Humans Cannot Step Outside of Language (October 2025 Edition)

We live, think, and perceive within an invisible membrane(or shell) called “language.”
Language is not merely a tool of expression—it is the interface through which humanity communicates with its world.
This essay traces the inseparable bond between language and human existence, drawing upon the reflections of Kant, Freud, and Uexküll.

E. Kant stated that space and time are the pure forms of human intuition. He distinguished the object of sensuous intuition as “phenomenon,” and reasoned that if something appears to our sensibility as a phenomenon, there must be something that appears behind it. He called this “the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich).” However, for Kant, the thing-in-itself is not an empirical object but a limiting concept (Grenzbegriff) that points to the outer boundary of our cognitive framework. It is not something we can experience directly. Thus, the “thing-in-itself” functions as a linguistic boundary line that gives shape to what cannot be spoken, delimiting the field of our discourse about the world.

S. Freud, on the other hand, discovered something hidden beneath human consciousness. He named it “the unconscious (das Unbewusste).” The unconscious, as Freud conceived it, cannot be directly apprehended by consciousness, but manifests its traces in language, dreams, and behavior. As J. Lacan later observed, “the unconscious is structured like a language.” The unconscious itself, therefore, emerges only within the linguistic order.

Humans, even when nothing is visible before their eyes, have conceived of “air” as something that exists. They imagined that even if the air were removed, “vacuum” would remain, and even without vacuum, “field” would still exist, as physics has taught us. By naming even the invisible, we have come to grasp it as something that exists.

Once we learn the words “thing-in-itself (Ding an sich),” “unconscious (das Unbewusste),” or “field,” we cannot think about these matters without employing those very words.

We might then say: the “thing-in-itself” is the trace of a limit indicated by the phrase “thing-in-itself”; the “unconscious” is the domain that becomes intelligible only when it is designated as “the unconscious”; and the “field” in physics is a construct located within the empirical world only through the linguistic act of naming. In other words, these entities appear only through language: language does not so much create objects as it defines what can count as an object in the first place.

Modern humans live surrounded by every kind of artificial object. The control of these objects depends upon the “names,” that is, the words attached to them. Even in the polar regions or deep within the Amazon rainforest, everything we see, hear, and feel is labeled with words; even an unknown creature, once called an “unidentified organism,” immediately becomes part of the human Umwelt (J. J. Uexküll). As Uexküll demonstrated, every organism lives within its own Umwelt—its subjective world—and the human Umwelt is a world composed and organized by language itself.

Thus, all that is effectively real to human beings—that is, all that can be recognized or manipulated—is nothing other than language and its network. Humans are beings who cannot escape the shell of language.

Yet this idea raises a major question: if humankind is imprisoned within this linguistic shell, why has it not perished from fatal errors, but instead flourished?

According to recent findings in molecular anthropology, Homo sapiens appeared in Africa around 200,000 to 150,000 years ago, and left Africa about 70,000 years ago to spread across Eurasia. We do not know precisely when humans acquired and began to use language, but it was likely quite early. Thus, assuming that humans began using some form of language at an early stage, it follows that for nearly 200,000 years, humanity has survived and prospered without extinction. During this long span, there seems to have been no major morphological change—no evolutionary divergence great enough to form new subspecies.

Meanwhile, the Earth alternated between warm and cold periods, with transgressions and regressions of the sea, subjecting life to drastic environmental changes. Physically fragile humans, lacking robustness in body, survived not through biological evolution but by cooperating through language and creating tools. Clothing and shelters protected them from heat and cold; fire provided warmth, cooked and preserved food, and offered light after sunset. By inventing objects and tools unnecessary to other species, humans enhanced their environmental fitness.

These were objects inserted between body and environment as protective shells—interfaces that shielded the fragile human body. Although these interfaces appear material, they are meaningful and effective only for beings endowed with language. Thus, they are, in a profound sense, linguistically constituted. Here, language functions not merely as a means of expression but as a membrane through which humans communicate with their environment.

Humanity, spreading across the globe, evolved this highly malleable network of language and its interfaces, adapting them to different individuals, groups, and environments. The current diversity of languages and ways of life is the outcome of this evolution. In the end, what has sustained human flourishing is not bodily strength, but the capacity to continually reshape this “malleable linguistic membrane.” Humans are prisoners of language, yet at the same time, creators who ceaselessly transform its very shell.