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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 mer64. 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 thisOn 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 of72 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.