Language is the primary medium in which persons communicate themselves to one another and articulately disclose reality. It is an expression of rationality and a precondition of dialogical encounter. In language the person’s capacity to communicate what has been cognized and to enter into dialogue with the other is realized.
Language is not a mere system of signs but a personal act: in speaking, the person steps out of her interiority and turns toward the Thou. The capacity for language belongs to the essential characteristics of the human person and attests to her spiritual nature. Language makes possible cognition, education, and the transmission of knowledge and wisdom between persons.
Concupiscent look
The concupiscent look is a specific form of practical oblivion of the person in which one person reduces another to an object of sensual desire (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 287 ff.).
Wojtyła analyzes this phenomenon as an attitude in which the personhood of the other is, as it were, skipped over. The one who looks does not see the person, but only the body as an object of desire. The body-soul unity of the other is thereby split apart, and the body is regarded in isolation as a means of one’s own gratification. Hengstenberg speaks of an oblivion of objectivity (“Sachvergessenheit”) with regard to the personal essence of the other.
The concupiscent look violates the Personalist Norm because it disregards the dignity of the person. It is not merely an outward action, but an inner attitude. The instrumentalization already takes place in the look itself, even before it translates into action.
Speech act
A personal act of linguistic utterance. Every speech act has a dimension of expression, appeal, and representation, and as a personal act it is subject to the duty of truth (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 199 ff.).
Language is not a merely conventional use of signs but a personal enactment. In language the person turns to a counterpart and thereby opens an interpersonal space. Karl Bühler distinguished three functions of language: expression (manifestation of the inner life), appeal (address of the counterpart), and representation (reference to a state of affairs). All three dimensions are united in the speech act. They point to the personal fundamental structure of language: only a being with interiority, interpersonality, and capacity for truth can speak.
The speech act is closely connected with the social act: many social acts — the promise, the request, the command — are performed linguistically. In language the person generates real obligations and claims that are grounded in the nature of the thing itself.
The lie is the perversion of the speech act. It abuses the representational function of language by deliberately presenting what is untrue as true. The lie violates not only truth but also the interpersonal structure of trust that underlies all communication. Perjury is an especially grave form of the lie, because it perverts the solemn invocation of truth.
From the perspective of personal ontology, language reveals the reason and self-transcendence of the person: in speaking, the person transcends her mere subjectivity and relates herself to the shared reality.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Personal Act
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Listening
Listening is a personal act of attentive reception of another person’s self-communication. It is essentially more than merely physiological hearing: it demands an inner turning toward the other that acknowledges the other’s dignity as a person (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 243 ff.).
Genuine listening presupposes empathy — the capacity to grasp the other in his experience without reducing him to one’s own perspective. It is thus a fundamental form of the interpersonal relation and an expression of reverence for the personhood of the counterpart. In dialogue, listening forms the necessary complement to speaking: only where a person truly lets herself be addressed by the other does genuine personal encounter arise. The refusal to listen can therefore be a subtle form of the oblivion of the person.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Bexten 2017, pp. 72, 77, 93, 133, 166, 211 (language and the concept of person).
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 85, a. 1 (cognition and linguistic articulation)
- Aristotle, Politics I, 2 (the human being as zoon logon echon — the being endowed with language)
- Husserl, Edmund: Logische Untersuchungen (1900/01). Halle: Niemeyer. (meaning and expression)
- Stein, Edith: Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person (1932/33, ed. 2004). ESGA 14. Herder. (language and personal communication)
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Osoba i czyn. Kraków (German: Person und Tat, Freiburg: Herder, 1981). (the concupiscent look as oblivion of the person)
- Hengstenberg, Hans Eduard: Philosophische Anthropologie (1957). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. (oblivion of objectivity with regard to the personal essence)
See also: Dialogue, Person, Reason, Interiority, Cognition, Education, Knowledge, Self-Transcendence