Language Alone

The Critical Fetish of Modernity

Geoffrey Galt Harpham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134734320
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

How did the concept of language come to dominate modern intellectual history? In Language Alone, Geoffrey Galt Harpham provides at once the most comprehensive survey and most telling critique of the pervasive role of language in modern thought. He shows how thinkers in such diverse fields as philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and literary theory have made progress by referring their most difficult theoretical problems to what they presumed were the facts of language.
Through a provocative reassessment of major thinkers on the idea of language-Saussure, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Rorty, and Chomsky, among them-and detailed accounts of the discourses of ethics and ideology in particular, Harpham demonstrates a remarkable consensus among intellectuals of the past century and beyond that philosophical and other problems can best be understood as linguistic problems. And furthermore, that a science of language can therefore illuminate them. Conspicuously absent from this consensus, he shows, is any consideration of contemporary linguistics, or any awareness of the growing agreement among linguists that the nature of language as such cannot be known.
Ultimately, Harpham argues, the thought of language has dominated modern intellectual history because of its singular capacity to serve as a proxy for a host of concerns, questions, and anxieties-our place in the order of things, our rights and obligations, our nature or essence-that resist a strictly rational formulation. Language Alone will interest literary critics, philosophers, and anyone with an interest in the uses of language in contemporary thought.

Three

ETHICS AND THE LAW OF LANGUAGE

1. Words as Guides, from Hume to Bernard Williams

One of the most striking features of the intellectual history of the past century is the relentless convergence of the hitherto separate fields of language and ethics. In the extended context of the Western tradition, this convergence may appear shocking, for ethical philosophers since Plato have generally distrusted language, especially literary language, as a subversive distraction from the kind of worldly rigor needed to conduct sound ethical reasoning. But from another point of view, this convergence is not surprising. From he beginning—since God created the world, and man, by a word—language has been felt to be instinct with spirit and has therefore always been a tempting resource for those who have struggled to articulate the relation of man, the only linguistic animal, and the ethical law that binds man and man alone. For this reason, language and ethics have never been altogether distinct concepts, and have indeed always demonstrated a kind of magnetic attraction for each other.

This old attraction took on new life when, with the advent of Saussurean modernism, the thought of language as such, language alone, began to dominate linguistics. For, unlike particular languages, language can be said to be universal and distinctive of the entire species; like the ethical law, it binds all alike (see Heidegger 1962: 312–48; Rorty 1989: 9; and Connor 102–32). A general or theoretical linguistics that takes as its object language alone has, then, already laid the groundwork for an understanding of language that is at once scientific and ethical. As we saw in the discussion of Saussure in the first chapter, the impossibility of a literal or empirical description of language alone invites a metaphorical supplementation that reflects, in Saussure’s case, particular normative concepts. In fact, it can be argued that theoretical linguistics becomes aware of itself as a fully modern and even scientific undertaking at the moment when it conceives of language as a force capable of exerting an ethical, that is, universal, influence on all human beings.

For its part, the inquiry into ethics has, for over 250 years, modernized itself by making the linguistic turn. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was beginning to be widely recognized that the ancient ethical questions—How ought one live? What is the good? What is the source of my sense of right and wrong? How do we know our duty? What is “imperative” in human life? Can there be ethical knowledge?—were having a difficult time finding answers that could command respect in a rationalist climate. Ethics is law; but what, and where, is the law? Why is a given principle credited with being “ethical,” when others are characterized as “political,” “self-interested,” “pathological,” or “ideological”? What mysterious warrant gives a given principle the kind of “overriding” force traditionally associated with ethics? Can ethical words be defined in nonethical terms? With so little evidence of the binding power of any principle worthy of the name of ethics, how can the legitimacy, much less the effectiveness, of the law be seriously asserted?

The specific version of these questions that challenged David Hume— with whom I will begin, in recognition of his direct influence on Kant—was, How do we know what is right if neither dogma, convention, nor reason tells us? Hume’s way of addressing this imperious question announces an agenda through which ethical theory is still making its way, without yet arriving at “new business.” In response, Hume attempted to construct not just a philosophy but a psychology, a sociology—and, most interestingly for our purposes, even a rudimentary linguistics. Since Hume, “progress” in the understanding of ethics has generally taken the form of disclosing an even deeper and more pervasive linguistic determination of the principles of ethics than had previously been supposed. A consensus on the intimate relation between language and ethics has not, however, produced agreement on the nature or content of the ethical law: the “ethics of language” do not crystallize in a single form. In fact, one of the most remarkable features of the linguistic turn in this field is the sheer variety of applications to which language can be put as an ethical agent. The narrowing of the search for the source of the law to the domain of language has resulted in an expansion rather than a contraction of the conception of the law itself, an expansion thoroughly in keeping with the generous and capacious spirit of Hume’s thinking.

Hume was among the first to attempt to think through what had traditionally been conceived as metaphysical questions in modern, nonmetaphysical terms—the subtitle of his first book, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) is An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. This method had no place for religious conviction, and accorded only a diminished role to reason, which Hume thought overrated. For Hume, reason was not the master of feelings or sensations, but only a diminished and moderated form of them. An understanding of morality had therefore to begin not with reason but with feelings, sentiments, and especially the primary and irreducible sensations of pain and pleasure, the true grounds of moral ideas. Such an approach—godless, atomistic, radically anti-idealist, empiricist, and utilitarian—was intended to sweep away all forms of dogmatism, piety, and intellectual mystification.

The method permitted no appeals to abstractions or idealizations. Hume was relentless in his pursuit of such theoretical fantasies, insisting in his more mature writings that our most cherished ideas, including that of a “self,” are weak and ambiguous concepts, not facts, and had a tendency to blend in with other, similarly shapeless things. Impressions, on the other hand, have a bracing specificity: they are distinct from each other and distinct from ideas by virtue of their greater “vivacity.” For Hume, if a thought or feeling is not grounded in an impression, it is not grounded at all. The cause-effect relation, for example, cannot actually be observed, and so must be considered a kind of cognitive-optical illusion that occurs whenever one thing regularly precedes and accompanies another, like the motion of a billiard ball that has been struck by another. Many of Hume’s readers have questioned this point. Surely, they say, when we see someone open a letter from the IRS, and then see him cry out, it is difficult to say that we do not see the connection between the two. But Hume insists that the connection merely seems to be visible, and that the agency behind this seeming is nothing other than custom, “the great guide of human life. . . . Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses” (1975: 5.1: 44–45).

Such realism had nothing to fear from contemporary science: no evidence of a “self” or a cause-effect “relation” was likely to emerge from some gentleman-scientist’s laboratory. But it encountered difficulties on its own, philosophical terrain. Kant, for one, was mystified by the notion of the nonexistent self. All impressions, he said, had to belong to someone, and Hume’s allowance for “unowned” impressions seemed curious. But the real problems arose in Hume’s account of “moral sentiments,” those feelings that captured the human sense of right and wrong.

While Hume might dismiss reason and theology with a shrug, he believed fervently in moral sentiments, which he described in the Treatise as natural, infallible, and automatic. He regarded as an indisputable fact that when we see a child harmed, we naturally and immediately condemn the harming action; and that if we witness an act of generosity or bravery, we automatically and rightly praise the act as virtuous. We do so not merely because the acts themselves are intrinsically worthy of blame or praise, but because of a powerful and universal feeling of “sympathy” whose spontaneous eruption within the human breast testifies to a common human moral endowment. As Hume put it, “The minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations. . . . As in strings equally wound up the motion of one communicates itself to the rest; so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature” (2000: 3.3.1: 368). The pleasure we take in acts of virtue and the displeasure we experience in the presence of vice constitute, for Hume, directly observable evidence of the moral sentiments implanted by nature in the human breast, part of the original fabric and formation of the human mind.

But what about those occasions where the passage from the act to the sensation to the sentiment is interrupted, conflicted, confused, or simply erroneous? How could Hume celebrate the limitless freedom of the imagination, as he did, and still insist that it had no power to interfere with the production of appropriate moral sentiments (1975: 5.2: 47)? How is it that people of diverse characters in widely varying circumstances feel precisely the same moral sentiments? And how are people to receive any moral instruction? Is there no guide to the right other than our inconstant feelings?

These questions disturb the youthful assurance of the Treatise, and even motivate one of its most famous moments, a kind of tacked-on appendix to the case Hume makes against reason as the origin of moral distinctions. “I cannot,” Hume remarks, “forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden, I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or ought not” The change is “imperceptible” but crucial, for since the ought expresses a new and different kind of relationship, “’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d’ and at the same time that a reason shou’d be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it” (2000: 3.1.1: 302). Philosophers have always worried about this passage because it creates doubt about Hume’s position on a key question, whether the passage from is to ought can ever be made by legitimate means. On one reading—the “standard interpretation”—he seems to deny that it can, but on another, he only expresses disappointment that those who make it do not spell out their reasoning more clearly (see Hudson). This is no small issue, for it reflects a larger uncertainty in the Treatise about the question of the ought, the imperative that guides us as if from above. Plainly, we feel the force of moral imperatives; but how, and why, since all moral sentiments are grounded in human nature itself?

Hume clearly felt that his treatment on this point was inadequate, because when, in 1751, he revised Book 3 of the Treatise (“Of Morals”) by writing the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, he introduced a new element into the discussion. He begins with a restatement of his position that the character of an action is determined by “some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species” (1975: 1.1: 173). But, he adds, before instinct makes this determination, it must go through a process of establishing facts, making distinctions and comparisons, and drawing conclusions—a process, in short, of reasoning. This would seem to install reason at the heart of morality, and thereby compromise his case against reason; but in order to foreclose on this possibility, Hume asserts that “the very nature of language guides us almost infallibly” in making the crucial decisions. Since “every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blameable qualities of men” (1975: 174; emphasis added). Since language use is natural and necessary for us, it should not be considered a rational process, and so, Hume suggests, we can receive moral guidance without benefit of reason.

With this conception of language in place, Hume can be said to have addressed his old problem, of how we pass from is to ought, a passage we make not by logical but by lexical means. The very nature of language, with its “sets” of words for vice and virtue, accomplishes the feat. To see is to think of the word, and thus to be led to the proper evaluation, and from thence to the brink of right action. If a given action elicits a “virtuous” description, then it ought to be performed or applauded. That little old lady is in need of assistance crossing the street; it would be generous and kind to assist her. Contemplating the prospect of such assistance gives us an immediately positive and pleasurable sensation. Therefore, one ought to give her a hand. Through the intermediate agency of language, we can tell what ought to be from a mere description of what is.

But other questions arise. Where does this “nature of language” come from? How can we say that human nature has all the answers to moral questions if, on occasion, it requires instruction and even correction by another kind of nature? The uncertain status of nature in Hume’s discourse produces a pattern of equivocation that is highly uncharacteristic in this philosopher of plain common sense. He is systematically unclear, for example, on the relation between the nature of language, the nature of man, and nature in some larger sense. A typical invocation of this simplest and most elementary of principles creates insoluble logical problems, as in the following: “Had nature made no such distinction, founded on the original constitution of the mind, the words honourable and shameful, lovely and odious, noble and despicable, had never had place in any language” (2000: 5.1: 214). This seems a mere restatement of Locke, who says that “Nature, even in naming of Things, unawares suggested to Men the Originals and Principles of all their Knowledge” (Locke 1975: 3.1: 5). But Hume’s point is actually far subtler, even to the point of obscurity. While Locke identifies language and nature, and places them both outside and prior to the human mind, Hume gives the human mind priority, and—vaguely, to be sure—suggests that nature and language follow on after, “founded” on the human mind. What Hume seems to be saying, unfolded to its full extent, is that the distinctions in the human mind must be made by nature, naturally, but then nature seems to take instruction from itself and create moral distinctions among qualities, which are then faithfully reflected in the nature of language, to which human beings can turn for instruction as to their own nature, which, as we know, was formed by nature.

The reason we need guidance is that human nature is naturally self-interested, and even the most amiable, sympathetic, and humane person thinks first of himself. The “natural” virtues remain properties of one’s personal character and are not necessarily oriented toward the welfare of others. As a medium of social interaction, language is conformed to the general interests of mankind, as expressed in the “artificial” virtues whose systematic cultivation produces, for example, justice as opposed to benevolence. “General language,” Hume says, is “formed for general use,” and “must be moulded on some more general views” (1975: 5.2: 228). Still nature, but nature at its best, language guides individuals away from a limited construction of their own nature and toward a more spacious or universal conception, which, as Hume concedes in a labored passage in an appendix, is still “natural” (see 1975: Appendix 3: 307). To reinforce the “externality” of language, Hume on one occasion even says that language comes to “invent a peculiar set of terms, in order to express those universal sentiments of censure or approbation, which arise from humanity.” Using these terms provided not by nature directly but invented by language, people disseminate moral concepts: “Virtue and Vice become then known; morals are recognized; certain general ideas are framed of human conduct and behaviour,” and the general good is promoted (1975: 9.1: 274).

Without the support provided by language—the definitions of words in particular—Hume’s argument would have little intellectual or emotional appeal, for he would have represented an essentially disjointed world in which the mind could only be guided by either instinct or etiquette. Situated between these two mighty forces, language gives the mind a legitimate role to play in determining its own nature and interpreting events in the world. But because Hume never works out a detailed theory of language, it is easy to underestimate how specific a notion of language and its operations he deploys, easy to miss the fact that he omits far more than he includes.

Hume’s understanding of language anticipates Saussure’s in being a means of communicating shared social knowledge. But it diverges sharply from Saussure—veers, indeed, in the direction of Chomsky—in that it claims the status of nature, and therefore of necessity, rather than being “arbitrary” and merely “conventional.” Humean language is, however, distinct from both Saussure and Chomsky in that it provides explicit instruction in the moral law. But perhaps the most striking divergence of Hume from all modern linguists is that Hume never discusses sign systems, syntax, the larger semantic patternings, the social contexts of utterances, or indeed any more general or systemic characteristic of language. For Hume, the fundamental unit of language is the word, and the ethically significant aspect of the word is the “qualities” directly associated with it. Hume is actively hostile to the notion that evaluations can be confused, conflicted, combined, inconstant, misguided, or unconscious; and he is altogether insensitive to the ways in which a description can be, for example, both exact and ironic or precise and metaphorical. For Hume, it is essential that language provides people with an infallible guide, but the account of language he produces is so limited and reductive that it cannot be taken seriously today.

To his partial credit, Hume seems to understand this. Again in the spirit of Locke, who devoted a number of pages in his Essay to a discouraged accounting of the imperfections and abuses of language, Hume concludes his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals with yet another clarification, in which he takes up questions raised but not settled by his account of the nature of language. In a final appendix called “Of Some Verbal Disputes,” he notes that the English language provides no absolutely precise way of demarcating virtues from talents, vices from defects: anything that could be described as a moral accomplishment could also, he concedes, be described as an organic condition, an aptitude, a lucky knack. From this small point a cascade of difficulties issues forth, as Hume considers the differences between social, intellectual, and moral virtues; between qualities of head and heart; between the voluntary and the involuntary. Faced with a proliferation of increasingly meaningless or misleading distinctions that suggest that language either has a mind of its own or no mind at all, Hume relinquishes the project of trying to establish the laws imprinted by nature in language. “Every one,” he says, “may employ terms in what sense he pleases: but this, in the mean time, must be allowed, that sentiments are every day experienced of blame and praise.” In the end, Hume resigns himself to the dispirited assertion that “it is of greater consequence to attend to things than to verbal appellations” (1975: 322).

At this point, Hume seems closer than ever to a position that could command respect in a modern context, the proposition that language is an arbitrary and artificial system of differences without positivity. But he seems miles away from himself, for he has demonstrated that a harder look at language’s dizzying capacity to generate distinctions, categories, and nuances can produce confusion about key points, such as whether justice is or is not “natural.” His terminal position, a dogged insistence on the primacy of “things,” represents an abandonment of the revolutionary gesture with which he had begun, a completion of the linguistic turn back to the starting point.

Hume’s late retraction notwithstanding, ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One LANGUAGE FOR BEGINNERS
• Two IDEOLOGY AND THE FORM OF LANGUAGE
• Three ETHICS AND THE LAW OF LANGUAGE
• InConclusion LANGUAGE AND HUMANITY
• Works Cited
• Index