Abstract
The origin of reason through an outline of the genealogy of language in the light of homonymity, analogy, and metaphor.
In this chapter, I try to show that reason as a cognitive capacity primarily functions through the use of homonyms. The argument is based on the fact that experience is created through the chiastic interrelation between world and body-mind as it is documented by the historical precedence of the verb in relation to the substantive. This creative modus operandi invests the mind with a catalogue of virtual aspects of sense incorporated in the word complex which represents them centered in the root. Thus, a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root like “*ghabh-” contains the double sense of “to hold,” which is either to take, and grasp, or to give and yield. This metaphorical core sense—probably inferred from the hand, since gabhasti means “hand” or “forearm” in Sanskrit—produces other aspects of sense like “begivenhed” in Danish, meaning “event,” and also “habit,” the way to “have,” or to accommodate oneself to the occurrences in life. What I claim is that reason is the capacity to understand and hence by meta-reflection to choose deliberately between such senses, in particular relating to their value basis, because reason also is involved as their principle of origin—qua practical reason—through which this metaphorical richness was originally coined. These principles of construction and deconstruction may also be applied to the analysis of reason itself since it also has a homonymic basis in the metaphors of air and light.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
J. G. Herder must probably be credited with shaping the idea that conceptualization is a function of the metaphorical use of perception. Like Locke, Herder saw sensation as producing all our concepts, but explained the abstract and nonempirical concept as the product of the capacity to create homonyms (Herder 2002).
- 3.
Jacob L. Mey suggested the concept “wording” many years ago: “By ‘wording’ I will understand the process through which human beings enter the world by their use of language” (Mey 1985, p. 166).
- 4.
It is remarkable that two of the most powerful theories of language from the last century, the one of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the one of Ludwig Wittgenstein, presuppose that language is a function of expression, thus abstracting from the concept of language as “synthetic” in Aristotle’s sense, as a contingent system in relation to semantic genealogy. Only the Stoics tried to seriously counter this view, despite the fact that their grammatical masterpieces that often strayed into onomatopoeic fantasies. However, in “Cratylus,” Plato anticipated the critique of the “synthḗké” which would become the trademark of Saussure’s theory. Merleau-Ponty developed his thoueghts on the origin of language based on his deep knowledge of child psychology; Wittgenstein’s casual remarks probably just intended to escape the label theory, which haunted him. The expression theory of language is, of course, rather banal, and impossible to corroborate, open to various perverse sorts of the petitio principii. It is worth noticing that at the time of its foundation in 1866, the Paris Linguistic Society in 1866 banned the discussions of the origin of language. I shall pursue it anyhow.
- 5.
In this and the following etymological presentations, I shall generally use: Klein, Ernest. 1971. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Amsterdam: Elsevier; The Oxford English Dictionary 1989. 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press; Watkins, Calvert, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots 2000. 2nd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.; Barnhart, Robert K., ed. 1988. Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology. H.W. Wilson Co.; and especially the Online Etymology Dictionary 2001. New York: Douglas Harper.
- 6.
In placing the metaphor in the center of epistemology, the opus of Hans Blumenberg stands out. Important translations are (Blumenberg 1996, 2010). One must also give credit to G. Lakoff and M. Johnson for having examined the relation between the development of a primitive vocabulary of the environment and the metaphorical function of language as a means to structure both our perception and understanding, as early as in the 1980s (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
- 7.
In classical Greek, the compound word “onomatopoeia” means “making or creating names.” Hence, they used a different word to refer to imitating sounds, namely “echomimesis.”
- 8.
“theologia” is the same word in Greek and Latin.
- 9.
Watkins, op. cit., p. 14.
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Kirkeby, O. (2016). Some Reflections on the Origin of Reason Through an Outline of the Genealogy of Language in the Light of Homonymity, Analogy, and Metaphor. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_27
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