Terministic Screens

Terministic screens are reasonable when speaking on the subject of symbols. Language, as a system of culturally recognized symbols, must necessarily include a wide variety of screens or the symbols could not stand for their definitions. The act of comparing two things must inevitably minimize their differences; the act of distinguishing things inevitably performs the opposite. Any symbolic act (which seems to be a definitive aspect of language for Burke) will rearrange reality to suit its purposes, to justify its intention. What seems weird to me (and maybe it's because I missed something) is just how relativistic it truly is. About the only thing he can do to save this theory from "the abyss" is to say that, even if these compositions and divisions are illusions, we must respect them as human beings in order to go about our lives. He states, "I'm even willing to grant that the distinction between things moving and persons acting is but an illusion. All I would claim is that, illusion or not, the human race cannot possibly get along with itself on the basis of any other intuition." (53)

I don't even know how that explanation is supposed to save it from relativism because anyone flirting with relativism will say the same thing: that it is necessary and that life is sometimes just that complex or the origins are just that obscure. The only other route out of relativism he leaves readers with in the essay is the blunt fact that no one person (himself included) and no one particular philosophic school invented the phenomenon of these terministic screens. He believes that it is "grounded in a kind of 'collective revelation,' from away back." (53) Could he not be using his own terministic screens, the ones that would support his theory, when he views history in this light? Maybe he is only offering these things up as a way of making sense of the world around him and not as a basis for a theory but I can't really believe that since this is an excerpt from an entire book which he hints at developing in later chapters.

One other thing I thought was interesting was the example of the different filters of light changing the understanding/perception of a picture. I immediately thought of John Locke's "From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." I specifically thought of the example "instance, liquor" where highly reputable doctors all argued about liquor in different terms (almost as if it was a different substance under each new circumstance). The issue for Locke was the idea of language imperfectly signifying things. I guess it made me wonder whether termnistic screens should be viewed in a strict sense of signification. These screens "reflect, select, and deflect" reality but can that be tied to issues with signification? If it can be, is symbolic action valid or would this, too, be another arbitrary characteristic of language?