The Father of Lights by Junius Johnson

Author:Junius Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Theology/Aesthetics;Aesthetics—Religious aspects—Christianity;God (Christianity)—Beauty;Philosophical theology;REL067000;REL028000;PHI001000
ISBN: 9781493427208
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Language and Beauty

Subjective Objectivity: Naming and Beauty

Insofar as linguistic realism grounds language on a principle of recognition, the realist claim parallels the anamnetic character of the experience of beauty. Yet the virtuosity introduced by the relativist dynamic within language parallels the subjective appropriation of that correlate in every particular experience of beauty.

We have learned from our analysis of the beautiful that the experience of the beautiful is controlled by what is so objective that it is the object par excellence, the divinity. Thus, realism and objectivism take the first place in the ordering of conceptual priorities. And yet, this is the experience of the beautiful, and so we are dealing with a subjective appropriation.7 Thus, we arrived at the need to understand the experience of the beautiful as a subjective objectivity—that is, as a subjective encounter and appropriation that is controlled more by the object than by the categories of receptivity in the subject.

Analogously, the linguistic moment, when it is most pure, is a subjective appropriation of (understood here as “making use of”) an objectivity that controls the manner of the appropriation. There is relativity, and therefore virtuosity and individuality, in the use that is made of language; but this virtuosity and individuality is bound by something other than itself, something objective. In the case of the experience of the beautiful, this is something that, as the objective par excellence, exceeds the subjectivity and relativity of every merely creaturely subject. But even in the case of linguistic imposition, all such actions are based on a prior moment of aesthetic semiotics—specifically, Adam’s, which, although hidden behind the fall, Babel, and centuries of cultural drift, nevertheless stands as the primal ground of all human language. Even the creative uses we make of language stand under the sign of recognition and so are controlled more by the signified than the signifier.

The Subjective Concern: Babel and Beauty

Babel strengthens the subjective component in language, restoring the desired virtuosity but also turning language into a dividing wall that separates culture from culture and person from person. Understanding of the linguistic other is greatly hampered, and a limit is set to the extent of understanding that is possible (though a limit neither specifiable by us a priori nor able to be definitively fixed by us a posteriori). And thus in language, as in the encounter with the creature, it is easy to miss the anamnesis. Just as beauty is elusive because our senses are poorly attuned to the God whose recognition is requisite for the experience of beauty, so truth and meaning in language are elusive because our entire semiotic economy lies under the curse of Babel.

And we can go further: the shattering of language widens the space between our concepts and the res they are imposed to signify, and this allows us to doubt the degree of correspondence, or whether there is correspondence at all, and even whether there ever could be correspondence. As this doubt deepens, we feel the rift between ourselves and the world widen.

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