29 July 2006

History of philosophy

So I am taking a modern philosophy class, because (1) it fulfills my last general education requirement which allows me to graduate next month and (b) philosophy is a field that interests me and I figured that this would be a good way to get some formal grounding. I might mention that my previous experience with the subject
consists of Sophie's World, my own amateur ramblings, and some tidbits I have come across in my Spanish literature classes.

I confess that I am not enjoying the class as much as I had anticipated, or at least hoped, and I think the blame may be distributed more or less evenly between the nature of the class itself and my attitude towards it. It also has to do with the graduate seminar that I am taking concurrently, whose reading list is both longer and more interesting than that of the philosophy class. So what I'm saying is that for various reasons, my lit class is receiving significantly more attention, and I just have not been able/willing to put in the time and energy necessary to really get into my philosophy class.

I still go to the class. I mean I'm there physically, at least, if not always mentally. This makes for some interesting class notes. Enumerated arguments for the existence of God or the non-existence of corporeal substance are interspersed with doodles of flowers or meteors and snippets of songs running through my head and the occasional extended stream of consciousness which is an attempt to get whatever is in my head (which frequently has nothing to do with the ongoing lecture) out onto paper so that I can try to make sense of it. One day I found myself tracing a river through a forested mountain range whose peaks alternated with the words "Transcendental Unity of Apperception" which I had written above. Unsatisfied with an incomplete-looking scene, I filled it in a long passage of ramblings about the most pressing thing on my mind that particular day.

More recently, something (I don't remember what) inspired me to write the following passage in my notebook. N.b.: I am still exhibiting signs of being an amateur philosopher. Oh, and it came out in Spanish. I provide the original and an English translation. Or I guess I should call it a translation into "English", or perhaps my English. You'll see. And I apologize in advance for what some might call a run-on sentence. It actually works pretty well in "Spanish", and I chose not to break it up in the translation in order to preserve the feel of the words just spilling out of my mind continuously. Did I just justify my translation of my own writing? Weird.

the original, por si acaso les interesa:
No existen dos personas que hablen el mismo idioma.

Toda persona, al aprender un lenguaje, toma en sí: el léxico, la gramática, la ortografía y la pronunciación, los interpreta de su propia manera de comprenderlos, los hace suyos y cuando los usa ya no habla o escribe español ni inglés ni griego ni maya ni cualquier de esos idiomas a quienes clasificamos con tales nombres, sino una lengua suya y propia, cual no se puede entender como alemán o ruso o lo que pretenda llamarse, que esto es sólo un disfraz y un vehículo imperfecto por el cual va el lenguaje personal y único de cada individuo divagando por el aire buscando quien lo entienda.
and the translation:
No two people speak the same language.

Every person, when learning a language, takes upon himself its lexicon, its grammar, its orthography and its pronunciation, interprets them in his own manner of understanding them, makes them his own, and when he uses them he does not speak or write Spanish or English or Greek or Maya or any of those languages that we classify with such names, but rather his own language, which cannot be understood as German or Russian or whatever it pretends to be called, for this is just a disguise and an imperfect vehicle in which the personal and unique language of every individual wanders through the air, looking for someone who understands it.

1 Comments:

At 2:12 PM, Blogger Saule Cogneur said...

It's kind of cool to have random ideas like that. If you ever become famous, you can sell them for big bucks.

You can write total crap and people will STILL give you money for it. At the same time, you can write great stuff an only a few will be able to tell the difference.

 

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