Language

The first essay by Heidegger that I ever read was when I was about 20. And let's just say I was unprepared. He had sayings like "the world worlds." And well, it turns out that language isn't much different: "language languages."

Now that doesn't sound great to my ear. Heidegger isn't as poetic as his favorite poets. But the move he's making is great. Language is doing its business - just like the world.

Now if that's true, then it means that language isn't something that we use only. It's also something that uses us. When I talk the word actually makes my mouth move in a certain way. Try thinking about that next time you talk. It's an exercise in weirdness - sort of like saying one word over and over and over and over and over and over until that word becomes dissociated from anything.

Heidegger says "language is the house of Being." Now I don't exactly know what the hell that means. But I think it has something to do with the fact that as humans we bring the world out of the void by words and then the world is able to work us over, affect us, and so forth.

Daniel Coffeen recently wrote about this on his blog An Emphatic Umph and he referenced a great quote by Merleau-Ponty: you reach for a word like you reach for an itch. The word and the itch are not different. The are gestures. With the notion of gestures all distinctions can collapse in a beautiful way.

Okay, well not ALL distinctions. But follow me: my cat gestures for food. A dog gestures with his nose much like I gesture with my hand. We use these parts of us to bring the world to us. When we thought that there was a difference between language and action - you know people say things like "Are you going to keep talking or do something about it" - it was easy to think language was passive. But people use language to change the world. I mean when I say "my beer is empty," I'm not describing reality - well I'm doing that too - but my goal is change. Please make this not the case.

To oversimplify: most 20th century philosophers thought either people were really, really different and used language to articulate similarities or they thought people were very similar and thought we used language to articulate differences. I'm closer to the latter. For example, if someone runs by me screaming, I have a question or two. Maybe I should be running too. Point being, language is used because it's useful. It's not "about" the world, it "is" the world. Now the world is more than language, but language is not just adding to it. It's like Spinal Tap - every time you talk you make the world one louder.

I remember one of my favorite professors saying that action in motions goal is action at rest. So why does the lion eat the antelope? According to him, so the lion can go back to sleep in the sun. Well, I don't know that I completely agree, but there's a point. Language is used to change the world, to fix problems - even if that problem is boredom. Now this doesn't encompass it - you can't do that - hell remember what we're using here: more language.

So here's to more language.