The Philosophy of Language: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Issues

This book deals with the philosophy of language and with what is at issue in the philosophy of language. Due to its intensity and diversity, the philosophy of language has attained the position of first philosophy in this century. To show this is the task of Part Two. But the task can be accomplished only if it is first made clear how language came to be a problem in and for philosophy and how this development has influ­ enced and has failed to influence our understanding of language. This is done in Part One. What is at issue in the philosophy of language today is the question regarding the source of meaning. More precisely the question is whether we have access to such a source. Again Part One presents the necessary foil for Part Two in showing how meaning was thought to originate in Western history and how the rise of the philosophy of language and the eclipse of the origin of meaning occurred jointly. Today the question of meaning has come to a peculiarly elaborate and fruitful issue in the philosophy of language, and the fate of the philosophy of language is bound up with the future possibilities of meaning.

One Historical Foundations of the Philosophy of Language.- One The Origin of the Philosophy of Language.- 1. The accessibility of the original reflections on language. Heraclitus.- 2. Language and thought in Heraclitus.- 3. Homonymy and etymology.- 4. The ????? and language.- 5. The ambiguity of the ?????.- 6. The dispersion of the ?????. The Sophists.- Two The Foundation of the Philosophy of Language.- 7. The transition from the harmony with language to the investigation of language. Plato.- 8. The origin of language from nature or convention.- 9. The interrelation of word and thing.- 10. Language and the metaphysical distinction.- 11. The distinction between grammar and logic. Aristotle.- 12. Language as instrument. Rhetoric and poetics.- 13. Language as the theme and the basis of Aristotle’s investigations.- 14. Language as a segment of reality. The Stoics and the classical grammarians.- Chater Three The Exploration of the Range of Language.- 15. The study of language in the Middle Ages.- 16. Terms and things. John Buridan.- 17. The antagonism of language and reality.- 18. Speculative grammar. Thomas of Erfurt.- 19. The interconnections of being, understanding, and signifying.- 20. The depth and extent of the signifying power of language (53);.- 21. Theology and language. Thomas of Aquino.- 22. Analogy.- 23. Metaphor.- 24. Language and rational theology.- Four Language and the Rise of the Modern Era.- 25. Language and the foundation of science and reality. Descartes.- 26. The problem of the uniqueness and autonomy of language.- 27. The sciences and the humanities. Vico.- 28. Vico’s New Science. The principles of language.- 29. The New Science and the natural sciences.- 30. The origin and progress of language. Rousseau and Herder.- 31. Ontological and ontic language. Humboldt.- Two Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Language.- One Language and Precision.- 32. The linguistic turn. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.- 33. The conflict of precision and expression.- 34. Formalized languages.- 35. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions.- 36. Limitations of the theory of definite descriptions.- 37. The explanatory status of logical analyses of language.- 38. The grounds of logical analyses of language.- Two Ordinary Language.- 39. Access to reality through ordinary language. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.- 40. Speaking and doing. Austin.- 41. The radicalism and cogency of Ordinary Language Analysis.- 42. The limits and further possibilities of Ordinary Language Analysis.- Three The Eminence of Language.- 43. The structure of language and the presence of language.- 44. The exemplary presence of language in literature. The theory of literature.- 45. Literature and reality. The difficulty of a theory of literature.- 46. The practice of the theory of literature. Wellek and Warren.- 47. The practice of the theory of literature. Frye.- 48. The practice of the theory of literature. Staiger.- Four The Structure of Language.- 49. The historical and the systematic aspects of language. Saussure.- 50. Language as empirically given. Structural and descriptive linguistics.- 51. The theoretical depth of language. Generative and transformational grammar.- 52. The presuppositions of empirically oriented grammar.- 53. The reach of theoretically oriented grammar.- Conclusion.- Conclusion.