227 - Some Lines on Lions

Some Lines on Lions
By Paul M. Van Buren

"IF a lion could talk, we would not understand him" (Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, II, xi, p. 223). Mr. Carse has come so close to understanding this saying that it is either useless or important to suggest what I take to be misleading in his interesting essay. I think he might have written a rather different article if he had also reflected on the following additional sentences from the Philosophical Investigations: "A dog cannot be a hypocrite, but neither can he be sincere" (II, xi, p. 229). "We say a dog is afraid his master will beat him; but not he is afraid his master will beat him tomorrow" (§ 650). (Compare also similar problems in §§ 282, 284, 348, and 360.)

Perhaps Mr. Carse might then have been led to notice the following passages as ways in which to dissolve and rearrange his initial problem: "Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious (§ 281; cf. § 360). "The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language" (§ 206).

I should like to throw some light on the major issue by commenting on several smaller but related points.

(1) "Direct translation . . . the method by which we learn any foreign language," is not so complicated, we are told. No, it is not, assuming you have already been trained in the technique of using

This brief critical comment on the article in this issue by James P. Carse was prepared at the request of the Editor. Paul M. van Buren is Associate Professor of Theology at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa., and the author of the widely discussed book, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, Based on an Analysis of Its Language, Macmillan, 1963, 1966.

228 - Some Lines on Lions

language, assuming you already are a user of words, in short, assuming you are what we call a normal human being. But is that an assumption we should take so easily for granted? When I think of the childhood of Helen Keller, of one's thoughts while waiting word from the operating room, of the results of our liberal applications of napalm to small brown bodies, I find it not so simply to be taken for granted that I can be more or less normal, that I can be a user of words and therefore find a foreign language no insuperable hurdle.

(2) Can you imagine a lion talking? Well, think of the lion in Through the Looking Glass or in The Wizard of Oz. But it is important that these are works of fiction. And the lion in each case does not just talk. He talks our language as part of sharing our form of life. I find I am unable to imagine a lion continuing to lead a lion's life and also talking. That says nothing about my powers of imagination, but it says a great deal about what we call talking. In order for us to understand a lion, therefore, the lion must not only talk. He must in some sense become man and dwell among us, behaving to a considerable extent the way human beings behave. If this were to happen, I do not know whether we would still go on calling such a creature a lion. This has yet to be decided.

(3) "If there is any God at all he must be infinitely remote-beyond the limits of human comprehension," we are told. While many have in effect agreed with this judgment, not all have, and some words of William James can stand for an alternative. "In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as a presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trails, even more than his dignity is needed in the empyrean." It might be said that if there is any God at all that any man could care about, he would have to be a God who was human enough to care about men, and therefore human enough to share in a large measure our human form of life. He would have to become a man in some sense and dwell among us, behaving to a considerable extent the way human beings behave. If this were to happen, I do not know whether we would still go on calling such a being a God. Maybe some would and some wouldn't. The decision is, shall we say, open?

229 - Some Lines on Lions

(4) "There is nothing in this world that cannot be explained in terms of this world," we are told. That is evidently not an empirical claim. Then just what sort of statement is it? So much is hidden within the words "this world." And what does "in terms of" mean here? Nothing in this world (or in some other world, if "this world" is taken in one way) can be explained by men to other men without the use of human language. That is a tautology of an important sort. It is also a grammatical note on the use of "explain." Yes, all our talking is talking. And all our thinking depends on our mastery of language. Further, if we take "this world" to mean the world for us, "everything there is," and if you say that to talk about everything is still a case of human talking, the point is an important one, terribly important, but what we shall then do to each other with our words, in part because of our different ways of taking "this world," is also important and has not yet been decided.

Although there is much that I find attractive in Mr. Carse's discussion, there is also something that leaves me profoundly dissatisfied. I rather like his idea of the Christian as one who seeks to understand at first hand his fellows because he has the sense of having been understood at first hand by another. My discomfort, however, arises from just this "first hand-second hand" dichotomy, for after we have singled out "knowing how to go on" with our fellow men ("first hand"), distinguishing this from "knowing how to go on" with the manipulative arts of a super-behaviorist ("second hand"?), we are left with as many possibilities as there are various ways in which we live (what we would still call) our form of life. How we live that life, how we are to go on, is what much of the Christian story can be held to throw light on, in quite a few different interpretations. There remains a good deal to be decided, even with Kierkegaard to help us. Or, to put it in other words: Had the lion become man, could we "surely have understood the lion at first hand"? Is understanding man "at first hand" really so simple and straightforward a matter? If it is, then Wittgenstein was a fool to have wasted his time doing these kinds of philosophical investigations.