What Is Before Thought?

The “pre-rational” is literally that which is before reason. It is not “irrational” simply because it is technically not rational; it is not relativistic rather than absolute; it is not “primitive” thinking, if we understand primitive thinking to be somehow inferior to “developed” thinking. The pre-rational is simply that which is within us, that suggests we do or say or express something; but it is that something which exists within us before we have assigned words to it. We may casually refer to it as “a feeling” in the same sense that we say “I have a feeling that...”; but these feelings are not emotions per se, rather they are only accompanied by emotions. Indeed, if the pre-rational, pre-expressed thoughts were not accompanied by emotions, we might not even know that we had them. And even though we do, the relevance of these judgments before judgment, these expressions before expression, these thoughts before conceptualization, rationalization, or thinking – the relevance of what I call the pre-rational – is hardly understood or recognized whatsoever. What is not recognized is that, in actuality, these non-emotional “feelings” are the ultimate basis for all true thoughts, all genuine statements, and all virtuous deeds.

Loosely put, the pre-rational is the feeling before the reason; and just as it can be described as occurring before reason, it exists also before language, before any rational conceptualization whatsoever. In this way we can definitely affirm that there is a "substance", an under-standing, or a foundation, upon which language rests – and it is upon this pre-linguistic foundation that all meaning is situated, such that there is meaning outside of language after all.