Kafka’s Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Espen Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Court System ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Extended Reflection

Using ideas from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Stanley Cavell’s visions of ordinary language philosophy, this essay explores Kafka’s modernism. As opposed to Maurice Blanchot’s notion of literary language as non-referential, it is argued that the modernism at stake in The Trial centers on the question of intelligibility. While the court system in the novel signifies some sort of general skepticism, in which the use of language threatens to become unintelligible, Kafka offers the reader an extended reflection on the conditions of intelligibility and sense. At stake is language itself and our relation to it as agents seeking to make ourselves understandable to others. In The Trial, there are numerous examples of acts of communication that only seemingly make sense. The parallels with how, for Wittgenstein, our language can become emptied of meaning are made explicit.

scholarly journals Hva betyr egentlig ordene om Gud? Om språk og livstolkning i Bjørn Sortlands ungdomsroman Hver morgen dyppet min søster brystene i isvann for å bli pen (2017)

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Åse Høyvoll Kallestad
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Character Of God

This article examines how Mariam, the main character in a Norwegian novel for youngsters, reflects on the existence and real character of God – and his relationship to her as a young refugee girl. Mariam has grown up in Syria with a Christian belief in God as caring and almighty. In particular, the article discusses what the inherited religious language means for Mariam in her desperate situation and how it influences Mariam’s interpretation of life. With support from Stanley Cavell, and the ordinary language philosophy, the article examines whether Mariam shares the criteria of the traditional religious language or if she turns to scepticism. The reading of the novel shows how Mariam maintains the established criteria for the language about God, in spite of her own experiences in a cruel world.

Whose Dream Is It Anyway?

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
External World ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
First Line ◽  
Standard Type ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism

I start with two basic lines of response to Cartesian skepticism about the ‘external world’: in the first, which is characteristic of Analytic philosophers to this day, the focus is on the meaning of ‘know’—what it ‘refers’ to, its ‘semantics’ and its ‘pragmatics’; in the second, which characterizes Continental responses to Descartes, the focus is on the philosophizing or meditating subject, and its relation to its body and world. I argue that the first approach is hopeless: if the Cartesian worry that I could be dreaming right now so much as makes sense, the proposal that—under some theory of knowledge (or of ‘knowledge’)—my belief that I am sitting in front of the computer right now may still be (or truly count as) a piece of knowledge, would rightfully seem to the skeptic to be playing with words and missing the point. I then argue that the practice of Ordinary Language Philosophy, which has mostly been linked to the first line of response to Cartesian skepticism, may be seen as actually belonging with the second line of response; and I show how a form of what may be called “Existentialist Ordinary Language Philosophy” can be used to reveal the nonsensicality of the Cartesian skeptical worry. My argument takes its cue from Thompson Clarke’s insight—an insight that Clarke himself has not pursued far or accurately enough—that our concept of Dream is not a concept of the “standard type.”

INFLUENCE OF LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY ON ANALYTICAL JURISPRUDENCE THROUGH THE PERSPECTIVE OF H. L. A. HART

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
pp. 315-330
Author(s):  
Luana Sion Li
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Legal Philosopher ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the influence of emerging linguistic philosophy theories in the 20th century on the development of analytical jurisprudence through an examination of the way those theories influenced the legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart. Although Hart is significantly influenced by linguistic philosophy, his legal theory could not have been developed solely with it. This is evidenced by Hart’s disownment of the essay Ascription of Responsibility and Rights, his attempt to employ ideas from ordinary language philosophy in the context of law. Hart’s theoretical development shows that he was above all not a linguistic, but a legal philosopher; and that analytical jurisprudence, albeit influenced by linguistic philosophy, depends on aspects beyond it.

Ordinary Language Philosophy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Method Of Cases

The article presents, clarifies, defends, and shows the contemporary relevance of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as a general approach to the understanding and dissolution of at least very many traditional and contemporary philosophical difficulties. The first section broadly characterizes OLP, points out its anticipation in Immanuel Kant’s dissolution of metaphysical impasses in the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, and then shows its contemporary relevance by bringing its perspective to bear on the recent debates concerning the philosophical ‘method of cases’. The second section responds to a series of common objections to, and misunderstandings of, OLP.

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

scholarly journals Stanley Cavell’s Argument of the Ordinary

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Compelling Argument ◽  
Fundamental Fact ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
Common World

My overall aim is to show that there is a serious and compelling argument in Stanley Cavell’s work for why any philosophical theorizing that fails to recognize what Cavell refers to as “our common world of background” as a condition for the sense of anything we say or do, and to acknowledge its own dependence on that background and the vulnerability implied by that dependence, runs the risk of rendering itself, thereby, ultimately unintelligible. I begin with a characterization of Cavell’s unique way of inheriting Austin and Wittgenstein – I call it “ordinary language philosophy existentialism” – as it relates to what Cavell calls “skepticism”. I then turn to Cavell’s response to Kripke in “The Argument of the Ordinary”, which is different from all other responses to Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language in that Cavell’s response, while theoretically powerful, is at the same time also existentialist, in the sense that Cavell finds a way of acknowledging in his writing the fundamental fact that his writing (thinking) constitutes an instance of what he is writing (thinking) about. This unique achievement of Cavell’s response to Kripke is not additional to his argument, but essential to it: it enables him not merely to say, but to show that, and how, Kripke’s account falsifies what it purports to elucidate, and thereby to show that the theoretical question of linguistic sense is not truly separable, not even theoretically, from the broadly ethical question of how we relate to others, and how we conduct ourselves in relation to them from one moment to the next.

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