign or appear to

us as the word 'sun' without the Latin alphabet and English written language as presupposed

signification-giving context and prior understanding. All signs always have some sort of "system"

of which they are a part, and only by virtue of which they can be seen as signs, and be said to have

any kind of meaning or signification.

Under this conceptualization information and data consequently becomes a subset of

language. The concept of information is not unproblematic,5 and despite it often being talked about

as something one "has", something one "receives", something hidden "out there" which can be

found and extracted like a resource, as a physical object or commodity, and talked about in many

2 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, part 1, I, §2 'Principle II: The arbitrary nature of signs', p. 67 onwards.

3 'Icons' is here understood as Peirce's notion of that class of signs that are signifying by some form of graphical

likenesp. 4 Hereby a concept of language is surely established, that is unlike the one known from our daily understanding and use

of it. It is and has nonetheless never been the job for philosophy to mirror our everyday language (what could the use of

such a doubling possibly be?), or vice versa, to let philosophy specify more or less hidden or truer meanings behind the

use of everyday words (for which purpose we already have lexicography). The language of philosophy is its own. 5 See Brier, Cybersemiotics, p. 35 onwards.

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other ways, that is quite unlike how we here understand the concept of 'language', despite all this,

there is nonetheless some form of "sign-ness" about 'information', 'data' and the like, which is

therefore categorized under this thesis' concept of language or the linguistical. What is importance

here, is that the illinguistical in this way also entails the "undata-" or "uninformation-like".

When the illinguistical and then the incommunicable are mentioned thereafter in this thesis, the

latter follows from the former. What is illinguistical is also incommunicable, since all

communication is communication of signs, in order for it to be communication, and all

communication therefore necessarily is something linguistical [pertaining to language].

Whether a sign requires a subject for it to be a sign, or a sign can be objective and subject-

independent, and similar phenomenological, epistemological and ontological problems, are not

directly related to this treatise. Expositions, theories and arguments within positive philosophy of

language can have certain phenomenological, epistemological and ontological implications or

premises, but positive philosophy of language in and of itself does not have any of these. Likewise,

the phenomenological, epistemological and ontological status of negative philosophy of language is

undefined.

Negative philosophy of language, and hence this thesis, concerns what lies beyond language. But by

what lies beyond language is also included that which is unconditioned by language. That what

some words refers to is not itself a word, is not only what is meant by "something" being beyond

language. To the extent that this "something" is conditioned by language, for instance by its

appearance being in some way conditioned by or dependent upon a linguistic conceptualization, it

will fall outside of the domain of negative philosophy of language, but only to that exact extent that

it is conditioned by or dependent upon language. Much is possibly conditioned by some minimum

of linguisticality in this way. In cognitive linguistics there has been argued for conceptual

metaphors not only structuring our metaphorical talk of life, love, argumentation, etc., but also

structuring how these appear and are understood, and thus structuring and conditioning what these

even are.6 The exact extent to which a phenomenon in this or similar ways are linguistically

conditioned or dependent, is also the exact extent to which it falls outside the domain of negative

philosophy of language, and thereby also outside the domain of this thesis.

6 Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p. 3 onwards.

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It is important, that it is to the exact extent something in this way is conditioned by

language, that it falls outside of negative philosophy of language, and that we are speaking of an

extent that might not encompass the phenomenon completely, which might have other dimensions

to it that lie beyond language and what it can express.

Silence, which designates the illinguistical and inexpressible, is not a sum of objects

or phenomena, of which something either falls wholly within or without. Silence as well as

language are aspects which something can assume.

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2.2 Tacitness and silence

"The absence of the sign can be a sign [...]" Merleau-Ponty writes.7 This I would like to formulate

as follows: The apparent absence of a sign can be a sign. This signifying absence of one or more

signs I will call tacitness [Danish: tavshed].8 Tacitness is hereby a mode of language and as such

something that communicates and is linguistical; as opposed to silence as the incommunicable and

illinguistical.

The meaningful and signifying apparent absence of a sign, that nonetheless is a sign,

and as such linguistical, is known from and can be used in a myriad of linguistic contexts. From

everyday life we know tacitness as a sign of disapproval, as a sign of compassion, and in many

other signifying and linguistic ways. Tacitness can also be utilized in art. A novel, for instance

written as a war diary, can be written such that the abrupt absence of text signifies the death of the

narrator. The apparent absence of signs in this hypothetical novel is in itself a sign, and thus an

example of tacitness. Tacitness is not only known from spoken and written language. A certain

exclusion in a painting can be telling. Tacitness in music is likewise not merely the momentary

absence of music in the music, but on the contrary a part of the music. Staccato is an example,

where the rythmic discontinuation or interruption of the notes can make a melody stand on pins.

The musical context around the tacitness in a composition can make the tacitness everything from

unnerving to blissful.9 The tacitness in music can be an extraordinarily saturated musical

expression, why it precisely classifies as tacitness and not silence, since the expressive apparent

absence of music nonetheless is music, an aesthetic expression, that speaks to us.

7 Signes, p. 45. My translation. "L'absence de signe peut être un signe [...]"

8 'Tacitness' is here the translation of the Danish concept of 'tavshed'. In Danish only entities with linguistic capabilities

can be tavse, give rise to tavshed, or perceive it. It is a withholding of language where it was possible for it to be

manifest. Tacitness may or may not convey some of the meaning inherent in this use. 'Tacitness' and 'tavshed' is thought

to have evolved from the same origin, as the Latin tacitus is cognate with Gothic þahan and akin to Old Norse þegja, of

which the Danish 'tavshed' stems. 9 Examples of elements of tacitness as an integral part of music is found in many well-known compositions, from

Beethoven's fermata in the famous beginning to his 5th symphony (unnerving tacitness) to Samuel Barbes half-way-

climax of tacitness in extension of the crescendo in Adagio for Strings/Agnus Dei (blissful tacitness).

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2.3 The limitless language

Negative philosophy of language entails as a premise that language must have some form of

limitation, a place where it ceases to be. In the works of certain philosophers, linguists and even

sociologists you will be hard-pressed to find this delimitation between what is linguistic and not

linguistic, and what can be expressed and what cannot. The thought of language having a limit or

some limitations is dismissed more or less explicitly.

The thought of the limitless language is perhaps already found in the bible in the

Gospel of John. The thought of the limitless language can be seen where 'the Word' [logos] is prior

to creation, where the Word is in Yahweh, is Yahweh, who creates life, where life is the light of

mankind, and where the light, "the true light that gives light to everyone", which distinguishes man

from everything else and makes salvation possible, all have 'the Word' as its foundation and

prerequisite. There is no limit to what has 'the Word' as its foundation and prerequisite here. Not

much (if any) room is left for that, which could lie outside 'the Word', and be unconditioned by it or

independent of it.

In semiotics the limit to what falls within the domains of language can be hard to find,

insofar a sign is always indicative of some form of language.10

"To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but

another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all

thought is in signs." (Peirce, 1868)11

"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of

crystals, and throughout the purely physical world [...]" (Peirce, 1906)12

It is hard to see how something could be illinguistical in a world, where not only every

kind of thought is linguistical, but even processes in the so-called "pure physical world" also are

linguistical. In this way Peirce nurtures the thought of the limitless language. Ideas of both Peircean

pan-semiosis as well as Weinerian pan-information have found their way into cybernetics, science

of information and philosophy of information.13

In Anglo-American philosophy similar ideas of

10 With reference to the definition of the concepts 'sign' and 'language', as presented in this thesis section 2: 'Positive and

negative philosophy of language as an extension of a conception of sign an language'. 11

'Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man', p. 103–114, the quote is from §253 12

'Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism', p. 492–546. 13

Brier, Cybersemiotics, 'Wiener: Pan–Information', p. 37 onwards.

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pan-information are also found, e.g. in F. Dretske's Knowledge and the Flow of Information, when –

parroting the Gospel of John – it is stated: "In the beginning there was information [...]"14

That language should have a limit is not always something that is denied either

implicitly or explicitly, but rather something not addressed where it nonetheless could be expected.

Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, for example, does not contain any detailed or explicit

philosophy of language such that it should be possible to encounter the limits of language. To the

extent that language [die Sprache] is treated in Being and Time, the discussion is subordinate to a

discussion of talk [Rede], or actual practiced discourse, something that does not have any obvious

limit at all.15

Heidegger is not alone as someone who, given what is considered in his thought,

could have been expected to have some notion of the limitations of language – and yet does not.

The tendency to reject or overlook a space for that which lies beyond language is seen to the wide

extent to which phenomena are treated as wholly linguistic phenomena. Here it is not a consequence

of language itself being explicitly treated without mention of its possible limits, but where different

phenomena are analyzed exclusively sub specie linguae, when for instance shopping habits are

sociologically analyzed as linguistic acts, insofar they express the consumer's attempt to construct

stories about him- or herself through consumption. Not just the choice of groceries are seen as

linguistic acts. All choices, large and small, conscious and subconscious, are dimensions of

language in that they are acts through which you narrate yourself. Also in this way can language

appear limitless, when the choice of socks bought and put on in the morning thus is a linguistic act;

when the breakfast consumed is a sign; when your particular choice of education, work, loved one,

number of children, human interaction, conscious life, the sum of your thoughts, your entire life, the

will you leave behind, and your funeral one and all are linguistic acts and phenomena.

It needs to be stressed, that it is not necessarily wrong, that much can appear linguistic

or conditioned by language in this or related ways, given for instance it is conditioned by narrativity

and is a part of our self-identity as narration. The question is whether these phenomena wholly and

only are linguistic; whether there isn't something that eludes language.

14 F. Dretske Knowledge and the Flow of Information, p. vii. Once again the differing conceptions of information and

language should be noted, in that information does not fall under the domain of language, if we were to follow Dretske's

own terminology – which we are not. 15

Being and Time §34 'Being-there and discourse. Language' p. 203.

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This thesis opposes the explicit and implicit assumption of the limitless language, and

also opposes the one-sided focus on many phenomena as linguistic phenomena – in forgetfulness of

that dimension of phenomena that is silence.

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3. Themes of the inexpressible

Numerous philosophers, separated by era and geography, separated by their subjects and topics, by

approaches and at times disagreements, or by a complete lack of knowledge of each other, have

nonetheless had room for that which eludes language. The basis for having this correspondingly

varies. In the following different philosophers will be held up against each other in regard to a

number of themes, which traditionally has been associated with the inexpressible and illinguistical.

3.1 The divine

The connection between the inexpressible and the divine, and thereby also the mystical

connotations of the inexpressible, stem from the tradition of negative theology. What is to be

understood by negative theology can – fittingly – appear opaque, and the very idea of such a

negative theology, united by one or more ideas running through the works of several different

philosophers and theologians, and running through several centuries, has been contested.16

Negative theology is also sometimes called apophatic theology, via negativa or via

negationis, of which the Latin terms already hint, that what is taken to unite negative theology is a

belief that the road to experiencing and knowing the divine is negative, and that the descriptions and

formulations of this experience and knowledge are impossible with anything other than negations. It

is impossible to describe what the divine is. Left is only to describe what the divine is not. It is an

approximation by exclusion. The basis and context for this varies among ancient and medieval

philosophers and theologians.

The incommunicable seemingly appeared for the first time in ancient times in connection with

mathematics, when the Pythagoreans, after Pythagoras' death and the discovery of irrational

numbers, referred to these numbers as unutterable [arrhēton].17

However, this concept of the

unutterable did not designate what this thesis seeks to address concerning the incommunicable. A

16 Bradley, Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy, p. 12.

17 Brunschwig, et. al., Greek Thought, p. 391

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Pythagorean, supposedly Hippasus of Metapontum, was sentenced to death for speaking publicly of

irrational numbers.18

This seems to suggest that the Pythagoreans did not have a concept of the

incommunicable by the concept of arrhēton, but had it designate a taboo or a ban on speaking of

something that was not to be spoken of, but thus something that was possible to communicate.19

The neo-Platonic philosopher Iamblichus in De vita pythagorica also describes how the

Pythagoreans were famous for their vow of silence and general reluctance to speak too much; how

they abstained from communicating what was possible to communicate.20

The earliest instance of the concept of the incommunicable in our known history of

philosophy, is therefore perhaps in Plato in his seventh letter.21

In e.g. Hannah Arendt's

interpretation of this famous passage from the seventh letter we find that the truth is supposedly

inexpressible [arrhēton].22 Plato, however, does not directly use the concept of truth [aletheia] of

that which you cannot communicate, but address philosophy and the subject itself [to pragma auto]

of philosophy.23

He writes, that there is no writing from him on the subject, since the subject of

philosophy "does not at all admit of verbal expression", but manifest itself in the soul, as when a

spark ignites a flame, "as a result of continued application to the subject itself."24

This is aligned

with the critique of writing in the dialogue Phaedrus, where orality is assigned a superior role in

communicating philosophy.25

Philosophy and its subject, whatever it may be, is hence not

something linguistical itself, but can lend itself – though only difficultly – to be hinted at through

orality and thereby through language according to Plato. This idea, that the subject of philosophy is

not in and of itself linguistical, nor lends itself to direct communication, and that the insight into this

subject can only be hinted at indirectly through language, influences neo-Platonism and what will

become negative theology later on.26

Proclus (412-485 CE), who was inspired by the neo-Platonic Plotinus, radicalized

Plotinus and also negated negations as a way to formulate knowledge of the highest, since he

18 Ibid., p. 391

19 It is same the reason why I will not be addressing the Jewish tradition of banning the utterance of the tetragrammaton,

YHWH [יהוה ], since it also is an example of a taboo and ban on certain communication, and not an example of

incommunicability. 20

Huffman, 'Pythagoras', section 2.2. 21

There has however been doubts recently of the authenticity of many of Plato's letters. See Slagmark 45/2006 p. 123–

147. 22

Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 291 23

Agamben, Potentialities, p. 27. 24

Letters 341C. 25

Phaedrus 275d-e 26

Agamben has convincingly shown how Plato nontheless maintains language as a road to philosophical knwledge of

"the subject itself" in both the seventh letter and in the dialogues, for which reason there in the case of Plato is still not

talk of an unequivocal incommunicability or illinguisticality. Agamben, Potentialities, p. 30-1.

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thought that neither affirmations or negations could capture the divine.27

Proclus in his magnum

opus, Theologia Platonica:

"Of all beings therefore, and of the Gods that produce beings, one exempt and

imparticipable cause pre-exists, – a cause ineffable indeed by all language, and unknown

by all knowledge and incomprehensible, unfolding all things into light from itself,

subsisting ineffably prior to, and converting all things to itself, but existing as the best end

of all things."28

In the writings of Proclus the ineffable is tied to the gods, the divine and the highest of

everything good.

With Proclus' student Pseudo-Dionysius (5th-6th century CE) this mysticism finally

becomes monotheistic and Christian as illustrated by the following prologue-prayer, which is

ascribed to Moses on the peak of Mount Sinai:

”Guide of Christians

in the wisdom of heaven!

Lead us up beyond unknowing and light,

up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture,

where the mysteries of God’s Word

lie simple, absolute and unchangeable

in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence”29

Here the inexpressible insight is remarkably enough tied to darkness, not light, but

also yet again to the divine, the highest, and now the Christian religion. This will not just remain a

theme in the more obscure regions of Christianity. Later on this becomes so uncontroversially

Christian, that church father Thomas Aquinas writes a prayer to the ineffable creator [creator

ineffábilis], intended to be used before studying by priests, monks and other clergymen.30

In negative theology the divine was not outside the limits of language; it could –

despite its relative obscurity nonetheless – be grasped and expressed through negations. Negative

theology was itself negated by Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius, according to whom language does

not even manage to express the divine with negations. The divine is here both completely

illinguistical and beyond any linguistic conceptualization or communication, positive as well as

negative. In Plato and this neo-Platonic mysticism, where negative theology is negated, we find the

earliest concepts of the inexpressible and also the origins of the association between religious

27 Bradley, Negative Theology and Modern French Philosophy, p. 13

28 Proclus, Platonic theology, Taylor, T., 3.1, my italics.

29 Pseudo-Dionysos, The Mystical Theology 997A.

30 Pope Pius the 11th, 'Studiorum Ducem', no. 764 in Raccolta 1923

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mysticism and the inexpressible, and the reason why the inexpressible still bears mystical

connotations to this day.

With the root of the association between religious mysticism and the inexpressible we

perhaps also find, as hinted at in the introduction to this thesis, the root of why the inexpressible as

a subject should be too banal or obscure for modern serious philosophy. Language and positive

philosophy of language has also been permeated by religious mysticism, from the belief in the

magical powers of words in folk tales, to the first words of the Gospel of John, and to Merleau-

Pontys characterization of the miracle [le prodige] that defines language.31

To take language

philosophically serious, has nonetheless not been scorned by this same token – and rightfully so.

31 Merleau-Ponty, Signes, p. 41

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3.2 Repetition and perishment [forgængelighed]

The concept of repetition has – through the concept of iterability – been intimately connected with

language as an essential property by a diverse range of philosophers like Austin, Searle and

Derrida.32

In the following I will continue along this line, but will – unlike those previously

mentioned – furthermore relate language and repetition to perishment and religiosity.

All that is linguistical has the possibility of being repeated. A sentence can be iterated,

a book re-read, a piece of music replayed. The possibility of this relies on it not being the perishable

[forgængelige] and specific sound wave, or exactly that perishable and specific ink in exactly this

book, that is repeated, but rather the typical and characteristic combination of signs, which have the

individual sound wave or book as a medium, that is repeated. All that is linguistical is principally

possible to repeat; it might even be a defining property of the linguistical itself.33

The linguistical is tied to religiosity through the concept of repetition, if we here think

of the linguistical in conjunction with Kierkegaard's reflections on repetition. In Repetition from

1843 Kierkegaard lets the ironic (and also ironically named) Constantin Constantius reflect on the

possibility of repetition. Repetition is characterized as divine, in that it is impossible yet happens to

e.g. Job, from whom God took everything and gave everything back.34

Faith in repetition is faith in

the impossible, that what has perished hasn't really perished. Job manages through faith to make

"the double movement of infinity",35

and believe in the possibility of repetition as a miracle,

bestowed as a gift of mercy from God.

Repetition is an important theme in differing religions and their differing beliefs about

the divine. Repetition appears both in the circular and the eschatological religious cosmologies.

That repetition appears in the circular cosmologies, where everything repeats itself for all eternity,

does not surprise. Repetition nonetheless also appears in their supposed opposites: The

eschatological cosmologies, in repetition as the reunion with the deceased, the resurrection of Israel,

the re-entrance into the otherwise lost paradise. It is the idea, that what time took, can be given

back, or taken back [Danish: gen-tage/tage igen; lit. re-take/take back]. Repetition serves to assure

32 Derrida, Limited Inc., p. 18 and 102 onwards. Derrida stresses however how the possible repetition of something

linguistical is at one and the same time both a prerequisite for there being communicated anything at all, it thus being

linguistical, and also stresses that repetition, exemplified by quotation, is never a "pure" repetition of the identical or

same, since what is repeated is also changed by being repeated (notice in particular p. 103: "As though [...] repetition

did not alter!"). 33

See the note above. 34

Gjentagelsen, p. 169-70. 35

Danish: "Uendelighedens Dobbeltbevægelse"

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the believer against the definitive perishment, that the deceased are gone, that Israel has fallen, and

that paradise is lost. But thus both for the circular as well as the eschatological religious

cosmologies, repetition serves to assure or safeguard the believer from irreversible perishment.

Language is capable of repetition, and repetition as a theme permeating religions as

the transcendent divine principle which keeps perishment at bay. Language and religions share a

peculiar theme.

The logician Gottlob Frege did not address the repetition and religiosity, but through

his philosophical concept of Sinn language is tied to the unperishable [uforgængelige] even here. In

contrast to the contingent material existence of ink printed on paper, which can rot and perish, and

in contrast to the concrete sound-waves produced, which must also recede and perish, in contrast to

this, the thought-content they can entail, the Sinn of these words and sentences, exist in a "third

realm", a distinct ontological domain, which also contains the eternal truths of mathematics,

geometry and logic, which is separate from the perishability of both the material and psychological

realms.36

The natural and artificial languages and the propositions formulated in them can perish,

but their Sinn, of which they are an expression, and without which they wouldn't be languages, their

Sinn does not perish, but persist in the ontological third realm despite all perishment. Also in the

Frege's philosophy do we thus find language connected with the unperishable, while, as a

consequence, silence, which has no Sinn, must belong to the perishable.

All that is linguistical has the possibility of being repeated, and repetition as a theme

permeates the different religions as the divine principle, which keeps perishment at bay. Language

and religion share a peculiar theme. If the possibility of the repetition of the linguistical rests on the

premise that it is not the specific ink, which is to be repeated in a linguistic repetition, but rather the

generic [almene] and characteristic combination of signs, which is to be repeated, then silence, as

that which is in no way sign-like or signifying, cannot be repeated. The illinguistical and

inexpressible, which we call silence, cannot be repeated, since it isn't and never was linguistical and

expressible to begin with. Silence is what irreversibly perished, perishes and will perish, which

cannot be repeated, since it is already lost. If language contained something divine, and language

harbored the possibility of repetition as the transcendent principle, which also assures the believer

that what has perished and what may yet perish does not do so definitively or irrevocably; then

silence shows itself as radical undivinity.37

36 'Der Gedanke: Eine logische Untersuchung', p. 58-77

37 From Danish det ugudelige, 'the undivine' or 'the ungodly'.

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3.3 Particularity: Individuum est ineffabile

One of the most prominent themes of incommunicability in the history of philosophy, which has

been brought up most often and most extensively, in the works of the most diverse philosophers,

and over the largest time span, is the particular. In the following I have selected and focused on

some of the thinkers, who have either formulated certain thoughts most influentially, or have

contributed with unique perspectives on the relationship between particularity and

incommunicability.

3.3.1 The metaphysical and epistemological particularity

The idea of particularity as something relating in a notable and remarkable way to language appears

as early as Plato's Theaetetus. Socrates tells of his dream in which a person says:

"[...] the primary elements [stoicheia] of which we and all else are composed admit of no

rational explanation; for each alone by itself can only be named, and no qualification can

be added [...]"38

Here the idea appears that the particular escapes language in a certain way, in which

the non-particular, i.e. the universal [almene] and composite, does not.39

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle also connects the particular with that of which

there can only be perception, when he writes, that "[...] intuitive reason is of the limiting premises,

for which no reason can be given, while practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular,

which is the object not of scientific knowledge but of perception [...]".40

The metaphysical particularity and the perceptual particularity, in the thought of Plato

and Aristotle respectively, seems to be what Hegel unites (without mention of the two) with a

linguistic twist in an argument against nominalism. The Hegelian combination of the particular and

the inexpressible is also later found in a number of so-called Young Hegelian philosophers, like

Kierkegaard and Max Stirner, who will be examined later in this section.

38 Theaetetus 201e, Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard

University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. 39

Socrates nevertheless ends up dismissing the idea that appears in his dream once he is awake and contemplates it,

since he thinks that it entails that the combinations or compositions of the elements, as mere sums of the elements, must

become just as unexplainable as the elements themselvep. Ibid., 206b. 40

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by W. D. Ross [1142a25]

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In the first section of The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel argues against a hypothetical

(or at least unspecified and anonymous) kind of nominalist who attempt to talk of completely

particular things without regard to or isolated from das Allgemeine, i.e. the universal.41

They believe

that this can be done, but what they mean and intend to say, is not what they actually say.

"they do not say what they “mean”. If they really wanted to say this bit of paper which

they “mean”, and they wanted to say so, that is impossible, because the This of sense

[sinnliche Diese], which is “meant”, cannot be reached by language, which belongs to

consciousness, i.e. to what is inherently universal. In the very attempt to say it, it would,

therefore, crumble in their hands.

[...]

but they speak of actual things, external or sensible objects, absolutely individual, real,

and so on; that is, they say about them what is simply universal. Consequently what is

called unspeakable is nothing else than what is untrue, irrational, something barely and

simply meant."42

The absolutely particular does not lend itself to communication in and of itself,

because its attempted communication presupposes and is only achievable through the universal or

universal concepts, whereby it is not the particular and only the particular which is communicated.

The absolutely particular is incommunicable.

Hegel associates the incommunicable with the absolutely particular, but the

incommunicable is not highly thought of, if the idea is not outright mocked, when he writes that

here, with the unspeakable, we are speaking of nothing else than the untrue, irrational, something

barely and simply meant.

In one of Nietzsche's early texts, 'On truth and lies in an extra-moral sense' from 1873, the untrue,

irrational and simply meant becomes the condition for not only the concept of truth, but all concepts

and language on the whole.

"Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. [...] We obtain the

concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature

41 Das Allgemeine could be translated as the generic, general, typical, or universal.

42 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, A.I.3., p. 102-3. Phänomenologie des Geistes, s. 91-3:"was sie meinen, sagen

sie nicht. Wenn sie wirklich dieses Stück Papier, das sie meinen, sagen wollten, und sie wollten sagen, so ist dies

unmöglich, weil das sinnliche Diese, das gemeint wird, der Sprache, die dem Bewußtsein, dem an sich Allgemeinen

angehört, unerreichbar ist. Unter dem wirklichen Versuche, es zu sagen, würde es daher vermodern. [...] aber sie

sprechen wirkliche Dinge, äußere oder sinnliche Gegenstände, absolut einzelne Wesen usf., d. h. sie sagen von ihnen

nur das Allgemeine; daher, was das Unaussprechliche genannt wird, nichts anderes ist als das Unwahre, Unvernünftige,

bloß Gemeinte "

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is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with

an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."43

Language with its concepts is here characterized as a more or less random and

coincidental abstraction, that is projected on the world in disregard and negligence of the particular.

The very construction of language entails an unavoidable and necessary Platonism as a

presupposition, which also makes it impossible for language to grasp the particular as particular.

Particularity remains something inaccessible and indefinable to language.

Nietzsche claims in continuation of this that the distinction between the particular

token and its type [Individuum und Gattung] is also itself merely presupposed by language, and

only occurs in or as a result of language, and does not occur outside of it in the reality language

purports to address.44

Here Nietzsche seems (perhaps with intent) to contradict himself. If the argument for

language not mirroring the world is that there is something in or about an aspect of the world, which

language cannot mirror (particularity), then it cannot also be claimed, that this something does not

exist in the world or as an aspect of the world, but is only to be found in language as a linguistical

construction.

If this is a deliberate contradiction it could appear as a demonstrative contradiction, an

attempt to show something, that cannot otherwise be said; namely to show the inherent limits of

language, how language falls short or implodes in contradiction if you try to transcend language

with itself. Hereby it is not only said, but shown, how language is supposed to be self-contained and

unable to transcend itself and reach and fathom the world outside language.

The metaphysical particularity is also present in the philosophy of Russell and the early

Wittgenstein in their logical atomism, and here particularity is also recognized as relating to

language in a peculiar way. Both Russells concept of indiciduals and the early Wittgensteins

Gegenstände are described by the later Wittgenstein as entities which can only be named and

escape any other kind of linguistic determination or description.45

I other words, here we are

presented with the idea of the particular escaping language in certain regard, as we also were in

43 Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks, p. 83. KGW III2, p. 374: "Jeder Begriff

entsteht durch Gleichsetzen des Nicht-Gleichen. [...] Das Uebersehen des Individuellen und Wirklichen gibt uns den

Begriff, wie es uns auch die Form gibt, wohingegen die Natur keine Formen und Begriffe, also auch keine Gattungen

kennt, sondern nur ein für uns unzugängliches und undefinirbares X." 44

KGW III2, p. 374 45

Philosophical Investigations §46

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Plato's works, when Socrates dreamt of the primary elements [stoicheia] being nameable, but

somehow indescribable.

3.3.2 The existential particularity

Following Hegel we find a somewhat similar association of particularity with incommunicability in

the thought of Kierkegaard and Stirner; but only somewhat similar, as their association of the

particular and the incommunicable follows Hegel in a sort of opposition to him, that yet draws upon

his thought – in the same way their overall philosophies do. Particularity and incommunicability are

not dismissed, like in the quote from Hegel, but are given importance and an existential dimension.

The existentialist Sartre also connects particularity and incommunicability in passing, and possibly

following both Kierkegaard and Stirner, but also following Kojève's famous and influential lectures

on Hegel and The Phenomenology of Mind, which Sartre attended.46

In the works of Kierkegaard we find numerous instances of the thought of the

individual [den Enkelte], who asserts himself as an individual before the universal [det Almene] by

his religiosity, and hereby cannot be mediated or communicated in any way. In Fear and Trembling

Abraham, as an individual in his individuality, cannot speak on his way down mount Moriah.47

The

individual, who asserts himself as a particular individual "over against the universal",48

cannot be

mediated through universal concepts [almenbegreber], like the universal concept 'human', since the

individual makes an exception of himself before the rest of humanity and what it means to be

human, a token of the type human. Kierkegaard describes how Abraham, if he were to speak, make

use of language, would commit to the ethical through the universal, whereby he would not be able

to justify why he was willing to kill his son on God's inexplicable command. Such justification

would be impossible because religiosity does not lend itself to explanation, substantiation, or

reason, whether ethical or rational. When the believer is in contestation ["Anfægtelse"] and asserts

himself as an individual before the universal, the individual not only breaks his subordination to the

universal, but also cannot make use of language, since language is always mediated through the

universal and universal concepts, like it was the case with Hegel. The religious individual "in his

46 Sartre, Qu'est ce que la littérature?, p. 51

47 Frygt og Bæven, p. 56

48 Fear and Trembling, 'Problemata I'

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individuality" is linguistically incomprehensible, cannot express himself, and is in this way

incommunicable.49

Without knowing of Kierkegaard The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner was

published in October 1844, merely a year after Fear and Trembling, which also addresses

particularity and incommunicability in regard to Hegel and in an existential manner, but diverts

from Kierkegaard in regard to religiosity. In Stirners thought we find the idea of the individual [der

Einzige] who asserts himself as an individual before the universal [Allgemeine] by his radical

irreverent irreligiosity, which does not lend itself to mediation or communication in any way.

"I am man, and you are man: but "man" is only a thought, a generality [Allgemeinheit];

neither you nor I are speakable, we are unutterable, because only thoughts are speakable

and consist in speaking.

[...]

The subject is again subjected to the predicate, the individual to something general

[Allgemeinen]; the dominion is again secured to an idea, and the foundation laid for a

new religion. This is a step forward in the domain of religion, and in particular of

Christianity; not a step out beyond it.

The step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable.

[...]

I [as der Einzige] am the criterion of truth, but I am not an idea, but more than idea, i. e.

unutterable."50

The individual [der Einzige] is a mode of being, where the existential meaning of the

individual is not derived from a universal concept, which the individual is subordinate to, be it ones

God-given soul, humanity, nationality, or gender,51

but where the individual finds or creates

meaning with oneself by oneself, by making oneself an exception to all things universal. Stirner

characterizes religiosity as the archetypical and primeval subordination and submission, where the

individual loses his particularity under his universality, why Stirner also uses precisely Abraham as

49 Furthermore, the entire so-called middle period (1842-51) of Kierkegaards works are characterized by indirect

communication [indirekte meddelelse] with Plato and Socrates as template. As treated in section 5 of this treatise, the

subject of philosophy was illinguistical according to Plato, and the insight into the subject of philosophy was only

indirectly accessible through language. Kierkegaard therefore seems implicitly to appropriate his own variant of the

platonic idea of incommunicability in regard to philosophical mediation, as well as his own variant of the Hegelian idea

of incommunicability in regard to particularity. 50

The Ego and His Own respectively p. 414, 239, and 475. Der Einzige, respectively. p. 349, 202 and 401: Ich bin

Mensch und Du bist Mensch, aber “Mensch” ist nur ein Gedanke, eine Allgemeinheit; weder Ich noch Du [as Einzige]

sind sagbar, Wir sind unaussprechlich, weil nur Gedanken sagbar sind und im Sagen bestehen. [...] Wieder ist das

Subjekt dem Prädikate unterworfen, der Einzelne einem Allgemeinen; wieder ist einer Idee die Herrschaft gesichert und

zu einer neuen Religion der Grund gelegt. Es ist dies ein Fortschritt im religiösen, und speziell im christlichen Gebiete,

kein Schritt über dasselbe hinaus. Der Schritt darüber hinaus führt ins Unsagbare.[...] Ich [som der Einzige] bin das

Kriterium der Wahrheit, Ich aber bin keine Idee, sondern mehr als Idee, d. h. unaussprechlich. 51

The Ego and His Own, p. 3-4. Der Einzige, p. 3-4.

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an example of the religious one, who consequently least of all manages to assert himself as an

individual.52

Abraham does not make an exception of himself before God, but obeys

unconditionally as a token of the universal category of man created in the image of God. Only if he

had made an exception of himself before the divine and managed a personal rebellion and

opposition of God's command, only if he had asserted himself as an individual in his individuality

before the godhead, he would have asserted his ownness [Einzigkeit] and been incommunicable,

would be Stirner's line of reasoning.53

Besides tying particularity and incommunicability together, Stirner here also ties – and

possibly for the first time in the history of philosophy – the incommunicable to the irreligious, in a

rebellion against everything that could be considered 'higher'. This form of irreligiousity is a

rebellion against not only Christianity, but also what Stirner identifies as covert Christianity:

Humanistic atheism like Feuerbach's,54

where "Man" and the essence of man is exalted and made

the higher and godlike universal, which you as an individual can strive to participate in and be a

true manifestation of. The incommunicable is otherwise something that characterizes the higher,

divine and religious from Plato to medieval negative theology to Kierkegaard and the early

Wittgenstein. It is language and 'the Word' – and not the incommunicable – which characterizes the

higher and divine in Stirner's thought. Where the incommunicable otherwise marks a higher and

divine sphere, it is here something that marks a sphere which on the contrary is to be kept pure from

the higher and the divines oppressive hegemony.

It should be noted how that which eludes language, in what could be called the existential tradition,

is tied to the particular human being rather than anything particular. Antiquity's, Hegel's,

Nietzsche's, and logical atomism's connection of the incommunicable with the particular as

something ontological or epistemological, we find as something existential in Kierkegaard and

Stirner.

Schopenhauer also has this connection of particularity with incommunicability

exclusively tied to human beings. In light of death, Schopenhauer remarks:

52 The Ego and His Own, p. 198. Der Einzige, p. 195.

53 Der Einzige's reason for rebelling against God's command to sacrificially slaughter one's own son would however not

be on the grounds of it being unethical, whereby one would merely submit and obey the ethical rather than God, one

universality instead of another. Der Einzige's reason would be: "Non serviam – I will not serve." 54

Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is to a great extend written as a reaction to Feuerbach's Wesen des Christentum, and

what Stirner thought was found herein: Humanism as a cult of Man, humanism as a replacement-religion.

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"The deep sorrow we feel on the death of a friend springs from the feeling that in every

individual there is something which we cannot define [etwas Unaussprechliches], which

is his alone and therefore irreparable. Omne individuum ineffabile."55

3.3.3 The parallel between Hegel/young Hegelians and Heidegger/deconstruction

The relation between Hegel and the opposition amongst the young Hegelians resembles the relation

between Heidegger and deconstruction on multiple decisive points.

Hegel emphasized the typical, universal and most general phenomena, which in

differing ways had to be the case, and to which the young Hegelians (Kierkegaard and Stirner)

objected that these universalities never wholly and completely capture the particular phenomena,

which the universalities were generalizations of; that no matter how necessary and universal an

exposition of man and the essence of man might be, there is nonetheless (at least potentially) always

something in or about the individual human being as an individual ("hin Enkelt", "der Einzige")

which 'Man' and the essence of man does not fathom or capture and never will be able to fathom or

capture.

Heidegger's Dasein as the essence of man [das Wesen des Menschen] is a somewhat

similar kind of universal category, against which Derrida also objected and drew attention to how

human beings tend not to be neither masculine or feminine, like Dasein as a neuter is neither

maculine or feminine, and that ready-to-handedness [Zuhandenheit] in its universality and neutrality

does not account for the difference between left- and right-handedness.56

The objection is in both

instances, that the generalization of something particular or some particular things can never capture

the particular in its particularity.

3.3.4 Criticism

Finally I would like to address some common criticisms of the idea of the particular as being

incommunicable, illustrated here by the German philosopher Franz von Kutschera in his book

Ästhetik from 1988, here in my own translation:

55 English: Essays of Schopenhauer, p. 199. German: Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. II, §311: "Der tiefe Schmerz,

beim Tode jedes befreundeten Wesens, entsteht aus dem Gefühle, daß in jedem Individuo etwas Unaussprechliches,

ihm allein Eigenes und daher durchaus Unwiederbringliches liegt. Omne individuum ineffabile" 56

Derrida, 'Geschlecht' and 'La main de Heidegger (Geschlecht II)' respectively in Psyché, p. 395 and 415

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"Individuum est ineffabile is an axiom, which is found as early as in the works of

Aristotle; one cannot fully or completely describe individual things, since they have

innumerable properties, but that does not mean that one cannot make many correct and

informative statements about these individual things. This similarly applies to the content

of a statement, more specifically that even though there usually is something which

cannot be exhaustively described, not "fully captured by the concept", there can still be

said much about the content of a statement and in any case partially about it. Like the

impression that an occurrence makes on us can be "contradictory" (or better: ambiguous)

– an event can for instance give us conflicting emotions – in a likewise manner the

content of a statement can be ambiguous, such that it cannot be captured or expressed

conceptually in a simple way. But that also does not entail "incommunicability"."57

There is however much that is incorrect and misunderstood in this criticism. By the

incommunicability of the particular is not merely understood, that there are innumerable properties

which can never definitively or exhaustively be accounted for. The incommunicability of the

particular has nothing to do with its qualitative properties, no matter how many or perhaps even

innumerably many of them there are, or how inaccessible they might be. The incommunicability of

particularity furthermore does not rely on language somehow not being able to be sufficiently

unambiguous. Kutschera is correct in as much as plurality of properties and linguistic ambiguity,

even if they were unavoidable and necessary conditions, do not entail that the particular is

incommunicable. Plurality of properties and linguistic ambiguity as inescapable preconditions are

however not the argument for the incommunicability of particularity. Many correct assertions can

be made of an object, but then it is of that object as a token of a type, or about the properties of that

object, where this or another property is a token of the property as a type; where that which is

predicated of the concrete object is done with and based on what is principally a universality [en

almenhed]. More about qualitative properties and incommunicability will be addressed in section

3.9 about the scholastic concept of haecceitas, and more about particularity, specificity and

exemplarity in section 4.1.

There is yet another and simple criticism: "Proper names name the particular, be it a place, an event,

a person, etc., whereby the association of the incommunicable and the particular is shown to be

unfounded and refuted."

It is obvious that one was not unfamiliar or ignorant of the existence of proper names

from Aristotle over Hegel, Kierkegaard, to Stirner and so on.58

That something or someone has or is

57 Kutschera, Ästhetik, p. 49 onwards.

58 So obvious in fact, that I believe one could not think the above to be an objection to the idea of the particular being

incommunicable without violating the charity principle.

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given a proper name does not mean that that something or that someone is hereby expressed in its

or that person's particularity through language. Abraham was still named Abraham before, during

and after he made an exception of himself, asserted himself as an individual [hin Enkelte], and

participated in the religious experience which was incommunicable. That he possessed a proper

name does not concern the matter. The particular experience then and there, which was

incommunicable, would still not be communicable if it was given a unique and proper name. To

communicate something means something more than referencing to it, it also means to share

something, which the word also originally means (from latin communicare). Both with or without a

unique proper name there could be communicated about this experience, but in a certain sense it

would not be possible to communicate or express the experience. In this tradition the argument for

this experience being incommunicable or inexpressible would be its radical specificity.

P. F. Strawson argues convincingly that any reference to a particular thing in the end

relies on some kind of demonstrative identification,59

where indexical signs are used.60

"[...] [T]he

identification of particulars rests ultimately on the use of expressions with some demonstratives

[...]"61

References to particular things are made possible by indexicals, and thus indexicality

precedes proper names.62

Wittgenstein is also of this persuasion, when he writes that "a name is not

used with, but only explained by means of, the gesture of pointing."63

Thus indexicals should be

better candidates to that which can express the particular in its particularity. This will also be

addressed in section 3.9 on the concept of haecceitas and in 4.1. on specificity as opposed to

particularity.

Silence signifies that which stands wholly outside of the distinction between the

exemplary and the typical, which also language relies on.

59 Strawson, P. F., Individuals, p. 22.

60 Strawson does not use the concept of indexical signs, which stems from Peirce, but in his examples of demonstrative

identification he exclusively uses indexicals (ibid., p. 19). An indexical is a sign that refers to something or someone

independent of what or whom it is, but solely by the context of the sign. Words, like 'this', 'here', 'now', 'I, 'mine', or

arrows or pointing gestures refer in this way to di onwardserent points in time, places, things or persons depending on

the time, place, person, direction, etc., of the "utterance". 61

Strawson, P. F., Individuals, p. 117. 62

Proper names can be given with propernames: "Rundetårn is the tower on Købmagergade in Copenhagen." But all

proper names in the end rely on indexicals, for if one does not know what 'Købmagergade' refer to, then this is either in

need of explanation with a new proper name or an indexical, and if this new proper name is not known, one will have

to call upon another proper name or an indexical, and so forth, until it is the indexical alone that establish the reference.

Even what Strawson calls "logically individuating descriptions" are not possible without some primary minimal sort of

indexicality, some theoretical "demonstrative point of reference". Even though this is a theoretical argument, one also

sees this demonstrated at times in practice, when a language divide is overcome by referring to individual things with:

"[Pointing gesture or sign] [+] [name]", or "This/now/here/there/I/you/he/she... [+] [the name]". 63

Philosophical Investigations §45

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3.4 Wittgenstein: Keeping language at bay64

and letting the mystical show itself

Wittgenstein is one of the most famous later philosophers to focus on language and especially its

limits. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a book whose explicit aim is to show the limits of

meaningful use of language by showing how meaningful use of language consists in representing

the hidden logical form of the thought behind a proposition, a thought which yet again depicts

models of the states of affairs [Tatsachen], the whole of which is the world.65

Where early

interpretations of Tractatus focused on what the explicit aim of the book was,66

later interpretations

have focused on the implicit goal, which Wittgenstein also stated as that of importance in the

preface, letters, conversations and unpublished notes: To show how little was achieved by this

delimitation of what can be said, and point to all that which lies beyond this and cannot be said.67

In

a letter to editor Ludwig von Ficker Wittgenstein wrote, that "[...] the point of the book [Tractatus]

is ethical [der Sinn des Buches ist einer Ethischer]."68

From Wittgensteins Lecture on Ethics we

know that he used a concept of ethics which diverts from the commonly known one, in that it also

encompassed aesthetics and religion and all that express 'the higher' or 'absolute'.69

In Tractatus the

ethical, aesthetical and religious are likewise declared different but equal in being phenomena that

does not exist in the world,70

and as such are phenomena beyond the adequate scope of application

of language. In the letter to Ficker he continues:

"My work [Tractatus] consists of two parts: one part that lies before you, and another part

which I have not written. And exactly this second part is the important one."71

Wittgenstein also wrote in a letter to Moritz Schlick that Carnap had misunderstood

that last famous sentence of the book, and thereby the primary point of the book.72

There seems to

64 'keeping language at bay' is the translation of the Danish 'at holde sproget i ave', which rather than merely suggesting

keeping language away or in its right place also entails doing so out of respect or reverence, as the Danish 'ave' is

cognate to 'awe'. 65

"Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge." Tractatus 1.1, "Wir machen uns Bilder der Tatsachen."

ibid. 2.1, "Das Bild ist ein Modell der Wirklichkeit" ibid. 2.12, "Der logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke" ibid.

3, "Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz" ibid. 4 66

The Vienna Circle's interpretation of Tractatus is an example hereof, an interpretation which would dominate how the

Tractatus was and is understood. 67

"[...] der Wert dieser Arbeit [besteht] zweitens darin, daß sie zeigt, wie wenig damit getan ist [...]" Tractatus,

Vorwort. Se endvidere Letters to Russell Keynes and Moore, p. 71-3 68

Prototractatus, p. 15. 69

Wittgenstein, 'Lecture on Ethics' p. 3-12. Originally in English. 70

Tractatus 6.41og 6.42 71

My translation. Prototractatus, p. 15. German: "Mein Werk bestehe aus zwei Teilen: aus dem, der hier vorliegt, und

aus alledem, was ich nicht geschreiben habe. Und gerade dieser zweite Teil ist der wichtige."

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be reasonable foundation for the mentioned post-positivistic interpretations of Tractatus, which

emphasize the ethical, the aesthetical, the religious, and all that which lies outside of what can be

communicated as the essential aim of the book. Karl Jaspers had an eye for this interpretation of the

early Wittgenstein:

"The philosophical significance that shows itself in the shattering of thought in

formalization (something like this is wonderfully illustrated by the works of

Wittgenstein), is monumental. In the shattering of thought against its self-realized limits,

through thoughts own forceful consummation, indeterminable spaces are disclosed."73

The mystical is characterized by Wittgenstein as the feeling of seeing or experiencing the world as a

limited whole [begrenztes Ganzes].74

The entire Tractatus is an attempt to delimit the world as that

sum of logically representable states of affairs, which especially Frege's predicate logic can

formulate. As a view of the world as a logically limited whole, Tractatus yet again shows itself as a

mystical treatise, where the limit of the world also marks that which lies beyond it. "God does not

reveal himself in the world."75

The incommunicable is therefore not a subset of the world, but

something outside of it.

"There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest

['zeigt sich', can also be translated as 'show themselves']. They are what is mystical"76

By this quote it is also established that the incommunicable exists – merely outside the

logically delimited world which consists of states of affairs which lends itself to depiction in

language. The classical connection between the incommunicable and the mystical is also made here,

a connection whose philosophical origins and evolution was briefly outlined in section 3.1 of this

treatise. But from this quote it is also evident, that the incommunicable – however incommunicable

– nonetheless can show itself. This showing itself is different from that which can be communicated,

and what shows itself does not lend itself to depiction or representation in language. From

Wittgenstein's letters, this one dated 9th of April 1917:

72 Letter dated August 8th 1932, Nedo & Ranccheti 1983, L. Wittgenstein: Sein Leben in Bilden und Texten, p. 255, n.

20. 73

My translation. P. A. Schilpp, Karl Jaspers, Stuttgart 1977, p. 799-800: "Die philosophische Bedeutung, das

Scheitern des Denkens in der Formalisierung aufzuzeigen (etwas von diesem Geiste scheint aus den Arbeiten

Wittgensteins wundersam anzusprechen), wäre außerordentlich. Das Scheitern des Denkens an den durch es

selbsterkannten Grenzen, durch das Denken selber zwingend vollzogen, würde dadurch unbestimmbare Räume

öffnen.". 74

Tractatus 6.45 75

Ibid., 6. 432: "Gott offenbart sich nicht in der Welt " 76

Ibid., 6.522: "Es gibt allerdings Unaussprecliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische "

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"If one does not strain himself with uttering the unutterable, then nothing is lost. But the

unutterable is – unutterably – contained in what is uttered.“77

If you read this passage from this letter in conjunction with the idea in Tractatus of the

incommunicable being that which can only show itself, it is understood that even though what

shows itself cannot be communicated, has nothing linguistic about it, and is not language-like, such

that language can mirror it; there can nonetheless, by what is communicated, be something that

shows itself. Something incommunicable, which can only show itself, can very well show itself – so

to say – through what is communicated, but is not what is communicated. The shadow-side of

Tractatus was not possible be write, but could show itself through what was written.

In the works of the early Wittgenstein there is not merely a delimitation of what is possible to say.

Here we have a narrowing of our use of language regarding certain subjects, as if we often

attempted through language to express ourselves beyond our capabilities, and debased and muddied

that about which we wanted to communicate. The entire paradox is captured in the thought, that

whereof you cannot speak anyway, you are commanded to be silent. What is the point in forbidding

something that is not possible? In what sense is the incommunicable incommunicable if it can be

touched upon and debased by communication?

The early Wittgenstein wanted to limit language and keep it back and at bay before that which

language – according to him – cannot fathom or express. Herein lies the difference between

Wittgenstein and this treatise. In this treatise there is put forth a concept of silence, which is not

derived from an attempt to keep language at bay out of respect and awe of the ethical, aesthetical or

religious. In this treatise a concept of silence is put forth where any articulation of the ethical, the

aesthetical, the religious, the higher, the divine, and so forth, still does not violate language and its

limits. Derrida also writes about negative theology as precisely "a certain form of language with its

own mise en scene, rhetorical, grammatical, logical, demonstrative procedures, in short: a textual

practice."78

The mystic does not violate language and its limits when he says what he says – on the

77 My translation. Engelmann, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Briefe und Begegnungen, p. 16: "Wenn man sich nicht bemüht das

Unaussprechliche auszusprechen, so geht nichts verloren. Sondern das Unaussprechliche ist, – unaussprechlich – in dem

Ausgesprochenen enthalten " 78

Derrida, 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials' in Derrida and Negative Theology, p. 73. Psyché, 'Comment ne pas

parler: Dénégations', p. 535: "une certaine forme de langage, avec sa mise en scéne, ses modes rhétoriques,

grammaticaux, logiques, ses procédures démonstratives, en un mot une pratique textuelle."

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contrary. The mystical is also a linguistical practice with its characteristic linguistic figures, where

the sense of depth lies in its language and linguistic construction by aestheticizing contradiction, the

disintegration of opposites, etc. In contrast to this, there will be outlined a concept of silence as the

incommunicable in this treatise, which precisely distinguishes itself from the mystical 'higher' and

'divine'.

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3.5 The incommunicability of the good

Incommunicability also has an ethical dimension to it, if one considers philosophers like Adorno

and Levinas.

The whole of Adorno's thought is to some degree and extent ethical or political. Even

the most abstract metaphysical questions, which are addressed in his thought, finds their relevancy

as a result of the way in which they also always play a role in a critique of society.

The incommunicable comes into play in Adorno's thought where the concepts in

philosophy must be transgressed or transcended by way of them self.79

Adorno whishes to show

something which cannot be said of our concepts, where we become aware of our concepts in a new

way, and don't just take them for granted; a sort of Brechtian alienation [Verfremdung] used in

philosophy instead of drama.

"A philosophy that lets us know this, that extinguishes the autarky of the concept, strips the blindfold

from our eyes."80

The task is to destroy the self-preserving and self-imposing nature [Autarkie] of

concepts, which make them think for us and reproduce the modes of thought that are endemic to

and reinforce the status quo. It hereby becomes a job for critical philosophy to philosophize in spite

of the concepts: "uttering the unutterable [zu sagen, was nicht sich sagen läßt]", as he calls it.81

In his own sense Lévinas has the ethical as his philosophical foundation and point of departure, and

he too finds that the unsayable has something – in a manner speaking – to say. The ethical occurs

and manifests itself in the face-to-face encounter, where language is at a loss. Language is in and of

itself objectifying,82

but the face is irreducible and eludes any objectification,83

and hereby the face

becomes inexpressible or incommunicable.

79 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 15. Negative Dialektik, p. 25: "die Anstrengung, über den Begriff durch den Begriff

hinauszugelangen." 80

Negative Dialectics, p. 12. Negative Dialektik p. 21-22: "Philosophie, die das erkennt, die Autarkie des Begriffs tilgt,

streift die Binde von den Augen." 81

Negative Dialectics, p. 9. Negative Dialektik, p. 19. 82

Lévinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 209; Totalité et infini, p. 230 83

Lévinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 291; Totalité et infini, p. 324

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"It is precisely for this that the face to face proper to discourse does not connect a subject

with an object, and differs from the essentially adequate thematization. For no concept

lays hold of exteriority."84

The face is that in which the surrender to the other's infinity takes place, which is also

the foundation for the ethical. When the face, as foundation for the ethical, becomes linguistically

unfathomable, the ethical becomes incommunicable.

Wittgenstein also had an idiosyncratic concept of ethics intimately tied to the incommunicable, as

we saw in section 3.4.

In conclusion, it is in a well known thought in philosophy, that the ethical and incommunicable are

related in some way or another. With this treatise a different concept will be put forth, where

silence, as the incommunicable and illinguistical, is unethical in the sense that it is not ethical and

eludes the ethical. Silence is, so to say, not at play in the domain of the ethical, but only in that

which is beyond good and evil.

84 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 295. Totalité et infini, p. 329: "Par là, précisément, le face à face du discours ne

rattache pas un sujet à un objet, diffère de la thématisation, essentiellement adéquate, car aucun concept ne se saisit de

l'extériorité."

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3.6 The incommunicability of beauty

In the field of aesthetics incommunicability has also figured prominently. The concept of beauty in

aesthetics even seems to have been associated with incommunicability more intimately and more

often than both the good, the true, and many other concepts from different subdivisions of

philosophy.

This theme of incommunicability appears with particular frequency and importance in the German

literature. Kant wrote in 1790 in The Critique of Judgement:

"[B]y an aesthetical Idea I understand that representation of the Imagination which

occasions much thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being

capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and

made intelligible by language."85

This seems to be one of the earlier appearances of the idea of the incommunicability

of beauty in the German literature, which will subsequently make its trace through both German

idealism and romanticism. Schlegel writes in 1800:

"All beauty is allegory. The highest can, precisely because it is inexpressible, only be said

allegorically."86

The poets end up subscribing to the idea, such that it is no longer only to be found in

philosophy of art, but also in art itself, as illustrated by Hölderlin in 'In lieblicher Bläue':

"The suffering of this man [Oedipus] appears indescribable, unsayable, inexpressible.

When the drama presents it like this, it is so."87

The composer E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote in 1810 in a classic review of Beethoven's

fifth symphony that music was "the most romantic of all the arts [die romantischte aller Künste]",

and:

85 Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 197. Kant AA V, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, p. 314: "unter einer ästhetischen Idee aber

verstehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft, die viel zu denken veranlaßt, ohne daß ihr doch irgend ein

bestimmter Gedanke, d. i. Begriff, adäquat sein kann, die folglich keine Sprache völlig erreicht und verständlich

machen kann." 86

My translation. Schlegel, 'Gespräch über die Poesie' in Charakteristiken und Kritiken I, in Kritische Friedrich-

Schlegel-Ausgabe vol. 2, p. 324: "Alle Schönheit ist Allegorie. Das höchste kann man eben weil es unaussprechlich ist,

nur allegorisch sagen." 87

My translation. Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 2, p. 155-6: "Diese Leiden dieses Mannes [Ödipus], sie scheinen

unbeschreiblich, unaussprechlich, unausdrücklich. Wenn das Schauspiel ein solches darstellt, kommt’s daher."

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"Music discloses to man an unknown kingdom; a world which has nothing in common

with the external sensible world which surrounds him, and in which he leaves behind all

conceptually definable feelings, so as to give in to the inexpressible."88

The romantic view on music later influenced Schopenhauer's view on the aforementioned, and

hereby also Nietzsche's, which is why one also finds Zarathustra giving in to song when words are

too heavy and deceitful for him in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,89

which is addressed in section 3.10.

Aldous Huxley reiterates this in 1931 when he writes, that "after silence that which comes nearest to

expressing the inexpressible is music.'90, 91

Even though art, with music as a primary example, might come close, it is not certain that it also

reaches the incommunicable. The quote from Huxley also indicates that even though music might

be close to reaching it, it does not actually do so; Hölderlin acknowledged that the Oedipus'

suffering could nonetheless be represented in drama; and Schlegel concurred that the

incommunicable could nonetheless be expressed allegorically. Even music has been recognized as

having undeniable similarities with language.92,

93

Music has already been characterized as

something that, to a certain extent, can be considered linguistical in this treatise, when we saw in

section 2.2 that music can make use of aesthetically signifying apparent absence of music, in other

words, make use of tacitness, like all other arts and indeed language as a whole. Also the

repeatability of music brings it in connection with language, since language distinguishes itself by

its repeatability as it was stated in section 3.2. The possibility of the repeatability of music relies on

it not being the perishable and specific sound-wave which is repeated, but rather the common and

characteristic composition of notes, which the individual sound-waves are a medium of, which are

88 My translation. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese, p. 34: "Die Musik schließt dem Menschen ein unbekanntes

Reich auf; eine Welt, die nichts gemein hat mit der äußeren Sinnenwelt, die ihn umgibt, und in der er alle durch

Begriffe bestimmbaren Gefühle zurückläßt, um sich dem Unaussprechlichen hinzugeben." 89

KGW, VI1, p. 287. Nietzsche also characterizes aesthetical means of expression, like music, song and poetry, as being

closer to expressing what can otherwise not be expressed, when he writes in his foreword to The Birth of Tragedy, 'An

Attempt at Self-Criticism', p. 5-6: "here spoke – people said to themselves with misgivings – something like a mystic

and almost maenadic soul, which, undecided whether it should disclose or conceal itself, stammers with an effort and

capriciously as in a strange tongue. It should have sung, this "new soul" and not spoken ! What a pity, that I did not dare

to say what I then had to say, as a poet." KGW, III1, p. 9: "hier sprach - so sagte man sich mit Argwohn - etwas wie eine

mystische und beinahe mänadische Seele, die mit Mühsal und willkürlich, fast unschlüssig darüber, ob sie sich

mittheilen oder verbergen wolle, gleichsam in einer fremden Zunge stammelt. Sie hätte singen sollen, diese "neue

Seele" - und nicht reden! Wie schade, dass ich, was ich damals zu sagen hatte, es nicht als Dichter zu sagen wagte." 90

Huxley, 'The rest is silence' in Music At Night, p. 19. 91

Vladimir Jankélévitch has also written a whole book with this principle view: La Musique et l'Ineffable from 1961. 92

Rosset, C., 'Musique et langage' i L'objet singulier, p. 70 onwards. 93

Bayerl, P., Von der Sprache der Musik zur Musik der Sprache, p. 78 onwards.

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repeated. Just as it is in spoken language. When even music in this way speaks, and speaks to us, it

is no wonder that art as such does the same, as also Merleau-Ponty elaborates on in regard to the art

of painting in 'The indirect language and the voices of silence' from Signs, and Sartre in regard to

literature in What is Literature?, which will be further explored in the next section, 3.7.

By virtue of the concept of silence in this treatise, as the inexpressible and incommunicable, silence

thus becomes un-beautiful in the sense of being non-beauty, that silence does not even have

aesthetic qualities, and is beyond the realm of the aesthetical as it also is beyond the realm of the

ethical. Silence also eludes the aesthetical.

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3.7 The relation of primacy between language, tacitness and silence

In the works of numerous philosophers one will find language, tacitness and silence positioned in

relation to each other such that one has "primacy" or "precedence" over the others, that one is the

others "prerequisite", "foundation", "condition of possibility" or something similar.

In this section the question of the relation of primacy between language, tacitness and

silence will be addressed. Among Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty one finds

differing perceptions of whether silence, as the absence of language, only appears against the

backdrop of language, such that language has primacy; or whether language likewise, but the other

way around, only appears against the backdrop of silence, as the incommunicable and illinguistical,

such that silence has primacy.

Even if Heidegger did not think that everything is language nor that everything is

conditioned by language, language as a conceptual metaphor nonetheless assumes a crucial role in

his thought. In his exposition of humanity's unique Dasein this appears in his attempt to establish

"the question of the meaning of Being". Dasein is that being for whom its own being is a question.

This is not to be understood as a concrete linguistical act, a concretely articulated questioning in any

kind of natural language. But it points to the importance of language, when something linguistic is

the starting point of understanding Being itself, via the unique being for whom the meaning of

Being appears as a question. Even though 'question', rather than the linguistic act of asking, more

precisely signifies having a concern [Sorge] for something, the metaphorical use of something

linguistic in the core of his thought nonetheless points to the importance of language. In the Gospel

of John the Word is the prerequisite for what distinguishes humanity from everything else, and in

Being and Time it is the metaphorical questioning that is the prerequisite for what distinguishes

humanity as Dasein from everything else.94

The gravity of language is immense. "[L]anguage is the

house of being in which the human being ek-sists by dwelling [...]".95

94 A similar thought is also expressed in Unterwegs zur Sprache, where Heidegger writes: "The human being speaks.

We speak while awake and when dreaming. We speak invariably; also where we let no word be spoken, but only listen

or read, even where we neither listen or read and instead pursue work or leisure. We continually speak in some way. [...]

As speaking, human being is: human being." My own translation of: "Der Mensch spricht. Wir sprechen im Wachen

und im Traum. Wir sprechen stets; auch dann, wenn wir kein Wort verlauten lassen, sondern nur zuhören oder lesen,

sogar dann, wenn wir weder eigens zuhören noch lesen, stattdessen einer Arbeit nachgehen oder in der Muße aufgehen.

Wir sprechen standig in irgendeiner Weise. [...] Als sprechende ist der Mensch: Mensch." [GA 12, p. 9] 95

Pathmarks p. 254. GA 9, Wegmarken, 'Brief über den "Humanismus"', p. 313: "Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins.

In ihrer Behausung wohnt der Mensch".

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It is of no surprise then, that Heidegger seemingly ascribes language a precedence or

primacy to silence. In Being and Time one reads that even the mute cannot be silent, and that "As a

mode of discourse, reticence [Verschwiegenheit] Articulates the intelligibility of Dasein [...]".96

'Reticence', in the English translation, is a mode of spoken language, which again is a mode of

language as a whole. It should be noted that spoken language is not merely one among other equal

modes of language; spoken language is the primary mode of language. As we know, language does

not write according to Heidegger, "Language speaks [Die Sprache spricht]".97

What Heidegger

means by Verschwiegenheit in Being and Time more closely resembles what we in this treatise

mean by tacitness: The signifying seeming absence of signs. Yet Heideggers concept of

Verschwiegenheit is more narrow than the concept of tacitness of this treatise, in that

Verschwiegenheit means the seeming absence of spoken language, whereas this treatise uses a

broader concept of tacitness, that also encompasses the signifying seeming absence of signs not

only in speech, but also in writing, visual art, music, etc.. Verschwiegenheit, as tacitness in spoken

language, is a mode of speech which is comprehended by way of speech as absence of speech.

Spoken language has primacy, such that tacitness [tavsheden] is only grasped as the present

absence that speech has in tacitness. Tacitness is only seen in light of language. When the mute

cannot be reticent, since being reticent is a mode of speech, 98

Heidegger does not give language

primacy over silence as it is understood in this treatise, such that he is giving primacy to language

over the illinguistical.99

Heidegger gives primacy to one mode of language (speech) over another

mode of language (tacitness). Silence, as it is understood in this treatise, as the absence – not of

sound – but of language, does not appear in this sense in Being and Time.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty takes a position in 'Le langage indirect et les voix du silence'

which appears to oppose Heideggers, in that he assigns the French silence primacy over la parole,

when silence appears as the precondition for spoken language:

96 Heidegger, Being and Time §34, 'Being-there and discourse. Language', p. 209. Sein und Zeit, §34 'Da-sein und rede.

Die sprache', p. 165: "Verschwiegenheit artikuliert als Modus des Redens die Verständlichkeit des Daseins [...]" 97

GA 12, Unterwegs zur Sprache, 'Die Sprache' p. 10. Not my italics. 98

Being and Time §34 99

Heidegger writes directly in Unterwegs zur Sprache, where the premise for understanding language is the sentence:

"Language is language. This sentence bring us to nothing else wherein language is grounded. It also says nothing of

whether language itself is a foundation for other things." My translation of: "Sprache ist Sprache. Der Satz bringt uns

nicht zu anderem, worin die Sprache gründet. Er sagt auch nichts darüber, ab die Sprache selbst ein Grund fiir anderes

sei." [GA 12, p. 11]

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"we must consider speech [la parole] before it is pronounced, this background of silence,

which shrouds it, and without which it would say nothing".100

Nonetheless Merleau-Ponty utilizes a concept of silence which more likely signifies

what we in this treatise signify by tacitness, and not silence. However, Merleau-Ponty's concept of

silence is not limited to the signifying absence of spoken language as tacitness, but also

encompasses – like the conceptualization of tacitness in this treatise – indirect communication and

the signifying exclusions which occur in written language, music and – for Merleau-Ponty more so

than the others – visual art. Hereby we find yet again that one mode of language is assigned

primacy over another mode of language. Where tacitness only occurred against the backdrop of

language with Heidegger, language here only occurs against the backdrop of tacitness with

Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty's "voices of silence" [voix du silence] are the voices of tacitness,

and not silence. Silence as the wholly inexpressible and illinguistical does not appear here.101

In the works of Sartre one finds a similar conception of tacitness as the precondition

for speech and language as a whole,102

who – somewhat like Merleau-Ponty, but contrary to

Heidegger – uses this broader concept of silence, which does not only come into play in relation to

spoken language, but also in relation to written language, pictures, etc., and especially in regard to

aesthetic expressions. In an exposition of how a literary object only speaks to the subject by virtue

of the significantly [betydningsfulde] unsaid, Sartre however also addresses the decidedly

inexpressible, when he writes:

"The literary object, though realized through language, is never given in language. On the contrary, it is

by nature a silence and an opponent of the word [...] To say that they [the silences of the literary object]

are unexpressed is hardly the word; for they are precisely the inexpressible."103

Even though Sartre does not merely address the signifying unsaid here, but the

inexpressible, this appears to be an exception, for everywhere else he does not use silence as a

concept of the inexpressible and illinguistical, but rather as something closely resembling Merleau-

Ponty's indirect language [langage indirect], whom he also mentions.104

There is once again an

100 My translation. Merleau-Ponty, Signes, p. 48: "nous faut considérer la parole avant qu'elle soit prononcée le fond de

silence qui ne cesse pas de l'entourer, sans lequel elle ne dirait rien." 101

Merleau-Ponty however has a concept of pre-linguistical consciousness, which with the concepts of this treatise

could be called silent consciousness. 102

What is Literature? p. 44-5. Qu'est ce que la littérature?, s. 100: "L'objet littéraire, quoiqu'il se réalise à travers le

langage, n'est jamais donné dans le langage ; il est, au contraire, par nature, silence et contestation de la parole. [...]

C'est peu de dire qu'elles [les silences de l'objet littéraire] sont inexprimées : elles sont précisément l'inexprimable"" 103

Ibid., p. 51 104

Ibid., p. 14

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assignment of primacy to one form of language over another form of language, and not an

assignment of primacy to the illinguistical and incommunicable over the linguistical, or vice versa.

This is however not the case with Wittgenstein, as apparent by the following remark among his

scattered remarks [vermischte Bemerkungen]:

"What is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background

against whatever I could express has its meaning."105

Here it is not the case that there is a relation of primacy between one form of (indirect)

language and another form of (direct) language, but rather that the incommunicable and

illinguistical is the precondition for communication and the linguistical. Language appears against

the backdrop of silence, where the latter has primacy. The tentative perhaps [vielleicht] should be

noted however.

We have hereby seen how different philosophers have related the concepts of

language, tacitness and silence in this treatise in different relations of primacy. In the tradition from

Heidegger over Merleau-Ponty and Sartre one finds the idea of a relation of primacy between

tacitness and speech, where speech is the precondition for tacitness with Heidegger, and where

tacitness is the precondition for speech (and language as a whole) with Merleau-Ponty and Sartre,

but where the thought of the wholly illinguistical and incommunicable does not appear. In

Wittgenstein one finds a tentative relation of primacy between language and silence, as the

illinguistical and incommunicable, where silence is the precondition for language.

Whether language is the precondition for silence, in the sense these concepts have in this treatise, or

it is the other way around, can appear fruitless: The reason for why any of them should be grounded

in the other is missing. Why any of them necessarily should have any such grounding at all, is

unclear. Could language exist without the illinguistical, could the illinguistical exist without

language, could any of them exist without its opposite? And would we be able to distinguish such

ontological questions from logical-semantic questions about conceptual opposites? Would we

know, for instance, that we were in fact addressing language as foundational for the illinguistical,

and not simply addressing any kind of concepts relation to its opposite or negation?

105 Culture and Value, p. 16. Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 472, the remark is from 1931: "Das Unaussprechbare (das,

was mir geheimnisvoll erscheint und ich nicht auszusprechen vermag) gibt vielleicht den Hintergrund, auf dem das,

was ich aussprechen konnte, Bedeutung bekommt."

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It has been examined how the relation of primacy between language, tacitness and

silence have been a theme in the thought of a number of historically prominent philosophers. In this

treatise the question of which of these concepts should be assigned primacy is put aside. These

concepts do not relate to one another in this treatise, such that one is another's presupposition,

foundation, background or condition of possibility.

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3.8 The linguisticality of thought

Incommunicability and illinguisticality have also been relevant to philosophy of consciousness in

the question of whether, or to what extent, thought is linguistical or language-like, if language

represents thought, or thought represents language, and to what extent one conditions the other.

First I would like to address some of the viewpoints I will not be considering in this debate.

In the cognitive sciences one will find people like Jerry Fodor, who subscribe to some

variant of the so-called language of thought-hypothesis, and who would disagree with there being

anything relating to consciousness that wasn't linguistical in the sense specified in this treatise.

Using a metaphor, the brain is here seen as computer hardware which runs some computer software,

where the latter corresponds to consciousness. This "computer software" is programmed in a

language, which is the language of consciousness or thought: mentalese. The conscious and –

depending how you define it – the sub- or unconscious would run in a surface- and depth-language

respectively. Even remembering how to ride a bike would thus – even though in some kind of

hidden or non-obvious way – be a "program", be a sum of signs in a language. It has however not

been made clear in the arguments for this position why there absolutely needs to be a language of

thought-hypothesis, what this should explain or describe, and if such a hypothesis can avoid

classical philosophical problems of regress, centuries old problems regarding representation, and

also so-called problems of demarcation and definition.106

Furthermore, all empirical attempts to

actually find and decode such a language, or something like it, have not yielded any results. Certain

semioticians would subscribe to similar accounts of thought, since everything related to

consciousness is regarded to be in some way sign-like.

I will not consider these and similar views of language and thought, which totalizes

language in a way resembling those thinkers and theories I addressed in section 2.3 of this treatise

on the idea of limitless language.

The possibility of consciousness and thought being illinguistical was debated by Kant and some of

his critics in the wake of the release of The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. At the time, the critics,

Johann Georg Hamann and Johan Gottfried von Herder, had been criticizing much of the trending

philosophy of the enlightenment from the vantage point of a critique of a perceived implicit

106 Aydede, 'The Language of Thought Hypothesis', section 7 onwards.

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philosophy of language of this era. Hamann and Herder criticized among other things the implicit

assumption of there being a sharp divide between thought and its concepts (or ideas) on the one

side, and language on the other.107

The accusation against Kant was that he maintained Hume and

Berkeley's unattainable idea of the separation and dominion of thought over language. Contrary to

this, Hamann and Herder maintained that both thought and its concepts were conditioned and

limited by our languages and their different syntax, grammar and semantics, but also that concepts

and their meaning is to be found in their use in language.108

Together with W. v. Humboldt they are

often thought of as some of the earliest philosophers to champion some sort of linguistic relativism,

which would state that our natural languages condition thought, and not the other way around.109

Kant's twelve categories of understanding, for instance, precedes any language and

persist to be unconditioned of any individuals mastery of this or another natural language,

regardless of what concepts are to found in this language of unity, reality, cause and so on [Einheit,

Realität, Ursache]. Many of the most famous of Kant's ideas, like the transcendental deduction and

the transcendental ego, support the notion that Kant separated thought and its concepts from

language, and regarded the former to condition the latter. Nonetheless, Kant also had passages in his

critical period where he had a sense of how language can condition thought, here in 1796/97:

"When he [the child] starts to speak by means of 'I' a light seems to dawn on him, as it

were, and from that day on he never returns to his former way of speaking. – Before he

merely felt himself; now he thinks himself. "110

Besides this, one will also find places in which Kant recognizes a limit to language,

and where what is thought cannot immediately be communicated, and thus in which thought does

not have undisputed dominion over language, contrary to how he is often portrayed. We saw this in

section 3.7 on aesthetics, where Kant describes aesthetic ideas and the aesthetic as a whole, as that

which "cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language."111

In certain places of

Kant's pre-critical period this idea of what is linguistically unfathomable assumes an even greater

role, where the World-construction [das Weltgebäude], with its immense greatness, diversity and

107 Forster, p. 485-6. Here 'language' is understood as concrete languages, like German or predicate logic, and the

syntactical, grammatical and semantical properties of these. 108

Ibid., p. 486. 109

Linguistic relativism is also at times called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, see section 4.3. in Scholz, et. al., 'Philosophy

of Linguistics'. 110

Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, p. 15. AA VII, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, p.

127: "Wenn es [das Kind] den Anfang macht durch Ich zu sprechen: von welchem Tage an es niemals mehr in jene

Sprechart zurückkehrt - Vorher fühlte es bloß sich selbst, jetzt denkt es sich selbst." 111

Kant, Critique of Judgement p. 197. AA V, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, p. 314: "keine Sprache völlig erreicht und

verständlich machen kann."

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beauty strikes one with a silent wonder [stilles Erstaunen],112

wherein one can experience the

linguistically unfathomable:

"In the universal silence of nature and in the calm of the senses the immortal spirit's

hidden faculty of knowledge speaks an ineffable language and gives [us] undeveloped

concepts, which are indeed felt, but do not let themselves be described."113

By virtue of the experience [die Empfindung] of the illinguistical and

incommunicable, these two also have a place in consciousness here in Kants pre-critical period.

In the thought of Hamann there can be no notion of any kind of incommunicable thought, since the

communicable and linguistical constitute what is to be understood by 'thought'. Hamann

characterizes spoken language as a translation of a thought-language:

"Speaking is translation – from a tongue of angels into a human tongue, that is, thoughts

in words. [...]"114

As previously mentioned Hegel also tied the incommunicable to the perceptual this [sinnliches

Dieses], and perhaps following Aristotle. The perceptual is not thought, but is presented in the quote

from Phenomenology of Mind to be conscious, whereby we see Hegel recognizing that the domain

of language or the linguistic does not permeate consciousness completely, that there is something in

or about consciousness which is illinguistical.

The later Wittgenstein also considered whether thoughts and other conscious phenomena were

linguistical or in some way within reach of language.

In Philosophical Investigations the later Wittgenstein maintained no longer – as was

the case in Tractatus – that language violates itself and its limits when the ethical, religious, etc., is

subject to an attempt at communication. In his later writings he sees these subjects, of which you

112 Kant AA I, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, p. 306

113 Palmquist, Kants Critical Religion, p. xv. Kant AA I, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, p. 367:

"Bei der allgemeinen Stille der Natur und der Ruhe der Sinne redet das verborgene Erkenntnissvermögen des

unsterblichen Geistes eine unnennbare Sprache und giebt unausgewickelte Begriffe, die sich wohl empfinden, aber

nicht beschreiben lassen." 114

Sparling, Hans Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project, p. 48. Hamann: Kreuzzüge des Philologen,

'Aesthetica in nvce', in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 2, p. 198: "Reden ist übersetzen – aus einer Engelsprache in eine

Menschensprache, das heisst, Gedanken in Worte "

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ought to be quiet before, as an expression of different language games: Loose systems of concepts

with internally defined relations of use, where meaning is given and to be found within its own

framework.

The role for that, which language cannot mirror or fathom, consists nonetheless in the

later writings in relation to consciousness and thought. This is for instance present in the following

passage, where he considers whether a child, never having encountered the word 'pain', would be

able to give a name this feeling.

"When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of

stage-setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make

sense. And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is

presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; it shews the post

where the new word is stationed."115

The language we use in relation to consciousness does not have anything in the realm

of the conscious that it "hangs on to" or "rests upon", such that they correspond structurally. The

structure (grammar) of the language we use regarding 'consciousness' or 'the structure of

consciousness',116

is what there is to be understood of consciousness and the structure of

consciousness. 117

In this distinguishing between consciousness and how we conceptualize it, and

cannot help but conceptualize it, when we talk of it, it is also presupposed that consciousness itself

is not something linguistical, or something operating in a linguistic manner, such that consciousness

and its properties or structure can correspond to or in some way be represented one-to-one in

language. There is no such language-like logically well-defined phenomena of consciousness like

pain, such that we would be able to designate it independently of our current and contingent use of

the concept 'pain', and such that we in any situation would be able to decide unequivocally whether

something falls within or outside that which defines and determines pain as pain. Consciousness,

pain, pleasure, and the like, as understood in this way, are not linguistical. 'Consciousness', 'pain',

115 Philosophical Investigations §257: "Wenn man sagt "Er hat der Empfindung einen Namen gegeben", so vergißt man,

daß schon viel in der Sprache vorbereitet sein muß, damit das bloße Bennenen einen Sinn hat. Und wenn wir davon

reden, daß Einer dem Schmerz einen Namen gibt, so ist die Grammatik des Wortes "Schmerz" hier das Vorbereitete; sie

zeigt den Posten an, an den das neue Wort gestellt wird." 116

The structure of consciousness: What we could call the relations between the phenomena of consciousness, like

discursive thought, non-discursive thought, pre-reflective consciousness, feeling, memory, associations, etc. 117

The late Wittgenstein would mean that one mistakes one for the other in philosophy of consciousness in a confusion

that is wholly linguistical, and with its concepts reveal itself as merely linguistical (e.g. in the debate whether this or

another phenomena of consciousness is transitive or intransitive, subject, object, etc.) See for instance Gallagher &

Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind, p. 52 onwards.

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'pleasure', and the like, are linguistical, and only their use and general rules of application can we

investigate (what Wittgenstein idiosyncratically calls 'grammatical' investigation).

It is however the privacy of consciousness that is the reason for this, and not

something so to say in or about consciousness in and of itself. A beetle in a box, which in some way

or the other is categorically impossible to have publicly accessible, or a private phenomena of

consciousness, like a sensation, amount to one and the same in this regard.118

Here a sort of limit is

drawn for language and its ability to express, name, represent or reference that which is private.

To what extent the domain of the incommunicable and the illinguistical might also encompass

thought and consciousness also relates to Heidegger, when it is assumed in The Question

Concerning Technology, that "All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language

in a manner that is extraordinary".119

That all ways of thinking lead through language, does not

imply that, for instance, the ways of memory and sensation do the same. There has been a tendency

in philosophy to define thoughts as linguistical in nature. In the works of the early Wittgenstein

thought was also seen as linguistical, in that they obeyed logic and was characterized as

propositions [Sätze].120

Gadamer has also written about the view on thought, as being that which is

linguistical in our consciousness, and about how this view can be traced back to at least the middle

ages.121

Whatever is supposed to be conscious and illinguistical, would be the rest: Feelings,

associations, memories and the like. But thoughts are also at times spoken of in ways, that make

them seem illinguistical in nature, and furthermore, what could be considered "the rest" seems able

of being linguistic in certain regards:

If one is asked to think of one's mother, and one does this, then what happens now in

one's thinking of one's mother is not something taking place in English, nor in Danish, and it is not

taking place exclusively as spoken or written language. A linguist would not be able to arrive at the

118 Philosophical Investigations §293.

119 The Question Concerning Techonology, p. 3. GA 7, p. 5: "Alle Denkwege führen, mehr oder weniger vernehmbar,

auf eine ungewöhnliche Weise durch die Sprache." 120

Tractatus 4: "Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz". According to the early Wittgenstein thought obeys logic in the

sense that it is impossible to think of states of affairs that are necessarily impossible (mainly arithmetic, geometric and

other mathematical/logical impossibilities). 121

Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 422-32

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finite and countable sum of morphemes, grammatical atoms,122

which make up what it means for

someone to think of his mother. Smells, moods, memories, feelings, a resonance in the hallway of a

childhood home, and synaesthetical combinations of all these, or even more types of sensations, can

make up what it here means for someone to think of his mother. Much of what it here means to

think is not linguistical in any conventional sense.

But also much of that which is not taken to be understood by the word 'thought',

seems to be potentially linguistical on some or several regards. Even though a smell does not take

place in any natural language, it can appear able to reference, mean and signify, if you for instance

ask a chef or a connoisseur of perfumes. In a perfume there can be made use of smell-signs, which

are arbitrary and have gotten their significance decided by convention, and which play a role in

social contexts in a public negotiation of identity. In this way a smell can appear as a speech-act or

some other communicative expression. In this example a smell can seem linguistical, and defy the

supposed monopoly of thought as that which is linguistical in consciousness.

Memory contains both things that are remembered in language, and things that aren't:

declarative and non-declarative memory respectively. To remember a telephone number, is an

example of declarative memory. To remember how you ride a bicycle, is an example of non-

declarative memory. Not all is remembered as or in language.

Negative philosophy of language overlaps with philosophy of consciousness, in that we in the

domain of consciousness stand by the frontlines of the limits of language. The domains of language

and consciousness, where they overlap and where they don't, in what regard they overlap, and

whether this overlapping subset exclusively should be called thought, is all up to debate. But that,

which is not in the domain of language, which fall outside language and its scope, which is beyond

language, has a place in consciousness.

122 A morpheme in linguistics is the smallest grammatically signifying unit, a grammatical atom. 'Unhappy' is for

instance a word consisting of two morphemes: 'un-' a bound morpheme, which signify negation; and 'happy' a free

morpheme, the root. Erik Hansen, Dæmonernes Port: materiale til studiet i dansk sprog, p. 12.

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3.9 Longing, personification [besjæling] and linguistification [sprogliggørelse]

Language is that, by which we come into contact with each other; through linguistic expression of

thought, feeling and everything we are affected by in our human existence. It is through the signs

that are written or spoken, or present in a facial expression, a gesture, a touch, that a human being

encounter others, understands them, and makes one self understood. A persons empathy has in

developmental psychology been tied to the babbling and face duet that take place between parent

and infant.123

Even if the content of the communication between parent and infant is admittedly

sparse in this period, there is nonetheless made use of some form of communication when, for

instance, a parent babbles with its child, the child answers with a smile, the parent reciprocates the

smile, the child laughs and kicks, and the parent talks about how happy the child is today. This is

not merely a matter of purely physiological reaction or imitation between parent and child. One

expresses something and the other answers. A notable part of the child's first contact with the parent

is to some minimal extent communicative. Our first experiences of being secure and understood are

facilitated by language.

It is a sort of personification [besjæling]124

to attribute linguistic properties or

capabilities to that which is not linguistical. To attribute linguistic properties or capabilities to the

world happens by the same motivation, that humans have for personifying the world. This can for

instance be seen in the case of the modern catholic monk, author and mystic Thomas Merton in the

book Raids on the Unspeakable:

"The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of

meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down,

selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the

trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places

where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the

forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the

most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,

and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!"125

When the wind in the treetops whispers, howls and cries in the crannies of a shabby

cabin, or when the rain speaks, it is a poetically motivated penetration by language into the domain

of the illinguistical, and in the case of Merton, this penetration, as the title of the book suggests, is a

123 As for instance the developmental psychologist Daniel N. Stern has shown it in Diary of a Baby: What your child

sees, feels, and experiences, p. 57 onwards. 124

'Personification' is here a translation of the Danish 'besjæling', which is literally "be-souling", to "be-soul"

something, attribute soul to something. 125

'Rain and the Rhinoceros', Raids on the Unspeakable, p. 9-10

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raid on the illinguistical. This raid is driven forth by religious longing. When human beings are

linguistic and language-mastering beings, and the world is attributed with linguistic properties and

capabilities, then the world isn't impenetrable and alien in its silence, but sensible in its speaking to

us, and thus human beings are brought to a belonging with the world. There is a religious-existential

need to feel belonging, which is satisfied by attributing linguistic properties and capabilities to the

illinguistical.

In Camus' The Rebel the godless absurdity of the world leads to human beings being

necessitated to accept the despairing discrepancy between our questioning and the unreciprocating

silence of the world., and in spite of this refuse suicide.126

When we find this thought of the

illinguisticality of the world tied to its absurdity and meaninglessness, we hereby also find the

reverse and implicit thought in Camus' work: The thought that the world having linguistic

properties or capabilities would imply its meaningfulness, it being a place in which human beings

would not be alien, where we would be at home, and in which we would belong.

Wittgenstein also expresses the discomfort that arise, when we cannot come to terms

with language; when that, through which we are otherwise brought into contact, when that, through

which we otherwise understand and are understood, when this causes us problems.

"The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the

character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms

of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language."127

There is furthermore a trace through a number of otherwise different sources, from the

Gospel of John to Heidegger, where language has been the badge of honor of mankind, where

mankind by virtue of language has been crowned as king, where language has been the hallmark of

mankind which distinguishes it from all else.

It is through language magic has taken place, through the divine power of the Lord's

word, through the words of the believer, who with prayer could forsake and guard himself against

evil, and through the priest with his words of blessing. The thought that words create, release, curse,

and bless, is the belief in the power of the word, and that one through words have some power over

one's life and the conditions one is subject to. To have the word, is to have the power; it was

126 L'homme révolté, p. 16

127 Philosophical Investigations §111: "Die Probleme, die durch ein Missdeuten unserer Sprachformen entstehen, haben

den Charakter der Tiefe. Es sind tiefe Beunruhigungen; sie wurzeln so tief in uns wie die Formen unserer Sprache, und

ihre Bedeutung ist so groß wie die Wichtigkeit unserer Sprache."

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because of this that women should keep silent in the congregation. The word and the power go hand

in hand. Where the word ceases, is where powerlessness begins.

Given this role that language has and have had for us individually as well as socially

and culturally in our outlook and view on ourselves in the world, it assumes a new dimension, that

the domain of language does not encompass everything. The extent of language's insufficiency or

absence, no matter what extent, even just drawing attention to it, that there is such an extent, can be

disturbing. The acceptance of negative philosophy of language and that silence exists, that not

everything is linguistic or linguistically conditioned, can thus be seen as a part of the process of

disenchantment in modern culture (die Entzauberung characterized by Max Weber), and is by the

same token met with resistance.

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3.10 The inexpressible as the higher and the exceptional

The inexpressible is also found as something exalted and exceptional in the works of different

philosophers. This is yet another conception of the inexpressible which this treatise seeks to

counter.

The inexpressible as something exceptional means that the inexpressible is either not

immediately or at any given time presentable and comprehendible, if it is something that

continuously and always exists, or yet again is something that only occurs or exists at certain

moments. The inexpressible as something exalted or higher is closely related to this, and shows

itself in a number of different vertical metaphors connected with the inexpressible. The origins of

these conceptions are yet again to be found in Neo-Platonism and negative theology. These

conceptions of the inexpressible as only being present or comprehendible in an exceptional and

momentary form of ecstasy and revelation, most often in some state of isolation from others and

culture, also plays a role in for instance both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

As already mentioned in section 3.1 on negative theology in this treatise, Pseudo-

Dionysius sets Moses in solitude in the heights atop Mount Sinai, when he prays to partake in the

wisdom of the heavens above, and to be led up to new peaks of insight into the mystical.128 The

vertical metaphors are central, and that the inexpressible is exceptional shows itself by the

inexpressible having status of an epiphany, which one can only be open to, but which you in the end

cannot actively cause, but is granted as a gift from above.129

In section 3.3 on particularity we also saw Kierkegaard reiterate certain central

themes, which are also found in Pseudo-Dionysius, in that it is here Abraham who is to be found

isolated in the heights on the top of Mount Moria, and here – with his determination to kill his own

son in a sacrificial slaughter – fulfills what religiosity truly means in his complete devotion to God,

his lord; something which is also linguistically incomprehensible and incommunicable.130

Abraham

is an exception, who makes an exception of himself, and reaches the summit of religiosity on the

summit of Mount Moria, a summit wherefrom he exceptionally cannot speak.

We also find these themes in the works of Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra

culminates in the end of the third book, where we find Zarathustra alone on the summit of a

128 The Mystical Theology, 997A.

129 Ibid., 997A.

130 Frygt og Bæven, p. 55.

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mountain, and – after having been tortured by the idea of the eternal return – restitutes himself and

accepts that never-ending yea-saying to existence, which the eternal return is a test of, and

concludes:

"See, there is no up, no down! Throw yourself around, out, back you light one! Sing!

Speak no more! – are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light?

Sing! Speak no more!"131

On the peak of the mountain and on the peak of ecstasy from newfound meaning with

existence – language falls short, and must give room to that pure expressivity which singing

exemplify. Even though Zarathustra wanders from the humans in the depths of the valleys and up to

isolation on the mountain peak in his process from delusion to insight, and hereby again vertically

marks the inexpressible as exalted, it is nonetheless worth noticing, that once this ascension is

complete all vertical metaphors are dissolved. In this exceptional incommunicability up in the

heights the directions of up and down disappear, and the higher and the lower dissolves. This

dissolution yet only takes place once atop the mountain, why it still seems warranted to claim, that

also Nietzsche connects the inexpressible with 'the higher' in this passage in his works.

Both Pseudo-Dionysius, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche share the theme of a main

character isolated atop a mountain, who as an exception partake in the ecstasy of something exalted

and incommunicable.

There are no mountains in the thought of Wittgenstein, but the incommunicable is

nonetheless connected with 'the higher'.132

"Propositions can express nothing that is higher."133

The

incommunicable is however not a state of exception according to Wittgenstein; it is not something

exceptionally revealed in isolation on a mountain top.

As we saw in section 3.4 on the early Wittgenstein in this treatise, there is even in

what is said something that only shows itself, which is contained in what is said as something

unsayable, which is nonetheless not identical with what is said. The incommunicable is in this way

something more continuous or constantly present in all that occurs by showing itself. From the

131 KGW, VI1, p. 287: "Siehe, es gibt kein Oben, kein Unten! Wirf dich umher, hinaus, zurück, du Leichter! Singe!

sprich nicht mehr! – sind alle Worte nicht für die Schweren gemacht? Lügen dem Leichten nicht alle Worte! Singe!

sprich nicht mehr!" 132

Wittgenstein, 'Lecture on Ethics', in Philosophical Review vol. 74 (January 1965), p. 3 –12. 133

Tractatus 6.42: "Sätze können nichts Höheres ausdrücken."

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inexpressible as an exceptional rapture and epiphany to the more permanent incommunicability, the

incommunicable nonetheless persists as the higher.134

The higher or the highest as incommunicable is also an idea that figures prominently

in romanticism in its view on art, as was illustrated by Schlegel in section 3.7: "The highest can,

precisely because it is inexpressible, only be said allegorically."135

Stirner distinguishes himself in this regard from all of the aforementioned by not only not

maintaining an idea of the incommunicable as the higher or the highest, but even having the

incommunicable be something, that is to be kept pure and untainted of the exalted and divine, as

was seen in section 3.3.2. But Stirner might yet still maintain the incommunicable as something

exceptional. Insofar der Einzige is an exceptional mode of existence, incommunicability is

exceptional, and is so precisely by stepping outside the hierarchical-normative distinction between

the higher and the lower. Under another interpretation everybody are Einzig all the time, maybe

merely without realizing it or accepting the consequence of this. Unfortunately Stirner not only

seems to be ambiguous in regard to this question, but decidedly contradictory: In some passages der

Einzige is something exceptional, something only the few are or are capable of being. Here he

opposes what he identifies as the fundamental mechanism in the religious mode of existence: that

everybody individually and at every moment have an authentic, true or divine self, which you

nonetheless can be (and often is) alienated from.136

In these passages there is a refreshing and early

revaluation of the principal theme of alienation and emancipation in philosophy, which appears in

our history of philosophy back to the Oracle of Delphi's command: "Know thyself", as if your true

self somehow eludes you.137

In other places this Einzigkeit seems to be something non-exceptional,

that each and everybody individually is in secret possession of at all times, and which merely waits

to set us free from our hidden imprisonment, if we were only to realize it.138

The incommunicable is

perhaps or perhaps not something exceptional according to Stirner, depending on whether

Einzigkeit is or is not something exceptional.

134 Wittgenstein furthermore uses the famous ladder-metaphor in Tractatus 6.54 (borrowed from Schopenhauer in The

World as Will and Representation), and hereby once again with a vertical metaphor conceptualizes the incommunicable

as the higher. 135

'Gespräch über die Poesie' i Charakteristiken und Kritiken I, p. 324, my italics. 136

Stirner, Der Einzige, p. 35. 137

A revaluation one otherwise does not find until certain select passages from Nietzsche or Ricoeur in his exposition of

the hermeneutics of suspicion. 138

Stirner, Der Einzige, p. 349.

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The incommunicable is under all circumstances something which is not associated

with 'the higher' in Stirner's thought, and something that does not even oppose, but eludes 'the

higher' by stepping entirely outside of the distinction between 'the higher' and 'the lower'.

Derrida, on the other hand, neither invokes the higher or the exceptional, when he characterizes la

différance [the differance] as l'inommable [the unnamable]. In the lecture 'Différance' from 1968

Derrida in his conclusion touches upon the very signification of differance as a name, and how this

name must fall short of that which it attempts to designate; why precisely it is l'inommable, the

unnamable, the unspeakable.

"As "older" than Being itself, such a differance has no name in our language. But we

"already know" that if it is unnamable, it is not merely provisionally so, because our

language has not yet found the right name, or because we need to find it in another

language outside our finite system."139

It is not due to any supposed poverty of the current natural or artificial languages, that

differance is unnamable, and neither some original language lost in time or some yet to be

discovered ideal one would be capable of this designation (here Derrida takes aim at Heidegger in

particular). But this designation, which differance is an attempt at, is in no way to be understood as

being insufficient due to the exaltation of what is attempted to be designated.

"«There is no name for it»: read this proposition in its platitude. This unnamable is not an

ineffable being which no name could approach: God, for example."140

The platitude of this unnamableness is why it is not to be confused with that of

negative theology. Connotations of flatness are also at play here through the Old French plat,

whereby it is underscored how differance as the unnamable is opposed to the above addressed

concepts of the inexpressible as the divinely exalted.

Furthermore differance is not an exceptional property of things, or a "something" one

as an exception can achieve a fleeting insight into. Differance is that which perpetually constitutes

everything as what it is and what it is not in a non-stable relation (by virtue of differance) to

everything else; and this is true even of Heidegger's Being [Sein] and being [das Seiende], why

139 My translation. Derrida, 'La différance', Marges de la philosophie, p. 28: "Plus « vieille » que l'être lui-même, une

telle différance n'a aucun nom dans notre langue. Mais nous « savons déjà » que, si elle est innommable, ce n'est pas par

provision, parce que notre langue n'a pas encore trouvé ou reçu ce nom, ou parce qu'il faudrait le chercher dans une

autre langue, hors du système fini de la nôtre." 140

My translation. Ibid., p. 28: "« Il n'y a pas de nom pour cela »: lire cette proposition en sa platitude. Cet innommable

n'est pas un être ineffable dont aucun nom ne pourrait s'approcher: Dieu, par exemple."

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Derrida calls differance "older" than both. In Derrida we therefore also see that 'the unnamable' is

different from the other concepts of the incommunicable as the exceptional.

What this treatise attempts to capture by the concept of silence, shares the absence of the

exceptional that Wittgenstein had associated with the incommunicable and illinguistical, and shares

the absence of the exalted that Stirner had associated with the incommunicable and illinguistical;

and that Derrida already had differentiated from the exalted as well as the exceptional.

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3.11 Haecceitas

Haecceitas is a scholastic concept, conceived by Duns Scotus, which means thisness (from Latin

haec, this).141

As Hegel is already quoted stating in section 3.3.1 of this treatise, the sensible this

[sinnliche Dieses] is supposedly that which language does not capture.142

The word 'this' is an

indexical, i.e. one of those signs which are purely contextual references. Given the context, 'this' can

refer to everything from a tree to a course of life, from a number to a place. Words like 'now', 'this',

an arrow, and a pointing gesture refer in this way.143

In Being and Time Heidegger characterizes the

sign as something that indicates.144

Remarkably we also find indexicals associated with the

shortcomings of language, when the later Wittgenstein writes on the fruitlessness of imagining that

one can name a private phenomena by in some sense pointing to it in ones inner consciousness.145

There is therefore reason to examine the connection between haecceitas and

incommunicability.

In scholasticism haecceitas designated 'thisness', as mentioned, in opposition to quidditas,

'whatness'. Haecceitas is "what" makes something distinct and unique as compared with everything

else. By this concept there is nonetheless not thought of any peculiar qualitative property or peculiar

sum of qualitative properties, no matter have subtle. Haecceitas is a non-qualitative property of

something, which separates this something from everything else, even what might be completely

qualitatively identical with it. It is every phenomenon's being this.

Leibniz' law of the identity of indiscernibles comes into play here. Two qualitatively

and relationally completely identical entities can, despite of this, be claimed to be different by virtue

of a property that is neither qualitative or relational: Haecceitas. Leibniz' law can hereby be upheld,

that if z and y are discernible, they must be so by virtue of some property which x has and y does

not, or vice versa. This property is haecceitas, which is neither qualitative nor relational.

Hume would oppose the concept of haecceitas, since he thought, that an entity is constituted wholly

and solely by its qualitative properties. Hume does not argue against haecceitas, but against the

141 Cross, 'Medieval Theories of Haecceity', section 3: Haecceity in Duns Scotus.

142 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, p. 92–3

143 See note 55 above.

144 Being and Time §17 p. 108, Zeigen is translated as 'indication', but could also be translated as 'pointing'.

145 Philosophical Investigations §258

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thought of substances. In A Treatise of Human Nature he asks a hypothetical philosopher to

imagine any object, and hereafter subtract its qualitative properties one by one. In the end you will

find that there is nothing left, namely no substance. Any thing or entity is wholly and solely

constituted by its qualitative properties.

"We have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular

qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning it."146

Haecceitas is nonetheless a noticeably different concept than the concept of substance.

In scholasticism haecceitas is a non-qualitative property which substances posses. Compared to sub-

stantia haecceitas is not something underlying or fundamental, there are not different

"haecceitases", as there supposedly are several different substances. The thisness by this object and

this other object is the same, yet that which distinguishes this one object as this one, and this other

as this other. Haecceitas is metaphysically lighter. It is to stand before Leibniz' two qualitatively

identical objects and say: "That one, and not the other." It is the pointing gesture, it is to say: "This

and nothing else but this."

Where indexicality is something that characterizes the signs that point out, haecceitas

characterizes that which is pointed out by these signs. Haecceitas is the ontological counterpart to

the indexicals of language which make indexicality possible. The scholastic would claim: "What

enables you to refer to this with the word 'this', is the thisness of this." Haecceitas as a property thus

shows some incommunicable aspects, in that it cannot be explicated what (quid) haecceitas is

without contradiction. Language is not capable of coming any closer to what haecceitas means than

by the indexical.

Haecceitas nonetheless is capable of being grasped and comprehended linguistically through

indexicality, and indexicality is something pertaining to signs and signification. But there is

something which distinguishes indexicals from other signs, such that indexicals are – so to say –

within the domain of language yet closer to its limits; such that when everything else that is

linguistical fails, one is left with the indexicals, the pointing gesture, to say: "look!", and let this be

a point of departure, to look from the pointing gesture and to that which is attempted to be pointed

out, for which there is no word, where one via language attempts to let something illinguistical

show itself.

146 A Treatise of Human Nature, book 1, part 1, section 6. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896, p. 15.

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4. Silence

Following the ambition of negative philosophy of language to approach that which eludes language,

I will from here begin to elaborate on what is to be understood by the concept of 'silence'.

4.1 Ontological, epistemological and phenomenological implications

It was claimed earlier in this treatise, that just as positive philosophy of language does not in itself

have any ontological, epistemological or phenomenological implications, neither does negative

philosophy of language in itself have any such implications. But as it was also acknowledged,

theories, arguments and concepts within positive philosophy of language could very well have

ontological, epistemological and phenomenological implications; and this is also the case for

negative philosophy of language and this treatise, including the presented concept of silence herein.

Silence does not signify, as in daily ordinary language, the absence of sound, but the

absence of language. Tacitness here signify the meaningful and signifying apparent absence of

language, that nonetheless is language. As first acknowledged implication is the ontological one,

that there is something, or something about something, that is not language nor linguistical, in that

it is not in any way a sign or something pertaining to signs, and not even something pertaining to

data or information.

By the very presence of this treatise it is also presupposed, that the illinguistical and

incommunicable can be known [genstand for erkendelse]. If being known entails that what is

known can appear in consciousness, then the illinguistical and incommunicable also have a

phenomenological dimension. The illinguistical and incommunicable are thus not in any way

something inaccessible, incomprehensible or inexperienceable. Knowledge and experience can thus

both itself be and be the knowledge and experience of something illinguistical.

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4.2 What cannot be communicated, and what there cannot be communicated

about

In the history of philosophy there has been a concept of that whereof one cannot speak. This is an

idea of there being some topic-oriented incommunicability, an idea found from antiquity to

modernity and beyond. A tradition just as long exists for not distinguishing between that, which

cannot be communicated, and that whereof one cannot communicate.147

That one could even

distinguish between what cannot be communicated and what cannot be the subject of

communication, and what conditioning relation there could be between one and the other, have

predominantly not even been considered.

The argument for there not being anything contradictory about this treatise as a result

of its subject, was already presented in the introduction by referring to the difference between that

which cannot be communicated, and that which there cannot be communicated concerning. All

communication is sign-like or pertains to signs [tegnmæssig], is communication of signs in order

for it to be communication, and every sign must be subject to a possible communication in order for

it to be a sign; but far from everything in the world is signs, even if it is acknowledged that signs

can signify everything in the world. There is a difference between a sign, and what it signifies. Even

though I use the sign 'you' of you, it is not 'you' I meet, when I meet you. I do not meet a pronoun in

English, and you are not one. There is a difference between you, and what signify you. This is not

merely a distinction between language and world, for language can also signify language. There is

nonetheless still a difference between saying something about something linguistical, as for

instance a poem, and to recite this poem.

This treatise does not concern that whereof one cannot communicate, but that which

cannot be communicated. Even though topic-oriented incommunicability is not the topic of this

treatise, this treatise is not therefore irreconcilable with there also being something which signs

cannot signify, that there should be something whereof one cannot speak.

147 As it is the case with for instance the early Wittgenstein. That there are "allerdings Unaussprechliches", and that

there cannot be spoken of these things ("wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber..."), amounts implicitly to one and the

same in Wittgenstein's early thought. (Tractatus 6.522 and 7)

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4.3 Negation and silence

Negative philosophy of language obviously relies on negation as a core concept in its investigation

of what is not language and cannot be communicated. This form of negativity can give the wrong

impression of the illinguistical as the mere secondary residual product of language, where language

is and remains primary, which the illinguistical always must be seen in conjunction with, and which

the illinguistical thus presupposes. With the concept of silence the illinguistical is sought to not only

be given a derivative role to language.

Silence as the illinguistical could furthermore seem to relate to a philosophical

concept of the nothing (das Nichts) via its negation, if one takes Heidegger into consideration. "We

assert that the nothing is more originary than the "not" and negation."148

Heidegger distinguishes

between the particular absence of something (for instance the absence of language, of one or more

things, and even everything) and the nothing, in a distinction that thus mirrors the distinction

between being [das Seiende] and Being [Sein]. Like there is a difference between being (what is)

and Being as such, there is a difference between the absence of being (what is not) and the nothing.

With negative philosophy of language I concern myself with the realm of being and absence, and

not Being and the nothing.

Silence is nonetheless not merely an absence, it is also its own. Silence and language

are sought to be addressed here without making one the others precondition, foundation, condition

of possibility, etc., following the conclusion of section 3.7. Silence is not merely the negation of

language, just as language is not merely the negation of silence; one is not primary, which the other

is only the secondary derivative negation of. It is an attempt to give each an equal status of primacy,

which has otherwise been reserved solely for language in large parts of our history of philosophy,

culture and religion. In the Christian perspective, where the Word is the foundation of everything

that is, where the Word is responsible for making everything that exists exist,149

silence, as the

opposite of the Word, would be absence itself. However, we disregard what would be this Christian

conclusion.

148 Pathmarks, p. 86. Also expressed later, GA 9, Wegmarken, p. 116-7: "Das Nicht entsteht nicht durch die

Verneinung, sondern die Verneinung gründet sich auf das Nicht, das dem Nichten des Nichts entspringt." 149

As we saw in section 2.3 on Joh.1:9.

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It is here silence gains its justification as a concept compared to the illinguistical and

the incommunicable. The 'illinguistical' is a negative term, 'silence' is not. 'Silence' is just as little a

negative term as 'language' is a negative term. And silence is no more negative than language.

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4.4 Specificity, materiality and the type-token distinction

The idea of types and tokens are as old as philosophy itself. It is found in Plato and Aristotle,150

and

it is found inherent in language: This sentence consists of signs, where each and every sign is a

token of a type. There are tokens of letters of different types, which are combined into tokens of

types of different words, and so forth.151

Language itself rests upon the distinction between token

and type. For us to approach and approximate that which is not language and eludes

linguistification, we must approach and approximate that which eludes this distinction.

We are in need of a third concept that differentiates itself and places itself outside the

dichotomy of types and tokens and the properties of being typical and exemplary.152

For reasons

which will follow, I will use the concept of specificity for this purpose.

A specific lamp here does not mean the same as a token of the type lamp, an object

that is hereby exemplary. What makes an individual lamp a token of the type lamp, is what is not to

be understood by the specificity of the lamp. That, which does not make the lamp merely a token of

the type of lamp, is that, which is to be understood by the lamps specificity. Every token has

something specific about it, which is not that, which makes it a token, and is exemplary about it.

Here is a token of a letter-type: e. That, which makes it an 'e', is that, which makes it a token of the

type 'e'. What makes it not only an 'e' among many others of the same type, is what makes it

specific. Language always and only functions in accordance with the token/type-distinction. The

specific is hereby that which eludes language. The specific is the unsayable, that which cannot be

communicated, the dimension of a phenomenon, that is its silence.

Particularity would be a problematic concept in this regard, since it has signified

exemplarity ("token-ness"), which specificity is meant to precisely not signify. Particularity is also

related to exemplarity insofar particularity comes from part, and a part is always a part of

something, a whole, in the same way a token is always a token of a type, in order for it to be a token

at all. Specificity, on the other hand, comes from specio, 'I see', and relates to the concept of

haecceitas as that certain thisness, which is near the limits of language, where one must say:

"look!", in a gesture that be means of language points to something language itself is not.

150 The well-known examples: Plato, Parmenides 128e-130a. Aristotle, De Interpretatione §7.

151 In ancient Greek a letter and an example were designated by the same word: στοιχεῖο [stoicheio].

152 In the Danish version 'type-token' was called 'type-eksempel', why having the quality of being a token was called

being eksemplarisk, or exemplary in English.

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When I write about that which makes something not merely one among many others

of the same type, then this is not due to some difficultly observable or hidden qualitative property.

That leaves of tea in a cup might whirl around with a number and in a three-dimensional

constellation, that had never occurred exactly like this before, would not be what made this cup tea

specific, even though it would make it unique. Another cup of tea could in principle have had the

same properties, even though it was not the case. Specificity, even of a phenomenon meant to

present itself as exemplary as possible, as for instance a machine-written letter, is not a qualitative

property. Specificity is not uniqueness, understood as some object having a qualitative property or a

combination of qualitative properties, which only this object possesses. Even things that are not

unique, that to the widest possible extent are exemplary, exemplary of a type, possess specificity.

The linguistical and thereby that which carries significance rests upon the type and not

the token, even if there might possibly never be a type without a token, or a token without a type,

and there might be grey areas, both in regard to when something is a token as well as a type.153

The

individual 'e' is, in its specificity, insignificant [betydningsløst]. Put any 'e' on this page in another

'e's place, and there will be no change of signification. In reading, the gaze glides over the page

unhindered by the individual letter. This is how language functions: by disregarding the specific in

its specificity. Exchange any plus-sign in any equation with any other token of the same type, and

the result will be the same. 1+1 = 1+1. The 'a' in différance is also merely an 'a', which could be

substituted with any given other example of 'a', without this making any linguistical difference. The

word différance, with an 'a', becomes paradoxical by it consisting of signs, that – in their specificity

– precisely does not make any difference. That which the word différance attempts to "express", is

the opposite of that, which even makes it possible for it to "express" anything as a word.

The mechanization and the digitalization of written language has effected a qualitative

uniformity of signs, that – even though specificity is not qualitative uniqueness – further contributes

to making the specific sign disregardable, or making specificity that much harder to recognize, with

the inhuman similarity and uniformity with which machines and computers can repeat signs again

and – again.154

153 Wetzel, 'Types and Tokens', section 4.2.5

154 Neil Postman, among others, have argued for typography as a medium having it's own inherent epistemology, which

separates typography from, for instance, calligraphy with it's artisanal books. The enlightenment's notion of knowledge,

etc., are inherent in typography as a medium, which have these ideas of the enlightenment as a bias. (Postman 1986, p.

51.) The age of mass production has also weakened the sense for specificity in the without precedence extremely

qualitatively similar things we surround ourselves with.

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The illinguistical does not possess the possibility of repetition. Only the universal [det

almene] is mediated through time and space, such that it can come back again. The specific in its

specificity does not reappear. Silence does not reappear.

Here is a sentence: 'It's dawning'. Here this sentence is repeated: 'It's dawning'. There

is not a times made use of repetition in language, there is always made use of repetition. There is

never language without repetition.

The difference between a token and a type is only one example of a difference, whereof there are

other types of differences. This type of difference, the token-type distinction, distinguishes itself

from other differences as that which is foundational for language. This constitutive difference

hereby differentiates itself from what Saussure meant, when he stated that language only consists of

differences. These constitutive differences, that Saussure mentioned, were in regard to the – so to

say – internal structure of language, were differences in language, in that language supposedly only

consists of interdependent linguistical differences. It is, as opposed to Saussure, a certain difference

(token/type), which is the matter here, as something differentiating language, not internally, but

externally in relation to that which is not linguistical.

A sign is something that in some regard reaches beyond itself, "says" something of

something, "stands" for something, or "points" to something that it itself is not; but always does this

as a token of a type. Even indexicals, like 'this', 'here', 'now', or a pointing gesture, functions by

being tokens of types, since even any individual pointing gesture only gains signification as a

pointing gesture, an example of the pointing gesture as type.

As already mentioned, it is not of importance how different semiotic or semantic

theories have different expositions of how and why signs, words, and sentences are signifying in

various ways and in relation to the interpretant and this persons cognition, disposition and

capability, including social and cultural context. As long as these differences does not change the

primary conception of the sign as being something signifying, which is signifying by – what I mean

in the broadest sense can be called – reaching beyond itself.

That something is silent, is to say that it does not stand for anything other than what it

itself is, in that it does not say anything about what it is not itself, and does not point to anything

other than what itself is.

This can be seen as a dimension of a phenomenon. There can thus be something about

a phenomenon, which has an aspect of silence, where the rest of the phenomenon does not. A word

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is an example of such a phenomenon. A word is – of course – first and foremost something

signifying, and as such something that is not silence, but there is a dimension to words, that is not

signifying, that is silence. This dimension of a word, which is untouched by the token/type-

distinction – this dimension that thereby is silence – must not be confused with materiality. A words

materiality, its color, texture, form and background can be more or less signifying in a plethora of

ways. One cold even say, that materiality is always also co-signifying [medbetydende], that the

quality of the paper also communicates and is a part of the literary work, and likewise whether the

painting is with oil or acrylic paint, or whether the melody is played by a string or a wind

instrument. In spoken language the materiality of speech, its tone, resonance, rhythm, etc., is always

co-signifying, in that the way in which something is articulated can signify anything from sarcasm

to sincerity. What a deep and calm voice communicates, is different from what a high-pitched and

irregular one communicates. Materiality is not merely something concomitant, but something which

takes part in the linguisticality of language. It is hereby also clear, that materiality is not what is to

be understood by that dimension of a phenomenon, which is the silence of the phenomenon. A word

has a dimension, where it is not seen as a word, and is not a word or anything linguistical. This is

the silence of the word, which is nonetheless not materiality.

Everything can be bestowed with signification. A left behind lukewarm coffee cup

can be a sign of recent human presence – the left behind coffee cup can also be agreed upon as a

sign, a signal, with one or another signification. What has signification, and what does not, is thus

not ontological categories which certain things fall categorically inside or outside of. The world

does not divide up in categories of wholly signifying and unsignifying things, but in things that can

have different signifying or unsignifying aspects. The same entity can at one and the same time be

both signifying and unsignifying, though not in the same regard. Thus the coffee cup can both be

signifying and unsignifying, and even a written word can in principle both be signifying and

unsignifying, even though it is harder or perhaps practically impossible to gestalt it as unsignifying

once initiated in the written language in question.

That something is silent means that it does not stand something else, in that it does not

say anything about anything that it is not, does not point to anything it is not, and not in any

linguistical way reaches beyond itself.

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4.5 'This'

There is inevitably an apparent contradiction in the concept of silence as relying on the specific in

its specificity, in that the silence becomes a universal concept [almenbegreb], a type concept, where

of individual occurrences of aspects of silence are examples or tokens of this; which is precisely

what silence is not, since it signify that which eludes the type/token-distinction.155

It is the result of

having to make use of something, which presupposes and inherently has that distinction, that one

wants to show that there is something beyond.

What is expressed here is, from it being possible of expression alone, inevitably also linguistical.

This is not to be confused with it being possible to express an expression for what is not itself an

expression. One can never express the table linguistically, only the expression for the table: 'the

table'. The table itself, which is not linguistical, never passes your lips; only the word for the table

itself does, which is linguistical. Already here we have the core: Where I do not want to talk about

the word, I will nevertheless have to make use of the word. I want to talk about this and not 'this',

but have to make use of 'this'.

155 This is also seen where P. F. Strawson, in an attempt to define his concept of individuals or particulars, writes:

"historical occurrences, material objects, people and their shadows are all particulars; whereas qualities and properties,

numbers and species are not." (Individuals, p. 15) It dawns upon the reader that there is something peculiar at play here,

when Strawson lists what should not be properties and types (species) nonetheless made use of notions of precisely

properties and types. Occurence is something, that there can be instances of, a sort of something, and with the adjectival

'historical' there is predicated a quality or property of these; and likewise with objects, which have the property of being

material, and people is certainly also a universal term [almenbetegnelse].

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4.6 This

Language consists of signs. A signs significance is something that it itself is not. A sign stands for

something it is not. In language we already find the foundational motif, which dates back to Plato's

phainomenon and idea, which also Nietzsche noticed.156

You are confronted with language. On this page the individual letter is of no

importance. Any one 'e' on this page could be substituted with any other 'e'. This is how language

functions. The specific in its specificity, the individual in his individuality, is not fathomed by

language. The specific and the specific individual is neglected in its specificity by it having to be

grasped as an instantiation of a hypostated universal concept. Blinded by language there is partaken

in the old Platonic ressentiment towards the specific. Silence however is not language at all. Silence

does not point to anything that it is not, does not stand for anything it is not, and silence is not

merely understood by virtue of it exemplifying something more general or universal. In language –

and not least in the expanding language fetishism – there is a resentment towards the specific, and

the specific individual. I do not only stand for something else, which I am not. I am not merely

derived of whatever that is posited as supposedly more general or universal. I persistently and

always left; unfathomed, untouched in silence.

Even entities, that should be unique, which are typical to the widest possible extent, being

exemplary of a type – have specificity. Specificity is a phenomenons being the specific this.

If everything has a dimension of specificity, then everything also has a dimension of

silence; then silence is always also there. Silence is never, not even nearly, the whole of what makes

up something, it is never everything – but it is always also there. Silence is the also everpresent

absence of language, and the also everabsent presence of language – as an aspect.

Not everything is language. Not everything has signification. Not everything has meaning. There is

"something" that is not language, that is not linguistical, that does not have signification, and does

not have meaning. I have wanted to signify this with the concept of silence. As opposed to

Wittgenstein, this concept is not a part of an attempt to hold language back and to keep it at bay

before something to be held holy. Not even silence is holy. It is not about drawing limits for the

expression of thoughts, to delimit the use of language, and in this way limit it. Language cannot

156 See section 3.3.1 above.

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destroy or encroach upon silence, for it is not grasped linguistically – it is not fathomed by

language. Let language do what it can. Let all possible signs and combinations of these appear. It is

of no importance in this regard.

"Something" can very well both be silent and linguistical, but not in one and the same

regard. There can be something silent about something otherwise linguistical, or something

linguistical about something otherwise silent, but the silence of the linguistical is not the

linguistical, and the linguistical of silence is not silence. Only silence is silent, and only language is

linguistical. Silence, as well as language, is not a "thing", but a non-exclusive dimension or aspect

among other dimensions or aspects.

Silence, the absence of language, is there, even if it is not sharply delimited in regard to language,

like sets in set-theory of mathematics are sharply delimited.

There is no ideal transcendence – because there is no ideal division to transcend. I

know of no ideal delimitation of when a chair is a chair and not a table. There might by

circumstances under which I would say that something is perhaps in some way both one and the

other, or neither one or the other, but that does not mean that the words 'chair' and 'table' does not

have any signification, and neither that they signify the same; and it also does not mean that

everything therefore potentially is a chair or a table. The absence of sharp boundaries in regard to

the concepts of this treatise neither implies that everything is silence, everything is tacitness, or –

least of all – that everything is language. The problem of demarcation is a pseudo-problem, as

Wittgenstein also argued.157

That language is real, and something real is also linguistical, does not

imply that they are indiscernible. Even if they were co-extensional they would not need to be

identical or indiscernible.

Even though meaning and signification are not the same,158

it is no coincidence that meaning and

signification are isomorphic. Meaning is understood like language is understood, because meaning

exist where the individual reaches beyond itself: A life lived for something other than that specific

life itself, like the sign, which signify something other than itself. Here it is again: That something

stands for something.

157 Philosophical Investigations §66.

158 Signification [Betydning] is something signs, words, sentences, etc., have. Meaning is something a user of language

has with his or her use of signs, words, sentences, etc.. Thus words do not have meaning, but a user of language can

have a meaning with a word, or something linguistical, and this meaning can be something other than or in opposition

to the signification of the linguistical entity at hand. (Lies are hereby possible).

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The unsignifying and the meaningless exist: It is silence. Where we see meaning, we

see life. To say that the world is unintended or unintenting is to pronounce it dead, where it was

once seen as living. One wants life which lives for something other than itself, which reaches

beyond itself, and hereby becomes meaningful. There is nonetheless also always that dimension of

the lived life that is silence, which does not reach beyond itself. It is this dimension that is

meaninglessness. The unsignifying nature and meaninglessness of a tautology is different from the

unsignifying nature and meaninglessness of silence, in that even the tautology is nonetheless

language and says something. Signification, but also meaning, also in life, have in this way

linguisticality as a precondition.

Life is not a story, for a story is something linguistical, which life is not. If you write

an autobiography, you do not recount your life. What (quid) you recount is not your life, this (haec)

that you recount is your life – and this is not linguistical, but silence.

Everything linguistical can be shared. To communicate is to impart. The incommunicable is the

unimpartable, the a-tomic [from Greek ἄτομος, a-tomos: un-part], that which is mine and only

mine. Where there is silence one does not partake [delværen, at være del]. Where there is silence

one does not participate [deltagen, at tage del]. Chaos and loneliness approaches. This is how

silence appears to one who nourishes the thought of the limitless language.159

Silence is however

neither chaos nor order, good nor evil, beauty nor ugliness, truth nor falsity, loneliness nor the

opposite of loneliness.

The longing for partaking and participating in something is a linguistic longing, in that

there is a reappearance of the type/token-distinction, the whole/part-distinction, of the distinction

between reference and referent, phainomenon and idea. The longing is not absolved, like the

philosophical problem is not solved, like the question is not answered – but becomes futile

[intetsigende, literally: nothing-saying], is silenced.

Both Hegel's Geist and Heidegger's Dasein are such universals there is a longing for partaking in as

a token. One wishes to be an example or a token of these overarching meaning-giving conceptions

in a way that corresponds to the way in which the universal word [almene ord] is the signification-

giving conception of the individual word. But as addressed in the section above on the similarities

between Hegel's relation to the Young Hegelians and Heidegger's relation to deconstruction: The

159 See section 2. 'The limitless language'.

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generalization of something specific or some specific things can capture several important and

essential points, but never capture the specific in its specificity.

The specific is always an exception or the exceptional in this regard. Specificity as an

aspect of things is always an exceptional aspect. The exemplary of a type is that which is never

exceptional, and which the specific is always an exception from.

There is yet a difference between the exceptional as that which is exceptional to a

universality and that which is exceptional in time and space. Here we mean the former form of

exception and not the latter, which was the form of exception that several philosophers and mystics

associated with the incommunicable, as we saw in section 3.8. Silence is not an epiphany, or

something peculiarly hidden which a revelation reveals, but continuous, enduring and ever-present

in time and space. And silence is always an exception, an elusion.

It is not silence and the incommunicable that is the mystical. The mystical is only found within the

framework of linguisticality. Mysticism relies on a certain form of mise en langue, linguistic stage-

setting and construction, made possible by certain characteristic linguistic devices: grammatical

self-reference, equating opposites, contradictions, to dissolve the division between the identical and

difference, etc.. A mystic is most at home in paradoxes and contradictions, since one in these can

communicate a feeling of depth in an unrivalled way. The mystic does not go too far in his attempt

to express what he wishes to express. The mystic does not go too far, is not a violator of Language,

Tacitness, Silence, or other deified and exalted concepts. The mystic does not go too far, does not

transgress the limits of language – on the contrary, is precisely the point. Through these linguistic

maneuvers an aesthetization of existence is manifest, which creates meaning in a way that is

isomorphic with signification. Silence does not have aesthetical qualities. Silence neither creates nor

bestows meaning.160

Language consists of signs and symbols where one thing stands for another, and where it is some

universality, which bestows the individual thing with its signification. I do not merely stand for

something else, I am not merely representative of something more universal, and it is not this

universal which gives me meaning (I have none – I am not a piece of language). It is also in love

that one avoids the ressentiment, which lies in subordinating the beloved a universal, to only see the

160 In Danish: "Stilhed hverken skaber eller giver mening."

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beloved through this universal. If one only loves the woman in ones woman, this woman as a mere

and simple (even though perhaps pristine) example or token, one does not love this woman.

The world is no more linguistical than it is grammatical. When I meet the world, I do not meet 'the

world', I do not meet a noun; and when I meet you, I do not meet a pronoun. I am not met with

grammar. I am in the meanwhile trying to show something that is not grammatical – through

something grammatical.

Words cannot be attributed to silence, without exactly merely being an attribution.

What I point to here – silence – is not what I here say and express, but what shows itself. This, that

shows itself, cannot be said, for what is said is not what is shown. Only the shown is shown. If what

is supposed to show itself here does not already show itself, then I cannot do anything more. If you

do not understand the act of pointing, then I cannot point to the act of pointing in order to make you

understand the act of pointing. I point with my right index finger. I point to my right index finger

with my left index finger. And then I would have to point to my left index finger with my right

index finger...

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of language. Silence is the incommunicable and

illinguistical, but silence is not divinely exalted above language, and silence is not something that

only exceptionally reveals itself in time and space as a revelation. Silence neither creates nor

bestows meaning. Silence is the undivine, the perishable, the specific, that which cannot be

repeated, that which cannot be imparted, and that which can only show itself. It is this.

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Oversættelse:

Stilhed: silence

Tavshed: tacitness

Sproglig: linguistical

sproglighed: linguisticality