Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 11, 2022

From the Boundaries of Language to the Revealed Image

(Abstract)

Shang Jie

While traditional philosophy places concepts before words, modern linguistics returns to linguistic facts and derives ideas from them. Neither exceeds the boundary of language; both merge ideas and language into one, thus passing over the issue of the Denkbild (image of thought) beyond the boundary of language. The revealed image lies in the ambiguous zone between language and non-language; it is not enclosed within the linguistic system, but shows itself as a differentiated “sense,” not an expressed “reference.” It transcends phonetic language, and is widely present in the pictographic-ideographic Chinese language, in graphics, images and videos, and various other art forms. The revealed image breaks through language utopia and returns to the original life-world. It is embodied in both scenes and situations, and in the process of mental images or monologues. The external scene and the mental image form a direct fusion-immersion relationship. In this process, the concept or word is only a specious presence, and the symbol is merely a subordinate rather than a mediator of the revealed thought of the image. This process is full of contingency or uncertainty, thus overturning the placement of “sense” before “reference” in traditional philosophy, modern linguistics, and modern philosophy of language. The paradox of the theory of sense is that it breaks through the normative principle of determinism followed by logical language and reveals the potentially different ways that different things coexist. The subconscious and the topic of philosophical images that it touches on are the intellectual characteristics of our time.