>Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 19:17:01 -0500
>From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>Subject: Re: Where does thought come from? was Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #4706
>
>kelley wrote:
> >
> > ritual is bound up with language and is
>
>There you go again. My point is that ritual _preceded_ language,
>probably by several hundred thousand years. It's that "bound up with
>language" that I balk at. It may be, but it need not be. Infants
>"interact socially" long before they achieve any language. And as adults
>we constantly find ourselves in the midst of actions/social relations
>_prior_ to their having any symbolic/conscious place in our thought.
Carrol! Ritual *is* interaction, it is the fusion of validity that has yet to be differentiated. Habermas has written extensively on this point: the linguistification of the sacred. As you indicate here: we constantly find ourselves in the midst of actions/social relations. These relations constitute consciousness, through symbolization. "Infants 'interact socially' long before they achieve any language" - of course! [did you think Habermas was arguing that kids are born with linguistic mastery?]. A theory of communicative action explains how archaic social forms evolved into argumentation. This isn't a history of ideas, it is a combination of anthropology, sociology, and ethnography - with eminently practical and pragmatic insights into what we are doing while we are doing it.
ken