语言与存在——罗蒂的语言观之批判

Language and Existence——A Critique of Roity's Language View

在存在的意义上,"语言"是不存在的,人们听到和看到的只是"意思",而非"语言"(语音和字符)。只有作为对象的时候"语言"才会出现,这样的"语言"只存在于语言研究和学习外语等境况中。语言虽必定存在于语境之中,但它又具有普遍性和独立性,可以超越语境而存在,由此我们才可以读懂前人的著述和听懂其他人的话语。语言的意义和功用是复杂的,不可以单一判断予以定性。在承认语言的游戏性质的同时,也应当承认其再现功能;一方面要承认语言的整体性,另一方面也需要承认语言单位(字词、音素)的实体性。这样才真正贯穿了解释学的整体性循环:局部意义需要从整体去寻找,而整体的意义就存在于局部之中,局部与整体相互构成和生成。以罗蒂为代表的后现代哲学在批判传统的实体语言观时,走向了另一个极端,彻底否定了语言的实体性,将局部的意义归结于整体,忽视了局部的独立性,实际上是一种倒过来的还原论。

There is no language in the sense of existence,for what people hear and see is＂sense＂rather than＂language＂（phones and characters）,and only when used as an object can language emerges,but such a language exists merely in language research and foreign language learning. Although language must exist in the context,it has universality and independence and can exist beyond the context,so that we can understand the writings of predecessors and the words of others. The meanings and functions of language are complex and cannot be determined by a single judgment. While acknowledging the game features of language,we should also recognize its representational role. On the one hand,it is necessary to recognize the integrity of language,while the entity of linguistic units like words and phonemes should also be acknowledged on the other hand. Only in this way can the holistic circulation of hermeneutics be ensured to run through the whole process,i. e. the local meaning needs to be sought from the whole while the whole meaning exists in the local,thus resulting in the mutual formation and generation of the local and the whole. In its criticism of the traditional view of real language,the post-modern philosophy represented by Roity has gone to the other extreme,namely,denying language entity,attributing the local meaning to the whole and ignoring the independence of the local,which is actually an inverted reductionism.