ANTO ́NIA SZABARItian humanism upon which Erasmus staked his studious life and his public reputation
could only exist in a precarious balance between criticizing conventional religion and
knowing when to stop. In Erasmus’s view, divulging one’s convictions ‘‘before unlearned
masses... would cause great scandal [magno cum offendiculo diceretur]’’ because the
uneducated cannot be expected to master moderation and linguistic control.^11 Unlike
Luther, Erasmus does not find religiously based violent language justifiable. In his view,
Luther’s manifest inability and unwillingness to maintain his speech within the limits of
urbanitasdestroys his credit: ‘‘Very many things prevented me from believing it [i.e., the
authenticity of Luther’s message], but among the principal reasons were the bitterness of
your pen, your unbridled urge to hurl insults, the utterly scurrilousbons mots, the saucy
moues and mocks which you employ against all who dare to open their mouths against
your dogmas.’’^12 Erasmus advocates an ethical ideal of public speech that consists in mod-
eration and the avoidance of injurious language (although he found controlled satire
acceptable),^13 and Luther’s rhetorical practice stretches the limits of classical and humanist
rhetoric to the point where its ideal of a moderate disagreement becomes impossible.
Erasmus stages the debate with Luther inHyperaspistes Ias a defeat suffered not by him
personally but by Christian humanism: ‘‘Your courage, Luther, has brought us to an era
when we are prohibited not only from speaking badly about Christ but even from speak-
ing well of him.’’^14
Erasmus’s resolute adherence to the rhetorical ideal of sophisticated self-control did
not permit him to describe Luther’s bent toward excess, his ‘‘double tongue,’’ effectively,
nor, for that matter, effectively to counter it. Both Luther’s practice and present-day
reflections on linguistic injury, however, confirm that, while norms can be established,
laws and rules laid down to curb the injurious effect of language, verbal injury implies a
flexible, situational, and interpersonal verbal act whose impact cannot be contained by
norms or laws.^15
Luther with Austin?
Austin’s idea of the performative has a constative kernel, as Shoshana Felman argues in
The Scandal of the Speaking Body. This constative kernel has to do with a metaphysical or
theological presupposition that is best illustrated by the condition of the felicitous prom-
ise, that is, the speaker’s corresponding intention and the continuity of this intention into
the future act after the promise: ‘‘every promise is above all thepromise of consciousness,
insofar as it postulates a noninterruption, continuity between intention and act.’’^16 The
theory of the performative reveals a second presupposition as well, that of the transparent
representation of this intention: ‘‘the ‘I’ who is understood by Austin to be the presump-
tion of illocutionary utterances is presumed to be a pure consciousness, a will, an inten-
tion, cognitive content, adequately and transparently represented by language in time.’’^17
PAGE 126126.................16224$ $CH4 10-13-06 12:34:32 PS