Philosophy of language Books

Book SynopsisA Stanford University Press classic.

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Book SynopsisThis volume looks at how intonation varies among speakers and societies in terms of age, sex and region, how it interacts with grammar and how it has been invoked to explain certain questions of logic.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I. Variation: 1. Age and sex 2. Dialect and language Part II. Intonation and Grammar: Clauses and Above: 3. Crosscurrents 4. Demarcation 5. Questions 6. Nonquestions 7. Dependent clauses and other dependencies Part III. Intonation and Grammar: Below the Clause: 8. Accent and morphology 9. Accent in higher units 10. Exclamations and interjections 11. 'Well' Part IV. Intonation and Logic: 12. Is there an intonation of 'contrast'? 13. Accent and entailment 14. accent and denial 15. An intonation of factuality? 16. A practical case: broadcast prosody Appendixes Reference matter.

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Book SynopsisDistinguished by its range of material and depth of coverage, this book offers sustained readings of some of the most important (and difficult) statements on language in modern European philosophy. Among its contributions to the literature on the authors treated is the single farthest-reaching interpretation available of Heidegger's On the Way to Language.

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Book SynopsisLanguage and culture are often seen as unique characteristics of human beings. This work examines the neurological evolution of our emotional repertoire and implications for current social behaviour and argues that our ability to use a wide array of emotions evolved long before spoken language.Trade Review“Turner’s thesis—the primacy of biologically based emotions as the foundation of human social bonding—is intellectually stimulating, and scholars in many fields not only in the social sciences but also in biology and the humanities, will want to read this book. . . . The writing style is clear and engaging.”—Larry Arnhart, Northern Illinois UniversityTable of ContentsCONTENTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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Book Synopsis“Speech is a way of tearing out a meaning from an undivided whole.” Thus does Maurice Merleau-Ponty describe speech in this collection of his important writings on the philosophy of expression, composed during the last decade of his life.

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Book SynopsisA major work in the philosophy of language by the celebrated French thinker Jacques Derrida. The book's two essays, Limited Inc and Signature Event Context, constitute key statements of the Derridean theory of deconstruction

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Book SynopsisEugene Gendlin's contribution to the theory of language is the focus of this collection of essays Each essay is followed by a comment from Gendlin himself. The work investigates how concepts grow out of experience, and compares Gendlin's work to that of Wittgenstein, Dilthey and Heidegger.

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Book SynopsisWhile the issue of language has become a key fulcrum of continental philosophy since the twentieth century, Immanuel Kant has been overlooked as a thinker whose breadth of insight has helped to spearhead this advance. The Linguistic Dimension of Kantâs Thought remedies this historical gap by gathering new essays by distinguished Kant scholars.

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Book SynopsisNancy Shawcross places Barthes' thought on photography in the context of his developing ideas about semiology, tracking origins, rejections and departures. She shows Barthes' affinities with and distinction from, other theorists of photography.

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Book SynopsisIn rewriting the philosophy of grammar, Braine restores the dynamic conception of language, reuniting structure and communicative function. Grammar, typically through the verb, gives the sentence its ‘saying’ function, the verb being what brings the sentence to life, giving the sentence’s other elements their role and force.Trade ReviewA tour de force. At nearly 800 pages, it ranges over a vast terrain of issues about the nature of language. Braine presents a sustained analysis and critique of much contemporary philosophy of language…This book's breadth and depth of material covered makes professionals the only appropriate audience." - Choice"This vast, inspiring undertaking is nothing if not utopian. At the same time, it has much to offer anyone who wants more than atomistic analysis, and is prepared to think through what modern linguistics is ultimately about." - Language and History

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Book SynopsisSpeech Begins after Death is a transcript of critic Claude Bonnefoy's interview with Michel Foucault in which he reflects on his approach to the written word throughout his life, from his school days to his discovery of the pleasure of writing. Never before published in English, this is one of Foucault's most personal statements about his life and writing.Table of ContentsContentsEditor’s NoteIntroduction: Foucault and Audiography Philippe ArtièresInterview between Michel Foucault and Claude Bonnefoy, 1968Chronologies of Michel Foucault and Claude Bonnefoy

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisRickert develops the concept of ambience to engage all of the elements that comprise the ecologies in which we exist.

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Book SynopsisResounding the Rhetorical offers an original critical and theoretical examination of composition as a quasi-object. As composition flourishes in multiple media (digital, sonic, visual, etc.) Byron Hawk seeks to connect new materialism with current composition scholarship and critical theory.Trade ReviewResounding the Rhetorical adds the latest chapter in the lineage of the foremost critical theory in the field of rhetoric and composition. Hawk makes his most important and carefully researched contribution to the conversation about post-process theory. Along this lineage are swirling constellations of metaphors – ecology, dancing, networks, even parasites – and ultimately Hawk's case study of sound and music is used to illustrate how we can better conceive of composition and rhetoric."" - Todd Taylor, University of North Carolina""Hawk presents a new framework or theory of composition based on the quasi-object. By situating sound as a quasi-object, Hawk demonstrates what this framework might mean for six key terms in the field: composition, process, research, collaboration, publics, and rhetoric. This is an extraordinarily 'big idea' for the field."" - Michael Neal, Florida State University

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Book SynopsisThrough a subtle reading of the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Hannah Arendt, Barbara Cassin produces an in-depth analysis, at once scholarly and personal, of nostalgia. Where does nostalgia come from? Where do we truly feel at home? Cassin explores the notion that nostalgia has less to do with place and more to do with language.Trade Review"A rich and moving account of home and homelessness by one of the most important and distinctively original French thinkers of our time." -- -Simon Critchley The New School for Social Research "[La Nostalgie is] an erudite work in which [Cassin] incites us to make good use of this ambiguous, delightful and sometimes dangerous feeling." -L'Express "This precise and beautifully written exploration of the meaning of nostalgia (well served by the translation) is throughout, like all of Barbara Cassin's work, a meditation on languages in their plurality and their equivalence, and on translation. When we fully understand that we do not speak the logos and when we authentically experience that our language is just 'one language among others,' then we are ready to philosophize otherwise, to philosophize between languages, or, in Cassin's words, to 'philosophize in tongues.'" -- - from Souleymane Bachir Diagne's forewordTable of ContentsForeword by Souleymane Bachir Diagne Translator's Note Of Corsican Hospitality Odysseus and the Day of Return Aeneas: From Nostalgia to Exile Arendt: To Have One's Language for a Homeland Notes

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Book SynopsisHow might we speak of human life amid violence, deprivation, or disease so intrusive as to put the idea of the human into question? How can scholarship and advocacy address new forms of war or the slow, corrosive violence that belie democracy''s promise to mitigate human suffering? To Veena Das, the answers to these question lie not in foundational ideas about human nature but in a close attention to the diverse ways in which the natural and the social mutually absorb each other on a daily basis. Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. Das shows that doing anthropology after Wittgenstein does not consist in taking over a new set of terms such as forms of life,Table of ContentsPreface | xi Introduction | 1 1 Wittgenstein and Anthropology: Anticipations | 29 2 A Politics of the Ordinary: Action, Expression, and Everyday Life | 58 3 Ordinary Ethics: Take One | 96 4 Ethics, Self-Knowledge, and Words Not at Home: The Ephemeral and the Durable | 120 5 Disorders of Desire or Moral Striving? Engaging the Life of the Other | 148 6 Psychiatric Power, Mental Illness, and the Claim to the Real: Foucault in the Slums of Delhi | 173 7 The Boundaries of the “We”: Cruelty, Responsibility, and Forms of Life | 198 8 A Child Disappears: Law in the Courts, Law in the Interstices of Everyday Life | 216 9 Of Mistakes, Errors, and Superstition: Reading Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer | 246 10 Concepts Crisscrossing: Anthropology and Knowledge-Making | 275 11 The Life of Concepts: In the Vicinity of Dying | 307 Acknowledgments | 333 Notes | 337 References | 373 Index | 403

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDelightfully engaging ... this book contains a wealth of hard facts about Chinese." —Canadian Journal of Linguistics"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." —Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York"Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." —William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

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Book SynopsisIntroducing a new and ambitious position in the field, Kit Fine's Semantic Relationism is a major contribution to the philosophy of language.Trade Review"Combines careful, detailed argumentation with inspiration and synoptic vision for the bigger picture. ... One can reasonably expect Fine's book to be a spur for thinking about these issues for many years to come." (Mind, October 2009)Table of ContentsPreface. Introduction. 1. Coordination among Variables. A. The Desiderata. B. The Problem. C. The Contextualist Response. D. The Dismissive Response. E. The Instantial Approach. F. The Algebraic Approach. G. Relational Semantics for First-order Logic. 2. Coordination within Language. A. Frege’s Puzzle. B. Rejecting Compositionality. C. Semantic Fact. D. Closure. E. Referentialism Reconsidered. F. A Relational Semantics for Names. G. Transparency. 3. Coordination within Thought. A. Intentional Coordination. B. Strict Co-representation. C. The Content of Thought. D. The Cognitive Puzzle. 4. Coordination between Speakers. A. Kripke’s Puzzle. B. Some Related Puzzles. C. A Response. D. A Solution. E. A Deeper Puzzle. F. A Deeper Solution. G. The Role of Variables in Belief Reports. H. Some Semantical Morals. Postscript: Further Work. Index

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Book SynopsisDesigned for readers new to the subject, Reading Philosophy of Language presents key texts in the philosophy of language together with helpful editorial guidance. A concise collection of key texts in the philosophy of language Ideal for readers new to the subject. Features seminal texts by leading figures in the field, such as Austin, Chomsky, Davidson, Dummett and Searle. Presents three texts on each of five key topics: speech and performance; meaning and truth; knowledge of language; meaning and compositionality; and non-literal meaning. A volume introduction from the editors outlines the subject's principal concerns. Introductions to each chapter locate the pieces in context and explain relevant terminology and theories. Interactive commentaries help readers to engage with the texts. Trade Review"To get stuck in to this book is to taste the sort of intense learning experience that you might get if the editors were giving you personal tutorials. Those who teach philosophy of language to University undergraduates will regard Reading Philosophy of Language as a valuable addition to their armoury." Dr Andrew Woodfield, University of Bristol "This is an outstanding text, with a perfect blend of well-selected original works and excellent, interleaved commentary. I will immediately adopt it for my undergraduate Philosophy of Language course." David Shier, Washington State University Table of ContentsSources and Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Reference and Meaning:. Introduction. Introduction to Locke. John Locke, ‘Of Words’ (extracts from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Commentary on Locke. Introduction to Mill. J.S. Mill, ‘On Names’ (extracts from System of Logic). Commentary on Mill. Introduction to Frege. Gottlob Frege ‘On Sense and Reference’ (extract). Commentary on Frege. Conclusion. 2. Speech and Action:. Introduction. Introduction to Austin. J.L. Austin, ‘Performative Utterances’. Commentary on Austin. Introduction to Alston. William P. Alston, ‘Meaning and Use’. Commentary on Alston. Introduction to Searle. John R. Searle, ‘Meaning’ (extracts from Speech Acts). Commentary on Searle. Conclusion. 3. Meaning and Truth:. Introduction. Introduction to Davidson. Donald Davidson, ‘Radical Interpretation’. Commentary on Davidson. Introduction to Soames. Scott Soames, ‘Semantics and Semantic Competence’ (extract). Commentary on Soames. Introduction to Wright. Crispin Wright, ‘Theories of Meaning and Speakers’ Knowledge’ (extract). Commentary on Wright. Conclusion. Appendix: Tarski’s Truth-theoretic Machinery. 4. Knowledge of Language:. Introduction. Introduction to Chomsky. Noam Chomsky, ‘Knowledge of Language as a Focus of Inquiry’ (extracts from Knowledge of Language). Commentary on Chomsky. Introduction to Dummett. Michael Dummett, ‘What do I know when I know a language?’. Commentary on Dummett. Introduction to Campbell. John Campbell, ‘Knowledge and Understanding’. Commentary on Campbell. Conclusion. 5. Meaning and Compositionality:. Introduction. Introduction to Horwich. Paul Horwich, ‘The Composition of Meanings’ (extracts from Meaning). Commentary on Horwich. Introduction to Higginbotham. James Higginbotham, ‘A Perspective on Truth and Meaning’ (extracts). Commentary on Higginbotham. Introduction to Pietroski. Paul Pietroski, ‘The Undeflated Domain of Semantics’. Commentary on Pietroski. Conclusion. 6. Non-literal Meaning:. Introduction. Introduction to Bergmann. Merrie Bergmann, ‘Metaphorical Assertions’. Commentary on Bergmann. Introduction to Davies. Martin Davies, ‘Idiom and Metaphor’. Commentary on Davies. Introduction to Bach. Kent Bach, ‘Speaking Loosely: Sentence Non-Literality’. Commentary on Bach. Conclusion. Further Reading. Index

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Book SynopsisDesigned for readers new to the subject, Reading Philosophy of Language presents key texts in the philosophy of language together with helpful editorial guidance. A concise collection of key texts in the philosophy of language Ideal for readers new to the subject. Features seminal texts by leading figures in the field, such as Austin, Chomsky, Davidson, Dummett and Searle. Presents three texts on each of five key topics: speech and performance; meaning and truth; knowledge of language; meaning and compositionality; and non-literal meaning. A volume introduction from the editors outlines the subject's principal concerns. Introductions to each chapter locate the pieces in context and explain relevant terminology and theories. Interactive commentaries help readers to engage with the texts. Trade Review"To get stuck in to this book is to taste the sort of intense learning experience that you might get if the editors were giving you personal tutorials. Those who teach philosophy of language to University undergraduates will regard Reading Philosophy of Language as a valuable addition to their armoury." Dr Andrew Woodfield, University of Bristol "This is an outstanding text, with a perfect blend of well-selected original works and excellent, interleaved commentary. I will immediately adopt it for my undergraduate Philosophy of Language course." David Shier, Washington State University Table of ContentsSources and Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1. Reference and Meaning 7 2. Speech and Action 43 3. Meaning and Truth 89 4. Knowledge of Language 152 5. Meaning and Compositionality 215 6. Non-literal Meaning 249 Further Reading 306 Index 318

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Book SynopsisKit Fine argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought. His key idea is that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Coordination among Variables A. The Desiderata B. The Problem C. The Contextualist Response D. The Dismissive Response E. The Instantial Approach F. The Algebraic Approach G. Relational Semantics for First-order Logic 2. Coordination within Language A. Frege’s Puzzle B. Rejecting Compositionality C. Semantic Fact D. Closure E. Referentialism Reconsidered F. A Relational Semantics for Names G. Transparency 3. Coordination within Thought A. Intentional Coordination B. Strict Co-representation C. The Content of Thought D. The Cognitive Puzzle 4. Coordination between Speakers A. Kripke’s Puzzle B. Some Related Puzzles C. A Response D. A Solution E. A Deeper Puzzle F. A Deeper Solution G. The Role of Variables in Belief Reports H. Some Semantical Morals Postscript: Further Work Index

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Book SynopsisWhat might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature?If inanimate objects such as novels or poems have no mental properties of their own, then why do we talk about them as if they do? Why do we perceive the minds of characters, narrators, and speakers as if they were comparable to our own? In Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind, Joshua Gang offers a radical new approach to these questions, which are among the most challenging philosophical problems faced by literary study today. Recent cognitive criticism has tried to answer these questions by looking for similarities and analogies between literary form and the processes of the brain. In contrast, Gang turns to one of the twentieth century's most infamous psychological doctrines: behaviorism. Beginning in 1913, a range of psychologists and philosophersincluding John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Gilbert Ryleargued that many of the things we talk about as mental phenomena aren't at all intTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Literary Experience and the Concept of Mind1. Behaviorism and the Beginnings of Close Reading2. Inner Sights3. Mental Acts4. The Form of ThoughtCoda. Observations and/or ReflectionsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisA short but engaging look at how questions shape our thinking. Why do we ask questions? In Questions, Pia Lauritzen explores the philosophy behind questions and probes how they function as both a development tool and a bridge to understanding. She speculates that the question is the essential characteristic that distinguishes human beings from animals and that it is the key to understanding why we think and act as we do. Basic human phenomena like surprise and doubt, ignorance and curiositywhich all articulate a questioning mode of dealing with the worldmay well be the reason why human beings developed language. Yet the diverse ways that different languages and cultures treat questions reflects and reinforces crucial cultural differences. Ultimately, Lauritzen argues, the question is the key to understanding the inner logic that links all major themes in the history of Western philosophy. In Reflections, a series copublished with Denmark's Aarhus University Press, scholars deliver 60Table of Contents1. Calling Questions Into Question?2. The First Question3. The History of the Question4. Questions And Being Human5. The Structure Of The Question6. Questions And Language

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Book SynopsisIn Topoi/Graphein Christian Abrahamsson maps the paradoxical limit of the in-between to revealthat to be human is to know how tolive with the difference between the known and the unknown. Using filmic case studies, including CodeInconnu, Lord of the Flies, and Apocalypse Now,and focusing on key concerns developed in the works of the philosophers Deleuze, Olsson, and Wittgenstein, Abrahamsson starts within the notion of fixed spatiality, in whichhuman thought and action are anchored in the given of identity. He then movesthrough a social world in which spatiotemporal transformations are neitherfixed nor taken for granted. Finally he edges into the pure temporality that liesbeyond the maps of fixed points and social relations. Each chapter is organized into two subjects: topoi, orexcerpts from the films, and graphein, the author's interpretation ofpresented theoriesto mirror the displacements,transpositions, juxtapositions, fluctuations, and transformations between delimited categorieTrade Review"Readers with an interest in spatial theory or cinematic geography should obviously appreciate this work, but so should anyone who wants to understand how a world falls apart and continues to fall apart."—Marcus A. Doel, Social and Cultural Geography“Topoi/Graphein poses the most profound philosophical and conceptual questions concerning the human condition from a compelling geographical perspective. A sustained meditation on our engagement with the world, it journeys over remarkably wide-ranging territory, delivering valuable insights with an uncommon intensity of thought. This is a heavyweight work that wears its profundity lightly.”—David B. Clarke, professor of human geography and head of the Department of Geography at Swansea University“Generations of scholars have identified their respective positions with reference to landmark propositions emanating from singular publications. Topoi/Graphein holds the promise of becoming such a book for a coming generation. It tackles its subject matter with considerable verve and elegant style.”—Ulf Strohmayer, professor of geography at the National University of Ireland, GalwayTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword: Born Again, by Gunnar Olsson Introduction: Angle of Power Part 1. Code inconnu/Crossroads Chapter 1. Encounter/Point Chapter 2. Wall/Stone Chapter 3. Code inconnu/When Above Chapter 4. Limits/Oedipus Chapter 5. Stranger/Terra Firma Part 2. Lord of the Flies/Passages Chapter 6. Desert/Line Chapter 7. Thing/Swerve Chapter 8. Lord of the Flies/Through Chapter 9. Division/Hermes Chapter 10. Fire/Terra Nullius Part 3. Apocalypse Now/The Event Chapter 11. Dream/Plane Chapter 12. River/Cloud Chapter 13. Apocalypse Now/In-Between Chapter 14. Darkness/Janus Chapter 15. Abyss/Horror Vacui Part 4. Geographein Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWerner Hamacher's witty and elliptical 95 Theses on Philology challenges the humanitiesand particularly academic philologythat assume language to be a given entity rather than an event. In Give the Word eleven scholars take up the challenge presented by Hamacher's theses.Trade Review“This is a stunningly original collection of essays—utterly engrossing and compelling. Probing, erudite, elegant, witty, these essays explore the concept of philology at once literally (literally “literally,” that is, to the letter, down to its smallest granules of articulation) and expansively, inviting us to rethink the fundamental categories of existence—language, translation, tradition, genealogy, history, sociability, love, kinship, in short, just about everything. Hamacher’s magnificent Theses could not find a more vibrant afterlife.”—Rebecca Comay, professor of philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Toronto “Werner Hamacher’s 95 Theses on Philology proposes a new radical understanding of philology distinct from its dusty nineteenth-century conception. The eleven responses to his 95 Theses have provided him with an opportunity to comment extensively and in generous detail on the responses they provoked. Hamacher’s lengthy contribution is not only an extraordinary document of scholarly debate but also a superb piece in which he elaborates on the context of his Theses and on their rich theoretical and philosophical ramifications, thus also providing insight into the workings of his own thought.”—Rodolphe Gasché, Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo, the State University of New YorkTable of Contents95 Theses on Philology / 95 Thesen zur Philologie Werner Hamacher, translated by Catharine Diehl Introduction Gerhard Richter and Ann Smock Part 1. Balances1. Was heißt Lesen?—What Is Called Reading? Gerhard Richter 2. Language-Such-That-It’s-Spoken Michèle Cohen-Halimi, translated by Ann Smock 3. 48: [this space intentionally left blank] Jan Plug 4. Catch a Wave: Sound, Poetry, Philology Sean Gurd Part 2. Times 5. Einmal ist Keinmal: On the 76th of Werner Hamacher’s 95 Theses for Philology Ann Smock 6. Rereading tempus fugit Thomas Schestag 7. Language on Pause: Hamacher’s Seconds of Celan and Daive Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Part 3. Categories 8. The Right Not to Complain: A Philology of Kinship Avital “Irony” Ronell 9. The Category of Philology Peter Fenves 10. The Philía of Philology Susan Bernstein 11. Defining the Indefinite Daniel Heller-Roazen Part 4. Responding to Responses 12. What Remains to Be Said: On Twelve and More Ways of Looking at Philology Werner Hamacher, translated by Kristina Mendicino Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisPhilosophy and rhetoric are both old enemies and old friends. In The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy, Donald Phillip Verene sets out to shift our understanding of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric from that of separation to one of close association. He outlines how ancient rhetors focused on the impact of language regardless of truth, ancient philosophers utilized language to test truth; and ultimately, this separation of right reasoning from rhetoric has remained intact throughout history. It is time, Verene argues, to reassess this ancient and misunderstood relationship. Verene traces his argument utilizing the writing of ancient and modern authors from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant; he also explores the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, as well as the nature of speculative philosophy. Verene''s argument culminates in a unique analysis of the frontispiece as a rhetorical device in the works of Hobbes, Vico, and Rousseau. Verene bridges the stuTrade ReviewVerene presents an extended original essay on one of the oldest of philosophical themes, the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. With great subtlety and enormous erudition, the author challenges the "Platonic quarrel with the poets and the rhetoricians". * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Rhetorical Sense of Philosophy Part I: Prolegomena Philosophiae 1. Philosophical Thinking 2. Philosophy and the Muses 3. Philosophy and Eloquence 4. Philosophical Style Part II: Three Rhetorics 5. The Rhetoric of Self-Discourse 6. The Rhetoric of Absolute Thought 7. The Rhetoric of the Philosophical Frontispiece Epilogue

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Book SynopsisThis is the first English translation, by Thomas Allan Smith, of Philosophy of the Name (Filosofiia imeni). Sergii Bulgakov (18711944) wrote the book in response to a theological controversy that erupted in Russia just before the outbreak of World War I. Bulgakov develops a philosophy of language that aims to justify the truthfulness of the statement the Name of God is God himself, a claim provoking debate on the meaning of names, and the Name of God in particular. Philosophy of the Name investigates the nature of words and human language, considers grammar and parts of speech, and concludes with an exposition on the Name of God.Name-glorifying, a spiritual movement connected with the Orthodox practice of the Jesus Prayer, was initially censured by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the controversy raised profound questions that continue to vex ecclesiastical authorities and theologians today. The controvTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. What is a Word? 2. Speech and Word 3. Towards a Philosophy of Grammar 4. Language and Thought 5. The "Proper" Name 6. The Name of God Post Scriptum to the Essay on the Name of God Excursuses

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSpanning from the biblical account of creation to modern genetics, Blumenberg's book can be understood as an intense effort to refract the history of ideas through the lens of a fundamental metaphor. In detailed individual analyses of relevant historical texts, he explains the metaphor's various assignments of meaning from the intellectual, sociocultural, and biographical contexts in which it is deployed. * Rhetorica *Learning about Blumenberg's metaphorology as well as the stars of intellectual history has been made possible for Anglophones by the extraordinary translation skills of Robert Savage and David Roberts. * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisBeing serious demands serious kinds of work. In Styles of Seriousness, Steven Connor reflects on the surprisingly various ways in which a sense of the serious is made and maintained, revealing that while seriousness is the most powerful feeling, it is also the most poignantly indeterminate, perhaps because of the impossibility of being completely serious. In colloquy with philosophers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche, James, Sartre, Austin, Agamben and Sloterdijk, and writers like Shakespeare, Byron, Auden and Orwell, Connor considers the linguistic and ritual behaviors associated with different modes of seriousness: importance; intention, or ways of really "meaning things;" sincerity; solemnity; urgency; regret; warning; and ordeal. The central claim of the book is human beings are capable of taking things seriously in a way that nonhuman animals are not, for the unexpected reason that human beings are so much more versatile than most animals at not being completely serious. One always, in fact, has a choice about whether or not to take seriously something that is supposed to be so. As a consequence, seriousness depends on different kinds of formalization or stylized practice. Styles of seriousness matter, Connor shows, because human beings are incapable of simply and spontaneously existing. Being a human means having to take seriously one's style of being. Trade Review"Connor's is a game-changing study, delimiting new terrain at every witty and penetrating turn. There is nothing like this remarkable book, with its lambent and matured critical voice and its confident obliteration of disciplinary boundaries."—Garrett Stewart, author of The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors"At once stunningly erudite and seriously entertaining, Steven Connor takes impish delight in revealing the way solemnity, zeal, and heavyweight intent weave across history into the fabric of philosophy, literature, and everyday life. With doom-mongering now the self-certified pastime of our current era of competitive piety, Styles of Seriousness is all the more eye-opening and deliciously irreverent."—David James, author of Discrepant Solace"The human species, said Emerson, is the only joker in nature. Steven Connor's essay on 'the holiday virtues' deliciously shows the precarious proximity of solemnity and hilarity. His anatomy of seriousness is both a philosophical meditation on the human estate and a political skirmish against the latest rounds of fatuousness. The book is at once puckish, exacting, and morally grounded."—John Durham Peters, author of The Marvelous Clouds

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Book SynopsisBeing serious demands serious kinds of work. In Styles of Seriousness, Steven Connor reflects on the surprisingly various ways in which a sense of the serious is made and maintained, revealing that while seriousness is the most powerful feeling, it is also the most poignantly indeterminate, perhaps because of the impossibility of being completely serious. In colloquy with philosophers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche, James, Sartre, Austin, Agamben and Sloterdijk, and writers like Shakespeare, Byron, Auden and Orwell, Connor considers the linguistic and ritual behaviors associated with different modes of seriousness: importance; intention, or ways of really "meaning things;" sincerity; solemnity; urgency; regret; warning; and ordeal. The central claim of the book is human beings are capable of taking things seriously in a way that nonhuman animals are not, for the unexpected reason that human beings are so much more versatile than most animals at not being completely serious. One always, in fact, has a choice about whether or not to take seriously something that is supposed to be so. As a consequence, seriousness depends on different kinds of formalization or stylized practice. Styles of seriousness matter, Connor shows, because human beings are incapable of simply and spontaneously existing. Being a human means having to take seriously one's style of being. Trade Review"Connor's is a game-changing study, delimiting new terrain at every witty and penetrating turn. There is nothing like this remarkable book, with its lambent and matured critical voice and its confident obliteration of disciplinary boundaries."—Garrett Stewart, author of The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors"At once stunningly erudite and seriously entertaining, Steven Connor takes impish delight in revealing the way solemnity, zeal, and heavyweight intent weave across history into the fabric of philosophy, literature, and everyday life. With doom-mongering now the self-certified pastime of our current era of competitive piety, Styles of Seriousness is all the more eye-opening and deliciously irreverent."—David James, author of Discrepant Solace"The human species, said Emerson, is the only joker in nature. Steven Connor's essay on 'the holiday virtues' deliciously shows the precarious proximity of solemnity and hilarity. His anatomy of seriousness is both a philosophical meditation on the human estate and a political skirmish against the latest rounds of fatuousness. The book is at once puckish, exacting, and morally grounded."—John Durham Peters, author of The Marvelous Clouds

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Book SynopsisRoland Barthes (1915-1980) was a central figure in the thought of his time, but he was also something of an outsider. His father died in the First World War, he enjoyed his mother’s unfailing love, he spent long years in the sanatorium, and he was aware of his homosexuality from an early age: all this soon gave him a sense of his own difference. He experienced the great events of contemporary history from a distance. However, his life was caught up in the violent, intense sweep of the twentieth century, a century that he helped to make intelligible. This major new biography of Barthes, based on unpublished material never before explored (archives, journals and notebooks), sheds new light on his intellectual positions, his political commitments and his ideas, beliefs and desires. It details the many themes he discussed, the authors he defended, the myths he castigated, the polemics that made him famous and his acute ear for the languages of his day. It also underscores his remarkable ability to see which way the wind was blowing Ð and he is still a compelling author to read in part because his path-breaking explorations uncovered themes that continue to preoccupy us today. Barthes’s life story gives substance and cohesion to his career, which was guided by desire, perspicacity and an extreme sensitivity to the material from which the world is shaped Ð as well as a powerful refusal to accept any authoritarian discourse. By allowing thought to be based on imagination, he turned thinking into both an art and an adventure. This remarkable biography enables the reader to enter into Barthes’s life and grasp the shape of his existence, and thus understand the kind of writer he became and how he turned literature into life itself.Trade Review"Barthes, like no other modern writer, invented a critical form that was “live” in every sense, where the labor of writing criticism acquired animate breath and pulse as it entered Barthes’ chronicle of aesthetic preparation for a Vita Nova, a new life, a novel, a reading of ideologies, images, voices, cultural myths and above all literary texts. Such a self-writing subject poses a daunting challenge to the biographer. But Tiphaine Samoyault has risen to it, with a magisterial life of Roland Barthes, enriched by new archival material and her own peerless talents as both writer and literary critic." - Emily Apter, New York University "Tiphaine Samoyault’s outstanding biography of Roland Barthes allows us to meet him in person, as it were, as a lively, seductive French intellectual. At the same time, Samoyault offers us a splendid introduction to Barthes’ ground-breaking writings in so many fields, from literary theory to meditations about the meaning of human existence." - Thomas Pavel, The University of Chicago ‘While offering the most detailed and elegantly written interpretation to date of the life and works of its remarkable subject, this book is much more than a traditional intellectual biography. Typhaine Samoyault’s masterful, multilayered and, at times, lyrical narrative captures Roland Barthes the person and writer, essayist and scholar, and depicts him in his time and with his contemporaries, family and friends, colleagues and lovers, to be sure. Her phenomenal study tracks the doing and undoing of a great writer and thinker, a witness of what is still, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, very much our own time and cultural, indeed, political predicament. In so doing, she offers a valuable testimony of a person facing opportunities and challenges whose enduring lesson and bitter sweetness we have all learned to appreciate and savour.’ - Hent de Vries, The Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University‘superb’ The New York Review of Books

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Book SynopsisA primatologist and a humanist together explore the meaning of being a “human animal”Humanness is typically defined by our capacity for language and abstract thinking. Yet decades of research led by the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that chimpanzees and bonobos can acquire human language through signing and technology. Drawing on this research, Dialogues of the Human Ape brings Savage-Rumbaugh into conversation with the philosopher Laurent Dubreuil to explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of what being a “human animal” means. In their use of dialogue as the primary mode of philosophical and scientific inquiry, the authors transcend the rigidity of scientific and humanist discourses, offering a powerful model for the dissemination of speculative hypotheses and open-ended debates grounded in scientific research.Arguing that being human is an epigenetically driven process rather than a fixed characteristic rooted in genetics or culture, this book suggests that while humanness may not be possible in every species, it can emerge in certain supposedly nonhuman species. Moving beyond irrational critiques of ape consciousness that are motivated by arrogant, anthropocentric views, Dialogues on the Human Ape instead takes seriously the continuities between the ape mind and the human mind, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will, and the formation of the “human animal” self.Trade Review"These dialogues provide unique insight into ape language research. Stimulating language in apes is too ramified to be controlled intellectually or restricted to a laboratory. It requires spontaneity, taking participants beyond the known. Even communicating the work requires spontaneity, for the intellect does not know what happened. You will be amazed at what these dialogues reveal about humanness beyond humanity."—Pär Segerdahl, Uppsala University"Dialogues on the Human Ape demolishes the simple human/animal dichotomy and the idealization that only humans ‘have’ language, as though language is some kind of all-or-none essence. These compelling conversations between Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Laurent Dubreuil will open minds and challenge assumptions about what it means to be a human ape."—Terrence W. Deacon, University of California, Berkeley"This book appears in an important series on Post-humanities, so academics and researchers in that field would certainly find much value in this volume as well. The book is intellectually and emotionally engaging, well written, and nicely organized."—ASEBL Journal"The book explores the continuities between the ape and human minds, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will and the formation of the self."—Cornell ChronicleTable of ContentsContentsForewordPrelude1. On Animals and Apes2. On Dialogue and Consciousness3. On the Flavors of Consciousness4. On Language and Apes5. On Free WillAnnex: A Timeline of Ape Language Research

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Book SynopsisA primatologist and a humanist together explore the meaning of being a “human animal”Humanness is typically defined by our capacity for language and abstract thinking. Yet decades of research led by the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that chimpanzees and bonobos can acquire human language through signing and technology. Drawing on this research, Dialogues of the Human Ape brings Savage-Rumbaugh into conversation with the philosopher Laurent Dubreuil to explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of what being a “human animal” means. In their use of dialogue as the primary mode of philosophical and scientific inquiry, the authors transcend the rigidity of scientific and humanist discourses, offering a powerful model for the dissemination of speculative hypotheses and open-ended debates grounded in scientific research.Arguing that being human is an epigenetically driven process rather than a fixed characteristic rooted in genetics or culture, this book suggests that while humanness may not be possible in every species, it can emerge in certain supposedly nonhuman species. Moving beyond irrational critiques of ape consciousness that are motivated by arrogant, anthropocentric views, Dialogues on the Human Ape instead takes seriously the continuities between the ape mind and the human mind, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will, and the formation of the “human animal” self.Trade Review"These dialogues provide unique insight into ape language research. Stimulating language in apes is too ramified to be controlled intellectually or restricted to a laboratory. It requires spontaneity, taking participants beyond the known. Even communicating the work requires spontaneity, for the intellect does not know what happened. You will be amazed at what these dialogues reveal about humanness beyond humanity."—Pär Segerdahl, Uppsala University"Dialogues on the Human Ape demolishes the simple human/animal dichotomy and the idealization that only humans ‘have’ language, as though language is some kind of all-or-none essence. These compelling conversations between Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Laurent Dubreuil will open minds and challenge assumptions about what it means to be a human ape."—Terrence W. Deacon, University of California, Berkeley"This book appears in an important series on Post-humanities, so academics and researchers in that field would certainly find much value in this volume as well. The book is intellectually and emotionally engaging, well written, and nicely organized."—ASEBL Journal"The book explores the continuities between the ape and human minds, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will and the formation of the self."—Cornell ChronicleTable of ContentsContentsForewordPrelude1. On Animals and Apes2. On Dialogue and Consciousness3. On the Flavors of Consciousness4. On Language and Apes5. On Free WillAnnex: A Timeline of Ape Language Research

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Book SynopsisA bold new critique of dialogue as a method of eliminating dissent Is dialogue always the productive political and communicative tool it is widely conceived to be? Resisting Dialogue reassesses our assumptions about dialogue and, in so doing, about what a politically healthy society should look like. Juan Meneses argues that, far from an unalloyed good, dialogue often serves as a subtle tool of domination, perpetuating the underlying inequalities it is intended to address.Meneses investigates how “illusory dialogue” (a particular dialogic encounter designed to secure consensus) is employed as an instrument that forestalls—instead of fostering—articulations of dissent that lead to political change. He does so through close readings of novels from the English-speaking world written in the past hundred years—from E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion to Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and more. Resisting Dialogue demonstrates how these novels are rhetorical exercises with real political clout capable of restoring the radical potential of dialogue in today’s globalized world. Expanding the boundaries of postpolitical theory, Meneses reveals how these works offer ways to practice disagreement against this regulatory use of dialogue and expose the pitfalls of certain other dialogic interventions in relation to some of the most prominent questions of modern history: cosmopolitanism at the end of empire, the dangers of rewriting the historical record, the affective dimension of neoliberalism, the racial and nationalist underpinnings of the “war on terror,” and the visibility of environmental violence in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, Resisting Dialogue is a complex, provocative critique that, melding political and literary theory, reveals how fiction can help confront the deployment of dialogue to preempt the emergence of dissent and, thus, revitalize the practice of emancipatory politics. Trade Review"Deepening and widening a furrow first plowed by Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek, Resisting Dialogue marks a refusal to underwrite ‘postpolitics’ as politics by insisting that unspeakable political ambition take its place, without apology, so that our voyage from a troubled modernist literature to the Anthropocene maps, simultaneously, a continuous trajectory and a jarring, disjunctive continuity."—Grant Farred, Cornell University"Resisting Dialogue draws on literature to develop a fresh vocabulary of political activism and thetic force. Contrarianism, deadlock, impasse, silence, resilience, persistence, the power of unexceptional figures of history to block and oppose the status quo—these immobilizing postures acquire a make-over as acts of agency that contest the eclipse of political agency besetting progressive theories of the Political."—Emily Apter, author of Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse and the Impolitic "In all, Resisting Dialogue will be immensely useful for those conducting scholarly work in global studies across the disciplines, especially in the twentieth- and twenty-first century literary studies."—Project Muse "In attuning us to examine with greater sensitivity the political contours of dialogue... Meneses makes a genuinely original,impactful contribution to the study of the novel, as well as to political discourse and theory. "—American Literary History"Meneses changes the terms of a larger cultural debate about dialogue to reframe what is actually happening as the illusory manipulations of postpolitical power... in doing so, he demonstrates a promising correlation between reading imaginative texts and reading the world."—MFS Modern Fiction Studies"Resisting Dialogue is a crucial meditation on our fraught times of ever-deepening social, cultural and political divides, where all attempts at dialogue seem to be failing."—LSE Review of Books

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Book SynopsisA bold new critique of dialogue as a method of eliminating dissent Is dialogue always the productive political and communicative tool it is widely conceived to be? Resisting Dialogue reassesses our assumptions about dialogue and, in so doing, about what a politically healthy society should look like. Juan Meneses argues that, far from an unalloyed good, dialogue often serves as a subtle tool of domination, perpetuating the underlying inequalities it is intended to address.Meneses investigates how “illusory dialogue” (a particular dialogic encounter designed to secure consensus) is employed as an instrument that forestalls—instead of fostering—articulations of dissent that lead to political change. He does so through close readings of novels from the English-speaking world written in the past hundred years—from E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion to Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and more. Resisting Dialogue demonstrates how these novels are rhetorical exercises with real political clout capable of restoring the radical potential of dialogue in today’s globalized world. Expanding the boundaries of postpolitical theory, Meneses reveals how these works offer ways to practice disagreement against this regulatory use of dialogue and expose the pitfalls of certain other dialogic interventions in relation to some of the most prominent questions of modern history: cosmopolitanism at the end of empire, the dangers of rewriting the historical record, the affective dimension of neoliberalism, the racial and nationalist underpinnings of the “war on terror,” and the visibility of environmental violence in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, Resisting Dialogue is a complex, provocative critique that, melding political and literary theory, reveals how fiction can help confront the deployment of dialogue to preempt the emergence of dissent and, thus, revitalize the practice of emancipatory politics. Trade Review"Deepening and widening a furrow first plowed by Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek, Resisting Dialogue marks a refusal to underwrite ‘postpolitics’ as politics by insisting that unspeakable political ambition take its place, without apology, so that our voyage from a troubled modernist literature to the Anthropocene maps, simultaneously, a continuous trajectory and a jarring, disjunctive continuity."—Grant Farred, Cornell University"Resisting Dialogue draws on literature to develop a fresh vocabulary of political activism and thetic force. Contrarianism, deadlock, impasse, silence, resilience, persistence, the power of unexceptional figures of history to block and oppose the status quo—these immobilizing postures acquire a make-over as acts of agency that contest the eclipse of political agency besetting progressive theories of the Political."—Emily Apter, author of Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse and the Impolitic "In all, Resisting Dialogue will be immensely useful for those conducting scholarly work in global studies across the disciplines, especially in the twentieth- and twenty-first century literary studies."—Project Muse "In attuning us to examine with greater sensitivity the political contours of dialogue... Meneses makes a genuinely original,impactful contribution to the study of the novel, as well as to political discourse and theory. "—American Literary History"Meneses changes the terms of a larger cultural debate about dialogue to reframe what is actually happening as the illusory manipulations of postpolitical power... in doing so, he demonstrates a promising correlation between reading imaginative texts and reading the world."—MFS Modern Fiction Studies"Resisting Dialogue is a crucial meditation on our fraught times of ever-deepening social, cultural and political divides, where all attempts at dialogue seem to be failing."—LSE Review of Books

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Book SynopsisA powerful new examination of the performative that asks “what’s next?” for this well-worn concept From its humble origins in J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory of the 1950s, the performative has grown to permeate wildly diverse scholarly fields, ranging from deconstruction and feminism to legal theory and even theories about the structure of matter. Here Jeffrey T. Nealon discovers how the performative will remain vital in the twenty-first century, arguing that it was never merely concerned with linguistic meaning but rather constitutes an insight into the workings of immaterial force.Fates of the Performative takes a deep dive into this “performative force” to think about the continued power and relevance of this wide-ranging concept. Offering both a history of the performative’s mutations and a diagnosis of its present state, Nealon traces how it has been deployed by key writers in the past sixty years, including foundational thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, and Judith Butler; contemporary theorists such as Thomas Piketty and Antonio Negri; and the “conceptual poetry” of Kenneth Goldsmith.Ultimately, Nealon’s inquiry is animated by one powerful question: what’s living and what’s dead in performative theory? In deconstructing the reaction against the performative in current humanist thought, Fates of the Performative opens up important conversations about systems theory, animal studies, object-oriented ontology, and the digital humanities. Nealon’s stirring appeal makes a necessary declaration of the performative’s continued power and relevance at a time of neoliberal ascendancy.Trade Review "What is 'the performative,' and why is it everywhere in contemporary thought? Jeffrey T. Nealon answers that question in this enlightening and witty book. In search of appropriate responses to our fact-free politics, Nealon offers sharp diagnoses of ‘post-critique’ and the ‘new materialism’ on the way to describing a resistant rhetoric to meet the challenges we face."—John McGowan, University of North Carolina "Fates of the Performative is a major intervention in the theory of the performative. Although performativity is not severed from language, in Jeffrey T. Nealon's view it is persuasively linked to the biopolitical. No theorist invested in the question of the biopolitical has gone down the path Nealon is following by proposing that we understand the embodied and the material, or the agency of the material, as a version of the performative. The idea that life doesn't adapt but performs—that it is distanced from itself by staging what it is—is a novel proposition, which means that this book will reorient theoretical debate about what the performative is and productively complicate our understanding of it."—Branka Arsić, Columbia University "Irreverent, funny and fast-paced, combative without being crabby, this book recycles its basic claims in a way that, against all odds, makes the book cohere."—American Literary History Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface: Why the Performative?Part I. Genealogy of the Performative1. The Truth Is a Joke? Performatives in Austin and Derrida2. Two Paths You Can Go By: Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick3. The Bodacious Era: Thoreau and New Materialism; or, What’s Wrong with the Anthropocene?Part II. Performativity and/as/into Biopolitics4. Biopolitics, Marxism and Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century5. What Is a Lecturer? Performative, Parrhesia, and the Author-Function in Foucault’s Lecture Courses6. Literary RealFeel: Banality, Fatality, and Meaning in Kenneth Goldsmith’s The WeatherConclusion: On the Returns of Realism and the (Supposed) Exhaustion of CritiqueNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA powerful new examination of the performative that asks “what’s next?” for this well-worn concept From its humble origins in J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory of the 1950s, the performative has grown to permeate wildly diverse scholarly fields, ranging from deconstruction and feminism to legal theory and even theories about the structure of matter. Here Jeffrey T. Nealon discovers how the performative will remain vital in the twenty-first century, arguing that it was never merely concerned with linguistic meaning but rather constitutes an insight into the workings of immaterial force.Fates of the Performative takes a deep dive into this “performative force” to think about the continued power and relevance of this wide-ranging concept. Offering both a history of the performative’s mutations and a diagnosis of its present state, Nealon traces how it has been deployed by key writers in the past sixty years, including foundational thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, and Judith Butler; contemporary theorists such as Thomas Piketty and Antonio Negri; and the “conceptual poetry” of Kenneth Goldsmith.Ultimately, Nealon’s inquiry is animated by one powerful question: what’s living and what’s dead in performative theory? In deconstructing the reaction against the performative in current humanist thought, Fates of the Performative opens up important conversations about systems theory, animal studies, object-oriented ontology, and the digital humanities. Nealon’s stirring appeal makes a necessary declaration of the performative’s continued power and relevance at a time of neoliberal ascendancy.Trade Review "What is 'the performative,' and why is it everywhere in contemporary thought? Jeffrey T. Nealon answers that question in this enlightening and witty book. In search of appropriate responses to our fact-free politics, Nealon offers sharp diagnoses of ‘post-critique’ and the ‘new materialism’ on the way to describing a resistant rhetoric to meet the challenges we face."—John McGowan, University of North Carolina "Fates of the Performative is a major intervention in the theory of the performative. Although performativity is not severed from language, in Jeffrey T. Nealon's view it is persuasively linked to the biopolitical. No theorist invested in the question of the biopolitical has gone down the path Nealon is following by proposing that we understand the embodied and the material, or the agency of the material, as a version of the performative. The idea that life doesn't adapt but performs—that it is distanced from itself by staging what it is—is a novel proposition, which means that this book will reorient theoretical debate about what the performative is and productively complicate our understanding of it."—Branka Arsić, Columbia University "Irreverent, funny and fast-paced, combative without being crabby, this book recycles its basic claims in a way that, against all odds, makes the book cohere."—American Literary History Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface: Why the Performative?Part I. Genealogy of the Performative1. The Truth Is a Joke? Performatives in Austin and Derrida2. Two Paths You Can Go By: Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick3. The Bodacious Era: Thoreau and New Materialism; or, What’s Wrong with the Anthropocene?Part II. Performativity and/as/into Biopolitics4. Biopolitics, Marxism and Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century5. What Is a Lecturer? Performative, Parrhesia, and the Author-Function in Foucault’s Lecture Courses6. Literary RealFeel: Banality, Fatality, and Meaning in Kenneth Goldsmith’s The WeatherConclusion: On the Returns of Realism and the (Supposed) Exhaustion of CritiqueNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThis text provides a lively introduction to the developments in philosophy of language in this century, and to the way these have impinged upon religious language. Included is the relevance of analytical philosophy of language, but the text also covers important historical debates about religious language that have had increasing impact upon biblical studies and theology.Trade Review"This is an excellent critical survey of the modern philosophy of language in general, and of religious language in particular, deftly set against the background of its traditional forerunners. It is readable, colourful, and richly informative, without being simplistic or sweeping in its descriptions and judgements." Steven Kings, Reviews in Religion and Theology "Dan Stiver offers, for "tose coming to these topics for the first time", a useful map to an academic (sub)discipline called philosophy of religious language." Brian Davies, Anglican Theological ReviewTable of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 Introduction 1 The Linguistic Turn in Philosophy 4 The Linguistic Turn in Religion 6 Philosophical Foundations 8 2 Historical Approaches to Religious Language 14 Three Traditional Ways 15 The negative way 16 The Univocal way 20 The Analogical way 23 The Universal Controversy 29 Literal and Allegorical Exegesis 31 3 The Falsification Challenge 37 The Early Wittgenstein 37 Logical Positivism 42 The Falsification Challenge 47 4 Language Game 59 The Later Wittgenstein 59 Religious Language as Noncognitive 67 Wittgenstein on religion 67 Wittgensteinian fideism 69 Religious Language as Cognitive 72 John Wisdom 73 Ian T. Ramsey 74 Ian Crombie 78 Speech-act Theory 79 Austin 80 McClendon and Smith 82 5 Hermeneutical Philosophy 87 From Religious to General Hermeneutics 87 Ontological Hermeneutics 90 Critical Hermeneutics 96 Ricoeur and Critical Hermeneutics 100 Reader-response Theory 107 6 Metaphor, Symbol and Analogy 112 Metaphor as Ornamental 113 Metaphor as Cognitive 114 Symbol and Analogy 122 Metaphor in Exegesis 127 Metaphor in Theology 129 7 Narrative Theology 134 The Chicago School 135 The Yale School 139 Hans Frei 140 George Lindbeck 145 Ronald Thiemann 150 The California School 154 James Wm McClendon Jr 154 Michael Goldberg 155 Terrence Tilley 159 8 Structuralism and Poststructuralism 163 Structuralism 163 De Saussure’s influence on Structuralism 163 Structuralist thinkers 166 Critique 171 Structuralism in Religious Studies 173 Ricoeur 174 Thiselton 175 Patte 177 Crossan and Via 178 Poststructuralism 180 Derrida 181 Foucault 184 Critique 186 Poststructuralism in Religious Studies 188 9 Conclusion: A Changing Paradigm 193 Reducing the Contrasts 194 A Changing Paradigm 197 Religious Language and Truth 201 Notes 206 Recommended Reading 246 Index 251

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Book SynopsisThis is an anthology of landmark essays in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and cognitive science since 1950. It includes essays that aim to reflect the fact that philosophy and the science of mind and language have close historical and conceptual ties. Each section begins with a brief and simple overview highlighting the issues and recommending other readings. The combination of this editorial material with a selection of classic essays makes this anthology a very flexible tool for introductory courses in cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology as well as courses devoted to contemporary analytic philosophy. However, the book also contains significant advanced and recent material, making it suitable for more advanced stud, including beginning graduate courses.Trade Review"Most of the essays in Readings in Language and Mind have appeared previously in many other places. However, the special attention given to language in this context is indeed unique and distinguishes it from other anthologies." Pragmatics and Cognition "Readings in Lnaguage and Mind collects classic writings in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind of the last 40-50 years, including important relevant items from linguistics and cognitive science. It's an excellent collection to give students a basic foundation to understand the background of current philosophical inquiry." Professor Gilbert Harman, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Philosophy of Language and Mind, 1950-90: Tyler Burge. Part I: The Meaning of Language: . 1. Natural and Formal Lnaguages. 2. Language and Communication. 3. Language and Environment. Part II: The Meaning of Mind: . 4. Language and Mind. 5. Mind and Machine. 6. Mind and Biology. 7. Mind and Environment. Part III: The Science of Mind and Language:. 8. Language and Cognition. 9. Artificial Intelligence. Index.

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Book SynopsisShows that the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) forms a philosophy of dialogue and communication that is crucially relevant to contemporary debates in the Humanities. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) is the progenitor of modern linguistics and the originator of the modern teaching and research university. However, his work has received remarkably little attention in the English-speaking world. Humboldt conceives language as the source of cognition as well as communication, both rooted in the possibility of human dialogue. In the same way, his idea of the university posits the free encounter between radically different personalities as the source of education for freedom. For Humboldt, both linguistic and intellectual communication are predicated firstly on dialogue between persons, which is the prerequisite for all intercultural understanding. Linking Humboldt's concept of dialogue to his idea of translation between languages, persons, and cultures, this book shows how Humboldt's thought is of great contemporary relevance. Humboldt shows a way beyond the false alternatives of "culturalism" (the demand that a plurality of cultural and faith-based traditions be recognized as sources of ethical and political legitimacy in the modern world) and "universalism" (the assertion of the primacy of a universal culture of human rights and the renewal of the European Enlightenment project). John Walker explains how Humboldt's work emerges from the intellectual conflicts of his time and yet directly addresses the concerns of our own post-secular and multicultural age.Trade ReviewThis book is not only an important contribution to the Anglo-American scholarship on Wilhelm von Humboldt. It also constitutes an inspiring enrichment of a multitude of contemporary debates of high social and political relevance and thus demonstrates the prime importance of Humanities research for our time. -- Professor Dr Marko Pajevic, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, University of TartuTable of ContentsPreface A Note on Texts List of Abbreviations Introduction 1: Humboldt and the Dialectic of Enlightenment: Language, Culture, and Freedom 2: Language, Dialogue, and Translation: The Human Relevance of the Comparative Study of Language 3: Language Interaction and Language Change: Humboldt on the Kawi Language of Java 4: Humboldt, "Orientalism," and Understanding the Other 5: Humboldt, Translation, and Dialogue between Faiths: Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Hauerwas, and Shahab Ahmed 6: Scriptural Reasoning: Dialogue and Translation in Practice 7: Secularity and Communities of Faith in the Public Sphere 8: Wilhelm von Humboldt: Translation, Dialogue, and the Modern University Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents the author's view of the scope of linguistic description, insofar as the field of linguistics touches on questions of the meanings of sentences. Fillmore takes the subject matter of linguistics, in its grammatical, semantic and pragmatic sub-divisions, to include the full catalogue of knowledge which the speakers of a language can be said to possess about the structure of the sentences in their language, and their knowledge about the appropriate use of these sentences. In the author's view, the special explanatory task of linguistics is to discover the principles which underlie such knowledge. Fillmore chooses to study the range of information which the speakers of a language possess about the sentences in their language by thoroughly examining one simple English sentence.Table of Contents1. 'May we come in?'; 2. Space; 3. Time; 4. Deixis I; 5. Coming and going; 6. Deixis II.

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Book SynopsisThis book is an exploration of current trends in logical theories of information flow across various fields.

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Book SynopsisThis book includes famous papers such as "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" and Frege on "Demonstratives and Cognitive Significance and New Theories of Reference"; papers co-authored with Mark Crimmins ("The Prince and the Phone Booth") and David Israel ("Fodor on Psychological Explanations") and related papers on situation semantics, direct reference, and the structure of belief. Perry has added afterwords that discuss responses to his work by Gareth Evans, Robert Stalnaker, Barbara Partee, Howard Wettstein and others. The word "I" is called an indexical which means who it stands for depends on who says it, not just on its meaning. Other indexicals are "you," "here" and "now." Perry discusses how these words work, and why they express important philosophical thoughts. He claims that indexicals pose a challenge to traditional assumptions about language and thought, and for that reason a number of these papers sparked lively debates.Table of ContentsIndexicals, contexts and unarticulated constituents; Reality without reference; Evading the slingshot; Broadening the mind; Myself and I; Reflexivity, indexicality and names; Rip Van Winkle and other characters; Frege on demonstratives; The problem of the essential indexical; Belief and acceptance; A problem about continued belief; Castandeda on he and I; Perception, action, and the structure of believing; From worlds to situations; Possible worlds to situations; Circumstantial attitudes and benevolent cognition; Thought without representation; Cognitive significance and new theories of reference; The prince and the phone booth; Individuals in Informational and Intentional content; Fodor and psychological explanations.

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Book SynopsisRapid innovations in digital technology deeply influence views on language and information processing. Any new developments raise many questions for researchers, and can help shed new light on old approaches. Logic is a tool that researchers can use to gain insight into investigations of the relation between form and content, the ways that linguistic utterances change information content and the dynamics of information change. This text presents a broad range of logical investigations into language and information processing. Topics covered include: the notion of "reasonable belief" in commonsense reasoning, perpetual reports in natural languages, the logic of creation and modification of objects, the verification of temporal aspects of reactive systems, analysis of scope by combining model theory and situation semantics, and semantic analysis of the information articulation of linguistic statements.

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Book SynopsisIn this volume, author John Perry develops a "reflexive-referential" account of indexicals, demonstratives and proper names. On these issues the philosophy of language in the 20th century was shaped by two competing traditions, descriptivist and referentialist. Referentialist tradition is portrayed as holding that indexicals contribute content that involves individuals without identifying conditions on them. Descriptivist tradition is portrayed as holding that referential content does not explain all of the identifying conditions conveyed by names and indexicals. This text reveals a coherent and structured family of contents - from reflexive contents that place conditions on their actual utterance to the fully incremental contents that place conditions only on the objects of reference - reconciling the insights of both traditions.

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Book SynopsisThis lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language.Trade Review"The best blend of technical competence, philosophical sophistication and topical coverage currently available in an introduction to the philosophy of language." Robert M. Harnish, University of Arizona "This is a first-rate introduction to the topics and philosophers it covers, from Frege through theories of truth to intentional semantics, the metaphysics of modality, translation, language in action, speech acts, and more. The book is well-written, clear, accessible, and thorough. Many students will be stimulated to explore the issues further, and will have a solid base from which to do so." John F. Post, Vanderbilt UniversityTable of Contents1. Fregean Beginnings. 2. Definite Descriptions and Other Objects of Wonder. 3. Truth and Meaning: the Tarskian Paradigm. 4. Foundations of Intentional Semantics. 5. Language and Context. 6. Language in Action.

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Book SynopsisThis lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language.Trade Review"The best blend of technical competence, philosophical sophistication and topical coverage currently available in an introduction to the philosophy of language." Robert M. Harnish, University of Arizona "This is a first-rate introduction to the topics and philosophers it covers, from Frege through theories of truth to intentional semantics, the metaphysics of modality, translation, language in action, speech acts, and more. The book is well-written, clear, accessible, and thorough. Many students will be stimulated to explore the issues further, and will have a solid base from which to do so." John F. Post, Vanderbilt UniversityTable of Contents1. Fregean Beginnings. 2. Definite Descriptions and Other Objects of Wonder. 3. Truth and Meaning: the Tarskian Paradigm. 4. Foundations of Intentional Semantics. 5. Language and Context. 6. Language in Action.

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