Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing?
There are three different provinces of philosophical in te re st:
reality, thought, and language. Classical philosophy has always been interested in arriving at an ultim ate understanding of the real world, but the effort to understand the world in ultim ate term s has not always been correctly carried out and free of error.
Here erro r and discussion rather than agreement in interpreta
tion are the norm. Descartes and the thinkers who appeared after him were of the opinion th at the object to be explained in philosophy is « ideas ». Now ideas can be conceived of in various ways, inasmuch as the content of knowledge is given to m an precisely in « ideas ». However, from the beginning of the tw entieth century the object of philosophical interest shifted, especially in the English-speaking world, to language, since lan
guage articulates all thought and there is no way to escape from language Q.
0 Linguists who follow F. de Sausure in distinguishing between
« language — le langage » and « speech — la parole », and thus between language as a semiotic system and concrete language or speech, think that it is impossible to extricate oneself from language, but such a stand is surely a « dogm a», since « le langage» is a system of signs which have been produced by man as he knows reality and establishes signs by virtue of an operation of human nature.
We do this consciously, in the function of the primordial sign cons
truction which is the production of senses or meanings in knowledge.
Furthermore, this is immensely important, we posses signless cognitive contact when we affirm the existence of a concrete being given to us in the empiria or experience of every day and also in our experience of our own (respective) self, since I ceaselessly register the fact that it is
« I » who know, feel, breathe. I affirm the existence of my « I » as a subject in the « act of subjectivizing » human activities.
186 M. A. Krapiec, O.P
To backtrack a little, after Condillac, it had also seemed to Destutt de Tracy and his confreres, th at ideology — « sciences des idees » — is the general science, and that it constitutes the starting point for all the other sciences, and that it is the basis especially for psychology and morality. Ideology was intended to replace metaphysics. However, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been a supporter of the school of the ideologues », upon attaining power, dissolved this school as being atheistic, as a
« tenebreuse metaphysique » which was at odds w ith the law and spirit of the nation. « Ideology » in a different form lingered on in other places... (2).
Thus when in recent decades linguistics underwent such an explosive development, some linguists, even such outstanding ones as. E. Benveniste, thought that they could dispense with certain metaphysical questions, even such questions as the « con
cept » of the self, since the pronoun « I » does not present any content (as David Hume had already brought to attention), that
thus the « I » is only an interiorization of the structure of the gram m ar of a language (3). Even before Benveniste, it had been noted th at the sentential conjunction « is » in principle appears
((only)) (*) in Indoeuropean languages and that it is unknown in other language groups. Thus all metaphysics is a m isunder
standing constructed around « is ». Linguists have been making
(2) Cf. R. R omberg, Ideologie, in « Historisches Worterbuch der Phi
losophic », Bd. IV, p. 174 ss. iSchwabe Verlag, Basel.
(3) By « natural language» I basically understand the language of every day life, common sense language, which is the base and point de depart in the formation of the various sciences and which constitutes the basic tool used in philosophical interpretations, of course after philo
sophical terms have been more closely defined. This is subj ect-predicate language, 'linked with our spontaneous understanding of the reality of
the real world, that is of being as an existing subject composed in itself.
We know this being « responsibly », that is truly, by way of judgements, the most perfect human act of cognition which may be rendered in sentences. In sentences we pronounce about a « subject» various « pre
dicates », « real features » known in the subject, and we join them in a judgemental predication with the subject by the sentential conjunction
« is » or equivalent grammatical categories.
(*) Double parentheses indicate expressions inserted by the trans
lator for the sake of clarity.
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 187
forays into the area of philosophy and will continue to do so, all the more as classical philosophy makes use of so called
« natural language » (4) as a tool in its analyses concerning being, which analyses are philosophical in character, not linguistic- How then is language related to philosophy? For isn't this the entire problem in how linguists are related to philosophy? If linguists want to « be related to philosophy » then they have to be philosophers.
Before we undertake to « establish » the borders between linguistics and philosophy we should first consider the ontic character of language, since this is the deciding factor in any effort to penetrate philosophical and linguistic problems.
Now language is without doubt a system of signs, and these signs are heterogenous. Most clearly there appear here also the {(various systems of)) conventional and instrum ental signs, such as various languages, national speech, or language groups, for example, Indoeuropean, Turanian, Vietnamese et cetera. Lan
guage, as a system of conventional signs involves three inter
dependent relations, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. Linguists are interested above all in the syntactic relations of language and sometimes are prone to undervalue language's most essential aspect, the fact that language is a ((system of)) signs; they are sometimes prone also to undervalue or even to deliberately pass over semantic and pragmatic relations (5). Meanwhile, if language is separated from its most primitive and basic relation which is the semantic relation, it will no longer even be recognizable
as language.
The semantic aspect of languages involves another system of linguistic signs, a system very im portant for cognition, namely
(4) I noted this topic in « Language and the Real W orld» (J?zyk i swiat realny). Lublin, 1985.
(5) Perhaps it is easiest to analyze the syntactic aspect of language, as a homogeneous object characterized by its own peculiar structure, the rules of which can be more and more precisely formulated, but this same syntactic aspect would not function at all as a language unless essentially joined with the semantic and pragmatic aspect, because lan
guage is by its essence a SIGN, from whose nature we cannot abstract without running the risk of losing the object itself.
188 M. A. Krapiec, O.P.
the system of transparent signs, of the meanings or senses, the concepts and the judgements which create the very content of knowledge. The senses of our spoken and w ritten language are natural transparent signs which, as a system, reveal the essential mode of our knowledge. At the same time thei point to various
cognitive aspects, namely w hat we grasp — from the thing itself and in what m anner we grasp it. Nonetheless, in our spontaneous knowledge it is not the senses of our linguistic expressions which are the object of knowledge, but rather these expressions indi
cate the manner in which we selectively make our way to the thing itself which is being cognized. The history of philosophical thought is full of instances where thought slipped into an out-of
control skid, where this system of transparent signs, the system of our concepts, judgements and reasonings itself was taken for the proper object of our (spontaneous) hum an cognition. This was the case w ith Plato, and later with Descartes and the whole philosophy of the subject, particularly in phenomenology. None
theless we are aware that the senses of our spontaneous know
ledge, i.e. of our concepts, judgements and reasonings become known only in the act of reflection upon our spontaneous cog
nition.
Finally the third system of « linguistic signs » is the thing itself as the object of our knowledge, the thing which is signi
fied » or m arked out by our meanings (natural signs) and this accessible to our intellect. The concrete thing in being known has « meaning » in our knowledge when it is accessible in the light of our natural signs, in the light of concepts and judgments.
What indeed do I understand from a concrete dog as it stands before me? Not very much in proportion to w hat I don't know
in the case of the dog- Indeed I know th at he is a certain kind
of mammal, a quadruped, that he barks, that he is a German
Shepherd. The entire « rem ainder » of the canine organism, of
the canine psyche is inaccessible to me. It becomes accessible
only in the measure in which it has been m arked out, «signified®,
by my acts of cognition and only in the measure in which it
posses cognitive « meaning » for me. Be that as it may, I know
the dog itself and not my concepts and my judgements about
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 189
the dog. Now when I cry out « dog! » everybody looks around for this object, and if they do not see him, they ask « where? ».
In such a case no one asks me about my understanding of « dog ».
It is in this sense that I can speak of the system of linguistic signs in the third case, in the case of the real object of my know
ledge. Indeed, if reality is not « signed » by some system of cognitive signs, it does not have any cognitive values. From the point ((of view of)) cognition such a reality is « meaningless », for it has not been marked out or « signed - a t » and thus is not accessible in knowledge and in linguistic - cognitive communi
cation.
As we consider the above distinctions made w ith regard to the system of those signs which are linked w ith our knowledge, we see that language itself oannot be abstracted from the three
fold system of signs, namely, 1) of conventional signs which are the instrum ents of our speech, 2) of natural signs or the senses of spoken language and 3) of the thing which is signed as the subject of knowledge and the object of language itself. If the bond between these three systems of signs is dissolved, the lan
guage itself and its essential functions in hum an life are de
stroyed. Of course this does not prevent linguists from taking some l« isolated » or « far-flung » region of language, for example, its syntactical aspect, for the particular object of their investiga
tions. This is even necessary if precise analyses are to be carried out. But it m ust at the same time be kept in mind that this is an artificial operation, as it were a « dissection ». It is not poss
ible for language aver to function in the artificial, laboratory conditions of analysis, ju st as it is impossible for a hand to work when we are breaking it down in the dissecting room into its elementary parts.
When analyzing language as a sign we m ust pay particular attention to the situation in which signs first arise. This situ
ation is fundam ental if we are to understand a sign, and conse
quently if we are to understand language itself as a system of signs. The first and principal sign for us is our « co n cep t»
which we form as we come to know the thing. A concept is of
its very nature a sign as a sign; one cannot understand other
190 M. A. Krapiec, O.P
signs without referring to the understanding of th t sign which is our concept- Our concept is a transparent sign of the thing known. The concept does not hold ((our)) cognitive attention, but guides our spontaneous cognition to the object. The con
cept fulfills, as it were, the function of special glasses which help the eyes to see the thing itself. As a sign the concept is
« transparent », in principle it directs the act of cognition to the thing signified; nonetheless the act of knowledge, as a spiri
tual act is « diffracted » and, as it were, forms a « cognitive after
glow » whenever spontaneous cognition occurs. Indeed, when I know a thing in an act of spontaneous cognition, at the same time i« I know that I am cognizing ». Concomitant reflection does not possess the object, since this reflection registers the very course which cognition takes. Now concomitant reflection, which is intensified in the measure in which the acts of spon
taneous cognition are repeated, is the basis for actual reflection, that is, for the act of reflection as a special act of cognition, when I take my acts of cognition themselves as the object of my cognition. To be sure, my being able to objectivize my mode of spontaneous cognition witnesses to the fact that in acts of spontaneous, objectivized cognition, the mode of cognition is registered in concomitant reflection. As a result I can take as the object of my cognition my concepts ((themselves)) which have been registered somehow in spontaneous cognition thanks to concomitant reflection. As has been already mentioned, con
comitant reflection is not something given to us embryonically.
It grows together with acts of cognition. And during reflective life, this reflection grows so excessively, that sometimes it blocks the very activity of man. Perhaps this is the reason why those thinkers who analyze hum an cognition ultimately failed to notice the « slip » and, as it were, « displacement » from the position of concomitant reflection to actual reflection, and they suppose that the object of hum an cognition is precisely the « world of ideas » « the world of things as it is given to us in concepts ».
As a result, the hum an intellect is locked within a world of symbols as Cassirer consistently thought.
It is very im portant in our analysis of hum an language, for
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 191
us to keep in mind, that the world of things which are designated by signs, and not significative transparent signs, constitute the object of m an’s spontaneous cognition. Signs, which come forth in the form of « concepts », best show the nature of the sign itself as a « relational agglomeration ». For, in fact, there can be observed in the concept, which is « the first sign », relations to things, to the subject i.e. the man who possesses the concept, to the one adressed in speech, to the system of other transparent signs and conventional signs. Indeed from a cognized thing only certain features are grasped- Either ((these are grasped simply because)) I am able to grasp them, or ((because)) they are necessary to me for something. From the features which I grasp I construct for myself a « concept »; I myself construct the concept, and thereby, as it were, I « embody » my cognitive act in a constructed sign-concept; this sign is ordered to another person (or to myself as « another »), to whom I « communicate » my cognitive result. This result, the sign-concept, is not isolated from other sign-concepts; rather, it is genetically connected with them in the process of cognition and sign construction. Last of all, this sign is connected with spoken language, and thus w ith a system of conventional, purely linguistic signs. Thus the ag
glomeration of relations which comes forth in the form ation of a basic transparent sign is obvious. This agglomeration which makes its appearance in the form of a concept, which concept is the sense of linguistic expressions, is the very « s o u l»
of language; it is language's raison d ’etre. Thus the Polish poet Stowacki was on the right track when he wrote: « W hat I w ant is for my nimble tongue ((or language)) to say all th at the head thinks... ». Language is to be fitted to thought and is at the service of thought. The Polish poet Mickiewicz also knew this problem, when he observed in « The Great Improvization » that
« Language lies to the voice, and the voice lies to thought;
Thought flies quickly in the soul, but is shattered in words.
Words engulf thought and totter and quake upon thought just
as the earth over a hidden river which it has swallowed. Do
not people search the depths of their thought after a trem or of
the earth: where is it hurrvins off to. Do thev guess? ».
192 M. A. Krapiec, O.P
There is still another im portant m atter w ith regard to know
ledge, signs and language. Namely, there are two situations, in which, as we cognize, we do not create any signs, even transpa
rent ones; we are not able to create them for we do not come into contact here with any content, inasmuch as content is the arrangement of a thing's features. These are acts of intellectual affirmation, that something exists, that we are dealing with something real and not illusory. Reality « attacks » me with its entire endowment of content, but we know th at existence is neither a feature nor a sum of features- Existence cannot be affirmed by way of sensile « ennumerations » of features, nor by way of any « protocol sentences ». The fact of existence is pri
mordial and it is not until something exists that it is a real
« thing »; contents come into being and go out of being under actual existence, and not vice versa (with the exception of works of art, but in such a case there is no subjective, substantial ex
istence). The second situation where it is not possible to con
struct any sign, even a transparent one, is the existence of the self, the « I », which when symbolized by a personal pronoun is destitute of any content. With regard to our cognition and our language (the use of language) it is of great moment that we possess « immediate and signless » cognitive contact w ith existence as it is given to us, on the one hand, in the world of sense experience and on the other hand, in the very cognizing subject, where my own « I » is present existentially in every act which I register as being subj ectivized (in the act of subjectivi- zation) in the « I ». (By the existential presence of the « I » I mean th a t I immediately experience that I exist but do not know who I am in my nature.) The fact that the existence of a thing and of one's own « I » is affirmed w ithout the mediation of any sign serves as a guarantee for the cognitive realism of those contents which are grasped o r prehended in all other acts of cognition. Indeed I possess a constantly real power for chec
king w hether the contents which I cognize are « real » and I
do not stand in need of any « Cartesian proof » as to the value
of my knowledge, for I never cease from distinguishing those
contents which can be said to exist only abstractly from really
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 193
existing contents (6). This is also the reason for the « pseudo
problems » proper to scepticism of various provenances.
While keeping in mind natural language as a system of signs, which signs have a mediatory role in our knowledge of reality and in the communication of cognitive results, we should still call to mind some traditional doctrines of the topic of the media'
tion of language, as a sign system in hum an knowledge. These doctrines go back to the middle ages. Various types of linguistic- cognitive mediation were differentiated:
1) The « Medium per quod » and « medium ex quo » refer to language as the vehicle of a philosophical or scientific theory
and to language as it is organized into a system of reasoning, whose symbol is the syllogism. Thus the « medium through which » events o r the structure of things are known is a phil
osophical or scientific theory; in order to acquire a knowledge of certain facts, for example, vestigial organs in living organisms, one m ust first take into consideration the theory of biological evolution, which in an appropriate way explains the facts ob
served; it perm its us to understand them. Likewise the « me
dium ex quo », reasoning, which is symbolized by the syllogism, m ust be known beforehand, just as the premises m ust be known prior to the conclusion.
2) The « medium quod » as an interm ediary is an express
ion, whether belonging to a natural or to an artificial language, which also draws to itself cognitive attention, for the under
standing of the sense of this term makes possible to understand
ing of the thing itself. One m ust « learn » the expressions of a given language in order to understand the object designated. It was said of this intermediary « quod cognitum, in cognitionem alterius d u c it» — « when it is known, it leads to the knowledge of another ».
(6) The problematic of being's existence made its appearance for good, after Avicenna, in Saint Thomas Aquinas, but has been developed and
has shown its consequences in metaphysics and epistemology in recent decades.
194 M. A. Krapiec, O.P.
3) « Medium in quo », namely an intermediary « in which » we see the thing itself. This is a concept, th at is, a transparent
sign, which in spontaneous cognition does not hold our atten
tion directly, but which is an essential component of our cogni
tion. As was mentioned above, this sign is noticed only « in
cidentally », since I can objectivize it in an act of reflection and I can find out exactly what this concept means as a transparent sign, as a m anner of our intellectual cognition of the thing itself*
The « medium in quo » as the meaning of linguistic expressions always makes its appearance in natural language, since w ithout it hum an speech would not be hum an speech at all.
4) The « medium quo » — an intermediary, in whose light the content of a thing is known. One m ust determine a cogni
tive aspect and so select acts of cognition, so as to determine for oneself through their harmony a clear « angle of vision » with regard to the object Just as light is necessary if the vision is to be able to see colour, so also an appropriate harmony of acts is necessary in cognizing in a determinate way some object.
In the tradition of scholastic philosophy this natural « medium quo » was the « species im p ressa», the « impressed im ag e»
which determines cognition and is expressed in the « species ex- pressa », namely, the concept. This « expressed image » is never noticeable, not even in reflective cognition. Nonetheless its ex
istence renders the determined cognition of some object free of contradiction.
5) Finally in the act of cognition we possess a sign-less contact w ith the thing's or the « I »’s act of existence, of the
« I » as « a subject in the act of subjectivizing ». This cognitive contact of my existing acts of cognition w ith the act of exist
ence, which act primordially releases the process of cognition is a « superintelligible » and « superaletheic » situation, for it is the reason for the cognizability of acts of cognition. W ithout such a signless cognitive contact with existence as the act of being, there would be no basis for distinguishing real states
from nonreal states.
The traditional concept of sign mediation presented here
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 195
refers above all to language. Language’s mediation is not uni
vocal and it possesses its own various modes and degrees. Philo
sophers have long ago been aware of the facts connected with language's role as a medium. This is born out by Aristotle's treatise « On the sentence »,
P e r i H e r m e n e i a s ,and numerous commentaries on this work both in the ancient world and in
the middle ages, for example, the commentary of Ammonius, which was translated by William of Moerbeke for Thomas Aqui
nas, who was probably the first to draw upon this enormous commentary. Precisely in keeping with this tradition, with common sense and the nature of philosophy itself as it ultim a
tely explains being, we should explain language as a being which is a system of signs. Hence also the understanding of the sign, of its structure and its prim ordial « meaning » is fundamental aven for linguistic science. Thus upon the canvas of the « ontol
ogy » of knowledge, more strictly speaking, of the metaphysics of knowledge, there appears the essential understanding of the sign system. The sign and its structure depend upon the struc
ture of the being which is designated and upon the being (man as he cognizes) who « signs » and creates the sign. Generally speaking, it is the structure of being as this structure is known which m ust be expressed in the sign or language, and as a m atter of principle one should not posit anything about reality from the point of view of a sign or language, for then nothing at all will be explained about reality.
Now it is true that the structure of natural language can be of help in understanding reality itself, but it is neither the only, nor the chief route of cognition. It is only auxiliary, for being is not dependent upon any sign, but a sign is dependent upon a being- Aristotle and Porphyrius, Plotinus's secretary, were both aware th at our language in its structure and its cog
nitive - communicative function « im itates » reality and is a pe
culiar « reflection » of reality. Porhpyrius in a masterly fashion called this to attention in his « Eisagoge » to Aristotle's Catego
ries. For, having in mind the structure of composite being, he
observed that the parts which « compose » being are sometimes
constitutive parts, sometimes nonconstitutive, changing, liable
196 M. A. Krapiec, O.P
to destruction, and thus accidental (although here too we can differentiate those necessary accidents which are linked together by necessity and « intrinsically » with the nature of a thing, or
only « extrinsically » and in a purely changeable way). The struc
ture of being, when it is known in a hum an way and expressed in an act of perfect cognition, namely a judgement expressed externally in the form of a « sign-proposition » (although not every sentence or proposition is strictly speaking a sign of a judgement as judgement), is, as it were, « m irrored » in the
« m aterial » composition of the judgement out of subject and predicate. The predicate reveals the component parts of the subject (whether it be an individual or an abstract). It is man who, in his act of cognition, is the one who joins the predicate with the subject by means of a sentential copula, and carries out the act of predication.
Predicates can be « joined » with the subject, that is, they can become « predicables » in various ways. One can « read out » those parts of the subject which are called « genus », « species »,
« specific difference », « property » and « accident ». Thus sen
tential predicates can reveal the structure of being and at the same time reveal the m anner in which the parts of a being are joined into one existing subject. I wrote at greater length about this in my book « J?zyk i swiat realny », Language and the real world®, where I analyzed the objective aspect of language(7).
Long before they developed the skills of reading and writing, people knew the structure of being, since they were able to create tools. Being's act of existence is precisely in the structure of being. Existence cannot be thought of as a « feature » of a thing w ithout falling into absurdity, neither can it be contained in a sign. Yet it is the « reason » for reality itself; w ithout exist
ence there would be no real being, no nature, essence, nor any of the real component « features » of essence. In our language we m ust advert also to the act of existence. In philosophy we
(7) Especially the first part of my monograph is dedicated to the problematic of language in a philosophical perspective. There also I
discuss and ground in a broader way to the matters raised in this article.
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 197
m ust perceive existence s function of making being real. This m ust be expressed in our language. This is precisely w hat we do in an existential, predicateless judgement, for existence can
not be conceptualized; it cannot be expressed in the form of a sign; it cannot become the predicate of a sentence, for it does not carry any new inform ational content about the subject. Can we abandon all this in our philosophical explanation of the world
because the linguists who ride a syntactical horse in their treat
m ent of language are not able to bring this « horse » to a holt by the spring of sign-making and give the horse to drink of the
w ater of meaning?
Language itself — whether it be in the group of Indoeuro- pean languages, or Turanian, or some other, cannot leave off seeing and communicating the existential aspect of language, namely from connotation of the realism of the objects of the real world- Yet, as has been known for a long time,. this is not always done by a sentential « is » (the functions of which are various), b u t ((sometimes)), by way of appropriate language structures, for example, by suffixes and prefixes, or, as in the Russian language, by sentence stru c tu re : for example, « ty vor »
— « you thief » where there isn't any « is », but everyone, espe
cially the defendant, understands of this sentence well enough.
These m atters are already well-known and in general they do not play a deciding role w ith regard to the structure of reality, nor should they be regarded as decisive in this respect.
It is worse when philosophers of certain philosophical orien
tation (analytic philosophers) would like to pass judgement on reality on the basis of language’s syntactic function. W hat takes place, and not w ithout the influence of linguistics, is a confusion of reason and consequence in explaining the world. For if lan
guage is a system of signs, and signs are produced by man to
« designate » (our knowledge of things) in some strictly deter
mined aspect, then it is first necessary to know things, and ((then)) signs are introduced to designate them. Although trans
parent signs make it possible to know things, still it is not signs, but the thing which is the object of our first spontaneous know
ledge; signs and their structure can become legible in reflective
knowledge.
198 M. A. Krapiec, O.P.
|
From this there follows the general conclusion, that lan
guage does not decide about the structure of reality, but rather reality is given to us first, since otherwise it would be imposs
ible to make anly sign for it and consequently it would be im
possible to create any language as a system of signs. I t is well and true that analyses of languages can help us sometimes to avoid posing pseudo-problems, that such analyses may help us to show more precisely the very structure of reality, but the analysis of language and of our knowledge of the rules of the syntactic meaningfulness of language still does not make it poss
ible to resolve philosophical problems nor does it show us the
w
very structure of being. One m ust have a view of being, and not merely a view of the sign, in order to make a judgement on being.
As we move on to the polemical section of our considera
tions on linguistics and philosophizing, we cannot, in the light of the above analyses, agree w ith the position that linguistics is a prerequisite for philosophizing. Philosophy and its pro
blems constitute the most ancient stratum of organized human knowledge and the possess their own value independent of lin
guistics. Furtherm ore, by virtue of its method of knowledge acquisition (searching for a unique necessary reason which vould render the facts free of contradiction), philosophy can take lan
guage as an object; indeed philosophy has done ju st this from the beginning. Linguistics as a rigorous science does a good job of elaborating the syntactic aspect of language, but when it turns to consider the semantic and pragmatic aspect of language not only do its analyses lose in precision, but it also rushes (where angels fear to tread) into the field of philosophy and pronounces common « non-sense » (for example, the negation of the ontic subjectivity of the self on the grounds th at the perso
nal pronoun « I » is a « contentual vacuum »). Now if linguis
tics were to stop considering the semantic aspect of language, it would generally cease to be a science about language, which is a system of signs signifying meanings and designating things.
Hence it follows that philosophical analyses of language possess
their own value independently of linguistics and can contribute
Is Linguistics a Prerequisite to Philosophizing? 199
to better determ ination of the object of the science of linguis
tics, namely, a system of signs. However it cannot be said that analyses carried out on the ground of linguistics are necessary preconditions for the cultivation of philosophy, for this is both historically and methodologically untrue.
Now we shall move on to a selective discussion of certain statem ents made by Alfred Gawronski in his article « When does
‘to be’ mean ‘to exist' »? (Kiedy ‘bye’ znaczy ‘istniec’? ») (8). It should be rem arked that, generally speaking, the author seems
to regard linguistics as a peculiar « a priori » for the meaning
ful cultivation of philosophy, w ith which we of course cannot agree. Mister Gawronski writes: >« For the many philosophical schools which are concerned with the problem atic of the various functions fulfilled by the verb “to be” in Indoeuropean lan
guages, how very im portant is the broad and methodologically precise presentation of this problem atic undertaken by the aut
hors of the monograph “The Foundation of Language”- This pre
sentation puts an end to the many intuitional and am ateur inter
pretations of the multifunctional character of this verb such as have appeared until recently in the philosophical works of the
most serious authors ». Does the author indeed think that me
thodologically precise and wide analyses in the area of linguistics can replace philosophical analyses? Or perhaps that linguistics is an « a priori » for philosophy? Yet in each discipline there are different issues. Are philosophical analyses of the verb « is » am ateur because thev do not consider linguistics? Sometimes
linguistics may problems but « for the
love of God » there is one subject m atter in linguistics and ano
ther in philosophy. Shortly thereafter the author w rite s: « the analysis of the world as something which can be grasped in the categories of our thought and speech, must begin (the underlin
ing is mine) by elucidating the various semantic functions played by this verb... ». A hundred times no! Linguistics became an aut
onomous science only in the tw entieth century and the most distinguished linguists sometimes commit terrible philosophical
(8) ZNAK, 1989, n. 2, 162-174
