From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:17:25 EST
Subject: heidegger-AT-lists. You Can't Say That!



--part1_183.3f80020.29a66985_boundary
Content-Language: en


Michael P I've written this specially for you though I have been meaning to
address 'being' as in 'human being' for a long time for the AIT website. 
[uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com]
You will find lots of figurative speech and metaphor therein



You Can't Say That!

There are two main reasons why people sometimes say: =E2=80=9CYou can't say=20that!=E2=80=9D
One reason for this prescriptive admonition is that what you have just said,
or what you are about to say, is socially unacceptable and may cause
unnecessary pain to somebody.  For example, if you say: =E2=80=9CBeatrice is like a
smelly pig.=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9CAll Germans like dressing up in uniform.=E2=80=9D  You are likely
to cause offence and very likely to end up with a thick ear.

The other reason why people occasionally say: =E2=80=9CYou can't say that!=E2=80=9D is when
they mean that such an utterance is grammatically or semantically incorrect
and consequently offensive to the rationality of the human mind and therefore
is meaningless and illogical.

There is no area of human discourse more sensitive to meaninglessness and
illogicality and irrationality than the ways in which we express our ideas
regarding the ubiquity of the world around us, and our own presence in that
domain, and the ways in which we think and talk about our own existential
modalities and the states and actions of others.

Many words in all languages are often reified into nouns. A noun is of course
a word that can be used to refer to a person or place or thing.  The words
that are usually hypostatised into abstract nouns are verbs, and very often
adjectives =E2=80=93 so we have examples such as 'Love,' which is a hypostatisation
of that combination of human acts of affection or desire that are described
using verbs, and in fact the noun 'Love' originates in the corresponding
verb, which in its infinitive conjugation is: 'to love' which means to attain
a state or modality of loving.

'Clarity' is an example of an adjective that has undergone this reificational
process from being a descriptive word distinguishing an attribute or quality
of a noun into a noun-type itself.  Can adverbs pass through this
quasi-materialist curtain from pure abstraction to semi-or quasi-materiality?
Can 'quickly' become a noun? I can't think of any examples off the top of my
head, but certainly there are lots of compound nouns which include an
adverbial dimension such as 'Seriously-Fast-Food' or 'Really-Quick-Service,'
which although they have to a certain extent been absorbed into a mutual
adjectival/noun-ness with the adjective/substantive which they partner in
their linguistic troilism =E2=80=93 they still retain a discernable intensive
adverbiality which we all recognise.
There is however one member of one cluster of words in human language which
is sometimes reified into a noun which is NOT a verb, (because it doesn't DO
anything =E2=80=93 is NOT an adjective (because it doesn't DESCRIBE anything) and is
NOT an adverb (because it doesn't QUALIFY a verb) and that is that
transcendentally over-exercised member of the BE cluster =E2=80=93 BEING.

Why is it that we can find this unique exception to our iron laws of
linguistic syntax and semantics, for here we have an example of an
attributive mechanism =E2=80=93 a syntactical enabler-word being itself hypostasised
into a fictitious material statehood or reificational instantiation.
Consider the following ideas:

(a) Lucinda Jones is an animal.
(b) Lucinda Jones is a human animal.
(c) Lucinda Jones is a human.
(d) Lucinda Jones is human
(e) Lucinda Jones is a being.
(f) Lucinda Jones is a human being.
(g) Bozo is an animal.
(h) Bozo is a Chimpanzee animal.
(i) Bozo is a Chimpanzee.
(j) Bozo is Chimpanzee.
(k) Bozo is a being.
(l) Bozo is a Chimpanzee being.

The above appears to tell us that we have constructed our syntax in such a
way as to distance ourselves from our animalism and to calumniate and
depreciate (by exclusion) the beingness of our nearest animal relation. 
Whilst we are perfectly happy to combine and associate the word 'being' with
our own 'human' categorization as in (f) we feel distinctively uncomfortable
if we use (a) and (b) and mildly uneasy if we employ (c) whilst we seem to
feel best pleased when (d) is used for (d) presupposes a condition or state
rather than a strictly scientific biological classification.

Why can't we say: =E2=80=9CBozo is a Chimpanzee being.=E2=80=9D?
Why for that matter can't we say: =E2=80=9CBozo is a Chimpanzee animal=E2=80=9D
Why can't we say: =E2=80=9CBozo is Chimpanzee=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9CThat insect is ant=E2=80=9D rather than =E2=80=9C
That insect is an ant.=E2=80=9D
Of course all this is tied up with hierarchies of human classification =E2=80=93 an
entity is first an animal or an insect and then a Chimpanzee or an ant or a
spider. A human is first a human and then a doctor =E2=80=93 a doctor can't=20be first
a doctor and then a human unless one lives on the planet Zog where there are
alien or Zogian doctors as well as human ones.

It seems obvious from all this that we humans are very jealous concerning our
beingness and don't much like attributing it to all and sundry, especially if
they happen to belong to another species.  If (as some people do) we accept
the idea that a Chimpanzee or a frog or a matchbox is a 'being,' why can't we
describe such creatures and objects as 'beings' in such sentences as: =E2=80=9CBozo
is a Chimpanzee being=E2=80=9D? Is it perhaps because there is no need to insert such
an additional appurtenant classification as 'being'  - because it DOES'NT
EXIST in the first place, and is therefore not necessary in a hierarchical
sense to describe a Chimpanzee?
But if being doesn't exist in the case of Chimpanzees and all the other
members of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms =E2=80=93 leastways in the
syntactical and semantic manner in which we address these entities in our
speech, why is it that we can glue on the word 'being' to humans and get away
with it?

The word 'human' in the term 'human being' has magically metamorphosed from=20a
noun into an adjective which is describing the word 'being,' which has also
been mysteriously transmuted from an attributive syntactical mechanism into=20a
living, breathing class of entity called a  'being,' which is described by
the once-a-noun-now-an-adjective 'human.  Perhaps the words 'human' and
'being' have fused in the manner of the adjective/noun partnership:
'fast-food' or 'poor loser' and become a compound noun which includes the
role or activity of being human with an imagined state of being?
But why is this so if there is NO state of being =E2=80=93 for being is simply an
attributive marker of the continuous states of other entities, having no
state or modality of its own.

We undoubtedly feel much more comfortable when we assign the word human as a
modality or state of an entity rather than as a mere classificatory label, in
the sense of somebody having human attributes or qualities, as opposed to
those of animals or divine beings.
=E2=80=9CThat 'human' is being used as an adjective in the sentence: =E2=80=9CLucinda is
human,=E2=80=9D can be demonstrated by simply substituting another adjective in its
place such as: =E2=80=9CLucinda is sunburned.=E2=80=9D  Does 'being' have anything to do
with being alive? Why do we say things like: The corpse was that of a human
being,=E2=80=9D if the body is no longer alive? If so much importance is attached to
the qualities and attributes of being human so much that we adjectivalise our
very classification by the addition of the 'being' word, why is a dead body
described as a 'human body' when its human qualities have disappeared?  Does
this mean that it is not necessary to be alive to be a human being?

If the answer to all this questioning is simply that we describe anything
that exists or has existed in the past as some type of being, why can't we
describe other states or modalities of human, animal or mineral behaviour in
the same way?  Why can't we transmogrify other verbs for example into
compound nouns or adjectival/substantive relationships and describe a dancer
or a bricklayer as a 'human-dancing' or a 'human-brick-laying?'

The answer is that 'being' isn't a verb in the first place, so other verbs
cannot emulate it in such a manner.
The simple solution to all these linguistic and philosophical conundrums is
of course that the whole conception of 'being' is deeply flawed =E2=80=93 that the
Greeks never understood how to talk about being, and the confusion has
proliferated throughout the world down the centuries, and caused fundamental
problems for linguistics and philosophy alike right down until the days of
Heidegger, (who at least confessed to not understanding it). There has been=20a
total misunderstanding of the function of the BE word, which has always been
taken for a verb instead of an attributive mechanism of existential modality
and NOT simple existence.  It is certainly not something that clings to the
underside of a leaf like some shy catapillar as poor Heidegger might have
believed.

The whole conception of 'being' is an ancient theological one and can be
traced to being an attempt to establish some sort of correlation between the
imagined  [though usually invisible] presence of various Godheads or
'Almighty Beings,' with  worshipping mankind as some form of 'lesser' and
more lowlier 'beings'.  The whole idea of 'being-hood' or 'beingness;'  is
vitally important to this form of 'spirituality' or transcendentalism.
Generally, the whole class of animals (including poor Bozo) were not seen fit
to be included as members in this privileged club of beingness' and so remain
until this very day merely 'Chimpanzees' rather than the more elevated (and
presumably closer to God)  'Chimpanzee Beings.'  Our Chimp friends may find
solace in the fact that to many Christians the un-baptised natives were also
denied 'being-hood' until that magical moment when a priest sprinkled them
with 'holy water' and they instantly became 'human beings' too, instead of
mere pagan savages. Will we live to see the day when our zoos are thronged
with cassocked bearers of beingness sprinkling the caged supplicants with
sanctified H2O? Will the rolling plains of Kenya be jammed with khaki-clad
clerics in Landrovers armed with bibles rather than hunting rifles, baptising
the elephants and giraffes beneath lonely baobab trees?
One last question: Does being human and being a human being mean that a human
has a being, or does being a human being mean that a being is simply being
human?
Cheers,

Jud.


--part1_183.3f80020.29a66985_boundary

HTML VERSION: