Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy
Translated by Daniela Ginsburg
168 pages
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6 x 9
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© 2013
Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers—but until now her books have never been published in English. Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy.
Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy—a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides—and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.
Stanley Cavell, Harvard University
“Sandra Laugier’s book is already quite influential in France and Italy, and it has drawn a renewed interest in language conceived not only as a cognitive capacity but also as used, and meant, as part of our form of life. This translation is very welcome, even indispensable, and could change the perspective on philosophy of language as well as on the analytic-continental divide.”
Toril Moi, Duke University.
“Sandra Laugier’s brilliant book provides a concise history of the philosophy of language after Quine and Wittgenstein. But Laugier does more than that: she shows why Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell’s claim that to speak about language is to speak about the world is an antimetaphysical revolution in philosophy, a revolution that transforms our understanding of epistemology and ethics. Anyone who wishes to understand what ‘ordinary language philosophy’ means today should read this book.”
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Language and Linguistics: Philosophy of Language
Philosophy: General Philosophy | Logic and Philosophy of Language
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