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Dictionary Lesson (Free verse) by Dovina

When I said, “I love you,” and soon realized its reciprocal, “You love me,” and its result, “We are in love,” and much later, with its contrary, “I don’t love you,” and finally its opposite, “I hate you,” and when, after a long hiatus, its many reverses blured into, “I have no feeling for you,” I realized my dictionary is a history, written ahead of fact, a compendium of devolution.

-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 21-Nov-04/12:46 PM
"But I agree that the poem presents an appearance of relating philosophy, as it applies to word definitions, to felt life."

The way philosophy applies to word definitions is: It takes everyday words which are only used in certain sorts of situations, and tries to determine the "real" definition of those words, such that the definition covers all possible situations and avoids all ambiguity and contradiction.

Of course this endeavour is doomed to buncombe, because most everyday words don't have (or need) a precise definition. Insisting that they must and trying to find out what it is is like insisting on knowing what colour Winston Smith's underpants are. There is no answer, and there won't ever be until George Orwell rises from his grave and writes a prequel to 1984 where Winston frequently appears in his underpants for an hilarious assortment of reasons.

At any rate, what has all this got to do with "relating philosophy, as it applies to word definitions, to felt life"?

And for Christ's sake, use linebreaks.




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