The conversation of humanity
"Based on the author's Page-Barbour Lectures, delivered at the University of Virginia in 2005, The Conversation of Humanity critically examines the idea that the nature of language can best be understood in terms of the model or figure of conversation. According to this idea, language has an essentially dialogical or discursive structure, reflecting the ways in which different dimensions of the cultural economy bear upon each other. Mulhall addresses the peculiar way in which philosophy must be understood both as one of those interlocking elements and as the place in which the culture reflects upon its own overarching unity. The book explores the articulation of these ideas in the work of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Cavell in ways that cross the divide between the "analytical" and "Continental" philosophical traditions, and shows how they bear upon the idea of moral perfectionism and its conception of the internal structure of self."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2007
University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2007
119 pages ; 23 cm.
9780813926261, 0813926262
71004063
Introduction: discursive conditions
Language, philosophy, and sophistry
Contributions to a conversation about the conversation of humanity: Heidegger and Gadamer, Oakeshott and Rorty
Lectures and letters as conversation: Cavell as educator in Cities of words
Conclusion: redeeming words
"Page-Barbour lectures for 2005."