scholarly journals Analytical Anthropology of Peter Hacker

Author(s):  
V. Y Popov ◽  
Е. V Popova

Purpose. The article is an explication of the features of the anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the context of analytical philosophy with consideration to the context of European philosophy within the framework of the Oxford School of ordinary language philosophy. The theoretical basis of the research is determined by the latest research in the English-language analytical philosophical tradition, rethinking the place of anthropological problems in the system of philosophical knowledge. Originality. Referring to primary sources, we reconstructed the philosophical and anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the unity of its basic principles and theoretical and practical results. We determined philosophical origins of the key ideas of his philosophical anthropology and substantiated their originality, systematicity and logical argumentation. His philosophical position is defined as anthropological holism, synthesizing the reinterpreted ideas of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Conclusions. Peter Hacker is the creator of the original version of Analytic Philosophical Anthropology. His anthropology is based on criticism of Cartesian dualism and physicalism, which underlie modern neurosciences and which he tries to overcome on the basis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical "logotherapy". The conceptual framework of his holistic anthropology is a rethought conceptual scheme of the Ordinary language philosophy. Hacker considers consciousness not as a separate mental reality, but one of the powers of human nature – an intellectual ability, which, along with emotional (passionate) and moral, belongs to a person as an integral socio-biological being. Asserting the free will of man, the Oxford thinker criticizes various forms of determinism, especially its most common form in modern science – neurobiological determinism, which is built on false philosophical foundations. This criticism allows the modern British philosopher to build an original, systematic and logically consistent anthropological concept that asserts the immutability of the highest human values – goodness, love and happiness.

Author(s):  
Toril Moi

For ordinary language philosophy—the philosophical tradition after Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, as constituted and extended by Stanley Cavell—meaning arises in use. Utterances are actions and expressions. This philosophy, therefore, is closely attuned to the work of language in theater. This paper shows that ordinary language philosophy gives rise to a kind of literary criticism that considers reading an practice of acknowledgment, as en effort to understand exactly why the characters say precisely these words in precisely this situation. By paying close attention to Hedda’s interactions with three different linguistic worlds—the Tesman world, the Brack world, and the world she shared with Løvborg in the past—this chapter brings out the contrast between the conventionality and brutality of Hedda’s surroundings and Hedda’s ideals of courage and freedom, and shows that Hedda is more vulnerable, and more damaged, than previous readings have assumed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Avner Baz

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.”


Author(s):  
Luana Sion Li

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.


Author(s):  
Avner Baz

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.


Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Avner Baz

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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