CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

I first remember seeing “metaphor theory” in the linguistics section hidden far atop the Taylorian library where I did most of my work for the semester (and where I heard a screaming crowd greet the queen a few stories below). I didn’t get to read on metaphor theory until I got back to the states and found Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By in a used book store in Chicago.

The basic argument is this: our conceptual mode of thinking (dominated by language as we’ve all been informed as of late) is essentially metaphoric. Not only in language do we model higher concepts on more earthy, physical phenomena, but this metaphorical process dominates our thinking too. Really, we’ve all known about metaphor in language for centuries. All Lakoff did was to glue that with the current philosophical trends that argue that language dominates thought. Some popular examples Lakoff uses are: A.) ARGUMENT IS WAR, B.) IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, C. HAPPY/LIFE/POWER IS UP.  An example of A: “We crushed his argument,” “I broke down his defense,” etc. Example for B: “I gave you that idea,” “His thesis is buried deep in the dense jargon,” etc. And examples for C: “My spirits rose,” “His health declined,” “She’s on top of the situation.” Lakoff argues this isn’t inherent to language alone but actually structures the way we think about the world. After reading the book, it felt as if Lakoff was doing the field work of Derrida’s theorizing about everything being dominated by language. Lakoff tries to sort through actual expressions and figure out how this plays out in common speech. Quite interesting to think of how metaphor dominates our thinking.

I read Lakoff over the past spring break, but I thought of him again this morning while reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s fourth chapter of Nature, entitled “Language.” Emerson likewise argues for the primacy of metaphor in language (though not applying it to mental conceptual systems as Lakoff does, of course).  His basic argument is outlined immediately: “1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.”  He then argues that “man is an analogist” and “immediate dependence of language upon nature….never loses its power to affect us.” He continues: “hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories.” And then Emerson says something that sounds straight out of Lakoff: “Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

However, the two thinkers come to slightly different conclusions. Whereas Lakoff simply argues that our conceptual thinking models “higher” (see, already did it again with a spatial metaphor), more abstract concepts on “lower,” more earthy phenomena. Emerson argues that “visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side.” If we can frame it in body/soul terms, Lakoff argues that our notion of the soul is built upon the feelings of the body while Emerson argues that our feelings of the body must lead to thoughts of the soul.

The trend today is with Lakoff, of course. But need they be mutually exclusive? Need one be dualistic and the other materialistic? Can’t they be two sides to the single coin of metaphor? Lakoff frames it in physical, psychological terms compared to Emerson’s romantic transcendentalism, perhaps leaving ole’ Ralph in the dust for our contemporary minds. But just because our soulful reflection is modeled on our physical interaction with the physical world, this doesn’t need to deny us the validity of soulful reflection, of the very human feeling that there is something more to every object than the thing as a lump of atoms alone.

Some improper speculation I stumbled into during morning devotions. I’m in Isaiah, slowly plodding through all of the old testament. This morning I came to the messianic prophecies in chapter 53. And I thought.

Why does the author speak of the messiah in the past tense?

10 “ Who among you fears the LORD?
Who obeys the voice of His Servant?
Who walks in darkness
And has no light?
Let him trust in the name of the LORD
And rely upon his God.
11 Look, all you who kindle a fire,
Who encircle yourselves with sparks:
Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled—
This you shall have from My hand:
You shall lie down in torment.

Such poetry sets up the standard of the human condition: wandering in the dark. After all, the Roman was right who said errare est humanum, not simply with our English notion of the word “to err” as “to make a mistake,” but with the full force of the Latin “errare”—to wander. Contemporary philosophy, thank God, partially undoes the Enlightenment torchbearing to plunge us back into where we were all along, Dark Ages.

Such poetry strips our ecclesiology of the foolhardy notion of torchbearing—“we are a city upon a hill.” These verses smack John Winthrop right over the head. The arena is the same: darkness. One can only “fear,” “obey,” “trust,” and “rely.” Such a vocabulary ought to continually ricochet in our skulls with such humbling, metallic force that we never again boldly use Winthropian-rhetoric.

Such poetry steals our torches. Thank God. After all, Lucifer (Lucem Ferre) was the light-bearer, even in the glory of Heaven. And the poet was right who continued sed perseverare diabolicum–but to persevere [in error] is of the devil. Put out your torches.

Because I love Gustave Doré

Rather than ask for certainty of one’s own being, because even an affirmative answer to that question is yes, Marion posits another, more fundamental question which he terms the erotic reduction: “Does anyone love me?” Only a positive answer to this question can answer vanity’s “What’s the use?”

The immediate objection that can be raised, and what is, I think, the underlying objection that Marion seeks to answer throughout the remainder of the book, is: “does not the demand that someone love me presuppose that I first be?” There is no quick and easy answer to this question, as the book plays out. Instead of offering an immediate answer, to which there can be none without first establishing a new erotic logic in place of the ego cogitans reason. Once again, against vanity, it is not enough for a person to see himself as a certified or certain object; he must find himself to be an assured phenomenon that is given and free from pointlessness. This assurance, distinct from the certainty of the epistemic or ontological reduction, can only come from elsewhere; that is, the ego cannot assure himself of himself, for that would require a love of self. Loving the self, if that should provide assurance, would be no different from the burden that the thinking ego feels in attempting to legitimate its being.

What happens, when the erotic reduction becomes an issue, is that one admits to a lack in one’s self. That is, I cannot be complete without assurance against vanity, and because I cannot assure myself against this vanity (for that would be a circular endeavour anyway), my legitimation, and hence myself, must come from elsewhere. Thus Marion says,

The very one who could assure me must estrange me. In short, certainty can lead me back to myself, because I acquire it by subtraction,[...]while assurance separates me from myself, because it opens within me the separation of an elsewhere.

Of course, many will immediately object that they do not lack and can indeed assure themselves because they love themselves. After all, doesn’t everyone love themselves first before all?

Marion retorts,

How can an I become doubled, as the ambition to be assured from elsewhere demands, while at the same time remaining the same, as the intention of love oneself requires? [....] A single and compact I cannot become an other than itself, in order to give itself an assurance that responds to the question Does anyone out there love me?”

He goes further, however, to give three reasons for the absurdity of thinking one can love oneself. First, self-love would require that one precede one’s self. Marion, supposing that love is necessary for and prior to one’s self, points out that his parents could only love him originally because “they loved me before I was even in a state to receive their love; loved without yet being, I was thus preceded by the response to the question ‘Does anyone love me?’ which I could not yet pose to myself.” This point is, I think, difficult to grasp at first, because we still wish to assume that something must be before it can be loved. But, if one supposes as Marion does, that one is not until one is loved, then love must come first in everything circumstance.

Second, an answer to the erotic reduction requires a complete conviction, leaving no room for doubt and falling into the suspicion of vanity, if love is to be effective. In other words, there must be an excess of love as “an answer that is only affirmative is not enough—only the excess that surprises and surpasses would suffice” for the erotic reduction. “The measure of this love requires loving without measure” because “every love simply commensurable with vanity would only reinforce its dominion.” Thus, I would have to demand an excess of myself over myself in order to sufficiently love myself. Marion proves this point with the common situation where the love of another is not enough because one considers them to be equal as one’s self, having the same lack of assurance as one’s self. The question that remains, and which will be addressed later, is how the other comes to be able to exceed and supply the excess of love that is required for one’s assurance.

Third, although one may provisionally divide one’s self (the I can play the role of an empirical me even as it can play the role of the transcendental I), loving requires an effective exteriority that involves crossing a true distance, a distance that is not feigned. Without the crossing of a distance because distance is what is required for something to be distributed, to go, come, and return. A true action must always cover a distance, and the self, although it may divide itself, cannot ultimately cover this gap. The lover must come from elsewhere.

A continuation of my last post, as prompted by Robert’s recommendation of James Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation.

Smith’s book definitely helps. I’m not quite done, so I may have more remarks later.

In the book, Smith focuses on four different hermeneutics, crudely and quickly summarized below:

• Traditional Evangelical: views interpretation as result of the Fall, something to be overcome. Rather, they desire unmediated and immediate full presence of God’s truth. Individual interpretation (which Smith equates with our contextuality in the world–our culture, our history, etc) can and must be submitted immediately with a purely biblical interpretation for believers. Thus, diversity of interpretation is frowned upon and–as Smith equates interpretation with a person’s context in creation–diversity in general is frowned upon, Smith argues. This leads to their traditional interpretation of Babel: the diversity of languages is a wholly negative punishment. In contrast, Smith argues–in the line of Kuyper–that God’s punishment at Babel was against human desire for unity (he doesn’t use “uniformity,” but seems to mean so). Thus, the dispersment of humanity into diverse langauges, cultures, and contexts (and hence, diverse interpretations) was the natural way that Creation ought to be.
• Habermas, Godamer, Pannenberg: acknowledge the ubiquity of interpretation, but still argue that it will eventually be overcome by God in the consummation–just not right now as the evangelical camp believes. Thus, they still imply the unnatural, fallen nature of interpretation.
• Heidegger- Defines “fallenness” as human finitude–and thus, ontologizes the Fall and makes it natural.
• Derrida- Interpretation is essentially violent, cutting and seperating. Deconstruction is an example.

The one thing in common to all these views is a rather negative view of human finitude and interpretation. Heidegger makes the Fall ontologically natural by equating it with human finitude, the evangelical camp frowns upon human contextuality as something to be overcome, etc.

In contrast, Smith puts forth his “creational-pneumatic” hermeneutic. In this view, human finitude is natural. Smith then argues against Heidegger; if finitude is natural and inherent in creation, and if Creation is–in line with Genesis 1–good, then human finitude likewise is good. A person’s contextuality is to be rejoiced as a natural and good part of what it means to be a human being. from this comes Smith’s interpretation of Babel and his joyful approval of diversity (in interpretation too).

Smith mentions Pentecost directly more than once, giving it a central place in his argument:

“The heart of a creational hermeneutic is also rather ‘Pentecostal,’ creating a space where there is room for a plurality of God’s creatures to speak, sing and dance in a multivalent chorus of tongues” (Smith 21)

“Further, as a creational-pneumatic hermeneutic, my model relates the multiplicity of tongues not only to this Babelian trespass but also to the experience of Pentecost. For at Pentecost Yahweh’s pneuma affirms the multiplicity of creation and the post-Babelian era, in direct contrast to the quest for unity that initiated the construction of the towers. It opens the door for an understanding of truth divorced from monologism, which in itself opens the door to those who have been shut out of the kingdom, so to speak—excluded because their interpretation was different. The truth, in creation, is plural” (Smith 60).

This is a different take than mine, but helpful, I think, in further reflection. A few thoughts this led me to:

Initially Smith’s arguments seem to go against mine. Pentecost for Smith is not a breach of human finitude in which individual consciousness can come to know God directly. The word “breach” itself has negative connotations that I think Smith would protest–if human finitude is good, there is nothing to “break through” or “breach.” Likewise, Smith’s book argues against the evangelical desire for unmediated experience of God’s truth. Then, for me to say that the Spirit is a means of God to crack through human finitude and give immediate experience of God to individuals would be distasteful at best for Smith, I think.

Could Pentecost be a means of preserving both the naturally good human finitude/creational diversity and direct, unmediated experience of God?  In reality, I think that Pentecost tends to muddle and deconstruct the binary of mediated/unmediated. For instance, we see that the Spirit itself is mediated–from God, through Christ, to us. Yet at the same time, the indwelling of the Spirit–especially in mystic traditions–has been supposed to give the individual, finite human direct (albeit momentary) access to God, i.e. speaking in tongues, prophecy–all the charismatic gifts of the Spirit seem to suggest a flow directly from the Divine, into and out of the finite creation–even though is mediated to us via the Word. Really, much of the mystical experience of the Spirit seems to be the mysterious, paradoxical encounter of finite with Infinite in which the good and natural finiteness of the individual is still preserved, but in experience of the infinite.

Finally, does Pentecost guarentee the possibility of a universal language with fixed meaning for all people? I don’t think so. The indwelling of the Spirit could be the Infinite speaking directly to the finite, but if the finite tried to communicate this experience of the Transcendental Signified to other finite individuals, he/she would fail, as these other individuals are still seperated from him/her by their own different context. All people are finite, but this is made manifest in different contexts for each individual. Thus, God speaks directly to everyone in their finiteness, but it is an utterly individual affair in which one individual’s direct encounter of God cannot rise above another’s in prominence precisely because every individual has a different context.

So, if this is the case, we seem to have done one giant circle. Fixed, extralinguistic meaning is possible through the Pentecostal breach. But, it is only possible on an individual basis because of human finiteness and differing contextuality. And, as Smith rightly shows, this is as good as Genesis 1 says. Is this relativistic? Perhaps. I’d be more inclined to say that Pentecost is the gift of absolute truth distributed on an individual basis. This isn’t to destroy truth, but to put it in its rightful place and likewise, to humble our own position in the scheme of things. I don’t think this is to throw away the distinction of “absolute,” as God is this absolute truth. But, it is an absolute, infinite truth meant to be experienced by finite, diverse individuals.

Thoughts?

To keep up Jacob and Adam’s late introduction streak alive, here I am with my own….

I am presently 21 years old, the oldest of five siblings, and the son of a wonderful mother and father. I was born in good ol’ North Dakota, but spent close to three-and-a-half early and formative years growing up on an orphanage my parents helped establish in Uganda–a beautiful country located in the heart of Africa. After returning to the United States, my family re-settled on a farm in North Dakota, where my mother somehow managed to homeschool myself and the rest of the rascal siblings up till I was a junior in high school. I spent the last two years of highschool at a tiny public school (20 in my graduating class), and after graduating took a year off to work, visit my old home and friends in Uganda, and get some direction on my next step in life. After a year, I decided to head to Dordt College with the aim of training to be a pastor someday. Since then, at the end of my sophomore year at Dordt, I have redirected my goals a bit, now majoring in both Theology and Philosophy with the intention of going on to further studies at the Graduate level, and to someday teach Theology at a highschool or college–God willing.

I’m a bit of a book-a-holic, and am ever cycling through delightful new reading material. My interests are very broad, ranging from rocks and minerals to Medieval philosophy, and sci-fi to the Mystics, but some of my primary reading is done in the areas of Theology, Philosophy and History. In addition to reading, I spend lots of time in the outdoors–camping, hiking, kayaking, and doing landscape photography. I could go on and on, but then I feel like I’d be bordering dangerously close to a Facebook/Myspace-like list of likes/dislikes, interests, relationship status, etc… So–I’ll end it here. I count it a great privilege to be able to learn from others’ ideas at the Veil Away, as well as contributing my own two cents.