The present personal : philosophy and the hidden face of language / Hagi Kenaan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kenaan, Hagi

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Philosophy.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

xi, 199 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2005]

Summary:

Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice? While philosophy is experienced at admiring, resenting, celebrating, and, at times, renouncing language, philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it. Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy's concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective, propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice. In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual presence in language.

In pursuing the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice, Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the "personal." He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language, necessary for intelligibility, and the ways in which we, as individuals, remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner.

The Present Personal fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, drawing on Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka, Kundera, and others. By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain, Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language; The Present Personal, and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language, uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language.

Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard's existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self. He then compares two attempts to subvert the "hegemony of content": the pragmatic turn of J.L. Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger. Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty. Kenaan's reconceptualization of philosophy's approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while, at the same time, permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content.

Contents:

Introduction: Philosophy and the Personal 1

Chapter 1 Language and the Bell Jar 19

1 A Picture Held Us Captive 20

2 Language's Frame 25

3 The Fact of the Propositional 28

4 "This Is How Things Are" 33

5 The Bell Jar 37

Chapter 2 The Limits of Language and the Dream of Transcendence 41

1 Philosophy and Disappointment 41

2 Language: The Map 44

3 Language and Silence: The Example of Abraham 50

4 The Limits of Language and the Question of Freedom 53

5 Before the Law of Language 58

6 From Disappointment to Philosophy 60

Chapter 3 Austin's Fireworks 65

1 Austin's Fireworks: The Promise of the Pragmatic Turn 66

2 How to Do Things with Austin 69

3 The Act of Speech 72

4 The Pragmatic and the Personal 79

5 The Mirror at Hand: Afterthoughts 84

Chapter 4 Personal Objects 87

1 Heidegger (Before) and (After) Austin 87

2 Heidegger's Pragmatic Interpretation of the Ordinary 90

3 The Prison of the Ordinary 95

4 The Aesthetic Elision of the Personal 97

5 Van Gogh's Shoes 102

6 Sabina's Hat 111

Chapter 5 Language Unframed: Beauty as Model 125

1 It's Funny 127

2 Aesthetic Judgment 135

3 The Language of Taste 138

4 The Phenomenality of Your Words 140

Chapter 6 Personal Time 149

1 The Time Is Past 150

2 Time and the Language of Possibility 153

3 Time Prefaced 159

4 Perhaps Present 168

5 In My End Is My Beginning 174.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [183]-192) and index.

ISBN:

0231133502

OCLC:

56014570