Modernism and the Language of Philosophy

by Matar; Anat

• ISBN13: 9780415353793
• ISBN10: 0415353793
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Modernism can be characterized by the acute attention it gives to language, to its potential and its limitations. Philosophers, artists and literary critics who worked in the first third of the twentieth century, on the one hand emphasized language's creative potential, but on the other, its impotence in conveying what was aimed at. In particular, modernists shared the belief that philosophical language was at a loss; that the kind of truth sub specie aeterni that was sought by philosophers is either meaningless or is more appropriately expressed by the arts - especially by literature and poetry. Modernism and the Language of Philosophy addresses the challenge this belief posed to philosophy, arguing that the modernist assumption rests upon a host of unacknowledged, repressed or denied dogmas or tacit images. Anat Matar begins by investigating the ideas that bring out this crisis in philosophical language, through examining the relevant views of the early Wittgenstein, Carnap and Artaud. The book goeson to look at the roots of the modernist crisis, focusing on Frege and Husserl's innovative ideas and analyzing the inner tensions in this pre-modern era. A contemporary solution is explored drawing on the work of Michale Dummett and Jacques Derrida. These two philosophers drive the narrative of Modernism and the Language of Philosophy and serve as spectacles through which both past and present day philosophers are looked at. Through the perspectives of Dummett and Derrida a dialogue is formed between the two philosophical traditions of the twentieth century - analytic and continental - and Matar shows that the dynamics of thought about language, philosophy and philosophical language in these traditions cannot be detached from one another.

Author Biography

Anat Matar is a senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction: two genealogies of modernism	1	(10)
PART I Acting, not speaking: three moments of modernism	11	(50)
Wittgenstein's Tractatus: modernism in its essence	13	(14)
Carnap: Modernism on its way out	27	(18)
Artaud: Modernism: the last breath	45	(16)
PART II Pre-modernism: the right turn that went wrong	61	(44)
`The way in which logic uses ideas'	63	(5)
Sense and reference?	68	(11)
The apparent primacy of language	79	(6)
Leaving psychologism out: `too rigid a barrier'	85	(5)
`Determining the logos from logic': language as a monologue	90	(15)
PART III Modernism aufgehoben: the inseparability of speaking and acting	105	(61)
Representation and presentation in the present	107	(4)
Dummett: (almost) nothing is innocent	111	(25)
Derrida: the stable instability of language and philosophy	136	(30)
Epilogue: words as dogmas	166	(9)
Notes	175	(9)
Bibliography	184	(5)
Index	189