OK, what you say is helpful. I presumed that when an itch occurs, we can find a word to describe it, however vaguely. I didn't mean to imply that all experiences or sensations are in words although many are. But I do claim that whatever we experience can be verbalized in some way even if unsuccessfully. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, July 25, 2012 1:50:10 PM Subject: Re: is list dead? 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.
