LANGUAGE: A MANIFESTATION OF HUMAN BEING'S SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

Mayon Volcano, Albay, Philippines

I love you. Je t’aime. Te quiero. Mahal kita. In whatever language it may be, this is arguably the most used expression in the world. But why do people understand this sentence even though it could not be seen or touched? Love could not be empirically verified. Love is not in the heart although it is mostly associated with it. Love is not a particular action though a particular action, like giving a gift or flower or comforting a sad or sick person, could be an expression of love, but it is not love itself. Love could not be reduced to any particular thing or action though they may express what love is, but not totally. Love is one particular concept that does not have a specific correspondence with any empirical reality. Nevertheless, we understand what it is. Why could this simple sentence, “I love you”, comfort a disillusioned person? Why could it fortify two persons in relationship? Love is empirically unverifiable, but it is the most universal among the human beings. The simple word “love” may not correspond to a particular reality, but it is undeniably a universal human reality.

Taal Volcano, Batangas, Philippines

In the prologue of his landmark Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote this famous statement: “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” This is just the one-liner summary of his ambitious project: to draw a limit to the expression of thoughts. According to him, “the limit can only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.” Though Wittgenstein did not deny the existence of the immaterial or spiritual realities, he was convinced however that we can never speak of them. Our language is too limited or imperfect to express those realities. What he believed is that a proposition is true if it can “picture” the world, and thus that proposition accurately represents the said reality. The proposition “God is perfect” is meaningless or empty of any significance because it could not be “pictured”, that is, verified empirically. For him, a proposition must have a pictorial form in order to be understood. The only way to understand a proposition is when it has a “picturing” relationship with the world. 

It is noteworthy to mention Wittgenstein’s correction to himself: “The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather – not to thinking but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought).”  He was right. The human being thinks as long as there are objects of thought. Only nothing is that we cannot think of. Is there someone capable of thinking about nothing? No one certainly do. Thus thinking has no limit as long as there is being to think of. Thus we can say: only nothing could limit our thinking. This affirms the fact that thinking is not limited by sensible reality, but rather it can go beyond that. Sensible realities constitute the object of our intellect only in potency.[1]

Mt. Pinatubo Crater, Zambales, Philippines

Wittgenstein put the limit on language instead:“The language masks the thought.”[2] Is language too imperfect to express our thoughts? Maybe but we cannot deny however that language is the vehicle of our thoughts. Man is a rational being, and he expresses his thoughts through language. As a rational being, man has eternal aspirations. Man is always searching for the truth. But truth cannot be limited to empirical things or a particular verifiable action. Truth does not depend on empirical evidence. Truth transcends the material reality. Our language, just like our intellect or knowledge may not totally capture what Truth is, but it helps us to understand it to some extent. Thus, philosophical propositions are not nonsensical. They are means in our pursuit for the truth.

The language we use in philosophy helps us in our search for the truth. We human beings cannot deny the fact that we are always striving to know it. Wittgenstein himself was aiming for it: “The truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive.” Is this expression of his thought nonsense since it does not correspond to a specific empirical reality? No, we absolutely understand what he wanted to say. Language then is not a hindrance but a medium to express one’s thoughts and to know the thoughts of others. To limit language to sensible realities is to limit the human knowledge itself.

Moreover, expressions of thought do need to be empirically verifiable to be understood clearly. Truth, love, and faith are just some of the examples in our language that could not be “pictured” or verified empirically, but they are the most common in our life. Without faith, every relationship would just be a selfish game of survival and taking advantage of. Without faith/ trust, everything would be absurdly subject of doubt. Without love, human life would be pointless. These are words that have no empirical correspondence, but they mean a lot to us. Precisely, our language could not be contained or be simply limited to an evident empirical fact because language is a manifestation of the spiritual dimension of man.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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[1] Cf. Jorge Vicente Arregui & Jacinto Choza, Filosofía del hombre. Una antropología de la intimidad, Rialp, Madrid, 1992, p.291.

[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.002