n the necessity of socialism and grammar

[bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

G'day Tom'n'Sabri,

> Sabri has framed the issue correctly. Both are beliefs. For the same
> reason
> as Sabri, I believe in God but not in a God or gods. The distinction
> is
> crucial. There IS a difference between believing in God and believing
> in "a"
> God or "the" God. God is a unique part of speech that cannot be a
> noun. The
> article makes God into a noun, which is grammatically absurd. It is
> like
> saying, in English, "I the go to store" or "She a eat apple." It is
> clearly,
> obviously ungrammatical. God is also not a verb, an adjective, an
> adverb, a
> preposition or any other common part of speech. In fact, one might say
> that
> the linguistic function of God is precisely to stand as other to all
> the
> common parts of speech and thus to remind us of the incompleteness,
> the
> inadequacy of any conceivable utterance. God is the unique grammatical
> term
> for the ultimate unutterableness of being.

I know where you're coming from, Tom, or at least I know there's a big
unutterable there somewhere that we all come from and dwell in (I have
only recently allowed myself to let the prepositions hang; wow, it's
like peeing outadoors!).  To avoid confusion, though, I'd not call it
God - admit rather, and often, that whereof we cannot speak we must pass
over in silence.

Apropos of which, I append this, a favourite (necessarily longish)
quote, by Pommie composer Anthony Powers (which can be had in full at
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,563387,00.html
:

                             "I came back to the Tractatus after reading
Ray
                               Monk's life of Wittgenstein and Bryan
Magee's Confessions of a
                               Philosopher," says Powers. "What became
clear to me was how
                               misinterpreted the Tractatus had been by
mid-20th- century linguistic
                               philosophers, and how what it was really
about was the importance of
                               recognising non- linguistic reality. The
logical positivists and linguistic
                               analysts thought everything could be said
if it was said in the right kind of
                               controlled and logical way. But the
Tractatus is saying almost the opposite -
                               that there are so many dimensions of life
and experience that are beyond the
                               capability of language to explain or even
adequately express."

                               The famous last sentence of the Tractatus
- "What we cannot speak about we
                               must pass over in silence" - is,
according to Powers, meant as an injunction
                               to philosophers "to put up or shut up",
and certainly not as a discouragement
                               to musicians. "According to Wittgenstein,
there are huge things - the whole
                               areas of moral and religious philosophy
and aesthetics - that cannot be 'said'
                               but can be 'shown'," says Powers. "The
honest thing philosophically is to be
                               silent about those things. What I'm
trying to do is to show in the piece that
                               music is a way of reaching into that
silence."

Cheers,
Rob.