'O men, serve your Lord who created you and those before you, so that you may guard against evil. Deals with Allah, Prophet Muhammad PBUH, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib -- What are the signs of the appearance of the promised messiah? and do these signs appear in the being of Hazrat Mirza Sahib?

Making the case, Stay on Message explores the poetics of political speeches in Australia, the USA, and elsewhere with examples of both the good and the delightfully appalling.

This volume presents some discourses (or. 54, 55, 70, 71 and 72) written by the orator and philosopher Dio of Prusa (about 40 - after 111 AD), who was also called Chrysostomos ("Golden Mouth"). Of these texts there have never been detailed commentaries up to now. They draw an image of the philosopher not as an abstract thinker but as a new Odysseus, Heracles, but also as a new Socrates or Diogenes, who purposely interferes in people's affairs and by his (...) mere appearance and demeanour provokes them and prompts them to rethink and change their lives. They also outline an ideal of practical ethics to which Dio himself felt obliged; this ideal can still have an effect far beyond Dio’s times and the diverse society of the Roman Empire. (shrink)

The article discusses mechanisms of manipulative influence on a theoretical basis of suggestion and on the actual material of Bulgarian press. The author supposes that adequate research requires integrated approach with symbiosis of techniques of cognitive science, linguistic pragmatics, psycholinguistics and the theory of speech activity. Manipulative action takes place not only through language (explicit and implicit), but also non-verbal instruments that have different range, different pragmatic potential, etc. The necessity of a comprehensive analysis of the hidden manipulative influence on (...) psyche which is implemented through a flexible system of complex-integrated manipulative pragmatic acts is stated. This system is projected to complete, hierarchically organized and fast changing communication technology which has the following form: cognitive and psychological basis of audience → intention of the adresser → communication strategy → verbal tactics → instruments → perlocutionary effect. Herewith the form of speech is one of the pragmatic factors having great value for actualizing manipulative potential. Communication in form of direct dialog, typical only for oral speech, has a significant resources to counter planned suggestion. Furthermore the author compares the usage of the same suggestive influence patterns in oral and written speech. So the monologue tactic is supposed to be optimal for planning and control of communicative intention, which may include the use of instruments and mechanisms with manipulative potential. Addresser has sufficient time for careful selection of communication strategies and tactics of speech, as well as for creative combination and skillful concealing of manipulativeness manifestations. The author concludes that the regularity, according to which one monologue makes manipulativeness ''tolerant'' and dialogue ''discredit'' it, reflects differently in different monologue and dialogue tactics that are relevant to different types of communicative interaction. (shrink)

There are various philosophers who have discussed the role of language in ancient India. Among them, Bhart ṛ hari considered the relation between the superficial appearance of speech and its essential nature. In actual life, we pronounce and perceive the word. He held that there must be some link between ideal logic and worldly truth. His focus in the Brahmakā n ̣ ḍ a of the Vākyapadīya, is on the process of communication, the process of the internalization of speech. He (...) differentiates the perspective of the speaker and the hearer, and explains the movement of sounds. The spho ṭ a theory addresses both how to pronounce the word and how to perceive it. Traces of his discussion are found in the works of his follower Ma n ̣ ḍ anamiśra in his book, Spho ṭ asiddhi. (shrink)

"Gagarin demonstrates persuasively that Antiphon the logographer is identical with the Antiphon who made intellectual contributions on more abstract topics." —Mervin R. Dilts, Professor of Classics, New York University Antiphon was a fifth-century Athenian intellectual (ca. 480-411 BCE) who created the profession of speechwriting while serving as an influential and highly sought-out adviser to litigants in the Athenian courts. Three of his speeches are preserved, together with three sets of Tetralogies (four hypothetical paired speeches), whose authenticity is sometimes doubted. Fragments (...) also survive of intellectual treatises on subjects including justice, law, and nature (physis), which are often attributed to a separate Antiphon the Sophist. Were these two Antiphons really one and the same individual, endowed with a wide-ranging mind ready to tackle most of the diverse intellectual interests of his day? Through an analysis of all these writings, this book convincingly argues that they were composed by a single individual, Antiphon the Athenian. Michael Gagarin sets close readings of individual works within a wider discussion of the fifth-century Athenian intellectual climate and the philosophical ferment known as the sophistic movement. This enables him to demonstrate the overall coherence of Antiphon's interests and writings and to show how he was a pivotal figure between the sophists and the Attic orators of the fourth century. In addition, Gagarin's argument allows us to reassess the work of the sophists as a whole, so that they can now be seen as primarily interested in logos (speech, argument) and as precursors of fourth-century rhetoric, rather than in their usual role as foils for Plato. (shrink)

Speeches of Bhumibol Adulyadej on Buddhism and moral values.

Rhetoric and philosophy both constituted the main elements of literary education in the Greco-Roman world of the second century A.D. The present study deals with the relationship between both disciplines in Second Sophistic literature: Did ...

Der Band präsentiert bisher noch nie im Detail kommentierte Vortragstexte des Redners und Philosophen Dion von Prusa (um 40 - nach 111 n. Chr.), die ein Bild des Philosophen nicht als eines abstrakten Denkers, sondern als eines praktischen Ethikers zeichnen, der durch sein Auftreten die Menschen zum Überdenken und Korrigieren ihres Lebens anregt.

This volume presents eleven new assessments by an international team of experts who for the first time study Dio's politics alongside his philosophy and writing ...

In terms of classical tafsir literature, it is possible that the speeches made to a person or group in the Qurʾān carry messages for other individuals or groups. According to some approaches that emerged in the modern period, when the speech was made and to whom it was directed not only determine the meaning, but also limits it. This dilemma has to be based on the theoretical dimension. The most obvious example of the transition of the speech from direct counterpart (...) to the other is the transition of the speeches made to the unbelievers to the believers. Therefore, in this study, the possibility of the transcendence of the speech in the Qurʾān will be handled in the context of the messages for believers in the speeches directed to the unbelievers. One aspect of the issue of the transcendence of the speech in the Qurʾān can be explained by the style that the Qurʾān follows. However, the subject should also be based on linguistic aspects. As a matter of fact, the expansion of the speech can sometimes be related to the meanings of words and sometimes with the possibilities and literary aspects of language, and sometimes with an analytical effort. In this study, the related examples will be analyzed and it will be revealed that the transition between the speeches in the Qurʾān is possible in terms of the style of the Qurʾān. In the study, the methodological findings related to the linguistic aspects of the issue will also be studied.Summary: The discourse that the Qurʾān is an address by God makes different associations in terms of classical literature and some modern methods of understanding. In the works of classical method and rhetoric, a theoretical framework is drawn around the nature, arbitrariness, conditions and types of the book. In this context, the varieties, indications and scopes of the addresses in the Qurʾān are discussed. While it is emphasized that the Qurʾān is an address in modernist contextualist approaches, it is stated that understanding the address requires having contextual information, therefore reading the address as a book evaporates meaning. Because, according to these approaches, the meaning is sought in the text with the transformation of address to book (verbal culture to written culture), thus the Qurʾān is converted from a literal meaning into a system. Knowing what the Qurʾān tells and why it tells that, depends on the comprehension of all the contextual elements of the Qurʾān, which was sent as an address. In fact, knowledge of when, where and when the Qurʾān was sent about what events and to whom it is addressed, is the data that is primarily considered in the comprehension of the verses, as emphasized by the classical interpretation literature. However, the perception of the classical interpretation evaluates these data in different categories in terms of the integrity of religion, judgment and experience. For example, the narrations on the reason of sending and the Makki-Madani information are only examples of the meanings of the verses. They sometimes serve as elements that contribute to the comprehension of the verses, while sometimes with the help of other chapters they can narrow the meanings of the verses. The realist-methodological basis of the method science provides the emergence of this holistic-categorical perspective.It is difficult to justify the claim that there is an absolute relationship between the address and the addressee in terms of the classical literature. In the classical literature, the expressions, which come in the form of an address and have a mandatory relationship with addressees, are dealt with the concept of direct address. Direct addresses are binding for the first addressees. Because when an address is mentioned, it is mandatory to have an addressee. It can be assumed that this discourse has the same position with the context theories considering its premises. However, it is not possible to compare these theories with each other in terms of the scope of the address. Classical theories of reasoning consider that direct addresses cover indirect addressees by methods, such as shar’i (legal) necessity or analogy (qiyas), while contextualists and historians can convert the text beyond the virtual level by identifying what a command means within the context of the address-addressee relationship. When the Qurʾān is completely considered as an address, or when direct addresses are taken into consideration, it is very difficult for the modern period's comprehension methods that the verses, which mention or address the disbelievers-polytheists, can also address Muslims. In fact, the dialectic of the address-addressee requires this. Moreover, the addressees (polytheists-Muslims) who are spoken within the context of the verses have two different beliefs that cannot be dealt with at the same time and mentioned in the same verse. Therefore, it is not possible to direct the messages given to the polytheists to the believers and to attribute the qualities in these verses to Muslims.However, the classical literature did not even consider as a problem to address Muslims with the verses that directly addressing unbelievers-polytheists. It is because both linguistics and facts requires this. The method practitioners and interpreters discussed this issue in a very wide range. They examined the transitivity of the book between parties, such as people of the book-Muslims, Muslims-unbelievers, Prophet-ummah. In the context of the interpretation literature and the perception of modern-day interpretation, the possibility of the transitivity of the book can be clarified in the context of the inclusiveness of a verse that speaks of polytheists-disbelievers to include Muslims, or the conversion of an address to polytheists-unbelievers to Muslims. Classical literature explains this point sometimes with the literal indication (circularization) and the circumstance of literary use of language (rhetoric) and sometimes with the possibility of the address (stylistic features).In verses and hadiths, belief bases categorical classes, such as believers, unbelievers, polytheists, hypocrites, people of the book are mentioned, as well as descriptions of the characteristic-practical dimensions of these classes. In this context, commands sometimes refer to the practices that need to be performed in order to be a believer, sometimes works that must not be performed by the believer, and sometimes matters that might put the believer's faith-practice integrity at risk when it is done. In the Qurʾān, in some of the addresses to the believers, it is apparent that they are prohibited from being like unbelievers or having unbeliever-like qualities. Moreover, sometimes negative results that may arise for Muslims when they act like unbelievers are cited in the verses. Sometimes at the end of the verses that address and mention Muslims, information is included on situations involving unbelievers and the torment they will encounter. In addition, in cases where adjectives belonging to opposing belief profiles are mentioned, the address to non-Muslims expresses warning, evaluation, gratitude and perseverance in faith for Muslims, while the address to Muslims contains elements of incentive and opportunity for non-Muslim groups. It is possible to justify this matter with the style of the Qurʾān. However, it can be said that the transitivity of the address in the Qurʾān takes place in two theoretical aspects. The first of these is related to linguistic-rhetoric premises and it is used in antithesis, allusion, metaphor etc. The second one is the similitude-comparison. Here, the comparison is a phenomenon that occurs in the mind without the need for propositions. Because when the mind hears these statements, it can instantly reach a stronger meaning than the literal wording. In this study, it is discussed whether it is possible to transition from direct addresses to indirect addressees, with reference to the problems of the modern period. In this context, the study primarily focuses on the fact that the Qurʾān sometimes transmits its messages and teachings to addressees through opposing belief systems. Thus, the manner adopted by the Qurʾān while directing certain commands and negations, not directly but through the opposing side, has been presented. In this study, the possibility of the verses that only mentions polytheists-unbelievers to also addressing Muslims was analyzed and these verses were compared with addresses to Muslims on the same matters. In the last part of the study, a theoretical framework was drawn on the subject and the method of interdisciplinary transitivity was determined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin LiteratureEllen OliensisAndrew Laird. Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xx + 358 pp. Cloth, $85.Prospective readers should not be put off by the title of this ambitious book. Though "speech presentation" (the use of direct discourse [DD], free indirect discourse [FID], etc.) may seem a (...) rather narrow and technical topic, Laird makes a persuasive case for its manifold significance. And while he foregrounds "Latin literature," Laird ranges freely across centuries and genres, drawing on texts as diverse as the Hittite SongofUllikummi, Sannazaro's DepartuVirginis, and a 1994 story in the DailyTelegraph. The result is a thoughtful and engaging study from which readers of very different interests and stripes will be able to profit. Three chapters on the theory of narrative representation and speech presentation are followed by another three exploring representational strategies in (mostly Latin) historiography, epic, and the novel; a final chapter treats the speeches of divine messengers in epic as "allegories of representation." The book is framed by a brief introduction and conclusion, the latter capped by a suggestive coda pointing to the multiple lines of research, across various disciplines, which might be opened up by a more scrupulous consideration of speech presentation.In the introduction, Laird outlines the benefits, practical and theoretical, of focusing on speech presentation: "First, [speech presentation] can throw light on the themes and stylistic features of particular texts. Second, functions of speech [End Page 596] presentation bear on broader concerns including form and content, representation, genre, ideology, and intertextuality" (xv). These claims are amply justified in the ensuing chapters. Laird's theoretical orientation generates an abundance of local insights. He suggests that Tacitus' contrasting introductions to the speeches of Calgacus and Agricola--the distancing locutusfertur versus the confident itadisseruit (Agr. 29.4, 33.1)--help differentiate barbarian from Roman by implying "that Agricola's oration possesses a greater ontological stature than Calgacus'" (126); that Encolpius' exploitation of what Laird dubs "angled narration of dialogue" (reserving DD for his interlocutors' speech and ID for his own) produces the effect of narratorial transparency in the Cena (217-20); that the use of direct discourse for Mercury's message and indirect for Fama's in Aeneid 4 "enhances the essential contrast between the nature of the two messengers" (272). In one of his boldest discussions (192-205), Laird reviews the unanswered speeches in the Aeneid and concludes that Virgil's epic is far more rigid than previous epics in associating speech with authority and dutiful silence with subordination (Laird interestingly contrasts Homeric epic, which proclaims this hierarchy but doesn't practice it with anything like Virgil's consistency); Laird goes on to speculate that this strong linkage of speech with authority also applies to Virgil's own epic discourse, which (like Aeneas' narration in books 2 and 3) is delivered to readers who are silent or even silenced.Occasionally, the marriage of theory and interpretation founders. For example, Laird's account of the multiple literary echoes in Encolpius's seaside soliloquy (Satyricon 81.1-82.1, discussed at 221-24) shows little trace of the theoretical self-consciousness displayed in his earlier remarks on the ideological character of intertextuality and its proximity to speech presentation. And the argument that the opening sequence of the Aeneid is designed to entice the reader into Virgil's "realist" fiction (157-64) rests on some unconvincing claims (e.g., that Aeneas' first speech "begins with a prayer" addressed to "the gods, or even the poem's audience" [162], and that Juno's first soliloquy has "the poem's audience or readers" as "her first addressees" [164]). Elsewhere, Laird suggests that Aeneas' parenthetical eloquaransileam? (Aen. 3.39) "could be FID conveying his own doubt and hesitation at the time of the incident he is describing" (182-83); but surely the question makes sense only if it is attached, not to the narrated past (where the relevant question would be "shall I keep pulling on this uncanny tree?") but to the present of narration.Although Laird, an astute reader, has much to teach us about... (shrink)

In this essay I explore efforts at regulating race-related speech on publicly funded colleges and universities. In the first section, I present the scope of the current debate about the topic: what speech is, contexts in which it is found, etc. In the second section, I present the case for unrestricted speech on campuses for the advancement of knowledge and social progress. The third section addresses standard problem cases for free speech like the non-scientific nature of racist epithets, existential threats (...) to the university, and involuntary exposure to racist speech. The fourth section explores arguments for regulating speech coming from critical race theorists and those who question the cultural narrative surrounding speech these days. In the fifth section, I lay bare the irreconcilable incompatibilities of free speech proponents and advocates of speech restrictions in several areas. The conclusion points the way forward toward by calling attention to the lingering questions about the values of knowledge and social progress. (shrink)

Seckendorff's »Teutsche Reden« of 1691 and the outline of his ideas on natural law published with them are a uniquely eloquent testimony of German Baroque culture. Seckendorff was the only 17th century aristocratic practitioner of courtly and political life to publish a number of his speeches in book form during his own lifetime and to supplement them with a theoretical superstructure substantiating his practical convictions. The text is centrally concerned with the connection between civilization and language culture and the dependence (...) of public speaking on the nature of the state. Seckendorff's unfinished outline of natural law betokens the critical engagement with the rise of secular natural law by a genuinely significant theoretician on the essential issues posed by government and administration. (shrink)

Philosophy in general is defined as the theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for an enriched life. Since time immemorial, many notable scholars have guided humanity towards leading a nourished and fulfilling life through their philosophical preaching and writings and were used by as benchmarks many in their day-to-day life. With the passage of time, Philosophy has taken strides and has evolved majorly to touch the human race irrespective of their caste, race, color, creed, region, etc. and (...) is presently a major contributor for a better world. An extension of this subject is the Logic Based Therapy which is slowly but surely is gaining grounds in today's world and is being used as a proficient tool to enhance the value of an individual's life by tackling his erroneous thoughts, also called fallacies in philosophical terms and to bring him on track towards a better existence. Hence, Logic-Based-Therapy is fundamentally a philosophical therapy as it makes use of the philosophical wisdom from antiquity, transforming them into antidotes and ultimately using these potent antidotes to treat the cardinal fallacies. Till date, LBT has been the domain of Western philosophical antidotes but Indian philosophy also has an immense plethora of insights to offer in this area. The Sanskrit word for Philosophy is 'Darshan' which means 'Vision'. Indian Philosophy is considered as the vision of the wise and learned people and it becomes even more relevant as it embeds the potential to make our lives qualitatively better. Hence, the ultimate aim of Indian Philosophy is to be a guide for humanity and lead them towards the path of leading a 'good and meaningful life' whilst overcoming our fallacies and issues in our daily lives mainly through the preaching and writings of some great Indian philosophers. The current paper is an attempt at constructing such useful Indian Philosophical antidotes from the ideas of some of the most prominent contemporary Indian Philosophers like Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Lokamanya Tilak, Gopal Agarkar and J. Krishnamurti. The main focus being the key aspects of these philosopher's ideas that are relevant in addressing the cardinal fallacies and strengthening/promoting the corresponding transcendental virtues. (shrink)

Volume 39 of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values includes lectures initially scheduled during the academic year 2019-2020. Owing to the global coronavirus pandemic, some were delivered at a later date. The Tanner Lectures are published in an annual volume. In addition to permanent lectures at nine universities, the Tanner Lectures on Human Values funds special one-time lectures at selected higher educational institutions in the United States and around the world.

In der Buchreihe Deutsche Neudrucke werden Texte der Barockliteratur in originalgetreuen Nachdrucken zeitgenössischer Ausgaben wieder zugänglich gemacht. Den einzelnen Bänden sind jeweils Register, Bibliographien und ein Nachwort zur Überlieferung und geistesgeschichtlichen Stellung der Texte beigegeben.

本套《人文通识讲演录》饱含着中国当代人文学界第一流学者们的深情,具有极高的学术价值和社会意义,是中国学术史和教育史上的珍贵见证.

When J. L. Austin introduced two “shining new tools to crack the crib of reality”—the theory of performative utterances and the doctrine of infelicities—he could not have imagined that he was also about to inaugurate a shining new industry in the philosophy of the social sciences. But with its evident concern for the features to which “all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial,” Austin’s theory soon became indispensable in the analysis of ritual, linguistic and (...) every kind of social action. While Indianists such as Frits Staal, Bimal Matilal and David Seyfort Ruegg have made good use of the work of Austin and his “ordinary language” school, it is Quentin Skinner who has attempted to turn Austin’s insights into a general “theory and method” for the study of intellectual cultures. The question I want to address in this paper has to do with the applicability of Skinnerian techniques to the study of literary and intellectual Sanskrit culture in premodern India. If not all of Skinner’s methods transfer to the new context, identification of the points at which they breakdown helps to clarify the distinctive contours of Indian intellectual history, and suggests appropriate methodological innovation. (shrink)

Jābāli, one of the priest-cum-counsellors of king Daśaratha, has long been recognized as an odd character, preaching materialism in order to persuade Rāma to go back to Ayodhyā after the death of his father. The critical edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa reveals several stanzas interpolated in the vulgate so as to denigrate Jābāli and brand him as a rank opportunist. In spite of that, whatever remains of Jābāli’s speech addressed to Rāma evinces one of the basic tenets of materialist ontology, (...) i.e., denial of the existence of any other-world, and hence the futility of performing rites for the ancestors. However, nothing is said about the epistemology,, ethics, and metaphysics of materialism as it existed at the time when the Rāmāyaṇa was redacted. Considering all this it is better to call Jābāli a proto-materialist who speaks of a philosophy akin to the teachings of Ajita Kesakambala, a senior contemporary of the Buddha, whose doctrine has been dubbed as that of annihilation in the Tipiṭaka. Both of them belong to the pre-Cārvāka materialist tradition in India. (shrink)

It is neither historically nor essentionally correct to designate Indian traditions of metho­dical rationality (nyaya etc.) as “Indian logic”. The logic as invented by Aristotle is a complex, structural discipline with its own object and a number of rules. Nothing com­plex could have been invented twice in the history of thought in the same way. The most important differences between the Indian version of methodological rationality and West­ern logic are named and illustrated. 1. The distinction between using (...) the mind for oneself and in communication. 2. Theory and typology of rational cognitive acts (pramana). 3. The scheme of isomorphism between a set of individual acts of cognition and speech communication about them. 4. Formal accounting of the necessity and expediency of acts of cognition. 5. Lack of enthusiasm for formalisms and a reluctance to separate this sci­ence from study and standardization of good reasoning. 6. Understanding of proof not only as a specific coherence of statements, but also as a communication. 7. The absence of a (half-hidden) Western idealization that posits a single thinking substance. (shrink)

Philosophical issues such as reality and appearance, God and world, self and not-self, rebirth and immortality, free will and determination, mysticism, etc., have been examined by eastern and western philosophers as far back as the sages of Upanishads (700 BCE) in the East, and Plato (400 BCE) in the West. However, there was no significant communication among the philosophers of the East and West perhaps until the eighteenth century. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the first among the great western (...) philosophers to recognize the value of Indian philosophies. Despite the lack of communication there are striking similarities of concepts and issues addressed by Indian and western philosophies. Also interesting is how similar are the mystical versions of different religions of the East and West. The author, Dr. Arun Chatterjee, has attempted to bring out the similarities and differences in various chapters of this book dealing with different topics. Among Indian philosophies the focus is on Vedanta philosophy and the views of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). The views of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) also are presented. Other Indian philosophies such as Sankhya and Buddhism are discussed briefly. Among western religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are discussed. (shrink)

Cochlear implants (CI) support the development of oral language in hearing-impaired children. However, even with CI, speech recognition in noise (SRiN) is limited. This raised the question, whether these restrictions are related to the quality of life (QoL) of children and adolescents with CI and how SRiN and QoL are related to each other. As a result of a systematic literature research only three studies were found, indicating positive moderating effects between SRiN and QoL of young CI users. Thirty studies (...) addressed the quality of life of children and adolescents with CI. Following the criteria of the World Health Organization (WHO) for pediatric HRQoL (1994) only a minority used validated child centered and age appropriate QoL instruments. Moreover, despite the consensus that usually children and adolescents are the most prominent informants of their own QoL (parent- reports complement the information of the children) only a minority of investigators used self-reports. Restricted SRiN may be a burden for the QoL of children and adolescents with CI. Up to now the CI community does not seem to be aware of a possible impairment of QoL in young CI users. Further studies addressing this topic are urgently needed, which is also relevant for parents, clinicians, therapists, teachers, and politicians. Additionally investigators should use valid pediatric QoL instruments. They should be aware, that most of the young CI users are able to inform about their quality of life also themselves (additionally to parents). (shrink)

The paper addresses the question how descriptive language is used to express legal norms. Sentences we find in legislative acts, i.e. statutes, constitutions and regulations, express legal norms. Linguistically speaking, there are various grammatical and lexical ways of expressing norms, such as imperative mood, modal verbs, deontic verbs, etc. However, norms may also be expressed by descriptive sentences, namely sentences in present or future tense and indicative (declarative) mood (i.e. _The minister determines the tax rate_). In many civil law countries (...) (including Poland), this is a very common, if not the default, form of expressing norms in legislative texts. Often presented as a legal peculiarity, this phenomenon has yet to draw much academic attention. The normative meaning of descriptive sentences is usually attributed to purely pragmatic factors stemming from our shared assumptions about the legal system. However, a closer look reveals that similar grammatical constructions are ubiquitous in everyday communication and in different languages. We tend to utter various sorts of directives using descriptive sentences (_Now we add a spoon of salt to the sauce_; _credit cards are not accepted_). This suggests the possibility for a linguistic (as opposed to exclusively legal) explanation. This paper aims to offer such an explanation. Rather than resorting to formal semantics, so prevalent in legal theory, it borrows from Cognitive Linguistics to reveal the cognitive underpinnings of our surprising tendency to express normativity in descriptive terms. This involves four different, yet complementary, theories. Firstly, the theory of conceptual metaphor by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson which explains the phenomenon in question in terms of the metaphor “ ought is is ”; with “ ought ” as the more abstract target domain and “ is ” as the more concrete, cognitively simpler source domain. Secondly, the theory of speech act metonymy by Panther and Thornburg which presents descriptive legal sentences as referring to various components of the underlying cognitive scenario of obligation. Thirdly, Ronald Langacker’s notion of the virtuality of language as the explanation for non-present, including future, perpetual and directive, uses of the present tense. Fourtly, the notion of normative generics which points to the nominal, as opposed to verbal, structure of descriptive legal sentences as the source of their normativity. (shrink)

The main purpose of the paper is to find illuminating and fruitful definitions of ?standard use?, ?misuse?, ?misleading use?, etc., as applied to our speech. The author first sets up two fundamental conditions for successful standard use of language: (1) that the statement should be given in the right circumstances, including the speaker's having a status such that he can make a statement of the kind in question; (2) that the speaker should mean what he says, in the sense that (...) what he says is an unfeigned, genuine expression of his mind. If either of these conditions is not satisfied, the statement is to be classified as non?standard in some sense. But depending on whether or not the person addressed is aware of the fact that the condition is not satisfied, the statement will be classified in different ways. Thus, if condition 1 is not satisfied and the person addressed is aware of it, he should call it simply ?odd? use, sometimes ?nonsense?. However, if the person addressed is unaware of this fact, we should talk about ?misleading? use (e.g. if someone who is not in command gives a command; if someone who was not there tells about the event as if he were present). If condition 2 is not satisfied and the person addressed is aware of it, we get ?secondary? use (e.g. jokes, irony, quotation, politeness, flattery as an accepted part of the social game). However, if the person addressed is not aware of this fact, we get ?misuse? or ?parasitic? use (e.g. lying, boasting, bluffing, cajoling). (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

The argument from retraction (the speech act of “taking back” a previous speech act) has been one of the favorite arguments used by relativists about a variety of natural language expressions (predicates of taste, epistemic modals, moral and aesthetic claims etc.) in support of their view. The main consideration offered is that relativism can, while rival views cannot, account for this phenomenon. For some of those leading the charge, retraction is, in fact, mandatory: a norm of retraction makes it obligatory (...) for an agent to retract a previously unretracted assertion whenever what has been asserted is shown to be currently false. This norm, it is contended, distinguishes (radical) relativism from other views on the market. Recently, several considerations—both from the armchair and based on empirical studies—have been offered to undercut the support retraction has been taken to provide for relativism. In this paper, I engage with both types of considerations and lay out two strategies the radical relativist can follow: weakening the force of the retraction norm and restricting it to certain conditions. I explore how much of the recalcitrant data can be accounted for by each strategy, and show that the best route for the relativist is to adopt a flexible version of the view. Finally, I address the objection from ad-hocness in relation to the flexibility envisaged and put forward a principle based on the notion of the importance of the context of the assertor in a given context of assessment that underlies flexibility. (shrink)

This study analyzes the cognitive and discursive process through which the issue of learning from the West is addressed in four of People's Republic of China founder Mao Zedong's political speeches – On New Democracy (1940), On Coalition Government (1945), On the Ten Major Relationships (1956), and Conversation with Musicians (1956). The study adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective and utilizes blending theory to investigate the metaphorical conceptualizations Mao uses to cope with the cultural dilemma of learning from the (...) West. The study finds that the focus in Mao's conceptualizations is not on a ‘positive Us’ vs. ‘negative Them’ dichotomy between Chinese and Western cultures, but on a good vs. bad dichotomy inside Western culture, implying that only certain parts of Western culture should be (selectively) emulated. While the natural compatibility between Western culture and Chinese society is constructed as out of the question, the possibility of compatibility after human effort is not rejected: the selected part of Western culture should be transformed to serve a new socialist culture in China. In this process, the agency and rational thinking of the Chinese are emphasized. (shrink)

It is often assumed that Paul Grice, in one way or another, has made an important contribution to the theory of speech acts} Grice, as far as I can see, never expressly addresses Austin’s theory in his published work. He hardly ever uses the speech act terminology of "illocution", "perlocution", etc.2 So what does the more or less implicit Gricean contribution to the theory of speech acts consist in'? There is more than one good answer to this question. I shall (...) concentrate on a particularly influential one, which goes back to Strawson (1964). It says that Austin, in his account of the nature of illocutionary acts, over-emphasized the role of conventions; that Austin went wrong in characterizing illocutionary acts as acts which are essentially conventional. The Gricean contribution to speech act theory, according to the envisaged answer, is twofold, both diagnostic and therapeutic. First, it helps us see where and why Austin went wrong in taking illocutionary acts to be essentially conventional. Second, it suggests an essentially intentional — instead of an essentially conventional- element in illocutionary acts. In his 1964 paper Strawson tried to bring out, as regards the interplay of convention and intention in illocutionary acts, both what can be conceded to Austin and what must be learnt from Grice. Austin (1962: 115) had said that "the performance of an illocutionaiy act involves the securing of uptake". Strawson (1964: 158 ff) interprets Austin as meani_ng to say that the performance of an illocutionary act involves understanding of illocutionary force. Understanding of illocutionary force involves, according to Strawson, grasping a "compleX [speaker’s] intention" (ib.: 160), and it is here, of course, where he brings Gricean ideas into _Austin’s scheme of what the essence of illocution is. He says. (shrink)

It has become commonplace in introductions to Indian philosophy to construe Plato’s discussion of forms (εἶδος/ἰδέα) and the treatment in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika of universals ( sāmānya/jāti ) as addressing the same philosophical issue, albeit in somewhat different ways. While such a comparison of the similarities and differences has interest and value as an initial reconnaissance of what each says about common properties, an examination of the roles that universals play in the rest of their philosophical enquiries vitiates this (...) commonplace. This paper draws upon the primary texts to identify the following metaphysical, epistemological, semantic and soteriological roles that universals play in the philosophy of Plato and of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika: Metaphysical: causal of the existence of x Metaphysical: constitutive of the identity/essence of x Epistemological: cognitively causal (i.e. of the cognition of one over many) Epistemological: epistemically causal (i.e. of knowledge of x) Semantic: necessary condition of speech and reason Epistemological: vindicatory of induction (Nyāya only) Metaphysical: explanatory of causation (Nyāya only) Soteriological: cathartic contemplation (Plato only) These roles provide us with motivations or reasons to believe that universals exist. As we examine these motivations, we find pressures mounting against our assimilating Platonic forms and the universals of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika in the discourse about common properties. It is especially when we appreciate the utterly different contribution that universals make in securing our highest welfare that we realize how Plato and the two sister schools are not so much talking somewhat differently about the same thing, but talking somewhat similarly about different things. This better understanding of this difference in these philosophies opens a route for our better understanding of their unique contributions in the ongoing dialogue of philosophy. (shrink)

The Sense of I: Conceptualizing Subjectivity: In Indian Philosophy (Sāṃkhya-Yoga) This book discusses the sense of I as it is captured in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga tradition – one of the oldest currents of Indian philosophy, dating back to as early as the 7th c. BCE. The author offers her reinterpretation of the Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā complemented with several commentaries, including the writings of Hariharānanda Ᾱraṇya – a charismatic scholar-monk believed to have re-established the Sāṃkhya-Yoga lineage in the early 20th (...) century. The textual analysis of the classical Sanskrit sources and their constructive interpretation is enhanced by some crucial questions and points of dispute commonly picked up in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as the challenge of ontological and categorical reductionism, the criteria of personal identity, the limits of agency and free will, the ineluctability of self-deception, etc. However, defining the sense of ego (ahaṃkāra) and ‘I-am-ness’ (asmitā) is the main focus of this research. Four chapters composing the study are subsequently devoted to: (1) the methodological assumptions of the present author and the basic historical distinctions relevant to the subject matter, (2) linguistic preconditioning of I-consciousness as well as metaphysical coherency and ambiguity of the concept of subjectivity presented by Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophers, (3) cognitive and ontological issues concerning the embodied ego being opposed to inactive and contentless consciousness, or the pure self (puruṣa), (4) axiological evaluation of self-discipline and significance of liberation from ego. 1. The method, scope, and problem. In the first chapter, the method of comparative philosophy adopted in this book is introduced by a phenomenological analysis of ‘otherness’ and ‘alienness’ inspired by the considerations of Bernhard Waldenfels and his understanding of xenology. This section is followed by a critical reflection on the incommensurability of the alternative conceptual frameworks, supported by some arguments provided by Ludwik Fleck and Richard E. Nisbett. When explaining the term ‘comparative philosophy’, the author pays special attention to those proponents of the aforementioned current who contributed to the rapprochement of Western and Indian philosophical traditions by tracing both their similarities and divergences. The author makes references to numerous prominent researchers, such as Paul Masson-Oursel, Paul Deussen, Stanisław Schayer, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Bimal K. Matilal, Raimundo Panikkar, Daya Krishna, Wilhelm Halbfass, and many others representing a younger generation. The historical introduction presents a concise survey of the evolution of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga textual tradition, and distinguishes five phases of its development: proto-Sāṃkhya (7th c. BCA – 1st c. CE), pre-classical phase (1st – 5th c. CE), classical Sāṃkhya (3rd – 9th c. CE), post-classical phase (till 14th c.), and neo-classical phase (since 1927). Here, the author also evaluates the primary sources, including Sanskrit commentaries, and the secondary sources in the light of their relevance and usefulness to the constructive interpretation of Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā. Then, she makes some methodological remarks concerning the specificity of their reading. This section is concluded with highlighting three main strategies usually applied when interpreting Patañjali’s sūtras: (1) anti-philosophical approach – treating the text as a merely mystical report or the yogic vademecum, (2) anti-mystical perspective – which reads the text as a highly speculative divagation of no much use to a practitioner, (3) mystic-and- philosophical approach – emphasizing the fact that the theory of consciousness presented in Yogasūtra is both philosophically coherent and empirically (or mystically) verified. The author argues for the third, heuristic, perspective mentioned above. The last section of the first chapter aims to problematize the I-concept (aham) and the paradoxical situation of the ego searching for self-knowledge. This part starts with the acknowledgement of the deliberation on non-self (anātman) by Śāntideva, a Buddhist philosopher claiming that one’s own ego ought to be identified with the ego of any other. Then, the author unfolds the fundamental assumptions and scope of the constructive interpretation she wants to develop following K.C. Bhattacharyya’s clues. When explaining her reasons, she stresses both the need to reveal the philosophical meaning of the source materials and, at the same time, the need to make them meaningful on the ground of our contemporary philosophical enquiry. Thus, among the main purposes there is a reliable, scrupulous and careful reconstruction of the historical conception of the self as elaborated on in the classical period of Sāṃkhya-Yoga tradition, as well as reinterpretation of the sense of I as it was grasped by the Sāṃkhya-Yoga thinkers in terms of modern comparative and ‘polylogical’ discourse. 2. Naming I. In the second chapter, a variety of linguistic categories capturing different aspects of subjectivity is discussed in detail. A textual examination is preceded by clarification of the semantic distinctions made by Patañjali, such as a verbal convention (saṃketa) which stands for uniting or overlapping a word (śabda), its meaning (artha) and a mental state of comprehension (pratyaya) that ascribes the word to a particular object. Among the key concepts there is also explained a spontaneous mental activity referring to pseudo-objects posited only by words (vikalpa), which is unwittingly involved in every process of conceptualizing, designating, and naming objects. Such mental states can neither be ‘valid’ nor ‘invalid’, and are believed to unavoidably accompany one’s use of language. These presuppositions testify to Patañjali’s severe criticism towards all verbal conventions that not only affect the way we formulate and construct our views, but also determine the very process of perception. A major section of the chapter contains the analysis of the ambiguous sense of subjectivity and its basic aspects distinguished by the author in the result of a contextual and comparative study of the Sanskrit terms used in Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā for naming I-consciousness. The six basic aspects of the self comprise: essentializing oneself, perceiving (something), getting conscious (of something), mastering or owning (something), and being capable of self-identifying as well as disidentifying oneself. A majority of the enumerated predicates ascribed to the self refer to different functions and activities of the empirical ego and the embodied mind. Yet, apart from this intentional, active, reactive, sensing, and objectifiable self Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophers distinguish a sense of subjectivity going beyond all these psycho-physical characteristics: the self that remains unmanifest, non-active, free from experiencing any joy or pain, said to be the principle of consciousness. The plausibility of its existence as the final cause of the world is to be determined by the embodied ego by virtue of abductive reasoning based on the analysis of all material and psycho-physical phenomena preconditioned by three guṇas that compose the domain of nature (prakṛti). In the subsequent section, three Sanskrit notions – ahaṃkāra, asmitā, and puruṣa, most significant for the Sāṃkhya and Yoga understanding of subjectivity, are discussed closely one after another to expose their semantic, epistemic and metaphysical connotations. The chapter is completed by some pivotal remarks bringing out the problem of discrepancy between the metaphysical position implied by Patañjali and Īśvarakṛṣṇa, and the grammatical instruments applied by them to express it. 3. Cognizing I. The third chapter addresses two important issues in the phenomenology of self-perception, namely the question of psycho-physical dualism explained on the grounds of the considered darśanas, and the spiritual quest for the ideal embodiment of consciousness. While emphasizing the unity of human psycho-physical nature the author refers to several contemporary Western thinkers, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Nagel, John R. Searle, David Chalmers and others, by making some comparative remarks on the idea of the embodied mind. Furthermore, three arguments for the plurality of selves (puruṣa-bahutva) are reconstructed and critically considered. The arguments given by Īśvarakṛṣṇa (SK 18) include the diversity of ways in which one experiences one’s life and death, the spatio-temporal distinctness of particular embodied egos, and the variations of features manifested by individual selves. The second section of this chapter presents a thorough inquiry into a non-theistic devotion and spiritual pragmatism defended by the adherents of Sāṃkhya- Yoga. God (īśvara) is defined here primarily as an object of meditative practice and a special tool convenient for yogic pedagogy. In the concluding part of this section four functions of devotional practice (īśvara-pranidhāna) are recognized and explained; they embrace: (1) prevention from mental scattering and dispersion, (2) therapy allowing to form some positive perceptual habits and the right cognitive approach, (3) enhancement of morally and spiritually required qualities, and (4) reinforcement of the sense of subjective identity being a complementary method of self-development. 4. Liberating oneself from I. The final chapter consists of three sections. The first one introduces the concept of liberation through action (pravṛtti-dharma), commonly opposed in Indian tradition to the path of renunciation (nivṛtti- dharma). According to Hariharānanda Ᾱraṇya’s interpretation, both Sāṃkhya- Yoga and Buddhism follow the latter one, which in terms of spiritual practice dynamics makes them much closer to each other than it is usually believed. In the subsequent section the idea of liberating oneself from one’s attachment to ego is explained in detail, along with the significance of gradual self-negation. Then the author raises the interpretation of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga perspective on liberation as self-distinction-through-renunciation. The main focus in this section is placed on the sense of agency (kartṛ), the problem of free will, and the criteria of moral and soteriological evaluation of one’s deeds. Some crucial questions on karmic conditioning of self-knowledge in the form of kleśas are also the subject of careful analysis. The next section undertakes the issue of ownership (mamakāra) of one’s activity and self-esteem (abhimāna) involved in spiritual growth. Again, some comparative remarks are made by referring to the Buddhist philosophers’ positions, such as Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva and Candrakīrti. Among others, the Buddhist refutation of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga concept of eternal, inactive, indifferent, irresponsible, and exclusively conscious self (puruṣa) is quoted and partly rejected in favour of the classical Hindu darśanas. In summary, the author emphasized the significance-generating or sense-creating function of I, its engagement in the search for its own raison d’être, its role in self-identification as well as subverting it, and the expediency of liberation from ego. The philosophers of classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga indicate a twofold sense of the self; on the one hand, the only appropriate designation: ‘I’ is true self (puruṣa), a passive and unknowable principle of consciousness whose existence makes the empirical phenomena meaningful. On the other hand, the ‘I’ clearly designates the current sense of the self, expressed as “I think”, “I doubt”, “I suffer”, etc. This second meaning of ‘I’, the specific sense of ‘mineness’, is recognized as a secondary and relative one – thus illusive and troublesome. However, its delusiveness does not mean that the empirical ego is an unreal or non-existent entity. What it implies is that the empirical self-identity is fundamentally inadequate and – according to the Indian thinkers – ought to be unveiled and, ultimately, given up. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption in Construction Grammar (but also before and elsewhere) that the meanings of verbs correlate with or even determine their complementation forms and patterns. There is much less research on noun complementation, however, although this category is even more interesting for a number of reasons such as the potential for valency reduction, nominal topicalization constructions, and additional complementation options, e.g.of-PPs and existential constructions.In this paper we focus on the class of nouns reporting commissive illocutionary acts (promise, (...) offer, pledge, refusal, bet, threat, etc.), and address the question of whether there is a correlation (i) between the meaning of these nouns and their preferred complementation patterns, and (ii) between their semantic similarity and their similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.We report the results of a study of a set of 17 commissive nouns chosen from a wider collection of illocutionary nouns. Two types of analysis were carried out in order to compare the semantic and grammatical characteristics of these nouns. The semantic analysis was based on insights from speech act theory and the philosophy of language. We developed a framework for a systematic comparative description of the nouns in our word field. The results were tallied with a corpus-based grammatical analysis. Two hundred tokens of each noun type were randomly sampled from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Using these data, the 17 nouns were subjected to an analysis of the relative frequencies of their complementation patterns.Results indicate a general match between noun meanings and complementation patterns. More specifically, however, they indicate that the closeness of this match depends on the prototypicality of nouns as members of the class of commissives.The study, then, contributes to our understanding of the relation between lexis and syntax. At the same time, it confirms the need for a close semantic analysis to account for the great extent to which item-specific information, i.e. properties of individual nouns, have to be taken into consideration at the expense of large-scale generalizations. (shrink)

Background In the coronavirus disease 2019 era, doctors have tried to decrease hospital visits and admissions. To this end, telemedicine was implemented in a non-systematic manner according. The objective of this study was to assess the current knowledge and attitudes of physicians in Alexandria, Egypt, and Punjab, India, toward telemedicine and its ethical and medico-legal issues. Method A cross-sectional study was implemented using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire carried out over two months (July and August 2020). A four-point Likert scale was (...) used to collect data about background knowledge, training in telemedicine and ethical and medico-legal issues in telemedicine practice. Results The questionnaire was completed by 175 Egyptian and 51 Indian physicians from different specialties. A significantly higher percentage of Indian physicians practiced telemedicine than Egyptian physicians during the coronavirus disease 2019 era. Although most physicians had no specific training or licensing to practice telemedicine, most of them practiced telemedicine through their social media accounts. Ethical violations involving waiving patient consent were detected. Significant ethical violations to doctors, for example, blackmail, defamation, hate speech, accusations in a court and violations of privacy, were observed. Indian physicians (39.2%) and Egyptian physicians (24%) thought the penalties should be lower in telemedicine than in traditional practice. Finally, most participants would like to continue using telemedicine after the coronavirus disease 2019 era but with improvements. Conclusions Coronavirus disease 2019 changed the acceptance of telemedicine by physicians. Many ethical and legal issues need to be addressed and clarified using formal training before implementation and standardization of telemedicine services. (shrink)

This article explores the (contested) concept of political representation in Urdu during the colonial period to address “deceptive familiarities” and highlight multilingual and transnational influences on contemporary Indian Muslim claims. Drawing on official documents, letters, speeches, and newspapers from the late 1850s to 1919, it argues that the “politics of presence”—or descriptive representation—of “Old Party” leaders stemmed from their aristocratic concept of representation as trusteeship (wakālat). Despite changes in terminology, the concept was only challenged in the 1910s by the (...) “Young Party” and by the embracing of democratic values. Conceptual change was then materialized by the appropriation of the Persian numā’indagī in Urdu—a term that might have consecutively accredited descriptive claims and the use of religious symbols in election campaigns. (shrink)

Prophethood (nubuwwah) is a divine institution that teaches the healthy progression of relations between Allah and humans, as well as between humans and the universe. However, from another perspective, it is also considered a human institution. Some opponents of religion, lacking strong evidence to challenge the existence of Allah, direct their objections towards prophethood, which is seen as a manifestation of Allah’s attribute of speech (kalām). To counter the rejection of prophethood, scholars of theology (kalām), hadith, and Prophetic biography (sīrah) (...) have compiled a body of literature known as Dalāʾil al-nubuwwah (Proofs of Prophethood). Their aim has been to collect proofs supporting prophethood as a response to these refutations and to dispel doubts regarding it. All extraordinary events occurring from before the birth until the death of Prophet Muhammad are considered evidence.During the fifth century, a notable figure in this tradition was the Shāfiʿī scholar al-Māwardī, who defended prophethood in his book Aʿlām al-nubuwwah (The Signs of Prophethood). Aʿlām al-nubuwwah has inspired subsequent works in this field due to its clarity and robust proofs. It became known by both names, Aʿlām al-nubuwwah and Dalāʾil al-nubuwwah, as it encompassed methods of narration and debate. Within his work, al-Māwardī mentions figures like Barāhimah, Dahriyyah, and certain philosophers as representatives of the idea rejecting prophethood. According to him, Barāhimah, of Indian origin is a sect that denies prophethood despite accepting the unity of Allah. Dahriyyah is a denialist sect attributing eternity to the universe and creativity to nature. Al-Māwardī considers these philosophers as infidels due to their comments on prophethood rather than outright denial. The basis of these movements' idea of denying prophethood lies in their efforts to portray reason (ʿaql) as an alternative to revelation (waḥy). Jews and Christians, on the other hand, are portrayed as groups that accept the concept of prophethood, however they reject Muḥammad’s. prophecy. Their objection stems from the fear of their religions being superseded. Al-Māwardī counters those rejecting prophethood by addressing the public interest (maṣlaḥah) of humans, the necessity of prophets, and the role of miracles. He illustrates that prophet charged with the duty of prophethood proves it through spectacular events orchestrated by Allah but carried out through his own hand. The prophet serves the public interest by conveying matters beyond human intellect and presenting them in a comprehensible manner, thereby ensuring the worldly and eternal felicity of humanity. Furthermore, he provides evidence for the Prophet Muḥammad’s prophethood through his moral character, prophetic biography, and accounts of miracles. The biography of Prophet Muhammad’s begins before his birth, and the method of proof is used to demonstrate his prophethood. In essence, al-Māwardī’s method of proving prophethood in Aʿlām al-nubuwwah can be seen as a synthesis of the approaches used by scholars of theology and hadith. One prominent figure in this tradition during the fifth century was the Shafi'i scholar al-Māwardī who defended prophethood through his book " ʿA'lām al-Nubuwwa" (The Signs of Prophethood). In his work, al-Māwardī mentions figures like Barahima, Dahriyya, and certain philosophers as representatives of the idea rejecting prophethood. While the Jews and Christians accept the concept of prophethood, they reject the prophecy of Muhammad (P.B.U.H). These groups attempt to present logic as an alternative to divine revelation (Wahy), as their objection stems from their concern that their religions may be abrogated. Al-Māwardī responds to those who reject the institution of prophethood by addressing the public interest (maslaha) of humans, the necessity of prophets, and the role of miracles. He also provides evidence for Muhammad's (P.B.U.H) prophethood through his moral character, prophetic biography, and accounts of miracles. In short, al-Māwardī's method of proving prophethood in "A'lām al-Nubuwwa " can be seen as a synthesis of the approaches used by scholars of theology (Kalam) and hadith. (shrink)

This article examines Gandhi's writings, speeches, and correspondence, produced mainly from 1946 to the end of his life, on the subject of violence against women during the riots surrounding the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. Gandhi, the article demonstrates, persistently fails to address the gender pathology revealed at the heart of South Asian society by these violations, a pathology to which men were subject, but of which women were the victims. The article compiles a comprehensive overview of Gandhi's shifting (...) positions during this brief, though cataclysmic, period, in the belief that in so doing a certain core aspect of mainstream Indian nationalism's patriarchal underpinnings can be laid bare to critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of ThinkingRobert MagliolaZen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking. By Carl Olson. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. 309 pp.Carl Olson's Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy compares two paths of liberation from the representational mode of thinking, namely, (...) Zen Buddhism and postmodern philosophy. Olson is to be commended for encouraging this dialogue, especially since professors of religious studies usually marginalize Gallic postmodern thought. He is also to be appreciated for the enormous effort that must have been required to describe so much material. Olson treats Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Guattari, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, and Lyotard on the postmodern side; and Dogen, Hakuin, Nishitani, many Chinese Ch'anists, and some Indian Buddhists on the Buddhist side. His method is to arrange the chapters according to topoi such as "Language, Disruption, and Play," "Ways of Thinking," "The Body," and so on, and to treat the pertaining ideas of the individual Buddhist and postmodern authors insofar as applicable.Because Olson's book assembles between two covers the names, selected works, and—at least in a general sense—the "key" ideas of the postmodern movement and their grosso modo similarities/dissimilarities via-à-vis Zen Buddhism, I think it serves an undergraduate readership well enough. The problem is that the book too often performs like a crib sheet in the CliffsNotes manner, reducing so-called "key" ideas to misleading clichés. The book is at its best when it gives an author some length of attention, as it does with Dogen. Rather than reduce my review to a series of sound bites (print bites?) corresponding to Olson's, I shall resort to what hermeneuts call an Auerbachian decoupage, that is, a close analysis of several passages that can be taken as indicative of an author's mode in general. I'll address three interpretations from Olson's book, one of Derrida, one of a Chinese kung-an (koan), and one of Lacan.Within his comparison of Derrida/language/Buddhism, Olson cites (p. 46) a sentence from Derrida's Writing and Difference: "Speech is stolen: since it is stolen [End Page 295] from language it is, thus, stolen from itself, that is, from the thief who has always already lost speech as property and initiative." Olson glosses as follows: "Derrida claims that a speaking subject, representing an irreducible secondary status, is no longer the person who speaks because his/her origin is elusive in an already established field of speech." Because of glosses like this, Derrida is all too often subjected to the ridicule of nonspecialists, who exclaim, "Derrida denies that a person can use speech instrumentally? Aren't his lectures the instruments of his own ideas?" Actually in the section Olson quotes, Derrida is appropriating Lacanian thought and mutating it for Derridean purposes. For Derrida, all life is stretched out in time and diced-out in space in such a way that phenomenological self-identity is an illusion. Physical writing is the best metaphor for this, in that written words (even Chinese ideograms) cannot, in the scientific sense, be perceived in one absolute moment: it "takes time" and it "takes space" to recognize a word, that is, "build" a word-meaning. Derrida calls life a "text" or "writing" because life is like writing: life on the phenomenological level appears holistic (much as a word-meaning appears self-identical, i.e., arising all at once), but life is actually a time/space "drift."1In the sentence Olson quotes, what Derrida means has the following gist: Speech (spoken words) is stolen from language in that it belongs to language as writing and is really writing; and insofar as it is really writing, it is stolen from itself; speech has "always already" been lost to language in that the instrumentality of speech is always undercut by language's nature as writing. Speech is always undercut by an inevitable drift that subverts intentionality and foils our attempts to make speech our absolute "property." This does not mean most of the intention... (shrink)