The Illusion of Belief and The Question of Language: on the Problem of the Sanctity of Words

Abstract

This study examines the structural relationship between language and systems of belief, exploring how language evolves from a communicative medium into a symbolic horizon that generates and stabilizes belief. The central hypothesis argues that belief is not an autonomous entity but a symbolic effect produced within linguistic structures, particularly through the mechanisms of naming and negation, which transform absence into an object of discourse—and eventually into an object of faith. The research adopts a dual methodological framework. Anthropologically, it traces the emergence of language within contexts of tool-use, ritual, and social cooperation, interpreting belief as a product of symbolic interaction rather than the manifestation of pre-linguistic metaphysical forces. Philosophically, it approaches language as an ontological condition for the appearance of meaning itself, drawing on insights from Husserl, Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, and Derrida. The study concludes that the sacredness of words is not an intrinsic property, but the outcome of linguistic and social processes that intensify meaning and solidify metaphor into conviction. In this sense, doctrinal illusion is understood not as mere falsity, but as a condensed linguistic effect that participates in shaping both mental and social reality.