Speech and Reality

Infobox Book
name = Speech and Reality


image_size =
image_caption =Cover of "Speech and Reality"
author = Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
country = United States
language = English
subject = Social philosophy
genre = Philosophy
publisher = Argo Books
pub_date = 1970
english_pub_date =
media_type =
pages = 201
isbn = 0912148-02-0

" Speech and Reality" is a book by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973), German social philosopher and is an English-language introduction to Rosenstock-Huessy’s German-language book, Soziologie. It comprises seven essays that he wrote and revised between 1935 and 1955. Rosenstock-Huessy introduces a new form of social research in which the human subject, as speaker, displaces the subject of orthodox sociology, wherein the subject can be mute. Speech and Reality is an English-language introduction to Rosenstock-Huessy’s "Soziologie" (sociology) and his method of inquiry for the social sciences, which is based on grammar. Using grammar as a tool, Rosenstock-Huessy describes the preconditions of anarchy, revolution, decadence, and war.Citation
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title = Speech and Reality
date =
year =2007
url =http://www.argobooks.org/english/speech_and_reality.html
accessdate = 2007-11-16] John Macquarrie emphasized the importance of Rosenstock-Huessy's language-based methods and Peter Leithart cited the scope of his thinking across the depth and breadth of society.

Overview

Along with Franz Rosenzweig, Ferdinand Ebner, and Martin Buber, Rosenstock-Huessy is a major contributor to "speech thinking," and it is a central concern of several works of his, perhaps the most important, in English, being "Speech and Reality." The basic idea of “speech thinking” is that our reality is not only an object to be espied, but an extension of our powers. And of all the powers which constitute us, it is speech, with its calls and responses, vocatives and imperatives, solicitations and appeals, that enables us to undertake collective action and thereby transform ourselves and the world around us. Speech does not merely describe or denote what exists, it enables us to draw out from ourselves possibilities and realities which are yet unrealized.

In place of Descartes’ "I think therefore I am," which is the clarion call to become lords and masters over nature and thereby to treat nature as a great machine subject to our will and our cognitive capacities, Rosenstock-Huessy taught "I respond, although I will be changed." This is a formulation, which comes from the recognition that life calls us into ever-fresh tasks and that we never approach urgent things already in full knowledge of an outcome. Being open to speech is being open to the various insights and requests, the urgencies and necessities that are encapsulated in speech. It is the recognition that we are mutual creators of each other and the world around us; that is a reality we cannot avoid, though we can easily fail to see what it involves. That our words become flesh is, in fact a variant of another fact—that we dissolve and resolve again in acts of love. Speech thinking, in other words, stands in the closest relationship to the law of love. [Citation
last =Rosenstock-Huessy
first =Eugen
title = Speech and Reality
publisher = Argo Books
year =1970
location =Norwich, Vermont
isbn = 0912148-02-0
url = http://www.argobooks.org/english/speech_and_reality.html]

Rosenstock-Huessy wrote in "Speech and Reality":

Assessment of "Speech and Reality"

In Commonweal magazine, John Macquarrie writes about "Speech and Reality": Citation
last =
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title = Speech and Reality
date =
year =2007
url =http://www.argobooks.org/english/speech_and_reality.html
accessdate = 2007-11-16] cquote| The Author believes as did Dilthey before him that social sciences must suffer from being forced into the methodological mold of the natural sciences. Anyone acquainted with the kind of psychology and sociology commonly taught in the United States today could hardly fail to agree, and there is in fact currently a good deal of dissatisfaction with the naturalistic model used in these sciences. But where do we look for a better method?

Rosenstock-Huessy suggests that we look to language. Speech is the basic social reality. Grammar, in turn, is the science, which describes and analyzes the structures of language. Hence grammar is the foundation for developing a methodology for the social sciences. It must be added at once that it is not conventional grammar that the author has in mind. The grammar we learn in school and which enables us to reel off conjugations and the like is a grammar which has killed the drama and dignity of living speech. Rosenstock-Huessy has in mind a renewed grammar, a "higher grammar," as he sometimes calls it, which will attend to the nuances of tense and mood, and will see in these the structures of the social reality.... This book could make very helpful contributions toward working out a more human approach to the study of the human phenomenon.

Peter Leithart writes on "The Relevance of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy" and his methods: [cite web
url = http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=786
title = The Relevance of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
accessdate = 2007-12-03
last = Leithart
first = Peter
date = June 28, 2007
work = First Things—The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life
publisher = First Things]

References

External links

* [http://www.argobooks.org The official web site of the Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund and Argo Books] includes a [http://www.argobooks.org/biography.html biography] , accessed 20 March 2007
* The Norwich Center, Norwich, Vermont, maintains an internet site devoted to an introductory [http://members.valley.net/~transnat/erh.html biography and appreciation of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy] , signed by Clinton C. Gardner, President of the Norwich Center, accessed 20 March 2007
* [http://homepages.ipact.nl/~ottok/engelsindex.htm Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Gesellschaft]