An Introduction To The Logomorphic Age
How we infer post-logical thoughts on a pre-logical age
A Quick History of English Words
Imagine yourself curled up on a crisp fall evening with a hot cup of honey mint tea and a Jane Austen novel. Before you dive in you take one more look over the title ‘Sense & Sensibility’ and you begin to ponder those two words. For a second or two some confusion occurs as you try to parse out why Austen would have used two synonymous words to describe her book. Surely, if you have any sense about you then you would be considered a sensible person with good sensibility. It seems as if all these words are just a roundabout way of saying the same thing.
The problem encountered here comes from the reader’s inability to consider what a word such as sensibility may have meant in 1795 during the time and culture Austen was enveloped in. While in Austen’s era, sense remained largely the same as it does today, the word sensibility referred more to emotional receptivity or response. To be sensible was not to use common sense but rather to have the proper barometer in emotionally charged, subjective situations. This variation is only slight but should cause the reader to think.
Sensibility is one example of many in how we often anachronistically read text or words with a modern, or post-logical lens. We are all guilty of doing this. When we read words like freedom, tradition, or authority we automatically place definitions upon that word in the strict sense of what the word means at the time. C.S. Lewis in his insightful work Studies in Words calls this interpretation the dangerous sense of the word.1
Take a word like authority for example. When you read this word, if you are in the modern Western world, a few reactions may occur. First, the word may be off-putting because for many it implies the exertion of power or control by someone over a situation or person. And with our Western sense of individual freedom and persistence of complete autonomy, we don’t necessarily care for having authority in our lives.2
This is the dangerous sense of what the word implies in our current cultural moment. However, for some, they can move past that dangerous sense and can simply acknowledge authority as someone who has the power to make informed decisions or offer insightful opinions on a subject like an author (part of where the word authority comes from) or a political leader.
If you grew up in the Christian tradition, you likely are familiar with the words of Jesus at the end of the gospel according to Matthew when Jesus claims, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.” If you read this as a modern, using the dangerous sense of the word, a claim of this sort likely makes you uncomfortable because of the continual disparagement of any authority making absolute claims over someone’s life.3
To further complicate the matter, the reader may ask where is the word authority derived from. A quick etymological search will find that the word translators are using when they use the word authority comes from the Greek exousía which could imply power, liberty, jurisdiction, or a host of other possibilities associated with ideas of authority.
The actual use of word authority was not used until mid 14th century, deriving from auctoritas, a term used by Roman rulers to imply that their rule was not merely political, but rather commanded respect in all areas of life. From here it is easy to see how we get words like autocrat or authoritarian, which are far more negative in connotation.
The point of this long-winded rant about the use of the word authority is to provide context as to why reading pre-modern text, while inhabiting a modern world is so difficult. We bring immense cultural, societal, and contextual baggage to everything we read. We apply definitions, meanings, and conclusions to words and texts that the author never intended.
The Problem with Logomorphisms
Owen Barfield in the seminal work Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning4 provides a useful term for our modern reading habits. He calls it a logomorphism and describes it as such,
“Simply put, logomorphism is the fallacious habit "at present extraordinarily widespread, being indeed taken for granted in all the most reputable circles" of "projecting post-logical thoughts back into a pre-logical age," of surreptitiously substituting our own phenomena for those which [our predecessors] were in fact dealing with." More broadly, logomorphism occurs when we read--anachronistically--into the experience, the thought, the literature of a given stage in the evolution of consciousness the "logos," or world-view of a later age.”5
This is especially prescient when reading ancient texts such as the Bible, Talmud, or Vedas. We attribute meaning and intent in places where the very meaning we are deriving does not exist in the consciousness or structure of the culture from which it was written.
If I read the history of the Israelites and can only interpret words like law, tradition, commandment, or authority using a modern Marxist critical lens, I will be guilty of ascribing attributes to early Mesopotamian society that are completely foreign. If I come across words like the patriarch and convulse because I attribute unhealthy masculinity and continual power struggles to all the stories of the Old Testament, I will have done a great deal of violence to the actual meaning of the text.
Consciousness is not static, nor is language. As different meanings throughout different time periods are placed upon words, it is paramount for readers to do their due diligence in working to discover the essence of words as they travel through time and culture.
The Good Type of Tourist
This is no easy task. I cannot simply become a 1st-century sailor or a 7th-century Celtic monk. However, I can aspire to become what Lewis calls a good tourist in my reading of those times and places.6
In an essay titled De Audiendis Poetis Lewis creates this analogy when speaking of reading pre-modern literature:
There are two ways of enjoying the past, as there are two ways of enjoying a foreign country. One man carries his Englishry [great word!] abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. Wherever he goes he consorts with the other English tourists. By a good hotel he means one that is like an English hotel. He complains of the bad tea where he might have had excellent coffee. He finds the “natives” quaint and enjoys their quaintness. . . . But there is another sort of traveling . . . . You can eat the local food and drink the local wines, you can share the foreign life, you can begin to see the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants.7
While we will never be able to become a native in the world of pre-modern reading, we should at least strive to be good tourists. This entails setting aside our modern sensibilities and earnestly trying to understand the essence of the time and place we are reading about.
Such an approach requires humility. If we think as we read Chaucer that his ideas are backward and barbaric simply because he lived and wrote in the Medieval time period, we shall not do very well in our reading. The reader must learn to set his or herself aside and strive to enter the consciousness and context of the time and place a work is produced.
This process is a slow, deep form of reading that takes many years. In a society valuing youthful efficiency and a schizophrenic pace, it is unlikely to be well received by the masses. But for the few that decide to become old souls, who see through the dangerous sense of words into a world full of meaning, there will be great reward.
To be able to comb through history and understand the drastically different meanings of words at different times and different places results in the wisdom that even a Medieval author like Chaucer could appreciate when he said,
“Men may the olde atrenne and noght atrede.” 8
If you can figure out the meaning of this phrase, you very well, like Chaucer, might be on the right track to understanding the deeper sense of the words you read.
*Note from the author*
This week’s essay is a bit truncated due to lack of time. I hope to give some more sustenance to ideas surrounding logomorphisms in future writing. For now, I welcome all feedback, suggestions, and criticism. As always feel free to share my work with anyone interested and tune in for a midweek poem around Tuesday or Wednesday. If you missed last week’s poem I have it linked here. Thanks!
Fides Quaerens Intellectum,
T.S.
Lewis, C.S. (1996). Studies in words. Cambridge Mass.: Cambridge University Press.
Well, at least we don’t think we desire any concrete, resolute authority. However, try having any form of a workable society without structures of authority for more than five minutes and you will likely rethink the renouncement of authority.
Another dangerous sense of the modern word authority creates in the reader’s imagination no world in which a truly benevolent, good authority could exist. This is why characters like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings are so important in helping us reconstitute what good, loving authorities can look like.
Barfield, O. (1984). Poetic diction : a study in meaning. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Pr.
I mentioned the conversation between Jonathan Pageau and Richard Rohlin last week. However, it is worth noting in the same conversation about reading Medieval literature Rohlin mentions the impact of Lewis’ analogy of the tourist. To listen to this conversation see the link here.
Lewis, C.S. and Hooper, W. (2013). Studies in medieval and Renaissance literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Chaucer, G., Guidry, M. and Jones, C.D. (2011). The knight’s tale : from the Canterbury tales. Nacogdoches, Tex.: Stephen F. Austin State University Press.