06｜The Telos of This book: Beyond the Language
Chapter IV. The Telos of This book: Beyond the Language
I. The Reconstruction of the Concept of "Truth" If our apprehension of the world is indeed fettered by the constraints of linguistic concepts—if all philosophical deduction must submit to the rigid ordinances laid down in the Tractatus—there yet remains one deduction we may pursue with logical necessity even within those confines.
If the decree "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" is itself a valid proposition, then by the very axioms of logic, the premise must imply its own horizon. To name the "Silence" is to implicitly acknowledge the "Other" of that silence—that which remains unutterable. We are led, by an inescapable inference, to a totality: that which is Speakable plus that which is Unspeakable.
If our systems of ideas, even those as vast as Hegel’s, are but linguistic tapestries, then there must exist a Ding-an-sich (Thing-in-Itself) to which these concepts point, yet which they cannot fully clothe. Here, we must reintroduce a venerable term, but with a new and vital gravity: Truth.
I define Truth as that which exists spontaneously and independently of human language or cognitive scaffolding—the inherent nature and governing principles of the Object toward which our cognition is aimed. We may apprehend Truth in part, but we can never exhaust it, for our reach is limited by the glove of Language. Beyond the Word, there must be a "White Space"—a sacred void. It is only by reconstructing Truth in this light that we may take that one perilous step further from where Wittgenstein halted. We must face the paradox head-on: we are using the machinery of Language to grasp that which is non-linguistic. To shun this paradox is to fall into mere sophistry; to embrace it is the only path to the Real.
II. A Critique of Rational Inquiry in History Wittgenstein’s refusal to speak of the "Beyond" was an act of supreme intellectual integrity. He recognized that if Language is the boundary of Reason, one cannot use Language to leapfrog over its own shadow. However, if we invite Truth back into the halls of Philosophy, we must concede three points:
- Reason is not coextensive with the fullness of Truth.
- Language is the perimeter, not the source, of Truth.
- Forms of Truth exist which transcend the linguistic vessel.
We find ourselves in the seemingly irrational position of using Language to describe the "After-Language." Yet, is this contradiction a flaw in Truth itself, or merely a limitation of the instrument? I contend it is the latter. Logic is not Truth; it is merely the shadow that Truth casts upon the human mind. Truth is trans-rational, trans-binary, and transcends the architecture of the syllogism. Therefore, we shall revisit the great milestones of philosophical history, not to discard them, but to show how Reason, through its own internal evolution, inevitably drives itself to this very cliff-edge.
III. Traversing the Border of the "After-Language" If we persist in using the "Transcendental Rules" of Kant—Causality, Quality, Space, and Time—as our only maps, we shall remain forever exiled from the Beyond. These are, at heart, linguistic regulations. But by uncoupling Truth from Language, we create a "breach in the wall."
This volume seeks to use Language without worshipping it as the sole manifestation of the Real. We propose to cross the border. And what lies there? Here, the ancient wisdom of the East offers a guiding hand: The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. If the spoken word is not the ultimate Truth, we may nonetheless "force a description" (强为之容).
Precision must yield to Description; Deduction must yield to Experience; the standardized inference must yield to the "Non-standardized Encounter" of the individual. This is the frontier of "After-Language." We shall demonstrate how Reason, having exhausted its own resources at the boundary, makes way for a non-linguistic mode of being—a state where Man no longer merely "thinks" the Truth, but stands within it.
