This essay is, in a way, impossible to write. That is, it is not possible directly as it refers to what cannot be said and the limits of language. However, where there are non-linguistic spaces whose interior are beyond what can be said, they are surrounded by linguistic references that show up where those spaces are. Such non-linguistic spaces and what they contain may therefore be indicated indirectly, but the content cannot be understood or described as they are experienced by the use of language. Elsewhere I have called this ‘the bit in between’.1 What one is encouraged to think about by this, as with talk of non-linguistic spaces, are those features of our life experiences and understanding uncovered, and uncoverable, by language. Imagine a crude net dragged through our experience and understanding of life. It picks up the chunky objects and assembles them for mutual inspection, but a vast amount is simply unnetable, like the watery ocean itself that this metaphor alludes to.
This should lead us not to overvalue language, or perhaps, to put it another way, not misunderstand it and overestimate what it can do. We can do this by not ignoring – and sometimes, it seems, denigrate as unimportant – what is beyond its grasp. For what is beyond its grasp is the very heart and core of what often matters most in our lives: the very feel of living. It is this that draws us through our lives and allows us to shape as we may what, for us, gives life meaning.
The issue is how one is to handle and deal with experiences in one’s life, such as the feeling on a particular occasion of the wind on your face while walking along a cliff top by the sea, something one may remember and what means, in a way you do not fully understand, a great deal to you.
What can one say about it? Well, I’ve referred to. I’ve described the circumstances of the event’s occurrence. But none of what is said describes what the experience is like. Nor do the words alone evoke the experience. In order for any reference or description to the experience to give anyone any idea what the experience is like they would have had to have had some experience similar to it. Even that would not be complete and take you to the experience, for let it be noted, the experience is particular.
The grasp of language fails in two ways on this occasion. The first is not to be able to say anything about the had-quality of the experience itself. The second is the perhaps necessary inability of language to say anything about the particular experience as language terms refer to universals.
However here we are indeed concerned with a particular experience and the “had-quality” of it as a particular experience, whatever similarities it might have to other experiences on other occasions, for an essential part of any …
Read the full article which is published on Daily Philosophy (external link)
