This title was first published in 2001. Explaining and defending a Heideggarian account of the self and our knowledge of the world, this book addresses the fundamental issues of selfhood and the elemental question of what it means to be human. The author vcritically examines theories of the self derived from two distinct schools of thought: Descartes, Hume, Kant, Sartre and Stirner representing a tradition which has dominated Western philosophy since Descartes; Heidegger and Laing represen...

This 1981 book is a general introduction to linguistics and the study of language, intended particularly for beginning students and readers with no previous knowledge or training in the subject. There is first a general account of the nature of language and of the aims, methods and basic principles of linguistic theory. John Lyons then introduces in turn each of the main sub-fields of linguistics: the sounds of language, grammar, semantics, language change, psycholinguistics: the sounds of...

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the wo...

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is considered by most philosophers - even those who do not share his views - to be the most influential philosopher of the 20th century. His contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, meaning and psychology - as well as to logic, mathematics and epistemology - permanently altered the philosophical landscape, and his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations continue to be studied in philosophy departments aroun...

The Revolutionary Kant offers a new appreciation of Kant’s classic, arguing that Kant's reform of philosophy was far more radical than has been previously understood. The book examines his proposed revolutionary reform - to abandon traditional metaphysics and point philosophy in a new direction - and contends that critics have misrepresented conflicts between Kant and his predecessors. Kant, Bird argues, was not a flawed innovator but an advocate of a new philosophical project, on...

In traditional semantics, the human body tends to be ignored in the process of constructing meaning. Horst Ruthrof argues, by contrast, that the body is an integral part of this hermeneutic activity. Strictly language-based theories, and theories which conflate formal and natural languages, run into problems when they describe how we communicate in cultural settings. Semantics and the Body proposes that language is no more than a symbolic grid which does not signify at all unless ...

Philosophers working within the pragmatist tradition have pictured their relation to Kant and Kantianism in very diverse terms: some have presented their work as an appropriation and development of Kantian ideas, some have argued that pragmatism is an approach in complete opposition to Kant. This collection investigates the relationship between pragmatism, Kant, and current Kantian approaches to transcendental arguments in a detailed and original way. Chapters highlight pragmatist aspects ...

Kant’s Inferentialism draws on a wide range of sources to present a reading of Kant’s theory of mental representation as a direct response to the challenges issued by Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature. Kant rejects the conclusions that Hume draws on the grounds that these are predicated on Hume’s theory of mental representation, which Kant refutes by presenting objections to Hume’s treatment of representations of complex states of affairs and the nature of judgment. In its place,...

The term ‘phenomenology’ has become almost as over-used and emptied of meaning as that other word from Continental Philosophy, namely ‘existentialism’. Yet Husserl, who first put forward the phenomenological method, considered it a rigorous alternative to positivism, and in the hands of Merleau-Ponty, a disciple of Husserl in France, phenomenology became a way of gaining a disciplined and coherent perspective on the world in which we live.When this study originally published in 197...

«Philosophical Heuristics» aims to translate philosophical issues into meta-philosophical issues examined from a unique perspective. The analytical and interpretive practice of heuristics seeks to grasp synchronously all the processes leading to the formation of philosophical discourse, its language, form and content. The book takes hermeneutics and pragmatism as a starting point for a multifaceted and systematic examination of philosophical heuresis and promotes a style of philosophising ...

Macann guides the student through the major texts of the four great thinkers of the phenomenological movement.

The essays which are collected in this book were written at various intervals during the last seven years. The essay "Heidegger and Dewey," which is the last one to be printed in the book, was actually the first one I wrote. It was written as a seminar paper for John D. Goheen's course on Dewey in the Spring of 1968 at Stanford University where I was a second-year graduate student. The paper went unchanged into my thesis "Four Studies in Phenomenology and Pragmatism," which I eventually su...