چکیده:
La vision du langage a toujours été soumise au point de vue ontologique des philosophes. Dans cette perspective, nous avons étudié le lien du langage avec la réalité en examinant les différentes perceptions du statut ontologique de ce dernier dans la dialectique permanente entre le relativisme et l’objectivisme afin de pouvoir dégager les phases principales d’un parcours évolutif riche et complexe. Pour ce faire, nous avons délimité l’étendu de notre recherche aux philosophes tels que Socrate, Platon, Aristote, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, etc., qui ont contribué à marquer un tournant dans la conception de ce lien depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours. Notre étude se termine par l’examen de la théorie austinienne dans la mesure où cette dernière reste toujours la plus récente à dépasser les conceptions classiques du langage et du traitement de la vérité. Nous avons ainsi, relevé trois phases d’évolution réflexive à propos du lien entre le langage et la réalité.
نگرش به زبان همیشه تابع دیدگاه هستیشناختی فیلسوفان بوده است. از این منظر، در این مقاله پیوند زبان و واقعیت با بررسی ادراکات مختلف از وضعیت هستیشناختی زبان در دیالکتیک دايمی میان نسبیگرایی و عینیتگرایی مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است تا از میان تطور ارا بتوان به شناسایی مراحل اصلی این سیر تحولی غنی و پویا پرداخت. در این راستا، دامنه این پژوهش را به فیلسوفانی همچون سقراط، افلاطون، ارسطو، فرگه، راسل، ویتگنشتاین، ... محدود کردیم که دیدگاه انان نقطه عطفی در تصور این پیوند از دوران باستان تا کنون بوده است. این مطالعه به بررسی نظریه استین ختم میشودکه همچنان متاخرترین نظریه از حیث گذر از برداشتهای کلاسیک از زبان و نسبت ان با واقعیت میباشد.
The vision of language has always been subject to the ontological point of
view of philosophers. In this perspective, we studied the link between language and reality by
examining the different perceptions of the ontological status of the latter in the permanent dialectic
between relativism and objectivism in order to be able to identify the main phases of a rich and
complex evolution.
To do this, we delimited the scope of our research to the philosophers such as Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, etc., who contribute to mark a decisive turning point in the
conception of this link from Antiquity to the present day. Our study ends with the examination of
Austin's theory because the latter still remains the most recent to go beyond the classical conceptions
of language and the treatment of truth.
I. FROM THE DUALITY OF BEING TO THE UNITY OF THE LOGOS
Language is for Socrates, the epistemological means allowing access to the reality already existing
deep within each individual. According to him, the reminiscence of truth occurs through guided
interrogation and induction, and this has only a linguistic existence. His model is developed by Plato.
According to him, humans share, thanks to Ideas, original knowledge which is purely abstract. The
only means that can lead us to Ideas is reason. Language always embodying the two sides of
speech/reason of logos becomes the means of accessing absolute truth. Our knowledge of this essence
is only possible through reminiscence: we remember what our soul already knew in the prenatal stage.
Hence the primacy of the general notion over the particular in Plato. Socratian induction thus gives its
place to Platonic deduction.
With Aristotle, the first theory of language took shape thanks to the distinction between thought and
speech. He rejects Plato's idealism. The union that Aristotle recognizes between form and matter
eliminates the Platonic distance separating objects perceived by the senses from their reality. Reality is
sensitive and therefore objective for him. Likewise, what brings language closer to reality is their
connaturality revealed by Aristotelian logic.
Studying the logical relationships between the components of a proposition is also the approach proposed by Frege. The meaning for him is abstract and objective. According to Frege, the understanding of meaning – and therefore of semantic reality – passes through that of language. This is made possible thanks to the common structure of meaning and language that Frege highlights in his logical analyses. Setting himself up against the internalization of meaning, he insists on the objectivity and independence of meaning in relation to the mind.
Russell's positivist mentality also considerably influences his conception of the link between language and reality. He is like Frege, an antipsychologist, but he does not admit the abstract dimension of ideas: he believes that thought is based on direct and immediate knowledge via the senses. So, for him, description is one of the essential means of achieving knowledge.
Ludwig Wittgenstein shares with Russell the predilection given to logical positivism and empiricism. Thus, the first Wittgenstein also believed in the depsychologization of language and in valuing the representationalist point of view. Indeed, according to him, each proposition represents a state of things and therefore, it shows reality both by the arrangement of its components and also by the link which unites them. This position, however, evolves from Philosophical Investigations where Wittgenstein renews his vision of language by distancing himself from the theory of depiction which he now recognizes as insufficient to share the semantic reality of language.
III. TOWARDS THE ADVENT OF CONTEXTUALISM
The second Wittgenstein continues to believe, like Frege, that thought is defined by language. On the other hand, he distances himself from Frege and from Russell with regard to the function of language: in Investigations, he declares that language should not be reduced to the description of reality, because it neither represents the thought, nor reality. It is social norms of word usage that constitute meaning. The figural model is therefore incapable of expressing values.
Like the second Wittgenstein, John Langshaw Austin believes that the meaning of an utterance is strongly linked to its use in dialogues. In addition to promoting contextualism in his studies of ordinary language, Austin proceeds to theorize the speech act. What makes his contribution original is the idea that the truth or falsity of a statement does not depend on its descriptive content, but on the circumstances of its production. For Austin, language is above all, a tool both for understanding the world and for acting on it. His theory introduces an important evolution in the perception of language to the extent that, contrary to the classic position of philosophy, it highlights illocutionary statements as the only statements that can be evaluated in terms of truth.
Our study also revealed that before pragmatism, despite the dynamism of the evolution of points of view, these opinions remained profoundly essentialist, while with pragmatism, any pre-existential status for the truth of a being is refuted. Consequently, the conditionality of truth replaces its univocity.