Language, Existence and Andrew

by Greg Kreisman

			In Jean-Paul Sartre's, NauseaI, Antoine Roquentin "learned all he could know abut existence" and the nature of his nauseas at 6:00 p.m. in a Bouville park. Aside from finding that existence is contingent as opposed to necessary, Roquentin came to realize that words which we call things by are merely "feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface," and that the obscene nakedness of existence could be experienced when this "veneer" is melted.       
			I believe we could say that these "feeble points of reference" are what Ludwig Wittgenstein focuses on in Remarks on ColourÑwords. Words which we use to order the world (such as "Tree", "Root" or "Colored Transparency"). Yet they are more than just words, they are what Wittgenstein calls language-game concepts. On page 5le Wittgenstein writes:
			1)"I see (hear, feel, etc.)X"
			2)"I am observing X~1

X does not stand for the same concept the first time and the second, e.g. "a pain," is used both times. For the question "what kind of pain?" could follow the first proposition and one could answer this by sticking the questioner with a needle. But if the question "what kind of pain?" follows the second proposition, the answer must be of a different sort, e.g. "The pain in my hand."

      Here we see things such as the words "Red", "Green", "Tree", "Root", belong to the 
second type of proposition above. Any other day Antoine could have talked about such and such a thing with someone using the feeble points of referenceÑe.g. "The Ocean is green; that white speck up there is a sea gull" (Nausea p. 127). However to make someone realize underling existence as he had, he would have to infect them with the nausea, like the above "sticking the questioner with a needle."       
				On page 49e Wittgenstein writes "There is indeed no such thing as phenomenology, but there are phenomenological problems." We can see clearly that attempting to understand Roquentin's nauseas and his subsequent change in perception is a phenomenological problem. Further these phenomenological problems are formulated in the style of the first stanzaÑI experience (see, feel, hear) obscene naked existence.
			Goethe's theory of colors is a phenomenological problem. He makes claims about his experiences of color. At times Goeehe utilizes a rather romantic style in attempting to capture these. Further toward the end of the "6:00" scene Roquentin's considerations about existence quite surprisingly begin to take on somewhat the same style: 

The smile of the trees, of the laurel, meant something; that was the real secret of existence (Nausea p. 135). 

But it is Wittgenstein's intent, in On Colour to show that Goethe's phenomenlogical analysis is actually built from Language-game concepts: 

Someone who agrees with Goethe finds that Goethe correctly recognized the nature of colour. And here 'nature' does not mean a sum of experiences with respect to colours, but it is to be found in the concept of colour. 

      In light of the above some questions arise. Are we right to make these creations in an attempt to understand and possibly explain our experienceÑe.g., smiling trees and romantic natures of colors? Are these creations art? Are they to be taken as weighty in our understanding of human reality? And are they inherently flawed in their aim at transcendence, because they arise only out of language conceptsÑthe very thing they wish to overcome (or be somewhat better than)? 

                       oooooo

      I'm not sure if I would have asked these questions at any other time. They would not have seemed so pressing, if it wasn't for Andrew. 
			Andrew drinks.       
			If you were so inclined to test his prowess in discerning whiskeysÑwhich some people are, most likely, because of his young looks and somewhat of a smirk which always grips his face when he raises any glass to his mouthÑyou could pour out one bourbon and one scotch and set them before him.       
			Andrew can tell the difference. He would say "this here is scotch and this here is bourbon."       
			Andrew prefers to observe scotch.       
			As you can well see Andrew is quite adept at answering questions concerning statements formulated in the style of stanza twoÑhe also knows his colors.       
			He does however have problems answering questions concerning statements formulated like the first stanza. And this did not just occur to him when the girl (wearing the green) sitting next to him asked: "what's really the difference between scotch and bourbon." He felt this difficulty well enough already. The girl in-green's question merely brought the general difficulty of these questions present to mind as he considered enumerating to her the differences in ingredients and processes between scotch and bourbon.       
			However he did not enurnerate these out loudÑthis kind of answer wouldn't have satisfied her. It did not satisfy him. He merely embarrassingly shrugged his shoulders and pushed the two glasses before her. I don't believe she was surprised at Andrew's silence or understood the nature of his answer (or opportunity). Andrew was rather inclined to be reticent even when the questions didn't on principle escape him.       
			The girl-in-green didn't drink.       
			Nausea was not Roquentin's only phenomenological problem, there was also adventure. Sartre in his war diaries says of this: 

I appeared to be saying in La Nausee, that it (adventure) didn't exist. But that is wrong. It's better to say that it's an unrealizable. Adventure is an existent, whose nature is to appear only in the past through the account one gives it (p. 198). 

In Nausea, Roquentin writes of such accounts: 

 . . .everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. (p. 39). 

In both passages Sartre is making the point that remembrances or stories of our past are fictionÑ nothing more.       
			I said about that Andrew was already quite familiar with the difficulty of answering questions concerning statements forrnulated like stanza one (I experience X) even before the girl in-green asked about the "real" difference between scotch and bourbon. He became quite familiar with this in his attempt to understand his own pastÑwhat he, his grandpa, everybody he knew, called his childhood.       
			This case, and the discussion of adventure, warrant a change in formulation of the first stanza. The verb changes to past tense: I experienced X. However I am not quite sure of the need to be this careful in formulating this example. I would not like to give you a false impression of Andrew, with the above careful considerations which are quite honestly done only for me. Andrew is a rather simple thinker when it comes to his own experiences.       
			His familiarity with the difficulty of answering questions concerning statements formulated like stanza one is merely implicitÑ yet honestly there. The changing of any season or the sudden reappearance of a once familiar scent are sufficient present tense experiences to arouse a thought experience of his past. Andrew seldom tnes to remember.       
			I believe this is the reason that Andrew became a physicist. Most timesÑsave for the ones mentioned aboveÑhe is able to hide from himself with in the complex abstractions of particle physics. However when he is caught off guard by a smell or change of season he quite unawarely and from conditioned reflexes tries to understand his thoughts.       
			Once he attempted to write down pieces of this past, yet quit early on. He must have felt any connections within his remembrances were two tenuous to be considered logical. Further he would have considered any theory that could not be falsified as fallacious.      
			The pages which he did write during that brief attempt at understanding all seemed to have the same theme: bodily appearance and mutilation. He had seen a fair bit of both. He stalely listed his approximate age, then a name of a person followed by their "odd" appearance or mutilation. He did this much like he enumerated the differences in ingredients and processes between scotch and bourbon. This too was unsatisfying.       
			If Andrew could have only seen that his strict adherence to what he believes is the "truth"Ñpositive factsÑcould come no more near the "real" experience of his childhood than the enumeration of scotch-bourbon facts can come to experiencing "real" scotch and bowbon. Further isn't fiction his only chance at something more satisfying. Andrew, like the rest of us, cannot drink from the past. Remembrances, like "age seven: Grandpa (in old folk's home): distended penis (range, semi-erect to limp)"bring to mind actual existents. Yet they fail. Maybe another type of literary form. "I don't quite know which kindÑbut you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, at something which would not exist, which would be above existence. A story, for example, something that could never happened, an adventure. It would be beaudful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence (Nausea  p. 178)." 


l. I will often refer to these as stanza  one and two throughout the rest of this paper