Biblical literalism is the approach to interpreting the Bible that takes the text at its most apparent, straightforward meaning. — BitconnectCarlos

Says who? You? Wikipedia says something different:

Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of literalism: "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense",[1] where literal means "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical".[2]

The term can refer to the historical-grammatical method, a hermeneutic technique that strives to uncover the meaning of the text by taking into account not just the grammatical words, but also the syntactical aspects, the cultural and historical background, and the literary genre. It emphasizes the referential aspect of the words in the text without denying the relevance of literary aspects, genre, or figures of speech within the text (e.g., parable, allegory, simile, or metaphor).[3] It does not necessarily lead to complete agreement upon one single interpretation of any given passage. This Christian fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to scripture is used extensively by fundamentalist Christians,[4] in contrast to the historical-critical method of mainstream Judaism, Catholicism or Mainline Protestantism.[5] Those who relate biblical literalism to the historical-grammatical method use the word "letterism" to cover interpreting the Bible according to the dictionary definition of literalism.[6] — Wikipedia

I'd rather accept Wikipedia's definition and characterization of Biblical literalism than the one offered by you, BitconnectCarlos.

As stated, sometimes the most apparent, straightforward meaning of the text is that e.g. a dream sequence is metaphoric. — BitconnectCarlos

Tell it to the judge, buddy.

From the wikipedia article:

"Biblical literalists believe that, unless a passage is clearly intended by the writer as allegory, poetry, or some other genre, the Bible should be interpreted as literal statements by the author."

And I'm not your buddy, guy.

Re Michel Henri - not sure, I’ve only read some brief articles and excerpts although he certainly seems congenial to my philosophy.

Propositions can never to removed from the existence in which they are discovered in the "first" place. — Astrophel

:100:

From the wikipedia article:

"Biblical literalists believe that, unless a passage is clearly intended by the writer as allegory, poetry, or some other genre, the Bible should be interpreted as literal statements by the author." — BitconnectCarlos

Congratulations, Captain Obvious. So your point is, what, exactly?

And I'm not your buddy, guy. — BitconnectCarlos

Congratulations once again, Captain Obvious. So your point is, what, exactly?

The movement of life is …the force of a drive. What it wants is …the satisfaction of the drive, which is what life desires as a self and as a part of itself, as its self- transformation through its self-expansion, as a truth that is its own flesh and the substance of its joy, and which is the Impression. The entirety of life, from beginning to end, is perverted and its sense lost when one does not see that it is always the force of feeling that throws life into living-toward. And what it lives-toward is always life as well. It is the intensification and the growth of its power and pathos to the point of excess. (Material Phenomenology)

Thank you for asking the most difficult question. As I see it, what makes Henry so difficult lies in his stand against Husserl's phenomenological ontology, which, he holds, is compromised by intentionality. Husserl holds that when an object is acknowledged, the universality of thought's grasp upon it is itself part of the essential givenness of the pure phenomenon. But for Henry, this entirely undermines the phenomenological purity, as "the singular is destined, in its ephemeral occurrence, to slide into
nonbeing" (Material Phenomenology) Husserl's pure seeing separates the seen from the seeing, and Henry thinks actual conscious life is lost.

I agree with Henry. The reduction takes one to the absolute palpable feels and experiences of the world entirely in what they are, and the "bracketing" of extraneous knowledge claims (I am calling them) is the method that delivers one to the manifestation itself. This is tricky. To me, Husserl was making a concession to Kant adn rationalism because after all, when one sees an obect, one knows one sees it and this spans the distance between the knower and the known; but note how this places the universal before the particular. The particular gets lost, and the vivid living experience gets lost, and this is what leaves philosophers all grasping to reconcile, like Husserl did, the subject and object with some epistemology. For Henry, the manifestation and the manifesting itself, the appearing and what appears, are one and the same.

So Buddhism I take to be a radical phenomenological reduction, an all embracing bracketing, a bracketing of intentionality as well, if done seriously. Desire is no longer ontic desire, and pain is no longer what it merely appears in the vulgar everyday sense. Now ALL is revealed in an impossible revelation that cares nothing for theoretical hindrances, for what appears is "restored" to its primordiality.

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? Pain is now an absolute manifestation ( I have tried to argue this before. Never brought Henry into it, but he was, among others, like Max Scheler, Karl Rahner), for everything is. And now the phenomenologist-Christian finds repose in God, but this is entirely the same thing as what the Buddhist is doing. Gautama Siddhartha, the quintessential phenomenologist! Both radically still the world/

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? — Astrophel

That's not an idea of my invention, it is simply my paraphrasing of Buddhist lore - it is something any Buddhist would say. I can't say I understand anything of Henry's criticism of Husserl, or indeed much of that post at all.

My very sketchy grasp of the issue of desire and suffering is more like Schopenhauer's - that will is a primordial kind of thirst, from which the seeker must be de-coupled on pain of being driven into endless rounds of becoming. The 'old wisdom school' of early Buddhism was starkly dualistic, renunciation was severe and irrevocable, and the ordinary human condition poles apart from the enlightened state, never the twain to meet. The development of Mahāyāna radically changed that approach, enlightenment or liberation was seen as implicit within the human state instead of being radically different from it. This is subject of a lot of literature, I couldn't try and summarise it here, except to say that Mahāyāna nondualism dissolved the radical otherness Nirvāṇa found in the earlier schools (this is according to Edward Conze, Buddhism its Essence and Development).

There are many points of convergence between Buddhism and phenomenology. Buddhist culture has been phenomenological from the very outset, with its emphasis on attaining insight into the psycho-physical systems which drive continued attachment (and so rebirth). Their philosophical psychology ('abhidharma') based on the five skandhas (heaps) of Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness, and comprising a stream of momentary experiental states ('dharmas') is utterly different from anything in the Semitic religions and even in ancient Greek culture (although there has always been some back-and-forth influence.) Here is a brief Wikipedia article on Husserl's reading of and reaction to the abhidharma literature.

The influential book The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson and Rosch contained many reference to Buddhism and was in many ways moulded by it (notwithstanding Evan Thompson's later re-evaluation of his relationship with Buddhism in his 2020 book Why I am not a Buddhist.) But again it emphasises the confluence between the Buddhist śūnyatā and the phenomenological epochē and the primacy of skilled awareness and attention to the flux of experience.

There is a response posted above.

As with all philosophical problems, I argue, this matter is discovered in the simplicity of the world's manifest meanings. A proposition as such has no value, and this is true of anything I can imagine, a knowledge claim, an empirical fact or an analytical construction. States of affairs considered apart from the actuality of their conception sit there in an impossible abstract space. — Astrophel

I'm not sure what you mean by "manifest meanings". Do you mean to say that we are affected by how things appear to us? If so, that would be a truism. An empirical proposition has no inherent value to be sure. For example, take the proposition 'it is raining'—the proposition itself if assertoric is merely the expression of an observation and the only value, meaning or quality it has is that of being true or false, and it is the actuality of rain that may have some value, whether positive or negative.

States of affairs are concrete not abstract; it is propositions about states of affairs whose content can be considered to be abstract in the sense of being generalizations.

So what about Wayfarer's talk about clinging "to the transitory and ephemeral as if they were lasting and satisfying"? — Astrophel

That well laboured old chestnut? It is also a truism. That we are subject to being affected by those things which we are attached to would have to be one of the most obvious observations regarding being human (or animal). That things are transitory, and that humans often wish they were not so are also simply obvious facts.

:up: :up:

Propositions can never to removed from the existence in which they are discovered in the "first" place. . — Astrophel

Reifiication / misplaced concreteness fallacy is implied in your assumption, Astro. "Propositions" are only truth-bearing ways of talking about aspects or features of "existence" and not the sort of things which can be "removed from" or "discovered in" "existence". Unlike sophists (or essentialists & idealists), most philosophers do not confuse their maps (or mapmaking) with the terrain.

As a metacognitive species we "suffer" from instinctive and/or learned denial of reality (e.g. change (i.e. pain, loss, failure, impermanence), uncertainty (i.e. angst)). As history shows, what greater reality-denial can there be than 'supernatural religion' (i.e. philosophical suicide) – a cure for suffering that frequently worsens suffering?

There are many points of convergence between Buddhism and phenomenology. Buddhist culture has been phenomenological from the very outset, with its emphasis on attaining insight into the psycho-physical systems which drive continued attachment (and so rebirth). Their philosophical psychology ('abhidharma') based on the five skandhas (heaps) of Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations and Consciousness, and comprising a stream of momentary experiental states ('dharmas') is utterly different from anything in the Semitic religions and even in ancient Greek culture (although there has always been some back-and-forth influence.) — Wayfarer

But what about the core Buddhist event?: the meditative act itself. Wordless, yet wondering, open, liberating. The essence of meditation lies in its radical simplicity. Do you agree?

Of course - but context is everything! What I mean by ‘context’ is that meditative awareness and samadhi are embedded in a cultural milieu which facilitates those practices and insights. That’s one point of Sangha, the association of the wise. But meditation has been a bit oversold in the West as a panacea or magic bullet.

I pursued Buddhist meditation for many years and attended several retreats, including the well-known 10-day Vipassana retreat. I learned a lot from that, and it’s an ongoing endeavour although I haven’t been able to maintain the same routine I did for many years. The ‘hindrances’ that the Buddhists mention are real, and overcoming them difficult. (See this old OP, Most Buddhists Don’t Meditate.)

So those states of spontaneous insight are real but rare. I attended services at a Pure Land sangha for some time just prior to Covid (not having another Buddhist association in the area.) I learned that according to Pure Land, meditation practices are discouraged. They are recognised as effective, but they’re said to belong to the ‘way of sages’ which is difficult (according to them, practically impossible) to bring to fruition. Instead their way is grounded in faith in the saving vows of Amida. I found this caused a kind of conflict for me, as it seemed very like the religion that I had declined to join - the interest I had in Buddhism was that it seemed to offer an alternative to mere belief. Yet, here we are again! (Although that said the core beliefs of Pure Land Buddhism and Christianity are completely different. It’s the psychodynamic of faith that is similar.)

This is all ongoing, I haven’t come to any kind of conclusion about it. There were things I learned from those years of practice and contemplation that will always stay with me.

I'm not sure what you mean by "manifest meanings". Do you mean to say that we are affected by how things appear to us? If so, that would be a truism. An empirical proposition has no inherent value to be sure. For example, take the proposition it is raining—the proposition itself is merely an observation and the only value, meaning or quality it has is that of being true or false, and it is the actuality of rain that has some value, whether positive or negative. — Janus

Manifest, or immanent, there, upon you, undeniable as modus ponens, the reduced phenomenon, pure presence, minus all one might be able to say about it. Is it possible to strip a living perception of all the presumptions of knowing so that all that remains before you is bare existence, free of the very finitude that language imposes upon it(including language about this very freedom)? Yet in this, one is still a language agency. This is what makes someone like Henry so offensive to philosophy, I think, but he is right about this. Take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. Very pure, non conceptual, noncontextual, and as undeniable as modus ponens. Of course, one need nothing so dramatic to make the point. JUst the interest, the care, desire, satiation or deficit, disappointment, I mean, just noticing something is affectively qualified.

States of affairs are concrete not abstract; it is propositions about states of affairs whose content can be considered to be abstract in the sense of being generalizations. — Janus

Well, I was thinking about early Wittgenstein's states of affairs, which are devoid of value. Nothing concrete about such a thing. We invest a thing with value when it is taken up in the perceptual act. Interesting thought experiment, I think, to imagine what a value-free encounter with an object would be.

As I see it, what makes Henry so difficult lies in his stand against Husserl's phenomenological ontology, which, he holds, is compromised by intentionality. Husserl holds that when an object is acknowledged, the universality of thought's grasp upon it is itself part of the essential givenness of the pure phenomenon. But for Henry, this entirely undermines the phenomenological purity, as "the singular is destined, in its ephemeral occurrence, to slide into
nonbeing" (Material Phenomenology) Husserl's pure seeing separates the seen from the seeing, and Henry thinks actual conscious life is lost. — Astrophel

As you know, it’s not just Husserl’s version of phenomenology that Henry objects to, but Merleau-Ponry and Heidegger as well. And one could imagine that, despite his never mentioning him, Henry would fault another thinker of immanent life, Deleuze, for the same weakness he finds in the others. That is, they are not true philosophies of immanence because they each slip into representationalism
by formulating thr self as an ecstatic relation with the world.
But I think Henry misreads these authors If the path to the elimination of suffering involves the deconstruction of the subject-object relation, this cannot be accomplished by holding onto the notion of a purely self-affecting subject. Henry rightly wants to get beyond representationalism and egoism, but to do so he must let go of the need for a notion of affect as present to itself.

Congratulations, Captain Obvious. So your point is, what, exactly? — Arcane Sandwich

That biblical literalists can understand a given part of the bible as metaphor and still be biblical literalists.

That biblical literalists can understand a given part of the bible as metaphor and still be biblical literalists. — BitconnectCarlos

No one is arguing the contrary. You're accusing me of something, and I don't even know what you're accusing me of, to begin with. But it doesn't matter. If you think that you understand Christianity better than I do, then explain why the following anecdote is not a good explanation of the story of Adam and Eve:

I actually saw, on social media (I think it was Facebook?) someone explain Adam and Eve from a "rational" point of view. This person on Facebook said, that a very long time ago, there were dinosaurs here on Earth. God created them. And then, a meteorite killed the dinosaurs. And who do you think was in that meteor? That's right, Adam and Eve. Because the meteor was actually a space ship. And, here on planet Earth, there was no metal prior to the crashing of Adam and Eve's "meteor". So where do you think that all of the metal comes from? It's from the meteorite, from the spaceship.

Please understand that I do not believe in the above explanation, for reasons that should be obvious. — Arcane Sandwich

They are recognised as effective, but they’re said to belong to the ‘way of sages’ which is difficult (according to them, practically impossible) to bring to fruition. — Wayfarer

Frankly, the way of the sages is the only one that interests me. The "cultural milieu which facilitates those practices and insights" does not belong to the essential purpose, enlightenment and liberation. Thought (and cultural means of understanding) is both the binding that holds one to the habits of normal thinking, and the openness of being's possibilities that eventually turns to itself and makes itself the center of inquiry.

I have my own far flung thoughts about this. I haven't spent time like you have in meditation, but I have spent a galaxy of time doing what you could call jnana yoga, or meditative thinking. Very calm in the process standing before the world, and realizing that the world is not the world. There are times when I get close. Augustine said it like this:
"'I am aware of something within me that gleams and flashes before my soul;
were this perfected and fully established in me, that would surely be
eternal life!' It hides, yet shows itself

:pray:

There’s an article on SEP about ‘divine illumination’ which links back to Augustine. It is said to have been an idea that more or less died out in medieval times, but I think Augustine was right on the mark.

As you know, it’s not just Husserl’s version of phenomenology that Henry objects to, but Merleau-Ponry and Heidegger as well. And one could imagine that, despite his never mentioning him, Henry would fault another thinker of immanent life, Deleuze, for the same weakness he finds in the others. That is, they are not true philosophies of immanence because they each slip into representationalism
by formulating thr self as an ecstatic relation with the world.
But I think Henry misreads these authors If the path to the elimination of suffering involves the deconstruction of the subject-object relation, this cannot be accomplished by holding onto the notion of a purely self-affecting subject. Henry rightly wants to get beyond representationalism and egoism, but to do so he must let go of the need for a notion of affect as present to itself. — Joshs

Henry thinks philosophy is done with itself at the point of phenomenological consummation. We have God's consciousness now.

Reifiication / misplaced concreteness fallacy is implied in your assumption, Astro. "Propositions" are only truth-bearing ways of talking about aspects or features of "existence" and not the sort of things which can be "removed from" or "discovered in" "existence". Unlike sophists (or essentialists & idealists), most philosophers do not confuse their maps (or mapmaking) with the terrain. — 180 Proof

I don't understand what you mean by "about". Not that it is wrong to say this, but it is a pivotal word.

As a metacognitive species we "suffer" from instinctive and/or learned denial of reality (e.g. change (i.e. pain, loss, failure, impermanence), uncertainty (i.e. angst)). As history shows, what greater reality-denial can there be than 'supernatural religion' (i.e. philosophical suicide) – a cure for suffering that frequently worsens suffering? — 180 Proof

I quite agree, if by supernatural you mean, say, the long history of Christian metaphysics and theology or Harry Potter's magic.

But it is not as if what is natural wears its philosophical disclosure on its sleeve. True philosophical suicide comes from ignoring this analytic, the one that can begin with the question, how do "natural" objects get into knowledge claims when causality, the naturalist's bottom line (just ask Quine) for everything, has nothing epistemic about it? Or, if you prefer, how does any thing "get into" a brain thing such that the what is in the brain is "about" that thing?

Separating knowing a thing from what it is to acknowledge a thing is, as you say, supernatural.

But what is religion apart from the bad metaphysics? One has to clear the question before summary dismissal. And what is NOT a "denial of reality" and that is the true ground of religion? You mention suffering, but what is this?

I don't understand what you mean by "about". — Astrophel

I don't understand what you don't understand about how I use "about" in that sentence.

... how do "natural" objects get into knowledge claims when causality, the naturalist's bottom line (just ask Quine) for everything, has nothing epistemic about it?

I don't understand the question or its relevance.

Or, if you prefer, how does any thing "get into" a brain thing such that the what is in the brain is "about" that thing?

I have no idea what you are talking about, Astro.

But what is religion apart from the bad metaphysics?

A community of ritualized reenactments of an epic myth (i.e. folk anti-anxiety placebo-fetish aka "magic show") ... no doubt based on "bad metaphysics". :sparkle: :pray:

And what is NOT a "denial of reality" and that is the true ground of religion?

Uncertainty.

You mention suffering, but what is this?

Useless hope (i.e. attachments) ...

I haven't spent time like you have in meditation — Astrophel

There is something I want to add, which I think you will understand. It is that 'spending time' and 'making an effort' in meditation counts for nothing. There is nothing that can be accrued or gained through the conscious effort to practice meditation and any feeling that one has gotten better or gained something through such efforts is mere egotism. That is all.

Is there something in the OP you wanted critique of specifically or is it just a whimsical view of the state of religion today for the sake of it?

I do find it interesting that suffering is sometimes equated as a kind of beatific edifice of religious faith. I think this can easily be seen as horrific too rather than a 'special gift' given to the few worthy.

Suffering, and its inherent sacrifice, insinuates itself between complacency and affirmation (I am reminded of Dickinson's poem I Heard a Fly Buzz), and one simply cannot ignore it any more. It now becomes a meta-suffering addressed by a meta-question of its existence. Religion takes its first step. — Astrophel

Isn't Religion supposed to ease the human suffering? Or is human suffering the part of or requirement for religion?

If you think that you understand Christianity better than I do, then explain why the following anecdote is not a good explanation of the story of Adam and Eve: — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not a Christian nor do I claim to understand Christianity.

A better explanation of the Adam and Eve story might be that biblical writers borrowed from Mesopotamian literature (e.g. epic of gilgamesh) and adapted it (imho improved it.) If you're asking for the impetus behind the original I don't know ask the Mesopotamians or Francesca Stavrakopoulou has some work on a supposedly historical garden of eden but I haven't looked into it.

I have no idea what you are talking about, Astro. — 180 Proof

You're some variety of a naturalist or a physicalist, right? So, brain here, tree there: how does the latter get into the former as a knowledge claim? Seems clear to me. It is the simplicity that is striking.

Uncertainty. — 180 Proof

Well, there is a response to this, but you're not going to like it. It makes sense if you follow patiently.

Uncertainty makes sense in context where there is some certainty assumed. But what if no certainties can be assumed? At all. Take logic: I assume tautological truth is inviolable, but then such truth is wrapped in language and language is not inviolable; it is in fact radically contingent. That is, the way we understand the logicality that is so certain and free of accidents (as they say) is given to us in something that is nothing but accidents, for language itself is self referential and its meanings have no foundational stability, only stability conceived in the agreements and disagreements within a given context. The irresistible "sense" of, say, the principle of causality is indicative of something, but when I try to speak or write this I find this intra-referentiality of language-in-play steals away the certainty I thought was so inviolable. Something is inviolable, but if whenever I try to conceive it this inviolability slips away into a question, the we face the "inexorablity of an enigma," and this runs through every knowledge claim imaginable, and every epistemic relation.

The point is, when it comes to religious uncertainty, available contexts are useless because concern exceeds context, the desideratum exceeds any conceivable contextuality. Why? Because this is a structural feature of our existence. When any and all standards of certainty are of no avail, we face metaphysics, real metaphysics. Here, empirical science simply falls away because any such thinking implicitly holds to some set of "certainties," things assumed but stand themselves on uncertain grounds. The world as such becomes an epistemic and ontological vacuum, and it is HERE now one can ask about suffering, because suffering is not a language construction; it clearly has explanatory possibilities that come to mind when we think of it, but there is in this something which is ontologically distinct and imposing that stands outside of language's contingencies. This is really not some abstruse issue at all. Just imagine intense suffering: like the intuition of modus ponens' apodicticity, there is something THERE that language seizes upon, makes claims about, but cannot exhaust just because suffering is not a language phenomenon.

The word transcendence is now meaningful, but here, unlike logic which really is about form, merely, we are deep into meaning, the torturous, and, of course, delightful, trial and aspiration of being in the world. This is religion's territory, where language cannot go to "finitize," that is contextualize, the world. Suffering is being's suffering, not localized in a reductive context. But note: analysis has displaced faith. It has brought inquiry to the threshold of our existence, and suffering is now a stand alone existential presupposition that cannot be analyzed. It is an absolute, inviolable.

There is something I want to add, which I think you will understand. It is that 'spending time' and 'making an effort' in meditation counts for nothing. There is nothing that can be accrued or gained through the conscious effort to practice meditation and any feeling that one has gotten better or gained something through such efforts is mere egotism. That is all. — Wayfarer

I see this as is a real insight. Meditation as "spending time" is no better than what my cat does on the window sill. Wonder must be in place. An openness that is not nothing but issues from the the ground of language itself as it stands open to the world as wonder, the primordial wonder about being here at all; and particulars, trees and computer monitors and ideas and emotions and anything that is particularized in some way or another in familiar affairs, yield to this open question of existence. Language cannot be made the enemy of meditation, even though language is exactly what clutters and congests understanding the world. Language does BOTH. It is the problem and the remedy. Even in silence, and thought is pushed down to nothing, thought is the seeking beneath it all, and a fascinating disclosure of something truly primordial can rise up.

The point I am making is that when Gautama Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree, he discovered something, and discovery is not something cats can do. It is a language phenomenon, but this does not at all diminish the nature of the discovery. It does elevate the nature of language.

I do find it interesting that suffering is sometimes equated as a kind of beatific edifice of religious faith. I think this can easily be seen as horrific too rather than a 'special gift' given to the few worthy. — I like sushi

Consider that the religious perspective raises this entire dimension of our existence, this affectivity, the vulnerability, the overwhelmingness of suffering and beatitude, to metaphysics. The question is, then, is there anything really real about metaphysics? We find this in ethics, aesthetics and epistemology.

Isn't Religion supposed to ease the human suffering? Or is human suffering the part of or requirement for religion? — Corvus

Best to think analytically: when one observes the world, what does one find at the level of basic questions? As I move into this difficult area, I rediscover everything. The usual ways of thinking at put on hold, bracketed, and the unusual questions become the theme for inquiry. So what happens when suffering is no longer given to us in the reductive contextualities of talk about this and that, whether in science or everydayness? Suffering now simply appears, and I am asking about this, call it purified presence, made more pure by the process of eliminating all things extraneous to what it simply IS. It is a fascinating study of the world and takes one deeply into meaning that has been otherwise summarily dismissed by a busy and distracted mind.

To grasp religion, one has to do this. For religion is a metaphysical question of our existence. One has to ask seriously about metaphysics, and what it is. THEN the value dimension looms large. The easing of human suffering is an issue in ethics (it should be eased). And in religion ,it is about metaethics. Why is it metaethics? Because the world is a meta-world at this level of inquiry.

The world as such becomes an epistemic and ontological vacuum, and it is HERE now one can ask about suffering, because suffering is not a language construction; it clearly has explanatory possibilities that come to mind when we think of it, but there is in this something which is ontologically distinct and imposing that stands outside of language's contingencies — Astrophel

If one sticks to the view of language as representative symbol this is true, but in the approaches to language we find in such figures as Merleau-Ponty , Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida language isn’t separate from the affective enacting of world, it is that enacting.

It is a language phenomenon, but this does not at all diminish the nature of the discovery. It does elevate the nature of language. — Astrophel

I don't see that. I think Gautama's discovery overflowed the bounds of what can be spoken. Hence the famous 'Flower Sermon' which is the apocryphal origin of Ch'an and Zen Buddhism. In the story, the Buddha gives a wordless sermon to the sangha by silently holding up a white flower. No one in the audience responds bar Mahākāśyapa, who's smile indicates his comprehension. It is said to embody the ineffable nature of tathātā, the direct transmission of wisdom without words. The Buddha affirms this by uttering:

I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvāṇa, the true form of the formless, the subtle dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.

(Although it has to be acknowledged that Ch'an/Zen Buddhism, regardless, has an enormous compendium of 'words and letters' housed in extensive monastic libraries a part of its teaching repertoire, and indeed the various Buddhist canons exceed in volume by orders of magnitude the collected Biblical writings. But there is always a kind of awareness in Buddhism that the finger that points to the moon ought not to be mistaken for the moon.)