Overview

The linguistic turn in German philosophy was initiated in the 18th century in the work of Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. It was further developed in this century by Martin Hiedegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer extended its influence to contemporary philosophers such as Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas. This tradition focuses on the world-disclosing dimension of language, emphasizing its communicative over its cognitive function. Although this study is concerned primarily with the German tradition of linguistic philosophy, it is very much informed by the parallel linguistic turn in Anglo-American philosophy, especially the development of theories of direct reference. Cristina Lafont draws upon Hilary Putnam's work in particular to criticize the linguistic idealism and relativism of the German tradition, which she traces back to the assumption that meaning determines reference. Part 1 is a reconstruction of the linguistic turn in German philosophy from Hamann to Gadamer. Part 2 offers the deepest account to date of Habermas' approach to language. Part 3 shows how the shortcomings of German linguistic philosophy can be avoided by developing a consistent and more defensible version of Habermas' theory of communicative rationality.

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Reviews

Lafont's scholarship is consistently first-rate. She provides a superb reconstruction of the development of Habermas's views of language, perhaps the most difficult part of his philosophical theory. She also proposes a novel reading of the connections between Habermas and the tradition, contextualizing him in a very interesting way. Finally, Lafont handles texts in the analytic and continental traditions with equal clarity. --Pablo De Greiff, Department of Philosophy, SUNY Buffalo

Author Information

Cristina Lafont is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. She is the author of Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure.

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