Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Volume 10, Number 1 Spring 1984

The Idea of Language: Some Difculties in Speaking About Language

Giorgio Agamben

ANYONE who has been educatedor has livedin a Christian or Jewish environment is familiar with the word: revelation. Such famil iarity, however, does not necessarily entail the ability to dene its meaning. I would like to begin my reections with an attempt to dene the term. Naturally, I don't mean to bring up a theological problem. On the contrary, I am convinced that a correct denition of this term is neither irrelevant to the theme of our meeting nor alien to the study of philosophy: to that discourse which, it has been said, can speak of ev erything, provided that it speak rst of all of the fact that it is speaking of it. The constant feature that characterizes every concept of revelation is its heterogeneity with respect to reason. This does not simply mean that the content of revelation must necessarily strike reason as ab surdeven though the Church fathers often insisted on this point. The difference in question is far more radical; it involves the very nature of revelation: its very structure. If the content of a revelationno matter how absurd, for example, that pink donkeys sing in the Venusian skywere something that human reason and language could still know and say through their own power, it would in itself cease to be a revelation. What it tells us must therefore be something that not only could not be known without such revelation, but further, it must be something that conditions the very possibility of knowledge in general. It is this radical difference at the level of revelation that Christian theologians express, saying that the sole content of revelation is Christ himself, that is, the word of God. Jewish theologians afrm, similarly,
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that the revelation of God is his name. When Saint Paul wants to ex plain to the Colossians the economy of divine revelation, he writes:"... to fulll the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to his saints" (Col.1, 26-27). In these lines, "the mystery" is in apposition to "the word of God" (6 Xoyoq xou sou). The mystery that was hidden and is now revealed does not concern this or that natural or supernatural event, but simply the word of God. So if the theological tradition has always understood revelation as something human reason cannot know on its own, this means only that the content of revelation is not a truth that can be expressed in the form of linguistic propositions regarding that which exists (even if a su preme being), but is rather a truth that concerns language itself: the very fact that language (and hence knowledge) exists. The meaning of revelation is that man can reveal what exists through language, but cannot reveal language itself. In other words, man sees the world through language, but does not see language. This invisibility of the re vealing in what it reveals is the word of God, it is revelation. Therefore theologians say that the revelation of God is at the same time his concealment or, further, that in the word God is revealed in his very incomprehensibility. It is not simply a matter of a negative deter mination or of a lack of knowledge, but of an essential determination of divine revelation, which a theologian has expressed in these terms: "su preme visibility in the deepest obscurity" and "revelation of something unknowable." Once again, this simply means, what is here revealed is not an object about which there would be much to be known, but that cannot be known for lack of adequate instruments of knowledge. What is revealed here is the unveiling itself, the very fact that knowledge and the opening of a world exist. In this horizon, the construction of trinitarian theology seems to be the most rigorous and coherent attempt to conceive the paradox of that primordial statute of the word that the prologue of the Gospel according to John expresses by saying: tv Ctpxtl T\v 6 Xovoq , In the beginning was the Word. The unitrinitarian movement of God that has become familiar to us through the Nicaean symbol {Credo in unum Dominum Iesum Christum lium dei unigenitum et ex patre natum ante omnia saecula, Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine ... genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri ...") says nothing about worldly reality, has no ontic content, but takes into account the new experience of the word which Christianity has brought to the world. To use Wittgenstein's terms, the symbol says nothing about how the world is, but reveals that the world is, that there is language. The word, which is absolutely in
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the beginning, which is therefore the absolute presupposition, only pre supposes itself, it has no precursor that can explain it or reveal it in turn (there is no word for the word!); and the trinitarian structure of the word is only the word's self-revelation. Now this revelation of the word, this presupposing nothingwhich is the only presuppositionis God: "and the word was ... God." The real meaning of revelation, therefore, is to show that every word and every human cognition have roots and a foundation in an opening that transcends them innitely; yet at the same time, this aperture concerns only language itself, the possibility and existence of language. As the great Jewish theologian and leader of the neo-Kantian school, Hermann Cohen, said: the meaning of revelation is that God is not re vealed in something, but to something, and that, therefore, his revela tion is simply die Schopfung der Vernunft, the creation of reason. Reve lation does not mean this or that statement about the world, nor what can be said through language, but that there is the world, that there is language. There is language what can such a statement mean? It is from this point of view that we must take a look at the locus classicus wherein the problem of the relationship between revelation and reason has been debated: namely, the ontological argument of Anselm. For, as many promptly pointed out to him, it is not true that the mere uttering of the name God, of quid maius cogitari nequit, necessarily im plies the existence of God. Yet a being whose mere linguistic naming implies existence does exist, and this being is language. The fact that I speak and someone listens does not imply the existence of anything except of language. Language is that which must necessarily presup pose itself. What the ontological argument proves, therefore, is that if men speak, if there are reasoning animals, then there is a divine word. Which means simply that the signifying function always pre-exists. (Provided that God is the name of the pre-existence of language, of its dwelling in the arche then, and only then, does the ontological argu ment prove the existence of God.) But this pre-existence, contrary to what Anselm thought, does not belong to the realm of signicant speech; it is not a proposition endowed with meaning, but a pure event of language before or beyond all particular meaning. In this light, it is useful to reread the objection that a great but little-known logician of the eleventh century, Gaunilo, opposes to Anselm's argument. When Anselm declared that the uttering of the word God necessarily implies for the person who understands it the existence of God, Guanilo posited, in objection, the experience of an ignoramus (an idiot, as he says) or a
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barbarian who, faced by signifying speech, surely understands that there Us an event of language, that there is, Gaunilo says, a vox, a human voice, but can in no way grasp the meaning of the utterance. This idiot or this barbarian, Gaunilo continues, does not conceive of the voice itself, that is, the sound of the syllables and of the letters, which is a thing somehow true, so much as he thinks of the meaning of the heard voice; and not as it is conceived of by those who know what is usually signied by that voice (and who conceived of it, therefore, according to the thing [secundum rem]); but rather, he thinks of it as it is thought of by those who do not know the meaning and who think only according to the movement of the mind that tries to represent to itself the effect and the meaning of the heard voice. The perception no more of a mere sound but not yet of a meaning, this "thought of the voice alone" (cogitatio secundum vocem solam, as Gaunilo calls it) opens up a primeval logical dimension that, denoting the pure "taking place" of language, without any specic event of meaning, shows that there is still a possibility of thought beyond sig nifying propositions. The most original logical dimension that is in volved in revelation is not, therefore, that of the signifying word, but that of a voice which, without signifying anything, signies signi cance itself. (This is the sense of theories like that of Roscellinus, of whom it was said that he had discovered "the meaning of the voice" and had afrmed that the universal essences were only atus vocis. Here atus vocis is not the simple sound, but in the sense explained above, the voice as a pure indication of an event of language. And this voice coincides with the most universal dimension of meaning, with being.) This endowment of a voice for language is God; is the divine word. The name of God, that is, the name that names language, is hence (as the mystical tradition has never tired of repeating) a meaningless word. In the terms of contemporary logic, we could then say that revelation means that, if such a thing as a metalanguage exists, it is not a signify ing statement, but a pure non-signifying voice. That there is language is equally certain and incomprehensible, and this incomprehensibility and this certainty constitute faith and revelation. The chief difculty inherent in philosophical exposition involves this same order of problems. In fact philosophy is not concerned only with what is revealed through language, but also with the revelation of lan guage itself. A philosophical exposition is, in other words, one that, whatever it speaks of, must take into account the fact that it is speak ing of it; a philosophical statement is one that, in everything that it
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says, says above all language itself. (Hence the proximity, but also the separation, between philosophy and theology, a link at least as old as the Aristotelian denition of rst philosophy as 9eo\oyiKr|, theologi cal.) All of this could also be expressed by saying that philosophy is not a view of the world, but a view of language, and, in fact, contemporary thought has followed this path with all too much enthusiasm. However, a difculty arises here from the fact that (as is implicit in Gaunilo's def inition of voice) a philosophical exposition cannot be simply a discourse that has language as its subject, a metalanguage that speaks of lan guage. The voice says nothing, but shows itself precisely as logical form, according to Wittgenstein, and therefore cannot become the sub ject of discourse. Philosophy can lead thought only to the boundaries of the voice: it cannot say the voice (or at least, so it seems). Contemporary thought is resolutely aware of the fact that an ul timate and absolute metalanguage does not exist and that any con struction of a metalanguage remains trapped in a regression to inn ity. All the same, the paradox of philosophy's intention is precisely that of an utterance that would speak of language and show its limits with out having a metalanguage at its disposal. In this way, philosophy comes up against what is represented as the essential content of revela tion (and, perhaps, also of poetry): logos en arche, the word is absolutely in the beginning, it is the absolute premise, or, as Mallarme once wrote, "the word is the beginning developed through the negation of every be ginning." And it is against this dwelling of the word in the beginning that a logic and a philosophy (as well as a poetry) aware of their tasks must always again be measured. If there is a point on which contemporary philosophies seem to agree, it is precisely the acknowledgement of this premise. And so hermeneutics assumes the irreducible priority of the signifying function, afrm ing (according to the declaration of Schleiermacher that stands as a motto to Wahrheit und Methode) that "in hermeneutics there is only one presupposition: language"; or else by understanding, as Apel does, the concept of Wittgenstein's "language game" as a transcendental con dition of all knowledge. This a priori is, for hermeneutics, the absolute premise which can be reconstructed and be made self-conscious, but cannot be overcome. Coherently with these premises, hermeneutics can set itself up only as the horizon of an innite tradition and interpreta tion whose ultimate meaning and foundation must necessarily remain unsaid. It can question itself about how comprehension occurs, but the fact that there is comprehension is what, remaining unthought, makes
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all comprehension possible. "Every act of the word," Gadamer writes, "in the act of its occurence, makes at once present the unsaid to which it, as reply and reference, refers." It is therefore clear that hermeneu tics, though harking back to Hegel and Heidegger, tends to neglect the very aspect of these philosophers' thought concerning, on the one hand, absolute knowledge and the end of history and, on the other, the Ereignis and the end of the history of being. In this sense, hermeneutics is opposed but not so radically as it might seem to such languages as science and ideology which, while presupposing more or less knowingly the pre-existence of the signify ing function, ignore this premise and allow its productivity and nullify ing power to operate without constraint. And, in truth, it is difcult to see how hermeneutics could convince the advocates of these attitudes to renounce their positions. If the foundation is, in any case, unsayable and irreducible, if it always anticipates speaking man, casting him into a history and a destiny, then a thought that recalls and deals with this presupposition seems ethically the equivalent of one which, abandon ing itself to its fate, carries out to the end (and there is, actually, no end) the violence and lack of foundation of such a thought. It is therefore no accident if, according to an authoritative current of contempory French thought, language is, indeed, maintained in the be ginning, but this dwelling of the logos in the arche has the negative structure of writing and of gramme. There is no voice for language; rather, from the start, language is a trace and an innite self-transcen dence. In other words, language, which is in the beginning, is the nul lication and the deferment of itself, and signicance is only the in exhaustible cypher of this lack of foundation. It is legitimate to ask oneself whether this awareness of the pre-exis tence of language that characterizes contemporary thought can really fulll the task of philosophy. It could be said that here thought consid ers its task done by the very acknowledgement of what constituted the more genuine content of faith and revelation: the embeddedness of the logos in the arche. What theology declared incomprehensible to reason is now accepted by reason as its premise. All comprehension is founded on the incomprehensible. But, in this way, isn't the very thing that should be the philosophic task par excellence abandonednamely the dissolution of the presupposition? Wasn't philosophy the utterance that was meant to be free of all premises, even of the most universal premise expressed in the formula: there is language? For isn't philosophy a mat ter of comprehending the incomprehensible? Perhaps in the very aban doning of this task, which sentences the handmaiden philosophy to a secret marriage with her mistress theology, lies the present difculty of
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philosophy, just as the difculty of faith coincides with its acceptance by reason. The abolition of the frontiers between faith and reason also marks their crisis, that is, their reciprocal judgment. Contemporary thought has come close to that limit, beyond which a new unveiling of language seems no longer possible. The arche charac ter of the logos is now completely revealed, and no new gure of the di vine, no new historic destiny can arise from language. Language, in the very moment it is located in the beginning, also reveals its absolute anonymity. There is no name for the name, there is no metalanguage, not even in the form of a non-signifying voice. If God was the name of the language, "God is dead" can mean only that there is no longer a name for language. The fullled revelation of language is a word com pletely abandoned by God. Man is cast into language without having a voice or a divine word that guarantees him a possibility of escape from the innite play of signifying propositions. And so, at last, we are left alone with our words, alone for the rst time with language, abandoned by any further foundation. This is the Copernican revolution that the thought of our time has inherited from nihilism: we are the rst people who have become completely aware of language. What previous gener ations thought of as Muse, God, Being, Spirit, Unconscious, we see clearly for the rst time for what they are: names of language. Thus all philosophies, all religions and all knowledge that have not become aware of this turning point, belong for us irrevocably to the past. The veils that theology, poetry, ontology, and psychology have drawn over what is human have now fallen and, one by one, we restore them to their proper place in language, which has dispelled from itself every thing divine, everything unsayable: it stands entirely revealed, abso lutely in the beginning. Just like a poet who can nally see the face of his muse, so the philosopher now looks at language face to face (that's why muse being the name of the most original experience of lan guage Plato says that philosophy is "the supreme music"). Nihilism undergoes this same experience of a word abandoned by God; but it interprets the ultimate revelation of language from the standpoint that there is nothing to reveal, that the truth of language attests to the nothingness of every thing. The absence of a metalan guage thus becomes the negative form of a foundation, and nothingness the last veil, the last name for language. If, at this point, we take up Wittgenstein's image of the y trapped in a bottle, we could say that contemporary thought has nally acknowl edged the inevitability of the bottle whose prisoner the y is. The preexistence and the anonymity of the signifying function constitute the
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presupposition that always anticipates the speaking man and from which there seem to be no exits of any kind. Men are doomed to under stand each other in language. But, once again, the actual project that was originally entrusted to that image is thus neglected: the possibility that the y could escape from the bottle. The task of philosophy, therefore, must be resumed at the very point where contemporary philosophy seems to abandon it. If it is true, in fact, that the y must begin by seeing the bottle within which it is trap ped, what can such a vision signify: What does seeing the boundaries of language mean? (The bottle, indeed, is not a thing for the y, but what it sees things through.) Is it possible to conceive of an utterance which, without being metalinguistic and plunging into the unsayable, says language itself and shows its limits? An ancient tradition of thought locates this possibility in the theory of ideas. Contrary to the interpretation that sees in it the unsayable foundation of a metalanguage, at the basis of the Platonic theory of ideas lies an acceptance without reservations of the anonymity of lan guage and of the homonymy that governs it (this is how we must under stand Plato's insistence on the homonymy between ideas and things as well as Sqcrates' rejection of all misology). This same niteness and ambiguity of human language opens the way to a "dialectical journey" of thought. For, if every human word presupposed another word, that is, if the presupposing power of language never ended, then truly there could be no experience of the boundaries of language. A perfect lan guage, on the other hand, from which all homonymy had disappeared and in which all signs were univocal, would be a language with no ideas whatsoever. The idea lies entirely in the play between the anonymity and the homonymy of language. Neither does the One exist and have a name, nor does it not exist and not have a name. The idea is not a word (a metalanguage) nor is it the vision of an object outside language: it is the vision U&eTv) of language itself. (This is the genuine content of every aporia, which makes it a pattern of philosophical exposition). For lan guage, which mediates all things and all knowledge for man, is itself immediate. Nothing immediate can be reached by speaking men ex cept language itself, except mediation itself. This immediate mediation represents for man the only possibility of reaching a beginning freed from all presupposition, even from the presupposition of language it self; of reaching, in other words, that dp/r) dvuii60Toq which Plato, in The Republic, presents as the xeXoq , as the fulllment and end of ccOtoc; 6 Xoyoq, of language itself, and at the same time as the "thing itself and the concern of man.
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No true human community can, in fact, rise on the basis of a presup position whether it be that of a nation or a tongue or even the a priori of communication of which hermeneutics speaks. What unies men is not a nature or a divine voice or the common imprisonment in signify ing language, but the vision of language itself and, therefore, the ex perience of its boundaries, of its end. The only true community is a com munity without presupposition. Pure philosophical exposition there fore cannot be the exposition of one's own ideas on language or on the world, but an exposition of the idea of language.

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