metonymy4u

During the first half of the 20th century we were pre-occupied with the efficient destruction of 100 million of our dear brothers and sisters. War was at least a useful specifier of the events, if nothing else. Now of course, we no longer have wars. Instead of fighting in war zones, we are entertained by operations that take place in theaters. Surgical dramas, in which the patient is anesthetized and the pathology excised, painlessly. Or so we keep telling ourselves. War, when we had it, was at least good for some level of clarity: Speakings that had some faint connection to happenings. Now I fear we live solely in linguistic delusion.

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of attributions in thinking and speaking. I wonder these days if we make attributions in the course of speaking, as a way of bolstering some allusive social authority. Also, in my case anyway, I often feel guilty about presenting ideas “as my own” when I clearly believe they are “someone else’s.” For example, I might point out to my students the category error of worrying about the “structure of the self,” which confuses an organizing concept with a reified substance. Clearly to view the “self problem” in such a manner (here comes the attribution) could be traced to the vocabularies of authors like Rorty, Skinner, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Nietzsche, Hume and Kant. But why make the attribution? Why not just think my thoughts and speak my speeches, and take responsibility for them “myself?” Does the attribution add anything to my speech? Or is it just an anxiety crutch I can learn to do without? Like a ladder one throws away after climbing it?

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