In a message dated 7/24/12 5:38:46 PM, [email protected] writes:

> no experience is truly 'speechless'.
> 
Depending on what you have in mind, I'd say I have to disagree with you on 
that. I certainly have itches, pains, sensations of heat or cold, the 
feeling of the toothbrush in my mouth as I brush me teeth, etc that I would 
call 
"experiences" -- and they can come unaccompanied by "speech" of any kind.

In any case, the statement I was reacting against was by Hannah Arendt 
where she explicitly is talking about "thought":

"All thinking is in words," she said. "Speechless thought cannot exist." 

Writers struggle to put their thoughts into words -- how could that be if 
their thoughts are IN words? How could you ever mis-speak yourself? 
Rock-climbers, chefs, chess-players, even tennis-players -- we'd say they're 
thinking 
all the time, just not with words.

Imagine how impoverished Arendt's thinking was. But then, it takes a mind 
that destitute to embrace Heidegger the way she did. He had a head that 
defied a law of physics: It produced sonorities in a vacuum.

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