[Language and ethics]

The author proposes the hypothesis that there exists an essential link between language and ethics, beyond the obvious fact that the postulates of ethics have to be expressed in a verbal way. He chooses two ways for demonstrating his hypothesis: a phenomenological description of the substantive element of language, which is the word, and then an analysis of both the philo- and the ontogenetic origin of ethical experience. Making evident the essential characteristics of language, among which it is appropriate to outline its capacity to give existence to things (as it is deduced from the analysis of some poetic texts), the author gets to unveil its deep ethic sense in the religious word: gods show themselves through the revealed word, and men address to them with their prayers. Gods give norms that imitate afterwards. The second way allows the author to demonstrate that the step from nature to culture is done through the norm, and this is basically verbal; but at the same time it is possible to demonstrate how the word is found in the base of the individual ethical experience, in that very particular phenomenon that is the voice of the conscience. In short, language is in its essence ethical, and the ethical experience is indissolubly bound to the verb.