Page 23 - Critical and Cultural Theory

LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION
concern is: what is the relationship between a statement and the
state of affairs that it describes? Relatedly: is a sentence for which
there is no such state of affairs necessarily meaningless? The two
most influential positions in the history of Western Philosophy of
Language are realism and nominalism. The first believes in the
existence of universal concepts in a realm separate from material
reality and maintains that the universal properties shared by parti-
cular things are abstract and unchanging. The second rejects the
existence of transcendental universals and asserts that objects and
their properties are just names and that everything that exists is
particular.
The Greek Sophists (fifth century BC) were among the first to
examine the relationships which need to exist between words and
things if language is to convey knowledge. Gorgias, one of their
principal figures, speculated that when we give one another words,
that is all we give one another: there is no direct transfer of shared
ideas or concepts from one mind to another. Even if there were,
there would always be a disparity between ideas and the ways in
which these are used and interpreted in particular contexts and by
particular individuals. In the Cratylus (c. 390 BC), Plato sought to
counter the Sophists' relativism, by arguing that although the
words we use may be purely arbitrary and conventional, concepts
are not: they are a matter of truth or falsehood. It is therefore
vital, according to Plato, to arrive at ideal names conforming to
the true nature of reality. This coincides with an otherworld of
immaterial and eternal Ideas, or Pure Forms, that transcend the
physical world. Only a correctly structured and furnished language
is capable of accessing those universal, unchanging abstractions
and thus communicating knowledge. 1 Aristotle (384-322 BC), by
contrast, opted for a naturalistic approach. He argued that univer-
sal principles are immanent in things, and can be discovered by
identifying the common properties of particular objects. Language
must be able to grasp and articulate those universals. In different
ways, both the Platonic and the Aristotelian models were
concerned with language's ability to represent objects or ideas.
This position was drastically challenged by the Sceptic philosopher
Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 AD), who argued that words can neither

1 IV For further discussion of Plato's theories, see Part III, Chapter 6, The Simu-
lacrum'.

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