Middle Voice

2000 words, 8 minute read

According to Benjamin Whorf, language is a record of how we see the world, and conversely, language conditions us to see the world in a particular way: a paradigmatic example of a non-linear, auto-reinforcing process.

Language is distilled from experience, but it also helps define what constitutes ‘an experience’ in our minds and it prompts us to label and sort experiences according to certain pre-set parameters. 

For example, someone attending Super Bowl LX might describe the event as an ‘experience’ and then proceed to talk about it using terms regularly associated with Pro Football games: e.g. entertainment value, strategic acumen, proficient execution, crowd participation, quality of concessions. Events help us break down the laminar inflow of time into discrete (or quasi-discrete) quanta which we call ‘experiences’. 

Take English, for example. When we speak, most of the verbs we use are either active or passive. We call that the “voice” of the verb. In an active/passive voiced language, we are always doing something to someone (or something) or someone (or something) is doing it to us: eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But it’s life as we know it, or rather, it is life as language has conditioned us to know it; we’re living it: it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Lex Talionis (‘eye for an eye’), literally the law of retaliation, is the paradigmatic expression of such an active/passive world view. 

Scotty broke the vase: active voice. Scotty is called the ‘subject’ and my poor Ming is called the ‘object’ of his action. This construction first separates Scotty from what he’s done. Scotty’s action itself assumes the status of an object; it is something that belongs to Scotty: “his action”. 

Scotty acted, and the vase ‘reacted’ (by shattering). The flow is one-directional: it’s a vector. Alternatively, the vase was broken by Scotty: passive voice. It’s the same event but this time seen from the point of view of the victim, my artifact. 

The vase is now the subject, but the action is still vectored. The active and passive voices appear as opposites but in fact they both communicate the exact same information. They describe the same event in terms of the same categories: e.g. the age and value of the vase, the level of Scotty’s contrition. All that changes is the point of view of the narrator.

So our world, as it is constructed for us by our language, consists primarily of ‘events’ that can be adequately described using active/passive voiced verbs. This forms the basis of the logos we impose on the world and that the world reflects back to us as language. You could say that we create our experience of the world in the image and likeness of our language.

In reality, however, ‘happenings’ that neatly fit the active/passive paradigm are rare, possibly even non-existent. IRL action is rarely, if ever, entirely one directional: 

“I hit the nail” is actually an abstract simplification of a much more complex process. When my hammer connects with the nail head, the nail resists, then moves (hopefully), and the hammer recoils, sending vibrations down my arm…and that’s assuming I didn’t also hit my thumb in the process.

But does such language serve our purposes? You bet it does! It’s hard to imagine a Golden Gate Bridge without it. Our language essentially reduces Being to a schematic. 

But does such a language actually meet our needs? Not so much! Syntax unravels the unity of Being and displays it like a collection of butterflies pinned to the wall of a natural history museum. The fact is that every real action is processional and reciprocal; it affects the so-called subject as well as the object. 

In the example of Scotty and the vase, that reality is somewhat trivial and can probably be safely ignored…that is, unless I accept Scotty’s explanation that the vase jumped off the shelf and attacked him, breaking in the process. And why not? The very same thing happened at Billy’s house just last week. 

Now imagine a third class of explanation: Nothing happened! The vase just fell off of the mantle and onto the floor, shattering in the process. We have trouble swallowing this scenario even though we know that the force of gravity, imperceptible earth tremors, and the rumble of a truck passing by can all lead to such catastrophes… and that’s not even to mention butterflies flapping their wings in Borneo.

‘Either Scotty broke the vase or the vase broke Scotty’. We are instinctively (i.e. linguistically) programmed to accept such a theory because it fits snugly into our active/passive template. Notice (above) that we don’t even have an economical way to state the third option. 

But what if we’re trying to model a chemical reaction, or worse, a quantum mechanical process, or even worse, some sort of ecological phenomenon? How do we describe these events using just active and passive voiced verbs?

We can’t. At best, we can approximate clumsily in simplified situations. “Two hydrogen atoms each lend an electron to one oxygen atom; or an oxygen atom borrows an electron from each of two hydrogen atoms.” (You call water!)

When we get into even more complex interactions, language breaks down completely, and we have to resort to diagrams (e.g. Feynman diagrams) or equations or shoulder shrugs. Now imagine the difficulty of modeling complex human relationships using just active and passive voice verbs! The War of the Roses is our paradigm.

And politics? Needless to say, we understand the world in terms of us and them.  We conceptualize social change as class war. If someone has something then they must have acquired it at the expense of someone else.

Of course, this is not the way things really work. Certainly, there are occasions where clear division is called for and there are plenty of examples of ill gotten gain but, believe it or not, these are not the norm. In the main, we are symbiotic creatures. We do better (economically) when the land does better (the Grail Legend) and the land does better when we do good (ecologically).

But how could things be any different? Many older languages had a third voice, along with the active and passive voices, which linguists call the Middle Voice. The middle voice is ideally suited to model situations where relationships are between equals and where action is reciprocal. It is at least possible that the middle voice preceded the active/passive voices in the evolution of Indo-European languages.

Modern linguists struggle to understand the middle voice. Conditioned by their own active/passive logoi, they want to understand this verb form as somewhere along the active/passive axis. Hence, the term ‘middle’.

In fact, the middle voice has nothing to do with its active/passive cousins. It’s a completely different way of viewing the world. The middle voice verb form describes an action that impacts both subject and object simultaneously. Every subject is a co-subject…and an object; every object is a co-object…and a subject.

The active voice implies a Future (post-act), and the passive voice a Past (pre-act), but the middle voice refers only to the Present. The active/passive voice sees the world from the outside; the middle voice sees it from the inside: objectivity vs. subjectivity.

Imagine what our world would look like if we viewed it solely in terms of reciprocal relations and omnidirectional events! Would that change the world itself? Or would it just enable us to see it as it really is? Or both? We’d see the world through a different filter, and we’d most likely act quite differently as a result. 

How do we talk about love using only active/passive verb forms? The best we can come up with is something lame like, “Mary and Paul are in love with each other.” This turns love into a static state rather than a raging fire. The middle voice, on the other hand, is ready-made to describe the relationship between Mary and Paul in a way that does it justice.

Thus, we have two opposing world views: an active/passive view and a middle voice view. One sees the world in terms of will, struggle, domination, and power; the other sees it in terms of mutuality. One is the syntax of war, the other of peace; one cause and effect, the other evolution. One is the syntax of past and future, the other of the present.

Unfortunately, however, most Western languages have lost their middle voice. Where the middle voice has been retained (e.g. Icelandic), it has been forced to co-exist with its active/passive cousins, and it no longer conveys the strong sense of reciprocity it once did.

The poverty of an active/passive voiced language and the lack of a strong middle voice alternative is not just a linguistic problem; it’s a philosophical problem and ultimately a theological problem. One way to understand ‘the Christian project’ is as an attempt to reintroduce middle-voice consciousness to the world. 

Of course, I am not suggesting that the New Testament authors, much less Jesus himself, were budding linguists. Yet they understood that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way folks viewed the world and, with incredible insight, they sought to change that view.

When you view events and the actions that constitute them in terms of unequal, unidirectional power relations, it becomes easy to abuse or exploit your neighbor...and impossible to love her as yourself. Even today, certain sub-cultures will brand you a sucker or a wimp or a ‘goodie two shoes’ if you don’t take advantage of the weaker folks in your orbit. “It’s just business!”

Active/passive voiced languages conflict with values like justice and kindness. It is difficult to inculcate an ethic of justice, reciprocity and love in folks who view the world according to the active/passive paradigm. Could ‘bad language’ be humanity’s ‘original sin’? Is the Second Commandment just an extension of the first. 

Christianity, especially in its early stages, sought to replace the active/passive world view with the world view that we are calling ‘middle voice consciousness’. In the Lord’s Prayer, for example, we read, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 12 centuries later, Francis of Assisi built on this insight: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

Whatever we do, we do to ourselves to the same degree and in the same way and at the same time as we do it to others. That goes for positive actions like forgiveness and negative actions like violence. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Why? Because in middle voice consciousness, your neighbor is yourself! 

David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.

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