The book is based on the proceedings of the conference on 'Philosophy, Language and the Political - Reevaluating Poststructuralism' held at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on the 10th, 11th and 12th December 2014. Several scholars from India and abroad participated in it. The book comprises 17 papers that were presented at the event, besides three additional papers, plus a Preface by Marc Crepon, as well as a description of the conference and a thematic introduction, both by Franson (...) Manjali. -/- The contributiors discuss diverse aspects of the poststructuralist and related philosophical ideas and practices, in the works of Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Helene Cixous, Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Luc Nancy, Georgio Agambed, Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Heideggar, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzche, Baruch Spinoza, and several other philosophers. The questions of language, literature, culture, art, the political, feminism, self and the other death, theology, violence, shame, the animal, psychoanalysis, Marxism, etc, receive scholarly attention of the contributors. (shrink)

In chapter one I firstly critique some contemporary family-resemblance approaches to the category woman, and claim that they do not take sufficient account of dis-semblance, that is, resemblances that people have in common with members of the contrast category man. Second, I analyze how the concept of woman is semantically contestable: resemblance/dissemblance structures give rise to vagueness and to borderline cases. Borderline cases can either be included in the category or excluded from it. The factors which incline parties in a (...) dispute about membership to include or exclude depend on metaphysical, ethical, or political background assumptions. In chapter two, I begin by considering the harms suffered by transgender persons through “misgendering”, the deployment of gender terms which inflict psychological harms upon transgender persons, place them in situations of injustice, or diminish their self-respect. Such deployments are morally contestable: they can be challenged on ethical grounds. Several characterisations of the term ‘woman’ proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. In chapter three, I elaborate a broadly liberal approach to gender pluralism. The approach involves: i) the public toleration of gender practices and beliefs which contest prevalent gender norms; and ii) state-gender neutrality. Public toleration allows gender non-conforming practices and beliefs within public space. State gender-neutrality consists mainly in the removal from law and government policy of provisions which assume compliance with prevalent conceptions of gender. (shrink)

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions (...) regarding the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions (...) regarding the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é examinar como Habermas, orientado pela intuição normativa do uso público da razão, reconstrói uma concepção procedimental de democracia deliberativa, que, sem desconsiderar da dimensão estratégica e instrumental da esfera pública e da política, reformula a dimensão epistêmica da democracia: a aceitabilidade racional dos acordos políticos. Inicialmente, apresento brevemente a análise sociológica e histórica do conceito de esfera pública crítica, realizada em Mudança Estrutural da Esfera Pública (1962), para, em seguida, expor duas linhas de argumentação sobre (...) o conceito de esfera pública e de política deliberativa, em Direito e Democracia (1992): a que se refere ao princípio de legitimação baseado na razão pública como uma reconstrução intersubjetiva e política do conceito kantiano de autonomia; e a que concerne aos aspectos essenciais da teoria crítica da sociedade fundada na distinção entre mundo da vida e sistema e a "tradução" sociológica e institucional do uso público da razão, nos conceitos de sociedade civil e esfera pública. The objective of this article is to examine how Habermas, guided by a normative intuition of the public use of reason, reconstructs a procedural conception of deliberative democracy which, without disregarding the strategic and instrumental dimensions of the public sphere and of politics, reconstructs the epistemic dimension of democracy: the rational acceptability of political agreements. First, I briefly present a historical and sociological analysis of the concept of the public sphere in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). I then present two lines of argumentation regarding the concept of the public sphere and deliberative democracy in Between Facts and Norms (1992): one refers to the principle of justification based on public reason as an intersubjective and political reconstruction of the Kantian concept of autonomy; the other refers to the essential aspects of the critical theory of society based on the distinction between lifeworld and system, and on the sociological and institutional "translation" of the public use of reason in the concepts of civil society and public sphere. (shrink)

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be (...) related to its perception, the conceptualization of ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike. (shrink)

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be (...) related to its perception, the conceptualization of ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike. (shrink)

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be (...) related to its perception, the conceptualization of ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike. (shrink)

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be (...) related to its perception, the conceptualization of ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike. (shrink)

Article 14 Chapter I ‘The State of Lithuania’ of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992 reads as follows: ‘Lithuanian shall be the State language’. This principle is not new in the Lithuanian history of constitutionalization, as Lithuanian was the official language of the State in the interwar period but lost this status during the Soviet occupation. After 1988, when many political, economic and social changes crucial for further development of the State took place in (...) Lithuania, linguistic issues re-emerged. It was recognized back then that language played a vital role in the life of the State and the society, and the Lithuanian language was given back its status of the official language by the Constitution. The principle that Lithuanian is the official language of the State, enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, was further elaborated by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania in its rulings and judgments. According to its official constitutional doctrine, the Lithuanian language should be treated as a very specific constitutional value, as it forms the basis of the ethnic and cultural identity of the Lithuanian nation and is the guarantor of the national identity and survival. The status of Lithuanian as the official language means that the Lithuanian language must be used in all spheres of public life. The Court also holds that having this principle enshrined in Chapter I ‘The State of Lithuania’ of the Constitution implies that the Lithuanian language enjoys particular protection since the provisions of this Chapter may be amended only by a referendum. (shrink)

David Bleich sees the human body, its affective life, social life, and political functions as belonging to the study of language. In The Materiality of Language, Bleich addresses the need to end centuries of limiting access to language and its many contexts of use. To recognize language as material and treat it as such, argues Bleich, is to remove restrictions to language access due to historic patterns of academic censorship and unfair gender practices. (...) class='Hi'>Language is understood as a key path in the formation of all social and political relations, and becomes available for study by all speakers, who may regulate it, change it, and make it flexible like other material things. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the place of representation in music. Music’s status as a representational art has been hotly debated since the War of the Romantics, which pitted the Weimar progressives (Liszt, Wagner, &co.) against the Leipzig conservatives (the Schumanns, Brahms, &co.) in an intellectual struggle for what each side took to be the very future of music as an art. I side with the progressives, and argue that music can be and often is a representational medium. Correspondence (or resemblance) theories (...) of representation, such as the one I offer, have been much maligned in philosophy since the 1960s. Most theories assimilate representation under “meaning,” which has usually been thought to belong primarily to language. As a result, representational content has been taken to be purely conventional in the way that sentential meaning is. People want to know what music “means,” and these theories interpret this as “what does it refer to?” or “what propositions does it express?” I argue that propositional communication is only one (small) part of the issue. Once we overcome the bias of conceiving of musical works as essentially linguistic items, speech acts (performed) or sentence tokens (written), we can begin to take music on its own terms to discover how it represents—one way in which it “means.” The first step is to “naturalize” music’s representational content. Influenced by recent discussions in the philosophies of mind and science, I argue in Chapter 1 that composers represent extra-musical objects, events, and states of affairs through their works by exploiting antecedent relations (such as similarities in pitch, timbre, and structure) in order to secure reference to them. In Chapter 2, I survey and respond to the main challenges that those skeptical of music’s representational possibilities would raise against my theory of musical representation. In Chapter 3, I explore a number of ways through which music has been claimed to represent in order to show how my theory accounts for these diverse phenomena better than its conventionalist rivals, both in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology. Chapter 4 extends this discussion by offering an account of how we perceive, understand, appreciate, and interpret sophisticated musical representations. I conclude by teasing out some of my theory’s implications and suggesting areas for further research. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Lacan is second only to Freud in its impact on psychoanalysis. Yannis Stavrakakis clearly examines Lacan's challenging views on time, history, language, alterity, desire and sexuality from a political standpoint. It is the first book to provide an overview of the social and political implications of Lacan's work as a whole for students coming to Lacan for the first time. The first part of _Lacan and the Political_ offers a straightforward and systematic assessment (...) of the importance of Lacan's categories and theoretical constructions for concrete political analysis. The second half of the book applies Lacanian theory to specific examples of widely discussed political issues, such as Green ideology, the question of democracy and the hegemony of advertising in contemporary culture. (shrink)

Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis is a sympathetic critique of Freud's work, tracing its political content and context from his early writings on hysteria to his late essays on civilization and religion. Brunner's central claim is that politics is a pervasive and essential component of all of Freud's discourse, since Freud viewed both the psyche and society primarily as constellations of power and domination. Brunner shows that when read politically, Freud's discourse can be seen to unite mechanics and (...) meaning into a plausible, fruitful and internally consistent theory of the mind, therapy, family and society. Part one deals with the medical and political background of Freud's work. It explains how Freud postulated mental principles that were the same for all races and nations. The second part is concerned with the logic and language of Freud's theory of the mind. Brunner also details how Freud introduced dynamics of dominance and subjugation into the very core of the psyche. Part three addresses dynamics of power in the clinical setting, which Freud forged out of a curious blend of authoritarian and liberal elements. Brunner focuses on how this setting creates an arena for verbal politics. He also examines various social factors that influenced the therapeutic practice of psychoanalysis, such as class, gender and education. Part four explores Freud's analysis of the family and large-scale social institutions. Though Brunner is critical of the authoritarian bias in Freud's social theory, he suggests that it provides a useful vocabulary to unmask hidden psychological aspects of domination and subjection. (shrink)

The review demonstrates that there are four main historiographical approaches to explanation of the role of Mendelssohn’s philosophy in the emergence of the Haskalah project: (1) traditional approach (created by the Jewish historiography in the second half of the 19th century; it stressed secular and culture-centered character of Haskalah, making it closer to German intellectual tradition); (2) social historiography (it treated Haskalah as a consequence of and reaction to the processes of global social and political modernization); (3) the approach (...) practiced by researchers of early Jewish proponents of Enlightenment’s (determination of the intellectual foundations of Haskalah in the early Maskilim projects); (4) the researches of Mendelssohn's Jewish texts, the concept of “Political Theology”, and the interpretation of Mendelssohn’s ideas in the works of Leo Strauss (new interpretation of the role of Mendelssohn in the creation of Haskalah). (shrink)

This book presents one of the first systematic assessments of aesthetic insights into world politics. It examines the nature of aesthetic approaches and outlines how they differ from traditional analysis of politics. The book explores the potential and limits of aesthetics through a series of case studies on language and poetics"--Provided by publisher.

v. 1. Books I and II -- v. 2. Books III, IV, and V -- v. 3. Books VI and VII -- v. 4. Books VIII and IX.

ABSTRACTWe examine Marx's critiques of language, politics, and capitalist political economy and show how these anticipated critical discourse and argumentation analysis and ‘cultural political economy’. Marx studied philology and rhetoric at university and applied their lessons critically. We illustrate this from three texts. The German Ideology critically explores language as practical consciousness, the division of manual and mental labor, the state, hegemony, intellectuals, and specific ideologies. The Eighteenth Brumaire studies the semantics and pragmatics of political (...) language and how it represents the class content of politics and contributes to social transformation. Capital deconstructs the categories of classical political economy and their constitutive role in capitalist social relations. This is one aspect of CPE. Capital also highlights the structural and agential aspects of these relations, their contradictory dynamic, and their crisis-prone character. We comment on this aspect too. This said, Marx held that social transformation is mediated through political imaginaries and highlighted the need for the proletariat to develop a ‘poetry’ of the future. We then consider the misleading ‘base-superstructure’ metaphor and note how, against the thrust of Marx's work, it tends to reify culture. The article concludes that Marx contributed to the critique of semiotic as well as political economy. (shrink)

The distinguished linguist and controversial political critic combines both aspects of his life and work in this wide-ranging and informative discussion that presents his political, moral, and linguistic views on current issues.

This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It explores the effects that specific linguistic choices may have in the production and the reception of arguments and in doing so, it moves beyond the first, necessary, descriptive stance provided by current literature on the topic. Each chapter provides an original take illuminating one or more of the following three issues: the range of linguistic resources language users draw on as they argue; (...) how cognitive processes of meaning construction may influence argumentative practices; and which discursive devices can be used to fulfil a number of argumentative goals. The volume includes theoretical and empirical or applied stances, providing the reader both with state-of-the-art reflections on the relationship between argumentation and language, and with concrete examples of how this relationship plays out in naturally occurring argumentative practices, such as classroom interaction, and political, parliamentary or journalistic discourse. This is a very original, timely and welcome contribution to the study of argumentation conducted with the tools of the language sciences. The collection of papers relevantly tackles key linguistic, discursive and cognitive aspects of argumentative practices whose treatment is underrepresented in mainstream argumentation studies by offering new and exciting linguistically-grounded theoretical accounts. As such, the volume testifies both to the vigour of the linguistic current within the discipline and to the high standards of scholarly commitment and quality that the younger generation is pushing forward. Without question, this book marks an important milestone in the relationships between linguistics and argumentation theory. Christian Plantin, Professor Emeritus. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of race and racism devote considerable effort to giving conceptual analyses of these notions. Much of the work is concerned to investigate a priori what we mean by the terms ‘ race ’ and ‘racism’ ; more recent work has started to employ empirical methods to determine the content of our “folk concepts,” or “folk theory” of race and racism. In contrast to both of these projects, I have argued elsewhere that in considering what we mean by these (...) terms we should treat them on the model of kind terms whose reference is fixed by ordinary uses, but whose content is discovered empirically using social theory; I have also argued that it is not only important to determine what we actually mean by these terms, but what we should mean, i.e., what type, if any, we should be tracking. My own discussion of these issues, however, has been confused and confusing. In giving an account of race or gender, is the goal to provide a conceptual analysis? Or to investigate the kinds we are referring to? To draw attention to different kinds? To stipulate new meanings? Jennifer Saul has raised a series of powerful objections to my accounts of gender and race, suggesting that they are neither semantically nor politically useful, regardless of whether we treat them as revisionary proposals, or as elucidations of our concepts. Joshua Glasgow has also offered a critique of my externalist approach to race as an effort to capture “our concept”. I agree with much of what they say, but I also believe that there is something I was trying to capture that. (shrink)

This volume offers recent developments in pragmatics and adjacent territories of investigation, including important new concepts such as the pragmatic act and the pragmeme, and combines developments in neighboring disciplines in an integrative holistic pragmatic approach. The young science of pragmatics has, from its inception, differentiated itself from neighboring fields in the humanities, especially the disciplines dealing with language and those focusing on the social and anthropological aspects of human behavior, by focusing on the language user in (...) his or her societal environment.This collection of papers continues that emphasis on language use, and pragmatic acts in their context. The editors and contributors share a perspective that essentially considers language as a system for communication and wants to look at language from a societal perspective, and accept the view that acts of interpretation are essentially embedded in culture. In an interdisciplinary approach, some authors explore connections with social theory, in particular sociology or socio-linguistics, some offer a political stance, others explore connections with philosophy and philosophy of language, and several papers address problems in theoretical pragmatics. (shrink)

This article begins by clarifying the notion of what Stanley Cavell has called ‘Emersonian moral perfectionism.’ It goes on to explore this through close analysis of aspects of Emerson’s essay ‘Experience,’ in which ideas of trying or attempting or experimenting bring out the intimate relation between perfectionism and styles of writing. ‘Where do we find ourselves?’ Emerson asks, and the answer is to be found in part in what we write and what we say, injecting a new sense of (...) possibility and responsibility into our relation to our words. But the language we speak and the lives that go with it are at the same time burdened with a past, and in the case of English, and in the American context especially, it is marked with a kind of repression relating to questions of slavery and race. These matters are implicated in questions of constitution, in both general and specifically political senses. Hence, inheritance and appropriation become causes of critical sensitivity, as do the forms of praise and acknowledgment that should meet them. The article explores ways of thinking through Emerson’s relation to these aspects of experience and seeks to find responses pertinent to today. (shrink)

Understanding is a ‘language event’ founded upon a ‘silent agreement’ between participants in a conversation. This silent agreement, built up of conversational aspects held in common, is what makes social solidarity possible and shows that the methods of science are an inappropriate starting point for our self-understanding. However, with the advent of industrial technical civilization, the question arises whether understanding has come under the control of a centrally steered communication system where language is a consciously wielded instrument (...) of politics with a corresponding loss of free insight and critical judgement. Only via a hermeneutic logic of words, which begins from recognition that words get their meaning from the open space of living conversation, can critical judgement be defended in the face of the authority of science and technology. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increased attention to temporality in political theory, and such attention is sorely needed. For too long political theory, with the exception of occasional phenomenological forays, has remained grounded in a particular experience of time as linear and sequential. This book aims to unsettle the dominant framework by putting time itself, and the experience of time in everyday life, at the center of its critical analysis. Smita Rahman focuses on the experience of (...) time as one where past, present, and future intermingle with each other and refuse to adhere to a sequential structure. Rather than trying to tame the flux of time, this book places this "out of joint" experience of time at the center of its analysis of global politics. Rahman takes the highly abstract concept of time and decenters it to speak to a wide range of political issues across disciplines by exposing the cultural construction of the foundational concept of time in political theory and attending closely to the challenges of cultural incommensurability that it encounters in a globalized world of difference. Specifically, the book looks at interrogation practices in Afghanistan, the challenges of coping with the burdens of collective memory in Algeria, South Africa, and Rwanda, the difficulty of uncritically applying such a framework to the Muslim world through the language of secularism, and finally at the beginnings of democratic emergence in Bangladesh to explore a politics of contingency. (shrink)

In this book, Catherine Frost uses evidence and case studies to offer a re-examination of declarations of independence and the language that comprises such documents. Considered as a quintessential form of founding speech in the modern era, declarations of independence are however poorly understood as a form of expression, and no one can completely account for how they work. Beginning with the founding speech in the American Declaration, Frost uses insights drawn from unexpected or unlikely forms of founding in (...) cases like Ireland and Canada to reconsider the role of time and loss in how such speech is framed. She brings the discussion up to date by looking at recent debates in Scotland, where an undeclared declaration of independence overshadows contemporary politics. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and using a contextualist, comparative theory method, Frost demonstrates that the capacity for renewal through speech arises in aspects of language that operate beyond conventional performativity. Language, Democracy, and the Paradox of Constituent Power is an excellent resource for researchers and students of political theory, democratic theory, law, constitutionalism, and political history. (shrink)

In this article I explore two aspects of Pettit's thesis about Hobbes' innovation with regard to the transformative and central role of language in thought and politics. First, I argue that while Hobbes had many debts to both traditionalists and innovators, he did break new ground in characterising language as in some ways constitutive of thought - a conclusion he came to as a consequence not only of his extreme nominalism, but also of his views on the (...) exceptional sensibility of words. Second, I argue that while language is part of a matrix of the forces which shape politics, it plays a powerful and indispensable part in both saving and cursing society. (shrink)

It is well known that AI-based language technology—large language models, machine translation systems, multilingual dictionaries, and corpora—is currently limited to three percent of the world’s most widely spoken, financially and politically backed languages. In response, recent efforts have sought to address the “digital language divide” by extending the reach of large language models to “underserved languages.” We show how some of these efforts tend to produce flawed solutions that adhere to a hard-wired representational preference (...) for certain languages, which we call language modeling bias. Language modeling bias is a specific and under-studied form of linguistic bias were language technology by design favors certain languages, dialects, or sociolects with respect to others. We show that language modeling bias can result in systems that, while being precise regarding languages and cultures of dominant powers, are limited in the expression of socio-culturally relevant notions of other communities. We further argue that at the root of this problem lies a systematic tendency of technology developer communities to apply a simplistic understanding of diversity which does not do justice to the more profound differences that languages, and ultimately the communities that speak them, embody. Drawing on the concept of epistemic injustice, we point to the broader ethico-political implications and show how it can lead not only to a disregard for valuable aspects of diversity but also to an under-representation of the needs of marginalized language communities. Finally, we present an alternative socio-technical approach that is designed to tackle some of the analyzed problems. (shrink)

This paper intends to examine the development of conflictual interactions, how they might be resolved, and the socio-cultural norms involved, by adopting an analytical framework in an online gaming context. The current paper was inspired by Kádár and Haugh’s framework as it enables me to investigate both the macro and micro aspects of (im)politeness. The study’s aim is to further examine how impoliteness, language aggression and conflict are realised in two online gaming platforms, namely Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. (...) Thus, I will explore discursively how these phenomena are subjective in a Tunisian Arabic setting and discuss how participants reach their subjective perception of conflict in ways that do not always correspond to the supposed intentions of the ostensible offender. The results indicate that conflict is subjective as it is evaluated in different ways by different gamers and could be a result of a conflictual intention. The findings also reveal that conflict may also be created/ escalated as a result of a non-conflictual intention. Thus, this paper contributes to understanding of conflict, how impoliteness can lead to conflict and the various aspects of impoliteness/the perception of impoliteness. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It explores the effects that specific linguistic choices may have in the production and the reception of arguments and in doing so, it moves beyond the first, necessary, descriptive stance provided by current literature on the topic. Each chapter provides an original take illuminating one or more of the following three issues: the range of linguistic resources language users draw on as they argue; (...) how cognitive processes of meaning construction may influence argumentative practices; and which discursive devices can be used to fulfil a number of argumentative goals. The volume includes theoretical and empirical or applied stances, providing the reader both with state-of-the-art reflections on the relationship between argumentation and language, and with concrete examples of how this relationship plays out in naturally occurring argumentative practices, such as classroom interaction, and political, parliamentary or journalistic discourse. This is a very original, timely and welcome contribution to the study of argumentation conducted with the tools of the language sciences. The collection of papers relevantly tackles key linguistic, discursive and cognitive aspects of argumentative practices whose treatment is underrepresented in mainstream argumentation studies by offering new and exciting linguistically-grounded theoretical accounts. As such, the volume testifies both to the vigour of the linguistic current within the discipline and to the high standards of scholarly commitment and quality that the younger generation is pushing forward. Without question, this book marks an important milestone in the relationships between linguistics and argumentation theory. Christian Plantin, Professor Emeritus. (shrink)

The aim of this volume is to investigate three fundamental issues of the new millennium: language, truth and democracy. The authors approach the themes from different philosophical perspectives. One group of authors examines the use of language and the meaning of concepts from an analytic point of view, the ontology of scientific terms and explores the nature of knowledge in general. Another group examines truth and types of relation. A third group of authors focuses on the current factors (...) influencing our concept of democracy and its legal foundations and makes reference to moral aspects and the question of political responsibility. The chapters provide the reader with an overview of current philosophical problems and the answers to these questions will be decisive for future development. (shrink)

Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Hölderlin are central to Heidegger's later philosophy and have determined the mainstream reception of Hölderlin's poetry. Gosetti-Ferencei argues that Heidegger has overlooked central elements in Hölderlin's poetics, such as a Kantian understanding of aesthetic subjectivity and a commitment to Enlightenment ideals. These elements, she argues, resist the more politically distressing aspects of Heidegger's interpretations, including Heidegger's nationalist valorization of the German language and sense of nationhood, or Heimat.In the context of Hölderlin's poetics (...) of alienation, exile, and wandering, Gosetti-Ferencei draws a different model of poetic subjectivity, which engages Heidegger's later philosophy of Gelassenheit, calmness, or letting be. In so doing, she is able to pose a phenomenologically sensitive theory of poetic language and a "new poetics of Dasein," or being there. (shrink)

"Human dignity" has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and (...) thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law. (shrink)

"Most modern legal theorists seek to limit their enquiries to a particular sort of law, on the assumption that law is necessarily restricted in its interactions with other social practices. margaret Davies deliberately - and provocatively - questions the usefulness of such 'positivist' dogmas, asserting that the law can and should be seen as multi-dimensional. Davies argues that the law is everywhere - in metaphysics, the social environment, language and the psyche. In a persuasive meeting of postmodern discourse, deconstruction, (...) feminism and legal theory, Davies creates new ways of thinking about the law by creating links with other practices and disciplines where none previously existed. This is a powerful critique of the ideology and theory of law in the West, providing a much-needed link between conventional legal philosophy and modern movements in legal theory." --From back cover. (shrink)

"Human dignity" has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and (...) thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law. (shrink)

To engage constructively with aspects of his writing sometimes given short shrift, in this paper I contend that Rorty can be fruitfully approached as a political theorist concerned with promulgating a new picture of the political world. Situating his recent thought as a political intervention aimed at revitalizing a moribund left allows us to take seriously his antirepresentationalist claims and evaluate his thought in terms of its political effects rather than accuracy of representation. By reading (...) Rorty’s notion of ‘metaphorical redescription’ through Sheldon Wolin’s conception of political theory as a kind of ‘vision’, I highlight the value of imaginatively constructing new perspectives on our world as a prelude to changing it. Yet even as it authorizes the creative power of imaginative language, Rorty’s antirepresentationalism limits the critical potential of his project by severing his redescriptions from political reality. Where Rorty seeks to alter our vocabularies, the great political theorists sought to alter the world. (shrink)

Aspect-seeing, I claim, involves reflection on concepts. It involves letting oneself feel how it would be like to conceptualize something with a certain concept, without committing oneself to this conceptualization. I distinguish between two kinds of aspect-perception: -/- 1. Preparatory: allows us to develop, criticize, and shape concepts. It involves bringing a concept to an object for the purpose of examining what would be the best way to conceptualize it. -/- 2. Non-Preparatory: allows us to express the ingraspability of certain (...) experiences. It involves bringing a concept to an object for the purpose of showing—per impossible—what it would take to properly capture one’s experience. -/- I demonstrate the usefulness of the two kinds of aspect perception in making conceptual judgments, and in making moral and aesthetic judgments. (shrink)

It has been a widespread belief among historians of antiquity that Athens’ importance on the political scene declined rapidly after 338, and especially after 322; Athens, so it is assumed, succumbed to the will of Alexander and, later on, of his Diadochoi. Of course, it cannot be denied that Athens found itself in a very precarious and sometimes impossible position. Yet the attitudes of Athens towards one king or the other, as well as its status, vary considerably until 261, (...) the end of the Chremonidean War against Antigonos Gonatas, king of Macedon. Certain aspects of the Athenian relationship with the various monarchs are reflected in the decrees of the assembly, passed in honour of royal officials, as well as in the decrees conferring the highest honours upon Athenian citizens who belonged to a king's court. My purpose is to examine precisely the image that Athens projects through the above-mentioned decrees with regard to its relations with the various rulers and their officials; and these in relation to its perception of its own position on the military and political scene on different historical occasions. (shrink)

It has been a widespread belief among historians of antiquity that Athens’ importance on the political scene declined rapidly after 338, and especially after 322; Athens, so it is assumed, succumbed to the will of Alexander and, later on, of his Diadochoi. Of course, it cannot be denied that Athens found itself in a very precarious and sometimes impossible position. Yet the attitudes of Athens towards one king or the other, as well as its status, vary considerably until 261, (...) the end of the Chremonidean War against Antigonos Gonatas, king of Macedon.Certain aspects of the Athenian relationship with the various monarchs are reflected in the decrees of the assembly, passed in honour of royal officials, as well as in the decrees conferring the highest honours (proedriaof the games,sitesisin thePrytaneion, and a statue) upon Athenian citizens who belonged to a king's court. My purpose is to examine precisely the image that Athens projects through the above-mentioned decrees with regard to its relations with the various rulers and their officials; and these in relation to its perception of its own position on the military and political scene on different historical occasions. (shrink)

The issue of hate speech is widely present in the Balkan Peninsula and although it has a serious impact in inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations, it has never been addressed properly by the academia or the judicial systems. This paper aims to outline the main principles that define hate speech from the linguistic and legal perspective. Throughout the paper several international cases of hate speech are cited along with the measures that western European countries take in order to minimize the level (...) of stereotypes and public discrimination. In the second part, the paper brings examples from degrading hate speech cases coming from public figures in Macedonia. In addition, a few comparative cases from the international practice have been cited in order to perceive if an egalitarian society is possible in Macedonia from the aspect of language usage without the hatred constituents by aiming to develop an acceptable public discourse for all. (shrink)

The fin de siècle has long been appraised as a period of simultaneous decadence and renaissance in the European context. The dialectical interrelation between these poles is often taken to encapsulate all aspects of society, from art to politics. This was an epoch during which the seemingly calcified power structures and norms of society, most notably colonialism, capitalism, class, and sex, were actively confronted with alternative approaches that stressed the infinite possibilities of the coming twentieth century. Challenges to the (...) status quo were widespread and varied: from Austria to Britain, women's movements emerged, which not only demanded equality but sought further redefinition of the public sphere;1 in .. (shrink)

Have the forms of life in the western democracies transformed into mere forms of survival – forms of bare life, as formulated by Giorgio Agamben? Has the sphere of bare life already become truly inseparable from the sphere of politics as an arena not structured by the necessities of life? If this is so, what has then happened to language, which – according to Aristotle – we owe life to on the other side of bare existence, yet which Agamben (...) compares with a dungeon? In order to answer the above questions, the author first looks into the features of the sphere of bare life. He then expounds Agamben’s understanding of language so as to be able to penetrate the reasons because of which he ascribes language the power which facilitates the separation of political and bare existence. Finally , the author examines the relation between Agamben’s diagnosis of the reduction of the human forms of life to forms of survival and his historical-philosophical reflections on language. (shrink)