173 / 298
Vico’s Ring
173
sky’s theory of
universal grammar
(see L. Formigari,
A History of Language Philoso-
phies
, cit., pp. 189-192).
324
G. Motzkin,
Hintikka’s Ideas about the History of Ideas
, cit., p. 123.
325
This dated, although still resonating, metaphor is repeatedly used by
Hintikka: «Language thus is, as far as our linguistic relations to the rest of the
universe are concerned, between us and the world. We cannot “reach” the
world linguistically except by means of our actual language. We are, in this
sense, prisoners of our own language» (Id.,
Lingua universalis
, cit., p. 22). In
other words, since language is “totalitarian”, all-inclusive, nothing can be ex-
pressed outside it, and it makes no sense therefore to speak of “the relations
of language and the world”, as if we were able to examine the relations inde-
pendently, in a detached manner (M. Kusch,
Heidegger and the Universality of
Language
, cit., p. 714). As to the possible philosophical roots of this problem-
atic, Hintikka observes: «For many influential [20
th
century] philosophers,
there obtains a grand albeit hidden equivalence between thought and lan-
guage, and as a consequence between what should, can or cannot be thought
of the conceptual world, thought and what can or cannot be thought about
our home language» (Id.,
Lingua universalis
, cit., p. XIV). That this underlying
assumption is not a recent phenomenon, is apparent from Kelemen’s charac-
terization of the Port-Royal language theory: «La grammatica è razionale nel
duplice senso, che la lingue respecchia direttamente il pensare […] (grammar
is rational in a twofold sense, in that language directly respects thinking […])»
(Id.,
Storia e lingua. Vico nella storia del pensiero linguistico
, cit., p. 143).
326
J. Hintikka,
Lingua universalis
, cit., p. 23. In Knuuttila’s words: «The ad-
herents of the conception of language as the medium of understanding think
that semantics is ultimately ineffable, because one cannot, as it were, look at
one’s language and describe it from outside; language is always presupposed in
our attempts to understand it» (Id.,
Hintikka’s View of the History of Philosophy
,
cit., pp. 98-99).
327
M. Kusch,
Heidegger and the Universality of Language,
cit., p. 714.
328
Ibid.
, p. 715.
329
It is of interest to note Hintikka’s own misgivings about his terminolo-
gy: «The fundamental and largely unacknowledged nature of the distinction is
reflected in the difficulty of finding self-explanatory terms for the two con-
trasted viewpoints. […] I have come to realize since that these terms, particu-
larly the term “language as calculus”, are not self-explanatory and may even be
misleading» (Id.,
Lingua universalis
, cit., p. 5). From the perspective of the histo-
ry of ideas, one would have to agree that the term
calculus
would tend to point
in a diametrically opposite direction, starting with Leibniz for whom «the
calcu-
lus ratiocinator
serves for mechanically deducing all possible truths from the list