A theme that both underlines and rises to the surface in a number of philosophies of language is loss. The essay, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” by Walter Benjamin is no different. He begins by expounding on language through its materiality and metaphysical traits while exploring language’s mystical and magical qualities but he explicates greatly on creationism as language’s epistemology, which is where the concept of loss appears. Benjamin implies this loss on page 326, “The paradisiac language of man must have been one of perfect knowledge; whereas later all knowledge…was indeed forced to differentiate itself on a lower level.” The Fall removed man from the level of name language—the creative word—and the “human word” originated with the judgment of good and evil. Benjamin states that the composition of language comes from a three-part consequence of the Fall: language as a means—a mere sign that results in plurality; the magic of judgment; and the origin of abstraction.
The first part is the ramification of the paradisiac language of naming. Man, having lost his purity, over-named things so language became signs pointing to things as a means to communicate. “Language is in every case not only communication of the communicable but also, at the same time, a symbol of the noncommunicable” (Benjamin, 331). This communicating function of language is formed by the symbolic limits and the signs in which man extends through all of nature. According to Benjamin, over-naming through this communication of symbols and signs is a reflection of God. He says, “God gives each beast in turn a sign, whereupon they step before man to be named…the linguistic community of mute creation with God is thus conveyed in the image of the sign” (326). Multiplicity of languages resulted from the naming word falling short of the creative word of God. Man translated the signs into his own image because the Fall soiled the purity of name; with that Fall, man came into the “uncreated imitation of the creative word” (Benjamin, 327), the nameless knowledge of good and evil.
Part two of the Fall is the magic of judgment. Man did not name the judging word; rather, man sensed the judgment and identified good and evil with the Fall. “The tree of knowledge did not stand in the garden of God in order to dispense information on good and evil, but as an emblem of judgment over the questioner” (Benjamin, 328). Benjamin explains that Adam and Eve aroused the judging word when they were expelled from paradise thus originating the mythical form of law. Not only law though, this was where the idea of man having free will formed, which resulted in linguistic confusion. Man’s free will shook the foundation of signs because he contemplated the Fall and discovered guilt. The consequence of the Fall and judging words is multiplicity because the definition of good and evil transformed and translated. Judgment is rooted in double meaning so when Benjamin says, “The abstract elements in language…are rooted in judgment” (328) one can see how abstraction is the final stage of language resulting from the Fall.
In man’s attempt to expel abstraction from language an element of specific word formed. Benjamin recalls the melancholy of the linguistic being and it’s relation to language: “The overprecision that obtains in the tragic relationship between the languages of human speakers” (330). What happened is man used over-naming to define the self and in doing that defined all else in his own liking. When Benjamin speaks of the language of the arts (sculpture, painting, poetry), does he mean the language associated with the action of these arts or of the language that envelops the essence of these arts? He opens up the concept of spheres of language, which it self is abstract. Man attempted to grasp artistic forms and functions through the language of specificity but that essentially removed art from its nature and its own communication with the world of thought.
Benjamin says, “Man communicates himself to God through name” (331) but man named the nameless again and again until the meaning of the things have been divided and have become incommunicable. Does Benjamin bring to light his notion that language is incomplete and inexpressible because of man’s Fall from pure knowledge so the reader is merely aware of this state of loss, or is his reflection an attempt to further boost the spirituality of language? One could argue either but the result would most likely be that the two reasons coexistent.
