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How can language undermine or support my efforts for clarity?
From: Augustine, de dialectica, here translated by J. Marchand
Page 2
These and all the others which were set down above are contained in the name 'man' and the same definition. If there is anything which is a boy or stupid or poor or even sleeping, if it is not a rational mortal animal, it is not a man, for that is what a man is. They must be contained in the same definition, and there is nothing ambiguous about the rest of them. One may be in doubt concerning a little boy, or a stupid or fatuous person, or a sleeping person or a drunk or a madman as to whether they are rational animals. This can be defended, but it takes a long time for anybody who is in a hurry. As far as that is concerned, this definition of man is thought by some to be incorrect and ill thought out, unless all men are contained in it and nothing except man.
Well, these are the 'univoca' which are included both in one designation and one definition, although among them they can be distinguished by proper names and definitions. For the names of boy and adolescent, rich and poor, free and slave, are diverse, as are other kinds of distinctions. So diverse things have proper definitions, but their one common name is 'man', just as the definition 'rational mortal animal' is common to all.
X. Now let us take up the 'equivoca', in which the perplexity of ambiguity grows like wild flowers into infinity. I shall try to divide them into certain genera. Whether my faculties are sufficient to the attempt, you shall judge.
There are first three types of ambiguity which come from equivocation: 1. by art, 2. by use, 3. by both. I say art for the sake of the names which are imposed upon words in the discipline of words. What is equivocal is defined one way by the grammarian, another by the dialectician. The single utterance which I make, 'Tullius' (Cicero), is a name and a dactylic foot and an equivocal. And if someone presses me to define what 'Tullius' is, I shall answer with an explanation of any of these notions. For I can say correctly: "Tullius is a name by which a man is signified, a great orator who as a consul suppressed the Catiline Conspiracy."
First Page ||| Next PageCf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
