{"id":83724,"date":"2015-03-17T14:04:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T18:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83724"},"modified":"2015-03-17T18:34:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T22:34:57","slug":"whos-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/17\/whos-number-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Number One?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and the role of the first person.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Eugen_Rosenstock-Huessy\"<\/a>

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy<\/p><\/div>\n

It can be staggering to realize, suddenly, that something you\u2019ve never thought about\u2014something you\u2019ve always accepted as real\u2014is just an article of faith. Language is often what turns the lightbulb on: someone defines reality afresh with a new word (mansplaining<\/em>, Rebecca Solnit) or by showing the hidden powers and interconnections of an old word (debt<\/em>, David Graeber). Rarely is the realization about language itself.<\/p>\n

\n

Of all the dogmas of classical antiquity, only grammar has held its ground. Euclidean geometry, Ptolemaic astronomy, Galenic medicine, Roman law, Christian doctrine\u2014the schools have radically demolished them all. But even now, Alexandrine grammar still reigns.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The quote is from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy<\/a> (1888\u20131973), a deeply idiosyncratic Christian theoretician of the modern era. (All translations are mine, from the two-volume The Language of the Human Race: An Incarnate Grammar in Four Parts <\/em>[Die Sprache des Menschengeschlechts: Eine leibhafte Grammatik in vier Teilen<\/em>].) Rosenstock-Huessy inspired a few cognoscenti, including W. H. Auden and Peter Sloterdijk, but he is still, it is safe to say, deeply, deeply obscure. It is hard to know what to do with him. I certainly find off-putting the self-evident all-importance of Christ\u2019s Birth or God\u2019s Divine Purpose, which he regularly tosses into his philosophical arguments. (Auden: \u201cAnyone reading him for the first time may find, as I did, certain aspects of his writings a bit hard to take \u2026 Speaking for myself, I can only say that, by listening to Rosenstock-Huessy, I <\/em>have been changed.\u201d) The grammatical dogma he means, though\u2014and which he spent more than one 1,900-page book in mortal combat against\u2014is the innocent-looking list dating back to the Greeks: first person, second person, third person. I love<\/em>, you love<\/em>, he\/she\/it loves<\/em>, or, if you studied Latin, amo, amas<\/em>, amat<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\n

We all learn languages according to these lists. What can possibly be meaningful about them? … In the Alexandrine ordering, every person is subjected to the same drill. All persons seem to speak the same way. This is where the fatal error arises. Much of our confusion about social relations and much of our ignorance of language can be derived directly from this one mistake. Stringing together amo<\/em>, amas<\/em>, amat<\/em>, amamus<\/em>, etc.<\/em>, gives rise to the impression that all these \u201cjudgments\u201d can and should be treated as though they had the same interpersonal meaning. The effect, on anyone who learns such a sequence, is the opinion that every indicative sentence is spoken with the same degree of \u201cpassion.\u201d My claim is that amat <\/em>and amo <\/em>and amas <\/em>are worlds apart, from a social perspective, and thus must not be taught as parallel. The Alexandrine list is not serious.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He\u2019s not saying we need to add a \u201cfourth-person\u201d form, for instance for the Ojibwe obviative<\/a>, or a \u201czero person<\/a>\u201d for impersonal constructions as in Finnish. He\u2019s saying that making \u201cI\u201d the first person is the original sin not only of linguistics but of philosophy, science, and social life itself. And he means it. Theoretically, it flattens out lived experience into cold and heartless reports, assimilating everything to a third-person \u201cstatement\u201d of \u201cfact\u201d that requires no personal courage, has no social stakes.<\/p>\n

\n

Amat <\/em>is spoken as a fact, without any inner involvement in it. It informs about something. Amo <\/em>and Amas<\/em>, on the other hand, cannot be spoken without serious social consequences. Amo <\/em>is an admission, indeed it confesses a secret. Amas <\/em>claims something. Both presuppose passion, and so we must study what passion and emphasis mean as social elements of grammar.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Empirically, the Greek list gets it wrong: \u201cfirst person\u201d does not in fact come first. A child\u2019s self develops as a result of being spoken to, by a parent or other loving caregiver. Someone has to say \u201cyou\u201d in the right way for a non-mad \u201cI\u201d to exist at all. (See Peter Sloterdijk, Neither Sun Nor Death<\/em>, p. 30, which is where I first heard of Rosenstock-Huessy.) Developmentally, psychologically, neurocognitively, \u201cI\u201d is last-person. You\u2019re a good boy. There\u2019s the bottle. I\u2019m hungry. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

All our experience teaches precisely the opposite of this Greek doctrine of the primacy of the individual \u201cI\u201d! The child gradually defines itself as an independent being out of the thousand cares and impressions and influences that envelop it, flow around it, press in on it. The first thing it discovers is that it is not the world, not mother or father, not God, but something else<\/em>. The first thing that befalls every child, every person, is that he or she is spoken to: smiled at, asked something, given something, rocked, comforted, punished, fed. The child is first a You <\/em>for a powerful external being, above all its parents \u2026 Hearing that we exist for others and mean something for others, that they want something from us, thus precedes any statement that we are ourselves, or statement of what we ourselves are. Getting commands and being judged from the outside are what give us self-awareness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the realization that so struck me. First person isn\u2019t first. There\u2019s no list at all<\/em>, except the ones we make up. What would the world look like if I could see outside this framework? If what came first was a bond strong enough to give you the authority to make claims about someone else\u2019s experience\u2014you love<\/em>, you\u2019re hungry<\/em>, you look pretty today<\/em>, you\u2019re being rude<\/em>\u2014and then came sharing a view on the world, and only then self-report? The Cartesian idea, \u201cI think therefore I am,\u201d and all the mind\/body\/self\/other splits that arise, might never have come up if Descartes hadn\u2019t been indoctrinated with the idea that \u201cI\u201d comes first. There\u2019s first-person and third-person fiction, but the second person is an outlier, just as we can\u2019t allow ourselves the same freedom to speak for a second person in real life as we do about ourselves in this self-disclosing age. How much more of the nature of fiction, and of the feel of my life, ultimately goes back twenty-two hundred years to the Greek grammarians?<\/p>\n

\n

In our modern society, amo <\/em>and amas <\/em>are treated as though they, too, were mere statements of fact like amat. <\/em>And the shamelessness of psychology, the social classifications, the tyranny of the physicists and analysts, are some of the results of this lack of wisdom and authority in the grammatical schema. Everyone is led to think of himself or herself as part of a sequence of facts, as though he or she were a Third Person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It may be worth mentioning that he wrote these thoughts on tyranny in 1945. And that the \u201che or she\u201d usage, far ahead of its time, is his.<\/p>\n

\n

This puts his or her human relationships on a false basis, an objective basis, which devalues them. For we speak objectively of those who are absent, and who therefore won\u2019t blush at what we say or get angry or need to listen to it at all. Human relationships thrive where we bring to bear secrets of mutual connection and an inner willingness to listen. Human relationships die where all our statements merely claim to assert facts. For then we are constantly insulting each other. Army, factory, school, hospital\u2014they so often insult.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rosenstock-Huessy traces everything back to this sin, from conflicts with authority in school to schizophrenia, and makes staggering claims for his own \u201cgrammatical method\u201d of reframing language. As I say, I don\u2019t know what to make of it all. But here it is, presented to you in alternating paragraphs from me and from him. You are the first person. Do with it what you will.<\/p>\n

\n

We can study higher grammar just as we do higher mathematics. When we were still burning witches at the stake, higher mathematics cured us by illuminating the universe so completely that there was no longer any room left for witches. Higher mathematics, by encompassing infinity, enables us to grasp the secrets of mass and energy, natural time and space. The world is no longer magical and bewitched. Its atomic order has become transparent, with the help of higher mathematics. A higher grammar, which attends to the kind of emphasis speech places on the word and on our actions, will enable us to grasp the secrets of social movements, of masses and individuals, of the pathologies and healing of political life. Lower grammar degraded language into an arbitrary tool of the human spirit; higher grammar will put it right.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Damion Searls<\/a>, the <\/em>Daily\u2019s language columnist<\/a>, is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and the role of the first person. It can be staggering to realize, suddenly, that something you\u2019ve never thought about\u2014something you\u2019ve always accepted as real\u2014is just an article of faith. Language is often what turns the lightbulb on: someone defines reality afresh with a new word (mansplaining, Rebecca Solnit) or by showing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[807],"tags":[17434,8032,17437,231,16982,687,16937,17439,4508,17435,17436,530,17438],"class_list":["post-83724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-translation","tag-eugen-rosenstock-huessy","tag-first-person-2","tag-fourth-person","tag-grammar","tag-greek","tag-language","tag-latin","tag-perspective","tag-second-person","tag-the-language-of-the-human-race","tag-third-person","tag-translation","tag-zero-person"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Does the First Person Come First?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The primacy of \u201cI\u201d goes all the way back to Greek grammar, and it colors our whole perception of the world\u2014but does it have to be that way?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/17\/whos-number-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who\u2019s Number One? by Damion Searls\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 17, 2015 \u2013 Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and the role of the first person. 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