The Conversation of Humanity |
| |
| Stephen Mulhall |
| 136 pages, 5 x 8 1/2 |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2626-1 • $25.00 |
| Page-Barbour
Lectures |
| Avialble April 2007 |
 |
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.
The link Mulhall clarifies between the fate of philosophy and the fate of culture helps explain why sophistry or nihilism is such a profound threat, both to philosophy and to culture. Resistance to nihilism, in fact, comes to appear as the central concern of a certain tradition of moral perfectionism that Cavell has associated with Emerson and Thoreau, and with a variety of other creative figures in philosophy, literature, and cinema.
The book concludes, as it begins, with an examination of the
ways in which the interrelatedness of language and culture can
be seen to draw upon and reconfigure essentially religious forms
of thought.
Stephen Mulhall, Fellow in Philosophy at
New College, Oxford, is the author of Philosophical Myths of
the Fall
and Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Kierkegaard.
