The Tower of Babel as an example of reism

Authors

  • Boris Dombrovskiy

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22240/sent23.02.079

Abstract

Building the tower in Babylon is interpreted as the manifestation of creativity, comparable in its intention to the creativity of God. There is an assumption that the result of this creativity is the division of previously common language, which may serve as an indirect confirmation of the creationist concept of creation through the God’s Word. From the point of view of historical grammar the article traces the evolution of denotative expressions up to the phenomenon of description. Unlike Russell, the author states that imagined objects may cause ontological failure of desctiption, not the failure of meaning. The same result is obtained during the construction of artificial languages, which are capable to create virtual objects. Thereby the linguistic creation, which has replaced esthetic creation, not only confirms the availability of protective mechanism of language, which impeds the creation of objects, but actually strengthens it. This is confirmed by the decrease in number of natural languages. The main thesis is that the shift from esthetic creativity to the linguistic one signifies a new stage, which, in terms of the history of philosophy, should be called Apophatic philosophy. Its main subject is study of the inner mechanisms of language protection against creation of objects (reism).

Author Biography

Boris Dombrovskiy

PhD in philosophy, noted researcher of Lviv-Warsaw School's heritage

References

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Published

2010-12-16

How to Cite

Dombrovskiy, B. (2010). The Tower of Babel as an example of reism. Sententiae, 23(2), 79–91. https://doi.org/10.22240/sent23.02.079

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