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Linguistics, Ethics, and Freedom J. Jacob Tawney

Some time ago I wrote about the role of consonants and vowels in the formation ofwords and consequently the role of words and syntax in the formation of ideas. Inspiredby a comment from a friend of a friend, I want to extend these ideas to and considersome parallels in ethics. First, let me summarize what I wrote about previously.

Linguistics

The purpose of language is to disclose objective truth. In this way, language isinherently

teleological

in nature. It strives towards perfection, perfection that ismeasured by the manner in which it authentically discloses truth. This top-downmanner in which truth itself, as

telos

, pushes down on language has two closely relatedimplications. First, as stated, language itself never exists for its own sake, but it alwaysexists for a purpose: to disclose the truth of being. In an article from

The Review of Metaphysics

(December 2005), Fr. Robert Sokolowksi put this in plain terms, “The focusof speech is not the speech itself, but the things spoken about” (“Visual Intelligence inPainting”, 334). Second, it is the pressure from above that

gives existence

to language.That is, the reality of truth-disclosure makes language necessary; language not onlyexists

in order to

disclose truth, but also

because

truth exists to be disclosed. Thisteleological pressure operates on two levels of language.The ﬁrst is the level of s

yntax-word

. In a matter-form relationship, the words play therole of matter which, unless formed by a proper syntax, becoming meaningless(irrational). In

Christian Faith and Human Understanding

, Sokolowski describes theprocess of lexicon-syntax as follows:“The most conspicuous feature of our verbal articulation is the way in which phrases areembedded into one another. This is the work of syntax; it makes it possible for us tosegment our speech ... into parts that are not just concatenated sequentially one afterthe other, but are stacked within one another .... Speeches of unlimited complexitybecome possible. It is this embedding ... that differentiates human speech from animalcries and sounds” (

Christian Faith

, 169).What is essential for our purposes is to understand that random sequences of wordsare limited in their

freedom

to express truth (the very purpose for which they strive)precisely

because of their lack of form

, or syntax. The role of syntax is to “clip” or“segment” the words in order to give them deﬁnition. This

clipping

is not a hindrance tothe abilities of the raw material of words, but is the device by which words are

given

their freedom

to express coherent ideas. As Sokolowksi says, it is syntax which“differentiates human speech from animal cries and sounds.”The rules of syntax that govern the manner in which words are used receive their beingfrom the downward push of rationality (truth in need of disclosure). In turn, rationalsyntax pushes down upon the words themselves. At the level of phonemes, the matter-form relationship is played respectively by vowels and consonants. Again fromSokolowski,

“Syntax has to be related to the phonemic structure within each word, and it isspeciﬁcally the consonants that function on this level in a manner analogous to syntax.Consonants are like the syntax within words. Consonants clip and trim the words wespeak.... Consonants order the more elementary vowel sounds, the wails and howlsand whimpers and glee that do not need to be taught to us. Vowels alone would be anunlettered human voice; it is the consonants that make the voice rational” (

Christian Faith

, 169).Again, what is important for our purposes here is that the consonants, in their “clipping”of the vowel do not hinder the freedom of vowel-sounds, but actually impart upon thema freedom to operate in their intended manner: to express a rational sound, i.e., disclosethe objective truth they seek to present. Unlettered vowel sounds, which can beproduced by non-rational beings, are not free to be anything more than randomsequences of emotional utterances. It is precisely because of the rational nature ofconsonants that humans have to be

socialized

into their use just as we have to besocialized into the rules of syntax (“Visual Intelligence”, 335). In the use of language,little children must

learn

to clip the natural vowel sounds in order to impart

meaning

intheir words. The form imparted by the consonants (as in any matter-form relationship)

gives freedom

to the vowels, the freedom to authentically disclose truth.This top-down pressure from truth through syntax and into the consonantal clipping ofsounds to form words is described by Sokolowski: “We shape sounds into words

because

we want to combine words into phrases and discourse (and we combine wordsinto phrases

because

we want to display things” (“Visual Intelligence”, 336). As statedabove, without the need to truth-disclosure, syntax would not exist, and by extensionneither would words or letters. The letters and words are not only ordained towards theprocess of disclosing truth, but they ﬁnd their very being in their

telos

.There is yet a deeper level of language that I did not discuss in my previous piece, thelevel of

prosody

, or “the rhythms and beats that are proper to a language” (“VisualIntelligence”, 337). According to Sokolowski, even the unborn child is sensitive to thisaspect of the mother

s voice; the rhythm of her voice penetrates the womb and isaccessible to the child through vibrations in the amniotic ﬂuid. Even in the womb, thebaby is learning to “recognize the melody and rhythms of language, that is, theintonation contours and the stress patterns that constitute the particularities of both itsmother

s voice and the sounds that will become its native tongue.... Thus the newborncomes into the world prepared to pay special attention to human speech” (“VisualIntelligence”, 337).Sokolowski calls this rhythm the “cadence of language,” and maintains that the child isaccustomed to it long before rational words can be formed. “By the end of the ﬁrst year,the baby

s babbling rises and falls in intonation to mimic questions andstatements” (“Visual Intelligence”, 337). Parents will attest to the distinction betweenthe coos of a newborn and the semi-rational babbling of a one-year-old, the child who isalready displaying knowledge of the “cadence of language.”

The three levels of human speech are the (1) the level of the sentence, the process bywhich syntax both governs and perfects the material provided by words, (2) the level ofphonemes, the process by which the consonants both govern and perfect the materialprovided by the vowels, and (3) the deep prosodic level, a cadence of rhythms andbeats (“Visual Intelligence”, 338). At all three levels, the top-down teleological processoperates providing a downward pressure from the

telos

of language, the objective truththat language seeks to present. *

Ethics

We are now prepared to extend the ideas of Sokolowski to the area of ethics. Just aslanguage is motivated in a teleological manner, so to is human action. And just asobjective truth provides the

telos

of language, so to does objective truth provide a

telos

for ethical behavior. In our description of the ethical structure of human behavior,however, let us work from the bottom up.At the deepest level of language we found the “cadence” of rhythms and beatsaccessible from a very early age. In the ethical realm we ﬁnd a

natural law

that isinscribed on the hearts of all rational beings. From a very early age with only a minimalamount of socialization, children inherently understand right from wrong. Theyunderstand that acts of love promote the good of both the lover and the beloved, andthey understand that acts of violence destroy both the perpetrator and the victim. Notethat understanding this law does not imply that it will always be adhered to, but it doesmean that the child is aware of when it is and is not being adhered to. The natural lawwill provide the most basic raw material for the ethical life, much like the cadence oflanguage provides the most basic raw material for rational speech.The second level of language is the form imparted by consonants on the more primitivevowel sounds. The consonants clip the otherwise endless sounds of vowels and at thesame time given to them rationality. The same relationship holds between

ethical norms

and otherwise random behavior patterns. Whether we view these as obligations,commandments, or norms, the purpose is the same. Random behavior is unintelligiblewithout a structure. While children have an inborn sense of natural law, there is acertain amount of socialization that must occur in order to impart a speciﬁc moral codeonto a child.The top level of language is where the distinction between rational and non-rationalbeings becomes most evident. The syntactical structure of words allow for “speeches ofunlimited complexity.” In the moral realm, the role of syntax is played by the

virtues

.The mature moral man takes the more basic norms and learns to apply them to speciﬁcsituations, to perfect them and give them a rationality unparalleled elsewhere in thenatural world. In other words, the virtues call the ethical man to transcend thecommandments, to recognize that to be fully human requires an ongoing process ofperfection, one that only

begins

with ethical norms. The mature moral man not only

knows

the norms of ethical behavior, but

internalizes

them to the point that he is

truly free

create

moral responses to a wide variety of situations, responses of “unlimited

of 00

uploaded a new revision for this document (#2)

11 / 18 / 2009

uploaded a new revision for this document (#1)

11 / 18 / 2009

Linguistics, Ethics, and Freedom

Some time ago I wrote about the role of consonants and vowels in the formation of words and consequently the role of words and syntax in the formation of ideas. Inspired by a co... (More)

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