“Language and thinking about things are so bound together that it is an abstraction to conceive of the system of truths as a pregiven system of possibilities of being for which the signifying subject selects corresponding signs. A word is not a sign that one selects, nor is it a sign that one makes or gives to another; it is not an existent thing that one picks up and gives an ideality of meaning in order to make another being visible through it. This is mistaken on both counts. Rather, the ideality of the meaning lies in the word itself. It is meaningful already. But this does not imply, on the other hand, that the word precedes all experience and simply advenes to an experience in an external way, by subjecting itself to it” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 416-417).

Language is not a voluntaristic manipulation. It has “being” of its own that is closely related to thought — a kind of thickness or “substantiality”. But I am doubtful that this applies to individual words in speech. We find one kind of metaphorical substantiality in discourse, and another in poetry, but I don’t think either of these comes from individual words. Language as meaningful consists of “sayings”, not mere names or representational tokens. Aristotle principally focuses on such sayings, and gives preferential treatment to what is well said. Such implicitly normative sayings are what is studied in the pragmatics of language, to which Habermas and Brandom explicitly draw our attention.

“If Greek philosophy does not want to admit this relationship between word and thing, speech and thought, the reason no doubt is that thought had to protect itself against the intimate relationship between word and thing in which the speaker lives. The dominion of this ‘most speakable of all languages’ (Nietzsche) over thought was so great that the chief concern of philosophy was to free itself from it. Thus from early on, the Greek philosophers fought against the ‘onoma‘ as the source of the seduction and confusion of thought, and instead embraced the ideality that is constantly created in language. This was already true when Parmenides conceived the truth of the thing from the logos, and certainly after the Platonic turn to ‘discourse,’ followed by Aristotle’s orienting the forms of being to the forms of assertion (schemata tes kategorias)” (p. 417).

Especially the beginning above seems quite disappointing, coming from one who has quite a few interesting things to say about Plato and Aristotle. He seems to be claiming that the Greek philosophers assumed that language is completely transparent. I find entirely the opposite at least in the case of Aristotle, who discusses many complexities in language use. Language for Aristotle is not at all a transparent medium, but rather something very tangible in which we live, make our way, and find our sustenance. Transparency of language is especially a modern prejudice. Reading it back into the Greeks comes only on the questionable authority of Heidegger. Gadamer seems to accept Heidegger’s claims that Plato and Aristotle base everything on a notion of presence (which really was a central concept for Husserl). I think this reading puts way too much of Husserl into Plato and Aristotle.

“There is, however, an idea that is not Greek which does more justice to the being of language, and so prevented the forgetfulness of language in Western thought from being complete. This is the Christian idea of incarnation. Incarnation is obviously not embodiment. Neither the idea of the soul nor of God that is connected with embodiment corresponds to the Christian idea of incarnation” (p. 418).

This distinction is certainly correct. Alain de Libera has emphasized the unrecognized role of Trinitarian theology and christology in shaping apparently secular modern Western notions of subjectivity and personhood.

“The uniqueness of the redemptive event introduces the essence of history into Western thought, brings the phenomenon of language out of its immersion in the ideality of meaning, and offers it to philosophical reflection. For, in contrast to the Greek logos, the word is pure event (verbum proprie dicitur personaliter tantum)” (ibid).

The last part about Incarnation as pure event might be plausible in itself. The Latin phrase means “the word is properly said personally only”. The “personally” here might indicate the performative mode of speech that Habermas discusses. But to stress a pure event is precisely to stress the accidental over the essential. And to claim an utterly unique event is a sectarian move. Live and let live, I say. Moreover, it is not at all clear what Incarnation specifically has to do with recognizing the being of language.