Language and Myth
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Trans. Susanne K. Langer. New York: Dover, 1946. Print.
SummaryCassirer seeks to discover the "common root of linguistic and mythic conception" (44) and how this relationship is reflected "in the structure of the 'word' that is given by speech and by myth" (44). He begins by telling a “sort of myth interpretation” (2) of the happenings between Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato’s Phaedrus. He argues that "mythical and verbal thought" are connected in every way (83) and that the structures of "mythic and linguistic realms" develop based on their spiritual motives.
ResponseIn class on 9/12/12 we had a discussion about how language fulfills roles for humans as well as how we had concepts before we had language (87-88). Cassirer seems to want us to think about the tension between these ideas. How does language fulfill certain roles for me, and how do certain connotations for such symbols play into this? For example, common first questions between people meeting for the first time might be, "Where are you from?" and "What do you do?" Our answers to such questions are full of a myriad of symbols and thus, connotations. Further, the ambiguous question, "Who are you?" takes the connotations of the possible roles we play in life to the extreme. The language and connotation embedded within someone identifying themselves as a "Republican, Christian stay-at-home-mom in Texas" is quite different than versus someone who identifies themselves as a "Democrat, Unitarian Universalit, businesswoman in New York"
Cassirer uses the concepts of "word" and "discourse" interchangeably and discusses the notion of words (aka discourse) as they connect to our inner tensions, which originate from consciousness (44-45). What truly has been fascinating to me since our class discussion on inner tension is how we might articulate our experiences in those inner tension moments. Can we ever fully articulate a moment when we experience inner tension? When I think of inner tension, I think of my friends who have recently gone through giving birth to their first child. We've all heard women tell us that we cannot understand the deep abiding love of having children until going through nine months of carrying a child and birthing it into the world--those moments are indescribable to others who have not experienced it--moments of inner tension. Connections/QuestionsJust as Heidegger discusses seeking the essence of technology, Cassirer, too, acknowledges name and essence as and their internal relation to each other (3).
When Cassirer talks of spoken word as "mere suggestion," which appears as "a poor and empty shell," I'm reminded of Julie’s metaphor of a word as a shell—an empty vessel—during our Volosinov discussion. What does logic (24) look like as the interplay between consciousness and the things outside? For Cassirer, it's the grey area rather than the concrete black/white ideas, that matter most. The grey areas in language are what he says we should turn our attention to, as these ambiguous areas are the least obvious. These ideas of ambiguity remind me of Peirce's concept of firstness as well as Heidegger's argument of embracing open-ended questions and resisting the danger of enframing (i.e. boxing, or trapping, ourselves into answers). After class on 9/12, I watched the scene from Contact (see below) that Dr. Murray used as an example to explain "inner tension." These impulses are almost like bursts in time when we encounter moments that leave us almost speechless, where we grasp to try to interpret the experience. When, in our own lives, do we encounter these "inner tensions"? Further, our examples in class were all positive and involved nature to some degree. Can an inner tension experience take place outside of nature and might it be a negative experience ever? |
Key Quotes
“Here in the realm of spooks and daemons, as well as in the higher reaches of mythology, the Faustian word seemed ever to hold good: here it was always assumed that the essence of each mythical figure could be directly learned from its name. The notion that name and essence bear a necessary internal relation to each other, that the name does not merely denote but actually is the essence of its object, that the potency of the real thing is contained in the name—that is one of the fundamental assumptions of the mythmaking consciousness itself” (3).
Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental activity” (5).
“For all mental processes fail to grasp reality itself, and in order to represent it, to hold it at all, they are driven to the use of symbols. But all symbolism harbors the curse of mediacy; it is bound to obscure what it seeks to reveal. Thus the sound of speech strives to "express" subjective and objective happening, the "inner" and the "outer" world; but what of this it can retain is not the life and individual fullness of existence, but only a dead abbreviation of it. All that "denotation" to which the spoken word lays claim is really nothing more than mere suggestion; "suggestion" which, in face of the concrete variegation and totality of actual experience, must always appear a poor and empty shell. That is true of the external as well as the inner world: "When speaks the soul, alas, the soul no longer speaks!” (7).
“[K]knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of thing sas they are, but must frame their essence in "concepts” (7).
“[E]very form of existence has its source in some peculiar way of seeing some intellectual formulation and intuition of meaning” (8).
"[N]o matter how widely the contents of myth and language may differ, [...] the same form of mental conception is operative in both" (84).
"If language is to grow into a vehicle of thought, an expression of concepts and judgments, this evolution can be achieved only at the price of forgoing the wealth and fullness of immediate experience. In the end, what is left of the concrete sense and feeling content it once possessed is little more than a bare skeleton" (98).
"[Language and myth] are both resolutions of an inner tension, the representation of subjective impulses and excitations in definite objective forms and figures" (88).
"According to the traditional teachings of logic, the mind forms concepts by taking a certain number of objects which have common properties, i.e., coincide in certain respects, together in thought and abstracting from their differences, so that only the similarities are retained and reflected upon, and in this way a general idea of such-and-such class of objects is formed in consciousness" (24).
Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental activity” (5).
“For all mental processes fail to grasp reality itself, and in order to represent it, to hold it at all, they are driven to the use of symbols. But all symbolism harbors the curse of mediacy; it is bound to obscure what it seeks to reveal. Thus the sound of speech strives to "express" subjective and objective happening, the "inner" and the "outer" world; but what of this it can retain is not the life and individual fullness of existence, but only a dead abbreviation of it. All that "denotation" to which the spoken word lays claim is really nothing more than mere suggestion; "suggestion" which, in face of the concrete variegation and totality of actual experience, must always appear a poor and empty shell. That is true of the external as well as the inner world: "When speaks the soul, alas, the soul no longer speaks!” (7).
“[K]knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of thing sas they are, but must frame their essence in "concepts” (7).
“[E]very form of existence has its source in some peculiar way of seeing some intellectual formulation and intuition of meaning” (8).
"[N]o matter how widely the contents of myth and language may differ, [...] the same form of mental conception is operative in both" (84).
"If language is to grow into a vehicle of thought, an expression of concepts and judgments, this evolution can be achieved only at the price of forgoing the wealth and fullness of immediate experience. In the end, what is left of the concrete sense and feeling content it once possessed is little more than a bare skeleton" (98).
"[Language and myth] are both resolutions of an inner tension, the representation of subjective impulses and excitations in definite objective forms and figures" (88).
"According to the traditional teachings of logic, the mind forms concepts by taking a certain number of objects which have common properties, i.e., coincide in certain respects, together in thought and abstracting from their differences, so that only the similarities are retained and reflected upon, and in this way a general idea of such-and-such class of objects is formed in consciousness" (24).