There is a seminal Torah idea about speech splintering into 70 languages, the soul comprising 70 faculties, and the human family splitting into 70 nations. This essay is the first of a three-part series presenting the meaning of each of these 3 interrelated subjects and their significance; nothing less than world-peace depends on understanding these concepts and – more importantly – living by them.
We humans require wisdom. We seek correct perception of reality and the higher knowledge necessary to lead a divine life. Our pursuit of wisdom is facilitated by thought and speech expressed in words, and these are understood by way of definition. The edifice of human wisdom is erected on a foundation of well-defined concepts: on precise, unambiguous words.
This ordered approach always fails. Well-defined concepts do not exist. Words obscure as much as – perhaps more than – they clarify.
Consider the most fundamental words that serve as the basis of all thought. They cannot be defined rigorously, for only words can define words: The barest and simplest truths that underpin them must remain undefined, leaving us with dictionaries of endless loops leading back on themselves.
The concept we call “being” is illustrative. Any definition of “being” can do no more than replace one word with another. The fundamental concept in and of itself must remain undefined, and all that is predicated on it – which is, of course, everything we know and experience – can be no more clearly defined than the undefined root. Language is like a tree. “Being” is its root; out of this root grows a trunk containing other general words; and this branches out into all the specific words of speech, all as infirm as its wobbly root.
We don’t really know what anything means.
Oh, the confusion, contradictions and tensions that ensue! The same word has different meanings in the mouths of different people. Not only abstract, general words, such as “good” or “right” will have as many meanings as there are personality types, but even concrete, specific words will vary in meaning, having not one definition, but many. For example, what is a “person”? A healthy and whole human being, we all agree, is a “person.” But what about a fetus? What about someone who is braindead? Or fully dead? Or an AI? The edge cases demonstrate that the definition we fancy to know is not quite defined. This failure of definition feels like a failure of knowledge itself, and the mind is plunged into confusion.
Enmity ensues as well. The words shared by speaking animals divide them and pit them against each other. Thinking of words as being precise and defined, therefore definite and decisive, we consider them proof of our position, and conclude that if our fellows disagree with ourselves – they must be wrong, and we must be right. Communication breaks down and discord ensues, all the more confusing for being the product of unity in terminology.
Language is ill-defined. Each individual defines words according to his own private value-system. Words wildly proliferate, as if words mean whatever people say they do, as if each person has his own private language generated by his own point of view and peculiar biases: to each his own dictionary.
If language is not a set of well-defined terms, how does it relate to truth? And must language necessarily obscure thought and divide men, or could a shared human vocabulary provide a path to shared thought?
To attain the wisdom we seek, we require a reorientation toward words. Imprecise words do relate to truth, but indirectly. They guide toward precision, for error can also point the way to accuracy – if the pathways of error are known. Consider: If you are mistaken about something, but you know the nature of your error (why you are mistaken), then you have a sense of the underlying idea that gave rise to your error even though you don’t perceive it directly, an impression of the root from which your mistake developed.
Take the word “person” again. Different individuals will use the word differently, depending on their particular values. Some feel that the future is the most real, the ultimate “being”; they might more readily apply the word “person” to a fetus, a being of the future. Others feel that the past is the most real and might sooner apply the word to one with a full life behind him. Both use the word in a way that is colored by their core value-system, what they feel to be most real, and therefore both provide a clue to a true, essential being. What is the true idea of a “person”? Answer: A concept, un-worded, which means this when colored by a future-sense and that when colored by a past-sense, this in the mouth of one individual and that in the mouth of another. Through these various shades of meaning a full idea of “person” can be formed – but never defined. No reality is beheld directly but through the shades of corruptive bias, but this bias can itself be directly beheld and probed for what it indicates. Error, begotten by truth, reflects indirectly on its progenitor.
All language is error, but all error is clue. We can never know exactly what we mean, but we can know why we mean it and thereby discern a wordless truth. The problem of language is solved with algebra: Understand the value brought to bear on a concept; divide the word by that concept, and you have solved for the root truth, which is no word, but an idea, and that glimpsed indirectly, sensed and not beheld.
Language doesn't contain truth; it merely refracts it.
Pick a word. Think about what that word means to you. Then, contemplate the reality or the law that gives rise to your subjective experience. That concept you have sensed – that is real and true. Your private language is your partial window on truth. For a fuller window on truth, you need to master the universal language: You must know the various reflections of reality glimpsed through the various kinds of souls.
A path toward unified speech opens before us. Language will unite humanity when we recognize that we share in common not truth but untruth. Each private language, vague and incomplete, points to unknowable truth, each in its own way; combined (translated into each other), they express the fullness of wisdom. Full truth is sensed through combining all errors, reality being what is left after all distortions are factored out. Effective communication occurs when both parties know what they don't know, when they embrace and understand the nature of their ignorance; this ignorance is the shared starting point of all speech and the medium of its translation.
Word-unity is the first step toward world-unity. The negative language of error is the universal language of mankind; speak it and you will learn to communicate effectively with your fellow man, and you begin uniting the world.
For the next essay in this three-part series, click here.
Concepts:
70 Languages/שבעים לשונות
Sources and references:
Exodus 4:10
Ibid., 33:20
Numbers 11:25
For more about the idea of the 70 languages (and how it’s connected to Purim), see my book משנת יעקב, דרוש פתחיה על הקנים and this video:
I am blown away by how precise the thought experiment is. Here is a method of solving the conundrum of subjectivity - simply by looking at our own internal value system with one eye on the unknown.
Language is about communication, rather than universal, absolute truth. Words convey conceptions; they need not reflect reality. Some languages convey conceptions that are not present in other languages. Speakers of a language that does not permit a particular conception would be hard pressed to think the idea not provided for in their language.
While it is true that speakers of any language often disagree about the precise meanings of the words that they use--at least, at the margin--that is often because they disagree about to what the values suggested by those disputed words ought to convey. For example, when people dispute the meaning of the word "person," they are usually not arguing about what the word means, but about what creatures ought to be afforded the protections granted to "persons." There is no underlying true meaning of the word.