Timely words

Stahmer offers this useful summary of Rosenstock-Huessy’s and Rosenzweig’s attack on “objectivity”:

“For J. G. Hamann, and for all those who have accepted the sacramental qualities inherent in the frailty and tentativeness of human speech, the ambiguities and relativity of history could not possibly be denied. Both Rosenstock-Huessy and Rosenzweig certainly knew full well that what one holds to be ‘objectively’ true, at the moment, is conditioned by time and history, and that perfect objectivity is simply not possible; in dealing with ultimate ontological questions, man is seemingly doomed to perpetual embarrassment and frustration.”

Yet, their position is not relativist, but “objective relativism,” a phrase that “conveys a sense of their awareness of the fragility and uncertainty of the human condition while maximizing the enduring durability of words uttered at the ‘right time’ – the ‘proper season.’”

In other words: All is vapor, most vapourous vapor. Yet, the words of the wise are like well-driven nails. Not one or the other. But both together.