Language is reality -- Language shapes reality -- Language creates reality -- Language propagates reality -- The greater conversation.

Língua e realidade é um dos mais instigantes ensaios escritos em língua portuguesa e, ao mesmo tempo, um dos primeiros livros filosóficos de abordagem moderna da linguagem.Vilém Flusser junta a teoria linguística de Ludwig Wittgenstein com a fenomenologia de Edmund Husserl para criar o seu próprio método de análise fenomenológica da linguagem, que lhe permite captar a língua como um elemento vivo, capaz de transformar o caos dos dados imediatos no cosmos das palavras preenchidas de sentido. No entanto, a obra (...) não é estritamente científica, como pode parecer à primeira vista. De forma sofisticada, estrutura-se em várias camada, como a poética ou a ficcional, todas emaranhadas por uma leveza lúdica. Flusser mostra-se, assim, não só um grande pensador, mas também escritor excelente, capaz de criar uma obra plástica, poética e provocativa, o que torna Língua e realidade atraente e acessível a um vasto público de leitores. (shrink)

Translator's introduction -- Paths -- Valleys -- Birds -- Rain -- The cedar in the park -- Cows -- Grass -- Fingers -- The moon -- Mountains -- The false spring -- Meadows -- Winds -- Wonders -- Buds -- Fog -- Natural:Mind.

In On Doubt, Vilém Flusser refines Martin Heidegger's famous declaration that "language is the dwelling of Being." For Flusser, "the word is the dwelling of being," because in fact, in the beginning, there was the word. On Doubt is a treatise on the human intellect, its relation to language, and the reality-forming discourses that subsequently emerge. For Flusser, the faith that the modern age places in Cartesian doubt plays a role similar to the one that faith in God played in (...) previous eras--a faith that needs to be challenged. Descartes doubts the world through his proposition cogito ergo sum, but leaves doubt itself untouched as indubitable and imperious. His cogito ergo sum may have proved to the Western intellect that thoughts exist, but it did not prove the existence of that which thinks: one can eliminate thinking and yet continue being. Therefore, should we not doubt doubt itself? Should we not try to go beyond this last step of Cartesian doubt and look for a new faith? The twentieth century has seen many attempts to defeat Cartesian doubt, however, this doubt of doubt has instead generated a complete loss of faith, which the West experiences as existential nihilism. Hence, the emergent emptying of values that results from such extreme doubt. Everything loses its meaning. Can this climate be overcome? Will the West survive the modern age? (shrink)

In 1963 Vilem Flusser presented a series of lectures at the Brazilian Institute of Philosophy (IBF) in Sao Paulo concerning the philosophy of language. The resulting ten essays would eventually be published in 1965 in the annual magazine of the Brazilian Institute of Technology and Aeronautics (ITA), and published here for the first time in book form. Flusser prepared each lecture as a response to the dialogs that followed the preceding lecture, thereby expanding and explicating his philosophy of language in (...) an intense dialogical process. Despite the fact that the other side of the dialogue was not recorded, it becomes clear to the reader that the resulting discussions and polemics generated by the lectures progressively and profoundly changed Flusser's intended trajectory for the course. This kind of philosophy in fieri was in part the result of a group effort between all of those present, and subsequently synthesized by Flusser in every essay. As a result of this experience, Flusser adopted this dialogic method as an integral part of his future work -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)