The continental philosophy reader
According to Gadamer, the error of the Enlightenment was its ‘prejudice against prejudice’, (109)to-process
how our natural view of the world—the experience of the world that we have as we simply live out our lives—is related to the unassailable and anonymous authority that confronts us in the pronouncements of science. (111)to-process
the real task of philosophy has been to mediate this new employment of man’s cognitive and constructive capacities with the totality of our experience of life. (111)to-process ❧ Philosophy has been about explaining the connections between our experiences and meanings in life with those suggested through the natural sciences. Philosophy has also been about combining it all into a coherent picture.
Language is the fundamental mode of operation of our being-in-the-world and the all-embracing form of the constitution of the world. (111)to-process ❧ I think the being-in-the-world part means that language is fundamental to our everyday experiences: the way we make sense of things and interact with things is through language. Perhaps even things like sitting on a chair involves associating what I see with the linguistic concept of a chair.
I’m not sure what the “all-embracing form of the constitution of the world” means.
Perhaps that is that we understand the world though language as well.
He rejects the claim that knowledge in all domains must fit the model of knowledge as pursued in the natural sciences. This kind of ‘scientism’, he claims, leads to an inadequate and reductionist view of knowledge which in fact is constituted by interests other than the purely technical. (235)to-process ❧ Habermas
Critical rationalism and negativism, for their part, share something too, which is that they reject transcendental and dialectical means of cognition while at the same time using them in a paradoxical way. (243)to-process
Thus, Saussure’s semiology was already influencing French philosophical thought by mid-century, and it was in this milieu that the structuralist paradigm first flourished. (289)to-process
Our ability to articulate such phonemes when we speak - and to discern them when we listen—provides a clue to the constitution of meaning within the self-regulating system of language. (290)to-process
Language is ‘always there’ for us in advance; we never invent language, but rather participate in it. (290)to-process
best interrogated by examining structural form rather than referential content. (290)to-process
The object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object. (291)to-process
One cannot divorce what is heard from oral articulation. (291)to-process
A sound, itself a complex auditory-articulatory unit, in turn combines with an idea to form another complex unit, both physiologically and psychologically. (291)to-process
individual aspect and a social aspect. (291)to-process ❧ As in, we use it together but also in our own thought and expression?
At any given time, it is an institution in the present and a product of the past. (292)to-process ❧ Since anytime in the past where there is language is a given time, it is influenced by it’s past.
The linguist must take the study of linguistic structure as his primary concern, and relate all other manifestations of language to it. (292)to-process
The structure of a language is a social product of our language faculty. At the same time, it is also a body of necessary conventions adopted by society to enable members of society to use their language faculty. (292)to-process ❧ The structure is created by our ability to make and use language, but it is also necessary in order to make and use language.
physical, (292)to-process ❧ In it’s script, it’s articulations and sounds
physiological (292)to-process ❧ In how we make the sounds/symbols and receive them
sychological. (292)to-process ❧ how we turn what we receive into our minds into meaning or otherwise act on the semantic content
it is not clear that our vocal apparatus is made for speaking (293)to-process ❧ The sense in which it is “made for” something must be accidental and probably advantageous, but might be an exaptation refined down the line.
The question of the vocal apparatus is thus a secondary one as far as the problem of language is concerned. (293)to-process
articulation may refer to the division of the chain of speech into syllables, or to the division of the chain of meanings into meaningful units. (293)to-process
it is not spoken language which is natural to man, but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas. (293)to-process
over and above the functioning of the various organs, there exists a more general faculty governing signs, which may be regarded as the linguistic faculty par excellence. (293)to-process ❧ This gives some validity to the principality of studying linguistic structure
concepts are associated with representations of linguistic signs or sound patterns by means of which they may be a expressed. (294)to-process
(294)to-process ❧ Between and is psychological, between circle and arrow is physiological, and between arrows is physical.
This analysis makes no claim to be complete. (295)to-process
call everything which is active ‘executive’ (c—s), and everything which is passive ‘receptive’ (s > c). (295)to-process
All the individuals linguistically linked in this manner will establish among themselves a kind of mean; all of them will reproduce—doubtless not exactly, but approximately—the same signs linked to the same concepts. (295)to-process
This is what we shall designate by the term speech. (296)to-process ❧ (?) The execution of an individual and reception of a social group?
language is never complete in any single individual, but exists perfectly only in the collectivity. (296)to-process
he language itself is not a function of the speaker. It is the product passively registered by the individual. (296)to-process
Speech, on the contrary, is an individual act of the will and the intelligence, in which one must distinguish: (1) the combinations through which the speaker uses the code provided by the language in order to express his own thought, and (2) the psycho-physical mechanism which enables him to externalize these combinations. (296)to-process
It is an error of method to proceed from words in order to give definitions of things. (296)to-process
science which studies linguistic structure is not only able to dispense with other elements of language, but is possible only if those other elements are kept separate. (297)to-process
he associations, ratified by collective agreement, which go to make up the language are realities localized in the brain. (297)to-process
science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek sémeion ‘sign’). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. (298)to-process
the psychologist, who studies the mechanism of the sign in the individual. (298)to-process
the sign always to some extent eludes control by the will, whether of the individual or of society: (298)to-process
A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. (300)to-process
We propose to keep the term sign to designate the whole, but to replace concept and sound pattern respectively by signification and signal. (301)to-process
For it is characteristic of symbols that they are never entirely arbitrary. They are not empty configurations. They show at least a vestige of natural connexion between the signal and its signification. (302)to-process
For onomatopoeia is only the approximate imitation, already partly conventionalized, of certain sounds. (302)to-process
onomatopoeic: and exclamatory words are rather marginal phenomena, and their symbolic origin is to some extent disputable. (303)to-process
he linguistic signal, being auditory in nature, has a temporal aspect, and hence certain temporal characteristics: (a) it occupies a certain temporal space, and (b) this space is measured in just one dimension: (303)to-process
if I stress a certain syllable, it may seem that I am presenting a number of significant features simultaneously. But that is an illusion. The syllable and its accentuation constitute a single act of phonation. There is no duality within this act, although there are various contrasts with what precedes and follows. (303)to-process
It is clear that the synchronic point of view takes precedence over the diachronic, since for the community of language users that is the one and only reality. (303)to-process
ut what that proves is that diachrony has no end in itself. One might say, as has been said of journalism as a career, that it leads nowhere until you leave it behind. (304)to-process
Synchrony has only one perspective, that of the language users; and its whole method consists of collecting evidence from them. (304)to-process
iachronic linguistics, however, needs to distinguish two perspectives. One will be prospective, following the course of time, and the other retrospective, going in the opposite direction. (304)to-process
language preconditioned human culture, (305)to-process
Cultures in Western Europe that changed rapidly and remained open to widely divergent influences he categorized as ‘hot’, whereas those cultures that changed very little over time were ‘cold’. (306)to-process
Instead of trying to enlarge the framework of our logic to include processes which, whatever their apparent differences, belong to the same kind of intellectual operation, a naive attempt was made to reduce them to inarticulate emotional drives, which resulted only in hampering our studies. (307)to-process
hatever the hypothesis, the choice amounts to reducing mythology either to idle play or to a crude kind of philosophic speculation. (307)to-process
Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, or revenge, or that they try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they cannot otherwise understand—astronomical, meteorological, and the like. (308)to-process
On the other hand, psychoanalysts and many anthropologists have shifted the problems away from the natural or cosmological toward the sociological and psychological fields. (308)to-process
should the actual data be conflicting, it would be as readily claimed that the purpose of mythology is to provide an outlet for repressed feelings. Whatever the situation, a clever dialectic will always find a way to pretend that a meaning has been found. (308)to-process
With myth, everything becomes possible. (308)to-process
If the content of a myth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar? (308)to-process
The contradiction was surmounted only by the discovery that it is the combination of sounds, not the sounds themselves, which provides the significant data. (308)to-process ❧ Relating to the linguistic problem of how languages are so similar yet arbitrary
Whatever emendations the original formulation may now call for, everybody will agree that the Saussurean principle of the arbitrary character of linguistic signs was a prerequisite for the accession of linguistics to the scientific level. (309)to-process
myth is language: to be known, myth has to be told; it is a part of human speech. (309)to-process
what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is timeless; it explains the present and the past as well as the future. (309)to-process
Poetry is a kind of speech which cannot be translated except at the cost of serious distortions; whereas the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation. (310)to-process
If there is a meaning to be found in mythology, it cannot reside in the isolated elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way those elements are combined. (310)to-process
Although myth belongs to the same category as language, being, as a matter of fact, only part of it, language in myth exhibits specific properties. (310)to-process
they exhibit more complex features than those which are to be found in any other kind of linguistic expression. (310)to-process
Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units. (310)to-process
that they cannot be found among phonemes, morphemes, or sememes, but only on a higher level; otherwise myth would become confused with any other kind of speech. (310)to-process
The only method we can suggest at this stage is to proceed tentatively, by trial and error, using as a check the principles which serve as a basis for any kind of structural analysis: economy of explanation; unity of solution; and ability to reconstruct the whole from a fragment, as well as later stages from previous ones. (310)to-process
each gross constituent unit will consist of a relation. (311)to-process
constituent units on all levels are made up of relations, and the true difference between our gross units and the others remains unexplained (311)to-process
the specific character of mythological time, which as we have seen is both reversible and non-reversible, synchronic and diachronic, remains unaccounted for. (311)to-process
The true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning. Relations pertaining to the same bundle may appear diachronically at remote intervals, but when we have succeeded in grouping them together we have reorganized our myth according to a time referent of a new nature, corresponding to the prerequisite of the initial hypothesis, namely a two-dimensional time referent which is simultaneously diachronic and synchronic, and which accordingly integrates the characteristics of langue on the one hand, and those of parole on the other. To put it in even more linguistic terms, it is as though a phoneme were always made up of all it’s variants. (311)to-process
What if patterns showing affinity, instead of being considered in succession, were to be treated as one complex pattern and read as a whole? By getting at what we call harmony, they would then see that an orchestra score, to be meaningful, must be read diachronically along one axis—that is, page after page, and from left to right—and synchronically along the other axis, all the notes written vertically making up one gross constituent unit, that is, one bundle of relations. (311)to-process