References
- Aristotle, On Interpretation, 16a 3, in vol. I of The Works of Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928).
- A preliminary word must be said about the reading of Aristotle as presented in this paper. Aristotle is focusing on the logical proposition in the work cited, and he may allow for a more intimate relation between thought and speech in the Rhetoric, where his focus is much more broad. However, this acknowledgement in no way undermines the project as it is presented here. Whether or not Aristotle's position on this issue is exhaustively represented by exploiting the passage cited, the present day crisis in language alluded to later in this paper is quite real and may well find its ancient origin in the words cited above. The question as to whether the crisis finds its origin directly or indirectly in this passage is extraneous to this discussion. Furthermore, even in the Rhetoric, Aristotle fails to account for the eventful and ethical nature of écriture.
- Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, (San Francisco, Calif.: 1982), p.197.
- Calvin O. Schrag, Experience and Being, (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969). See especially pages 158–84 and 190–96. Hereafter, this work will be cited in the text and notes as EB.
- Ibid., p. 162: “The spoken word is subject to the self-limitation of already delivered meanings. The word as spoken gives rise to new points of view and creates meaning through a transfiguration of the spoken word.”
- Ibid., p.164: “Language…is objectified and institutionalized speech.”
- I believe that this provisional positive interpretation of the distinction between speech and language is in keeping with the spirit of Professor Schrag's critique. The aspects of the distinction which I take to be problematical (below) may appear so only in the context of a critique which is directed at a broader issue than he explicitly addressed. Differences arise as a matter of contextualization and emphasis.
- See EB, especially pp.108–21.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969).
- EB, p.164: “Language is an investigatable object, transparent to theoretical analysis and amenable to practical manipulation. Speech is a developing and organismic event, so inextricably bound to the speaker, his bodily bearing, and his wider situation that it escapes any exhaustive interpretation.”
- Once again, the point of my difference with Professor Schrag does not hinge on whether or not he intentionally advocates such a position. His text may lend itself to such a traditional reading, however. In his important recent work (Calvin O. Schrag, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity [Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986], hereafter referred to as CP.), he continues to use speech almost exclusively to exemplify eventful expression. This unfortunately appears to reify the conclusion one might draw from EB, that écriture is somehow denegrated with respect to speech. No matter how misleading many passages from these two works may be. Schrag explicitly warns against such a reading in the more recent work: “Speaking is an event or occurrence in which something happens or is undergone. Writing too, as an allied genre of discourse is an undertaking, a performance, a project, a species, calling forth the interpretative response of reading” (CP, p.35). Rather than viewing this as an inconsistency in his work, the distinction between speech and language can be seen to arise out of the word as spoken/spoken word distinction, granting full recognition to the eventfulness of écriture.
- Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress press, 1963), hereafter cited as WF.
- Gerhard Ebeling, Introduction to a Theological Theory of Language, (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1973) hereafter cited as TTL.
- WF, p.318: “The word is what opens up and mediates understanding, i.e. brings something to understanding. The word itself has a hermeneutic function.”
- TTL, p.79: “In view of this cynical use of language it is understandable that people take refuge in a land of minimum use of language, limiting themselves to a language which is free of error, but for that reason aseptic and sterile.” Cf. also CP, pp. 186–87, where Schrag makes a similar statement in his discussion of ‘hermeneutical rhetoric’.
- WF, p.326: “Word is therefore rightly understood only when it is viewed as an event which (like love) involves at least two. The basic structure of the word is therefore not statement (that is an abstract variety of the word-event) but apprisal, certainly not in the colorless sense of information, but in the pregnant sense of participation and communication.”
- As for the undertaking of an approach to language (or world peace) which may be viewed as “unscientific,” Heidegger indicates very well how little one should be deterred in philosophical inquiry. “If, according to the altered and narrowed concept of science, we must say today that philosophy is not science, that does not mean that it is abandoned to chance ideas and opinions, but only that philosophy as what is more primordial cannot be determined by the standards of what is derivative. ‘Martin Heidegger, Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom, (Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 1985), p.16.
- The differences between what I mean by this term and what Heidegger meant by his term Sorge (usually translated as ‘care’) I take to be enormous, and they hopefully will become obvious in the ensuing discussion. Likewise, in describing my notion of care as “a concernful dwelling-with” I by no means wish to exclusively reference Heidegger's Besorge (usually translated as ‘concern’). The existential recovery of language cannot be construed as a project of fundamental ontology.
- For a discussion of “existential intentionality,” see Calvin O. Schrag, Existence and Freedom,(Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1961), especially pp.20–25. I would like to thank the following individuals whose comments and instruction have been invaluable in the completion of this paper: Carl R. Hausman, Joseph J. Kockelmans, and Cari G. Vaught of the Pennsylvania State University, and most especially Calvin O. Schrag of Purdue University.