A Language of Pain

Chapter 2 presents a close reading of two texts by Herder: “Treatise on the Origin of Language” (1772) and “Critical Forests” (1769). In the first, Herder presents his theory on the origin of language, which is distinctly somatic: language arises from pain, and is expressed in the cry. This chapter elaborates on the figure of Philoctetes, which is mentioned on the treatise’s first page and largely epitomizes Herder’s understanding of language with a special focus on questions of pain, the cry, human-animal relation, silence, body, and sympathy. In the second text discussed, Philoctetes is not only briefly mentioned, as he is in the Treatise, but takes the foreground. Here, in the context of his criticism of Lessing, Herder considers the problem of sympathy and the expression of pain in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Both texts are considered from the perspective of three main terms: the cry of pain, silence, and sympathy.

Pain, Expression, and Sympathy

Chapter 5 provides a discussion of one scene in Sophocles’ play: Philoctetes’ pain attack in light of Herder’s theory of the origin of language. The interpretation focuses on Philoctetes’ cries of pain and how they constitute the possibility of sympathy for the pain of the other. The problem of the possibility, or impossibility, of sympathy conjures Stanley Cavell’s notion of “acknowledgment.” The chapter turns to Cavell as a philosopher who brings the problem of pain together with that of language and sympathy, using the implications of skepticism to put forth his own approach to the possibility, or impossibility, of knowing the other’s pain. It ends with a discussion of André Gide’s Philoctetes and with Werner Hamacher’s philosophy of language.

Language Pangs

Chapter 6 revisits the book’s main issue: the relationship between pain and language. It returns to the two paradigms about pain and offers a third. The first paradigm considers the destructive nature of pain and the violence it inflicts on body, psyche, and sense of self. The second deals with the separation that pain creates between those in pain and those witnessing it, destroying the possibility of a relationship with others. This chapter glances back on Herder, Heidegger, and Sophocles thereby offering a third paradigm arguing that the relationship between language and pain is not exhausted by these functions and demands a different outlook. It concludes that pain is not the end or demise of humanity and language but indicates, rather, their common origin.

Language and Hearing

Chapter 4 provides a close reading of Heidegger’s “On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word” (1939), a seminar on Herder’s Treatise. From Heidegger’s obscure preparatory notes to the seminar (as well as his students’ notes), the chapter reconstructs his interpretation of Herder, focusing on the sense of hearing and its importance to language. This chapter not only discusses a text rarely considered in the literature about Herder but also points out what seems to be Herder’s profound influence on Heidegger’s later ideas. Along with hearing, another central topic is the exploration of the relationship between the internal and external which Heidegger discusses, following Herder, in terms of what he calls “the crossing-over,” a unique space between inside and outside, sounds and silence. This is the space in which, according to Heidegger, language and hearing reside.

Language and Attention

Chapter 3 continues the discussion of the origin of language, moving from the language of sensations shared by humans and animals to what Herder presents as distinctly human language characterized by awareness and reflection. Notwithstanding the fact that human language is articulate and mediate, Herder keeps it very close to the fundamental principles of the language of sensations, especially insofar as the acoustic dimension of both languages is concerned. The language of sensations was founded on the production of sound in the cry or groan, whereas human language is about hearing. With a radical shift from the customary conception of language rooted in speech and communication, Herder argues that it evolves from man’s ability to listen. Herder uses the sense of hearing to establish a uniquely human linguistic orientation in, and attention to the world. This idea is developed in the chapter in comparison to a related argument in Rousseau’s theory of the origin of language.

On Pain and the Origin of Language

The first chapter raises objections to two commonplace paradigms about the relationship between language and pain: first, the idea that the radically isolating character of pain makes it uncommunicable—and thus unsharable with others; and second, that because pain has such an effect on humans’ capacity for communicating it, it also shatters language altogether and becomes destructive to their linguistic capacities. Language Pangs challenges these conceptions and proposes a reconsideration of the relationship between pain and language in terms of an essential interconnectedness rather than the common exclusive opposition. The twofold premise of the chapter is that the experience of pain cannot be penetrated without consideration of its inherent relation to language, and that the nature of language essentially depends on an understanding of its inherent relationship with pain. The chapter presents two of the book’s two main figures, Herder and Philoctetes, showing how they are relevant to one another and to the book’s overall argument.