Ineffable: back to the source of language and consciousness

Carta, Stefano

2025-01-01

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Abstract

This article tries to define what is the nature and the origin of the phenomenological experience of the “ineffable.” Starting from the etymology of the word, it differentiates different kind of spoken languages. The one related to the ineffable being related to expressing something particularly important, or even to prophesizing. The relationship between semiosis and the lateralization of the brain is considered to define the role of the right hemisphere for implicit knowledge, which is one of the characteristics of the ineffable. The second, fundamental characteristic is found in its anoetic origin, phylogenetically common to non-self-reflectively conscious animals. Hence, the origin of the experience of the ineffable is found in the irruption of the phylogenetically ancestral layer of anoetic consciousness belonging to the collective unconscious, into metanoetic, reflective consciousness.