Imagining New Worlds through Language

How a simple Greek distinction between two types of action can prompt profound reflection on happiness and meaning

German philosopher Martin Heidegger believes in the transformative power of language.  In much of Heidegger’s work, he simply leaves Greek terms untranslated, without even a footnote to illuminate the meaning. Although this can be frustrating to the reader, if we take this as a signal to slow down, research, and carefully contemplate the meaning of the term instead of quickly translating it into a familiar term it can be a profound philosophical exercise. Some concepts are so rich that understanding them can uproot lifelong metaphysical and ethical assumptions. The presentation of a contrast case to our own conceptual schemes can contextualize and even unhinge those schemes by illustrating that their ground is not in an unchanging reality but in the particular way our linguistic scheme organizes and demarcates experience.  Heidegger writes of the power language has in shaping our world, “Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.” 

       Heidegger thought that by making use of Greek terms he could encourage readers to inhabit the world of Ancient Greece. Personally, I do not think that simply understanding the language of a culture can lay bare the “essence” of that culture’s worldview. A culture’s way of living and worldview is constituted by a whole network of causes, only one of which is language; and further no culture, way of life, or worldview is static. Cultures are continuously being transformed through internal dialogue and creative activity as well as external interactions with other cultures across time and space. When we point to any particular worldview as a static, determinate, and unchanging thing, we must make an artificial boundary by separating out one moment in time and space from the dynamic, ever-changing historical, natural, and cultural forces that this moment is embodying, reinterpreting, and transmitting into the future. From this point of view, a “culture” is the momentary stability of a metaphysical and ethical consensus amongst a group of people that will inevitably be transformed as the fundamental principles on which that consensus is based are challenged through external influence and internal transformation. Although it would be inaccurate to think we can read off the essence of the Greek worldview from Greek concepts, we can use certain Greek concepts as a vector of meaning to destabilize the solidity of the principles that underpin the consensus of our culture. This is not a project concerned with ultimate truth but a creative and normative project, a way of using alternative ways of thinking and conceptualizing to destabilize ethical and metaphysical  assumptions that, at least from my point of view, may not serve our well-being as individuals or a community.