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version seven. http://demongin.org |
De Institutio
On instruction and the nature of things instructive.
Monday, 2004-09-20 | Classic Gin, Language, Philosophy
The word Instructive is an adjective.
When it modifies a noun, it asserts that the noun in question conveys (or is capable of conveying) knowledge or information; that the noun is edifying or capable of producing intellectual (moral, spiritual, etc.) improvement.
As the adjective in question can modify any noun, any person, place or thing, we are capable of describing almost anything as Instructive. 'The sandwich artist was, I reckon, instructive,' for example, is a valid prepositional statement in the same way that 'the anxiety over the proper transmission of oral tradition in Tertullian's description of Baptism in North Africa during the third century AD is instructive' is.
Inanimate nouns can also be Instructive. For example, the prepositional statement 'I found the luminescence of the mineral growth instructive' is also a correct usage of the adjective.
The adjective, like most adjectives, can easily be transformed into an adverb with the addition of the suffix 'ly.' For example, 'my time spent bound and gagged in the trunk passed instructively.' This usage, in my estimation is to be avoided, however, as it imputes the ability to convey knowledge to an event peripheral to the original subject rather than the subject itself and, in doing so, lessens the impact of the concept. In the above example, it was not the time spend bound and gagged that was Instructive, but rather, the manner in which the time passed. The semantic difference is slight, but it is present. Something about the way the time was spent was instructive and the actual time a prisoner in a trunk was not.
The adjective from which we began as well as its adverbial form proceed, of course, from the noun Instruction--the noun that describes the conveyance of knowledge or information.
Finally, to take Instruction from some person, place or thing is to find him or it Instructive. The relation to the subject to the object here is of utter importance: one who seeks to provide instruction may not be found instructive by his subjects. The subjects, so far as instruction is concerned, have the final say (in a paradoxical manner of speaking).
When Aristotle, in his Rhetoric describes 'the defects of our hearers,' this is the sort of phenomenon he is describing. As we posit ourselves as instructors (those who convey knowledge or information) we are always at the mercy of our auditors for with them rests the validity of that which we have posited.
Instructors who are not found by their auditors or readers to be instructive are not what they have claimed to be, simply because their auditors or readers withhold basic assent. Does the fault rest, as Aristotle argues, with the hearer or the speaker?
Language is salient among the agonies.
