>>> kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca 08/09/01 11:54AM >>>
At 08:19 PM 8/8/01 -0400, you wrote:
>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.
((((((((((
CB: This is more straight forward communication from Ken. I don't know if it is communicative action.
Humans are characterized by an enormous social being compared to other species. A main dimension of this social being is that a living generation of humans has its social realm extended back through many dead generations of the species. This is done mainly through the symbolic, including language. So, the importance of the symbolic is that it is a medium of expanding the social qualitatively. Through it we are able to experience the experience and activity of many other individuals, thereby expanding our social realm enormously.
The main thing about language and ritual is that they are both symbolic. I am not sure that ritual preceded language in paleohistory. Symbolic action with the body is not necessarily prior to speaking. There would be no archaelogical remains of speech sounds.