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Language as a necessary limit for transition of

philosophy

Language is elementary for humans. We as humans need a form of

interaction between ourselves. Language is so elementary for humans that there

have been many languages and the evolving of them through time and place. We

have languages for deaf people, blind, for the normal persons and language is

even so important in different places that it changes the meaning of the words. An

example is bizarre, in English it means odd, strange, absurd, but in Spanish it

means brave. Also it is so necessary there is a language for the professions there

are in the world, like philosophy, economics, design, programming, medics, etc. we

call this jerga, which proves us that Language is essential for human kind.

The problem with language is that it limits almost in every aspect because it

can be used in very specific ways, just like medics and economist. They may havea chat and use the same words but the words might be misunderstood because

they are used in different context because of the career. So Language is

elementary for the communication between us and yet the same thing happens

when language is applied to philosophy. Here comes the limit ant through history

with language. Because besides the type of language used to communicate to

each other also the time affects us because of the historical context and the place.

Therefore we cannot fully understand what someone was referring to because of

the context, the jerga he or she used and the intention he or she meant.

This trouble here is that Language is necessary but it limits everything. But

in philosophy it should limit us even more because the time, the context, theexpressions and the many translations there are of the dialogs of the philosophers.

Even if 2 philosophers were talking, if they are not from the same time there might

be a misunderstanding precisely because of the context. Yet they need language

to communicate with each other so Language is a necessary limit.

Plato says, as far as I understood, that language is not necessary for

thinking. This is a good theory because we needed to think before making a

language to communicate between us, therefore language is not necessary for us.

But first the proposition mentioned at the beginning is that language is a limit for

philosophy, not for thinking and this is exactly the point. Philosophy comes from the

Greek and it means love for wisdom.

Philosophy having this meaning will seek knowledge, which is absolute,

unchangeable, and perdurable. Here the limit is that we use language, which

changes through time, profession, place and abilities, and is in constant motion, to

try to explain knowledge so we use non absolutes, or not truth to try to explain

truth. This is very complicated because it is like we saw in class, an entity trying to

be the being, but still we will not accomplish it. Now the limit here is clear in the

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transmition of knowledge and here comes the cratilo dialog.

This dialog says that Hermogenes was talking with Cratilo in a discussion

about the meaning of words coming in a natural way or in an arbitrary way

depending on the habits of people. Hermogenes asks Socrates to intervene in this

chat and there is the discussion about the name of the things not expressing the

essence of the thing itself because it can be changed to other name or word if

necessary. Also I understood the 3 got to the conclusion that changing words

constantly is like cheating the language so the oldest language is no different from

a new one and unestablished. Therefore the conclusion is like we do not need

language, it is not a tool for absolute knowledge and it is like a way of making us

complicated the understanding of knowledge.

One thing I cannot understand is that if we do not need language, let us say

one philosopher gets the absolute knowledge of everything and the meaning of life,

but as his moral obligation after getting the idea or the knowledge is to return to us,

normal people who do not have that absolute knowledge, to teach us thatknowledge. How would he or she do it if he or she does not knows the language

we use so he would need language to explain to us the knowledge he got, yet the

comprehension of this would not be 100% right due to the limitations we have from

language. It is not like he or she would teach us the meaning of life, existence and

the being by using his finger and making noises, that would be less

comprehendible so he or she would need to know the language to explain himself

in order to accomplish his or her moral duty. We get, after this, to the limitation of

language.

The conclusion of Socrates in the dialog of cratilo has a lot of truth and this

is reflected now days in every conversation we may have. Yet after putting theexample of what it would be if we had no language it is kind of a deal of what we

can do without it; we cannot communicate properly. But there is one thing I really

do not comprehend at all; if there is a philosopher who gets to know the absolute

knowledge and abandons language to accomplish it, when the time comes to

explain this knowledge to the other people would he really have any trouble

communicating this knowledge?.

What I mean is if he or she has absolute knowledge, the perfection, the idea

or the complete soul or whatever you may call it, he should know a way of

communicating this knowledge with or without the language because the

knowledge is absolute, one, perdurable. This is from the point of Socrates because

if we see this like the sophist we would keep in the change and the language

would have been, is and will be always a limit for the transition of knowledge, but

also if everything changes so would knowledge and because of this knowledge

would not be knowledge, not absolute, perdurable, etc. Returning to Socrates`

point of view, the problem is that if there is philosopher who achieved the

knowledge, would he have or not be limited in sharing or explaining this knowledge

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to the other people. And with this I get to a question I cannot answer which is; what

is the absolute knowledge?

If we could answer this question we should be able to know if there is or not

a limit with language when transmitting this same knowledge to everyone else. Yet

to achieve this knowledge we might have to quit to language in order to learn it, or

not, again when we have the moral obligation to come back. And what makes it

even more complicated, we do not know if we or any human being is going to be

able to ever achieve the real and absolute knowledge, most of this is only a

supposition which might not happen at all. The seek for this knowledge has more

than two thousand years which, more than help us achieving this wisdom, is

complicating it even more with more specific terms for different things and

technology that privates us from thinking, we are screwed in Facebook instead of

thinking in something more productive or interesting.

The only conclusion I can get to is that we as humans need to communicate

and interact; therefore we thought first in a way of communicating and we createdlanguage. This language with time changes and it can complicate the

understanding of any kind of message due to the context, time, and what the

emissary and receptor know about the subject. Language is a limit for

communication but not for thought or reason. In the supposition that someone

achieves the absolute knowledge he or she would have 2 possible cases; the first

one is that when his or her moral obligation comes he or she should have a

problem to communicate this knowledge due to language and the perception of the

receiver, and the second case is that when the moral obligation comes he or she

would have no limit nor problem explaining the absolute knowledge and therefore

we would all have the absolute knowledge and live in a utopia where everyone iswise and so none one is.