Grammar of the West
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, April 20, 2026
In a 1942 essay, Louis Renou could assert that “Indian thought has as substructure reasonings of a grammatical nature”. The three categories into which, according to Indian philosophy, all reality is articulated — substance, quality, action — unquestionably derive from the grammatical analysis of language: noun, adjective, verb. Pāṇini’s Sanskrit grammar and Patanjali’s commentary, indeed predate most Indian philosophical texts.
One may wonder to what extent this also applies to the Greek philosophy that underlies our culture. This hypothesis seems to be countered by the tradition which attributed to Plato and Aristotle the discovery of the parts of speech and, consequently, the invention of grammar. The contrast fades and disappears as soon as one understands that what was being suggested was that, in order to be philosophers, Plato and Aristotle had first had to be grammarians.
The West is, from beginning to end, a grammatical civilisation, which has made the analysis of language and its construction in a grammar the basis of its knowledge of the world and its dominion over nature. Science, which has become the religion of the West, indeed presupposes, like every religion, a named world, in which ontology — that is, the fact that being is expressed and ordered in language — is subdivided into regions, each of which is taken charge of by a particular science. The destiny of the West is thus inscribed in Indo-European grammar, with its cases and logical-syntactic connections of hierarchical dependence in which, along with its language, it articulates its thought.
Perhaps it will be by looking to China — a culture which has not analysed and constructed its own language within a grammar, but sees in it monosyllables without any grammatical articulation — that will arise, if not a new thought, at least a way out of the dark fates that, without our realising it, the logical analysis of language, which is not coincidentally taught to us in elementary school, has inevitably assigned us.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, April 20, 2026
In a 1942 essay, Louis Renou could assert that “Indian thought has as substructure reasonings of a grammatical nature”. The three categories into which, according to Indian philosophy, all reality is articulated — substance, quality, action — unquestionably derive from the grammatical analysis of language: noun, adjective, verb. Pāṇini’s Sanskrit grammar and Patanjali’s commentary, indeed predate most Indian philosophical texts.
One may wonder to what extent this also applies to the Greek philosophy that underlies our culture. This hypothesis seems to be countered by the tradition which attributed to Plato and Aristotle the discovery of the parts of speech and, consequently, the invention of grammar. The contrast fades and disappears as soon as one understands that what was being suggested was that, in order to be philosophers, Plato and Aristotle had first had to be grammarians.
The West is, from beginning to end, a grammatical civilisation, which has made the analysis of language and its construction in a grammar the basis of its knowledge of the world and its dominion over nature. Science, which has become the religion of the West, indeed presupposes, like every religion, a named world, in which ontology — that is, the fact that being is expressed and ordered in language — is subdivided into regions, each of which is taken charge of by a particular science. The destiny of the West is thus inscribed in Indo-European grammar, with its cases and logical-syntactic connections of hierarchical dependence in which, along with its language, it articulates its thought.
Perhaps it will be by looking to China — a culture which has not analysed and constructed its own language within a grammar, but sees in it monosyllables without any grammatical articulation — that will arise, if not a new thought, at least a way out of the dark fates that, without our realising it, the logical analysis of language, which is not coincidentally taught to us in elementary school, has inevitably assigned us.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Avigdor Arikha, Anne with Hand on Mouth, 1970. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
