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Vico’s Ring
149
very different premises, or rather different types of premises. We
might also note that the rejection of the tool analogy seems to
rely more on a tacit, intuitive response to its potential implica-
tions than on a more systematic examination, not to suggest that
the end result would have turned out differently. Clearly, the
most fundamental implication allowed, although not forced up-
on us, by pursuing the tool metaphor would downgrade language
to being a mere implement, utensil, a view that clearly flies in the
face of everything Vico held dear, and had to say. There is a way,
nonetheless, to address this question more systematically. It con-
sists of positing the language question against the framework of
two fundamentally alternative conceptions, for the first of which
we will refer to language as “universal medium”, and for the sec-
ond, language as “calculus”.
Both in using this terminology and the conceptual framework
it relates to, we follow the work of J. Hintikka in the philosophy
of language and logic
320
.
Ab initio,
it must be admitted that these
terms are framed in ways that are far from obvious or transpar-
ent. This is especially true for the notion of language as universal
medium; in this compound, and therefore already complex ex-
pression, language, on the one hand, is taken as a medium of
communication and thought, however, the more highly operative
term is “universal”.
“Universal” in this context does not refer to the now trivial
fact that language is spoken (and also usually written) by all hu-
mans, diachronically and synchronically
321
. In the realm of phi-
losophy, however, it is necessary to point out the difference with
Leibniz’s vision and project of a “universal language” (
lingua uni-
versalis, lingua rationalis, lingua philosophica
322
), a formal, symbolic
language capable of expressing all knowledge, be it philosophical,
mathematical, or scientific
323
. The difference does not lie in a dif-
ferent choice of language, but in understanding the nature or on-
tology of language itself. Rather than speaking of “universality”
of language, it may be more accurate (and less polysemous) to