Argo Books, Inc. Norwich, VT 1970
Introduction by Clinton C. Gardner
Feringer notes
Notes started: 1-14-92
Last edited: August-98
Contents
Introduction by Clinton Gardner
1. ERH is an influential thinker among many scholars, but is not well known generally. Harvey Cox, attending a meeting on theological thought in East Berlin, found as much in Rosenstock-Huessy as in Tillich and Bonhoeffer. J.H. Oldham, a former President of the World Council of Churches has described Rosenstock-Huessy as “…one of the remarkable figures of our time.” Reinhold Niebuhr, Lewis Mumford, and Carl Zuckmayer have hailed his work. Yet in the U.S. he remains largely unknown. Why?
2. Part of the reason lies in the fact that for many years most of his writing was in German and remained untranslated. Another reason was that he had no constituency in the U.S. because the basis of his thinking was questioning and attacking the very foundation of traditional academic thinking in the fields of theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, indeed in all of the social sciences.
He threatens the very basis of their existence, for all of his writing and teaching is, in effect, a storming of the academic trenches. As Martin Marty wrote in The Christian Century in 1965, `Rosenstock-Huessy was ahead of his time–and he still is.’ (p.1)
Rosenstock-Huessy did not fit the academic mold in other ways. Like Descartes, he waited to develop his ideas, writing “out of the circumstances of his life,” rather than spending time “neatening up” his ideas, as would a traditional scholar. [RF – a more detailed commentary on the implication of this style appears in the introduction of these notes.]
3. Purpose of S&R? To dethrone Descartes’ method as the basis for all science. Cartesian method is assumed by social scientists to apply to society. Beginning with Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy (1830):
“…they adopted that same method. In other words, the social sciences, down to our day, have more or less agreed with Descartes that he had discovered a new metaphysic, a universal and true view of reality which could be directed toward any investigation, be it of matter or man.” (p.3)
Contrarily, ERH contends that 1) Cartesian analysis applies only to natural science, 2) a method for social science can be found in the patterns of human speech, and 3) the Grammatical Method is universal, i.e. Cartesian method is one of its four elements.
4. In general, ERH’s works are divided into historical, sociological, and theological as follows:
a. Historical: mankind is formed by 4 kinds of speech, 1) tribal, orienting toward ancestors (past),. 2) templar speech, originated in Egypt and oriented toward nature (outside society, such as stars), 3) Greek speech, oriented toward organized “thought” (i.e. poetry and philosophy), and 4) Prophetic speech, originated by Israel and oriented toward what humankind should become.
The Christian era fused these four types; it asserted that in order to understand our experience and survive, humankind moves in a rhythm between all of these. The rhythm (proper sequence for understanding types of experience) would be, in terms of grammar, imperative, subjective, narrative, and finally objective. Historical man unfolds in this pattern, as does significant everyday human experience. (p.6)
b. Sociological & psychological works: how man discovers himself by speech (going beyond the I & Thou of Buber). That is, ERH submits: 1) First comes the “thou” by which man is called to create a future for the community. 2) He then discovers his “I,” his subjective, inner self. 3) Then he responds by his action of contributing to the community denoted by “we” and 4) finally, he is recognized, objectively by the outside world, in the role of a third person “him.” Thus, his philosophy addresses to the future and past in time, and the inward and outward in space (space meaning the inner space of the mind contrasted with everything outside it). Speech creates our consciousness of and understanding of social experience comprehensively in terms of the past and future (what society has been and what it should become), the inner world of thought, and the outer world of nature.
c. Theologically: What was called the “holy spirit” can now be called the speech of mankind. Man’s divinity consists in his speaking and listening. “Supernatural” is man speaking “beyond himself” i.e. creating a community (a future). Life after his death exists in terms of the memory of humankind carried into the future.
“God is not a supernatural being, but the power that makes us speak… “We experience him every moment we reach out beyond ourselves, saying the word that needs to be spoken, that is timely, that moves us into the future. Sin is abuse of the word, words that destroy peace and the truth that all language seeks to establish.” (p.7)
d. Assumptions: 1) Speech is man’s “matrix” (that is, the structure of our speech reflects the structure of how society has survived over the millennia). 2) Speech precedes organized thought and therefore reflects its pattern, having been created intuitively. 3) A new method for the social sciences (and indirectly for all of science as well) can be erected on the basis of how men speak and listen.
End of Introduction
Chapter 1 IN DEFENSE OF THE GRAMMATICAL METHOD
This provides the grand plan for the method, into which all other six chapters fit.
1. The Unity of Social Research
a. Assumption: ERH considers Ludwig Feuerback, in the nineteenth century, to be the father of grammatical philosophy as a basis for social science.
b. In defense of these assertions ERH cites several facts:
1) The rise of social disciplines, history, ethnology, sociology, etc. augmented elements of society, but with no integrating principle. “…in grammar only, is there performed such a multiformity within unity.” (p.9)
2) In philosophy a group of language thinkers arose in the 19th Century.
3) Linguists began to look in the direction of society, previously having concentrated on its structure an not its social implications. Problems like social breakdowns and insanity were not previously addressed.
4) Warnings came to indicate that social breakdowns and the condition or usage of language could not be separated. We have been warned by psychoanalysts, Nietzsche, and the Russian revolution in recent times that corruption of language usage and social breakdowns are concurrent.
5) The organized study of Language had never been used as a universal method for social analysis, and ERH will show that the method for natural science excludes “…application to society, by establishment.” (p.11)
6) Medieval and modern thinkers never laid claim to a method to explain changes in society. They contended that methods must either be “scientific” or “theological.” (Science faults theology for not being scientific theology faults science for a lack of direction, and both ignore each other.) This attitude promotes fragmentation of thinking. ERH maintains here that only through a social grammar can these groups can be united. And he warns that unless such a unity is found, academe (in the social sciences) can be ignored by the masses, “…in our un-understandable division.” (p.11)
2. Social Dangers Compel Us to Speak Our Mind (p.11)
a. War, revolution, anarchy, and decadence eternally threaten the extinction of society. [RF-I take this, not only literally, but as a metaphor for all groups within society as well.]
b. He makes an important qualification, that he is not addressing individual ills, but only social ills. (p.12)
“We do not inquire into the problems of disease and death, suicide and lunacy here although they reflect social ills or correspond to social ills. We shall speak of social ills only in the sense that they comprehend more than one generation or more than one locality.” (p.12)
[RF – I see this as a crucial distinction in his thinking.]
c. Anarchy is the lack of cooperation within a group; there is too much individualism, no common inspiration! Socially, this represents a breakdown of a group’s inner space.
Decadence is the lack of passing on old aims and ends. Either people have no children, or children do not accept the old values. This is a breakdown of time between present and past, an inability to reach the future in mind, body, or soul. (p.12) There is a lack of faith, faith as a belief in the future. Decadence condemns the next generation to barbarism!
Revolution does violence to the existing order, as the old are liquidated, considered “past men.” (p.13) There is a break in time between present and future.
War represents the increased efficiency in power of a government, where power is increased in attempts to extend that power over territory outside its own borders. This represents a breakdown in the management of “outer space.”
These are definitions of the social order, making distinctions between time and space fronts, past/present/future, inner and outer space. Such distinctions offer reference points (locations in time and space) by which to assess social ills search for causes and cures, and measure corrective action.
(RF – If the reader has not read a definition distinguishing natural and social science, the following will be helpful at this point. The need for a new perspective for social science is apparent when one looks at how natural science defines these elements of time and space. To the natural scientist time is an endless stream with no beginning or end; past is past and of little importance, present is a micro-moment between past and future, and time can be divided almost endlessly, with an absolute value in measurement – Max Planck’s “C” constant, for instance. Space is a given in nature, and descriptions of events are denotative in terms principally of space. All measurement seeks absolute accuracy and the measure for quality.)
(However, this does not describe how we actually experience time and space. We have a memory that can strongly influence our view of an event. The future, if society is to survive, must be shaped because natural “animal” tendencies of greed, avarice, and self-centeredness would tear the world apart. Also, in the process of controlling our time, we increase the sensation of “present.” In sum, then, the social science of Rosenstock-Huessy includes the space and time perspective of the natural scientist, but expands it; additional dimensions of time render it flexible rather than absolute, and dimensions of space separate the world of thought from the world of concrete events. To denotative description, when we describe our feelings we just as often needconnotative speech – metaphor.)
The complete victory of any one (of war, anarchy, revolution or decadence) — ends society (p.13), and the sustaining dominance of any one of these, over time, will do the same. The validity of this paradigm can be understood upon reflection of one’s own life experience.
d. All social research that does not address these ills is “superfluous,” imprisoned in the reality of the “outer world.” Dwelling on cures to social problems solely in the “outer world,” as our present social methods tend to do, exacerbates these ills.
e. What are the Cures? For war, peace begins when people begin to speak again. It took 10 years, 1945-55 for WWII, before peace began. For decadence, words have no meaning between old and young, and the faith of the old is not transmitted, where language is mere verbiage, “a petrified ritual.” Faith between the generations must be established. (p.14) Anarchy “…means a lack of unanimity, of common inspiration…” It is reflected in the fact that metaphorically, two languages are spoken within the group, and there is no communication – it is a Tower of Babel. Obviously peace begins when all speak one language. With revolution, old values and terms are “ridiculed.” These are merely a reflection of many more indicators of social diseases. Problems, methods, and terms need redefinition. `
Obviously “language is the weapon of society against those four ills.”( p.14,15) Time and space distinctions as advocated above must be respected and unified, thought with experience (the outer); action (in the present) must be informed by past experience and move toward a desired future.
The four diseases dismantle society, by breaking down one of its fronts in time or space… The evil of decadence is the lack of faith in the future. The evil of revolution is the lack of respect for the past… War rages when anarchy between two groups is replaced by the violent effort of establishing unity…Wars prove the weakness of the peacetime system. (p.15)
3. Society Lives By Speech, Dies Without Speech
a. There are four different “styles” of speech, one for each of the four fronts. (p.16) 1) External world, conquered by reason, logic, science. 2) The future is ruled (by values, laws passed). 3) The past is narrated. 4) Unanimity of the inner circle is expressed in song.
The energies of social life are thus compressed into words that must be articulated, circulated, and regenerated. For instance, new meanings or new terms must be created when old ones no longer have power.
b. Grammar is thus the most obvious organon for the teachings on society. Grammar here means a higher grammar where the consequences of action are correlated with words, as contrasted with the lower, purely structural aspects of language, e.g. spelling, sentence structure, vocabulary. Social grammar refers to the consequences of our speech in society.
c. Science (in general) has two languages, logic and mathematics. Aristotelian logic admits no paradox, as medieval logic does. The grammatical method retains medieval logic. (RF – as defined by Anselm of Canterbury). In this usage, paradox signals the need for a higher principle that will unify the contradicting experiences.Mathematics retains the data, but strips off the appearances in evidence (i.e. uniqueness). (RF – in general, he laments the limitations of the natural scientist’s concept of time and space when applied to social experience and its continued use as a method today by social scientists.)
d. Man lives on the four fronts of two-fold time and space, past and future, and must constantly make a decision as to which one to expand or emphasize at any given moment. For man to become conscious of past and future, inner and outer is essential. These facets of experience must be kept in balance, in perspective. In other words, there is a time to plan for the future; there is a time to remember what values must be fought for out of the past (such as law and justice and freedom). As to space considerations, anarchy (within) and war must also be confronted as well.
e. Natural science time and space concepts are not suitable in describing social experience. Scientific time is uni-directional and is inexorable; space is singular in its concreteness and is unlimited. Social time is flexible, pointing toward the past at times, into the future at times, and conscious of the present at times. Social space likewise is more expanded because recognition is made of the fact that we live, consciously, in two worlds of thought (which is subjective) and concrete nature, (which is outside and objective). Contrary to what hard-core scientists might believe, they can never escape the subjectivity of their thought, their “inner” space.
f. “LANGUAGE DISTRIBUTES AND ORGANIZES THE UNIVERSE, IN EVERY MOMENT, ANEW. IT IS WE WHO DECIDE WHAT BELONGS TO THE PAST AND WHAT SHALL BE PART OF THE FUTURE. OUR GRAMMATICAL FORMS BETRAY OUR DEEPEST BIOGRAPHICAL DECISIONS.” (p.19)
1) Tenses locate events in time: he was, she is, they might be. “Any assertion in the present is biographical in that it presupposes past and future…” (p.19)
2) To say “we” or “it” or “they” indicates whether the speaker includes the person spoken about within a group or outside it, or whether the object is considered a non-human “it.”
g. It is important to indicate how the proposers of other methods of thought, science and theology, by their own admission, have left open room for another method by denying that their own method is concerned with social experience. This in turn allows them to welcome a method uncontradictory to their traditional beliefs.
For instance, natural science has no rudder; its value lies in describing the concrete world. Theology, on the other hand, is not of this world, but offers direction, telling us what we should become.Only a method of society joins them and identifies the way to bring society to its potential. Science and theology are necessary constituents, but not, in sum, adequate. By putting their specialized fields into a larger context of society, each takes on greater meaning, thus allowing them to be more fruitful and respected – With the present separation, science and theology are burdened with goals their method is unable to fulfill. Science is too pervasive and theology is discredited.
THIS IS A FUNDAMENTAL STATEMENT. It not only clarifies the problem, but renders the other two methods more powerful. It renders the method of science more solid by indicating its limits; ditto for theology, but also it re-introduces theology into the study of knowledge by providing an essential purpose for it.
h. Regarding the integrating power of speech, ERH makes the following two assertions. 1) In order to evaluate our experience we must “orient” that experience (events) in time and space. 2) The way we use language provides the clue as to how orientation is to be accomplished. “Only when we speak to others (or for that matter, to ourselves), do we delineate an inner space or circle in which we speak – contrasted with the outer world about which we speak. (p.21)
The space of science is posteriori, and just one half of the complete phenomenon of space. But the truly human phenomenon of space is found in the astounding fact that grammar unites people within one common inner space. (p.21) [RF-emphasis mine]
The phenomenon of time is the same. “Only because we can speak, are we able to establish a present moment between past and future.” (p.21) What this seems to mean is that thought is an attempt to explain the outer, world and these two worlds must be integrated; thought unrelated to the outer-world cannot be validated, and unexplained experience cannot be understood. We cannot orient ourselves to, and by, a method of the outer world only, that is, by the method of natural science only. To become properly oriented, two things also occur: 1) The attributes of the inner world must be recognized and included (i.e. the “fact” of thought as different from concreteness). 2) Communicating connections with others can only occur via the inner world of thought. Thought, by being capable of naming and speaking about concrete phenomena, literally allows us to see hidden elements of those phenomena (i.e. other than merely appearances; appearance is corrected or balanced by measurement).
Two fundamental assumptions are crucial to understanding the grammatical method as the foundation for a science of society. 1) UNITY: establishing a relationship between all elements of reality, for example, thought correlating with concrete events. 2) RECOGNIZING THE NEED FOR REFERENCE POINTS. Experience, in other words, cannot be understood without knowing where we are, and “where we are” can only be described in terms of time and space. Reference points are essential to free us from total confusion from the cascade of stimuli that imposes on our consciousness every waking moment.
Still another underlying assumption is that mankind is an animal born with a potential to become something beyond the animal state meaning, “becoming human.” Our nature in the sense of spiritual and psychological growth is not a given, but constantly changes, or has the potential to improve as we learn.
The implications of these assumptions explain the completeness for three basic methods for the understanding of experience. One is to determine what “nature” ( the concrete world) is like; its method is “natural science.” Another is to determine what we should become. Its method is theology, the idealist goal. Finally, the third is to determine how mankind (society) might be moved toward the goal. The method for the latter problem is what is called a science of society. It integrates (subsumes) the other two methods. HUMAN SURVIVAL DEPENDS UPON ACHIEVING ALL THREE GOALS, AND FAILURE TO REACH ANY ONE SPELLS THE DEATH OF SOCIETY. Thus, we require a curriculum that addresses physical, moral, and social elements of experience.
/i. He goes on to point out that inner space preceded outer space, because science could not have been created without the prior inner space of the scientists.
j. Because of the dangers that threaten society, we are constantly forced to pass judgement upon the status of affairs. e.g. Is society decaying, disintegrating, is it going to last? “The danger of death is the first cause of any knowledge about society.” (p.22). Most conversation deals with this issue in relation to ourselves and our working group – the community. All problems, ultimately, are about survival.
k. In this conversation, and for these reasons, we are all teachers. We wish to influence others by way of our observations, our conclusions of their meaning and hopefully what a useful response might be.
Natural science is based on pure reason. Theology is based on the purity of the creed. The validity of social knowledge wholly depends on its being based on pure teaching. (p.23)
SCIENCE HE DEFINES AS VERIFIABLE KNOWLEDGE
l. He defines “pure teaching” as the fitting it into the “polychrony” of society. Society contains many ages and problems and the four types of groups. Pure teaching then must be about social concerns, but with no immediate concern for either teacher or student. He contrasts it with “mixed teaching,” which is directed toward personal prestige, examinations, or current events.
[RF – This explanation appears contradictory. He seems to be saying that teaching is unconcerned with current events, yet it must focus on the problems of society. Scientific teaching, as he describes it, appears to mean that personal concerns of the student and teacher are to be set aside. But, as he suggests elsewhere, not the personal biases of the student and teacher. (?) He then cites the four basic elements of pure teaching – listening, speaking, studying (reading), and teaching. I presume teaching in this context means explaining truth. The first step is to listen, “Listen and society will live, is the first statement and the perpetual promise of any social research.”] (p.24)
Pure teaching, then would seem to begin with “listening”. Pure teaching thus recognizes not two elements (I, and IT) but three, I, You, and IT. The student, the teacher and the subject matter.
4. The A-Prioris of Theology and Physics
His assertion is that the two other methods of analysis, science and theology, have omitted a whole realm of experience, and it is the burden of this section to prove it. The two formulas representative of these two methods will be those of Anselm and Descartes.
a. Anselm: SO THAT WHAT WE HOLD BY FAITH ABOUT THE DIVINE NATURE AND ITS PERSONS, EXCEPT FOR THE INCARNATION, CAN BE PROVEN BY NECESSARY REASON WITHOUT THE AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. (p.25) The subject matter of theology is divided into two parts, 1) divine nature and trinity, and 2) incarnation. Method for #1 is logic and deduction. For #2, historical and personal experience.
Irreducible datum of Christian theology is the crucifixion, the rest of theology is then left for logical discussion. (p.25)
“Except” means that the existence of God can be proven by logic, but cannot explain human experience or events. Thus, Christianity is based on a fact plus reason (analysis).
b. Descartes: NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND NATURAL SCIENCE ENDEAVOR THAT THE FACTS WHICH WE OBTAIN THROUGH THE SENSES ABOUT PHYSICAL NATURE AND ITS ELEMENTS, MAY BE PROVED, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF SPACE AND ITS EXPANSION, BY NECESSARY REASONING WITHOUT THE AUTHORITY OF OUR IMPRESSIONS. (p.26,27) The meaning of this is that the existence of space cannot be proven, but is intuitive. The rest of natural science therefore is deduced logically from space datum, e.g. rules about waves, movement, weight, etc. (p.27)
Time is either reasoned away or included (metaphorically) as the 4th dimension of space. “God is a hypothesis for which he (the scientist) has no need within his own system.” (p.28) Thus, God and “time” are omitted from the basic assumptions of natural philosophy.
c. Rosenstock-Huessy, asserts that grammar, as the organon of a new science of society, concentrates on the phenomena of time. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE TEACHINGS OF SOCIETY ARE BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE CONTENTS OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS ABOUT THE SOCIAL CHANGES CAN BE PROVED, EXCEPT FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF PEACE, BY NECESSARY REASON WITHOUT THE AUTHORITY OF THE EMPIRICAL STATUTE LAW. (p.28).
This statement is built in strict correspondence to the two other methodical claims.
d. All three statements have the following in common. They include two intellectual enterprises, one general philosophy, the other a specific science (or a number of them). This double subject means that the problems with which they deal are large, complex, and founded on a philosophy, for which innumerable specifics are forthcoming. (p.29)
e. All three attempt to replace empirical knowledge with general (universal) statements or basic laws. Three types of empirical knowledge are the Bible (for theology), sense data (for science), and statutes of groups (for the social order or a true social science). (p.29,30)
f. All three must be based upon an assumption not possible necessary to prove, and therefore always a “given” condition; expanded space and movement for science, incarnation for theology, and peace for the social teacher. (p.30) The medium in each case is different, with science by “intuition,” with incarnation by church “tradition,” with peace by way of “social laws” within groups of any type. Evidence is sensation,history, and rules governing daily group life.
ERH points out that these three assumptions are fundamental to human thought. We trust our sensory experience. History tells us that mankind has been around for a while, and therefore there is a future for the human tribe. Finally, we can only learn completely when there is peace. These assumptions may also have to be enlarged, to space, movement, and to incarnation and the trinity.
The important fact here is that we are speaking of two types of data, one set that is given, and one set that can be identified by scholarly activity, by thought, by our creating it. (i.e. IF THIS, THEN THAT FOLLOWS type of thinking). He goes on to explain that these two types of datum, science and common sense, have been separated. The three methods of analysis have things in common, and important differences. (p.31)
5. The Metanomics of Society, or Teaching
a. “…no social science can communicate any truth to a student or reader who has no experience of peace…” Anarchy, decay, revolution, and war destroy social teaching.
b. It is natural for the social scientist to go with the methods of natural science if the choice is between that and faith. But society exists in a sea of time, of continuity and discontinuity, of changing values and a changing environment. His examples: if we know when a phenomenon is occurring in its proper time (order) and when not, when things are at war or at peace, “…we know all we can know about it.” (p.33) To select books to read is to select contemporaries; we look forward to goals and backward to determine what to take into the future; the older generation teaches the younger and waits for it to catch up (that is what classrooms are for mostly); representative thinking presented to the student stands between past (what our teaching represents) and future (what his learning is anticipating). (p.33)
c. Therefore, “The first embodiment of the new grammar of society, then, is education.” (p.33) To get an education is to learn from the past and to have more of a future, more direction and responsibility. Thus, the teacher represents the time element of the past, and the student the time element of the future. In the classroom, or wherever, student and teacher become contemporaries.
d. Dialogue has three basic elements, the logic of the discussion, agreement of the facts, and, importantly a victory over time, a joining of “distemporaries,” a bridge in the generation gap, PEACE! He asserts, that is not a part of nature, and education is therefore pure social process. (p.34)
e. Education therefore cannot be reduced to the “space thinking” of the scientist; his version of time is too mathematical. Nor is education dealing with eternity (theology, i.e. what we should become ultimately). “Education is, in its form and method not dealing with eternity. Eternity may be its content. But the educational process itself is secular, temporal, untheological, social… It presupposes the desirability of peace.” (p. 34)
f. These three qualities of methods – space, incarnation and peace – are the minimum datum for each of these methods. The scientist must concentrate on space( without which mysticism becomes dominant), and the religious thinker on “the perfect man” (p.35) otherwise values become manifold, polytheistic, without unity. Without peace (student and teacher becoming contemporaries, accepting the same problems, working together spiritually), teaching cannot bear fruit, as there is no willingness on the part of the student to accept and act on the truth passed to him. THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF TEACHING IS THE QUALITY OF THE RELATIONSHIP, THE PEACE, BETWEEN STUDENT AND TEACHER.
g. What are the implications of time in social science? Scientific time does not recognize, or make room for more than one quality of time. Because change is ambiguous (things may get either better or worse), peace means that the change came at the right time, i.e. the best change is peaceful change, change that is supported and approved by most of the people. (pp. 35,36) And thus, the change is most likely to be permanent. In this way peace restores the time and space axis to society.
h. To summarize, peace restores the time and space axis to society; speech sustainsthe time and space axis; war, anarchy, revolution, and decadence are the major disturbances to the axis; the cure for them is for someone to speak his mind to his listener. Thus, “…this basic rule of social research in the phrase: listen so that we may survive.” (p.36)
Finally, ERH summarizes the basic methods for analysis of experience, 1) theology (genesis, to originate a new direction), 2) analysis (to calculate cause/effect elements for any event or class of events), and 3) synthesis (social teaching, how to maintain a healthy society). The foundation of social teaching is peace, because no truth can be exchanged or agreed upon until peace has been established between two people.
“At least we must establish peace between ourselves, speaker and listener, before we can communicate truth.” (p.37) “…education is the primary experience of how mankind establishes peace between distemporaries…” (p.38)
These, ERH claims, are the three basic methods for evaluating experience.
6. Meta-logic, Meta-esthetics, Meta-ethics, or the March of Science
He asks, why is a science at one time vital and at another time second rate? Why was scholasticism progressive, scientific, and regenerating, why is modern theology apologetic, timid, reactionary?
COMTE, LAST, EHRENBERG, JASPERS, THE NEO-KANTIAN AND NEO-HEGELIAN SCHOOLS ALL SUGGESTED DIVIDING UP THE EVALUATION OF EXPERIENCE INTO 3 SCIENCES, science (logic), esthetics (social), ethics (theological).
Rosenstock-Huessy suggests the need to render a unity to these three compatible methods and points out that, without such unity, teachers do not deserve the confidence of students. Each method must have its own integrity (division of labor), within a larger unity.
a. Meta-logic, the method of a science of theology, appeared at the beginning of the 12th century because of the unsatisfactory working of the church. The method of this new science is META-LOGIC based on the paradox, i.e. “Nothing comes from nothing; the world is created from nothing.” Also, humankind must change, but remain the same. (p.39)
Aristotle’s science included the will of the gods. Today, the term “nature” means nature minus the values of gods or God. Science and theology have been separated.
The notion of the paradox is no esoteric abstraction, but must be taken seriously, for it holds the power to create unity within differences. It lies at the very foundation of ordered thought, and is essential to all three fields of experience. In science, its appearance signals the need for a higher level of theory to explain *contradictions of research; in theology it, does the same for different interpretations of creed; in social science ERH explains:
My grammar of assent, my grammatical organon, is devoted to the task of supplementing the statute law of any given society with metanomics that explain and satisfy our enthusiasm for the synchronization of the distemporary, of old and young, black, brown and white, government and anarchy, primitive and refined, highbrow and lowbrow, innocence and sophistication, all at peace, in one human society. (p.41)
[RF – given the present social ills of the world, which seem unsolvable, this statement would seem to be a wild fantasy, the ultimate paradox. But these are exactly what must be solved! ERH goes on to explain:]
The equilibrium between the special social sciences in which man appears to differ, and the social philosophy which makes him appear eternally the same human being, is the secret of all research in the social field. We cannot give up one side of the social paradox, either by identifying all men as being the same, or by allowing them to become so different that they lose their power of identifying themselves with others. Peace is the term which expresses the existence of this paradox in society: that different people by having peace together, are identifiable. (p.42)
7. Thesis
a. All social change tends to create social diseases of one type or another.
b. PEACE is the only condition that creates or engenders progress.
c. If one has not experienced peace, one will not trust traditional learning. This is why peace must precede all teaching.
d. The major effort of social science is how to create peace in an environment of constant social change.
e. Methods include, 1) searching history for conditions similar to the present and thus learning what might be valid as a beginning, 2) communicating effectively, and 3) including all groups within society, lest they create war, revolution, anarchy, or degeneration.
f. The principle parameters of a true science of society must be: 1) time and timing, i.e. a consciousness of past, present and future, and 2) education, absorbing proper lessons from the past, as well as learning the meaning of our present experience, and being motivated to take action to create a desired future.
g. The three sources of knowledge to accomplish all of this are learning 1) what the natural world is like (science), 2) what is the source of our creative power (religion), and 3) how to create a community at peace.
h. The organon of speech must teach us to articulate our experience truly, to commit ourselves to higher ambitions than mere consumption and social parochialism.
Speech is composed of words we tend to take for granted but seem as trifles. We hear them constantly (often in small talk), often corrupted by lying. This is at the root of much dissension because the corruption of the most important words creates the worst situations. To treat speech – language – seriously “…is a great and noble risk.”
8. Schematic Survey (p.44)
abstract term: Meta-logic Meta-esthetics Meta-ethics
concrete field: values (gods) nature (space) society (time)
intellectual
tool: dialectics natural science “metanomics”
proposed
task: concordia coordinating synchronizing
discordant- movement antagonistic
ium of distant “distempor-
canonum bodies: aries”
concording system
contra-
dictory
eternal truth
starting points: 1050, Lanfranc 1543, Coper- 1808, Saint-
1142, Crusades nicus Simon
1620, Descartes World War I
Thirty Years’
War
Chapter 2 – Articulated Speech
Thought and speech are intimately related. Unarticulated thought bears no social consequences, and no complex thought is possible without language. Articulated thought, (speech) is always at the center of communication. Language therefore has no power unless and until spoken. What then is the process of articulation that renders speech its power? Does language reflect human nature, or is human nature shaped by it?
2. The basic measure of the power of speech is peace in the community, in uniting free and independent persons. Articulation is the means by which this takes place.
3. Articulate speech is based upon these conditions: 1) The speaker recognizes the “wills” of others. 2) One believes in powers beyond and bigger than the time and space of the present moment. 3) Persons commit themselves to more complex thoughts than shouting & yelling. 4) Both speaker and listener place themselves on a “…far higher and on a more risky level.” Speaking the truth can be risky. (p.46)
4. Although our ability to communicate tends to be taken for granted, articulate speech has some formidable barriers that expose it to failure. It may be misinterpreted, it may misrepresent (used to lie), the speaker may be wrong, and he/she may be unable to express the ideas.
A CRUCIAL POINT HE MAKES IS THAT UNLESS A SUBJECT IS DRAMATIC, UNLESS THE MESSAGE IS SEEN AS IMPORTANT, IT IS BORING. GRAMMAR IS USUALLY UNDERSTOOD TO BE BORING!
Part 1. — Our Four Responsibilities in Speaking (p.47)
1. Second set of facts about language: 1) person addressed must be called by his/her or some name (Sir, Madam, Ms., etc.) 2) The listener must answer. The act of speaking, even in a simple two – party conversation, is a complex act. It requires a name and an answer. 3) Intentions, desires and emotions (even if neutral) are part of this process, as is necessity. There must be a common language. 4) There is a physical element; our sensory equipment must be in-tact or there is no impression. Hence, both the inner thought and the outer physical world are needed (even if there is only sign language used).
2. Four lessons to learn from a simple interaction: 1) Language has long since been established; thus proper use of speech respects the history of mankind. 2) Three possible directions into which an answer can fit are a) “Go to hell,” an imperative, b) objective statement of fact, “Sir,” indicatival, or c) indicating the “I” form of intention, “I am coming,” intentional form, subjunctive. These three directions represent avariation within a linguistic tradition. “To articulate, then, is a highly complicated act that implies both identity and variation.” (p.49) Thus, we transform the initiation of the interaction in the process of responding.
To speak is, indeed, a biological phenomenon of metamorphosis. This biological fact, however, takes place within the kind, not within the individual. For, it is the rebirth of that element which binds together the whole race…(p.31)
2. The Cross of Reality – (p. 51)
1. Four facts about “speech-disease” (lack of articulation)
a. When we speak we are connected, through the millenniums, in the process of attempting to use the proper words. (time factor-past)
b. When we respond we indicate a willingness to continue respecting a communal act, i.e. continuing the vitality of the community into the future. Variations of articulation point toward a possible new way.
c. Expression of intentions, emotions indicate (inner) feelings.
d. Our observable responses are the (outer) front, the touching of our senses.
Thus, the cross of reality is representative in the most basic or common acts of speaking. “A human being, when speaking, takes his stand in time and space.” (p. 52)
Inward
Backward Forward
Outward
2. The time and space of living organisms differs widely from that of dead matter. Dead matter, the subject-matter of physics, is mechanical and predictable. In time perspective, the past creates the present, and the present creates the future. With conscious life, time has two directions, past and future. We can remember and anticipate – both influence our thought.
In physics the interest is only in the concrete world of space and measurement. Conscious life, being capable of thought, by definition has an inner dimension as well as a sensory system to indicate the outer world.
a. The presence of living organisms is created by pressure from past and future. Every word spoken is traditional and evolutionary.
“We steer between the origins of our patterns of language, speech, thought and our destiny. Real time has two directions: backward and forward…The mechanical picture of a straight line starting at zero in the past and going forward towards the future does not apply to the living being…” (p.53)
b. Space, in living organisms, is two-fold, with metabolism, growth, assimilation; individuation requires a distinction between inner and outer space. With all speech there are two worlds, the inner world of thought, and outer concrete reality; an inner circle reflecting the outside world. Man is between two fronts of space, one facing inward, one outward, corresponding to the time aspect of backward and forward. I am oriented inside my head, inside my family, my club, profession, community, country, etc., as against the “outsiders.”
We speak in an attempt to ease this strain. To speak means to unify, to integrate, to simplify life. Without this effort, we go to pieces by either too much inner, unuttered desire, or too many impressions made upon us by our environment, too many petrified formulas from the past, or too much danger and emergency from the future. (p.54)
3. This means that for all living beings, including plants and animals, space is a conflict between inner and outer processes, as is time a conflict between responsibilities toward the past and the future.
With mankind, if we do not speak we cannot properly balance the conflicts between these four fronts of time and space. If we do not do this, we become inarticulate. Lack of speech always leads to social break-downs. War means there is no meaningful speech between the parties. Insanity is the inability of the individual to connect the inner with the outer world.
Part – 3. The Pillars of Time and Space
1. The defense against the 4 fronts of time and space is reflected directly in our grammar, in our social roles and methods of analysis of experience, as summarized in the following matrix:
grammar role & method ref. in time/space
——————————————————————————–
a. come – imperative leader/politics forward/future
b. he has come historian backward/past
c. he is coming scientist outer/concrete
d. will he come poet inner/emotional
Being stuck in any one role for too long creates distortion and is incomplete; a person requires all dimensions to see and understand experience fully. No single role is complete. (RF – It is also interesting to observe that each of the four branches of the cross of reality, in addition to correlating with time and space dimensions of experience, reflects the four basic mental functions – anticipation, memory, sensory observation (and logic), and emotion.)
Scientists, philosophers, and clerics suggest there is thought in itself, i.e. concepts are more than words, beyond language, and mathematics or inspiration (from God) is more perfect than language. ERH’S PARADIGM REFUTES THOSE IDEAS. Hence, the gift of God to humankind is speech, and God is only present in humans through speech.
Speaker and listener, stationed at the center of the cross of reality, are in a position to see the distortions of a “single language,” such as mathematics, the language for analysis.
The general public today more than ever, is warned against uncritical language, and invited to become analytical. From chemical analysis to psycho-analysis, everything is analyzed. Our bread is so well analyzed that nothing is left in it of the illogical grain and that vitamins have to be injected into the flour afterwards to make up for the losses by too much analysis. And the soul is analyzed so well that all our loyalties and all our wishes and all our dreams are abandoned as just so many frustrations and chains and inhibitions. (p.59)
2. WHY IS THE NOTICE OF GRAMMAR CRUCIAL TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF EVENTS? Because it is delicate and dangerous to face the four fronts of life; we are forced to decide what belongs to the past, the future, the inner and outer. “Our grammatical forms in our daily speech betray our deepest convictions.” (p.59)
It is because a major part of our understanding of experience, especially in social science, focuses on understanding the thoughts of others, which are hidden from us except as they speak. The importance of this notion becomes apparent! The person, in the act of deciding and speaking, thus reveals him/herself.
3. To face the four fronts is to think and speak creatively, as compared to reflection and analysis only. This is another way of saying that the language of science is incomplete for describing social experience.
4. Science observes; this we are familiar with. But reflection about the past, fulfilling past ceremonies and forms, recognizing customs, and the glorious past all are crucial reference points in our lives. Time stands still here. (The past cannot be changed!)
Politics and action: A description of either present (science) or past (history) makes no sense if action is not taken, and thus we must use education as preparation for action. And neither of these have much meaning out of the context of our interests, our desires and what gives us fulfillment. The inner front is crucial to us all. [“May she love me, or may I not live to see this happen” is the language of poetry. ]
Any society that would be purely scientific, or purely political, or purely poetic, or purely ritualistic kills the spirit. In time, it physically kills the person. It would be untenable.
5. The freedom, the right and responsibility to choose which is to be when, (what is to be forgotten, what to be acted upon now, and what must wait for our action) represents our ultimate freedom in life. When we practice these freedoms is past, present, future, and which to commit to thought only, or to describe the outer world as we see it), represents our ultimate freedom in our lives, without which there is no freedom. WHEN WE PRACTICE THESE FREEDOMS WE ARE REGENERATED DAILY! (p.63)
6. The risk in life comes because we can fail at these tasks. We forget instead of remembering, we hate instead of loving, we remain indifferent when we should boil over. We fail to describe an unreasonable or crazy situation, or we fail to act when we should.
7. Since we are not perfect, we require other people to help us to remember and love and act at the right time. We need articulate speech (as contrasted with lying or small talk) and community, because we are not God.
The whole race is making up for my forgetfulness, my indifference, my fears, my madness (craziness). (p.63)
8. We attempt to participate in all four languages by participating in speech.
Language is not an imperfect first attempt of reducing us to logic, but an attempt to integrate one and the same cross of reality into every human heart and brain…When we are taught to speak, we are given the unifying orientation for our way through life and with all men. (p.64)
Our security every hour of life must be re-established, and this can only be done through practicing the four languages of speech to defend ourselves against these four fronts. This is difficult, as is life.
Chapter – 3 – THE UNIVERSITY OF LOGIC, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE
ERH sets out with the thesis that thought, language, and literature reflect the culture(s) of human beings, that each has its division of labor, and that only in sum would a culture be known. Wilhelm von Humboldt—
…believed that the structure of language contained the secrets of national individuality, of history, of man’s creative destiny. He treated languages as a historian of philosophy might study the many schools of Greek thought, not for their own sake but for a complete picture of the possibilities of the human mind. (p.67)
He blames the arrogance of philosophers as wrong-headed in that their assumption that philosophy as a science of finding truth is complete He, ERH, then begins his analysis of each of these fields, – thought, language, and literature.
1. Philosophy represents only a science (logic) of a special kind of truth.
2. Most linguists have reduced language to the status of a tool “…degraded to the level of brass tacks.” (p.70) Thought, complex thought, would be inconceivable without our language!
3. Literary criticism addresses the fact that, while thought (logic) must be formed by language, the act of thinking changes language.
Words return into language changed and transformed, sometimes petrified and paralyzed after having passed through the thinker’s mill….Our hypothesis is that they (language, thought and literature) are rays of one fire burning in man to communicate to or to hide from his fellow man his share of truth. And we throw out the hypothesis that thought, language, and literature, in so far as they are means of concealing or revealing truth to ourselves, to a partner, or to all men, are ruled by the same laws. [RF – emphasis mine] (p.71)
Furthermore, he quotes Whitehead in support of his assertion. I am assuming that his case rests, for inclusion of literature, on the fact that metaphor reaches beyond itself, into inference. As Whitehead is quoted, “…meanings miraculously revealed in great literature.”
ERH connects literature with the use of the concept of “enthymeme,” that of leaving out a link in a syllogism or chain of logic, either a premise or at times a conclusion, but still implying it. Connotation, implication, or suggestion, is just as essential as denotation.
a. Any speaker on a platform tries to speak his mind in a lasting way. To do this he must think in a monologue, he must speak in a dialogue (with the audience), and he is hoping for a lasting effect, beyond the power of the moment.
b. In monologue, he is thinking out loud; in dialogue, speaking to his hearers, in “pleologue,” beyond the audience, into the future.
c. From pleology, literature developed. (p.72)
4. ERH reasons that where thought has been disconnected from language, memory of the one step, monologue, has been forgotten, and thus the assumption that thought can be separated from language, and that language (of any lasting meaning) can be separated from literature. (pp.72-73)
All three of these states, language, logic, and literature, contribute toward meaning:
In reality, we discover as many new things about ourselves or about the world or about our beliefs through speaking out and writing down as by thinking inwardly. The revealing and concealing process is equally at work in all three aggregate states. (p.74)
5. Speaking of man’s nature:
a. Man is essentially concerned with disclosure as well as with velation (veiling or covering up).
b. He is constantly justifying himself to himself, and to others, in the acts of wearing clothes, speaking, reasoning, writing books, listening to the scruples of ourselves and others, and to the wisdom of books. “At any given moment, man answers to his attitude with true or false statements.” (p.74)
6. Since there is no difference in the method of language, literature, and logic, a slip in logic, for example is not important. There is a unified whole in our thought that goes beyond any of the parts. “A man’s thought is as much a piece as the nation’s literature.” (p.75)
Professionals tend to specialize in one of the three fields, and thereby, remain incomplete. The common person, speaking every day and combining all three methods, will speak with power.
7. Humankind is incessantly speaking and listening, or thinking and writing – to God, to mankind, or to the world. Every human being does this in every conscious moment of his life. Man’s freedom to make decisions is pretty much limited to the choice to conceal or to disclose the truth of what is happening to him. (p.75)
8. MANKIND’S REAL ACTION IS THEREFORE CONTAINED IN SOME PROPORTION OF CONCEALMENT OR REVELATION. COWARDICE OR COURAGE, CONCEALING OR REVEALING ARE THE MAJOR (TOTAL) ACTIONS OF MAN AS A HUMAN, AND SOCIETY AND HIS COMMUNITY ARE DIRECTLY EFFECTED BY HOW ONE WORKS OUT THIS BALANCE.
SOCIETY IS CONSTANTLY CHANGED AND TRANSFORMED BY THESE CONFESSIONS OR SUPPRESSION OF WHAT JUST HAPPENS IN OUR MINDS , OUR GROUPS, OUR DESTINIES. (p.76)
What then is the method which might combine these three methods?
9. In the next two or three pages, ERH proves the common bases upon which language, logic, and literature in terms of how each reflects the same patterns of flow between space (inner and outer) and time (past and future) at each moment. He establishes this in terms of traditional grammatic forms (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative, etc.) and how these reflect the three forms of poetic writing (lyric, epic and dramatic).
For instance, epic and lyric poetry are largely unconcerned with time, in the sense that they deal with description (indicative) and subjunctive (desire or speculation), neither of which is concerned with action.
On the other hand, the dramatic form of poetry, focussing on the imperative, or a decision to make, is concerned directly with past and future. The decision is whether to continue with past practices, or to make a break and risk a future of unpredictable possibilities. This also is highly emotional (representing the inner space). The lyric and epic forms dealing with the outer, larger world. (see pp.77-79)
Naturally, any book can mix these four attitudes, but it must use these four cardinal attitudes precisely as a man who speaks can shift from perfect to imperative, from indicative to subjunctive (or optative) and still is bound to move within these forms of decision about our situation in time and space. As long as the biologists overlooked the polarity of inward and outward, and the philosophers that between the past and the future, the identity of the grammar of society with the grammar of language could be overlooked. (p.79) [RF – emphasis mine.]
10. Will other literary forms than poetry, follow the same tendencies to recognize time and space?
The grammatical forms of imperative, indicative, optative and participle are recomposed in prose by oratory, mathematics, philosophy, and history. Political speech is the articulation of an imperative; philosophy reflects on our inner thought. Mathematics analyze relations in space and….all pure narration (in scientific prose) looks backwards and tries to conjure up the past and to quote its speech and utterances as faithfully as possible, needs hardly saying….even taken together, are only in charge of two modes of our conscious life, of the elating optative of our inner self and the analytic indicative of the external world….The two other wings of man’s expansion into time, present and future, are occupied by two other types of speech, the past by ritual, the future by all the imperatives…( pp 80, 81)
11. Language is a living thing, and all life springs into life and dies. Verbs used often tend to become nouns, e.g. sing, and its past tense (the singer), build (builder). By our speech we must thus resuscitate the dead. This means that verbs go from motion to standstill (dead). To re-instill meaning (resuscitate) is the function of a living speech, i.e. to use the imperative. (p.84)
All modes of speech (prose, poetry, ritual, and imperative) are necessary to balance and to allow us to fix our place in terms of time and space, that is, in the universe of our lives. These are reference points necessary to find our way in evaluating experience, analogous to measurement in science.
At another level we must at all moments be free to shift our moods, “…from the subjective “I,” to the objective “it,” and further to the listening “thou” and to the remembering “we.” Otherwise, we are not able to see our experience fully.
12. ERH gives still another example, that of the philosopher, pointing out that Descartes listened to the imperative, Cogita et eritis (Think and you will be). He was neither subject nor object, but a you, in relation to some impetus that took him over . He thereby forgot that he himself first followed a command, in a sense. And that his god-like uttering “I think, therefore I am” was a second step in the process of his creativity. The world cannot therefore be divided (as the scientist or philosopher thinks) into only subject and object.
13. What are the major problems or phases we must go through in order to regenerate any group, which, to remind the reader once again, is the purpose of a science of society?
a. One must listen (to the imperative), to a command; we must be plastic, willing to be commanded. This means willing to be cut off from the past, willing to be transformed. “One” in this context is then only one type of noun, a thou (you), which is neither an “I” or an “it”. “One” in this position is neither subject nor object, but preject, the pointing toward the future. But the “mood” that makes it possible to listen comes from the inside, based on emotion, on passion.
b. The Grammatical “We” represents a group with a common experience, thetraject, oriented toward the past “We” evidences those who have been cast from the past (shared experience) into the present. Here the “mode” is that of indicative, or description.
Thus, the terms preject (you) and traject (we) must be nouns added to the subject (I, or inner) and the object (it, or outer).
14. Each of these four situations or conditions – in/out, past/future – requires a different language for expression. Thus, the four types of literature: the essay (logical), the epic, the lyric, and the ritual (dramatic).
15. The method ERH uses is not to extrapolate from subject/object, or from the old scientific terms of time and space, but to limit them by adding two more dimensions to them (adding to the natural science method for social science) i.e. traject/preject denoting past and future respectively. These terms correspond to the additional elements of time and space from science, i.e. past and inside, as the two additional dimensions of time and space.
TEACHING AND HOW THE GRAMMATICAL
METHOD RELATES TO IT
16. With teaching, our traditional approach has been to memorize and analyze. But ERH points out that these are late processes in “…the biography of words and forms.” (p.89)
This is for the simple reason that the “…truth which the student is expected to grasp is supposed to be in existence when he enters the school…” (p.89) THIS, OF COURSE BELIES THE VERY PURPOSE OF TEACHING, WHICH SHOULD BETO PREPARE THE STUDENT TO GENERATE NEW KNOWLEDGE RATHER THAN SIMPLY REGURGITATING OLD KNOWLEDGE. The question implied is, “How do we prepare the student to understand a principle, to make the knowledge his own, transform him by way of being motivated to apply it and be changed in the process?”
17. FIRST PRINCIPLE
Learning takes time. It must pass through the several stages of thought, speech, and writing.
SECOND PRINCIPLE
Learning processes are analogous to the procedure of the court-room of law, a process which was eventually moved into academe. (details below)
THIRD PRINCIPLE
Each part or role in the court-room procedure requires a different type of speech, or approach, or “language,” as ERH calls it. These follow from the four fronts of time and space, past/future and inner/outer.
18. Defense of the Idea
A living situation of any type, including teaching, evolves out of some problem raised. In the case of teaching, the teacher has evolved a solution. Analogous to the court-room situation, a citizen accused of committing some (alleged) crime, the question is, “Were his actions legal?” The purpose of the trial is to ascertain the culpability of the defendant in the law court. In the classroom, the problem is the degree of probability of validity of the solution posed by the teacher.
In both these instances, it must be kept in mind that the purpose is to determine what is the best course of behavior into the future. In other words, what is the truth?
Steps in court (or classroom) are as follows:
a. Accusation is made by prosecutor, that the “law” was broken. In the case of classroom, a traditional view may be questioned. It must be remembered that the original problem statement took place in a specific context, and the solution is to follow some accepted or newly proposed principle (method of solution).
In the case of teaching, the teacher himself must act, for a while, in the role of the prosecutor. In this role, the prosecutor’s defense is from tradition. His method therefore is to present the accepted methods, rules etc. from the past and present the evidence in the case that these rules were broken. THE PROSECUTION’S CASE RESTS ON DESCRIPTION FROM THE PAST. The method is essentially scientific, logical; looking outward as well as to the past. (p.92)
b. The defense (a role performed by the teacher) is based not so much visible evidence (that has been presented), but rather on intentions, on personal integrity, good faith (in court, bringing in character witnesses to establish this, who take an oath to tell the truth). This process is essentially soul-baring, passionate, a personal response to the notion that this response is the only moral way to go; in other words, the best interpretation to reach the intended goal. The teacher defends his actions (proposed solution) looking inward and to the future. It is an act of the will of the teacher.
c. The teacher (who ERH calls a philosopher, a seeker of truth) must align himself with a constituency willing to share the problem, willing to listen to the evidence and possibly be moved by it. He must thus motivate his students to be called to take interest in the problem. The teacher was already motivated, as was the accused in a law court, to respond. Now the constituency must be convinced to so respond. The teacher, defendant, and prosecutor, alike use all their persuasive powers to plead their cause.
d. The judge and jury, then, having heard the evidence and the defense of the actions, makes a judgement. This judgement is of course a decision, which is in turn a defining of what happened. A definition is a summing up, reaching, of a generalization if you will. Such a generalization is more or less dead or un-living knowledge because it has had all details of the case stripped away, out of the context of time and space.
19. To summarize: 1) The teacher, or defender, or jury has been called upon to respond to some situation. This represents a personal commitment, a calling, as willingness to listen, to be called “you” by some higher authority. 2) The evidence is presented and heard, and the event as experienced is retold to the court, including the 3) narration of specifics and the reasons for the solution. Finally, (4) there is a judgement based upon how well the law was applied, if a new law should be formulated, or if the old law was indeed broken (in the case of classroom, the new proposed method refuted). This last act is one of definition, of summarizing what has been learned in the form of a generalization, or a principle (of law).
But, as we have said above, principles or generalizations or laws represent dead knowledge (coagulated), a summary of all possible meanings of the principle at that time. TO BECOME LIVING KNOWLEDGE, TO GUIDE ACTION IN THE FUTURE, the individual must, upon approaching another event, infuse (ERH uses the term resuscitate) that dead knowledge with life. Because definitions, by establishment, combine many shades of meanings, the actor must make a decision as to which one, (possibly a new one), might apply to any given situation. Thus, he gives life to knowledge. ERH calls definitions and generalizations, research, libraries he calls, “…a petrification of life and knowledge.” All of this awaits the reader to possibly bring it to life at the right time, that is, to act on the knowledge.
Finally, there are fundamental steps that cut across all of these processes. We stated above that “full knowledge” of the meaning of experience must address the four fronts of time and space. The point is that each of these four steps in teaching cited above represent these four fronts and regardless of one’s role, all four must eventually be addressed. The sequence of steps will differ depending upon the presenter’s role and purpose. ERH presents the following. (p.95)
sequence mental function time/space language (special mood
designation definition)
1 memory past history indicative
2 anticipation future narration dramatic
3 logic outer science descriptive
4 emotion inner poetry lyrical subjunctive
The sequence in the court room (ritualistic) = 1,2,3,4
” ” ” scientific research = 3,1,2,4
” ” ” obedience (teaching) = 2,4,1,3
Thus, he points out that our traditional teaching begins with the wrong information, with the decision before the case has been heard. THIS DOES NOT RESULT IN TEACHING THE STUDENT HOW TO GENERATE NEW KNOWLEDGE, to applygeneralizations, or resuscitate dead knowledge. In this case (traditional teaching), #2 and #4 have been omitted, and the student has no way to transform knowledge. Another way to describe the teaching/learning situation is to present a problem to which the student will be called. This problem must be understandable (within the life experience of the student). The calling is represented by #2. With #4, the student gives himself to the experience completely, making no logical prejudgments, but being absorbed in the situation. With #1, he describes what has happened, he narrates or recalls the evidence. And finally, he generalizes, defines, in preparation for meeting the next event.
The only ethical command which church and society can impose on man is: Give ear, think it over. The first thing society must guarantee to its members is time for recollection and reconsideration….the processes of language, literature and thought…Audi! Lege! Medita! (Listen, Read! Think!)…And is not all education based on this assumption? (p.97)
It should be clear and no wonder that mental functions, time and space factors, and forms of speech are all coordinated and provide essential reference points in our journey through life. The answer to the beginning question in this chapter is that language both reflects human nature and in turn shapes it!
Chapter 4
He begins with the problem statement that all of the ancient dogmas have been replaced by modern ideas, except that of grammar. This in turn has caused serious social disintegration. For instance, Euclidean geometry, Ptolemaic astronomy, Galenian medicine, Roman law, and Christian dogma have long since disappeared from our texts. “Ancient grammatical dogma still dominates.”
The reader might recall how dry and meaningless our grammar lessons were. The structure of sentences and paragraphs are divided into categories of subject/verb/object, and different qualifiers such as adjectives and adverbs and conjugations were all memorized, appearing to have equal weight in the scheme of structure. The whole process seemed mechanical and of little relevance to how we actually spoke and thought, therefore meaningless.
What the author advocates is that there can be a “higher grammar,” which is taught and structured to help us better understand life processes and aid us in understanding our life experiences. There is an enormous difference, he asserts, in the consequences in our life between making a statement in the first, second, or third person. The mood is also important whether indicative, or evaluative (adjectival), or reflecting a commitment in the imperative mood.
The principle problem with “lower grammar” is that it indicates no differences in emphasis and in political consequences. For instance, to say I love or I kill “…cannot be spoken without grave social consequences. Hence, they presuppose emphasis…” (p.100) Furthermore, these crucial utterances can be evoked or repressed by the way we think about grammar. In traditional grammar these social consequences are not discussed. All statements in conjugation, e.g. I love, he loves, we love, they love, are spoken with equal emphasis. Finally he asserts that history cannot be a science because it requires emphasis (choice), the implication of values in what was important to stress. With science, which is purely objective, and where description in itself is without added values there is no need to emphasize.
The worst sin is, of course, its Greek origin, our grammar school’s tradition from Latin and Greek sources. The Greek and Latin names and tables of grammar have been handed to us even when we had to learn French, German, Spanish or Russian, or English itself. The wrong Alexandrinian table of grammatical values is with us everywhere. (p.99)
Part 1. – Amatur (he is loved)
1. Amatur is an objective statement of fact, “…reported by somebody who is neither the speaker, or writer nor the listener, or reader.” Neither speaker nor listener has any stake in the statement, and thus the concept “love” has no power.
Of love, ERH points out, we can only speak in fear and trembling if we speak of it in the first or second person. In the third person it is rendered powerless!.
Speaking in the third person abstracts from the speaker and listener; it is a two fold negation of a relationship. “This reduces the linguistic situation to a monologue of a thinking subject who thinks an object.” (p.101) The implication is that there exists an enormous gap between the meaning and mood, between the first and second person on the one hand, and the third person on the other.
Part 2 – Amo (I love)
2. What are some of the gaps between first & second and third person moods?
a. To say, “I love” has two implications, involvement in an act and admitting it. This is very risky because the act can then be interfered with. To speak out about what you either intend, or are in the act of doing, means others can enter into and change the situation. ONE THEN SHOULD NOT SPEAK IN THE FIRST OR SECOND PERSONS UNLESS ONE MUST.
To say amat, “he loves,” has no such emphasis or commitment.
Time is also a factor. To say I eat or I sleep is short term, with little chance for interference. To say I love implies a life-long commitment. THEREFORE, AMO CAN NEVER BE AS PUBLIC A STATEMENT AS AMAT. It should only be spoken to the second person.
We conclude that amo is made of absolutely different stuff than amat and the history of language proves our point. Amo is an emphatic form, a subjective exclamation which is quite wantonly inserted into the Alexandrinian table as an indicative. The first form singular did not originate with the indicative. (p.104)
Part 3 – Amas (Thou loveth)
3. “The rift between amo and amat, however, is not wider than the rift between amas (you love) and amat.” (p.104) Here he asks, what is the difference between the 2nd and 3rd person?
There is just as great a gap because the first person must have received authority to speak about the subject to the second person. You cannot say, “You love,” as a friend unless the friend has already admitted this to you, just as you can only say “You have diabetes” if you are the person’s doctor. Only a parent may say to his/her child, “You have been bad today.” In the former case, the second person gave the speaker the authority by telling him/her first. In essence, the first person, having received authority from the second person, opens the way for the other to become a listener. Without such authority there isn’t liable to be a listener!
THIS EMPHASIS ON A “PRIMED” LISTENER IS A CRUCIAL ELEMENT OF THE SECOND/THIRD PERSON RELATIONSHIP. If you say, “you are a fool,” to someone who is not prepared to listen, the speaker is powerless.
Why is advice unasked-for never given successfully? Because it has no power to unlock the recipient’s ear. In amat, no power is required to state the facts. They do not presuppose any social power or authority over other people. But the quality of any sentence in the second person is graded by the degree of authority the speaker wields over the listener. He must have converted the listener to just that–a listener. (p.106)
Part 4 – Comparison
4. a. amo = speaker having decided to break his own silence on some issue.
amas = listener having decided to invite interference.
amat = speaker and listener have no commitment to an attitude before they listen, they neither defy nor interfere in their own affairs.
b. Amo is debatable as to wisdom (regarding political consequences and propriety), amat as to fact, amas as to authority. Hence, knowledge = third person, authority = second person, communion = first person.
c. Amat faces problems of truth. Authority faces the dilemma between listener’s freedom and his necessity. Amas faces problems of interference with one’s freedom. (p.107)
d. Examples: To say, “I sweat” = overcoming shyness. To say, “you sweat” cannot be done without permission, unless the first person is socially superior to the second. “The social discrepancy between amat (knowledge of facts), amas (authority to tell), and amo (revelation of secrets) is enormous. They represent three different social processes between man, fellow man, and the outer world. (pp.107,8)
Part 5 – The Teaching of Grammar
5. Alexandrinian grammar taught in our schools blinds the student to discovering the real person.
…it contradicts all the experiences of society and of us in society…Every man is told to think of himself or herself in a matter of fact way, as though he or she were a third person. This puts his or her human relations on a wrong, objective, basis which devaluates it. For objectively, we speak of those who are absent and who therefore need neither blush nor listen. Human relations thrive where we attribute secrets of communication and loyalties of listening. Human relations die where all our statements only contribute facts.” (pp. 108,9)
Part 6 – History or Science
6. The fourth form of the grammatical statement (after first, second, and third persons), is amavimus, “We have loved.”
a. “We” means a group (a merger) of speakers and listeners who have acted together and formed a successful fusion.
b. Real history is “…the inside story of a We group…” (p.109)
c. “They” histories lie outside “our” group. These histories are scientific in that there is no personal responsibility for what has happened. “They” are multiple to the scientist whose method is to make distinctions between things. In a scientific age such as ours multiple histories abound, e.g. the history of Mexico, of Russia, of Boston, and even within different fields of science itself. Only when humankind is seen as “one,” and we listen and speak to each other around the world, could there be a universal history.
d. “Our” history, by contrast, is among those of us who have spoken to each other. Thus we have the right to say we.
e. What “moderns” (in the pejorative sense) teach as history implies 1) thought without language, 2) speechless thinkers and speechless societies. There is no distinction or emphasis between first, second and third persons, or between “we” and “they.”
f. The conclusion and implications? 1) All of us are, at different times each day, in the role of I, you, it,-we, and they. 2) We must understand the distinctions between these roles and the rights and responsibilities thereof.
For instance, “You love” can be justified if it is true and spoken as an act of healing, not as an insult. “I love” can be justified if it is an act of faith and not shameless. “We love” can be justified if based on common experience, and not abstract dogma. A sensitivity to the differences reflect the degree to which we are immersed in and caring about our spoken word.
Once the ways of speech are confused, the brazen intellect will obliterate all distinctions by speaking everything: the intellect neglecting the real social life between speakers and listeners…Brazen objectivity and whispering shyness are social malaises which spring from an insecurity of grammatical distinctions….The alexandrinian lists of grammatical forms cauterize the social sensibilities of the objects of our educational system…the wrong grammar is not ineffectual. It does positive harm. (pp.113,14)
Chapter 5 – How Language Establishes Relations
1. The several traditional ways of dealing with language: 1) Phonetics, the physical aspects of making sounds. 2) Meaning, where semantics are systematized. 3) Historical, how language came about. This is not the same as studying language in the context of use. ERH proposes that we add a fourth approach, studying language in the context of use. Language is a physical act, in other words, which can be scientifically studied. The organs of ear, eye, respiration are involved. He points out the Greek meaning of shaking hands, is planting one’s self with the other.
a. First principle: “The fundamental classifications of grammar and the fundamental classifications of social relations coincide. Discovering the one, we discover the other.” (p.117)
HERE HE POINTS OUT A VERY IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE THAT FITS ALL HIS THEORIES. IT IS THAT MAN IS INCALCULABLE, BUT HIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE CLASSIFIED IN ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL POSSIBILITIES.
b. Four basic forms of speaking (and social) interaction are:
1) The speaker and the listeners are unanimous, of one spirit. They agree.
2) The speaker and the listener are “dubious,” split, and of two spirits. They are strangers.
3) The speaker depends on the listener, whom the speaker expects to act on what he has to say.
4) The listener depends on the speaker because the speaker has acted already.
Before going further with this analysis of these situations, one other element needs to be understood, that is, pre-conditions for speech interaction.
c. The silence before speaking can have four possible causes:
1) Lack of a person to speak to, e.g. lack of an audience. This must include lack of a person WHO WISHES TO LISTEN. The listener is not yet ready.
2) Lack of a person to listen to in terms of lack of the authority to speak, or of content, or of something extraordinary to be said. I would put this in another way, “lack of anything to say.” The speaker is not ready.
3) Lack of relations between two people. They may be strangers, different too far apart.
4) Lack of distance, relations between people who are so close they think they need not say anything.
In #1 & #2, the moment has not come. In #3, & #4 the scene is not set (with #3 strangers move with different thoughts; with #4 the unity and intensity are too close to “…allow for the distance in which alone language can fly back and forth.) With #1 & #2 the time element is prohibitive, in #3 & #4 the space element is prohibitive.
d. 2nd Principle: Social relations need a medium distance in space and time. “All these situations correspond to the great situations of decadence, war, chaos, revolution.” (p.118)
Here he repeats the theme of the book, that language is a system of social relations, and grammar is the scientific process by which we become conscious of the system of social relations. It is not the grammar of the classroom, of forms by themselves, however; this he calls lower grammar. He calls his new social science “higher grammar,” and the rest of the book explains how this differs from lower grammar. Lower grammar systematizes relations between words only; higher grammar correlates these relations with social behavior and its consequences.
e. 3rd Principle: Communication, effective use of language “…becomes language properly speaking, when the relations are mutual and reciprocal. When I speak and you listen, when I formulate and you repeat, when I object and you explain, when I sing and you fall in, we have human language.” (p.119)
f. 4th Principle: “Language survives any individual speaker. Thus, language is obviously not restricted to temporal and passing relations. It tries to build up recurrent and remembered relations (also).” (p.120)
Thus, words represent events from the past. Example: One cannot speak of America, or of France or polo, without implying the processes that brought these entities into existence. In the process of communicating, we do either a service or a disservice, (as in the case of lying) to these past acts, and thereby INTENSIFY LIFE. This occurs by unifying separated acts dispersed by distance and time, into “…one stream of continuous conversation and recording.”
g. Speaking “about” events is analogous to the shell (chaff) surrounding the grain of meaning. (ERH calls this “small talk.”) It represents only a small division of labor in the context of more serious communication needs. More will be spoken about this later.
h. 5th Principle: In the process of “real, meaningful speech” we describe and interpret the universe, uniting all events since the beginning of history into the present. This is a momentous thing because it allows us to learn from the past, and therefore gauge change.
We, all the time, spread the good and the bad news. And to spread news is the function of homo sapiens. In this way, he establishes a permanent system of coordinates in time and space. (p.121)
i. 6th Principle: “All speech is transfer of actions to other human beings, and thought is a subcase of such transfer.” (p.122)
Transfer it because I have experienced it: by telling a tale (story).
” ” so that it may reinforce my action (song, for instance): “Let us go.”
” ” so that it may eliminate resisting action about objections: “He actually is going.”
” ” so that I need not act myself: the command, “Go.”
j. 7th Principle: “An individual becomes a person by being able to represent speaker and listener both within one person.” Logic in this context can be understood as the process of breaking down objections so that communication will not be severed.
[IT OCCURS TO ME THAT, IN SUM, THERE IS A MORAL OBLIGATION TO PASS ON OUR INTERPRETATIONS OF EVENTS SO THAT THE PROPER INFORMATION CAN BE MADE USE OF BY OTHERS. EACH OF US THEN, IS OBLIGATED TO RE-ENACT THIS COSMIC PROCESS. -RF]
k. Listening only is not enough. If communication is to be effective, what then is the role of the second person, the listener, and how can he be convinced to participate?
There are four basic situations that are a restatement of #b above, and not necessarily related to (#c) above.
1) Old and young: people in succession, sacramental words and their reiteration. (analogous to b,3 – speaker depends on listener)
2) Friends in agreement: soloist & chorus. (analogous to b,1 – speaker and listener are unanimous, of one spirit)
3) Strangers in disagreement: question and answer (analogous to b,2 – speaker and listener are split, of two spirits)
4) Leader and led: command and response (analogous to b,4 – speaker depends on listener because the speaker has acted already)
#1 and #4 are time-related, as are all imperatives (trying to convince the listener to take the next step). THE FUTURE DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN, IT IS PREPARED FOR AT THIS STEP! The future needs action now! “This impending and imperative character of the time concept “future” is overlooked in modern discussions.” (p.124,25)
#2 & #3 are space related, friends lie “inside” the circle, strangers “outside.” Insiders give up some individuality for the group. “The `inner’ life of man is not a privilege of private individuals. Any group in the world has this inner sanctuary.” (p.125)
“Outside” means distance, separation, the making of distinctions. In an argument or a dialogue (of voicing objections and asking for a defense) is an example of two individuals being separated (at least for that period of time). The commercial world, traders, perhaps by necessity, partake of this type of speech. –
“But it is but one form of communication among others. Magister and disciple, singer and chorus, leader and respondent are of equal originality in their linguistic situation as the interlocutors of a discussion in the form of question and answer.” By isolating the interrogatory mood, the origin of question and answer was inexplicable until today. [RF – I know of many people who believe this as the main, if not only type of interaction] As soon as we compare the prosaic process of question and answer to its parallels in historical tradition (formula and repetition), in musical unanimity (singer and chorus), in political challenge (imperative and response), question and answer are disclosed as one application of the general principle of social relations to be established through speech, the application to the meeting of two people from different spaces, and therefore of a different standard of objectivity.” (p.126 )
l. Each of these languages has a different intonation: singing, scientific discussion (or commercial discussion), story-telling or history, any command. “Everybody knows that it takes years to acquire the voice of command that is without flaw and effort, neither shrieky nor embarrassed, but irresistible.” (p.127)
Each language embroils the speaker and listener in different types of social situations, and “…the eccentricities of the whole of national languages have been built.” [RF – One is reminded of Chinese; one written language, many dialects.] In summing up:
The past must be remembered by reiteration, the inner life must be felt, the outer circumstances and facts must be known, and the future must be done so that it may become a part of the unforgettable, knowable, experienced, and responded for time-space pattern called the universe.” (p.128)
The Classification of the Parts of Speech
1) Pronouns, we, you, it, they, I, “…only make sense when you are actually talking to people, within one circle of peaceful relations. ”
2) Nouns classify distinctions between things and people, but need two sub-types indicating inside and outside. The inside as with pronouns, the outside as objective phenomena.
3) Adjectives indicate an evaluation, a looking to the past, an attempt to understand an object by connecting it with some common knowledge. e.g. round, red table gives some idea of the otherwise unknown table. This connects us with the origins of life.
4) Verbs indicate the imperative, the future, making the world over by action.
ERH now correlates grammatical forms with the social-relation terminology. “All language may take four shapes, and so may all parts of speech: The experience asks to be called future, past, objective or subjective (nominal), verbal, pronominal and adjectival form of language is something eternal.” (p.130, 31)
5) The subjective is called ours and mine by pronominal language.
6) The objective, as between strangers, is extrapolated as by nouns, nominal language.
7) The old is expressed as having certain qualities, adjectival usage.
8) The new is expressed in process, as bound to come off, imperative usage, because the success depends on the act voiced.
“Or, we may table our findings as follows:” (p.123)
a. The inward aspect stresses the unity of the interlocutors, who feel their unanimity: pronominal language. (Pronouns: we, I, ours, mine, you, thou, yours, thine, etc. Conjunctions: and, but, in spite of, etc. Optative, subjunctive. Poetry, Music.)
b. The outward aspect stresses the freedom of each interlocutor who meets in an objective world: nominal language. (Nouns: stone, rain, fire, hail, tree, etc.; one, two three, four, five, etc. Indicatival speech. Arithmetics.)
c. The backward aspect traces everything to its familiar qualities: adjectival language. (Adjectives: red, green, good, bad. Participles: loving, gone, been. These are both historical background and moral judgement.)
d. The forward aspect accompanies the unfinished creation of the world of tomorrow: imperatival language. (Verbs, imperatives: Thy will be done, thy kingdom come. — or Help! Stop! Listen! – Political eloquence, prophesy.)
And the true perfection in speech is not achieved by mixing the four styles but by being completely devoted to one of the four at a time. The most important fact about speech is that it must remain four-fold, and no one style can communicate the whole truth of the matter we are trying to convey. No one style can be reduced to another. Rational, scientific language is one of four different languages, and must remain so. (pp. 132,33)
It should be obvious that ERH is using the term “languages” to express the four references in time and space, outward, inward, backward, and forward, although he expresses these in different ways, in terms of nouns and verbs as above. Also, in terms of disciplines, as the sciences, the arts (outside/inside), history and sociology/prescriptive philosophies. ONE SHOULD REMEMBER AS WELL THAT HE ASSERTS THESE ARE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES FOR ALL LANGUAGES. The term “style” seems to mean one of the four disciplines. It is important as well to note the idea of one-at-a-time and sequence. This concept is central to his paradigms related to action. For instance, the natural sequence in learning that is intended to affect the student’s acts outside the classroom, and where motivation or “a calling” must precede action.
Chapter 6 – THE LISTENER’S TRACT
1. Traditionally we are not taught the importance of listening. Listening instead is represented as a different phenomenon, such as in the military training, the issue is called “obedience.” The goal in this chapter is to emphasize listening as a part of language, and its fundamental meaning in terms of the imperative.
Is it not a justified question to ask ourselves how language must be composed in order to reach the listener so that he is set in motion and begins to acquire a fragment of the information and content of that which the speaker has said?….To educate means to be a representative of creation. The long range process of listening: – this is education….The listener’s tract is one-half of the social relation that is established by the process of speech. And this half is as varied, as complex, as the speaker’s tract. (p.135)
a. The four ways in which the human body is involved in listening: 1) respiratory-oral tract, 2) outer tract such as gesticulation, 3) audition, 4) vision. All of these are interrelated with each word in the message, and the failure to attend to any one effects all the others.
b. Principle #1: Energy differential is a crucial factor in effective speech, as the amount of energy of the speaker should match that of the listener. If the speaker appears bored (mechanical, uninspired) so will be the listener.
If the listener is bored, the speaker shouts and is no more effective. In this case, the speaker is filled with his subject, but the listener is receiving only second-hand data and therefore only stores it in memory – at best.) “Any philosophy is deteriorated by the fact that it is memorized by the disciples.” (p.139) Memorization only, at worst means one is unable to reproduce knowledge!
The moods of both speaker and listener must be the same. “It is the discrepancy that endangers our social system because speech is abused, in these inadequate responses, by one of the two interlocutors.” (p.138)
c. Serious speech is effective only when hearers are willing to do something about it. Only then does the speaker produce heirs to carry on his ideas. (p.139)
d. Memory is important for clear messages. When there is wrong memory or mis-interpretation, its value back-fires. Memory has power when it can be correlated with present, and new experience for the listener.
e. Principle #2: Memory must be accurate and translated into a form whereby it can be applied to a problem in the present.
The power of recognition that enables us to identify our own new experience with the record of past experience is a power that transcends logic and definitions.
The power of identifying us with people who express their ideas in other terms requires a quality of mind that is much rarer than logic or memory or sentiment. It requires the superior power cultivated by the church and in the family: The power of translating for the sake of mission and education the eternal truth into language of the times. The power of translating fuses the different ways of understanding. (p.140)
[RF – I understand this to mean the ability to accurately re-state the meaning of another’s message in one’s own words]
This is the most difficult objective to achieve in education, and when the student does not have that benefit of church and family, it clearly must be attempted by the teacher.
To educate, the speaker must arouse the listener emotionally, to take action intelligently, and observe new situations, and to translate memory. The speaker must, to achieve this, share his/her own excitement and methods.
f. Lying has occurred since the beginning of speech. There are many forms: 1) Propaganda, where speaker uses subterfuge to convince listener to act in a certain way, using short cuts or an attempt at cheap influence. 2) Hypocrisy is another form. Propaganda is impossible between people who live together, for obvious reasons. The purpose of speech is to animate the listener to the same degree as the speaker.
g. Chart of degrees of effectiveness in speech (p. 142)
speaker listener
chats smiles
talks listens
tells remembers
teaches learns
sings feels
commands obeys
argues understands
prophesies carries out
h. The beaten track represents repetition; it does not lead into the future. Obviously, the point is not always to take, the beaten track or the less travelled-track, but rather to take whichever is appropriate, at the right time.
Obviously, the point is crucial to education, apropos of principle #2, to translate memory appropriately in the light of present problem. We teach to restore the honor of listening.
i. To teach is to command — to listen is to carry out. In time of anarchy, one cannot teach, one must listen, serve.
j. The listener must have expectations The silence before the speaker speaks represents those expectations.
Learning requires three elements: the teacher, (conveyor), the administrator(resources), and authority .
Authority makes student expect to be inspired by public need. The student must be “emotionally” hungry for this.
Not our jokes, not our tricks, can lighten the burden of the student when he is not eager to learn. And why should he be eager when he does not expect the extraordinary.?…the first stage in the listener’s track of hearing: his expectations, and his authorities that open him up to the important and extraordinary idea that he should listen…till he is transformed into a soldier of truth, service and peace for society.” (p.146)
To achieve this, the student (listener) must be given the complete set of phases in the social relationship (involving the whole person), to speak and to listen, to expect and to act, to be silent, and to command. This requires all methods, all four basic disciplines.
…Poetry, music, prose, mathematics actually plays on different senses that take part in the process of listening. …No theory of education is satisfactory because theory is speaking scientifically. Education is the full process of translating, out of the confusion of tongues, into one living language. (p.148)
k. The student must be inspired to give “inner time” to the subject, to think about it in off hours. The process of “giving time” is all on the side of the listener. This acceptance by the student to do this depends upon the teacher’s perceived authority to speak about the content.
This is a “life giving” process when it occurs, that is when the speaker has “taken time” to understand his topic and the listener is willing to give time and ultimately to act on the knowledge.
One assumes, of course, that “knowledge” in this case refers not to small talk, but to significant problems that need to be addressed in the community. Other talk is simply passing the time of day.
l. The listener must have the following feelings or attitudes:
1) He should be willing to respond; it is his business to respond. He should feel, and should be made to feel, that he has been selected.
2) He should feel that the thing asked is reasonable. In this case, the term “reasonable” does not mean that it is plausible, but that it is something that should be done, and “this is the best alternative.” [RF – ERH, rightfully I believe, thinks that today one of our social diseases is that we have too many alternatives and no standards to tell us what one to choose. The speaker’s role is important here. Thus, the concept of the imperative, “Listen! Be interested.”] (p.151)
The concept of reason is not to speculate about what to do, but to find a solution to the problem that should be acted on. ERH points out that all of these rules make no sense unless there is an emphasis, also depending on the context in which the problem is likely to arise. He reminds us again that the student is, or should be, listening for the emphasis, the imperative part. The emphasis for the scientist, who primarily describes, is indirect, in his method, (“Let there be method.” (p.153) [RF – See an excellent description of science.] ( pp.152,153). While the scientist’s work is objective, the act of the scientist applying himself to science is subjective. (p.153)
The powers by which the scientist gives his assent to practice science are not rational.
And our world goes crazy today because scientists have forgotten the basis of their own actions: that they have chosen between two irrational possibilities of the future: system or no system, the reasonable path of the system, without guarantee of success. (p.154)
And he continues:
The word rational does not include the problem of living into the future. It is applicable to objects only. Rationality is impossible when the outcome is unknown, because it lies in the future. And rationality assumes that we remain unchanged and analyze objects. The future, however, is that situation by which we undergo a change and are transformed ourselves. (p.154)
Chapter 7 – The Individual’s Right to Speak
Part – 1 Everybody Speaking
1. The question (problem) this chapter raises is, “What happens to me when I speak?” When traditional grammatical study has been accused of viewing and using language as a “tool,” it means the attitude is to master language and use it to make speeches, in addressing others and perhaps in gathering one’s thoughts. This attitude is highly individualistic and tends toward forgetting that language would never have arisen without the participation of everyone in community. This means that language began evolving at the beginning of history, and will last until its end. It can continue if there is one spirit to respect it, or civilization will end. How can we understand its power better?
2. ERH asserts that his birthright to speak freely is protected by the terms of grammar. Why is this important? Because we all crave self-realization and this, he asserts, occurs only when understanding the sum of all phases of our lives.
3. Wealth, biology (gender), marriage, profession, important as these are, are not enough for self-realization. To a `city’ we must belong, in order to be human.” This, and this alone, can bestow equality between every member, and this depends upon speech!
In community all its history belongs to the citizen, each participates in carrying on its vision, in narrating its great story…. The young student in his songs builds up courage for the great future tasks of his community….Physically, we are the children of our mother. Mentally, however, our national language is our mother-tongue…. It gives us access to anything that has ever been called into existence by the community. (p.158)
4. Language is the great “fortune” by which we might possibly understand each other, and thereby participate in this bounty.
“When we would thus penetrate into each other (in spirit), we always would experience a sublime moment in which new language was born, and new human words formed.” (p.160)
The mother tongue, what has been said and thought before us in the community, can be spoken by us, through us, and that has great sustaining value, spiritually. We participate! But we do not necessarily understand each other. All we can say is that we understand each other’s words, but to say that our interpretation of these words tell us the spirit, the inner life of the other, is quite another matter. Only rarely does this happen, when one speaks what is in his heart at the right time.
5. When we speak we either quote other ideas of the community, or we create new ones. To speak means to crave unanimity, and ERH asserts this is proven by the fact that each language is assumed to be complete; whether it is 800 or 80,000 words, it is assumed to be able to say anything.
Part – 2 English Spoken
1. Since there are many languages, one would not be able to assume that his language is complete. HOWEVER, this problem was solved 2,000 years ago when the Bible appeared, because it has been translated into all other languages. THUS, IT WAS LEARNED AND THIS NOW BECOMES “A NEW PRINCIPLE PROCLAIMED: ALL LANGUAGES MAY BE TRANSLATED INTO EACH OTHER.” (p.161)
2. Thus a universal Bible and universal science has transformed languages. They are no longer separate “individualities.” ( p.161)
3. What are the conditions by which speech remains alive, and therefore reflects the spirit of the community?
Principle #1 : “It is the essence of language to be momentary, fluid, fleeting. Hence a word has its full truth only among the people between whom it spouts, and at the moment at which this happens.” (p.162)
Qualifications to this statement; a) words should not be mistaken as accidental. When they rise to the occasion, speak the truth about it, they attain the level of a “…meaningful historical event.” When such highest truth is spoken, it transforms the occasion as a memorable one!
Nor does this mean that intent to speak the truth is necessarily powerful.
At that moment of deep truth being spoken, it is the most powerful. All other truths, theories, historical events etc. are comparatively more remote, less powerful, more abstract in meaning.
In the event of speaking of the truth, the speaker assumes the listener will participate heart and soul.
As those words become removed from the situation, more remote (as with books, and other writing or quotations by others) they become more rigid in meaning, more formal, classic, moving toward petrification!
Petrification means the decrease of power of the words, of course, rendering them somewhat impotent when they cannot reflect the truth of the original occasion.
4. To learn language, such as with children, or adults learning a language of science or of art, the preparation has limited meaning. This situation is unavoidable and not bad as long as we understand it and do not mistake it for “powerful speech.” True speech is therefore not available to the initiates of other ages; the participants must have had “first hand experience” to comprehend the meaning. When second-hand speech is thus mistaken for true speech (first-hand speech), there is no communication – and only chaos and violence can result!
“Having lost faith in speech, he no longer may obey the order of the day which is authorized by its creative power in the necessity of the moment.” (p.163)
ERH quotes the Nazi propagandist Sorel, who in 1923 claims to have destroyed the power of words. In 1933 the last issue of a Free Youth Journal headlined, “Words have lost their meaning.”
This was meant, by the way, in the book of Exodus when God said to Moses: “There is no sky-world of astrology; you cannot hear what you have to do from the fourteen hundred and sixty-one year cycle of Egypt. My name is, I am here and now.” This meant two things in one: first, it meant that man must rise to the occasion, now. Second, it meant that to rise does not imply a blind reaction, a hit-or-miss move. To rise to the occasion means to listen to the suffering of which speech is the healing. Reality which remains speechless must drive man crazy. (p.164)
Implied in principle #1 is the fact that language is constantly dying. Notice the meaningless ceremonies we go through almost daily where there is no context invoked that might give the words meaning.
Part – 3 The mental World
1. Now to the inner structure of the language. The first assumption is that language cannot exist without the common will of the community. It is the common will vocalized.
2. Two polarities, command and obey. The speaker (one who commands) and the listener (one who obeys) reflect a common spirit in a group. The commander is burdened to follow the will (spirit) of the group or suffer possible disinterest and lose his listener. He has less freedom than the listener. The person who obeys is less interested in the content; he accepts the command voluntarily, and thus expresses freedom. He is more relaxed, with less need to be tough. “A general has greater difficulty in keeping his freedom and equilibrium than his subordinates.” The speaker’s equilibrium is maintained when the command is obeyed. (p.165)
3. Commands must be given in the proper tone. Too soft a command suffers the possibility of not carrying force and thus not being obeyed. Too loud may give offense and thereby reduce the spirit of the group to obey. Halfway between is therefore usually the most effective.
4. A good imperative changes the course of the world. Both speaker and listener are ( or must be) voicing the will of the group for such transformation to occur. .
5. There must be a distinction between inner (spirit) and outer (problem being addressed). To be objective refers to an object (problem) outside the “common will of the group.” It offers resistance to the inner subjective (group will). To speak objectively means referring to someone outside the group; “…it means that we are in the world, and have to expect resistance and difficulties.” (p.166)
Because today we are so “world conscious”, meaning objective, with scientific orientation, we have reduced our style of speaking mainly to “objectivity” (to indicate). When we speak within a group, when an order is given, or even in the event of criticism one can rely on a basic common spirit that reduces resistance.
But the world “outside” the group is different; it is more skeptical, resistant to suggestion and influence. In this case one cannot rely on a common spirit, so commonality must rely on objective, spacial events that can be shared. Thus we describe, take measurements, seek statistics; we calculate and measure to seek:
“..the right terms in which I speak of the objects of our actions so that we might break their resistance.” (p.167)
6. Another terminology to meet is the past. For the past to have meaning it must be convincing that there was life there. Life means names of people who spoke imperatives and led the fight. Objective language cannot take the measure of such names. Thus, the power of real history is to help us move in the present.
Facts are objective and dead. Acts are historical and thereby restored to life in the name of the author of every sentence we report….In the sentence, `Constantinople was conquered by the Turks’ the Turks are the real agent, the subject of the sentence. The old grammarians, therefore, called the expression `by the Turks,’ the ruling subject of meaning despite the grammatical form of the sentence. (p.168)
We know that the wheel was invented, that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066, but the men who dared to risk life, are the center of history and of meaning. Because we in the present are constantly confronted with solving today’s problems we therefore ask of history, “How did they do it?” The passive and nominative are the forms into which speech turns with regard to the past. “You live the past by speaking of great names.” (p.169)
7. In our inner world, we are torn by emotions, unsureness of ourselves, not knowing how we will be evaluated by our fellows, what they will finally call us. At the extremes, we find states of ecstasy and hell. “Therefore, the subject of the musical experience of this inner man is nameless in the deepest sense of the word.” (p.170)
To understand this inner world, it must be with pronouns,
You, I, mine, our, we thou, are the true forms of the realm of emotions and mixed motives…grammatical forms attached to these pronouns are subjunctive, optative..these processes are mere assumptions of inner experience…not yet materialized. (p.170)
ERH offers several examples of the force of poetry with subjective grammar, pointing out that we all seek unity, and unity does not exist in the outer world naturally. “Nobody could speak if he didn’t believe in unity…” [RF – I would qualify this and say that it exists when we attempt to organize the natural world. And do we not find laws that describe and allow us to predict events in the natural world?]
To sing (speak and sing poetry?), the power of language rests in itself, bridging the gap between inside and outside, therein creating a unity in both spheres. To sing belongs to neither past nor future.
H. Freedom and; Free-will: The only real freedom we have lies within our thought, because in the outside world, the world of concrete reality, there are numerous constraints. This is why to be “called” into a profession or some commitment, to dedicate one’s energies to a cause, is a decision representing and demonstrating free will. The corollary of this is that “…man’s own self is the greatest enemy of man’s free -will….Thoughts pay no custom duties, and they pass all frontiers.” (p.171) The logic should be obvious. Only we ourselves can deny our own freedom of will.
[RF – Implied here it seems to me, but not specifically stated, is an important principle, one I would name, PRINCIPLE #2. This is, if our inner world of thought is the only place we find the possibility of total freedom and total unity, and conversely, the outer concrete world we find chaotic and confining, then we bring unity to the outer world by imposing on it. In other words, through hypotheses proved, we create unity in the outer world which is recognized. Of course, such unity only exists as long as people are around.]
I. Is thought independent of language? Obviously NOT, according to ERH.
1) Our thought must be validated by communication with others, and proved through observation and discussion.
“Madmen think alone. Sanity depends on communion.” Truth cannot be owned by us, but it can be imparted. Thought, then, may be defined as opening ourselves to the truth. (p.172)
2) To validate truth there must be two conversations. The first, within ourselves where we debate, with ourselves, some issue; here we anticipate outward conversation.
“Any thinker of quality is amazed by the poor level of the criticisms raised against his theses, for he knows many more dangerous objections to his own ideas….The mental world, then, is the duplication of the speaking world by unifying the speaker and the listener within one mind.” (p.173 )
3) There is yet another element of language that is not commonly discussed. Most philosophers of language believe that language is captured by the words in the dictionary, and that systems of philosophy contain the thoughts of man. This in turn would imply that words were the same as speech, and thoughts the mental world. These thinkers, ERH asserts, treat these two worlds, words and thought, as separate. But is this not circular logic, to suggest that we speak about thought with words, but keep them separated? Thinking according to this logic would then seem to be for curiosity.
Why we should respect each other’s curiosity I do not know. I usually kill flies when they become too curious. ( p.173)
Part – 4 The Healthy Person
1. To speak means to speak to someone (individual or group). And this “someone” must be called by his correct name. The someone named must therefore be “called” or addressed, in turn, by a “named” authority or power. Thus, society precedes individuality. For example, “A woman I meet by accident would never have the authority to call me for my breakfast. My mother had.” This power or authority has, or should have, limits, however. My mother should not have the right to choose my wife.
2. “To think means to introduce better names (into society).” (p.174) This means that at some point we must become independent, to rise above our names, to change the world, to name new things. “We think because we ourselves wish to speak with authority, just as we were spoken to before.” We also need to re-interpret the world, to either correct misconceptions or interpret new experience, our own.
“Thought gives man a kingdom.” But that kingdom must be “ruled.” And its rule comes from concrete experience! Law, as related to all social life, could not exist if we did not speak out what we believe is the truth. Criminal acts would not be reported, we would have no friends, because the conditions by which we would live with others would not be spelled out.
3. Speaking, addressing others when there is a reason, speaking what we really think and where some action needs to be taken, and where we are willing to take that action ourselves, or ask others to do it, is the way we individually contribute toward the community.
To speak means to enact the various roles in society itself. By speech, then, we contribute actual power to the life of society…He does not speak who talks abouteverything under the sun…Speech enters the scene only when we are back of our words with our reputation, life, honor…Anything below this degree of veracity simply is uninteresting. (p.178)
4. There is an important distinction between real speech and pseudo speech. Real speech is spoken to the right person or right body at the right time, in the right place. Many speakers, perhaps most, do not follow these criteria and are therefore ineffective.
The indications for right and wrong, good and evil, with regard to a sentence, are not of a logical or scientific nature. They are a problem of timing. (p.180)
ERH goes on to explain by example. 2×2=4 is an eternally true generalization. But in the case of 7 people ordered to ride in a car made for 4, it can be said that 7=4 may also be true 7 in a car made for 4 may at times be acceptable in some situations. The basic difference between science and judgement is one of timing, where specifics, not generalizations, dictate the efficacy of the judgement.
For every truth, there is but one right process of law by which it ultimately can be verified. The more serious the truth, the rarer the occasion. (p.180)
5. In the classroom there is total freedom to say anything, as intellectual curiosity prevails. There is freedom to think, to contemplate, speculate. In real experience, such as war, there can be no such freedom, as the situation controls our freedom. In freedom we make a judgement. We must make judgement.
Part – 5 Yes
1. “Whoever speaks believes in the unity of mankind.” To believe in the unity of mankind defines a “yes,” an affirmation to life.
2. One does not need to be conscious of whether he believes in something (a truth) or not; the fact that he participates in seeking it is enough. This act of participation reflects what is important in life. To speak means that one believes there are listeners. Since any statement can be translated into any language, we possess the ability to speak to all of humankind, directly, or through translation. Speech therefore has the power to unite all of humankind.
And since our power to evolve from animals toward becoming human is dependent upon speech, as has been established all through this essay, to say “Yes” to belief in speech is saying yes to being called to life as a human, it is saying yes to seeking truth, to an obligation to contribute toward the great enterprise of creation of community. All of this is to say YES to the spirit of humankind.
It is quite unimportant whether a man knows that he believes in God or not. The power to speak is God because it unites me with all of men and makes us judges of the whole world….Unless we bow to this power, we must abuse our right to speak and to think. For either we try to use it right and tell the truth, think the truth, listen to the truth, or the tongue will dry up in our throat, and our ears shall hear nothing but cries of suspicion and hatred and despair. We will be cursed by posterity as the destroyer of peace, of power, of credit, of order, all things which truth alone can establish. (pp.184,5)
The fact that we speak and that speech unites mankind and allows us to judge the world means that we believe in God. To say NO to truth, to lie, to be a hypocrite is to destroy the world and at the same time be an unbeliever. [RF – It seems to me to say “no” to truth (lying, in other words) is analogous to using democracy to destroy it, as the Muslims in Algeria claim today, 1992].
3. “By speaking, the individual makes himself a cell of one tremendous body politic of speech. Open your lips, and you have ceased to be yourself. You have become a member and you occupy an office…” (p.185)
To pretend, to lie, to order others to do what we are unwilling to do, to plan for others but not oneself, all who do these things are devils who destroy speech and the community. (p.186)
4. Through speech, then, with these freedoms to make judgement, every person has accessible to him/herself the ability to understand law, poetry, literature, science, and to participate in all of these in some manner. But the power of this freedom is realized only with discipline. The franchise of free speech and thought is destroyed by the liar. The liar therefore weakens and eventually leads to the destruction of society by destroying the validity of speech.
Thus, our freedom is two edged, to either create or destroy. “This witchcraft of speech and thought–where is it anchored in our organism?”
Part – 6 Some Final Terms for Grammar
1. “The individual, in his power to say
This has been
This shall be
I see this. This is.
I am of it. Let me be one of yours.
enters four orders of grammar.” (p.187)
2. These powers can be summarized in the following table:
activity grammar mood axis discipline
———————————————————————————————————————-
command prejective dramatic future ethics/prophecy
song subjective lyrical inner world art
remember trajective epochal past history
calculation objective logical outer world science
3. Everyone has these powers potentially, to pronounce something dead, to call something new into life (this shall be), to describe reality (this is), to participate in a group.
4. These powers cast into the form of some professions:
practice law (trajective)
preach (prejective)
create art (subjective)
create science (objective)
These are constant because they represent our reference points in time and in space. “The whole intellectual life of a nation–literature, legislation, politics, sciences, song and slang–is subject to grammatical analysis of its health.” (p.188)
5. These activities are “macroscopical” because we see them every day. Inmicrocosm we can parallel these with grammar within a sentence.
1. verbs imperatives politics
2. adjectives subjunctives literature and arts
3. nouns narratives tradition
4. numerals indicatives sciences
1. projects us into the future, calls us to carry out the act.
3. records the completion of the action for posterity; the thing has been named.
2. describes our inner state while we did the act, our emotions.
4. classifies the product, by analysis.
“In this way, the individual’s attitudes in speaking have furnished us with one universal terminology for all processes of the spirit. The cycle…applies to the greatest and the smallest and all the human phenomena of speech and thought.” (p.189)
Index
adjectives…………………… 23, 29, 30, 41
anarchy………………………… 3-5, 9-11, 32
Anselm…………………………………. 5, 7, 8
answers………………………………………. 18
Aristotle……………………………………… 10
articulation………………………. 12, 13, 19
arts……………………………………….. 30, 41
astrology…………………………………….. 36
audience………………………………. 17, 27
Bible………………………………………. 8, 35
biology………………………………………. 34
Bonhoeffer……………………………………. 1
Buber…………………………………………… 2
calculation………………………………….. 40
calling…………………………….. 21, 22, 30
chorus…………………………………… 28, 29
Christianity……………………………………. 8
communication………… 4, 12, 25, 27-29,
35, 38
community…………… 2, 7, 11-14, 16, 18,
33-36, 39, 40
Comte…………………………………….. 1, 10
concept……………… 5, 17, 23, 28, 30, 33
contemporaries……………………………… 9
conversation…………………. 7, 13, 27, 38
cooperation………………………………….. 3
crusades……………………………………… 12
death……………………………………. 2, 3, 7
decadence……………………… 3, 4, 10, 27
decay…………………………………………… 9
destiny………………………………….. 14, 16
dialectics……………………………………. 12
dictionary……………………………………. 38
dimension……………………………….. 8, 14
disclosure……………………………………. 17
distemporaries…………………………. 9, 10
dogma………………………………….. 23, 26
ear………………………………….. 22, 24, 26
education……………. 9-11, 15, 22, 31-33
Ehrenberg…………………………………… 10
emotion…………………………… 15, 19, 22
epic……………………………………… 18, 20
ethics………………………………. 10, 12, 40
ethnology…………………………………….. 2
Exodus……………………………………….. 36
experience……….. 1, 2, 4-11, 14, 15, 19,
22, 26, 29, 31, 34,
35, 37-39
faith………………….. 3, 4, 8, 9, 21, 26, 35
formula………………………………………. 29
freedom………… 5, 16, 18, 25, 30, 36-40
fronts……………………. 4, 5, 14-16, 20, 22
future………. 2-6, 8, 9, 11, 13-22, 28, 29,
32-34, 37, 40, 41
generation………………………………… 3, 9
genesis………………………………………. 10
geometry……………………………………. 23
gesticulation……………………………….. 31
God………… 2, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 36,
40
government…………………………….. 3, 10
hearing………………………………………. 32
history…………… 2, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19,
22-26, 28, 29, 30,
34, 37, 40
Holy Spirit…………………………………….. 2
Humboldt……………………………………. 16
hypocrisy…………………………………….. 32
imperative………… 1, 13, 14, 18, 19, 23,
28-30, 33, 36
individual…………. 3, 13, 14, 22, 27, 28,
34, 38, 40, 41
interlocutors……………………………. 29-31
interpretation……………………. 21, 31, 34
Jaspers……………………………………….. 10
Kantian………………………………………. 10
knowledge………. 6-8, 11, 20-22, 25, 29,
31, 33
language………… 2-6, 11-20, 22, 24, 26,
27, 29-31, 33-39
Latin………………………………………….. 23
law……………. 5, 8, 10, 20, 21, 23, 38-41
leader……………………………… 14, 28, 29
learning……….. 9, 11, 20, 22, 30, 32, 35
legislation…………………………………… 41
liar…………………………………………….. 40
life…………… 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 14-16, 18, 19,
22-24, 26-29, 33,
34, 37-41
listener……….. 10, 12, 13, 15, 23-33, 35,
36, 38
literature…………… 16-18, 20, 22, 40, 41
logic…………. 5, 8-10, 12, 15-18, 22, 28,
31, 37, 38
love……………………… 15, 16, 23, 24, 26
Marty…………………………………………… 1
mathematics…………………. 5, 15, 19, 33
matrix…………………………………….. 2, 14
medicine……………………………………. 23
memory…………. 2, 4, 15, 17, 22, 31, 32
method……….. 1-3, 5-10, 14, 18, 20, 21,
25, 33
mind………… 2, 3, 10, 16, 17, 20, 31, 38
monologue……………………………. 17, 23
Moses………………………………………… 36
mother-tongue…………………………….. 34
Mumford………………………………………. 1
music……………………………………. 30, 33
mysticism……………………………………… 9
name……………………………….. 13, 36-38
nature……….. 1, 2, 4-6, 8-10, 12, 17, 22,
39
Nietzsche……………………………………… 2
noun………………………………………….. 19
numerals…………………………………….. 41
oath…………………………………………… 21
object…………. 5, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 29,
36
Oldham……………………………………….. 1
oratory……………………………………….. 19
orientation…………………………. 6, 16, 36
origin……………………………………. 23, 29
paradox…………………………….. 5, 10, 11
participle……………………………………. 19
passive……………………………………….. 37
past……………… 1-6, 9, 11, 13-16, 18-22,
27-29, 31, 37, 40
peace……………………. 2, 4, 8-12, 32, 40
perfect…………………………. 9, 15, 16, 18
philosophy………. 1, 2, 8, 11, 16, 19, 31,
38
phonetics……………………………………. 26
physics………………………………. 7, 13, 14
poetry…………. 1, 15, 18, 19, 22, 30, 33,
37, 40
politics…………………………….. 14, 15, 41
power…………… 2, 3, 5, 6, 10-12, 17, 18,
23, 24, 31, 34-40
preject………………………………….. 19, 20
present………. 3-6, 11-16, 19, 21, 22, 28,
31, 32, 37
pronouns………………………….. 29, 30, 37
propaganda………………………………… 32
prophesy…………………………………….. 30
prose…………………………………….. 19, 33
psychology……………………………………. 1
question and answer……………….. 28, 29
rationality…………………………………… 34
reading………………………………………… 7
reality…………. 1, 4, 6, 13-17, 36, 37, 40
reason……………….. 1, 5, 7, 8, 20, 33, 39
reflection………………………………… 4, 15
reiteration……………………………… 28, 29
relations………………………. 19, 25-27, 29
religion………………………………………. 11
resistance……………………………………. 36
respect………………………………. 4, 34, 38
revolution……………………. 3, 4, 9-11, 27
risk…………………………….. 11, 16, 18, 37
scholasticism……………………………….. 10
social sciences………………………. 1-3, 11
society…………. 1-12, 16, 18, 19, 22, 25,
32, 38-40
song…………………………….. 5, 28, 40, 41
soul……………………………… 3, 15, 21, 35
space………… 2-10, 12-15, 18-22, 27-30,
41
speaker……….. 5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 23, 24,
26-29, 31, 32, 33,
35, 36, 38
speech………….. 1, 2, 4-6, 10-16, 19, 20,
22, 26, 28, 29,
30-32, 34-41
spirit………… 2, 16, 26, 28, 34-36, 39, 41
student………. 7, 9, 20, 22, 25, 30, 32-34
subject………….. 7, 8, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23,
24, 31, 33, 37, 41
subjectivity……………………………………. 5
subjunctive……………. 13, 18, 22, 30, 37
synthesis…………………………………….. 10
system……….. 4, 8, 12, 14, 26-28, 31, 33
theology…………………………… 1, 3, 6-10
thinker……………………………. 1, 9, 17, 38
thought……… 1, 2, 4-6, 8, 10, 12-20, 22,
23, 26, 28, 34, 37,
38, 40, 41
time………… 1-6, 8-16, 18-22, 24, 27-30,
32-34, 39-41
Tower of Babel……………………………… 4
tradition…………….. 8, 13, 21, 23, 29, 41
traject…………………………………… 19, 20
trinity…………………………………………… 8
truth…………… 2, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16-18, 20,
21, 25, 30, 31, 32,
35, 38-40
unanimity…………………. 4, 5, 29, 30, 34
unity………… 2-4, 6, 9, 10, 27, 30, 37-39
universe……………………….. 5, 19, 28, 29
values……………………. 3-5, 9, 10, 12, 23
velation……………………………………… 17
verb…………………………………………… 23
violence………………………………….. 3, 35
war……………………. 3-5, 9-12, 14, 27, 39
world………… 1, 2, 4-6, 10-14, 16-19, 25,
28-30, 33, 36-38, 40
World War I…………………………………. 12
writing…………………….. 1, 17, 18, 20, 35
Zuckmayer……………………………………. 1
