Eloquent Musings

People often say that language is the boundary of thought.

This statement is usually attributed to Wittgenstein, although his original words in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus are: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The world here does not refer to all the objectively existing things in the universe, but rather to the world that a person can recognize, describe, understand, and endow with meaning.

The ocean did not stop flowing simply because the ancients had not yet developed the concept of ocean currents. The facts had already occurred, but the occurrence of facts does not equal their being understood. Only when disordered phenomena are distinguished, named, and placed within a set of relationships can “something is happening” become “I know what is happening.”

But the truly difficult part of this statement lies precisely here. Does language merely give names to thoughts that already exist, or must thought itself rely on language in order to take shape?

If language is merely a tool of expression, things become very simple. Thought first appears in the mind in a complete form, like a letter that has already been written. Language then arrives afterward, responsible for putting it into an envelope and sending it to another person. A poverty of language would only make expression less elegant; it would not harm thought itself.

Yet our experience is precisely the opposite. Many times, we think we understand something clearly in our hearts but simply cannot put it into words. Only after we actually begin writing do we discover how many cracks are hidden within this so-called understanding: the preceding sentence does not logically lead to the next; feelings take the place of reasons; positions masquerade as facts; and several mutually contradictory judgments are forcibly bound together by a powerful emotion.

We originally thought that a building was already standing in our minds. Only when we attempted to express it did we see clearly that there was nothing there but a pile of bricks and stones that had not yet been assembled.

Language is not a vehicle that arrives only after thought has been completed. Very often, expression is the construction site where thought itself is being built.

If an idea is to become genuine thought, it cannot merely flicker inside the mind. It must be capable of being judged, of having its reasons questioned, of entering into relationships with other judgments, and of being revised when contradictions are discovered.

A ruler can measure length because its graduations do not change temporarily each time a measurement is made. A word possesses meaning for the same reason: it enters into a relatively stable set of public uses. In our shared lives, we learn what circumstances are called pain, how people typically behave when they are in pain, how to ask about it, how to offer comfort, when to be suspicious, and when to seek medical attention.

A person can conceal pain, pretend to be in pain, or be unable to find accurate words to describe pain. Yet these very possibilities—concealment, pretense, and inaccurate description—already presuppose the existence of public rules.

This does not mean that other people understand my pain better than I do, nor does it deny the inner life of human beings. What it reveals is that experience belongs to the individual, but meaning cannot be entirely invented by the individual alone. Without public rules, we would certainly still suffer, but it would be difficult to elevate suffering into a form of understanding that can be recognized, reflected upon, communicated, and revised.

Language thus constitutes the boundary of thought.

Beyond the boundary, there is not nothing. There are bodily tremors, vague intuitions, impulses of desire, and fears that have not yet been understood.

It is just that, before entering language, these things function more as forces that propel us than as objects that we can turn around and gaze upon. A person driven by anxiety and a person who knows why they are anxious already inhabit two different spiritual worlds.

The first thing language does is draw distinctions within a continuous world.

Reality has no obligation to arrange itself neatly according to our words.

Where does red end and orange begin? At what point does sadness become depression? What distance separates obedience from consent? How should the killing that occurs in war be distinguished from murder? These boundaries are rarely as naturally clear as mountains and rivers.

Yet thought must draw lines, because without distinctions, judgment is entirely impossible. Thinking requires people to recognize differences among similarities and discover connections among differences. Chaotic feelings cannot accomplish all of this by themselves.

Someone who knows only how to say “I feel bad” will compress anxiety, grievance, shame, anger, and sadness into the same experience. Faced with all forms of suffering, they may have only three possible responses: endure, run away, or lose their temper. Only after becoming able to distinguish these feelings can they begin to ask further questions:

Am I grieving over something I have already lost, or am I anxious about a danger that has not yet occurred? Have I genuinely done something wrong, or has someone placed a shame upon me that does not belong to me? What do I need: an apology, an exit, resistance, or simply permission to cry for a while?

Only when words become precise can paths, rooms, and exits emerge from the darkness that once filled the entire inner world.

Thus, the most serious consequence of linguistic poverty is that it makes one’s world crude and impoverished: reducing love to liking and disliking, politics to supporting and opposing, people to good and bad, and life to success and failure.

The fewer concepts a person possesses, the more blurred the texture of reality becomes, until only a few broad outlines remain. Such a person may hold extraordinarily strong opinions, yet can only make all those opinions collide back and forth within a few narrow boxes.

The reason many arguments never make progress is that people use the same word while holding different things in their minds. Factual judgments, value judgments, and judgments about interests impersonate one another. Discussion ultimately becomes a contest of voices, as though whoever speaks more loudly must be closer to the truth.

However, the influence of language on human beings does not stop there. We use language not only to understand the external world but also to become an “I” capable of understanding itself.

A child initially does not know how to say “I.” First, the child hears others call their name. They hear words such as well-behaved, naughty, sensible, or good-for-nothing. They hear what deserves praise, what ought to bring shame, what kinds of desires may be spoken aloud, and what kinds of feelings must be hidden.

It is through these responses that the child gradually learns to view themselves from the positions of others, organizing scattered feelings into a subject with a past, a personality, and responsibilities.

This does not mean that an infant without language has no self, nor does it mean that human beings are entirely manufactured out of words.

The body, memory, and desire all exist before the full development of linguistic ability.

Yet the kind of self that can connect yesterday’s self, today’s self, and an imagined self of tomorrow; that can say, “This is what I did” and “This is not the person I am willing to become”; that can reflect, tell a story about itself, and accept responsibility—such a self is difficult to conceive of apart from language.

We do not first become a complete self and then pick up language to express our inner world. As we learn how to say “I,” we also learn how to become an “I.”

The truly firmest boundaries do not need to bear a sign saying, “No Passage.”

They need only make the life beyond them unimaginable. If it cannot be imagined, it will not be demanded. If no one makes a demand, reality has no need to change.

This does not mean that people will remain imprisoned forever within their existing language. Language is a boundary, but it is also a tool through which people continually move that boundary.

Poets change syntax, placing things that were originally far apart next to one another, allowing experiences that ordinary language cannot accommodate to become visible for the first time. Philosophers question words that have become far too familiar through habitual use, forcing people to reinterpret truth, justice, the subject, and freedom. Social movements give a common name to isolated suffering, turning individual experiences into public facts that can be seen.

Whenever people invent a genuinely explanatory concept, it is like chiseling a window into the wall of the existing world. The scenery outside the window has been there all along; only now have we acquired a perspective from which to see it.

The meaning of reading does not lie in transporting how many famous quotations into one’s memory, but in using other people’s concepts to recognize one’s own world anew. When people encounter the concept of alienation, they begin to see how labor comes to dominate the laborer in return. When they encounter the banality of evil, they begin to understand that great evil is not necessarily committed entirely by demons; it may also be accomplished collectively by countless people who refuse to think and are willing only to obey procedures.

A good concept does not save us the effort of thinking. It makes a question that we previously could not think about suddenly impossible to avoid. It makes the familiar unfamiliar, revealing the historical seams in orders that have been taken for granted. Afterward, people may still accept reality, but it becomes difficult for them to accept it again in the same unconscious manner as before.

Acknowledging that language constitutes the boundary of thought does not mean that language determines everything. Human beings possess spatial intuition, facial recognition, and bodily memory. They also make judgments before searching for reasons. The colors a painter sees may not all be expressible in words, and the vibrations produced by music often resist explanation. If linguistic relativity is pushed to the extreme, as though the absence of a particular word makes the corresponding experience absolutely impossible, it turns human beings into puppets of concepts.

Human experience will always overflow, in part, beyond language.

It is precisely because everything cannot be fully expressed that poetry, music, and painting need to exist.

But the fact that feelings precede language does not mean that thought has already crossed beyond language. An inexpressible tremor may be extraordinarily real, yet it is difficult to turn it into a form of understanding that can be examined, repeatedly understood, and communicated from one person to another. Intuition may discover a direction first, but ultimately it must return to language to undergo examination.

A scientist may vaguely sense that an old theory has developed a problem. Only when a new concept is established, relationships are explained, and evidence is organized can that premonition become knowledge shared by humanity.

Therefore, language has neither created the entire world nor is it merely a garment worn over thought. It exists between experience and understanding, turning fleeting feelings into recognizable objects, private encounters into public issues, and the scattered fragments of life into an “I” capable of telling a story about itself. It can also, in turn, obscure experience, allowing power to enter human desires through words that appear natural, and causing people to measure themselves according to standards prescribed by others.

Freedom thereby acquires a meaning deeper than merely possessing choices. Freedom also means that a person can create a little distance between themselves and their own language, listening to determine whether it is truly they who are speaking, or whether certain unexamined words are continuing to live through their mouths.

Human beings cannot completely escape beyond language, because even doubts about language must be expressed through language. But people can make language more precise, more honest, and more capable of accommodating experiences that were once excluded. We cannot acquire a pair of eyes completely unaffected by concepts, but we can notice how the lenses alter the light and continually clean them.

Therefore, the deepest meaning of the statement “language is the boundary of thought” is neither that vocabulary determines a person’s intelligence nor that the world ultimately consists of nothing but words.

What it says is that human beings begin by living in a world that has already been named, interpreted, and divided. Through this language, we become beings capable of thought, and in doing so, we inherit all of its illumination and all of its blind spots.

The beginning of thought often occurs at the moment when resounding answers suddenly cease to work. A person stops for the first time, questions a word that has become overly familiar, and refuses any longer to call fate “fate,” harm “love,” obedience “maturity,” or the inability to imagine something “impossibility.”