The Other Side of Language Quotes

“It almost seems that ‘culture’ requires aspirants to participate according to their specific qualifications, to become adherents to an immense task of justifying a ‘logic’ that knows very well how to say practically everything and hardly knows how to listen.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“An aversion – almost – towards listening to the rich multiplicity of ‘reality’ seems to be linked with a background of profound fears and to the resulting defensive postures that express themselves in a tendency to reduce knowledge in general to a set of principles from which nothing can escape. A relentless battle is waged as an attempt is made to organize everything in the light, or shadow, of the ‘best’ principles of knowledge: a chronic struggle of territorial conquest where the ‘territory’ is the set of notions and principles for constructing reality. Listening thus comes to be an essential function in the attempt to identify and monitor possible predatory aspects of our knowledge, no longer even capable of rememorizing or imagining the Parmenidean function of the ‘shepherds of being”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“The inhabitant of a tradition possesses ‘objectivity’ and, therefore, the ‘right’ to not listen when he fails even to notice his logical heritage, or when he proposes it as a background in cognitive pursuits. In a ‘naive’ rationalism, in fact, the correctness of a deduction, the discovery of a contradiction or the improvement of experience is regarded as something that effectively possesses an ‘objective’ content inasmuch as it is constructed in terms of a rigorous methodology. And yet ‘objectivity’ may even at times appear more as the result of a lack of cognitive perspicacity than of an intrinsic quality of philosophical rigour. It is in the twists and turns of these one-sided knowledge claims that a world view is imperturbably elevated to the status of criterion whereby we can even evaluate comparatively the quality and the goals of life.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“There seems to be the deployment of an underlying nonlistening and curtailed logos which can not see and question the bearing of its own achievements on humans. Under the covering of our halved logos there is constant denial of any ecological totality in favour of obstinate attention to the parts. While an ever-increasing formalization of specialized languages conceals the problem of reciprocity between different fields of research, a restoration of our logos by means of a recovery of our potential propensity for listening aims at a possible conjugation of standpoints.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“Paradoxically, it is the major theoretical trends that appear to be in search of that aspect of our logos which has been lost in western thought, namely the capacity for attentive listening. In fact, the more rigorous the knowledge claims are, the more ‘greedily’ they demand to be listened to. And the need becomes so impelling that even double-edged means are adopted by the adherents in order to ensure that central claims be heard and accepted. As we are not sufficiently conversant with the attitude of openness, acceptance is once again confused with indoctrination and standards of success and popularity are taken to be the conditions best suited to guarantee knowledge claims.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“As Kant points out: The proverbial saying, ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’ (i.e. ‘Let justice reign, even if all the rogues in the world must perish’) may sound somewhat inflated, but it is nonetheless true… But it must not be misunderstood, or taken, for example, as a permit to apply one's own rights with the utmost rigour… 32 It would appear that here the serious risks inherent in misunderstanding a sound principle of right and the ‘permit to apply one's own rights with the utmost rigour’ are held to be comparable. Both misunderstanding (in the sense of incorrectly using a message) and using one's own rights (not only civil rights but, above all, rational rights) ‘with the utmost rigour’ may derive not so much from a ‘misleading’ categorization or abuse of current logic as from the pre-established dismissal of listening. Both the misunderstanding and utmost rigour (’hard’ and ‘slippery’) that Kant warns us about would appear to be the primary derivatives of a dominant thinking that can not and hence will not further comprehension. ‘Rigour’ and, conversely, misunderstanding are deeply rooted in the exclusion of listening, in a trend which brooks no argument, where everyone obeys without too much fuss. These interwoven kinds of ‘reasoning’ lead us into a vicious circle, as powerful as it is elusive, a circle that can only be evaded with a force of silence that does not arise from astonished dumbfoundedness, but from serious, unyielding attention.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening