Abuse of Language Abuse of Power

Rating:
Summary: Words really do have meaning!
Review: In this slender, but powerful work, the great (and often overlooked) Thomistic scholar Josef Pieper sends out a call to arms against "every partisan simplification, every ideological agitation, every blind emotionality . . . [and] well-turned yet empty slogans . . ." He pulls no punches in taking on those modern (and ancient) sophists who rape and pillage language in order to obtain political power and cultural currency. He also takes on modern advertising, noting that we live in an age and culture where "what is decisive is not what you say, but how you say it." In an era of politically-correct pap, vapid mantras and bumper-sticker philosophy, this book sends a clear, clean note of truth into the murky darkness of a deafened and confused populace.

Rating:
Summary: Words really do have meaning!
Review: In this slender, but powerful work, the great (and often overlooked) Thomistic scholar Josef Pieper sends out a call to arms against "every partisan simplification, every ideological agitation, every blind emotionality . . . [and] well-turned yet empty slogans . . ." He pulls no punches in taking on those modern (and ancient) sophists who rape and pillage language in order to obtain political power and cultural currency. He also takes on modern advertising, noting that we live in an age and culture where "what is decisive is not what you say, but how you say it." In an era of politically-correct pap, vapid mantras and bumper-sticker philosophy, this book sends a clear, clean note of truth into the murky darkness of a deafened and confused populace.

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction to "Correspondence" theory of language...
Review: Josef Pieper's brief essay is a defense of classic CORRESPONDENCE THEORY of language as articulated by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. This proposes TRUTH can be articulated...stated confidently...by Language. Language RE-presents REALITY. The essay avoids delving into difficult propositions concerning so-called INTENTIONAL Being (by which Reality conveys particular and universal essences that are asserted as Judgments: statements of sustantive Truth. Circularity cannot be avoided in such propositions. But the principal argument is asserted over-against Post-Modernist ("self-referential"; non-Logos) theories of language which are based not on Reality but on POWER (the purpose for which a statement or proposition is made; rather than to RE-present reality).

Hence: a person is not "blind"; he is visually challenged. Multiple agendas of self-esteem/homage; euphemtic avoidance of manifest reality; exercises in deception and self-absorption become subtle or blunt agencies of distortion and ever decreasing contigency upon "reality". FAIR can become FOUL...FOUL may be FAIR. As a leader who characterized himself ace mis-Re-presnter of Reality stated, "It depends on what you really mean by "IS"......

Pieper points out "Humpty-Dumpty/ Orwellian Newspeak" is nothing new. He cites 2,400 year old examples from Plato's DIALOGUES concerning Sophists' abuse of the Truth "function" of language (pp. 8-13; 18-22). Then he moves with warp speed to Nietzschean assertions of Langage as excellent vehicle of WILL TO POWER. The latter is key to Martin Heidegger's Being & Language theory (Language is the House of Being/Reality). Here Pieper makes a crucial error where he asserts Heidegger as sympathetic exponent of Freedom which truthful language preserves (p. 49). My reading of Heidegger firmly ensconces this once-Nazi philosopher in Post Modern-DECONSTRUCTION schools where language is a tool (zeug), a virtual weapon in an arsenal (zeughaus); whose purpose is not use of language for freedom but distortion of truth for CONTROL. Perhaps I am unfair in citing this error. But irony abounds here: Peiper looks to Heidegger for support when in Reality, Heidegger and his PM legions from Focault to Fish are premier exponents of the "praxis" of Language Abuse for the sake of Power.

This essay was written in 1974. Politically Correct Language (in the USA) began radical evolution. In the 80's PC became, particularly in academia and feminist satraps, common. By 1990 language abuse...leading to what Czeslaw Milos called THE CAPTIVE MIND in Eastern bloc countries...became flagrant. The problem with Josef Pieper's study is how methodically the Professor refuses to reply to adversaries of Reality/Truth with language of POWER. His essay is elegant. He rarely resorts to sarcasm or "irrefutable" barrages of facts framed in blistering rhetoric. He states his case for truth, and in good faith judges this sufficient.

"Do we have to go on?" Pieper poses (p.39). The answer is manifestly self-evident to those who bemoan or fear The Totalitarian danger thought-through-language control portends. The title: ABUSE of LANGUAGE, ABUSE of POWER is an excellent title to a good introduction about Correspondence Theory of language: Language= Reality= Truth. Let "Yes" mean Yes; "No way" mean no. The rest is (should be?) silence...

Rating:
Summary: A Manifesto for the integrity of words
Review: This excellent little book by Josef Pieper made me think of the movie "Repo Man". Like the movie "Repo Man" it advocated an argument against the hegemony of corporate advertisers proselytizing our minds with sophistic twists of language where it is becoming near imposible for a good decent American to even know what the meaning of "is" is. We drive down the freeway of life and are bombarded with little slogans and attempts to convince and smartly convert us to a way of thinking with marketing bill boards, or through the mail, on TV, in the paper - subtle attempts to steal our minds by over-loading them with a coorporate marketing agenda and sloganism. A bit abusive language on my part. It won't stop, but the question is worth pondering, and the questions raised in this book are of the sort that any educated man should ponder, even if there is no solution, it makes great "smartening-up" not "dumbing down" (sloganism) of the curriculum. Peiper persuasively argues that communication is not happening as much as might be thought, because communication must be void of ulterior motives. And his arguement that we must be able to express our view of the "truth of things" in freedom; why many do not is due to what he calls "the lingo of the revolution". Read it, share it with a friend. Great book - at all levels. Sugjestion - State College Professors, show "Repo man", Read this book, have a discussion, essay. Private Colleges, skip Repo man.

Rating:
Summary: A Manifesto for the integrity of words
Review: This excellent little book by Josef Pieper made me think of the movie "Repo Man". Like the movie "Repo Man" it advocated an argument against the hegemony of corporate advertisers proselytizing our minds with sophistic twists of language where it is becoming near imposible for a good decent American to even know what the meaning of "is" is. We drive down the freeway of life and are bombarded with little slogans and attempts to convince and smartly convert us to a way of thinking with marketing bill boards, or through the mail, on TV, in the paper - subtle attempts to steal our minds by over-loading them with a coorporate marketing agenda and sloganism. A bit abusive language on my part. It won't stop, but the question is worth pondering, and the questions raised in this book are of the sort that any educated man should ponder, even if there is no solution, it makes great "smartening-up" not "dumbing down" (sloganism) of the curriculum. Peiper persuasively argues that communication is not happening as much as might be thought, because communication must be void of ulterior motives. And his arguement that we must be able to express our view of the "truth of things" in freedom; why many do not is due to what he calls "the lingo of the revolution". Read it, share it with a friend. Great book - at all levels. Sugjestion - State College Professors, show "Repo man", Read this book, have a discussion, essay. Private Colleges, skip Repo man.