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All You Need Is Language - by Dennis Bouvard

dennisbouvard.substack.com · 2,715 words · saved by 1 readers

When forced to answer questions like, what is the ultimate telos, what does it all mean, what allows us to reject nihilism, etc., I always fall back on the answer: language. Language is literally meaning, and if you think you can say there is no meaning that just means that language is transparent to you and you need to make it visible and audible. The fact that asking about meaning means something situates you within language, and if you are situated within language you have taken upon yourself the originary and never completed project of deferring violence and you might as well get on with it. There’s no justification for humanity and if you don’t care whether we go extinct or blow ourselves up or whatever, well, I can try to take you seriously but the resentment in such attitudes is so evident as to render the attitudes themselves comical. As Dostoevsky or Girard would say, it’s not that you don’t care about humanity; it’s that you want others to see you not caring about humanity. B

When forced to answer questions like, what is the ultimate telos, what does it all mean, what allows us to reject nihilism, etc., I always fall back on the answer: language. Language is literally meaning, and if you think you can say there is no meaning that just means that language is transparent to you and you need to make it visible and audible. The fact that asking about meaning means something situates you within language, and if you are situated within language you have taken upon yourself the originary and never completed project of deferring violence and you might as well get on with…

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