02.18.08

I don't need to two extend two lines for infinity in order to know that they are parallel to one another. Even if that is entailed by the word-concept of "parallel". [what "parallel" means.]

This is how deeply ingrained in our language our "transcendent concept of spirit" is.

Myshkin and I have been discussing a lot lately about the extension of metaphors in our language, of how metaphors become extended and embedded into our language. My personal favorite examples include the family of words that descend (descendre) from the Latin spirare, to breathe:

conspire
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French conspirer, from Latin conspirare to be in harmony, conspire, from com- + spirare to breathe
Date: 14th century
transitive verb : plot, contrive
intransitive verb
1 a: to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement "accused of conspiring to overthrow the government" b: scheme
2: to act in harmony toward a common end "circumstances conspired to defeat his efforts"

aspire
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French aspirer, from Latin aspirare, literally, to breathe upon, from ad- + spirare to breathe
Date: 14th century
1 : to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal "aspired to a career in medicine"
2 : ascend, soar

inspire
Main Entry: in·spire
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French inspirer, from Latin inspirare, from in- + spirare to breathe
Date:14th century
transitive verb
1 a: to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural inspiration b: to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence on "was particularly inspired by the Romanticists" c: to spur on : impel, motivate "threats don't necessarily inspire people to work" d: affect "seeing the old room again inspired him with nostalgia"
2 aarchaic : to breathe or blow into or upon barchaic : to infuse (as life) by breathing
3 a: to communicate to an agent supernaturally b: to draw forth or bring out "thoughts inspired by a visit to the cathedral"
4: inhale 1
5 a: bring about, occasion "the book was inspired by his travels in the Far East" b: incite
6: to spread (rumor) by indirect means or through the agency of another
intransitive verb
: inhale

expire
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Anglo-French espirer to breathe out, from Latin exspirare, from ex- + spirare to breathe
Date: 15th century
intransitive verb
1: to breathe one's last breath : die
2: to come to an end
3: to emit the breath
transitive verb
1obsolete : conclude
2: to breathe out from or as if from the lungs
3archaic : emit

All of these words - conspire, aspire, inspire, expire - necessarily carry with them the concept of breath. So to be inspired, say, by the Muse, means to have the breath breathed into you. To expire is to breathe your last, to have your breath leave you. And to conspire is to breathe together, as one. What I think is common to all of these words is that they present the concept of spirit as it is a cornerstone of our own culture, that culture being the West, all of those nations who trace their genealogies back to the Ancient Greeks - by whom I mean Plato - by way of Rome. So I cannot talk about "being inspired" or of "aspiring for success" without also simultaneously invoking (invocation, definition 1b: "a calling upon for authority or justification" from the latin invocare, a calling together. Who are we calling, Mr. Heidegger?) the concept of my having a soul. And if you're a modern English speaker, really you ought to be blaming William the Conqueror for all of this.

So my question is something like, "To what extent am I always speaking in terms of metaphor?" I have written about this before, but I want to do it now in terms of Nietzsche and the 18th century philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, and maybe a little Rousseau in there for background purposes. The answer to this question is going to be something like, "Sometimes, not always," because claiming that I am always speaking in metaphors negates the concept of metaphor itself. Still, if you want to understand how your language works, you need to understand how its "inventor tore ideas out of one type of feeling and borrowed them from another!; how he borrowed most in the case of the heaviest, coldest, distinctest senses!; how everything had to become feeling and sound in order to become expression! Hence the strong, bold metaphors in the roots of the words! Hence the metaphorical transferences from the one type of feeling to another, so that the meanings of a stem-word, and still most of its derivatives, set in contrast with one another, turn into the most motley picture." (Herder, Treatise on the Origin of Language, 113) I think Nietzsche says it better in Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense, but I don't have that here right now.

Of course, where I really want to go with this line of thought is to the word-concept "law". When is it being used metaphorically and when is it not? There is a law that prohibits copyright infringement, and there is a law that prohibits the spontaneous stopping of a body in motion in a vacuum. Why the same word here? And what I am really concerned with is the idea that there is a law that prohibits the human mind from perceiving an object outside of space and time, or that "Clearly the laws of logic cannot in their turn be subject to laws of logic." (§6.123)

Main Entry: an·i·mate
Pronunciation: \ˈa-nə-mət\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin animatus, past participle of animare to give life to, from anima breath, soul; akin to Old English ōthian to breathe, Latin animus spirit, Greek anemos wind, Sanskrit aniti he breathes
Date: 15th century
1 : possessing or characterized by life : alive
2 : full of life : animated
3 : of or relating to animal life as opposed to plant life
4 : referring to a living thing "an animate noun"
— an·i·mate·ly adverb
— an·i·mate·ness noun