Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 14:31:13 +0000
Subject: Re: Routledge Guidebook to Being and Time (translation)


In message <36A86015.6A4D1582-AT-iname.com>, Ryan Stubblefield
<vorpal-AT-iname.com> writes
>And if you are going to bother with Quine, it would be a crime to omit
>Davidson's continuation of the project.  Especially his paper "A Nice
>Derangement of Epitaphs," in which he offers his (in)famous thesis that
>all linguistic activity is interprative. (and thus there is no such
>thing as a language so-called)
The relation between Davidson and Quine is difficult. I do think,
however, that "language" does not 'mean' the same thing in their mouths.

Perhaps, (the later) Wittgenstein offers a closer link to H than Q to the
so-called Analytical Tradition, if the missing link is what we seek -- after
all, philosophy affords that lost-lane into heaven, the great forgotten
language, the Stone, the Leaf, the Unfound Door.

Can't we construe W's animadversions in PI wrt to the sign 'E' in his
discussions on the so-called 'private-language' possibility as pivoting on
the same basic assumptions as H's and Q's; i.e., the following
assumption: that we can/do -- at least, seem to ourselves to -- make
sense of our own words is a matter of translation/interpretation.

 How does W's interlocutor know that 'E' means the same across the
different occasions of its invocation? In the manner that the tradition has
passed on to us: by concentrating his attention, by mental focusing? No,
says, W; he doesn't, because he can't. He can make sense of his own
words because he can/does speak a language, not the other way
around: not, because for the meaning of words, like 'E', he somehow
mysteriously preserves/conserves a diachronic identity. I.e., because he
dwells in the house of language, he can make sense of his own words;
because that is the nature of his Being, because he Exists (in H's sense).

Or is this reaching for straws?
jim


     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---