Practical Knowledge of the Soul

* Book: Practical Knowledge of the Soul. by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. Argo, Imprint: Wipf and Stock, 2015

URL = https://wipfandstock.com/9781498282109/practical-knowledge-of-the-soul/

Description

"In this book devoted to knowledge of that mysterious entity, "soul," which neither philosophers nor psychologists will have anything to do with, Rosenstock-Huessy gives soul essential, practical meaning. Without recourse to anything mystical or transcendental or merely poetic, he assures us of the reality of the individual soul for healthy human beings, and connects it to his larger work on an entirely new grammar that elevates to primacy the imperative and vocative forms of speech. Rosenstock-Huessy makes us aware, as few other writers can do, of the limitations inherent in the structure of the natural and social sciences, how much is blindly left out for the sake of adhering strictly to materialist and quantitative methods. In any lifetime there are profound transformations of one's soul, which a correct analysis of grammar, true to human experience, helps us recognize and appreciate. As he states here, "The grammar of the soul is not an ineffectual luxury. . . . The disclosure of the miraculous world of the soul by a grammar based on the primal forms will create an applied study of the soul that should assume its place next to the modern era's technical natural science."

Discussion

Hans van der Heiden:

"For Rosenstock-Huessy, speech is the shaping and framing power (“Sprachkraft” or “Nennkraft”) of human existence. Speech is participation in a world of language from time immemorial; it is earlier than you and more than you. The whole process of being “appealed to,” “being named,” receiving a first name and responding to it, creates a specific personal room, one’s own place and identity in the passage of time. It is agenesis! In Chapter Five Rosenstock-Huessy speaks of “the grammar of the soul.” He poses the question: Does the soul have a grammar? His answer: “The ‘word’ originates in the soul and comes closer to the truth inasmuch as it comes from the depth of the soul. We measure the power of speech by the vibrations of the soul. Just as logic determines the structure of the mind, the soul must have ‘a confluence of words’ as its inner structure. This confluence of words is called grammar. . . . Grammar is the key that unlocks the soul. Whoever wants to become familiar with the soul must understand the secrets of language!” Precisely that is the program of this small book. The secrets of language are methodically revealed, bit by bit. First and very powerfully this takes place by the denunciation of the Greek or Alexandrian grammar table, which for centuries has been compulsory language drilling for students, the familiar verb conjugation beginning “I love,” “you love,” “s/he loves,” etc. We are all contaminated by it unto the depths of our souls. “I” in this ancient structure is the first person, but no one before Rosenstock-Huessy questioned whether this honored place is in agreement with the reality of our grammatical experiences. Yet, as Rosenstock-Huessy points out, it is only by means of the name by which the newborn child is addressed that he or she is incorporated into the world of language from time immemorial–– “you are loved, John.” It takes a while before the child discovers himself as an “I”, a subject. The child is incorporated into language, language being, Rosenstock argues, “wiser than the one who speaks it.” The human being, the child, from the beginning is approachable by speech. He is call-able; he can be appealed to. He can be addressed by his name. The child is therefore not an “I” in the first place but a “you” or a “thou”. It is from this “being called by one’s name” that the grammatical method takes its point of departure. The starting point is being “spoken to. ”Technically we are referring to the vocative mood. The vocative mood is the address or the appeal, which always comes first––“You, Mary.” It precedes all other speech, not only biographically from birth but also throughout life. Being named puts people on the move, makes them stand up and go. Directly related to the vocative mood and combined with it, is the imperative (compare the “command” in Rosenzweig and Levinas). The imperative mood is the most original form of the verb and the shortest form: Laugh! Walk! Look! Wait! Stand up! Go!

Only the root of the verb is used, which feeds the presumption that all other forms of the verb are derived from it. However, the imperative is not by itself a complete sentence. It bridges the distance between the speaker and the listener and implies and evokes an answer, a response. Will that answer follow? The listener always has a choice between “yes” and “no.” “Will you follow”? “Yes, I will follow.” The one who says “yes, I follow,” the addressee, provides the subject for which the verb in the imperative mood is searching. With the imperative, something is going to happen. The situation is going to change. A process of change is initiated. Theimperative mood is challenging and for that reason it is called the “mode of change.” Change and renewal is what Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammar of the soul envisions, and therefore it can also becalled “the doctrine of transformative change.” One thinks here of Rosenstock-Huessy’s credo: Respondeo et si mutabor – I respond although I will be changed in the process.

In this brief introduction there is space only to cite these two first principles of the “Leibhaftige Gammatik”: “the ‘you’ comes before the ‘I’” and “the change that the vocative mood and the imperative mood effectuate.” These are the first steps towards the grammatical method that is presented in Practical Knowledge of the Soul. This grammar comprises the miracle of becoming human. We must, however, pay attention, too, to the other term in the title, “soul.” A person searching for a convincing definition of the soul will give up after a while, with some disappointment. The meaning of “soul” cannot be pinned down in a fixed formula. Nevertheless, as Rosenstock-Huessy asserts, there is a deep longing to unravel the secrets of the soul. In our time the term emerges rather often, maybe because people feel that the predominant scientific and objectifying understanding of mind and body does not touch the secret of being human. Immediately the question is raised in this book whether “practical knowledge of the soul ”is the same as “practical psychology.” The question needs an answer. What does the word “psyche” mean and what do we understand by “soul”? Rosenstock-Huessy pays a lot of attention to the difference between the two. The word “soul” evokes all sorts of memories, thoughts, and subjects that we do not connect with the word “psyche.” But what then is the content of the word“soul”? First Rosenstock-Huessy answers negatively with a short and powerful statement: “The soul is not a thing.” But what is the soul? We already heard the statement of Rosenstock-Huessy: “Just as the mind has logic as its structure, the soul must have a confluence of words as its inner structure. This confluence iscalled grammar.” That means, in the search for the soul Rosenstock-Huessy discovered a structure of language, the source of language, the primary grammar, the starting point of the power of speech. One might say this is the result of the search: The rediscovery of language asthe power of speech, in which the vocative mood and the imperative mood constantly initiate change and renewal of man and society. One might then say: The soul is that in human beingsthat reveals and leads the process of change. Change occurs when a new love enters, a new command, a new imperative. That in us from which love springs, our passion, or whatever one is inclined to call it, that is our soul. At the same time, we are not fully conscious of this loving capacity for change that lives in us. One might also say: The soul is that part of our heart that loves, but without our being in control and fully conscious of that love. The soul is that power inus that is beyond ourselves, and that leads to the unknown future. It is that part of us that is already on the other side, and our mind and body cannot do otherwise but follow suit.

How is the grammatical method applied in the further work of Rosenstock-Huessy? We want to value this method for what it is worth, indicate the importance of it in the “genesis” of the neighbor, of human beings, of a people, of Europe, of the world. That is quite a claim, but thatis what the grammatical method promises. Chapter Ten of Practical Knowledge of the Soul, with the title “Our People,” suggests agrammatical model that Rosenstock-Huessy applies to history. The result is his comprehensive language-historical book Die Europäischen Revolutionen und der Charakter der Nationen, published in 1931. As stated above, in 1938, expanded with new material and a different chronological order, it was published in English under the title Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man. Indeed it contains an “autobiography of Western man” because it not only presents facts but focuses on the events that made us what we are. These are truly events. Only when we are fundamentally changed by history can a happening really count as an event. These events are connected to the new imperatives that emerge and are articulated from time to time in history. In response to these imperatives people take daring n ew steps resulting in the framing and shaping of new institutions. Each of the great European revolutions created a new human type with new qualities, new laws, and new forms of language. The grammatical method is also the foundation of Rosenstock-Huessy’s encompassing language-sociology, entitled Soziologie (1956-58). In two big volumes he goes through all world history. Each phase in history is characterized by a new “way of speech.” Again, these new forms of speech that organize a society emerged as a response to the urgently felt needs of the time. For instance, the ancient Egyptian empire is a response to the need and the chaos of the tribes before that time, their struggle for life in that fertile land. Ancient Israel and Greece can as well be understood as a reaction to the hierarchical harness that this imperial culture, by its strict organization, imposed on its subjects. Israel brought about a rupture with the cyclical, Egyptian hierarchical order by prioritizing a future of justice above the existing earthly order. The God of Israel is coming from the future and justice is preparing his way (Psalm 85:14). Greece softened this hierarchical order, in Homer, in the tragedies, and in philosophy by sympathizing with the tragic human being who cannot escape the laws of the cosmos. In each new way of speech social reality is ordered and arranged anew.

The final application of this method is in Rosenstock-Huessy’s third great work, Die Sprache des Menschengeschlechts (1963). The institutions realized in the course of history are crystallizations of new ways of speech, which have been revealed to and discovered by man in the course of history. Thereby the human race is constantly enriched by ever-new forms and expressions of speech. In this way the creation of God progresses towards its fulfillment. The vast language repertoire at the disposal of the human race increases in the course of history on the condition that being human means remaining flexible, receptive, moldable, and open to the future. The importance of this plasticity was once more emphasized by Rosenstock-Huessy when he put at the end of Die Sprache des Menschengeschlechts a work entitled Die Frucht der Lippen (Fruit of Lips) about the four Gospels, in which he shows how Jesus Christ bestowed this transformative power on the entire human race."

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286922602_Introduction_to_Practical_Knowledge_of_the_Soul_by_Eugen_Rosenstock-Huessy_translated_by_Marc_Huessy_and_Freya_von_Moltke_Wipf_Stock_ix-xxxvi)