The being of the body is the being of language.
My goal is to explain what this phrase means to see precisely in what sense it is true. Because there are senses in which it is true.
The phrase is likely not intelligible from the outset because I am using the words 'body', 'language', and 'being' in peculiar or idiosyncratic ways. I will explicate what I mean by these words. I will repeat the phrase, 'the being of the body is the being of language', as I proceed. I hope that as I explicate and repeat the central terms a reader, and myself as the writer, will begin to perceive the intricacy or complexity of the terms. In this way the writing will be a self-instancing of what Eugene Gendlin refers to as 'carrying forward' or the 'fashioning of concepts capable of displaying their intricacy'. I am currently hard at work on Gendlin, so this will help.
The being of the body is the being of language.
When I use the word 'body' I am likely to conjure a host of connotations, the most prominent perhaps being the idea of the 'physical' body that operates principally through mechanisms that we measure through physics, chemistry, physiology, and biology. The body, in short, is thought of as a type of machine. A machine, Gendlin argues, can be broadly defined as "a set of known patterns separated from the thing in which other factors could cross with them. Now we can notice that science renders everything as a machine!" ("The Responsive Order,"1997, in Saying What we Mean, 2018, 272). If the body is a machine, as science and medicine presuppose, then of course the being of the body is not the being of language.
The being of the body is the being of language, but not in the sense of the body as a machine. This would require an image of language in which it were also a collection of 'units' that could be interchangable with one another. It would require what Whitehead refers to as 'the fallacy of the perfect dictionary': it requires a misunderstanding of language in which it consists of 'logical atoms' (Re: Russel, Ayer, early Wittgenstein). The body is not a machine, it is not comprised of units. Language is not a machine, it is not comprised of units.
The body is an organism, not a machine. Language belongs to organisms, and itself resembles an organism.
The being of the body is the being of language in the sense that the body is an organism that makes its way in the world via its aims, or its sense of pleasure, goodness, or value.
To think the body as an organism as opposed to a machine requires that many presuppositions be reconfigured. The body as an organism implies an account of language in which it is more than a collection of parts, but a part of a holistic organismic process. Language must somehow be a subordinate element in the total functioning of the organism. I quite like Peter Levine's definition of organism as "a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relation and properties are largely determined by their functions in the whole. Therefore, the whole of the organism is greater than the sum of its individual parts." (Waking the Tiger, 67). The existence of organisms is a direct contradiction to the account of the universe whereby it is defined by the chaotic movement of its smallest parts. The organism is a problem for physicalism.
I think it more promising to rethink physicalism than to explain away the organism, although many think otherwise.
Organisms as genuine wholes driven by aims raise the question of the place of goodness or value in the universe. For if the existence of organisms is a challenge to the account of physicalism, atomism, the unit model, then the organism demands a fundamentally different picture of the cosmos. In particular, the organism challenges the Lucretian, atomistic view of the universe in which it is made of empty space and atoms. The smallest things are not the most important things. Mereological nihilism is not a defensible position (and I have never taken it to be). Genuine wholes exist.
The existence of organisms presents us with the problem of the radical discounting of life that has taken place during the modern period. If we examine the reasons for the radical decentering of life we find political motivation. Beginning with Machiavelli and passing through Bacon, Descartes, and much of the early modern period, the physical sciences, particularly atomism, are viewed as a politically useful tool. Robert Roecklein explicates this problem in provocative ways. Machiavelli knew that by borrowing terms from physics he could think of the 'people' as 'masses' to be manipulated. Bacon and Descartes furthered this project of mastering nature and applying physicalist models to the workings of politics. I am unsure if behaviorism, B.F. Skinner, and transhumanism would have pleased or horrified the early modern founders. Transhumanism, I have been claiming for a while, is the logical outcome of the early modern philosophers.
The being of the body is the being of language.
If the body is an organism, then the organism has some fundamental connection with language, and language has some fundamental connection with being. For if the body is not a machine and language not a series of units being deployed by that machine, then language must be something other than a series of 'signifiers' pointing to unknowable 'signified'.
The body as an organism must also have its own politics. For we see that the account of the body as machine leads to an account of language as machine leads to an account of politics as mastery, as techne.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of language is the being of the world.
The being of language is being.
The being of the organism is necessarily being through time. As an organism moves through time it necessarily 'moves through' or 'occupies' space. As an organism moves through time and space it leaves traces of its activity in the world. An organism can not move without effecting the environment around it.
These traces seem to possess an inherent intelligibility. I imagine that animals smell each other, notice each other's tracks and droppings. The movement of an organism implies the existence of other organisms that are 'related to' or 'accounted for' within the movement of the organism.
The existence of the organism implies the existence of other organisms. Just as the existence of hunger implies the existence of food, implies the existence of digestion, implies the existence of defecation, implies the existence of hunger.
The being of an organism implies the total environment that 'facilitates' or 'contains' the organism's being. The being of an organism implies other organisms that inhabit this environment. The being of the organism thus implies an intelligible world in which there are necessarily others who are both intelligible and intelligent.
The being of the body is the being of language.
The being of the world is the being of language.
The body is the language of the world.
Language is the body of the world.
The world is the speaking body.
The world is alive.
The being of the organism implies the existence of memory.
The existence of memory implies the existence of story.
The being of the world is the being of language.
To say that the being of the body is the being of language forces us to confront the intimate intertwining of ideas about ourselves, other animals, politics, and the cosmos. For the if the body is a machine it implies: the existence of empty space, the existence of atoms, a strictly formal account of language, and a politics of mastery. If the body is an organism it implies: the existence of a living universe; the primacy of wholes over parts; an account of language in which it is synonymous with being; and a politics of tragedy (which I will not explicate here).
The being of the body is the being of language.
Being is Language.
The body is being
The body speaks, incessantly.
The most appropriate name for the world is: The Tale.
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