Amos

In case you wonder about the mechanics of Stephen's vision:

Time shall be no more" simply means that with the rapture of his past the new Stephen took up residence in his subconscious mind where 'time-as-such' is not known . . . and therefore became the end of his involutionay period = soulfree and fancy free because to be 'one with' your soul is to be 'without' a soul (sic). This, then, is how Stephen "re-created life out of life." It happens all over in Romanitc literature but a detailed account of this is the birth of Jesus as the reborn Joseph.

John Page

I consider language the product of specific thought processes (i.e. a type of thought). The apparent "entwinement" she refers to is IMO a confusion driven by our use of language to express our thoughts.

Hope this is clear now.

Cheer, John

phaedrus

Language is a type of thought you say. Could you elaborate on that .....i mean what are the different types of "thoughts" we have and how language is not an "expression" but a type of thought.

What penny means is that language and thought cant be seen as being mutually exclusive entities

Amos

Hi pheadrus, would it be al right to say that language is the verbalization of thought? If so, it is a product of convention (agreement) and our voice box ("adamps apple") is used to interject reason into our stream of words. If so, glossolalia would be non-rational speach and therefore "God's" language that is free from the unfluence of our rational [Adamic] nature/influence.

Accordingly, if thinking is not part of our God identity (or freethinkers could go heaven) would this not mean that language and thought are mutually exclusive for if they were not freethinkers could become soulffree and fancyfree in which case marauders would be allowed into heaven.

John Page

Here's my post again for clarity: "I consider language the product of specific thought processes (i.e. a type of thought)." I mean that language is the product of a type of thought, not that it was a type of thought itself. It is through thought processes that language is expressed.
I don't disagree with this (see above). However, Penny also says I think there is a great deal of use in such an exercise and consider it nigh on essential to investigate thought's feedback loops - e.g. thinking aloud enables one to externalize the thought in a different manner than mere inward contemplation. I also believe that thoughts and fears (primitive thoughts?) can exist completely independently of language - witness localization of speech areas in the brain.

I hope I've cleared up some confusion rather than added to it!

Cheers, John

Luiseach

The other contributors to the thread have welcomed you already, and I'll add my belated greeting.

I apologise for not responding earlier, but I've been up to my eyes in work for the past few days (I'm preparing job applications....ack!), and I see that the convo has moved on quite a bit. I'll see if I can start the process of catching up.

This is a good way of putting it, I think. Yes.

One question, though (although you may have dealt with this issue later in the thread and I haven't read it yet...if so, never mind the question, I'll find it...) :-D --- If language is a product of the human brain, then how can it not be innate, in your view? To put the question another way, what do you mean by the innate foundations of language not being 'fundamental'? I think my queries are for clarification.

Luiseach

Yep, as I predicted, you did deal with my queries further along in the convo....lol!

Ah, yes...I see what you mean. I agree. Very good point to make. Language, besides being inherently logocentric, is also innately structured to 'critique' itself. Which ties in rather well with Derrida's insistence on texts unravelling themselves. Deconstruction happens to language, and it part of how language functions...we (as 'deconstructionists') don't do deconstruction, we just witness the event (I think I talked about this earlier in the thread somewhere).

So, in a sense, language really is constructed in a self-reflexive manner....it's as much a process as it is a thing.

Luiseach

I agree with Derrida on this point. As soon as we reflect on 'reality,' even in our thoughts, we are re-presenting it, and therefore the only way we can get at it is through representational processes, such as language. This is not to say that there is no external reality, since there must be if we can represent it, but the only reality we know is that which has been filtered through the words (or even images) we use to engage with it in a way that seems to make sense to us within the context of the signifying system...

....all of which suggests that consciousness is dependant upon language of some form or another...

Luiseach

Hi Amos...

Should we turn our critical eye on Eliot, do you think?

It would be interesting.

I think one of my favourite bits of the poem is this:

'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.'

Eliot The Waste Land (ll. 19-24)

It's the phrase 'A heap of broken images' that has always struck me as relevant to any discussion of consciousness, or an awareness of 'reality.' We see the world like this, I think, and through language try to impose sense, logic, cause/effect, reasonableness, meaning onto what is, without language, unreasonable. Language 'shelters' us from the full awareness of the universe's incoherence. Or, on a more positive note, we as conscious, self-aware signifying folk, are the universe making sense of itself.

What do you think? (or anyone else, for that matter!)

Eliot definitely plays hardball in the poetry department. Sheesh!

Amos

Very much agree with you here but would add the word "trying" [to make sense]. Lovely, he sure does play hardball, doesn't he?

It's a lyric poem, no question about that. Yes it would be nice to do "The Waste Land" with you because I have never really had a decent opinion of it. We did in English 460 but never got much out of it.

I am looking for some direction with regard to "What the Thunder Said." [I think] I am OK with the rest. Let's face it, there is movement in the poem but I am afraid that from my own perspective I do not agree with the ending as much as I can appreciate the beginning. I also think it is wrong of him to use foreign languages because that leaves me stranded.

"April is the cruellest month" (love it; shows promise) and maybe this is a call for us to look beyond our barren winter months and towards awakening. Would you please considder these lines to forshadow the first 175 lines.

The sweetest rest is at even,
After a wearisome day
When the heavy burden of labor
Has born our hearts away;
And those who have never know sorrow
Cannot know the infinite peace
That falls on the troubled spirit
When it sees at last release.

We must live through the dreary winter
If we would value the spring;
And the woods must be cold and silent
Before the robins sing.
The flowers must be burried in darkness
Before they can bud and bloom,
And the sweetest warmest sunshine
Comes after storm and gloom.

On line 42 "Oed' und leer das meer" tells me that last year nothing happened but this year is different. Hence the prophesy that followed to give a foreshadow of this.

So I suspect that this is a call to awakening with the invitation to come under the shadow of this "red rock" (supposedly the rock of Christ???). With "the dry stone [makes] no sound of water" he seems to be looking for "living water." So yes, the lines you cited point at 'the unexamined life.'

It's late and time for me to quit. We'll carry on tomorrow.