Philosophy of Language

(1.5-3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This module is a historical and critical introduction to the hermeneutical approaches in modern European philosophy. In this first part I commence by sketching out the three major concerns of this tradition, those of translating, or understanding and of expressing. The foundations of the hermeneutic tradition are to be found in the work of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, the last of whom saw hermeneutics as the appropriate methodology for the human sciences. I then go on to consider the phenomenological theories of interpretation set out by Edmund Husserl in his studies of expression and indication, and more originally of perception and temporality. I also explicate his account of the oral and graphic conditions of establishing and developing traditions with sedimented accomplishments bearing development. In the second half of this course, I pick up the phenomenological thread by following the work of Martin Heidegger. We begin by examining Heidegger's explicit account of language, meaning, and being-in-the-world. We then go on to the manner in which interpretation acts as a philosophical methodology for Heidegger; initially as a means of critique but also ultimately as a means of creation. We go on to read Paul Ricoeur's description of interpretation, noting in particular the manner in which he both inherits and modifies Heidegger's work. We also examine his account of temporality and history as defining the context of interpretation. As a contrast to Ricoeur's hermeneutic approach we look at the work of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction, in particular the ideas of untranslatability and incompletion. Finally, we turn to the contemporary philosopher Barbara Cassin and her work on untranslatability as philosophically productive. With Cassin we finish by using translation and interpretation as paradigms for navigating the relation between the universal and the particular.