Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
Interpretation
Language is fundamental to thought and can lead to misunderstandings in reasoning.
In this quote, Johann Georg Hamann highlights the essential role of language in the process of thinking. He suggests that not only does our ability to think hinge upon the language we use, but also that misunderstandings arise from how we interpret reason through language. This underscores the complexity of communication and the nuances of language, which can shape our understanding of ideas and truths.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, to emphasize the importance of language in shaping our thoughts.
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.
Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.
But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.
I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.
If you want to be free, be free, because there's a million things to be.
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