Is the confusion and delay brought about by competing languages, competing definitions, and the overuse of metaphor an insurmountable obstacle? Or will there in time be a universal way of speaking? Gramsci didn't seem to think so:. . . From Antonio

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Anonymous 2023-06-13 (Tue) 04:16:01 No.17900

Is the confusion and delay brought about by competing languages, competing definitions, and the overuse of metaphor an insurmountable obstacle? Or will there in time be a universal way of speaking? Gramsci didn't seem to think so:

From Antonio Gramsci - The Modern Prince and Other Writings
>In the Study it is noted that the terms “immanence” and “immanent” are certainly used in Marxism, but that “evidently” this use is only “metaphorical.” Very good. But has he in any way explained what immanence and immanent mean “metaphorically?” Why have these terms continued to be used and not replaced? Purely out of a horror of creating new words? Usually when one new conception of the world succeeds another, the earlier language continues to be used but is used metaphorically. All language is a continuous process of metaphors, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture: language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of the fossils of life and civilization. When I use the word disaster no one can accuse me of astrological beliefs, and when I say “By Jove,” no one can believe that I am a worshiper of the pagan divinity; nevertheless, these expressions are a proof that modern civilization is a development of both paganism and astrology. The term “immanence” in Marxism has its precise meaning which is hidden in the metaphor and this must be defined exactly; in reality this definition would truly have been “theory.” Marxism continues the philosophy of immanence, but rids it of all its metaphysical trimmings and leads it on to the concrete basis of history. The use is metaphorical only in the sense that the former immanence is superseded, has been superseded, although it is still presupposed as a link in the process of thought from which the new link has been born. On the other hand, is the new concept of immanence completely new? It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno. They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno’s works in their notes. Conversely, Bruno was not without influence on classical German philosophy, etc. Here are many problems in the history of philosophy which could be usefully examined.

>The question of the relationship between language and metaphor is not simple, far from it. Language, however, is always metaphorical. If it is perhaps not correct to say that every statement is metaphorical in respect of the thing or the material and tangible object indicated (or the abstract concept), since that would broaden too much the concept of metaphor, it can still be said that present-day language is metaphorical in respect of the meanings and ideological content which the words have had in earlier periods of civilization. A book on semantics—that of Michel Bréal, for example—provides an historically and critically reconstituted catalog of the semantic changes of certain groups of words. Many errors both in the field of learning and of practice derive from not taking account of this fact, in other words from not having a critical and historical view of the phenomenon of language: (1) An error of an aesthetic character, which today is being to some extent corrected but which was in the past a ruling doctrine, is that of regarding as “beautiful” in themselves certain expressions as distinct from others in so far as they are crystallized metaphors; the rhetoricians and grammarians swoon at certain words, in which they discover who knows how much virtue and abstract artistic essence. The very bookish philologist’s word “joy,” which suffers agonies as a result of certain etymological or semantic analyses, is actually confused with artistic delight: recently we had the pathological case of Language and Poetry by Giulio Bertoni. (2) A practical error which has many followers is the utopian idea of a fixed universal language. (3) An arbitrary tendency towards absurd word innovations, which arises from the problem posed by Pareto and the pragmatists regarding “language as the cause of error.” Pareto, like the pragmatists in so far as they believe that they have created a new conception of the world, or at least that they have originated a certain science (and that they have therefore given words a new significance or at least a new shade of meaning, or that they have created new concepts), finds himself faced with the fact that traditional words, especially those in common use, but also those used by the cultured classes and even those used by specialist groups dealing with the same science, continue to keep their old meaning despite the innovation of content, and this has reactions. Pareto creates his own “dictionary,” demonstrating his aim of creating his own “pure” or “mathematical” language. The pragmatists theorize abstractly about language as the cause of error (see G. Prezzolini’s little book). But is it possible to rid language of its broad metaphorical meanings? It is impossible. Language is transformed together with the transformation of the whole of civilization, through the flowering into culture of new classes, through the hegemony exercised by one national language on others, etc., and in point of fact continues to use metaphorically the words of preceding cultures and civilizations. No one today thinks that the word “dis-aster” is bound up with astrology, and those who use it in this way are considered to be wrong. In the same way an atheist can speak of “disgrace” without being thought a follower of predestination, etc. The new “metaphorical” significance broadens with the broadening of the new culture, which, on the other hand, also coins new words and borrows words from other languages and uses them with a precise significance, i.e. without the broad aura they had in the original language. So it is probable that the term “immanence” is known, understood and used by many people for the first time only in the new “metaphorical” significance given to it by Marxism.

Anonymous 2023-06-13 (Tue) 04:54:46 No.17901

For if existent things, as objects of vision and of hearing and of the senses in general, are by definition externally existent, and if these visible things are apprehensible by sight and audible by hearing, and not vice versa, how, in this case, can these things be indicated to another person? For the means by which we indicate is speech, and speech is not identical with the really subsistent things; therefore we do not indicate to our neighbor the existent things but speech, which is other than what subsists. Thus, just as the visible things will not become audible, and vice versa, so too, since the existent subsists externally, it will not become identical with our speech; and not being speech, it cannot be revealed to another person.
Speech, moreover, is formed from the impressions caused by external objects, that is to say, objects of sense; for from the occurrence of flavor there is produced in us the speech uttered concerning this quality, and by the incidence of color speech respecting color. And if this be so, it is not speech that serves to reveal the external object, but the external object that proves to be explanatory of speech. Moreover, it is not possible to assert that speech subsists in the same fashion as things visible and audible, so that the subsisting and existent things can be indicated by it as by a thing subsisting and existent. For, he says, even if speech subsists, yet it differs from the rest of subsisting things, and visible bodies differ very greatly from spoken words; for the visible object is perceptible by one sense-organ and speech by another. Therefore speech does not serve to indicate the great majority of subsisting things, even as they themselves do not reveal each other’s nature.
But even if they are known, how could anyone reveal them to someone else? For how could anyone express what they have seen in speech or, how could it become clear to the hearer, if he has not seen it? For just as sight does not recognize sounds, so, likewise, hearing does not recognize colors, but only sounds; moreover, the speaker speaks, but he does not speak a color or a thing. So, when someone has no conception, how could he conceive it through someone else’s words, or through some sign which is other than that thing, unless he sees it, if it is a color, or he hears it, if it is a sound? For, firstly, nobody speaks a sound or a color, but only a word; so that it is not possible to think a color but only to see it; nor to think a sound, but only to hear it. And even if it is possible to know and read a word, how can the hearer have a conception of the same thing? For it is impossible for the same thing to exist at the same time in a number of separate people; for then the one would be two. But even if the same thing was in a number of people, nothing would stop it from appearing differently in them, given that they are not completely alike, nor in the same place; for if there was such a thing, it would be one and not two. But not even the same man appears to perceive similar things in himself at the same time, but different things with his hearing and with his sight, and different again at the present moment and in the past, so that one man can hardly perceive the same as another. Thus it is impossible, if anything exists, for it to be known; and, if it is known, no one could reveal it to another; for the reason that things are not words, and because no one has the same conception as another.