Language, Aristotle, and the Matrix

Why Shakespeare? The man died 395 years ago, and yet his plays are performed over and over. There are many reasons for the Bard's enduring popularity, including his profound grasp of human emotion and psychology, his humor, and the historical aspect he introduced into many of his plays. But many commentators site his grasp of language as his defining characteristic.
Shakespeare is "the greatest writer the English language has every known, a master of language who used it with precision, beauty, depth, and genuine spiritual insight" says Dr. David Allen White, who taught World Literature at the Naval Academy in Annapolis for two decades.

In a conference given in Winona, Minnesota, Dr. White delves into the mystery of language and shows that words matter and that language makes us fully human. Shakespeare knew this -- and we grasp it as we watch his plays.

Below, three paragraphs from the article, with the full article at Angelus Online:

I'm making a claim that language is an extraordinary gift of God. It is part of what makes us fully human. In fact, Aristotle says man is a rational animal and that what sets him apart, what raises him above the animals, is that he has the ability to reason, and it is very clear that he cannot reason without language.

Language is necessary in order for man to be a rational creature, and only to man has it been given. Some claim that porpoises and gorillas talk. It is only a sign of how far this has gone when I have to defend the proposition that language is unique to man. For years propaganda has come down that the porpoises are squeaking to each other, that the gorillas are talking to each other, and the chimpanzees can push the right button and get their banana. What we know is that language is special, and it is one of the things that defines man. Beyond being a manifestation of his power to reason, language is there so that we can pray, that we can communicate. We can write beautiful things which appeal to reason, such as poetry, etc.But, perhaps first and most importantly, I defer to St. Paul who tells us that faith itself comes by hearing...

...What happens to a world that begins to lose language? That is what is happening out there! Language is deteriorating, vocabularies are shrinking, people are less and less able to express themselves linguistically or have a pool of words to draw on to describe what they think and feel. As a result, in its place, they are often compelled instead to wordless action because they are blocked in their very nature. I suspect it has something to do with why there is an increased level of violence in the world. With words no longer available to us, we act physically because that's what we know and what we've seen.

Read the full article here at Angelus Online.