The Other Wolterstorff

Philosophy

Review article of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Inquiring about God:  Selected Essays, vol. 1, and Practices of Belief:  Selected Essays, vol. 2, edited by Terence Cuneo.

The Other Wolterstorff- A Review Essay By Todd Buras Nicholas Wolterstorff. Inquiring about God: Selected Essays, vol. 1, Terence Cuneo, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 322 pp. ISBN 0521514657. Nicholas Wolterstorff. Practices of Belief: Selected Essays, vol. 2, Terence Cuneo, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 446 pp. ISBN 0521514622. 1. Nicholas Wolterstorff needs no introduction to readers of Christian Scholar's Review. He has done as much as anyone alive to promote the kind of integrative scholarship that is CSR's raison d'être. The project of Christian higher education, in general, does not have a more able spokesperson. Wolterstorff's writings on Christian scholarship and Christian higher education are well known, and, thanks to two recent collections of essays, that work is now readily available.1 The pair of volumes reviewed here brings a different Wolterstorff clearly into focus. The familiar Wolterstorff-at least in the present context-is an astute advocate of faith-informed scholarship. The other Wolterstorff is an accomplished practitioner of this sort of scholarship. The publication of these volumes of selected essays offers the broader community of Christian scholars a fine occasion to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with the other Wolterstorff.2 The purpose of this review is, as it were, to handle the introductions. I begin with the big picture and then touch on a few of the details. 2. The other Wolterstorff is unmistakably Wolterstorff. Those who know him mainly through his reflections on Christian scholarship will recognize the many virtues on display in these essays: the spritely leaps across centuries of learning; the courageous indifference to disciplinary boundaries; the tenacity, creativity, and Todd Buras is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. 78 Christian Scholar's Review candor of a true lover of Wisdom. These volumes present Christian scholarship in the sense of scholarship distinguished by the virtues to which Christians aspire. The other Wolterstorff is, though, a philosopher's philosopher. His conversation partners are icons, his topics epic. Is the world outside the mind accessible to human reason? What is it for beliefs to be formed and held responsibly? What are the limits of our entitlement to believe? His answers to these questions are not exclusively, or even explicitly, Christian. But they are consistent with Christian commitments. These volumes display Christian scholarship in the sense of hardhitting work at the center of a discipline that is consistent with Christian commitment, and distinguished by the virtues to which Christians aspire. The other Wolterstorff is also a philosopher's philosopher of religion. He is interested in questions that may not occur to just any philosopher-questions about the implications of philosophical theories for religious belief, and about the philosophical issues raised by religious proclamation and practice. Given what he says about epistemology, for example, he asks, "Can belief in God be rational if it has no foundations?" Similarly, he asks about the assurance of faith that believers admire and enjoin: "Is it consistent with the tentativeness implicit in responsibly held belief?" We have here Christian scholarship in an even fuller sense: hardhitting work at the center of a discipline that is consistent with Christian commitment, characterized by the virtues to which Christians aspire, and especially attentive to questions of importance to believers. The other Wolterstorff is also, at crucial junctures, an explicitly Christian philosopher's philosopher. At certain points, he sees no alternative to theorizing within a framework of convictions not every rational and well-informed adult will share. At these points Wolterstorff is a methodological pluralist, who turns his attention to cultivating one of the thousand flowers he is happy to see bloom. This Wolterstorff's work is not simply consistent with Christian convictions and attentive to the questions raised by faith; it is plainly Christian theorizing. His contributions to philosophical theology (which need not be Christian) aim at both philosophical cogency and harmony with the broad themes of Christian Scriptures. In the final analysis, then, these volumes present hard-hitting work at the center of a discipline that is consistent with Christian commitment, especially attentive to questions of importance to believers, characterized by the virtues to 1See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning, Gloria Goris Stronks and Clarence W. Joldersma, eds., (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002); and Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education, Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks, eds., (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004). 2But even these volumes do not suffice to complete the picture. There are yet other Wolterstorffs! There is, for example, Wolterstorff the aesthetician in Works and Worlds of Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Wolterstorff the analytic metaphysician in On Universals: an Essay in Ontology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Wolterstorff the political theorist in, most recently, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); and Wolterstroff the historian of philosophy in, for example, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 79 The Other Wolterstorff-A Review Essay which Christians aspire, and, in places, explicitly shaped by Christian faith. The volumes are worth reading simply for the example they set of Christian scholarship. If the familiar Wolterstorff had never written a word about the nature of Christian scholarship, we could still learn the essential lessons from the other Wolterstorff's deeds. 3. Wolterstorff has scattered philosophical essays in occasional volumes and professional journals for well over 40 years. Some vital work has remained largely hidden from view in the form of unpublished lectures. These volumes are welcome additions to the Wolterstorff corpus in part because they make this work more readily and broadly available. Terence Cuneo set about editing these essays with this goal in mind. But he accomplished something more. Thanks to Cuneo's judicious selections, these volumes largely supplement rather than overlap material already available in Wolterstorff's books. More importantly, they unify Wolterstorff's work by demonstrating how his main contributions in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology follow from his central convictions in metaphysics and epistemology. Some of the essays here are new. Some are substantially revised. Some are well-worn touchstones of professional debate. Together they are a revelation, even for long-time students of Wolterstorff's work. What emerges is not a system, but systematic themes, the outlines of which will occupy the remainder of this review. The introductions Wolterstorff composed for each volume, together with the postscript appended to the second, offer the best points of access to the unifying themes. These pieces add a personal touch and an element of narrative unity to the collections. They allow the volumes to tell the story of the convergence of Wolterstorff's thought around a handful of animating philosophical convictions. The story begins with the death of logical positivism. For untenable reasons that need not be rehearsed here, positivism suppressed the grand concerns of metaphysics and epistemology. In the wake of positivism's demise, the more traditional philosophical challenges resurfaced. Wolterstorff's personal journey into professional philosophy coincided with this momentous shift. Two of the traditional issues-one Lockean and one Kantian-drew the lion's share of his attention over the years, especially as they are applied to theistic belief. His deepest philosophical commitments emerged in the process of responding to these challenges. His central contributions to philosophy of religion and philosophical theology apply these commitments to theistic beliefs. 4. The Lockean challenge rests on what Wolterstroff calls a doxastic ideal, a certain picture of an ideally managed belief life. Very roughly, the picture is this: 80 an ideal believer is a responsible epistemic agent. A responsible epistemic agent holds only those beliefs to which one is entitled by the proper conduct of the understanding. The beliefs to which one is entitled by the proper conduct of the understanding are those supported by one's evidence, narrowly construed. The beliefs supported by one's evidence, narrowly construed, are those that follow by good inductive or deductive arguments ultimately from one's basic beliefs. One's basic beliefs are self-evident necessary truths and incorrigible truths about the content of one's own conscious experience. This ideal is an expression of what Wolterstorff calls classical foundationalism, and its offspring he dubs the evidentialist challenge. The challenge is to demonstrate that one's beliefs satisfy this ideal, especially one's beliefs about matters of ultimate concern. Responding to this challenge is a general issue in epistemology and a watershed issue in philosophy of religion. Some thinkers (following Locke himself) accept the terms of the challenge and attempt to demonstrate that the central tenants of theism satisfy the ideal. Wolterstorff sides with those who instead question the terms of the challenge. Indeed, along with Alvin Plantinga and William Alston, Wolterstorff is credited with originating the response to the challenge that now goes by the name Reformed Epistemology.3 Where Plantinga's and Alston's initial responses to the challenge eventually received book-length treatments,4 the most substantive developments of Wolterstorff's ideas have been available only in the form of scattered essays and unpublished lectures. The second of these two volumes, Practices of Belief, fills that gap. The essays collected in this volume are the most complete statement of Wolterstorff's general epistemological framework and of its application to belief in God. Practices of Belief includes Wolterstorff's original contribution to Reformed Epistemology ("Can belief in God be rational if it has no foundations?"), a retrospective reflection on the movement ("Reformed Epistemology"), and a series of pieces in which he engages historically influential challenges and alternatives (see, for example, essays 6, 7, 9, 10, and 13). But Wolterstorff's most developed reply to the evidentialist challenge can be found in four essays, two published here for the first time, and two revised for this occasion. "Ought to believe-two concepts" identifies what the Lockean ideal got right, that is, the importance of responsibly held belief in epistemology. "Historicizing the belief-forming self" identifies what the ideal got wrong about the concept. "Entitlement to believe and practices of inquiry" fleshes out Wolterstorff's alternative account of entitlement. "On being entitled to beliefs about God" applies this general epistemological Christian Scholar's Review 3The three crucial papers were first published in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). Wolterstorff discusses the publication of these essays, and identifies some of the earliest hints of the central ideas in Practices of Belief, "Reformed Epistemology"-volume 2, essay 12. 4See Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) and William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 81framework to belief in God. The view developed in these essays is a valuable supplement to that of his fellow Reformed Epistemologists. All parties to the movement agree that the Lockean ideal sketched above is too stingy in the distribution of epistemic merits to be a plausible epistemology. They also agree that a sufficiently broadened alternative is more congenial to theistic belief. But Plantinga and Alston challenge the implicit standards of basicality at work in the ideal. Wolterstorff nowhere disputes the legitimacy or importance of this response. But he does make a point of going further. His aim is to refine the concepts of entitlement and responsibly held belief involved in the Lockean ideal. At one level, the explanation of this difference is simple. Wolterstorff notes at several points that there are a variety of different merits that attach to beliefs. His colleagues focus on one sort (such as warrant and reliability, respectively), while he is interested in another (such as entitlement). A deeper reason for the difference is that Wolterstorff is interested in merits that imply a certain degree of voluntary control over our beliefs, while his colleagues are not. This difference belies yet another. We are responsible only for beliefs that fall under our voluntary control; yet most of our beliefs are formed by the activation of dispositions, which is beyond our control. Many conclude from these considerations that the range of beliefs for which we are responsible is of negligible importance in epistemology-not Wolterstorff. In "Ought to believe-two concepts," he argues that, despite the considerations just adduced, the range of beliefs under our voluntary control is not at all negligible. Our intentions to hold and strengthen beliefs impact the beliefs produced by our dispositions dramatically over the long run. For these intentions and their doxastic impact we are rightly held responsible. For these reasons Wolterstorff carries the critique of the Lockean ideal further. Not only is the operative account of properly basic beliefs too narrow, as his fellow Reformed Epistemologists have argued, but the operative notion of responsibly held belief is similarly flawed. Wolterstorff is ultimately a sympathetic critic of this dimension of the Lockean ideal. Locke was right to identify responsibly held belief with beliefs to which we are entitled by the proper conduct of the understanding. The crucial blunder is the ham-fisted identification of the beliefs to which we are entitled with beliefs supported by an attenuated mode of inquiry-inquiry into what follows with certainty or probability from a narrow stock of basic knowledge. As Wolterstorff tells the story, Locke was tempted by this blunder because of the hope it held out for extricating humanity from socially disruptive disagreements. What Locke failed to appreciate, however, is what Wolterstorff calls the historically situated nature of the belief-forming self. In "Historicizing the belief-forming self," he argues that there is no rising above the particularities of time and place by the proper conduct of the understanding because the proper conduct of the understanding is always a historically situated practice. Wolterstorff's own positive account of entitlement in "Entitlement to believe and practices of inquiry" recognizes the centrality of historically situated practices The Other Wolterstorff-A Review Essay 82 of inquiry. Practices of inquiry are simply ways of finding things out, patterns of action aimed at bringing it about that one learns something. Among all the possible practices of inquiry, Wolterstorff explains, only some are available in one's society at a given time. For any given person at any given time, fewer practices still are personally accessible and acceptable, that is, such that one is both capable and willing to conduct them. Epistemic agents are often prompted into practices of inquiry by dissatisfaction with their beliefs, but some doxastic deficiencies are such that one has an obligation to do one's best to eliminate them by engaging in practices of inquiry. Responsibly held beliefs are, to a first approximation, those that survive the available, accessible, and acceptable practices of inquiry one has an obligation to conduct in order to remedy as far as one is able deficiencies of belief. We are entitled to our beliefs, on Wolterstorff's alternative, unless they are held irresponsibly. This is epistemology on a grand scale-a general theory about what it is for one's epistemic house to be in order, as Wolterstorff says. Examples bring the theory down to earth, and no example is more important to Wolterstorff than the case of theistic beliefs. Where Plantinga and Alston argue in different ways that belief in God can be properly basic, Wolterstorff argues that beliefs about God can be responsibly held, or, alternatively, that we can be entitled to beliefs about God. In "Entitlement to beliefs about God," Wolterstorff revisits the case of Virginia, introduced in Divine Discourse.5 Virginia must determine whether she is within her rights to maintain a belief about God that she mysteriously finds herself holding, namely that God has spoken to her about a certain situation in her community. Through careful consideration of the details of Virginia's particular situation- which are too rich to be treated here in summary fashion-Wolterstorff shows that Virginia satisfies the standards of entitled belief he has defended. Virginia is entitled not only to believe that there is a God, and not only that God speaks, but also that God has spoken to her. Virginia is entitled to these beliefs because they survive the practices of inquiry she has an obligation to conduct. Granting Virginia's entitlement does not entail that her belief is true, or that other people in different situations are similarly entitled. The example emphasizes the highly situation-specific and indirectly truth-conducive nature of entitlement. Wolterstorff's is a trusting and pluralistic epistemology. We each must conduct inquiry as the historically situated persons we are, trusting that the competent execution of our best practices of inquiry will eliminate doxastic deficiencies or lead us to yet better practices that will. We can do no more than our best to keep our doxastic houses in order. 5. The other Wolterstorff, we have seen, is an epistemic responsibilist. This Christian Scholar's Review 5Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ch. 15. 83makes him a reformed epistemologist with a twist, and a methodological pluralist in philosophy more generally. But the other Wolterstorff is also a practitioner of the methods of inquiry he defends-as indicated by the title of the other volume, Inquiring about God. He inquires into the nature of God as the fully historicized person he is. As a Christian, he is interested in philosophical theology that is not only internally coherent but also consistent with the broad themes of Christian Scripture. His practice of inquiry involves a complicated process of thinking through the implications of the classical concept of God and through the interpretation of Christian Scriptures in light of one another. In the next section, we will touch on some of the most significant results of Wolterstorff's theological inquiry. Before doing so, however, we should note briefly the way in which the practice itself pits him against another of the great challenges of traditional philosophy, a Kantian challenge to the possibility of this sort of theological inquiry. Where the Lockean challenge is to show that beliefs about God may be held responsibly, the Kantian challenge is to show that it is possible to have beliefs about God in the first place.6 Behind this challenge lies a general theory not about the proper conduct of the understanding, but about the admissible contents of thought. The rough outlines of the challenge are these: We can have beliefs about God only if we have ideas about God. We have only those ideas that satisfy some general criteria of admissible contents (here the details vary). The challenge is to show that the idea of God satisfies the general criteria, or to accept that, strictly speaking, we have no beliefs about God. Rather than meeting the challenge on its own terms, Wolterstorff again questions the terms of the challenge. His critique of the challenge this time around is much less sympathetic; there is no core insight he is interested in salvaging. One reason for this more uncompromising response is that theories of admissible contents are easy to come by. The best way to determine what are and are not possible objects of thought is not by theorizing about the human mind but by examining the actual content of one's own thought. For his own part, the other Wolterstorff is an unreconstructed realist about theological inquiry (and, indeed, about metaphysics generally). He says, forthrightly: "I myself, as a religious person, would stop thinking God-thoughts and cease using God-talk if I thought I was never thinking and speaking about God" (1:52). He thinks he is inquiring about God, and therefore in possession of beliefs about God. Since actuality proves possibility, he thinks it is possible to hold beliefs about God. It would therefore take a strong argument to persuade him that what he takes to be the case is impossible, and that he is not doing what he seems to be doing when he takes himself to be inquiring about God. Are there any such arguments? In a trio of essays that span the two volumes, The Other Wolterstorff-A Review Essay 6Wolterstorff takes care to note that the Kantian challenge is poorly named, since Kant himself was not, in the end, skeptical about the possibility of beliefs about God. Indeed, he notes that Kant himself was a practitioner of a certain kind of rational theology. See essays 2 and 3 in volume 1, and essay 2 in volume 2 for further discussion. 84 Wolterstorff patiently entertains the best reasons he can find to believe his mode of theological inquiry transgresses the boundaries of human thought and is therefore, despite appearances, impossible. In "Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?" he entertains reasons to think beliefs about God, in particular, are beyond the pale. In "The world ready-made" and "Does the role of concepts make experiential access to ready-made reality impossible?" he examines reasons for a much more general pessimism about our access to mind-independent reality. The details will grip professionals. Suffice it to say here that he finds all these arguments spectacular failures. The most these arguments show is that access to either mind-independent reality or the nature of God is impossible on certain theories of the admissible contents of thought. This is a good enough reason to Wolterstorff to look for better theories-in just the same way that the failure of the Lockean ideal to accommodate obvious cases of entitled belief was a good enough reason to develop a better theory of entitlement. The essays mentioned above touch on the very broadest outlines of what a better theory will look like. But a full-dress presentation of such an alternative is, at this point, one of the other Wolterstorff's unfinished projects. This is one reason I said above that the essays in these collections present systematic themes and not a system. 6. Wolterstorff's response to the Lockean and Kantian challenges clears the way for a practice of inquiry about God. His inquiry about God leads him to the last great challenge tackled in his essays, what we might call the Thomistic challenge. His response to this challenge also falls short of a system-in his own words, the response is "piecemeal and mostly negative." Even so, the essays comprising the heart of Inquiring about God (essays 5-10) are a lasting contribution. They present a sympathetic critique of the classical concept of God, which receives its most articulate expression in St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. The criticisms are motivated not by any theoretical misgivings about the classical concept but by a deep commitment to the message of the Christian Scriptures. Though these essays offer no systematic alternative, they are a powerful dissenting voice in the tradition of Christian philosophical theology. As Wolterstorff himself describes the situation in the introduction to Inquiring about God, he is committed in this series of essays to a particularly Christian practice of inquiry, a pattern of activity aimed at finding things out about God by consulting Christian Scriptures. He recognizes the complexity of the interpretive project involved in this practice, but thinks that there are nonetheless "pervasive patterns" in the scriptural story about who God is. One such pattern represents God as savior, acting in history, and specifically in the death and resurrection of Jesus, to redeem. This pattern of scriptural representation strongly suggests that God is involved as an agent in the events of human history and that God is equally Christian Scholar's Review 85affected by what transpires therein. He is similarly committed to the distinctly philosophical practice of finding things out about God by the natural light of reason. This too is a complicated business, but again patterns emerge. In particular there is an ancient line of reasoning in support of the following claim: there exists something on which all other things depend for their existence and properties but which does not itself depend on anything else either for its existence or its properties. Such a thing is a se (from itself), or possessed of aseity. The heart of the Thomistic challenge is to reconcile these two characterizations of God. The difficulty of the challenge comes from the domino-like consequences Aquinas draws from aseity. In outline form, the consequences are these: aseity leads to simplicity, which leads to immutability, which leads to impassibility and eternality. But it seems nothing impassible is affected by the events of human history, and nothing outside of time is an agent in the events of human history. Yet the savior described in the Christian Scriptures is affected by the events of human history and an agent in that chain of events. Therefore nothing impassible and eternal is the savior described in the Christian Scriptures. Wolterstorff is well aware of the strategies deployed from Aquinas forward to demonstrate the compatibility of eternality and saving action, impassibility and responsiveness to human sin. His critique of the classical concept of God turns on his case against these compatibilist strategies. His case against these strategies in "God Everlasting" and "Suffering Love" are justly renowned. The subtleties cannot be conveyed here, but the basic strategy is simple enough: show that there is some element of the biblical depiction of God's agency and passion that cannot reasonably be construed in the way required by the most promising compatibilist schemes. Wolterstorff allows, for example, that many of the things God is represented as doing in Scriptures may be such that doing those things implies no temporal ordering of events in the divine life. But he argues (see 1:150-153) that God's remembering and planning are not things God can do without some element of succession in the divine life. Yet, these are essential parts of what the redeeming God of Scriptures does. Wolterstorff's critique forces hard choices. One can resuscitate one of the compatibilist strategies. One can reject the literal truth of the scriptural depictions of God's actions and passions. One can dispute a link in the chain of consequences from aseity to eternality and impassibility. Or, lastly, one can replace the classical concept of aseity. Wolterstorff sees this last alternative as the only plausible option. His disagreement with the classical concept is all the way back at the beginning. It was a mistake, he says, to hold that God is not dependent on other things for some of the properties God has (see 1:15). A detailed systematic theology that concedes this aspect of the concept of aseity is another unfinished project broached in these essays. But the other Wolterstorff's inquiry about God is sufficiently well developed to make him an eloquent spokesperson for what I once heard him call "the other God." 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Language , identity and Meiteilon

Philosophy

Language,identity and Meiteilon Ningombam Bupenda Meitei (St.Stephen's College) Department of Philosophy ,University of Delhi Abstract Language and identity have played a significant role in shaping the modern nation-states. Though , in modern days, it is a result of the French Revolution and European Renaissance , the notion of identity and language if not vividly but also did exist in Athenian society. The paper makes an attempt to understand the notion of language and how and who determines a language differentiating from its dialects , and also captures the notion of identity. The paper journeys through with an understanding of the language-identity relation through some fundamentals of socio-linguistic and anthro-linguistic schools of thought. It also highlights a small case study on Meiteilon , the official language of the state of Manipur. Introduction Language and identity in today's socio-political world have become so interwoven that either of the two are not only complementary but also can not exist without the other as the notion of identity in modern world can not be sufficed without the notion of a language which signifies one's identity. Identity revealed through language is a modern concept born out of European Renaissance and French Revolution as language becomes not only a mere medium to communicate but a pragmatically important tool to control power through nation state, lingua franca in courts and high elitist societies besides running trade and national educational policies. Since the time of Hellenistic period when Greek is a language from linguistic coverage of the dialects of Athens , the evolution of a language either through convergence or divergence of dialects due to a change of socio-politico-cultural temporal world thereby making a possibility for modern languages like French , English , Chinese , Russian , Japanese of today to flourish 2 as not only a standard language for communication but also as a unique identity to assert their nationality in the modern world of nation states. The recognition of language and its nation state has become so necessary that in the present working scenario of the international political organizations of the world, the languages of a few nations which are powerful are only accepted as official languages of the organization. Hence, there is a close linkage between language and one's identity which is linked with political , social , economic , cultural equations besides an understanding resulted out of an academic research in the socio-linguistic and anthro-linguistic evolution of the language. The notion of language Language when discussed primarily means a language which is linguistically understood as "standard language" determined by a period of time in the time scale of evolution of languages. The definition or making or acceptance of one language as standard language is a complex activity as in doing so or even trying to make an attempt to do so , there would be many other vernaculars or dialects which are potentially strong enough or culturally and temporally matured enough to be linguistically accepted as standard language but instead are sidelined ,hence , the notion of language if discussed as the notion of standard language could only become meaningfully satisfied if the history of the growth of the language is also not discarded. Thus, history and language can not be made to fall apart from each other as two differently antagonistic poles. It is difficult to define what is language as today's French language could be unhesitatingly considered as a dialect of Romance by linguists who also do not normally accept the standard language of English as that which is given in OED (Oxford English Dictionary). Americans would be uncomfortable if their English is branded as American dialect ,instead they would accept their language to be called as New England accent or Southern accent but never as an American dialect because Americans use dialect to refer to low class or rural speech. Which English is to be considered as standard English is not merely an empirical question but also a socio-anthro-linguistic inquiry to know whether English spoken in London central or in Ireland or in Manchester is the standard one. Whether French is the standard language and patois as its dialect , who will decide it and how will it be done ? Structurally for a language to have its dialect is different from functionally a language has its dialects, as in the case of French dialects , they are structurally regional like Greek but not functionally like it. The structural making of dialects connotes the need of understanding the growth of convergence of the dialects to form the language but the understanding of the functional significance of the language carries a temporal political and social conditions which are also not alien to cultural practices and economic based innovations of changing the language styles either in terms of its spellings or pronunciations or accent morphologically and internally also such as syntax like word order in the case of Thai language having a SVO (subject + verb + object ) order after being heavily influenced by its colonial master of English .So, whether to accept the language spoken by the high elitist classes of a few in population from London metropolitan in the case of English or to accept a politically crafted and diplomatically tackled language like Malay instead of making Javanese to be the official language or the 3 national language of Indonesia , requires the understanding of a language to be acceptable or not in a society or nation. Thus , there is a form of matrix which is followed for a language to grow and the matrix exists in the form and the function of the language in terms of its selection followed by codification and in turn , considered for elaboration and acceptance. Even in the teachings of Buddha, Sanskrit was not used by him but Pali was used despite Sanskrit being an esoteric language meant for intellectuals because to communicate with the masses, he needed Pali and thus , it proves that language also needs acceptance which is the last stage of the said matrix form. Despite Hindi being the one of the official languages of India ,even today in the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India , the arguments and paper works are all done in English and even politically chosen, the first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru gave his Midnight speech of an independent India in English, signed the oath taking of the Prime Ministership in English but used Hindi to communicate with the masses and thus , it also shows that depending upon the acceptance of language by whom, the functionality of it also differs. The notion of language remains a complex inquiry to not only define but also assess as one's dialect in the past has become today's language and no one knows that today's language may also become tomorrow's dialect or vernacular. The notion of identity Identity whether to be understood as cultural identity or linguistically governed geographical regional identity creating isoglosses or political identity or macro sociological identity or religious identity or ethnic identity or economic class identity or high versus low class identity in terms of elitist class versus common masses or nation-state identity born out of French Revolution against the rule of feudalism and kingship, which also has gone against the kinship and rural village bonding of man , is a complex manifestation out of the intricate web of relationships of constraints such as political , economic , social , cultural and ideological variables conditioned by the changing time and space of the society ,nation and the world. To study such ever changing phenomenon by socio-linguists or anthro-linguists are though no sufficient to develop a holistic understanding of what an identity is but nevertheless, their attempt to de-codify the mystery of identity in today's modern world of politically rigid but economically porous nation states being backed by the facts of the human civilizations of the past, has made the study of identity and its revelation through language not only possible but also more easier. The notion of identity makes sensible when there is a concept of sameness of the speakers of the language while dealing among themselves and a concept of difference when they encounter an outsider 4 with a language different from theirs and hence , sameness and difference mark the vivid boundary to some extent of identity. Identity becomes an issue when determining a dialect to be a language or not and after the determination of it , one that becomes subordinate to the other becomes the dialect of the latter and hence, the latter becomes the language and the former ,the dialect of the latter. To build a nation-state also needs to have a national language not only for communication but also to govern the nation centrally by the state. The breakdown of the then Soviet Russia to smaller nations like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia , the struggle of Irish Republic from the United Kingdom , the conflict between Bantu and Nilotic tribes of Uganda , the partition of the British India into Pakistan and further Bangla speaking Bangladesh are the consequences of the changing temporal political identity conflicts. The creation of two official languages of Norway in the form of Norwegian influenced by Danish language spoken in Oslo and Nynorsk or New Norwegian spoken by rural people of the western part of Norway , is an example to understand the gravity of identity through one's language. It also reflects the notion of nationhood to have its own language to differentiate its nationals from other nations' but contrary to this , Switzerland has three languages and all of them come from outside the state of Switzerland and the similar case also can be found in Belgium where it has two languages from its neighbors , thus the notion of nationhood is also not necessarily to be governed only by one's own language meant for the nation from where the language must spring out . Despite having many colonies of the world being influenced by their former colonial masters such as English , Dutch and French , there are nations in the post colonial world after the world wars which have tried to de-educate the past education influenced by the colonial rulers and then to re-create and reeducate the masses particularly the children in schools and academia. Even , there is an attempt for an internal cleansing of language through state machinery by constitutionalising it , but the costs become the factor of decision for the state. Nations like Finland and Israel have started developing their languages seriously in 19 th and 20 th century respectively. The understanding of an assertion of one's identity is very crucial as it is the source of making one's dialect a language by subduing other dialects which may be capable of replacing the proposed language, thus identity plays an important role in shaping the life of one's language. Language – identity relation Having been made an attempt to understand both the notion of language and identity since from Athenian days to today's modern world of nation-states , it is analytical to comprehend a possible relation between language and identity and if the relation exists , how does the relation exist and why it has to exist ? 5 To answer the above question , it is essential to have an analytical logical argument asking a few more questions like , what has happened to the status of standard Dutch in Norway , whether Parisian French shall be accepted as the standard French , why is that the courts from Paris to Moscow use French at some point of time in the past , how strongly English and French have made influence to underdeveloped languages of their colonies which have become developed languages according to the yardstick of colonial rulers' mindset , why despite having elitist's influenced Javanese , Malay has been recognized as the official language of Indonesia and Sanskrit being kept as a language to understand Indonesian Indic culture , and why during the reign of King Ashoka , a multi-lingualism was practised . Understanding the questions above would mean to know some fundamentals of socio-linguistic and anthro-linguistic schools of thought out of which , some of them have been discussed here ,such as the notion of power , identification , practice , ideology , performance , authorization and illegitimation . Power is crucial to be used by the state as a machinery to constitute and legalise an authority or legitimacy for a language to flourish and grow with acceptance for which the acceptance is treated as a national obligation. Identification of a language to be the national language is significant for a nationstate to run efficiently and effectively . Practice of the language so identified by the power of the state through a constitutional mechanism ,is done through national educational systems , scientific institutions , academia and other intellectual activities like literary and cultural indoctrination besides creating a sense of literacy of the language both in written and spoken. Ideology is a word which has become functional to usage since the time of Karl Marx , the notion of ideology becomes the source of inspiration for the providers of the information and know how of the language and ideology is often controlled by the ruling elites who form or greatly influence the political class of the nation. Authorization of a language to be an official language may have suppressed so many other languages and other vernaculars and the process of authorization in modern nation-state is politically deeply calculated. By acknowledging the authorization of the language , there is an understanding of perceiving the remaining languages or underdeveloped languages in the eyes of the national language or vernaculars to be illegimate to be used as an official language or to make an impact to challenge the authorization of the authorized national language. . Thus , there is a close intertwined relationship between language and identity . The classic example of such a relationship is endorsed by the Indian Constitution in the form of creating Indian states based on linguistic states. The relationship has shown many optimistic developments and critical conflicts which also have become politically hostile in some issues in present modern day Republic of India 6 Meiteilon : a case study of language-identity relation Meiteilon is a language with script since a historical recording of royal kings in 33 A.D. from Cheitharol Kumbaba ( Cheitharon Kumpapa , in early Meiteilon pronounciation ) . The language spoken by Meiteis since history known through writings ,is also a state governmental language of Manipur besides being a lingua franca of all the communities whether tribals or non-tribals such as Nepali and even outsiders ( those who are not the indigenous people of Manipur ) who have come to do small business and trading in Imphal such as Marwaris and Punjabi Sikhs , etc. Meiteilon as once called but nowadays usually replaced by another word 'Manipuri' which appears to be a synonym, is again caught in a political net which is further complicated by today's evolving social conflicts in the state. The argument is, if linguistically followed in a field of academics, then 'Meiteilon' is ought to be the best possible word to symbolize in letters as the language spoken by the people and the particular people who originally have been speaking the language which is Meiteilon are Meiteis and thus , they being the original speakers who are also speaking the same language as of today shall without any doubt be given a status of coining the name of their own language and if that is accepted, then it is expected to have no problem when the language is called 'Meiteilon' instead of 'Manipuri' which is the name recognized by the Constitution of India in its 8 th schedule of modern Indian languages as it stands today. The identity of Meiteis in particular which has been diffused with the arrival of Hindu religion and the change of Meitei script to Bengali script by the royal imposition of the then King Pamheiba of Manipur who got converted into Hinduism (Chaitanya's school of Vaishnavism) in 1717 under the influence of Shantidas Adhikari also named as Shantidas Gosai through burning of ancient Meitei texts in the royal palace in 1729 , has been made to revert back to the old Meitei script in a socio-cultural revivalism even to the extent of burning books written in Bengali script by burning Manipur State Central Library ,Imphal (which is next to the Raj Bhawan of Manipur) which was considered to be the source of books predominantly written in Bengali script. Just like Hebrew being made to come back to life again anew by the Jews , Meiteis have projected their old lost script to be re-enlivened to assert the sense of identity which is the identity which has been recorded in written history for almost two thousands years and the assertion of such identity has come in an intricate relation with language namely Meiteilon. Thus , Meiteilon which is also spoken in Assam , Tripura ( the language used in the then royal court of Tripura kingdom ) , Burma and Bangladesh besides Manipur for centuries, has become an unshakable identity for the Meiteis in particular today. The role of literary activities and cultural and religious practices in Meiteilon besides making it compulsory in curriculum in state run schools and CBSE schools except Kendriya Vidyalayas , opening its research and doctoral level studies in Indian universities and also by changing the script from Bengali to Meitei script, the Meiteis and the state of Manipur today can not be considered to be not proud 7 of the language called Meiteilon. Having known the historical and social facts, it would be premature to judge the assertion of a Meitei language or Meiteilon as merely a political make-up , instead the reprojection of the language is to be viewed differently from viewing the Meitei as people. Often, it is found that more than criticizing a writing, the writer which is the personality gets criticized and hence, the desire to criticize the personality of the writer overshadows the expected criticism of the contents of the writing ,such similar intention could though prejudicedly be posited but the real dilemma lies in hairsplitting the difference between criticizing a language and its speakers , as one's dislike of the speakers does not necessarily and sufficiently entail the dislike of their language used because that would encourage the building up of illogical argumentation to superficial appearance of deception based on subjective interpretation instead of analyzing what the truth given by the language per se really is. Conclusion The study of the language and identity relation clearly shows the intricate and complex equation which is shared between the two and to solve such a complex equation, there is a need to understand the fundamentals of the socio-linguistic and anthro-linguistic schools of thought which are governed by the conditionalities of variants like social , political , economic , cultural ,etc. which are also time and space bound in the discourse of human civilization. References 1) Haugen, E. (2009). Dialect, Language, Nation1. American anthropologist, 68(4), 922-935. 2) Foley, W. A. (1997). Anthropological linguistics: an introduction. Wiley-Blackwell ,389-416. 3) Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004). Language and identity. A companion to linguistic anthropology, 369-394. 4) Parrat, S. N. A. (2005). The Court Chronicle of the Kings of Manipur (the Chaitharon Kumpapa English Translation). 5) Abbi, A., Gupta, R. S., & Kidwai, A. (2001). 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