The Role Of Language Essay -- essays research papers

The Role of Language Can contemporary discourse presume a community of interest? In order to answer this question, one is forced to first answer the question, can language be used to reveal anything new? If the answer is yes, then how can it do this and how can we employ it to do this for us. Also, one is forced to ask what is it exactly that we are looking for? Once we’ve found it, how can we use it to improve our present condition? Plato and Descartes both believe that language can indeed improve our conditions through it’s revelation, and both give methods to attain new knowledge. Although vastly differing, in that Descartes builds knowledge from the ground up, while Plato works from a distorted view, and seeks to clarify it, their philosophies mean the most, and have the highest practical purpose when they are employed together. By basing a Socratic argument on Descartes’ pre-established truths, one can attain undoubtable new knowledge. This knowledge can, and will improve societ y. The reason it will do this is explainable by looking at the tendency that man has to correct himself once he knows in certitude that he has been mistaken in his actions. Any enlightened individual who has, in the past, made mistakes due to their own ignorance, would, upon learning the error of their ways, not return into err, but use the knowledge to correct their previous mistake. So it is with society. Once we find out where we are in err, it would be ignorant of us not to correct ourselves. Before we can look at finding knowledge, however, we must first look at how we should properly use language. Socrates and Plato see language mainly as the mechanism to provide truth and knowledge. In engaging in argument, Socrates is given a definition of a word such as courage, justice or piety. Then, rather than giving his own definition in retort, he offers a situation in which the given definition is incorrect and then challenges his opponents to find something which is common to all courageous, just or pious acts. The commonality in things is the goal that Plato and Socrates are striving for. What makes things, like just acts, the same even though they all differ in some way? What is it that all separate just acts have in common so that they are recognizable as just acts? Knowledge is to know what isn’t evident in the object or action, but to know what it is that makes all objects ... ...ve no one would care to argue this point. Since we are contented with our lot in life and do not care to search for truth but rather have it handed to us for the cost of an education, cable bill and Internet connection per month, are we not the fools who are content while the enlightened few, the philosophers and all those others who think for themselves, remain discontented with our situation. As Plato and Socrates would certainly suggest, language use is essential if we are to have some idea of a means to achieving our goal as humans in society. It is quite evident now that language is indeed a powerful tool and can be used for reasons of knowledge and for reasons of power. It is also quite obvious that today only a small number of the population use their own heads to think and leave the power solely to the modern institutions of ‘knowledge distribution’. By using Aristotelian Logic, arguments can be used to produce truths, so long as the premises are true, and De scartes has provided this foundational truth. Using argument, talking to each other, one can find the commonality in all things, and discover what our own commonalties are as human beings and as elements in the state.