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
82
Embed
Beyond the Limits of Language - Silence as a concept in negative philosophy of language
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
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
2
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.
4.6 This ........................................................................................................................................... 74
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 –
6
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.
7
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'.
8
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.
9
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.
10
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.
11
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).
12
13
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.
14
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.
15
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.
16
17
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
18
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.
19
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
20
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
21
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"
22
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'.
23
24
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]
25
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 "
26
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
27
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'
28
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.
29
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.
30
"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
31
"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.
32
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
33
34
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."
35
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 "
36
"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."
37
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'.
38
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
39
"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."
40
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."
41
"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.
42
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.
43
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".
44
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]
45
"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
46
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."
47
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.
48
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.
49
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."
50
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 "
51
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