Ul, Language as Such and on the Language of Man life can be understood as a kind of Every expression of human mental li Sf ngage, and chis understanding, in the manner of a true method, every- ocean: 10 talk about a language of music language of technology ee ee ee -ned—technology, art, justice, or religion—tow: ofthe consents ofthe tind. To ut ps ll comminication ofthe conten of the mind is language, communication in words being only a case of human language a it or founded on it se or another inherent, but with “There is no event oF thing in either animate or inanimate itis i partake of language, in the nature of each one to parental . word “language” is in no ntirely Wi absence of language in anything. An existence entirely t tolanguage is an cas but this le can Bear ao fru even within that eal ‘of Ideas whose circumference defines the idea of Goi All that is asserted here is that all expression, insofar On Language as Such 63 cation of contents of the mind, is to be classed as languas And expression, by its whole innermost nature, is certainly to be ‘guage. On the other hand, to undersea necessary to ask of which mental ent to say: the German language, for example, is by no means the expr of everything that we could—theoretically express through i that which communicates therefore obvious at once th language is not language itself but something to be The view that the mental mental entity vnuunicates is the first stage of any inguistic incomprehensible paradox, the expression of the word “I Femains a paradox, and insolubl ‘What does language comm h these languages, ugh, a language, which means istic being. Mental being is capable of communication, not outwardly identical wit identical with linguistic being only insof What is communicable in 2 mental entity is its linguistic Language therefore communicates the particular linguistic bei ‘mental being only insofar as this is directly included insofar as itis capable Language communicates of things. The clearest mani- tation of this being, however, is language itself, The answer to the ques, fion What does language communicate?” is thercfore “All language com. tes itself.” The language of this examy not the lamp (for the menéal being of the lamp, insofar asi ble, is by no means the lamp i wunication, the lamp in expr the linguistic being of all things is linguistic theory depends on giving thi even the app. m communica- nut the language-lamp, the lamp in nae ropositic earance of tautology. This propos it which in a mer64. On Language as Such i which appears most clearly in its language is communicable in @ mental entity, as was just said by way of transition, but this capacity for commu- ity, just s nication is language itself. Or: the language of a men that which is communicable in it. Whatever is commu inthis it ‘Which signifies that language communicates i in is in the purest sense the “m nunca Mediation, which is the immediacy of all mental communication, is the fundamental problem of linguistic theory, and if one chooses to call this immediacy magic, then the primary problem of language is its magic. At the same time, the notion of the magic of language points ro something else: its infiniteness. This is conditional on its aes For Pee nothing is communicated through language, what is communi is lan- guage cannot be externally limited or measured, and therefc contains its own incommensurable, uniquely constituted being of things is their language; this proposition, applied to man, means the linguistic being of man is his language. Which signifies: tan commnicas his own mena bsing és language: Hower, the language of man speaks in words. Mai fore communicates his own vital eng inoar a's commanicabl) by naming alter things Bt do we know any other languages that name things? It should not be accepted that we know of no languages other than that of man, for this is untrue. We only know of no naming language other than that of man; t0 identify anguage with language as such is to rob linguistic theory of its ights,—It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things. me them? To whom does man communicate himself?—But is this Why question, 2s applied ro man, different when applied to other comaunica- tions (languages)? To whom does the lamp communicate itself? The moun- ? The fox?—But here the answer is: to man, This is not anthropomor- phism. The truth of this answer is shown in huma and perhaps also in art, Furthermore, ifthe lamp fox did not communicate themselves to man, how them? And he names them; he communicates himself by naming them. To whom does he communicate himsel : ‘Before this question can be answered, we must again inquire: How does rman communicate himself? A profound distinction is to be made, a choice presented, in the face of which an intrinsically false understanding of lan- guage is certain to give itself away. Does man communicate his mental being by the names that he gives thing? Or in them? In the paradoxical nature of ‘these questions lies their answer. Anyone who believes that man communi- cates his mental being by names cannot also assume that it is his mental being that he communicates, for this does not happen through the names hebeabletoname 4 On Language as Such 65 ty and emptiness of which will become increasingly holds that the means of communication is the word, ‘object factual, and its addressee a human being. The other conception of language, in contrast, knows no means, no object, and no addressee of communication. It means: in the name, the mental being of man communi- cates itself to God. The name, in the realm of language, has as its sole purpose and its incomparably high meaning that i s the innermost nature of language itself. ‘The name is that through which, and in which, language itself communic itself absolutely. In the name, the mental entity that communicates language. Where mental being in its communication is language it absolute wholeness, only there is the name, and only the name is there. Name as the heritage of human language therefore vouches for the fact that language as such is the mental being of man; and only for this reason is the ‘mental being of man, alone among all mental entities, communicable with- out residue. On this is founded the difference between human language and the language of things. Bur because the mental being of man is language itself, he cannot communicate himself by it, but only in it. The quintessence of this intensive totality of language as the mental being of man is the name. Man is the namer; by this we recognize that chrough him pure language sofar a6 it communicates itself, communicates itself in language, and so finally in man. Hence, he is the lord of nature and can give names co chings. Only throigh the linguistic being of things can he get beyond himself and attain knowledge of thcm—in the name. God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in ime language alone speaks, Man can call name the language of language the genitive refers to the relationship not of a means but in this sense certainly, because he speaks of language, and for this very reason its oni speaker (which, however, according to the Bible, for example, clearly means the name giver: “As man should name all ving creatures, so should thoy be called”), many languages imply this metaphysical truth, Name, however, is not only the last utterance of language but also the true call of it. Thus, in name appears the essential law of language, according, ‘0 which to express oneself and to address everything else amounts to he same thing. Language, and in it a mental only expresses itself purely where it speaks in name—that is, in its universal naming, So in name ‘alminate both the intensive totality of language, as the absolutely commu- ‘nicable mental entity, and the extensive totality of language, as the univer-66 On Language as Such sally communicating (naming) entity. By virtue of it communicating nature, is universality language is incomplete wherever the mental entity that speaks from itis notin its whole stractare linguisti—th wunicable, ‘Man alone has a language that is complete both in its universality and in its intensiveness, In the light of this, a question may now be asked without risk of confu- sion, a question that, though of the highest metaphysical importance, can be lemy posed fist ofall at one of seominology, fis whether mental i (for that is necessary) but also of things, and thus being—not only of man (for that is ary) hing and th being, then a thing, by virtue of its ment nication, and what is communicated fence with its medi- Language is thus as the latter is communicable, becomes is no such thing as a content of languages as communication, language conemunicates a mental entity—something communicable per se. The dif- ferences between languages are those of media that are distinguished as it were by their density—that is, gradually; and this with regard to the density both of the communicating (naming) and of the communicable (name) aspects of communication. These two spheres, which are clearly d guished yet united only in the name-language of man, are naturally con- stantly interrelated. For the metaphysics of language, the equation of mental with linguist being, which knows only gradual differences, produces a graduation of ‘mental being in degrees. This graduation, which takes place within mental being itself, can no longer be embraced by any higher category and so leads to the graduation of all being, both mental and linguistic, by degrees of existence or being, such as was already familiar to Schi to mental being. However, the equation of imental and feat metaphysical moment to lingui : Goncep thar hes agen and again, a5 if of is own accord elevated isl to the center of linguistic philosophy and constituted its most intimate connec- tion with the philosophy of religion. This is the concept of revelation — and unexpressed. On considering this conflict, one sees atthe same time, from the perspective of the inex- pressible, the last mental entity. No clear that in the equation of ‘mental and linguistic being, the notion of an inverse proportionality between the two is disputed. For this latter thesis runs: the deeper (that is, the moze __ subjection of the Bible to objective consideration as On Language as Such 67 existent and re: ind, the more it is expressible and expressed, and it is consistent with thi equation to make the relation between unambiguous, so that the expres (that is, most fixed) is lingui in a word, the most expressed This, however, is same time the purely ment by the concept of revelation, only and sufficient condition ai ly one that does not know the inexpressible. For it is addressed in the name and expresses itself as revela- tion. In this, however, notice is given that only the highest mental being, as ‘appears in religion, rests solely on man and on the language in whereas art as a whole, including poetry, rests. not on the tiltimate essence of the spirit of language but on the spirit of language in things, even in its consummare beauty. “Language, the mother of reason and revelation, its alpha and omega,” says Hamann,? ‘Language itself is not perfectly expressed in things themselves. This propo- ition has a double meaning, in its metaphorical and literal senses: the languages of things are imperfect, and they are dumb, Things are denied the ure formal principle of language—namely, sound. They can communicate to one another only through a more or less material community. ‘This community is immediate and infinite, like every linguistic communication; iti magical (for there is also a magic of matter). The incomparable feature of human language is that its magical community with things is immaterial and purely mental, and the symbol of this is sound. The Bible expresses this symbolic fact when it says that God breathes his breath into man this is at once life and mind and language — If in what follows the nature of language is considered on the basis of the first chapter of Genesis, the object is neither biblical interpretation nor led truth, but the discovery of what emerges of itself from the biblical text with rogard to the nature of language; and the Bible is only initially indispensable for this purpose, because the present argument broadly follows it in presapposing language as an ultimate reality, perceptible only in its manifestation, inex plicable and mystical. The in regarding itself as a revelation, must necessarily evolve the fundamental linguistic facts.—The second version of the story of the Creation, which tells of the breathing of God's breath into ‘man, also reports that man was made from earth, This is, in the whole story ~ of the Creation, the only reference to the material in which the Creator expresses his will, which is doubtless otherwise thought of as creation without mediation. In this second story of the Creation, the making of man did not take place through the word: God spoke—and there was. But thisOn Language as Such 69 68 On Language as Such i: man, who is not created from the word, is now invested with the gift of language and is elevated above nature. ‘ou man is curious revolution in the act of creation, where it concer ata ly recorded, however, in the first story of the Creations and in vouches, same certainty, for a special language resulting from the act ofeeation ist chapter establishes Id rhythm of the act of creation in the first 1 Kit of bas Yom, fom which the set tha cates man dinege “6 nilfeanly. Adie this passage nowhere expres refer toa relationship citer of man or of nature to the material from which they were created, and the question whether the words “Fle made” envisages a creation out o! ‘must here be left open; but the rhythm by which the creation of is 1) is accomplished is: Let there be—He mad individual acts of creation (Genesis 1:3 and The deepest images of this divine word and the point where human language participates most intimately in the divine infinity ofthe pure word, the point at which it cannot become finite word and knowledge, are the human name. The theory of proper names is the theory of the ontier __ between finite and infinite language. Of all beings, man is the only one who zames his own kind, as he is the only one whom God did not name. It is Perhaps bold, but scarcely impossible, to mention the second part of Genesis 2:20 in this context: that man named all beings, “but for man there was ‘tot found a helper fit for him.” Accordingly, Adam names his wife as soon as he receives her (woman in the second chapter, Eve inthe third). By giving ‘ames, parents dedicate their children to Gods the names they give do not forrespond—in a metaphysical rather than etymological sense—to. any knowledge, for they name newborn children. In a strict sense, no name ; ought (in its etymological meaning) to correspond to any person, for the ropes name is the word of God in human sounds. By it each man is by God, and in this sense he is himself crea ical wisdom in the idea (which doubtless frequently comes truc) that a man’s name is his fa the communion of man with the creative word of however; man knows a further linguistic communion Through the word, man is bound to the language of ) only the 7 ” and in the words “He “Let there be” occur. In this “Let there be” and tne a eee eee deep and clear relation of the creative act to language appears each time. With the creative omnipo- expressed by my of language it begins, and at the end language, as it were, assimilates | ‘he creatal names ie Languages ere oth eenive and ihe ied Gomi In God, name is creative because it is word, 1 ond copa be “And he saw that it was ings. The human Wword is the name of things. Hence, it is no longer conceivable, as the urgeois view of Language maintains, that the word has an accidental knowles inwardly identical with the creative word, the pure medium of This means chat God made things Knowable in theic names. Man, howeves; -otding to knowledge. gah reat of man, the teed chythm ofthe creation of nature has ae wy oan ety dierent ore. Tn hf, lang hs ing: of the act is here preserved, but in this v. Strat ie vergence al the more wanes he thecal He man rom the wordy and he di not name him, He did not wish ro subject him to language, but in man God set eae ks ek rel et oe a ein el adie ‘when he had lft his creative power to itself in man. This creativity, relieved of its divine actuality, became knowledge. Man is the knower in the same 10 its object, agreed by some conver rejection of bourgeois rests on @ misunderstanding. For according to mystical theory, the word is simply the essence of the thing. That is incorrect, because the thing in itselE Hiss no word, being created from God's word and known in its name by a human word. This knowledge of the thing, however, is not spontaneous ation; it does not emerge from language in the absolutely unlimited and nite manner of creation. Rather, the name that man gives to language depends on how language is communicated to him. In name, the word of God has not remained creative; it has become in one pare receptive, even if {eceptive to language, Thus it aims to give birth to the language of things themselves, rom which in turn, soundlessly, in the mute magic of nature, the word of God shines forth. For conception and spontaneity together, which are found in this unique union only in the linguistic realm, language has its own word, and this word applies also to that conception of the nameless in the name. It i the franslation of the language of things into that of man, It is necessary to ind the concept of translation at the deepest level of linguistic theory, for much too far-reaching and powerful to be treated in any way a¢ an ‘bought, as has happened occasionally. Translation attains its full mean, theory likewise created the knower in the image of the creator. Therefore, the propos that the mental being of man is language needs explanation, His mental being is the language in which creation took place. In the word, creation took las, and Go ings sing i she word. Al homan language it only the reflection of the word in name. The name is no closer to the wor ‘The infinity of all human language always in nature, in comparison to the absolutely of the divine word,70 On Language as Such ing in the realization that every evolved language (with the exception of the word of God) can be considered a translation of all the others. By the fact, that, as m 6 relate to one another as do media of 1ages into one another is estab- continuum of transformations. Translation passes through continua of transformation, not abstract areas of identity and similarity. The translation of the language of things into that of man is not only a translation of the mute into the sonic; it is also the translation of the nameless into name. It is therefore the translation of an imperfect language into a more perfect ind cannot but add something to it, namely the task that God expressly assigns to man himself: that of naming In receiving the unspoken nameless language of things and converting it by name into sounds, man performs this task. It would be insoluble, were not the name-language of man and the nameless language of things related in God and released from the same cr communication of matter in magic communion, and in his mouth and the living word; for God in his heart, the origin of language was as natural, as close, and as easy as a child's game...” Friedrich Miller, in his poem “Adams erstes Erwachen se Nachte” [Adam's First Awakening and First Blissful Nights), has God summon man to name giving in these words: “Man of the earth, lation and naming implies the communicating toward the word-language of man, which same chapter of the poem, the poet expresses the word from which things are created permits the realization that ‘man to name them, by communicating itself in the manifold languages of animals, even if mately, in the image: God gives each beast in turn a sign, whereupon they step before man to be named. In an almost sublime way, the linguistic community of mute creation with God is thus conveyed in the image of the sign. Since the unspoken word in the existence of things falls infinitely short of the naming word in the knowledge of man, and since the latter in tum must fall short of the creative word of God, there is a ceason for the multiplicity of human languages. The language of things can pass into the ‘ive word, which in things became the 4 On Language as Such 71 language of knowledge and name only through translation—so many trans- lations, so many languages—once man has fallen from the paradisiacal state that knew only one language. (According to the Bible this consequence of the expulsion from Paradise admittedly came about only later) The Paradisiacal language of man must have been one of perfect knowledge, whereas later all knowledge is again infinitely differentiated in the mult plicty of language, was indeed forced to differentiate itself on a lower level as creation in name. Even the existence of the Tree of Knowledge cannot conceal the fact that the language of Paradise was fully cognizant. Its apples ‘were supposed to impart knowledge of good and evil. But on the seventh day, God had already cognized with the words of creation. Aid God saw that it was good. The knowledge to which the snake seduces, that of good d evil, is nameless. It is vain in the deepest sense, and this very knowledge itself the only evil known to the paradisiacal state. Knowledge of good id evil abandons name; it is a knowledge from outside, the uncreated imitation of the creative word. Name steps outside itself in this knowledge: the Fall marks the birth of the human word, in which name no longer lives intact and which has stepped out of name-language, the language of kaowl- edge, from what we may call its own immanent magic, in order to become ‘expressly, as it were externally, magic. The word must communicate some- thing (other than itself) In that fact les the true Fall of che spirit of language. The word as something externally communicating, as it were a parody-—by the expressly mediate word—of the expressly immediate, creative word of God, and the decay of the blissful Adamite spirit of language that stands _ between them. For in realty there exists a fundamental identity between the word that, after the promise of the snake, knows good and evil, and the externally communicating word. The knowledge of things resides in the name, whereas that of good and evil is, in the profound sense in which Kierkegaard uses the word, “prattle,” and knows only one purification and clevation, to which the prattling man, the sinner, was therefore submitted: igment. Admittedly, the judging word has dizect knowledge of good and Its magic is different from that of name, but equally magical. This ing word expels the first human beings from Paradise; they themselves have aroused it in accordance with the immutable law by which this judging word punishes—-and expects—its own awakening as the sole and deepest Built. In the Fal, since the eternal purity of names was at any rate, a mere sign; and this later ‘The second meaning is that from the Fall of name that was damaged by it, in the plurality of languages. exchange for the immediacy new immediacy arises: the magic of72 On Language as Such judgment, which no longer rests blissfully in itself, The third meaning that can pechaps be tentatively ventured is that the origin of abstraction, too, as a faculty of the spirit of language, is to be sought in the Fall. For good and evil, being unnameable and nat sand outside the language of names, which man leaves behind pi the abyss opened by this question. ‘Name, however, with regard to existing language, offers only the ground in jut the abstract elements of lan- of abstraction came doned immediacy in the communi and fell into the abyss of the mediateness of all communicati as means, of the empty word, into the abyss of prattle. For—it must be said ‘again—the question as to good and evil in the world after the Creation was empty prattle. The Tree of Knowledge stood -den of God not in ‘order to dispense information on good and ev as an emblem of judgment over the questioner. This immense irony marks the mythic origin which, in making language mediate, laid the foundation {inguistic confusion could be only a step away. Once men ‘name, the turning away from that contemplation .gs in which theie language passes into man needed only to be com- to deprive men of the common foundation of an already ‘of language. Signs must become confused where things are f language in pratte is joined by the enslave- ings in folly almost as its inevitable consequence. In this turning avay from things, which was enslavem plan for the Tower of Babel came into being, and linguistic confusion with it The life of man however, is mute. T how this mutenessy by ma Friedrich Miller has Adam say of the animals chat named them, “And saw by the nobility with which they leaped away from me that the man had given them a name.” After the Fall, however, when the appearance of nature is deeply changed. 1e “deep sadness endow with language” more than “to make abl has a double meaning. Tr means; frst, that she w the great sorrow of nature (a language of man—not only, as is supposed, of the poet—are in nature). TI ‘On Language as Such 73” proposition means, second, that she would lament, Lament, however, is the ‘most undifferentiated, imp ‘more than th plants, there ii infinitely more than: the inclination to communicate. That which mourns feels it remains an intimation of mourning. But how be named not from the one blessed paradisia- rom the hundred languages of man, in which name has already withered, yet which, according to God's pronouncement, have knowledge of things, Things have no proper names except in God. For in his creative word, God called them into being, calling them by their roper names. In the language of men, however, they are overnamed. There in the relation of human languages to that of things, something that can be approximately described as “overnaming”—the deepest linguistic reason for all melancholy and (from the point of view of the thing) forall deliberate muteness. Overnaming as the linguistic being of melancholy points to an- guage: the overprecision that obtains in the name language of ure oF painting is founded on certain kinds of thing-languages, that in them we find a ee lation of the language of things into an infinitely higher language, which the same sphere. We are concerned here with nameless, \guages, languages issuing from matter; here we should recall ymmunal in a way : only in the deepest to the doctrine of signs. Without the latter any linguistic ere tirely fragmentary, because the relation betwee tithesis that perméates ions to the aforemen-74 On Language as Such tioned antithesis berween language in a narrower sense and signs, with ‘which, of course, language by no means necessarily coincides. For language is in every case not only communication of the communicable but also, at the same time, a symbol of the noncommunicable. This symbolic side of language is connected to its relation to signs, but extends more widely—for example, in certain respects to name and judgment. These have not only 2 communicating function, but most probably also a closely connected sym- ,t0 which, at least explicitly, no reference has here been made. ions therefore leave us a purified concept of language, ‘even though it may still be an imperfect one. The language of an entity is the medium in which its mental being is communicated. The uninterrupted flow of this communication runs through the whole of nature, from the lowest forms of existence to man and from man to God. Man communicates himself to God through name, which he gives to nature and (in proper ‘ames) to bis own kind; and to nature he gives names according to the ‘communication that he receives from her, for the whole of nature, 00, is imbued with a nameless, unspoken language, the residue of the creative word of God, which is preserved in man as the cognizing name and above ‘man as the judgment suspended over him. The language of nature is com- parable to a secret password that each sentry passes to the next in his language, but the meaning of the password is the sentry’s language Al higher language is a traislation of lower ones, until in ultimate the word of God unfolds, which is the unity of this movement made language. ‘Writen in 1916; unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime. Translated by Edmund Jepheott. Notes 1. Or sit ather, the temptation to place atthe outset a hypothesis that constitutes an abyss for all philosophi 2, Johann Georg Hamana to F. H. Jacobi, October 28, 1785, Hamann was a German the: 1d philosopher whose zhapsodi cllipticel style and appeal to affect and intuition led to controversies with eighteenth-cencury rationalists (Kant among them). He exerted a powerful influence on Herder and the authors of the Sturm sind Drang.—Trans. Friedrich “Malec” Miller (1749-1825), German author, painier, and art critic — Trans. Thee on the Problem of Identity Al onideniey is infinite, but this does not imply chat all identity is 2. The possibility that an infinite might be identical in this discussion, 3. Nonidentical infinity can be nonidentical y ‘identical. The a-ident yond identity and nonidentity, but in the course of devel is capable only of the first, nof the second. b, It is not potentially identical and is nonidentical in actuality. Note: The question of which kinds of mathematical i (a) of (b) requires investigation. aaiiaer dicta 4, Identity-relations can be established only in the case of and not even in the category of infinity considered undei 5. The validity of identty-relations is assumed for the object of a state- ment, but does not have the same form for the subject of the state- ‘ment as for the nonfinite universal A of the sentence A= A. If we nevertheless use this form to express the validity of the identity- relation for the subject of the statement, it zesults in tautology. The relation of tautology to the problem of identity can be thought of differently. It arises with the attempt to conceive of the identity. relation as a statement.