It doesn't matter whether you're conservative or liberal, religious or skeptical, the very fact you are able to understand the words you're reading right now—that we are all able to communicate with each other using language—means we must share a vast body of beliefs.
While language may shape the way we think about the world to some small extent, it makes much more sense to say truth shapes language to a very large extent.
That’s the central argument of this book:
Truth is the condition that makes language possible.
To take the poll, click on your answer choice. Your answer is completely anonymous, not even I will know. This is just for fun.
Poll: Given our current political divides, would you say we live in different realities?
Table of contents with chapter links at the end of each post.
We appreciate your generosity!
Neal (Santa Claus), Tina, & Geordie Bear
3
The Poetry of Ordinary Language
TO DEMAND THE LITERAL TRUTH from poetry and obscure sacred texts—a demand we might call one of the defining characteristics of Western philosophy—is to ask for something that was never promised and cannot be delivered.
In Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, it is common to view language as figurative. Take, for instance, the Hindu and Buddhist perspectives on the metaphysics of maya, the notion that reality dissolves the boundaries that hold things apart. Because language depends on the separations that define maya—subject from predicate, noun from verb, species from genus, one word from another, and so forth—it is assumed that reality is beyond linguistic expression. But of course this does not mean that one ceases to talk about it. It merely changes the way we view such talk. In effect, it increases the importance of poetry in our conception of speech and knowledge. It is simply assumed that all talk is essentially poetry, whether or not the speaker realizes it. It is only through poetry—words that when taken literally are untrue—that we have any way at all to speak of reality.
What does it mean to say that God has the head of an elephant and is the son of Shiva and Shakti? It’s hard to say, even if we worship God this way. What does it mean to say that I am drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Jesus? One can cherish the ritual and still have no idea what it means. Does the notion that God has the head of an elephant contradict the idea that God had a son named Jesus? What about the idea that Jesus is both God and the son of God? Only the illusion of literal truth makes us wonder whether there is a contradiction here. Once we free ourselves from that, the words and images become supple and malleable, mere riddles in need of interpretation.
A dramatic shift must occur in one’s attitude toward logical contradiction. The principle of non-contradiction applies straightforwardly to literal speech. In it, A and not-A cannot both be, as we say, ‘literally’ true. Indeed, the acceptance of non-contradiction as the measuring rod of truth is likely one of the defining qualities of literalness. But in poetry, the principle of non-contradiction either does not apply or applies only indirectly. In one line of (not very good) poetry, I can describe the sun as a blazing bird, and in the next I can call it the angel of the daytime sky. No one but a pedant will bat an eyelash. In the same way, the Hindu can say that God is Shiva and Shakti and Krishna and Ganesh and any of a thousand other gods. He can with little trouble add Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, his guru, or the girl next door to the standard pantheon precisely because he understands all these images of God as merely that—images, metaphor, poetry—which, although they are to be passionately embraced, cannot be taken literally. Because they are images, all mirror an aspect of the godhead; they are all ‘true’. But for the same reason they are also ‘false’ and need to be taken with a grain of salt. They make sensual and imaginable what is in itself none of these things. Because of this, images are both precious and not to be taken seriously.
Many religions believe taking a picture of God literally is idol worship. There is a Hindu prayer that apologizes to the universal, timeless, and shapeless God, asking for forgiveness on the grounds that it was only by giving God some definite form that it was possible to worship him at all. But the Hindu, precisely because he has so many idols, has none, whereas literalists with only one well-guarded image, are, at least from the Hindu perspective, the true idolaters.
What is of interest here is not the metaphysics of any particular religion or any sort of theology, but to point out what happens when we think of language as poetry. Insofar as metaphors do not pretend to be literal depictions, alternative metaphors cannot contradict one another. Their meaning is far too obscure for simple logic.
How sharp is the line between poetry and ordinary speech? More blurry than we commonly realize. We need only consider how much of ordinary speech is slang or idiom. A great deal of it, if not most of it. And surely most slang and idiom, whether evocative or dull, is essentially metaphorical. Consider for instance the words: cool, neat, lousy, and stinks. Or these ubiquitous phrases: passed away, home free, sign up. Anyone who has attempted a word-for-word translation into another language will quickly come to realize how figurative language really is. And because virtually the whole of ordinary language either is or was figurative, virtually the whole of it either needs or once needed the principle of generosity. But to really make this case, we will first need to dispel some common misconceptions about language.
Table of Contents
What do YOU think?
Do you agree that “virtually the whole of ordinary language either is or was figurative”? Why/why not?
Is reality beyond linguistic expression?
Questions? Ideas? Feel free to comment!
Truth and Generosity: Chapter 3