Communication and Expression: Adocb by Hofstatter Hogh & Philip Hogh

Author:Hofstatter Hogh & Philip Hogh [Hogh, Hofstatter & Hogh, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Critical Theory, Language, Movements, Non-Fiction, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781783487271
Google: aMMWswEACAAJ
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
Published: 2017-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

CONSTELLATORY SPEAKING

The central motif of Adorno’s concept of constellation and its constellatory linguistic and conceptual practice is clearly defined: ‘undiminished cognition,’184 in which the subject can express her experiences of the matter at hand in such a way that the latter shows itself in its particularity. This necessitates a constellatory understanding of linguistic meaning as well as a renunciation of an understanding of objects of knowledge as isolated units. In other words, it necessitates the knowledge that ‘the object of its [consistent thought’s] philosophizing not only runs right over the knower as though on some vehicle but is inherently in motion, thereby divesting itself of its last similarity with the Cartesian res extensa, matter extended in space.’185 If philosophy wants to do justice to these objects, it cannot simply disregard ordinary linguistic practices and invent a new language. This alternative would be unsuitable because it would ignore the significance of sedimented history in language. This way, objects would have to be grasped with radically newly defined concepts and their historical character could not be thematised.186 This is why the language of philosophy remains bound to ordinary language. Yet it is precisely ordinary language that promises justice to objects but cannot redeem this promise. Since logically and grammatically purified scientific language, which Wittgenstein and Carnap aimed to identify, cannot redeem this promise either, philosophical language oscillates between ordinary language, on the one hand, and scientific language, on the other, in its attempt to do so. The rehabilitation of the aesthetic-rhetorical aspect of language in philosophy thus tries to mediate the liveliness of ordinary spoken language and the reasoned stringency of scientific language for the benefit of an expression of ‘undiminished experience’.

Accordingly, philosophy is nothing but ‘a form transmitted to those which differ from it as well as distinguished from them,’187 namely a form of linguistic expression of experiences. The differentiation of linguistic presentation, which the objects demand and with which philosophy is confronted, thus begins with the concepts of ordinary linguistic practices; yet, in orienting the latter towards the respective objects, it jeopardises its intelligibility. This, however, has a critical function with respect to ordinary linguistic practices: rather than presenting an object in its constellation in a differentiated way, ordinary linguistic practices only express those aspects of an object that come under the socially shared concepts used within it. This way, only those aspects of an object are communicated and expressed that are communicable according to current linguistic practices, given the correct use of concepts. This form of linguistic concept use thus remains below the possibilities of language and, last, prevents ‘communicating [the matter at hand].’ 188

Hence, both, philosophy and science must begin with the concepts of ordinary language. Yet, rather than using them unreflectively—that is, without reflecting the relations between concepts and the relations of concepts to the non-conceptual—and thus remaining within ordinary language, philosophy and science differ in how they use the material of ordinary language. Whilst, according to Adorno, science seeks to purify language from all its equivocations

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