Format:
386 Seiten
ISBN:
9780674980914
Content:
This book explores the nature of meaning, primarily through readings of the work of Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Alexander Stern offers a critical analysis of Benjamin's philosophy of language, finding in it a common root with Wittgenstein's thought on language, and traces the historical foundation of both accounts of meaning to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy. Benjamin's theory of language is notoriously dense and obscure. In elucidating it, Stern emphasizes Benjamin's attempt to reorient the Kantian project around language-the medium in which knowledge is expressed-and his concern with the logical understanding of language gaining credence in the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. The result is a radical model of the relationship between language, experience, and the world that sees "absolutely everything" as linguistic in a broadened sense and which sees the logical or designative capacities of language as grounded in an aesthetic foundation. Wittgenstein and Benjamin are read in the book as complementary to one another, sharing comparable critiques of empiricism and comparable accounts of concept use, linguistic understanding, and the relation between experience and language. Although this similarity breaks down over Wittgenstein's account of the "experience of meaning," which is subordinated to his account of meaning as use, Stern argues that Benjamin's theory of language can productively address some unresolved issues in Wittgenstein's understanding of meaning.--
Content:
Part I. Benjamin's philosophy of language: The metaphysics of meaning -- From name to sign: language out of Eden -- The theory gets dressed up -- Part II. The history of language as such: The thought of language -- What art means -- The linguistic U-turn -- Private language & other nonsense -- Part III. Benjamin & Wittgenstein: The word & the deed -- The character of language
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Online-Ausgabe Stern, Alexander, 1986 - The fall of language Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2019 ISBN 9780674240636
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780674240643
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780674240629
Language:
English
Subjects:
Philosophy
Keywords:
Benjamin, Walter 1892-1940
;
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1889-1951
;
Sprachphilosophie
