1 / Introduction
Philosophy in the twentieth century stands out and distinguishes itself from all previous philosophy, in its emphasis on the part played by language in the philosophical enterprise. Anglo-American philosophy, beginning with the attack on the idealism prevalent at that time, by G.E. Moore and Russell at Cambridge in the early 1900’s, can be said to be purely linguistic philosophy. Continental European philosophy, in the phenomenological and existential thought of philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, has also been led towards a concern with language. Gadamer, for instance, points out that language is the medium of hermeneutical experience.
The focus on language can be seen therefore as the fundamental characteristic of twentieth-century philosophy. It is no accident that language has come to occupy such a pre-eminent place in philosophy: its ascendancy has been a gradual and an inevitable process. This book seeks to trace that process of ascendancy and to spell out some of the implications of the emphasis on language in philosophy.Philosophy in the twentieth century stands out and distinguishes itself from all previous philosophy, in its emphasis on the part played by language in the philosophical enterprise. Anglo-American philosophy, beginning with the attack on the idealism prevalent at that time, by G.E. Moore and Russell at Cambridge in the early 1900’s, can be said to be purely linguistic philosophy. Continental European philosophy, in the phenomenological and existential thought of philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, has also been led towards a concern with language. Gadamer, for instance, points out that language is the medium of hermeneutical experience.
There is no doubt that Descartes’ philosophy signaled a radical break with medieval philosophy. Descartes, focusing on the question of certainty, resolved the epistemological crisis with his famous cogito ergo sum. In so doing, he separated what constituted reality into res cognitans and res extensa, consciousness and matter. It is this separation that has haunted philosophy ever since Descartes. The way in which thought connects with reality became a pivotal concern of philosophy. Radical skepticism suggested that there could be no point of contact between thought and reality; we could have no knowledge of reality. Kant, in addressing himself to this issue, proposed the possibility of “synthetic a priori” statements, which give priori knowledge of reality. Such a possibility implied that thought had the constitutive power of constructing phenomenal reality according to its inherent categories. Kant’s philosophy resulted in a distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal.
The philosophy of Darryl Naranjit 