Three things
I and me. I feel me—are two objects. Our false philsophy is embodied in the entire language; we can, so to speak, not reason without reasoning falsely. One does not consider that speaking, no matter of what, is a philosophy. Everyone who speaks German is a folk philosopher, and our university philosophy consists in moderations of the former. Philosophy is the rectification of the use of language, that is, the rectification of a philosophy, and indeed of the most common. Only the common philosophy has the advantage that it possesses declinations and conjugations. Thus the true philosophy is always taught with the language of the false. To explain words does not help, for in explaining words I do not yet change the pronouns and their declination. (Lichtenberg, H146; German previously.)
The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin. (Lichtenberg, C17 in Hollingdale's edition and translation, which means only that in a complete edition it is in book C somewhere after the sixteenth aphorism.)
God himself can make no promises to man except in a human language. (Anscombe, "Rule, Rights and Promises", qtd. in Moran & Stone, "Anscombe on Expression of Intention".)
Comments
on 2009-02-22 20:00:46.0, Paul Lowry commented:
There is communication that does not require language. I wonder what a philosopher like Seneca would think of academic philosophers.
and, further, on 2009-02-22 20:25:38.0, ben wolfson commented:
You mean like Arcesilaus?