Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba

NAGLIS KARDELIS Vilnius University ORCID id: orcid.org/0000-0002-2179-3754 Research areas: philosophy of language, Ancient philosophy, Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion. DOI: doi.org/10.35321/all89-13 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATIVE LANGUAGE The question of which language a philosopher should philosophize in seems, at first glance, to be very simple, as is the answer to it: one ought to philosophize in the language in which one thinks—for the element of philosophy is the element of thinking, though not of just any thinking, but specifically of thinking that has been given voice and put into words. Unless a person has completely lost their national identity, they think in their native language, or, more precisely, in their mother tongue; thus, the answer to the question of which language would be most suitable for philosophizing already seems entirely clear and simple in itself, especially from the standpoint of everyday and personal experience: one ought to philosophize in one’s native language, one’s mother tongue. Nevertheless, the question of which language a philosopher should philosophize in, despite its real or apparent simplicity, is a fundamental philosophical question requiring reflection and deeper theoretical analysis. Although the initial unreflective intuition corresponding to everyday experience and common sense—that it is more suitable to philosophize in one’s native language—may be regarded as self-evidently correct, it is desirable also to provide theoretical arguments supporting this insight; that is what we shall seek to do in this article. But why should we raise and consider this question at all? Is it relevant—and for what specific reasons—to cultivators of the native language and to philosophers themselves? Is it perhaps possible to philosophize equally well in any other language learned later, so that when philosophizing in foreign languages nothing is lost, neither the native language nor philosophy itself? Casting a glance at the history of world philosophy, we clearly see that the absolute majority of great thinkers—from Antiquity to our own times—wrote their philosophical works in their native language. Is it possible to imagine Plato and Aristotle philosophizing, in speech and writing, in any language other than Ancient Greek, and likewise Socrates (although he wrote nothing), addressing the citizens of Athens—or communicating with his own inner daimōn—in some foreign language? Or Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger philosophizing in a language other than German? And all the more so Sartre or Derrida, creating in a language other than French? Nevertheless, in the history of world philosophy there are cases when texts of the highest theoretical level and linguistic subtlety Įžvalgos / Insights 285 NAGLIS KARDELIS were created in a non-native language as well. The most prominent, though not the only, examples are the works of representatives of Medieval scholastic philosophy, written in Latin, above all those of St. Thomas Aquinas. Some Roman thinkers, such as Cicero, knew Ancient Greek so well that they not only translated Plato’s dialogues from it into their native Latin, but were also able to philosophize and deliver rhetorical speeches in Greek; yet even Cicero—the creator of philosophical Latin—best unfolded his powers of thought and eloquence within the element of his native Latin. The intellectual Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek, during a military campaign, a diary not intended for publication, meant only for himself. After the commander’s death, these notes, in which the most intimate secrets of a soul seeking the meaning of life were opened to itself in a non-native language, were published, one might say, against the author’s own will and have since been known throughout the world by the eloquent title given to them by their publisher—“To Himself.” Turning to the history of Lithuanian philosophy, we see that during the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the ancient philosophy of Lithuania was created mostly in Latin by representatives of the various peoples living in this state, including ethnic Lithuanians—this was determined by the status of Latin at the time as the medium of universal European scholarly development and dissemination. The outlines of modern Lithuanian philosophy began to emerge at the end of the nineteenth century, with the beginning of the national revival movement, whose heralds clearly understood and continually emphasized in their writings the importance of the native Lithuanian language for awakening and cultivating the consciousness of the reborn nation. Nevertheless, the doctoral dissertations in philosophy of even the most prominent thinkers of this period, such as Stasys Šalkauskis, whom we could regard as founding fathers of modern Lithuanian philosophy, were written in a non-native language while their authors were studying abroad. Although Stasys Šalkauskis, Pranas Kuraitis, Antanas Maceina, Juozas Girnius, and other leading Lithuanian thinkers of the interwar period were highly capable of writing philosophical texts in foreign languages, we value their contribution to Lithuanian philosophy chiefly with regard to the philosophical texts these thinkers wrote in Lithuanian and to the very work of creating a philosophical Lithuanian language, especially the formation of Lithuanian philosophical terminology. The case of the Russian philosopher Lev Karsavin, who worked in interwar Lithuania, is also eloquent: this thinker learned Lithuanian almost perfectly, and was therefore able to write in Lithuanian not only works on the history of philosophy and culture, but also original philosophical texts; nevertheless, Karsavin’s most valuable philosophical and theological works were written in his native Russian. It is not difficult to discern a certain regularity connected with specific historical circumstances that explains why, during certain periods in the development of philosophy, thinkers had to philosophize in a non-native language: whenever, in Europe, in another civilizational region, or on a global scale, a particular culture and the language associated with it, as the medium of that culture’s expression, became the foundation of a culture aspiring to a greater or lesser degree of universality, 286 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba that culture and language became dominant in the relevant geographical region and historical period. It was not only the cultural prestige of the dominant lingua franca, but also the very facilitation of cultural and academic communication, that determined the establishment of one or another language that had become universal, or had even been formally recognized as such, in the sphere of scholarship and culture. For example, in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, thinkers of Jewish origin wrote their philosophical works in Latin, while in the Islamic civilizational sphere they wrote in Arabic. The example of the brilliant Jewish philosopher and poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) is also interesting and eloquent: he composed religious and secular poetry in Hebrew, but his philosophy, of extraordinary subtlety, in Arabic. In the geographical region where Indian civilization culturally dominated for a long time, thinkers of various peoples most often wrote their philosophical texts in Sanskrit, which was the lingua franca of that region. Recognizing that every true science must be universal in content and form and universally valid, and likewise holding that philosophy is a kind of science, it is not difficult to understand why, under certain civilizational circumstances, philosophy was expected to become a universal science, for which there would be a universal language. Recognition of the status of one or another universal language rested on the assumption that human nature itself, like the whole of human experience, is universal in its deepest essence, independent of differences among local cultures, and can therefore be expressed through universally valid philosophical concepts, which, it was believed, could be created and used uniformly by all speakers of the universal philosophical language. Unlike the semantically flexible language of literary texts, whose words are characterized by polysemy and in which strata of words used in literal and figurative meanings playfully intertwine and overlap, scientific language operates with terms possessing strictly defined meanings. The meanings of terms used in the natural sciences to describe empirical reality do not depend on, nor reflect, the distinctiveness of particular human cultures conveyed in literary works created in different languages. Since scientific terms—especially those of the natural sciences—lack the cultural specificity that is easy to express in a native language, ripened in the soil of one’s own culture, but difficult to convey in other languages expressing the nature of other cultures, scientific texts are not difficult to translate into other languages because of the univocality of the terms used in them. In fact, there is little—or no—difference as to which language a natural-scientific text is written in, since, regardless of the language, it conveys the same scientific information, in no way connected with the distinctiveness of particular human cultures. When it is assumed that there is no difference as to which language scientific texts are written in, the view naturally develops that the very diversity of languages in which science is created, and the necessity it entails of translating scientific texts from one language into another, merely causes human resources to be wasted Įžvalgos / Insights 287 NAGLIS KARDELIS on translation, while providing no additional value to science itself. Thus the consistent conclusion is reached that, given the universality and global character of science, and in order to facilitate scholarly communication, scholars of different nationalities who speak different native languages must be encouraged, in the sphere of scholarly communication, to adopt one of the languages already widely used in science. Just as Latin was in the academic world of Medieval Europe, English has become the lingua franca of global science today. Nevertheless, even if we were to believe that world science created in a single dominant language would itself lose nothing, and might perhaps even gain something, we would still have to acknowledge that the conscious exclusion of local languages from the sphere of science would greatly impoverish national languages and cultures. Science is not only a distinctive form of humanity’s intellectual relationship with reality, but also an important part of high culture, constituting, so to speak, a separate register of human experience; thus, by renouncing our right and duty to create science in national languages, we would eliminate from them an entire register of human experience together with the very possibility of its linguistic expression. The sciences and the arts are the summit of human spiritual activity, of humanity’s most exalted spiritual experience, and if this highest spiritual activity and experience is not given voice and put into words in the national language, that language loses what, in an extended sense, we might call its upper floor and roof—the spiritual and social prestige, dignity, attractiveness, and communicative charisma—and consequently the lower floors of the language’s house, too, gradually begin to crumble and collapse: having initially withdrawn from the sphere of the highest spiritual experiences into the sphere of everyday life, the degraded and impoverished national language later begins to withdraw from everyday life as well. A language spoken only about potatoes in the kitchen will later inevitably end up in the kitchen’s trash bin together with the potato peels. Even if the writing of scientific texts and the creation of scientific terminology in local languages create no additional value for global science itself, they cultivate and mature national cultures, which through their very existence and flourishing make a substantial contribution to the development of world culture. It must also be emphasized that science is considerably more than natural science alone, although the latter, because of its precision, is often regarded as the standard of science. If we regard the humanities as sciences at all—specifically, as sciences about human beings—we must acknowledge that they analyze human reality not only from the perspective of the universality of human experience, but also from that of its locality. Unlike the natural sciences, the humanities, which are concerned both with the universality of human experience and with its diversity as manifested in geographical place and historical time, not only take cultural distinctiveness into account but also direct special attention to it as an object of study worthy of the greatest interest and respect. Although the humanities likewise seek to create a system of strict scientific terms and to make these sciences as precise as possible, the objects of the humanities themselves, whatever they may be, are 288 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba inseparable from cultural distinctiveness; therefore, it is far from irrelevant in which language they are discussed scientifically. Texts in the humanities written in a particular language can, without a doubt, also be translated into other languages, but not without at least a minimal loss or distortion of the meaning conveyed. Translating works in the humanities into other languages is considerably more difficult than translating works in the natural sciences, because certain things connected with cultural distinctiveness may be easier to name and explain better in some languages than in others. Thus, even if we regard the humanities as a science (and we have grounds for doing so), texts in the humanities written in different languages somewhat resemble works of literary fiction written in those languages: although both can be translated into other languages at least satisfactorily, neither can be translated flawlessly, without a greater or lesser deficiency, excess, or distortion of meaning. Just as a translator of a humanities text written in a local language into a language regarded as universal in global science will never be able to translate that text without losing important shades of meaning, so a humanities scholar who from the outset attempts to write about their work not in their native language but in the language of global science will be unable to convey their thoughts as they would be able to when writing in their native language. Yielding to insistent calls for scholars in the humanities, like representatives of the natural sciences, eventually to adopt a single universal language of science would bring even more harm than in the sphere of the natural sciences: the exclusion of local languages from the humanities would mean not merely—as in the case of the natural sciences—the impoverishment of one or another national language and culture, and thereby of world culture as a whole, without inherently harming global science itself, but also the destruction of the potential of global science itself, specifically of the world humanities. In cases where the object of study is essentially connected with the distinctiveness of languages and cultures, the possibility of properly understanding and adequately explaining that object scientifically depends, at least in part, both on the perspective afforded the researcher by a particular language and, more generally, on subtle means of linguistic expression. But let us return once again to considering the relationship between philosophy and the native language. The question of what a philosopher loses by abandoning the practice of thinking, speaking, and writing in their native language is connected with two other questions: whether philosophy is a science at all, and, if so, whether by its nature it is closer to the natural sciences or to the humanities. Western philosophy, born in Ancient Greece, may be regarded as the mother of all sciences and the cradle of science. Both philosophy and the sciences born from it arise from the human desire to know and understand the world surrounding us, are grounded in the critical powers of reason, and cultivate a rational relationship with reality. Nevertheless, philosophy surpasses the particular sciences in abstraction: by forming the methodological approaches of individual sciences, it reflects on and synthesizes the results achieved by other scientific disciplines, thus manifesting itself as a superscience or a science about sciences (metascience). But philosophy, especially as it was understood by its Greek creators, is called Įžvalgos / Insights 289 NAGLIS KARDELIS to reflect not only on external reality but also on the inner human world, the spiritual experience of the thinker, and to offer bold visions for transforming human existence. Philosophy, even if it is regarded in a certain respect as a science, a superscience, or a metascience, is far from being science alone—it is also akin to the arts, since it invites us not only to know and understand the world but also to contemplate its grandeur, beauty, and harmony, revealing a sphere of ethical and aesthetic values independent of empirical facts, articulating human aesthetic experience in abstract language, and the consequences of one’s ethical choices. In the classical conception of the seven liberal arts—septem artes liberales—the idea of the kinship between the arts and sciences cultivated by a free person is clearly visible: after all, the seven liberal arts may also be called the seven liberal sciences, since the Latin word ars and its Greek predecessor technē, meaning mastery in a particular field, can designate both an art and a science. Among the seven liberal arts we find disciplines that we would now call sciences, namely arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, as well as those that we would unhesitatingly regard as arts, such as music. The classical idea of the kinship between sciences and arts is also expressed by the fields overseen by the nine Muses—some of them we would now call sciences, while others we would call arts. The circumstances surrounding the birth and development of philosophy in Ancient Greece clearly show how short-sighted it is to regard philosophy as only a science, despite the fact that it may be regarded as the cradle of the sciences, the mother of the sciences, the science of all sciences, or a kind of superscience. That philosophy is not only a science—or that it is not merely science or simply another science—is evidenced, among other things, by the different historical fate of the results of philosophical thinking compared with the fate of scientific achievements. On the one hand, philosophy, unlike science, which seeks to reveal eternally valid laws of nature and to disclose the “final truth” about them through their rigorous mathematical formulations, has never claimed to provide final answers to fundamental questions of being, unless it offered hypothetical versions of such final answers. Nevertheless, despite this modesty characteristic of philosophy, no philosophy created even in ancient times has become outdated as hopelessly as any science of antiquity. For example, Ancient Greek metaphysics remains interesting and relevant not only to the history of philosophy but also to contemporary philosophy, whereas what we would call Ancient Greek physics—not ancient in the sense of the word “physics,” but precisely in its modern sense—is relevant to no one except historians of science. We could reasonably assert that philosophy does not age at all—or that it is not inclined to age as rapidly as science does. Modern Western culture, unfortunately, has preserved neither the idea of the “muse-inspired” unity of the sciences and arts nor the conception of classical philosophy, which seeks through theoretical vision to encompass and unite the experience of individual sciences and arts while elevating it to an even higher level of universality. Instrumental rationality-based modern Western consciousness fatally determined what we might call the separation of the sciences 290 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba from the arts, or the schism between the registers of scientific and artistic experience of reality in contemporary Western culture. We see this schism not only—viewed on a broad scale—in the entire social and cultural practice of contemporary society, in which the worlds of science and art are like two vessels that do not communicate with one another, but also—on a smaller scale—in contemporary philosophy itself, split by what might be called a radical philosophical schism into the so-called analytic (arising and practiced mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries) and the so-called continental (formed in continental Europe) schools. This philosophical schism is fundamental when considering the importance of the native language for philosophy. Analytic philosophy understands and defines itself not merely as a science, but almost as a natural science or a distinct kind of exact science akin to it. Having inherited from Ancient Greek philosophy the aspiration to investigate reality rationally, it has, unfortunately, to a considerable extent lost the existential and semantic dimension of philosophical thinking. Achievements in physics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and information theory, not to mention the newest branches of logic, are considerably more interesting and important to it than what happens in any humanities discipline. Although philosophy taken as a whole is traditionally still assigned to the humanities, a very important part of it—let us say, its larger and more influential half, namely analytic philosophy—has been dehumanitarianized and dehumanized to such an extent that calling it a humanities discipline would be almost contradictio in adjecto. The terms used in the language of analytic-philosophy texts are strictly defined and therefore univocal, while ordinary words are often replaced by logical formulas. The language of these texts usually reflects neither the singular existential experience of the human being nor the distinctiveness of local cultures. Authors of analytic-philosophy works methodically avoid using metaphors and other tropes, which makes analytic-philosophy texts, like works in the exact sciences, comparatively easy to translate into other languages. Since the native language creates no additional value when writing analytic-philosophy texts—especially when formulating arguments—there is no difference at all as to which language they are written in; and since this school historically formed in the Anglo-Saxon world, analytic-philosophy texts have traditionally most often been written in English, regardless of the nationality of their authors. This saves human resources and facilitates scholarly communication, all the more so because analytic philosophy itself is almost entirely depersonalized and understood as a collective project of thinking rather than the fruit of an individual philosopher’s creative work. Just as Latin dominated scholastic philosophy in the Middle Ages, English dominates contemporary analytic philosophy, which we might call the secularized and demetaphysicized scholasticism of our day. Analytic philosophy’s blindness to human existence, the human pursuit of meaning, and the distinctiveness of local cultures, moreover, provides no grounds for belittling the achievements of analytic philosophy, Įžvalgos / Insights 291 NAGLIS KARDELIS which are truly impressive and recall in their importance and fundamentality the results of contemporary natural science. Unlike analytic philosophy, which operates with univocal concepts, continental philosophy, despite its own technical character, relies considerably more on the flexibility of everyday language and the resources of figurative expression, while the play of words and of the different meanings of the same word is employed to convey the essence of philosophical intuitions. Existentialism, phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, poststructuralism, and postmodern philosophy also have their own specialized terminology, but authors representing these currents of philosophical thought, when creating new philosophical concepts, also turn toward the elemental powers of living everyday language and toward their own personal existential experience, which they are best able to give voice to precisely in their native language. When encountering works belonging to the continental philosophical tradition, we clearly see that the native language of their authors itself exerts an evident and considerable influence on the philosophical intuitions expressed in that language. Some subtle insights of Martin Heidegger or Jacques Derrida cannot be translated into any other language at all without a substantial distortion of meaning—for instance, into some “universal” language of science such as English. We will be able to understand Heidegger properly only by reading the German originals of his works, and to understand Derrida only by gourmandizing on the play of words in his philosophical French in the original texts of this thinker. To be sure, the texts of philosophers representing the continental tradition can also be translated into other languages, but only approximately, without avoiding loss, distortion, or unwanted additional overtones of meaning. For example, concerning the texts of Heidegger and Derrida, as well as the works of most other thinkers belonging to the continental philosophical tradition, unlike the works of authors representing analytic philosophy, we certainly cannot say that it makes no difference in which language they are written. It is clear that these thinkers themselves perfectly understood this difference—they would certainly not have thought that they were capable of expressing their thought with equal precision not in their native language but in some lingua franca of philosophy. A similar dependence of philosophical thoughts on the language in which they are expressed can be seen in classical philosophy, in which this occurred even before the fateful division of Western philosophy into analytic and continental traditions. Although ancient Greek philosophy, characterized by respect for rationality and the pursuit of clear and transparent thought, and contemporary analytic philosophy share quite a few points of contact and common features, the natural language vitality still pulses through the plastic texts of ancient thinkers; therefore, we may assert that the ancient tradition of philosophical thought is, in certain respects, also similar to contemporary continental philosophy. All those who have had the opportunity to read the Greek originals of Plato’s dialogues clearly understand that no translations into other languages will ever equal them—in either precision or expressive power. The gap 292 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba between the Greek originals and their translations into modern languages becomes even more noticeable when one turns to the fragments of the pre-Socratics, especially the works of thinkers as profound and polysemous in their speech as Heraclitus. Even Aristotle, whose philosophical concepts had already become strict terms, is easier to understand when reading the Greek originals of his treatises rather than translations—despite the fact that we may know ancient Greek less well than our native language or modern foreign languages. Thus, it would never even occur to us to entertain the absurd thought that it made no difference to the ancient Greek philosophers in which language to write their immortal works, just as it makes no difference to us, who read these texts, in which language to read them. In creating the project of Western philosophy as a completely new spiritual relation to reality, the ancient Greeks wished to attain such a philosophical vision of the world in which the personal existential experience of the thinker would be harmonized with the far more universal experience of the entire ethical or political community. Contrary to what is sometimes thought, the thought of ancient human beings was not depersonalized or detached from experience. On the contrary, it was precisely the concrete existential experience of ancient human beings, philosophically reflected upon, that enabled them to understand what transcends the individual experience of each separate person and gives it a dimension of universality. We must pay attention to the connection between experience and nature, which is highly important in the context of ancient thought: how the experience of a particular person can become relevant to the entire community, becoming part of its experience, or even acquire a still more universal cosmic dimension, can be understood only by discerning the natural commonality of the individual person, the community that transcends the individual, and the nonhuman reality that transcends humanity itself. Established as a completely new form of relation to reality, Greek philosophy, in reflecting on the world and the processes taking place in it, had to reflect both the individual nature of the person, the natural framework of the being of a particular political community, and the universal nature of the entire cosmos, of all ordered and harmonious reality. It is precisely the constant attention to nature characteristic of ancient thought that enables us to understand the importance of natural language—in other words, the native language—for philosophical thinking understood through the example of the ancient Greeks. The fundamental connection between experience and nature to which we seek to draw attention allows us to discern a relation of great importance not only to ancient philosophy but also to the philosophy of other epochs: the relation between concreteness and abstraction, particularity and universality, locality and globality. After all, we naturally associate experience with concreteness and individuality, and nature with abstraction and universality; therefore, the way in which, through personal experience, we discover the natural core of ourselves and of all reality establishes a more general rule, revealing how, on the basis of personal experience, we might link our natural individuality with natural universality and take root in it. Įžvalgos / Insights 293 NAGLIS KARDELIS The conclusions of these reflections apply not only to ancient philosophy but also to any other philosophy inspired by it which, nourished by the sap of the native language, not only does not lose its universality but, on the contrary, discovers it even more readily as it advances across the bridges of nature connecting different realms of reality. A concrete natural starting point for philosophical thinking, given voice in the native language, becomes the place that nurtures the oak of authentic thought, whose crown branches out in the heights of universality and abstraction. Not only many of us, contemporary thinkers, but also the ancient Greeks would have been inclined to agree with Heidegger’s thought that philosophical thinking must include the thinker himself—for every theoretical reflection must be grounded in experience, which gives our thinking authenticity and naturalness. Here another essential connection between experience and nature becomes clear: if, when thinking, we rely not only on what we have read or learned from others but also on our personal experience, then, owing to the self-evidence characteristic of the latter, we make our thinking considerably more authentic, one might say “more natural,” because we rid ourselves of the artificiality characteristic of superficial thought, which lacks self-evidence and immediacy; and the connection between naturalness and being natural is already self-evident—for the Latin word natura precisely means nature, birth, and the natural world. Being natural is simply the same as naturalness, only named by the native Lithuanian word rather than by a foreign word of Latin origin. Deep, nonsuperficial philosophical thinking, always beginning with what is self-evident, allows us to understand—even to understand self-evidently—that which in itself or at first is far from self-evident. Thinking that lacks naturalness will never attain depth—it will always be superficial precisely because of its artificiality, as the opposite of naturalness, whatever form this artificiality may take. Incidentally, the Greek noun logos, meaning both word and thought—in other words, both language and thinking—draws attention to the connection between the naturalness of language and the naturalness of thinking. The naturalness of language and speech is their being natural, which our native language provides, because it is our authentic natural language. In turn, the naturalness of thought and thinking is their being natural, arising from the naturalness of speech—in other words, from speaking in the native language. Even when we do not speak aloud with others but think silently within ourselves, we seem to speak in our souls with ourselves in the language we know best, in which we feel most at home, and which we understand as expressing our identity most authentically; and this is almost always our native language. Thus, if we think authentically, relying on our own rather than foreign wisdom and experience, we think in our native language; and if we think in it, we ought also to speak and write in it whenever, through our speech and writing, we seek the greatest authenticity, as well as the most precise correspondence between thought and word. For one who seeks to think with their own rather than someone else’s mind, and to philosophize authentically, personal experience is always more important than the experience of others, but even personal experience differs 294 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba in its degree of immediacy. The more immediate the thinker’s experience, the more authentic, transparent, and profound the thinking based on it. Immediate experience, one might say, allows the veil separating the philosopher from external reality to be drawn aside, and, in the ideal, albeit difficult, case, to avoid such a veil altogether. When considering the relation between philosophy and authentic experience, the paradoxical nature of the phenomenon of language becomes clear. On the one hand, abstract philosophical thinking is impossible without language, without a linguistic medium of thought; on the other hand, this linguistic medium, like any other medium, inevitably creates a gap between the thinker and the reality being thought about, thereby destroying or suppressing the immediacy of thought through the very linguistic mediation of thinking. The paradoxical ambivalence of the relation between language and philosophy is determined by the fact that, although thinking not mediated linguistically is impossible in general, linguistic mediation of thought itself—in other words, mediation—reduces the immediacy of thought, inevitably becoming a greater or lesser obstacle to thinking that seeks the greatest possible immediacy. Let us imagine that we, external observers of reality, for some reason have no possibility of observing it without glass separating it from us. An example of such a case would be observing ocean fauna in a gigantic aquarium in a maritime museum, in which a thick transparent glass wall separates the observers from the animals observed: since we ourselves are not marine inhabitants, we would be entirely unable to observe ocean animals directly, without the glass separating us from them, which at once enables and obstructs observation; therefore, the glass wall that enables and simultaneously mediates—interposes—the observation must either be completely imperceptible, as though invisible, or at least as transparent as possible. The glass must be such that, looking through it at what opens up beyond it, we do not see the glass itself because of its transparency. If the glass were opaque, cracked, or scratched, our eye, instead of examining the objects opening up outside, would inevitably turn its attention to the imperfections of the medium of observation itself—namely, the glass—and would thus be constantly disturbed and distracted. On the basis of this analogy, we can imagine language itself—the linguistic medium of thought—as glass of varying transparency and smoothness. The example presented allows us to discern an important difference between the native language and any nonnative language, a difference particularly important for understanding the natural connection between philosophy and the native language. From childhood onward, we have grown so closely together with our native language, with each of its words naming the objects of the external world, that the native language and each of its words have become like parts of our very spiritual nature: the native language is so close to us that, when speaking it, we do not even notice it, failing to see its presence within or beside us. It is like pure, odorless air, which is vital to us, although, while breathing it, we do not even notice it precisely because of its purity. If we imagined our soul—our spiritual nature—as having a spiritual body of a certain kind, any nonnative language, learned later in life, could be likened to Įžvalgos / Insights 295 NAGLIS KARDELIS the garment worn by this spiritual body of the soul, whereas the native language would be the very spiritual body of the soul, in which the soul, being embodied, does not even feel it. By naming the objects of the everyday world around us with the words of our native language from infancy onward, especially those that are extremely close and dear to us because we live with them, see them, and rejoice in them every day, we, when uttering those words, do not stumble over them and, as it were, utter the objects themselves at once. When we give voice to objects of the external world with the words of our native language, those words mediate the experience of the world for us minimally, unobtrusively, imperceptibly, like transparent glass that we do not see; therefore, the words of our native language, which we utter naturally, spontaneously, without strain, do not become linguistic objects of a second level or secondary nature—in other words, artificial things of language itself that distract our attention and draw it away from the real things of the external world—the sun itself, the earth or the river, the sky itself, the cloud, the wind, the bird, the tree... The native language, whose words immediately, as if without any mediation, direct the gaze of our soul toward the things of external reality, opens the world to us as homelike—or even, in a certain sense, domesticates it through the very act of giving it voice. Speaking our native language—and feeling at home in it—we also feel at home in the world given voice by the native language. When learning the words of foreign languages, and later uttering them each time, we ourselves experience them as objects of a secondary level and secondary nature, as though they were artificial things in the world of language that, when we think and speak, divert our attention from the real things of the external world—or even begin to observe them altogether, interfere with observing them, hybridize and amalgamate with them. We are forced constantly to look at the words of a nonnative language as separate objects “competing” with the real things of the nonlinguistic world, which we would like to experience without any interference. This happens because, owing to insecurity and a lack of naturalness and spontaneity in speech, we constantly control our speech, check it excessively, and reflect on it objectively; through this very movement of reflection, we turn the words of a foreign language into objects we suspiciously observe—as though they were things belonging to a separate artificial world of language. Instead of opening the objects of external reality as immediately as possible, the words of foreign languages themselves become secondary objects that we observe obsessively: in our experience of thinking and speaking, a nonnative language becomes like uneven and heavily scratched glass, behind whose opacities, scratches, and other imperfections—as though they were new artificial things—our eye continually catches, although it would rather graze in the meadows of the external world, among the real things of nonlinguistic reality. However well we may know any foreign language, we will never know it as well as our native language. Fully aware of this—and lacking confidence in speech, spontaneity of linguistic expression, and naturalness—we eventually acknowledge that both in the foreign languages themselves 296 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba and in the external world they open up, we will never feel as at home as we do in our native language and the reality it opens up. When Heidegger called language the house of being, he meant that human being “takes up residence” inside this house, establishing itself when we delimit an undefined, chaotic living environment by defining it with a certain linguistic contour, as though with the walls of a house. But the relation between language and being can also be imagined differently, by invoking a completely opposite—or oppositely interpreted—analogy: language can be imagined as a house in which being itself does not reside but opens up to the one looking through its windows. Being, which in fact lives not inside the house of being but outside it, never reveals itself directly to the mortal beyond the space of this house, which may not be left, but only indirectly, mediately, by dwelling in the house of being, or, more precisely, the house of language, and looking from inside it outward through the transparent or opacity-laden glass of the windows of this house. If we look through the windows of our native language, we see being so clearly, as though it opened up beyond transparent glass, almost immediately; but if we look through the windows of foreign languages, the forms of being appear indistinctly because of the opacity, unevenness, or scratches in the glass. If we acknowledge that authorial philosophy, in which the distinctive mark of the thinker’s authentic existence must be imprinted, must grow out of experience as immediate as possible, we must conclude that it is possible to philosophize in the mode of authorial thought only in the native language. In this respect, authorial philosophy closely resembles poetry, which is authorial by its very definition and spirit: we will never learn to write genuinely profound works of authorial philosophy, any more than good poems, in foreign languages. Authorial philosophy resembles poetry in that both seek to give a dimension of universality to the singularity and uniqueness of personal human experience. The difference is only that poetry translates the individual experiences of a particular person into forms of universal experience significant to all people by drawing on the powers of language that determine expressive concreteness, especially concrete images and representations created linguistically, whereas philosophy does so by relying not only on the linguistic expression of concreteness but also on the powers of abstract concepts. Like good poetry, authentic authorial philosophy is enslaved neither to the mirages of pure objectivity nor to the whims of pure subjectivity, always expecting the miracle of insight only at creatively discovered intersections of objectivity and subjectivity, where every apprehension and insight of meaning—which is likewise never purely objective or purely subjective—opens up. Both poetry and authorial philosophy seek to convey the experience of the world as an integral meaningful (or, conversely, meaning-lacking) whole, but seen not anonymously, rather from an angle revealed only to that particular poet or thinker. Authorial philosophy, like poetry, also seeks to convey the integrity of singular personal human experience as it unfolds not only spatially but temporally. The philosopher, like every other mortal, speaks their native language from infancy—much Įžvalgos / Insights 297 NAGLIS KARDELIS longer than any other language learned later, and therefore it is precisely the philosopher’s native language, in whose house they have lived the longest, that is able to convey better the temporal existence and overall integrity of the philosopher as a person persisting through time, thereby reducing the gap between existence and its authentic expression in thought given voice. This is another argument, in our view worthy of attention, for why authorial philosophy, like good poetry, is easier to create in the native language, and in certain cases can be created only in it. Both poetry and authorial philosophy aspire not only to reveal reality—as it already is—but also to create, through poetic images or abstract philosophical concepts, visions of an alternative reality, a better and more meaningful world. The ability to create alternatives to existing reality through thoughts and linguistic images depends greatly on the capacity of the language in which poetry or philosophy is created to break away from existing forms of reality; this capacity, in turn, depends on the plasticity of the language used. If a poet or philosopher has not yet become completely alienated from their nation and forgotten their native language, their native language has been and will remain the most plastic medium of their thinking, creativity, and linguistic expression, in which it is easiest to perform the conscious movement of focusing and defocusing the spiritual gaze, bringing closer and moving farther away the image of reality focused in the medium of language, thereby either spiritually identifying and merging with reality or, conversely, emotionally and intellectually distancing oneself from it, becoming alienated from it and creating a greater spiritual distance in relation to it. Precisely because of its transparency as a linguistic medium, the native language can most easily and reliably domesticate existing reality and take delight in the world as it already is, still transformed, drawing the poetic and philosophical gaze toward the most joyful aspects of reality and allowing one to merge spiritually and identify emotionally with reality. On the other hand, because of its exceptional plasticity and the related power to defocus the poetic and philosophical gaze, the native language, better than foreign languages, enables the creation of alternative versions of existing reality, giving both poet and philosopher the opportunity, so to speak, to rest somewhat from our still transformed lived world when it becomes overly harsh and inhospitable, to distance themselves from that world and seemingly escape from it into more perfect and soul-friendly worlds of poetry and philosophy. No other language is as generous to philosophy as the native language, especially if we regard philosophy as something more than merely an ordinary science. The native language allows us to return to the very origins of philosophy, to the authentic conception of classical philosophy inherited from the ancient Greeks, discovering in the depths of philosophy the element of poetry and, in the rigorous form of science, the seething magma of the arts. And most importantly, as philosophy and the native language grow together, they cultivate and educate one another. Authentic authorial philosophy matured by the sap of the native language enables the native language to give voice to the highest spiritual experiences of human beings—thus 298 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIX Filosofija ir gimtoji kalba the native language speaks in its richest, subtlest, and noblest register, and having spoken in this way, it earns such respect from us, its speakers, and even from strangers that it does not occur to us to forget it and abandon it for some other language supposedly richer, more worthy, more respectable, and more prestigious. It is precisely philosophy raised by the native language that later allows the crown of the green native-language oak itself to flourish, while at the same time enabling this oak to send such deep roots into the earth that it becomes impossible to uproot, immortal... Received November 27, 2023 NAGLIS KARDELIS Vilnius University Faculty of Philosophy Universiteto g. 9/1, LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] Įžvalgos / Insights 299