ON JEST. Metafizyka a język. Parmenides - Wittgenstein - Barańczak
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2008
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Wydział Teologiczny UAM
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HE IS. Metaphysics and Language. Parmenides - Wittgenstein - Barańczak
Abstract
The aim o f this article is to look from an existential point of view at the metaphysical argument
from language to reality. The main questions are as follows: does language reflect the structure
of reality? or is it rather a tool that enables us to perform certain actions, like the action of
proving a thesis? and can we, by investigating the nature of language arrive at truths about extralinguistic
reality? Those issues are taken up with respect to insights gained by Parmenides, Wittengenstein
and Barańczak, a contemporary Polish poet and translator.
For Parmenides language is not an autonomous domain but is conjugated with external reality,
so by discovering the rules that govern the attribution of meaning to linguistic utterances we can
reach beyond phenomena towards the nature of the world as such. Contradictory statements are
then seen to result from the aspectuality of particular accounts, whereas in being conceived in its
entirety there is no self-contradiction but only degrees of properties. Parmenidean metaphysics is
of interest to us here in connection with his concept of the relationship between a word and its
referent, whereby it is possible to infer the essence of the thing picked out by a word from the
established rules of its correct usage.
Ludwig Wittgenstein is a philosopher whose impact on thinking about the metaphysical consequences
of language is not to be overlooked. His position concerning the very possibility of
metaphysical claims splits into two standpoints, expressed in his two basic works: Tractatus logico-
philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. Tractatus is Parmenidean in its presupposed
isomorphism between the structure of language and the world, as well as in assuming that the substance
of the world determines the logical space of all possibilities and that it is eternal and unchangeable.
On the other hand, however, we do not have an access to the comprehensive state of
things denoted as «the world» in its material mode, and therefore we have no basis for deciding
which metaphysical statements are its true formal representations. That is why on the level of logic
people can arrive at mutually exclusive metaphysical claims, as shown by Plato in the ending of
his Parmenides.
In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein considers, among others, the role of prototypes
in the process o f transmitting/learning the meaning of words whereby the objects of experience can
be categorized. He also reflects on language as an act governed by autonomous rules which are
accepted by users, a theory which he called language games. What underlies both these issues is
the question of an element o f identity between language and extralingustic reality. The answer that
this element consists in the logical form of an utterance whereby reality is supposed to be mapped
by a sentence becomes problematic in the light o f the discovery o f the ambiguity of an image when
it is placed in two different contexts that contain different prototypes of reference for the sign under
consideration. In reading a particular notation as a mapping of a specific state of things, one’s
knowledge of the rules of notation plays an important role as it enables one to recognize the content
that one already knows. The rules that impose interpretation on reality constitute a broadly
understood grammar. They are autonomous relative to reality so when we utter a sentence the words
obtain their meaning depending on how they are used. This does not translate into a referentially
understood meaning, because what turns out to be important is the sense of the word, i.e. the way
in which it is used by the speaker.
Self-aware poetry seeks sense in links between the word and the world, not just within the
domain of language itself. Conscious of grammatical rules, it employs them as a tool in overcoming
the autonomy of language. This approach is analyzed on the example of an essay on the essence
of poetry titled Tablica z Macondo [The Macondo License Plate] by Stanisław Barańczak.
He talks in it about a personalized license plate he would devise for himself in order not to forget
the most vital truth that enables him to navigate his life. Such a plate would read in Polish ON
JEST [HE IS], where - owing to the specificity of the Polish grammar - the third person masculine singular pronoun can stand for the reader (or more generally “the other”), the world, and God (or
transcendence). The intended ambiguity of this pronoun makes us realize that although pronouns
are substitutes for the noun phrase in a sentence, they are in fact a sort of mental abbreviations that
encapsulate more abundant content than a mere 1:1 correspondence with a single noun. Of the two
basic functions of pronouns in interpersonal communication: anaphoric and deictic, the latter proves
to be more basic as it introduces new objects into the universe of discourse shared by the participants
of a conversation. One cannot speak about the meaning o f the pronoun «he», but about the
sense in which it is used, and this sense pertains to extralinguistic reality indicated directly by the
speaker. The sentence HE IS does not tell us anything about reality unless reality itself is included
into the utterance as one of its constituent elements. The triple encounter (the other, the world, transcendence)
spelled out by Barańczak in terms of an inclusive unity of experience represented by
a single sentence is a manifestation of the metaphysical.
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Keywords
metaphysics, language, reality, experience, sense
Citation
Poznańskie Studia Teologiczne, T. 22, 2008, s.235-251
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0209-3472