Ostensible Definition
Posted July 27, 2010, 20:07 ET Comments Off
St Augustine thought that language was learned by ostensible definition. (Pointing) “This is a table, that a chair.” But how can complicated concepts, such as the state, be taught in that manner. I used to think this impossible. Now I am less sure, after re-reading DeGaulle’s memoirs.
The greatest of political autobiographies begins “I have always had a certain idea of France.” When he returned to Paris, after the liberation, on his first day back, DeGaulle visitited the Ministry of Defence. It was just as he had left it, on June 10, 1940. The curtains, the chairs, nothing had changed. The telephone on the side table, still there. Even the names on the telephone were the same. There was only one thing missing: the state. “It was for me to re-establish it.”
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