Communication and the Global Landscape of Faith by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Language and Location

Part of the ecological space that faith occupies takes place in linguistic clearings that are unique to each culture. Recent research in cultural values has been directed toward identifying universal or core values.[19] However, the diversity of cultural expressions that result from the interplay between an infinite variety of cultural texts and contexts and varying degrees of interculturalness suggests the search may be in vain.[20] In the case of religious experience, it is always an “experience of,” and thus calls for observing the relationship of metaphysical language couching experience. Cultural forms of expression (e.g., language) serve as limiting vehicles to any possible universal meaning.[21] In the connection between the spiritual and the experience of it, it is the cultural it that is revealed in language. Regardless of the nature of the metaphysical universe, the interpretation of that universe, and its concomitant universe of discourse, will vary as infinitely as do communities and their environments. It is in understanding the varying expressions of closely held sentiments and convictions that we may encounter insight into distinct cultural areas.

The notion of language disclosing cultural universes was Heidegger’s point in his formulation of the connection between discourse and Being (essence). Heidegger views language as the locus of Being, and this implies that language is the source of speech, that is language precedes us in speaking.[22] The act of speaking, or in Heidegger, saying, does more than ascribe meaning, it reveals, or un-conceals, essence—Being. Saying projects essentia (possibility or potential); the saying of a being un-conceals them as they are—and the saying may be said by means of speaking, listening, heeding, or silence. Language as the bearer of culture informs us of its nature in the process of saying.[23] From this perspective, we can conclude that there are particular historico-linguistic complexes which create very different “clearings” for Being in separate cultures. Heidegger develops the notion of presence (the dynamic, fluid, transhistorical) as the foreshadowing of, or that which reveals, the present (the static, fixed, and bound to a given time and space) in the “trace” of presence in language. The saying of something reflects the unveiling of presence in what Heidegger calls an occurrence, which implicitly places the present (saying) in a historico-linguistic tradition.[24] Hyde suggests the possibility “that cultural difference and change is fundamentally a linguistic phenomenon.”[25]

Heidegger’s logic contained an implicit acknowledgement of place in all being. It followed the path of to think is to be (ich denke, ich bin), and to be (bin is the root of bauen, to build, an emergent coming to fullness) presupposes dwelling (the original meaning of bauen was to settle a piece of land).[26] This is true regarding the English verb “to be” as well, it derives from the meaning of “place dwelling.” For Heidegger, humanity’s being entailed “dwelling at peace.” And religion was Nachfolge or “following after” which pays homage both to the historicity of religion, something that has gone before us, but also to the responsiveness of the follower to the hermeneutic nature of tradition bound up in language.

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