[lit-ideas] Re: The Meaning of Life
- From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2015 09:21:43 +0000
If you believe that three Austin cocksucking idiots in oxford have the
monopoly, you are out of your mind, which may indeed be implicated
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Meaning of Life
In a message dated 4/23/2015 10:30:47 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Chomsky's implicature to Marx not withstanding or withsitting or laying down
(lying down?) -- or cela ne fait rien as we like to say in Paris (Tennessee,
that is). I do agree fully with JLS in his assertion: "The French lack the
idea of 'meaning'. Indeed they do. So do we all. We all want to mean things,
of course. No one knows just why we do. Or what meaning means.
But as Marx once remarked: " That's a capital idea!! But he never specified
just what he meant. Me neither.
Indeed. As Mrs. Marx once implicated to Mr. Marx (but however, the implicature
went apparently over his head), and then she was talking to her neighbour, over
the fence, "_He_" (meaning his hubby) should spend more time bringing SOME
home, rather than writing TONS about it."
She was referring to Marx's opus magnum.
The French lack the idea of 'meaning'.
For that matter, also the Italians. Cfr. this from Wikipedia:
"Monty Python - Il senso della vita (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life) è una
commedia cinematografica interpretata dal gruppo comico britannico dei Monty
Python. Il film consiste in una serie di sketch comici sui diversi stadi della
vita, nello stile degli sketch della serie televisiva Monty Python's Flying
Circus. Il film si aggiudicò il Grand Prix Speciale della Giuria al 36º
Festival di Cannes."
Now, Umberto Eco, who taught semiotics at Bologna, would perhaps laugh, in an
Italian way, at this. For semioticians, 'senso' is something FREGE thought it
existed (vide Max Black and P. T. Geach, "On sense and reference", their
translation of Frege's essay: Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung).
In "Sense and Sensibilia", J. Austin, the philosopher, used to say that it's
best to understand
'meaning'
alla Frege
to represent (a) sense
------------------(b) reference
So Monty Phyton's quest becomes one for the sense and the reference of Life.
The Reference of Life seems easy enough: the reference of Terry Jones's life,
the reference of Eric Idle's life, etc. Note that 'the' applies to "meaning",
not to "life" (it's notably NOT "the meaning of the life". Monty Phython think
that to generalise over "the life" can be otiose, and when they do speak about
"the life" is usually about the life of this or that
individual: hence their other film: The Life of Brian Cohen.
The 'sense' of 'life' can be ambiguous. Usually, there seems to be four
'senses': upwards, downwards, to the right, and to the left (in the highway
code, only to the right and to the left, since cars don't fly or submerge).
This is _not_ the idea of 'sense' in the Italian translation, "Il senso della
vita".
The film was translated to French also using 'sens':
"Monty Python : Le Sens de la vie (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life) est un
film britannique réalisé par Terry Jones, sorti en 1983. Ce film a obtenu le
Grand Prix Spécial du Jury au Festival de Cannes."
But 'sens', and Italian 'senso' is not really a Greco-Roman philosophical
lexicon, and I'm not surprised Peirce (who loved a Greco-Roman philosophical
lexicon) never appealed to (or felt an appeal for) 'sense'.
Cheers,
Speranza
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