Prado, C. G. Review of Jeff Malpas, ed. DIALOGUES WITH DAVIDSON. NDPR (October 2011).

Malpas, Jeff, ed.  Dialogues with Davidson: Acting, Interpreting, Understanding.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.

This is an impressive collection, though one defying brief review. It consists of an illuminating Foreword, a clear, stage-setting Introduction, twenty articles in three topical sections, and an extensive Bibliography. The orientation of the collection turns on Jeff Malpas' attempt to cast Donald Davidson's work as broader than the narrowly analytic corpus many take it to be: e.g., Ernest LePore. (xviii) Another collection in this vein, to which I refer below, is Ludwig 2003.

Two comments on the orientation before turning to the articles: first, no one, including the philosopher in question, can legitimately limit interpretation of and extrapolation from a philosophical corpus. Second, that said, I had the privilege of meeting Davidson and commenting on his "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" two years before its publication. (Queen's University, 9/27/84). I drew a parallel between him and Gadamer that Davidson resisted. He seems later to have changed his mind to some extent, but I suspect he would be ambivalent about several of this collection's articles, despite their being as intellectually productive as they are convincingly supportive of Malpas' view of Davidson's work.

I proceed by saying a bit about each article and more about those I found most interesting. I will say now that this is a book anyone interested in Davidson should own.

A preliminary point: the collection's articles are "dialogues" with Davidson; discussion of his work in relation to continental thinkers is not about one-way or reciprocal influences but about parallels in philosophical thought. It is one thing to draw parallels, though, and another to exploit them: a difference evident in the more and less successful articles. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/26831-dialogues-with-davidson-acting-interpreting-understanding/

"Philosophy and Ordinary Language I," Université Catholique de Louvain, May 19-20, 2011.

Since the earliest days, philosophers have always maintained ambivalent relations with language, sometimes seeing it as a natural and assured path towards truth, sometimes as an obstacle to grasping reality, or even as a positive power of illusion. Plato forcefully criticized the Sophists' rhetorical discourse, but may himself have unduly reified the universals conveyed by language. According to the well-known works of Emile Benvéniste, Aristotle is alleged to have confused the fundamental categories of reality with those of the Greek language and thus, from the outset, compromised his undertaking of constituting a first philosophy. Closer to us, among other idols, Francis Bacon, castigated those of the marketplace, a prioris conveyed by language and preventing our being in contact with things themselves. Elsewhere, the linguistic turn fostered by Moore made language the royal pathway in investigating the real. Wittgenstein, having dreamed of a more precise artificial language eliminating the ambiguities of natural language, set as his task rehabilitating ordinary language to a certain extent. Other (old and new) illustrious examples might of course be presented here: e.g. Austin, Strawson, Grice, Cavell, Kripke, Putnam, Brandom, etc.

A conference, which will be held at the Catholic University of Louvain (Université Catholique de Louvain), will seek to investigate the relations that philosophies have maintained with regard to language. Need we advocate a non-discursive access to reality to speak the truth? Should we have recourse to a technical language to do philosophy correctly or, on the contrary, is ordinary language the best way forward?

E-mail addresses for submissions: jean-michel.counet@uclouvain.be; marcel.crabbe@uclouvain.be.

Pub: Michael N. Forster, AFTER HERDER.

Forster, Michael N.  After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition.  Oxford: OUP, 2010.

Philosophy of language has for some time now been the very core of the discipline of philosophy. But where did it begin? Frege has sometimes been identified as its father, but in fact its origins lie much further back, in a tradition that arose in eighteenth-century Germany. Michael Forster explores that tradition. He also makes a case that the most important thinker within that tradition was J. G. Herder. It was Herder who established such fundamental principles in the philosophy of language as that thought essentially depends on language and that meaning consists in the usage of words. It was he who on that basis revolutionized the theory of interpretation ("hermeneutics") and the theory of translation. And it was he who played the pivotal role in founding such whole new disciplines concerned with language as anthropology and linguistics. In the course of developing these historical points, this book also shows that Herder and his tradition are in many ways superior to dominant trends in more recent philosophy of language: deeper in their principles and broader in their focus.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

PART I: HERDER

1: Johann Gottfried Herder
2: Herder’s Philosophy of Language, Interpretation, and Translation: Three Fundamental Principles
3: Gods, Animals, and Artists: Some Problem Cases in Herder’s Philosophy of Language
4: Herder’s Importance as a Philosopher
5: Herder on Genre
6: Herder and the Birth of Modern Anthropology
7: The Liberal Temper in Classical German Philosophy: Freedom of Thought and Expression

PART II: HAMANN

8: Johann Georg Hamann
9: Hamann’s Seminal Importance for the Philosophy of Language?

PART III: SCHLEIERMACHER

10: Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
11: Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutics: Some Problems and Solutions
12: Herder, Schleiermacher, and the Birth of Foreignizing Translation

For further information, visit: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199228119.do.

CFP: "Philosophy of Language and Linguistics," Department of English and General Linguistics, University of Łódź, Poland, May 14-15, 2009.

The title of the conference is deliberately ambiguous: we wish to investigate the relation between ‘philosophy of language’ and ‘linguistics’, but we also want to focus on ‘philosophy of language’ as opposed to ‘philosophy of linguistics’. Are the two in opposition, or do they perhaps complement one another? The principal aim of our conference is to bring together philosophers and linguists; we would like the papers to address the following issues (the list is not exhaustive):

• what are the new problems and issues in the philosophy of language in the 21st century?
• have any traditional problems been successfully solved?
• how does research in linguistics influence the philosophy of language and philosophy of linguistics?
• how does philosophy influence modern linguistics?

The following scholars have accepted our invitation to address the conference as plenary speakers:

• Prof. Eros Corazza (Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University)
• Prof. Katarzyna Jaszczolt (Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge)
• Prof. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Łodź)
• Prof. Michael Morris (Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex)
• Prof. Jaroslav Peregrin (Department of Logic, Charles University, Prague)

Abstracts of papers of max. 500 words should be forwarded by e-mail to philang2009@uni.lodz.pl. Deadline for submission is 31 December 2008. Presentations should last max. 30 minutes (including discussion and questions). Notification of acceptance will be sent by 1 March 2009. A volume of conference proceedings will be published with an international publisher.