Philosophy of Language

Catalog description

This course is your invitation to consider with philosophical care the essential aspect of our human being that language is. Are we tool users who employ language as a tool, or is it rather the case that language has us? Beginning and ending with a contemplation of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word,” central texts for this course include contemporary classics such as Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method. This is a philosophy course with rich application to students’ academic work now, to their lifelong creative writing, and to those who wrestle with Derrida’s postmodern dismissal of language as mere logocentrism.