232
PART ISAN RE VIEW
world became effo rtlessly and lastingly Greek.
Ricardo Arias Calderon:
W ould Plotinus have th o ught that anything
else except Greek would ever be spoken?
Claudio Veliz:
Yes, I agree that cultural ph enomena are endl essly sur–
prising. After Cannae, no o ne would have imagined that the next
lingua
fra nca
after Greek wo uld be Latin , and thi s was in 216
B .C.
Of course it
is virtually impossible to predi ct these things, but th e very least that we
can ask is for a challenge r to emerge over th e ho ri zon , and this is very
clearly not happening today .
Irving Louis Horowitz:
Th e iss ue o f language and its relati o n to
culture is no t quite so open and shut. T hrough th e netwo rking of
computer technology, we already are crea ting an internati o nal language.
While it has many elements of English , it is but part of a commo n supra–
language. This new co nditi o n is no t o ne o f artifi cial constructs, like
Es pe rant o, but a respo nse to realisti c demands fo r better and rapid
communciati on over grea t distances.
Le t me conclude these rem arks with a parti cul arist counter–
illustration to the uni ve rsalist points that have been raised by o thers. And
if it is no t quite central to C laudi o's co nce rns, it does no netheless
illustrate how complex issues o f language and culture become in ordinary
lives. I am o ften in H olland , and I o nce asked my Dutch fri ends "Why
do yo u co ntinu e to speak Dutch ?" They sa id , " Irv in g, thi s is the
language of o ur hea rt; when we make love, we speak Dutch ; when we
have a sc ientifi c co nference w ith fo reigners w e spea k En gli sh." Thi s
makes clear that language is a subtle thin g; alth o ugh English is th e
commo n scientifi c language, it has no t destroyed th e language of th e
pri vate self and the life of th e soul. It is true that th e co rpo rate language
as well as th e sc ientifi c idi om is English , but it has not destroyed the
intimacies with whi ch we communi cate - th e language o f love, regio n ,
and natio n.
Robert Packenharn:
I
didn 't know we were go ing to close o n the
subj ect of love, but thank you fo r your clarifi ca ti o n. I want to empha–
size that just because the democra tic style has been w idely adopted , it is
not the only style available . That kind of reasoning really does belo ng to
the hedgehog.
There is an essay by the Brazili an po liti ca l sc ienti st Boli va r
Lamo uni er, "The Importance o f Certain Formalisms," publish ed abo ut
