A Voltairian Retort to the Language Games

Écrasez l’infâme!

I must confess, my dear philosopher, that your labyrinth of words has produced nothing but intellectual mist where clarity is most needed. What use are these elegant paradoxes when men are being imprisoned for speaking truth to power? While you debate whether freedom is a “language game,” real tyrants use real weapons against real bodies.

Your assertion that political concepts are merely moves in a game betrays a dangerous naiveté. When a despot crushes dissent, builds prisons for those who dare to think, and confiscates property without cause, he is not playing with words! He is exercising brutal power that is painfully concrete to its victims.

This linguistic sleight of hand — reducing politics to grammar — serves only those who wish us to remain confused while they act decisively. How convenient that when faced with oppression, we should contemplate the definition of “oppression” rather than fighting against it! What comfort your paradoxes must bring to every petty dictator!

You ask: “Where is the measuring stick of legitimacy? Is it something that can be pulled out and shown to anyone?” I answer: Yes! It is found in the cries of the tortured, in emptied treasuries, in broken laws, in arbitrary arrests. These are not matters of grammar but of human suffering.

Let us speak plainly. A government that protects the basic rights of its citizens, that allows them to speak without fear, that administers justice impartially, and that uses public funds for public good — this is legitimate. One that does not — this is illegitimate. No philosophical puzzle here! Only common sense, which seems uncommonly rare among philosophers.

Your claim that political problems are “grammatical” rather than factual would be merely amusing if it weren’t so dangerous. Tell the hungry that their starvation is a grammatical problem! Tell those fleeing persecution that they simply misunderstand the language game of “justice”!

Écrasez l’infâme! — “Crush what is infamous!” — not by contemplating whether “infamous” has a stable meaning across language games, but by recognizing evil and standing against it.

Your final paradox — that politics demands speech where one perhaps should be silent — reveals the bankrupt nature of this philosophy. In politics, silence is consent. Your elegant inability to speak clearly on matters of basic justice does not make you profound; it makes you complicit.

I would rather be clearly wrong than so obscurely “right” that no practical action can follow from my words. The first duty of thought is clarity. The second is utility. Your linguistic puzzles achieve neither. They beautify confusion while the world burns.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​