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Lectures on Method

Volumes

The future, gentlemen, will also have two sciences. Grammar and higher grammar, which I call ... liturgical thinking. Liturgical thinking. Grammar ... and higher grammar. So we have logic and concording. We have arithmetic and mathematics, or higher mathematics. We have grammar and ... liturgical thinking ... higher grammar. Now gentlemen, this course is an example in higher grammar. What you have learned is that a man is a child, an artist. He is a man and a fighter. And he is an elder, a -- a priest. Now gentlemen, in the first phase, he is a "thou," because his parents, and his teachers, and the world create him. They allow him to play. He is entrusted to others. He listens. Now "I listen, because you tell me to listen to me": "Listen." He is "thou." As a fighter, he's "I." And as a priest, he's "we." And that's grammar.

May 11, 1949

Rosenstock-Huessy outlines the aspects of social reality that make a new method of inquiry necessary, while explaining that grammar accurately reflects these aspects.

Disciplines can be grouped into large categories of knowledge, like “natural science.” These larger groups involve different kinds of intellectual activity. The natural sciences, for example consist of a constant conflict between teaching and research. In theology, however, the authorities pre-exist the discipline, and the intellectual task is to bring apparently mutually contradicting authorities into concordance. Political resistance is also a form of attempting concordance.

Intellectual history moves from original idea to commonplace. Intellectual activity exists in every era at two levels, a basic, and a higher. The scholastics had logic as a base, and concording as a higher form. Concording occurs where two logical arguments clash, but where they overcome their discord in unity of heart. The academics have had two levels: of arithmetic and geometry at the lower level, and higher mathematics, algebra and calculus. on the higher level where they deal with term "infinity," and "zero."

The future will also have two methods: Grammar and a higher grammar, which Rosenstock-Huessy believes will be called liturgical thinking. Higher grammar considers the different declined and conjugated forms man can exist in. For example, people listening to a lecture can alternate conjugations of their forms of action. As listeners they are in the “you” or “thou” form. If the same people answer or ask a question, they move into a different form of action and enter the “I” form. People’s humanity arises from their freedom to move between difference forms of activity.

Higher grammar is based on the different orientations people and things have to their reality in time. The “name” betrays the great nostalgia of mankind to be recognized. The “name” is waiting to become true. “Names” start reality. That's why any child of God has to receive a name at the beginning of the life, so that at one time this child may say, "I have taken up this name, you see, and made it into something that meant something real to other people."“Numbers” have the opposite relationship to reality: they can only come into existence after a thing has happened, at the end of its reality. The three grades of speech--figures, words, and names--also connote the three distinctions of the times in which we all live.

Speech reveals the reality of the life between men. Spoken declarations are native to that life. The declaration of war is an act in the war itself. It's a part of the process.To speak is an hour in the life of mankind. It's a moment in one’s own existence. One cannot separate doing something from speaking about it. Declaration in the grammatical method is an act of vitality, of life. Speech is central to life and death. To speak is itself a potent act of life. It is like a flower that blossoms up and bears fruit.

The coming third area of intellectual inquiry, beyond the academic natural sciences and the scholastic theology, will be inquiry into the creative and organic forces of the human mind. The circulation of thought will be one aspect of that inquiry. Circulation of thought consists of a process over time among different people who play different roles. Merely having an original thought is not enough. The thought must be brought to the attention of other people, and it must be sufficiently inspiring that these other people pass it to succeeding generations, who are in turn inspired by it.

It is native to the truth in the social sciences, that people put themselves at risk, to keep ideas flowing or to keep societies healthy. People also play different roles in society at different times of their lives. Thus a method appropriate for the investigation of the social sciences must be reflect the reasons people are willing to put themselves at risk. Such a method must also reflect the changes people are involved in over time. Men’s experienced time and the changes it brings are the central issues in the social sciences.

The circulation of thought is a process encompassing the ages. Ideas must come into existence and then bear fruit over time. Thinking is subject to measurement and judgment on the basis of its fruitfulness. If a claim doesn't come true, it's dead thing, is not part of circulation of real thought. In a person’s real life at times a thought must grip one with such power that one must do something about it. One must make thought real. People realize that a thought is very frail, and if they do not act to preserve it, it will disappear.

Incarnation is central to the circulation of thought. Incarnation in the sense that real things are derived from thoughts, from something first thought, first said, first commanded. Thought is destined to become real. Thoughts are not under our control if we don't do anything about them. All thoughts must be put through the strainer of realization. Thought that is not realized becomes an injustice to all those things and people to which it does not apply but should have.

For Richard Feringer's more detailed notes on lectures included in Lectures on Method, click on the following links: Circulation of Thought - 1949 Circulation of Thought - 1954 Four Disangelists - 1954 Circulation of Thought - 1956 Grammatical Method - 1962 Peace Corps - 1966

The Rosenstock-Huessy lectures are available in two versions:
•     the original audio recording of Rosenstock-Huessy giving the lecture and
•     transcripts of the original audio.

Argo sells these versions in two different packages:
•     electronic and
•     paper

The electronic package of Lectures on Method is sold on a DVD, which contains

•     the original recordings of 49 hours of college lectures in mp3 format,

•     as well as every transcript of all of the English-language lectures Rosenstock-Huessy recorded, in computer text format. These transcripts are an excellent basis for word searches, to compare what Rosenstock-Huessy had to say on a particular topic or on related topics, either in different contexts across nearly 20 years.

DVDs are produced to order, which can take up to 5 weeks. 

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