This reminds me of Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception making a distinction (which I've heard was borrowed from Cassirer and early psychologists) between banal and sedimentary speech and the literary practice:
"We possess in ourselves already formed significations for all of these banal words [paroles]. They only give rise in us to second-order thoughts, which are in turn translated into other words that require no genuine effort of expression from us, and that will demand no effort of comprehension from our listeners...our view of man will remain superficial so long as we do not return to this origin, so long as we do not rediscover the primordial silence."
"The writer who says and thinks of something for the first time...[transforms] a certain silence into speech."
I'm sure that there are certain factors today that make this ossification more persistent, but I really like the example of sea-language and the Acts of Supremacy and 1930s German because it shows that this is perhaps not, as a true pessimist might be inclined to argue, an unchangeable fact of modernity (or post-modernity) but a natural process present in other times and other domains (the development of the academic style of painting in the 19th century is perhaps another example which has been the subject of much study and maybe even the state of English literature at the beginning of the Edwardian era as well)
A very interesting passage from Merleau-Ponty - I know Cassirer relatively well but I can't think of anything that matches up with it - thank you for sharing. Hill discusses the poetry that came out of those two crises - both in Paul Celan and Wyatt, as well as other Henrician court poets; but he was very pessimistic about the state of contemporary poetry.
What a pleasure to see literature and philosophy so advantageously wed. And your insight about languages as practices is precisely one of the points MacIntyre is eager to make, at least it seems so to me.
Thank you so much; and yes I was hoping the argument was at least in the spirit of MacIntyre. In After Virtue the language dimension comes in through his account of 'narrative unity'. People form communities, communities form practices, and out of those practices the people tell stories that render their lives intelligible, both to themselves and to others.
Great piece Nik. Eliot says, even more forcefully, in The Use of Poetry, that "correct language is civilization." You draw on some excellent examples here.
Excellent read! But on the notion of 'practice' as the ground of virtue in MacIntyre: isn't the result that, in the end, anything is permitted? I have always found this troubling in the great sage of Notre Dame...
Ah there is a highly attractive but complicated and treacherous meta-ethics to deal with the problem of the courageous cat drowner or the scrupulous practitioner of Sado-masochism. Lots of stuff about traditions.
You tie practice and language together in intriguing ways here--and describe something all too familiar in the vapid use of language in contemporary business, government, and education.
Something I don't think Weber entirely anticipated is how far language (and numbers, or rather the presentation of data in PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and the like) would go in the direction of pseudo-rationalization. For Weber, disenchantment is the price of rationalization: selling our souls for efficiency. But if the main function of language and numbers is not a faithful reporting from the bean counters but an uncountable number of (external and internal) marketing campaigns dressing up statistical lies in colorful charts that are "precise" about fantasy beans down to a couple of decimal points, we have sold our souls for less than nothing. It's not a stable situation either culturally or economically.
A question from reading this, or perhaps an extension of sorts, is how does a practice begin?
Also, given the current values given to practices of disruption and innovation, is not the use of 'decline' a mis-labelling, or even an example of itself? I do not argue this in a strong sense. <insert emoji> but a practice of decline does have its refined if decadent schools and subcultures.
I have two beginnings to share. The first is a inquiry into might we establish the reader as a trade? Perhaps a nothing, perhaps not.
And the other is much more inchoate, which asks can a poet's poetry _only_ refine? Given the word's etymology one would say no, but I guess a making could begin in refinement, which a disruption is not want to do, being a different sort of change.
Other questions? Do declines presage disruptions, do all disruptions allow a creative destruction, necissitating invention? Or just as likely, a collapse? Using a market of winners and losers, as libertarians do for social activities beyond the market (or they assume there is nothing beyond the market) is perhaps a too risky thing?
All very good questions; I'm not sure I have very good answers to hand, and thank you for sharing the links. But on the point about the poet purifying language - I agree that the poet does something other than just refine the prior language of practices; poetry reacts off that language in creative ways. As R P Blackmur puts it poetry 'adds to the stock of available reality'
This reminds me of Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception making a distinction (which I've heard was borrowed from Cassirer and early psychologists) between banal and sedimentary speech and the literary practice:
"We possess in ourselves already formed significations for all of these banal words [paroles]. They only give rise in us to second-order thoughts, which are in turn translated into other words that require no genuine effort of expression from us, and that will demand no effort of comprehension from our listeners...our view of man will remain superficial so long as we do not return to this origin, so long as we do not rediscover the primordial silence."
"The writer who says and thinks of something for the first time...[transforms] a certain silence into speech."
I'm sure that there are certain factors today that make this ossification more persistent, but I really like the example of sea-language and the Acts of Supremacy and 1930s German because it shows that this is perhaps not, as a true pessimist might be inclined to argue, an unchangeable fact of modernity (or post-modernity) but a natural process present in other times and other domains (the development of the academic style of painting in the 19th century is perhaps another example which has been the subject of much study and maybe even the state of English literature at the beginning of the Edwardian era as well)
A very interesting passage from Merleau-Ponty - I know Cassirer relatively well but I can't think of anything that matches up with it - thank you for sharing. Hill discusses the poetry that came out of those two crises - both in Paul Celan and Wyatt, as well as other Henrician court poets; but he was very pessimistic about the state of contemporary poetry.
What a pleasure to see literature and philosophy so advantageously wed. And your insight about languages as practices is precisely one of the points MacIntyre is eager to make, at least it seems so to me.
Thank you so much; and yes I was hoping the argument was at least in the spirit of MacIntyre. In After Virtue the language dimension comes in through his account of 'narrative unity'. People form communities, communities form practices, and out of those practices the people tell stories that render their lives intelligible, both to themselves and to others.
A brilliant and truly elegantly erudite synthesis. I'm not just a big fan, I'm downright jealous of this one. Highly recommended.
Great piece Nik. Eliot says, even more forcefully, in The Use of Poetry, that "correct language is civilization." You draw on some excellent examples here.
Excellent read! But on the notion of 'practice' as the ground of virtue in MacIntyre: isn't the result that, in the end, anything is permitted? I have always found this troubling in the great sage of Notre Dame...
Ah there is a highly attractive but complicated and treacherous meta-ethics to deal with the problem of the courageous cat drowner or the scrupulous practitioner of Sado-masochism. Lots of stuff about traditions.
Yeah... 'trechorous' is definitely one way I would be tempted to describe the idea...
You tie practice and language together in intriguing ways here--and describe something all too familiar in the vapid use of language in contemporary business, government, and education.
Something I don't think Weber entirely anticipated is how far language (and numbers, or rather the presentation of data in PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and the like) would go in the direction of pseudo-rationalization. For Weber, disenchantment is the price of rationalization: selling our souls for efficiency. But if the main function of language and numbers is not a faithful reporting from the bean counters but an uncountable number of (external and internal) marketing campaigns dressing up statistical lies in colorful charts that are "precise" about fantasy beans down to a couple of decimal points, we have sold our souls for less than nothing. It's not a stable situation either culturally or economically.
A question from reading this, or perhaps an extension of sorts, is how does a practice begin?
Also, given the current values given to practices of disruption and innovation, is not the use of 'decline' a mis-labelling, or even an example of itself? I do not argue this in a strong sense. <insert emoji> but a practice of decline does have its refined if decadent schools and subcultures.
I have two beginnings to share. The first is a inquiry into might we establish the reader as a trade? Perhaps a nothing, perhaps not.
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/the-reader-as-a-trade
And the other is much more inchoate, which asks can a poet's poetry _only_ refine? Given the word's etymology one would say no, but I guess a making could begin in refinement, which a disruption is not want to do, being a different sort of change.
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/tradition-first-entry-in-the-taphonomy
Other questions? Do declines presage disruptions, do all disruptions allow a creative destruction, necissitating invention? Or just as likely, a collapse? Using a market of winners and losers, as libertarians do for social activities beyond the market (or they assume there is nothing beyond the market) is perhaps a too risky thing?
All very good questions; I'm not sure I have very good answers to hand, and thank you for sharing the links. But on the point about the poet purifying language - I agree that the poet does something other than just refine the prior language of practices; poetry reacts off that language in creative ways. As R P Blackmur puts it poetry 'adds to the stock of available reality'
I'll be looking up Blackmore, my TBR poetry ETC has fallen behind by about 30 years