Burke’s fourth clause is that man is “Separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making” (13). Burke explains that man’s “natural condition” is his “sheer animality” (13). I think this is an insight that is becoming an evermore prescient as man devises and “moves himself into” some his most abstract tools. As Burke seems to suggest with this passage, tools aren’t just things to pick up and use, they are actually things to inhabit. Burke uses the example of the strange feeling of panic experienced by New Yorkers during a black out. The darkened street, utterly routine in the country, became a strange place haunted with danger in the city.

Later, Burke says something interesting about the tool-ness of language. That is, he doesn’t exactly believe in it, which, as he notes, is an unusual way of looking at things among academic types (14). The usual way of looking at things, Burke argues, is to say that language is a type of tool, that is a tool that involves both making and thinking about making (e.g. meta-analysis). Therefore, tool-making is somehow prior to language. Burke argues that this is not the proper way of looking at things, and the proof is our own processes of trying to figure out this paradox. In order to do it, that is, to think about thinking about thinking we have to make a definition. Defining is a primary attribute of symbolizing, not an act of toolmaking.

While I definitely see Burke’s point here, I wonder if his problem is really with priority or with instrumentality, which he gets into on page 15:

“Those who begin with the stress upon tools proceed to define language itself as a species of tool. But through instrumentality is an important language, we could not properly treat it as the essence of language. To define language simply as a species of tool would be like defining metals merely as a species of tools. Or like defining sticks and stones simply as primitive language.” (15)

While I understand his point about defining language as SIMPLY a tool, I think the act of defining as such is a function of a terministic screen…and defining it as more than that is also a function of such a screen. If you are looking for “toolness” or “action” you are likely to find that. I guess my question is, what makes Burke’s argument superior, aside from our preference for something more than instrumentality?