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Old 03-27-2009, 05:52 PM   #12
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Dojo: Hiroshima Kokusai Dojo
Location: Hiroshima, Japan
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Re: Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 12

Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote: View Post
Peter - your writing becomes richer and richer with each essay. Regarding language, I think of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's formulation that "language is sublimated flesh." Sublimation is a term adopted by the Freudians from alchemy - it's meaning is that something is dessicated, all moisture removed, but all essence retained. In other words, a correct understanding of language would meant to restore the moisture to the words - or the body to Osensei's pronouncements. Without this attention, the words fly like dust. Thus, the importance of your work.
Best
Ellis
Hello Ellis,

I believe one factor in this is the fact that I have lived in two different countries and learned to converse in the appropriate languages (in addition to the UK, where I was born and brought up). One was France; the other is Japan. Extensive converse with native speakers of a language not one's own can--can is the operative word here--lead, in my opinion, to enhanced sensitivity to language.

The fact that Japanese has a writing system based on Chinese is of staggering importance for someone accustomed to the world of a language based purely on an alphabet. It forces on one the renewed study of semiotics and the processing of information.

Which is why I have some sympathy for Wittgenstein's overriding idea that language is a game played by participants (who do not have much choice in the fact of the matter--though how they play does have some element of choice).

Of course, the aspect of writing and the social aspects (games) have profound importance for the whole world of aikido and aikido training.

Best,

PAG

P A Goldsbury
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