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8 - Meaning and Language

from II - Logic and Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

By
Josef Stern
Edited by
Steven Nadler  and
T. M. Rudavsky
Steven Nadler
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
T. M. Rudavsky
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Summary

It may be anachronistic to speak of the philosophy of language before Frege, but philosophers have been concerned with questions of meaning and language since Plato, and medieval Jewish philosophers were no exception. Nonetheless these topics are part of the infrastructure of medieval Jewish philosophy rather than its primary subject matter. Where medieval Jewish philosophers discuss questions of language and the nature of meaning, it is generally piecemeal and subsidiary to larger projects: in introductions to grammars and lexicons; in exegetical contexts such as the interpretation of Gen. 2:20, “And the man gave names, and so on”; to explain why the rabbis call Hebrew lashon ha-qodesh, the holy language; while addressing metaphysical questions such as divine attributes; or, as translations are produced, in introductions to or commentaries on the logical treatises of the Organon, especially De Interpretatione. We do not find among the Jews the same rich literature on topics such as significance, supposition, and the semantics of terms and propositions that we find among the Latin scholastics. To uncover and analyze the medieval Jewish philosophers’ opinions on these issues, the scholar must extract them from other discussions and texts, beginning with the Bible.

According to scripture, the very first words ever uttered – “Let there be light” – are God’s, announcing the creation of light and thereby bringing it into existence. Each of the first three creations is also completed by an act of divine naming: light is called “Day,” the firmaments “Heavens,” and so on. Thus, an opening announcement by God and a final naming frame each of these acts of creation, perhaps to suggest that the way the world presents itself, divided into objects and structured according to kinds, is determined as well as represented by language. The rabbis expand this role of divine speech to encompass all of creation: “With ten utterances,” R. Yohanan states, “the world was created” and God is “He who spoke and the world is created.”3 Divine language preexists the created world.

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The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century
 , pp. 230 - 266
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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