The Language In Berkeley And Beckett

The language, first understood as a divine ontological creation, is doubted in its power to create being and to organise it in the passing of time. Both George Berkeley and Samuel Beckett wonder about the nature of language as the genuine expression of the being of the expressed thing or of the conscience trying to tell itself. In the Old Testament, Genesis starts with a speech on the word of God, and it couldn't start differently since the beginning was the Word. Here is the explanation of the origin of the world with which Genesis starts: "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light", and there was light. That was the first day. And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." And it was so. God called the expanse "sky". That was the second day. And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land", and the gathered waters he called "seas"." Thus, the earth was formless, it was empty and in darkness and it was the word of God which gave it a form, which filled the emptiness, which brought light to it. That the world was empty, formless and in darkness before the word of God named it may be the reason for all word. When later, Saint John will come back to the reflection on the word, he will give his sentence this surprising order: Saint John doesn't say "the beginning was God", but he affirms, "the beginning was the word". This denotes the supremacy of the word over God. Hence in the Christian tradition, the word, and God who is the holder, constitute the intelligible order from which the human history could take place not as an arbitrary movement devoid of meaning, but as a temporality supervised by the logos.

Since the dawn of time, the conscience of men, reflecting upon its objects of conscience, has endlessly been searching for a rational interpretation of what it encounters. This conscience is looking for a knowledge that would be certain of its objects, whether tangible or intangible. That is why men have always observed what they came across, analysed, quantified, and dissected the parts of real that were offered to them in order to find a rational explanation to the material and spiritual world. In the 18th century, the language conceived as significant was still strictly cognitive: to signify meant to correspond to a thought in a bi-univocal way. A word or a sign was conceived as giving access to the knowledge of the expressed thing.

And yet, as early as 1710, George Berkeley asserted in his introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, that arbitrary is a characteristic of language, and that the mistake is to treat the sign as if it was the thing itself or the image of the thing. According to him, the word is not the expression of the thing; it's only a word that we associate to the idea of the thing by habit. ". so difficult a thing it is to dissolve an union so early begun, and confirmed by so long a habit as that betwixt words and ideas. (.) For so long as men thought abstract ideas were annexed to their words, it doth not seem strange that they should use words for ideas.". Berkeley starts by observing that language is dangerous. Then, the problem of the philosophical language arises since any language is first of all a lesser evil. That is the reason why Berkeley had previously announced in his Commonplace Book, which regroups notes from 1705 to 1708, fragments B 392-B 398, that he would always use the simplest speech as to its form as well as to its content. Simply because he thought that popular (vernacular?) language was less charged with prejudgements. He thought that among all the possible dialects that awkwardly attempt to restore our ideas, popular languages are necessarily closer to real: learned languages always trust more the word than the idea. However, this doesn't imply abandoning the rigour of an erudite language. It is necessary to refine the language as a tool, but also to maintain its simplicity. Language seems a trap set by the signs that are the words that constitute it. It is nonetheless impossible to avoid using it insofar as language responds to a fundamental human drive of interaction with others. And language is the only means to satisfy this need. Yet, if it is impossible to do without language we must keep in mind its deceiving nature. Since what we use are only cultural signs, it is important to distance ourselves from them by using intently a simple language or a foreign language. Hence, a long time after Berkeley, in the 1940's, Samuel Beckett, although Irish by nationality and culture, chose to write his main masterpieces in French. "If he chose our language, it's because it was new to him. It allowed him to escape the automatisms inherent to the use of a mother tongue." These automatisms make us inappropriately associate the thing with the idea we have of it, thus warping our understanding of things, and consequently our thought, therefore, our approach to real. To Berkeley, we must think like the learned but speak like the vulgar. The requirement for a simple expression of complex ideas must stop us from any semantic slip. If no language is perfect, there is an imperfect language, and the most perfect language is the closest to what we feel, that is to say the idea. Since the language doesn't speak about anything else than the idea, and that the only existing reality is the idea, we must necessarily keep the language used for creating our own reality. Language is organised from a primordial language which is the language that ideas make up as the life of the mind that perceives them. In Molloy, the character doubts the truth of language: "That is to say, I could say it, but I won't say it, yes, I could say it easily, because it wouldn't be true." There is in Beckett's work an obsession for the dualism between the say, the words, and the said, the things. To say something equals lying. Since to speak isn't to say the thing in itself, but trying to make the words coincide with our own ideas, our own feelings; the language is reduced to be the rough shape of an individual thought of reality. It is the expression of the singularity of everyone, with which it doesn't coincide completely either. The word never reaches neither the truth of the thing, nor the truth of someone's thought. Whatever we say, we never say the truth. "For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion of truth like mine." That's why we must be careful not to be taken in by words, and keep in mind that we are using the language metaphorically. The language is dangerous because it makes us believe abstract things to be true. Yet, it is autonomous in the sense that it postulates unities of sense before checking their referentiality. In this sense, pure phonetic constructions are presented as realities. It also makes exist verbal entities devoid of external references and favours the adhesion to abstract ideas; and therefore non-existing since without connection to the effective perception. "Oh I did not say it in such limpid language. And when I say I said, etc., all I mean is that I knew confusedly things were so, without knowing exactly what it was all about. And every time I say, I said this, or, I said that, or speak of a voice saying, far away inside me, Molloy, and then a fine phrase more or less clear and simple, or find myself compelled to attribute to others intelligible words, or hear my own voice uttering to others more or less articulate sounds, I am merely complying with the convention that demands you either lie or hold your peace." Beckett spoke of ontological indecency of language. This language that possesses the power to create and to make us believe what is not, when it is only a convention instituted by men driven by the necessity to master a means of communication. Mere sounds organised and set up to carry reality and meaning. "But I tell myself so many things, what truth is there in all this babble? I don't know. I simply believe I can say nothing that is not true, I mean that has not happened, it's not the same thing but no matter. Yes, that's what I like about me, at least one of the things, that I can say, Up the Republic! For example, or, Sweetheart! For example, without having to wonder if I should not rather have cut my tongue out, or said something else. Yes, no refection is needed, before or after, I have only to open my mouth for it to testify to the old story, my old story, and to the long silence that has silenced me, so that all is silent. And if I ever stop talking it will be because there is nothing more to be said, even though all has not been said, even though nothing has been said;" To speak is a gift that allows the capacity either to speak to say nothing, that is to say, to speak about things that don't exist, or to get confined in a solitary silence. As it is impossible to say something that cannot be said, speech loses its importance. This theme of the absence of importance of speech can be found in all Beckett's work. "Don't exhaust yourself with speech, that's not relevant." When language reveals itself as a code of signs, a system of obsolete codification, when it's only a contestable part of the story of a civilisation, it loses its former power of saying, of uttering a true speech. It cannot henceforth neither act, nor "do, (make?)". "There is no use indicating words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle."

The meaning of words disappears: "Who could ever think, to hear me, that I've never seen anything, never heard anything but their voices? And man, the lectures they gave me on men, before they even began trying to assimilate me to him! What I speak of, what I speak with, all comes from them. It's all the same to me, but it's no good, there's no end to it. It's of me now I must speak, even if I have to do it with their language, it will be a start (.) It's a poor trick that consists in ramming a set of words down your gullet on the principle that you can't bring them up without being branded as belonging to their breed. But I'll fix their gibberish for them. I never understood a word of it in any case, not a word of the stories it spews, like gobbets in a vomit." The language is such that it is incapable to restore the exactitude of ideas. It possesses a power of generalisation which allows it to transform ideas into "facts". We say "red" to refer to all red objects indifferently. This power tends to persuade us that something like "red" truly exists, inherent to the thing we perceive, whereas the meaning of the word does not refer to a general idea but can refer to any particular idea, depending on how each individual feels what a singular situation produces in them. To think, for Berkeley, is not ceasing an abstract idea, real or nominal, it is to pass from one idea to another owing to the function of the sign, supported by the idea. In ordinary conversation, most words evoke no idea at all, being used "like letters in algebra", which always refer to particular qualities, to which we don't have to think to reason well. Lastly, the language is often intended not to suggest ideas, but like in speeches, to suggest emotions or dispositions of the mind. A sign is not like a label stuck on a thing but rather the starting point and the suggestion of a complex movement of thought, which keeps a certain vagueness, and a certain flexibility. The abstract idea is a logical monster, which we wrongly link to the usage of language, and therefore, the idea of a thing independent from the mind is a consequence to the faith in abstract ideas. To Berkeley, the nature of language or speech is effectively only a means of mediation between the thing and the mind, via the idea. What we know are ideas, the ideas of the things we perceive and not the things themselves. But truly, all our ideas are relative to our senses. They are the mediators of our perceptions, and it is through them that it is possible for us to know the things outside us. Consequently, they depend on the way each individual perceives them within each of their subjective experience of reality. Their perception of the qualities of reality, whatever they are, in presence of which they find themselves, varies according to a multitude of internal and external parameters. The subjectivity of the idea created by the sensation, which gives its meaning to the word is present in Molloy: ".in the sense this word had a sense for him." The language, then conceived as a subjective epiphenomenon is no more a criterion neither of truth, nor of coherence.

As we said before, in addition to the consequence that cannot be ignored of a subjective process, it exists nevertheless a generic name for several particular criteria of a thing, insofar as according to Berkeley: "And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple." The language as a means of communication needs an agreement between men. Our mental process is to associate the different particularities we perceive and we will name this association with a word that we know admitted as a reference to the singular qualities of our association. The latter is truly still only an idea. So, the fact remains that the language is an arbitrary phenomenon that we share between men without ever managing to reach a precise comprehension. The word only expresses the word, and nothing else. Only pure sounds, free of any association: "Yes, the words I heard, and heard distinctly, having quite a sensitive ear, were heard a first time, then a second, and often even a third, as pure sounds, free of all meaning, and this is probably one of the reasons why conversation was unspeakably painful to me. And the words I uttered myself, and which must nearly always have gone with an effort of the intelligence, were often to me as the buzzing of an insect. And this is perhaps one of the reasons I was so untalkative, I mean this trouble I had in understanding not only what others said to me, but also what I said to them." Nothing but words, of which the human consciousness is prisoner because it cannot at the same time, neither do without them, nor find in them an objective logic which would constitute an apodictic foundation as for the being of things and the order of the material world. Yet, for Berkeley and Beckett, words are a habit of the human mind, established long ago in order to express itself, to attempt a sensible interactivity between men. Reaching a usage of the language adequate to reality would on one hand organise the real, and on the other hand, give the certainty of a concrete existence of what is. This order and this certainty would guarantee peace for the conscience.

In 1964, Beckett participated to the realisation in NewYork of the scri pt entitled "Film", with Alan Schneider as a director and the actor Buster Keaton, which is a real dialogue with Berkeley. The scri pt starts with the famous formula by Berkeley, esse est percipi, thus pointing at the importance of the relation between Film and The Principles of Human Knowledge as well as at Berkeley's theory of vision. However Beckett cannot be considered as Berkeleian since he refuses to give significance or philosophical principle to his work, including giving a meaning to this refusal. After a series of references apparently philosophical, it is said: "No truth value attaches to above, regarded as merely structural and