As Featured in Belonging Again II.2
Thoughts on “The Mystery of Language, Relationship, and Translation,” with Daniel Zaruba and Guy Sengstock
If language orients how things “appear,” and Hegel is right that appearance is connected to essence…
In “The Mystery of Language, Relationship, and Translation,” Daniel Zaruba and Guy Sengstock engaged in a conversation that for me is right at the heart of the matter of language, upon which the entire address of Belonging Again rides (the distinction between “Discourse and Rhetoric” and/or “Kafkalikeness and Voicecraft”). Having engaged in deep translation work, seeking “to listen to the heart of language” itself, Zaruba speaks of “language itself as the teacher,” for the idea that people alone came up with language doesn’t seem right: once you study the roots of terms, how terms lead to others, how their histories develop — words seem to have their own life. It’s a result of “high order causality” versus “low order causality,” we might say, and though it requires humans to exist (on earth, at least), it is not reducible to human intentions, which means there is potential for humans to learn something if they study it and — as Zaruba suggests — follow it back to its origin.¹
“Language makes something appear,” Zaruba notes, and so the language that we use impacts the “being” we experience, with all its people, things, and world. Zaruba is a scholar of Heidegger, and he draws attention to how Heidegger came to see the fate of humanity profoundly connected to the language we use (and keep in mind that Lacan links language with the social and Symbolic: there is a social because we communicate, an act which can lead us into needing psychoanalysis). In his stream “Relational vs. Substance Ontology and Epistemology, Information vs. Meaning,” Luke Thompson made the point that in order to contrast two things, we require “a third” of the background (or “horizon”) which makes it possible for us to make judgments and contrasts at all (a point which reminds me of Leibniz). Likewise, if we are trying to decide if the sky is best described by “cerulean” or “blue,” we need the sky to which to refer.² But even if we have the sky, if we only have the word “blue,” we won’t have what we need to engage in contrast and distinction, which please note means we won’t get “ourselves” involved (in a “metajudgment”). This is critical: the more language we have, the more we relate to the thing of which we speak, precisely because we have more options by which to refer to it. In that increase of options for words about a given thing; we become more meaningfully involved, whereas if we just increase options of what we could do or speak about, we use our judgment in a way that could be attributed to causation and stimulation (for we could just be stimulated by the multiple options differently). But if we are deciding what to name a tree, the tree is “there” and doesn’t stimulate us differently from what it does; if we experience a different stimulation, there is greater reason to believe this is internally derived (“us”). Sure, the wind could shift and the light change, so there is boundless external stimulation we could see as responsible for any change of words, but even then, if we decide these new external stimulus warrant a change of words, we have made that judgment. We are watching and in-volved (might we think of “e-volve” as “in-volve,” seeing as evolution reflects the environment, say one that includes the SCM?).
Luke noted that if you are comparing two circles on a piece of paper, we require the paper to make the comparison; likewise, if we are going to compare two words and which is best to use in a certain context, we require the language as a whole and the culture in which the language is “situated” as itself. A language makes possible contrasts and distinctions between its words, as conditioned by the contrasts and distinctions we make — a feedback loop of “conditionalism.” But all those variations of “appearance” occur within and atop the language which also influences how things “appear.” There are then at least two senses then by which things appear according to language: according to the precise words (“blue” vs “cerulean”), and then according to the particular language (English vs Arabic) — a point we can associate with changes in Grammatics and Symbolics, as discussed with Korzybski and Eric Harris-Braun. And so though with greater word-choice we have more metajudgment, it is even more obviously “us” in the choice, change, and/or creation of the language or “horizon” in and according to which we make word-choice itself (please note that new ideas invite new language, and perhaps that is why creativity is itself) — and note that translation is engaged in both of these dimensions at the same time, hence it’s profound educational potential.³
I spoke with Layman Pascal on Gurdjieff (#187), and in our conversation we discussed how metaphors structure our thinking more than just decorate it (a regular point in O.G. Rose, indebted for me to Neil Postman). I noted how Gurdjieff brought to my attention how the practices and actions we choose to engage in impacts the metaphors “at hand” for me to draw on when I’m looking to describe something, and if I never garden (for example), then I won’t readily think to use “gardening” as a construct by which to explain the economy, my relationships, etc. — and we seemingly cannot help but use some metaphor to explain something, as to be expected if thinking is analogous, as Sander and Hofstadter discuss. Perhaps this is a good thing, because “gardening” would be a bad metaphor for the economy, but if ultimately I’m likely to use some metaphor (say “an engine”), then it’s arguably important that I have as many metaphors available to me as possible before I get “framed” in one and then stuck (Kafkalike). It’s also extremely important that I can metajudge the quality of metaphors, which is an evaluation not readily given to me by my immediacy. This is another way in which I can in-volve/e-volve, and it suggests there is great value in doing different things and trying many experiences: the metaphors and frameworks available to me becomes far greater, affording greater “checks and balances.” Does language set metaphors like language sets word-choice? Well, metaphors are influenced by how the world “appears” to us, and Zaruba is right that how the world “appears” is indivisible from the word. Language is interwoven into experience like experience is into language, and though there are easily situations where one is more primary than the other, for our purposes I think we can say both need to be addressed (“the wor(l)d”).
Anyway, the language and words we use profoundly impact how the society, institutions, relationships, etc. manifest and “appear” to us, and if we want to change them, we should perhaps learn to speak differently first, say by transiting from Kafkalikeness to Voicecraft. This is exactly what Sengstock and Zaruba suggest when they consider the threat of “technical language,” which I associate strongly with Kafkalikeness, and that has indirectly shaped our word-choice and metaphors profoundly, as incubated and given “plausibility” by our institutions, habits, ethics, and the like. We today have fallen under the sway and dominance of “technical language,” precisely because it “works” so well in terms of utility, economics, growth — which is why we are at risk of “closing our horizon” to only understanding the world according to these terms, which is an easy mistake (of “narrowing”) because they are quantifiable (“at hand”-measurable), while changes in “appearance” are qualitative, “fuzzy,” and require us to “see beyond our immediacy” to consider other possibilities and counterfactuals that are then by definition abstract. If such abstraction requires more energy of humans than normal, then it is probable that the majority through time will not engage in such abstraction, and so the technical and quantifiable (Kafkalikeness) will likely rise and spread (Land waits). Unless that is we make a point to resist it and cultivate alternative language-use, but problematically if we lose Voicecraft, how could we talk about it? If things will then “appear” differently, how could we observe our mistake? This is the great problem: our challenge is that which hides itself. If we fail, we won’t readily “see” that we are failing. Our challenge is an “enclosing,” a great “locking ourselves inside” (Lewis). An irony. A vanishing. (What’s the problem?) But even if we resist Kafkalikeness, what good is it if ultimately we don’t “spread Voicecraft/Childhood” to bring about societal shifts? Indeed, we need an infrastructure as well, something like “the social coordination mechanism.”
Again, language necessarily entails in it the threat of becoming “mere technical language,” as Voicecraft can become Kafkalikeness (as “being” must be a threat to itself, as Zaruba noted with Heidegger): if we “are” speaking, the threat must be with us (and even “likely,” suggesting social breakdown could be “likely” though not destined). Language orients how things “appear,” and if Hegel is right that “appearance” shapes essence, then the way language changes things is deep (to the point of possible “mentidivergence”). Not all at once, of course, like a magical spell, but gradually through time (“instantaneous magic” might be more the myth than magic in general). We know that if we call a person “stupid” long enough, the person really can come to see his or her self as “really stupid”; likewise, if we keep calling a home “a bunch of bricks,” it “practically really does” just become a “house.” The signifier can never be the signified, no, but that’s the challenge: if that gap was closed, the signifier might be safe from being changed by language, for good and for bad. We do change what we speak about, and yet we often “speak through language” versus take time to “speak about language,” and so we can be “captured” and not know it. As some Christians note, an idol though is something “looked at” while an icon is “looked through,” so there is danger in speaking about speaking (as perhaps has been the mistake of many intellectuals), but if we don’t do it at all, we might be lead by our speaking to somewhere we don’t want to go. (Land waits.)
As hopefully Belonging Again II.1 showed, there is for me strong historic evidence that language is at the heart of humanity and society. The point is not just philosophical; if Deidre McCloskey is right, language is behind “The Great Enrichment”; if Jonathan Rauch is right, language is essential to knowledge and development. Why language is so powerful is easily tied to the reality that language impacts how things “appear,” and it basically seems necessary that we can “see things differently,” beyond what is immediate to us, if we are going to “create wealth” versus just stimulate it (suggesting a need for “the skill of starting a good conversation,” which Luke Thompson noted). In language is the secret of changing “appearance” (and so “apprehension,” as I discussed with Sam Green, #211), not just to us as an individual (which could risk psychosis), but for the social in relationship and between people. Critically, any of us can come up with our own “private language” and “change how things appear” to ourselves, yes, but the challenge is somehow doing this socially with others (if we are to avoid “Cheap Deleuze” for “Costly Deleuze,” like we see in Simone Weil). Also, it won’t suffice to just impose a new language on people to change how things “appear”: that would be totalitarian and fall into the mistakes of Part I. We must rather somehow increase the likelihood that people can access the process of language development, change, “flow,” etc. itself. I believe the SCM could make this possible, especially if philosophy and art are indirectly processes of making new words, metaphors, and Grammatics. (Perhaps must of Book 3 of Part 2 is about changing language to change how things “appear.”)
Language like being (Geometric) necessarily entails the danger and risk of falling into a technical version of itself (Algebraic), at which point the way things can “come forth” is narrowed into a Kafkalike “hallway” (of Capital/AI). Zaruba spoke of translation as a practice of comparing the ways things can be made to “appear” — if the word “blue” is used versus “cerulean,” the reader’s mental image of the sky will change — and I wonder if in philosophy, theology, and art we might be comparing descriptions of how things “are” to see which best captures the sense of our experience? Maybe, but the point is that we can find “a saving power in language,” as Zaruba put it, which is to say that to save a word can be to save a way the world appears to us, as learning to speak anew can be to learn to “let being be” (anew) (Thomas Winn #93, “free(ing) speech”).
If we can speak differently, we can be differently, and that is why so much rides on the movement to Voicecraft from Kafkalikeness, a movement which might also afford us that “life-changing experience of Gestalt” that Jan Zwicky discussed. Everything can hinge on how everything appears.
.
.
.
Notes
¹For more, see “The Phenomenology of Voice” by O.G. Rose, as also discussed with Tim Adalin:
²In this way, language is evidence of an external world, though the more we “practically make” language like a “blob,” the more it might seem like nothing outside of us (“blob”-ish) exists.
³Grammatics and Symbolics present a problem though, for we can be “captured” by one; however, if we remove Grammatics, the Social is doomed. We must “tarry with the negativity,” but how? Hard to say, but if we cannot understand or think backgrounds (“horizons”), we cannot address Global Pluralism, and Land will prove correct.
.
.
.
For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram.
Also, in May, Philosophy Portal with Cadell Last will be hosting a month dedicated to “The Art of Story Telling.” This month will be attempting to bring together the intersections of philosophy and literature through the works of O.G. Rose and the Stygian Society (Holly Rhiannon and Pae Veo). Throughout the month, we will be focusing on philosophy that can be represented as a good story, and literature that contains within itself good philosophy. The first event will include the official release of Cadell Last’s next book Real Speculations, the second event will explore the art of authenticity in the age of the algorithm, and the third event will offer an invitation into the fictional world of O.G. Rose’s “Under the Wing.” We will end the month with a reflection on our relationship to story on the level of our creative works.
