Richard Price

1. Quote/Unquote Philosophers like other people often have a weakness for quiz-shows. And like the crew in the Hunting of the Snark, they are all of them fond of quotations 1 . So I begin with a quotation and a question. The quotation comes from a famous o indeed a ‘superstar’ o text. But which text? Which famous writer indicted these lines? The purpose of the universal jargon was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of logical empiricism, but to make other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when the universal jargon had been adopted for all and the metaphysically infected terminology forgotten, a metaphysical thought o that is a thought diverging from what logical empiricism regarded as genuinely thinkable o should be literally unthinkable, at least in so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a log...

This article probes Jonathan Israel’s theory about ‘Radical Enlightenment’ inaugurating political modernity by way of explicating the thought of Joseph Priestley. In Israel’s view, despite the inconsistencies plaguing Socinian thought, Priestley, a monist, emerged as an ardent supporter of religious toleration and democratic republicanism. This article seeks to restore the fundamental coherence of Priestley’s theological and metaphysical views, arguing that they were produced as parts of a system founded on the simultaneous adherence to providentialism and necessitarianism. Prized as a prerequisite of the unfolding of the divine plan, the unobstructed expression of religious opinions was the centre of the conception of civil society and civil liberty that Priestley articulated based on these premises and his forays into politics aimed to secure its permanence. A comparison of Priestley’s stance on the issue of manhood suffrage with that of Richard Price reveals not the materialist Priestley, but Price, a dualist, as an advocate of democratization and casts into doubt the applicability of Israel’s scheme in the case of England. The article closes with some suggestions towards reappraising the relationship between Enlightenment and modernity.

Table of contents

1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism; 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy; 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a form of life; 4. Epicurus and ethics as care for oneself; 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions; 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism; 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism; 8. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelianism; 9. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism; 10. Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian moral doctrine and Aristotelian ethics; 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry; 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living
13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism; 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality; 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism; 16. Richard Price and intuitionism; 17. Adam Smith and sentimentalism; 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism; 19. Immanuel Kant, the practical use of reason and judgment; 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and a critique of Enlightenment universalism; 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment; 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism; 23. Edmund Husserl and the a priori of action; 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism; 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics; 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism; 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy; 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics; 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics; 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

PDF-PowerPoint presentation of the talk I gave on Sunday, 26th August 2018 at the 2018 Societas Ethica Annual Conference, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 23th – 26th August 2018.
Abstract
In the first chapter of her “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, Mary Wollstonecraft defines human degrees of reason, virtue and knowledge as the instruments for measurement of human nature’s perfection. Reason, virtue and knowledge constitute, in Wollstonecraft’s intents, the new values that ought to promote a radical change, in general, in the whole human dimension and, in particular, in the woman’s sphere of life. In my contribution, I would like to analyse principles, contents and arguments present in Mary Wollstonecraft’s work “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” – published in 1792 –, which constitutes one of the first texts – probably the first “manifesto” – of the feminist movement. I will also take into consideration Wollstonecraft’s work “A Vindication of the Rights of Men” in order to investigate the main points of Wollstonecraft’s criticism of Burke’s “Reflections on Revolution in France”. An initial, rather short part of my contribution will be dedicated to the presentation of the main events in Wollstonecraft’s life, in order to reconstruct at least some of the cultural and intellectual environments with which Mary Wollstonecraft came in contact during her life: Wollstonecraft’s role and contribution in the Enlightenment will thereby be described. Furthermore, the exposition of some biographical facts regarding Mary Wollstonecraft will aim at illustrating the dimensions of the hostile political and intellectual groups against which Mary Wollstonecraft had to fight in her life, since Wollstonecraft’s positions apparently belonged to an absolute minority as regards the spectrum of ideas of her times. The main aim of my investigation will consist in showing that both “Vindications” are expressions of a programme of radical modification of the society: The subjection of women in the `community is, in Wollstonecraft’s view, a part of the greater problem of the subjugated social community. Wollstonecraft expresses in her works an absolute denial of the traditional education of women: Wollstonecraft’s principal purpose is to promote the change of female education and the reform the social and political institution oppressing women. Women’s inclusion into public life can be reached, in the opinion of Mary Wollstonecraft, only through a common education for men and women; reform of the education of women means reform of the society.
We will see that one of the aims of Wollstonecraft lies in persuading women to abandon a false conception of the feminine nature in order to let them adopt the practical virtues of rationality, autonomy, and self-reliance. Wollstonecraft expresses her absolute denial of whichever categorization of women as creature of feeling rather than of reason. This point constitutes the first step, in Wollstonecraft meditation, towards a model and towards a proposal of a new education, in which women and men are given the same kind of education: education ought to produce in individual the attitudes to reason, to autonomy and to independence. The education to the attitude and the behaviour led by reason represents, in Wollstonecraft’s project, the opposition to the traditional cultivation, in the women’s sphere, of sensibility. The main principle of Wollstonecraft’s project of education consists in the persuasion that, without knowledge, there can be no morality: not sensibility, but reason ought to be the aim of the education itself. A method of education promoting sensibility in the individual can only produce mental instability in the individual; moreover, education tending to strengthening sensibility in women proves to be an agent in the diminution of value and in the consequent oppression of women. The duty of women consists, in Wollstonecraft’ view, in abandoning false femininity in order to reach the practical virtues of rationality, independence and self-reliance. The mind has no sex: There is no natural disposition because of which men are reason, and women are sensibility. This artificial distinction, which lies at the very origin of the oppression of women, is established only in the society: therefore, the society ought to be, in Wollstonecraft’s intents, profoundly reformed. I shall point out, furthermore, Wollstonecraft’s connections with the religious environment of her time. The religious roots of Mary Wollstonecraft’s thought will be, therefore, investigated in order to demonstrate that her thought was profoundly influenced by the religious background of that time: I will show that Wollstonecraft’s meditation cannot be interpreted without its connections with the positions of the radical dissenters. Moreover, utopian components are not extraneous to her theological conceptions. My analysis will, furthermore, concentrate on the reconstruction of Wollstonecraft’s polemical issues: therefore, I shall analyse Wollstonecraft’s criticism of, for instance, Rousseau’s and of Milton’s conception of the woman. As regards the connections of Mary Wollstonecraft with the feminist movement, the main question I shall propose in my contribution will consist in analysing whether the feminism model of Mary Wollstonecraft does or does not contain in itself a tension or even a contradiction between a possible radical feminism component and a more traditional component. Through her radical feminist component, Wollstonecraft undoubtedly denounces many forms of oppression of women. On the other hand, due to her traditional component, Wollstonecraft apparently binds the role of women, for instance, to the role of mothers, thus reaffirming the diversity, as to social duties and social self-realization, between men and women. In other words, the question will be whether Mary Wollstonecraft oscillates between models of radical, anti-patriarchal feminism and models of acceptance of separate spheres for male and women. The bibliographical studies on Mary Wollstonecraft will help in the analysis of the presence (or not) of this dilemma in her works.

This paper revolves around James Gillray -a political caricaturist of the 18th century- along with his views and portrayals of the French Revolution and it's protagonists, followed by his contribution to the then circulated Anti Jacobin newspaper.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

Looking back at the early thought of parliamentary reform pioneer Major John Cartwright (1740-1824) in an essay of 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge contended that no-one could ‘have more nakedly or emphatically identified the foundations of Government in the concrete with those of religion and morality in the abstract.’

Indeed, Cartwright himself repeatedly stated that moral and religious considerations formed the fundamental basis of his political perspective. From his early statement, made in a letter of 1775, that ‘the principles on which politics are built, are the principles of reason, morality, and religion, applied to the concerns of large communities,’ he repeatedly asserted, throughout his career, that all temporal ‘rules of prudence and policy’ depended for their validity upon their being ‘strictly just and perfectly consonant with morality and religion.’

It is the fundamental contention of this article that Cartwright’s ideas are only comprehensible if we take these statements seriously and place his arguments within the context of eighteenth-century debates about the nature of moral knowledge, as well as considering his thought in the light of the broad Dissenting and Anglican latitudinarian tradition of rational religion.

PDF-PowerPoint Presentation of the talk I gave on Friday, 18th May 2018 Colloquium “Reforma. Conservação. Revolução”, Núcleo de Estudos Politicos da Universidade de Lisboa (nepUL), Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 16-18 Mai 2018.

Stimulated by T. P. Uschanov’s paper ‘The strange death of ordinary language philosophy’, I try to reach a balanced assessment of Gellner’s notorious book and also to decide where Gellner stands on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  Some of the things he says suggest that he rejects the notion but he neither clearly formulates what it would have to be nor gives much in the way of argument that there could be no such thing.  One gets the impression that when philosophers he does not like – Wittgenstein and Oxford ordinary language philosophers – use it, it is unacceptable but not necessarily when philosophers to whom he is less hostile – Russell and the logical positivists – do so.

Few would doubt that one often encounters the preposterous in philosophy.  Some would claim that preposterousness in philosophy is often a matter of literal nonsensicality, i.e. meaninglessness.  Is this plausible or is it itself an example of a preposterous philosophical claim?

Immanuel Kant’ın insanlığın olgunluk çağına geçiş aşaması olarak betimlediği Aydınlanma, ‘bilmeye cesaret et!’ (sapare aude!) şiarıyla başlamıştı; ama, bildiği ya da bildiğini sandığı dünyaya yönelik gittikçe daha kibirli hale gelen bu özgüven, Fransa’da tarih sahnesine henüz çıkan ‘halk’ın (le peuple) devrimini, kısa sürede, çok genç ve çok hırslı hatiplerin teatral performanslarının liderliğindeki donsuz (sans-culotte) güruhların giyotin festivallerine dönüştürecektir. Edmund Burke, 1790 yılında, yani Kant’ın Aydınlanma Nedir Sorusuna Bir Yanıt adlı metni yayımlandıktan yalnızca altı yıl sonra, böyle bir devrime karşı çıktığı ve onun, çok daha büyük çaplı, yıkıcı ve soğukkanlı bir dönüşümün habercisi olduğunu duyurduğu aşağıdaki satırları yazdığında, henüz ne Fransa Kralı XVI. Louis idam edilmiş ne de Fransa Kraliçesi Marie Antoinette, vatana ihanetten ensest sapkınlığa kadar birçok suçlamadan ölüme mahkum edilerek Paris sokaklarında taşlanmış ve bir kutlama eşliğinde giyotinde can vermişti:

“O zaman veliaht eşi olan Fransa kraliçesini Versailles’da gördüğümden beri on altı ya da on yedi yıl oluyor ve onun zar zor dokunur gibi olduğu bu göz küresine daha nefis bir imgelem asla takılmamıştı. Onu ufkun hemen üstünde gördüm, henüz taşınmaya başladığı yüce kubbeyi dekore eder ve neşelendirirken––sabah yıldızı gibi; yaşam, görkem ve neşe dolu pırıldarken. Ah! ne devrim! ve o yükseliş ve o düşüşü duygusuz düşünmem için sahip olmam gereken ne kalp! (…) Yiğit adamların ulusunda, şerefli adamların ve şövalyelerin ulusunda ona rastgelen böyle felaketleri görmek için yaşamam gerektiğini hayal etmezdim. Onu hakaretle tehdit edecek bir bakışın bile intikamını almak üzere on binlerce kılıcın kınlarından fırlayacağını düşünürdüm. Ama şövalyelik çağı kapandı. Sofistlerin, ekonomistlerin ve hesapçılarınki kazandı ve Avrupa’nın ihtişamı sonsuza kadar söndürüldü. Rütbe ve cinsiyete yönelik o cömert sadakati, o mağrur teslimiyeti, o vakur itaati, esarette bile yüce bir özgürlük ruhunu canlı tutan kalbin o tabiiyetini asla, artık asla seyreylemeyeceğiz."

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

Richard Price (1723-1791) was a notable eighteenth century philosopher, activist and dissenting clergyman. He made significant contributions to moral, political, and religious philosophy, as well as to mathematics and finance. He was known for his resolute commitment to the ideal of liberty, and his subsequent support for a number of progressive causes, including the abolition of slavery, the easing of political and civil restrictions on non-Anglicans, the eradication of the national debt, and especially, the American and French Revolutions. In light of this, Price has been described as “the first and original Left Wing intellectual” in British history (Pocock 1984). While he was very well known in his lifetime, not only in England but also in America and France, his influence waned rapidly after his death. Today, Price is best known for his 1789 sermon, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, which prompted Edmund Burke to respond with his Reflections on the Revolution in France a year later. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed scholarly interest in Price’s moral and political philosophy

This paper is a critique of coercive theories of meaning, that is, theories (or criteria) of meaning  designed to do down ones opponents by representing their views as meaningless or unintelligible.  Many philosophers from Hobbes through Berkeley and Hume to the pragmatists, the logical positivists and (above all)  Wittgenstein have devised such theories and criteria in order to discredit their opponents. I argue 1) that such theories and criteria are morally  obnoxious, a) because they smack of the totalitarian linguistic tactics of the Party in Orwell’s 1984 and b) because they dehumanize  the opposition  by portraying them as mere spouters of gibberish;  2) that they are profoundly illiberal since  if true, they would undermine Mill’s arguments for free speech; 3) that such theories are prone to self-contradiction, pragmatic and otherwise; 4) that they often turn against their creators including what they were meant to exclude and excluding what they were meant to include; 5) that such theories are susceptible to a modus tollens pioneered by  Richard Price in his Review Concerning the Principle Questions of Morals(1758); and 6)  that  such theories are prima facie false since they fail to ‘predict’ the data that is it their business to explain (or, in the case of criteria, fail to capture the concept that they allegedly  represent).  The butcher’s bill is quite considerable:  some of Hobbes, a fair bit of Locke, half of Berkeley, large chunks of Hume, Russell's Theory of Types, verificationism in its positivist and Dummettian variants, much of pragmatism and most of Wittgenstein - all these have to be sacrificed if we are to save our souls as philosophic liberals.

Do original, em inglês, “A Discourse on the love of our country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the meetinghouse in the old jewry, to the Society for commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain”, publicado em 1790 pela prensa de George Stafford, para o editor e livreiro T. Cadell. O discurso, proferido na ocasião da comemoração do 101º aniversário da “Revolução Gloriosa” na Revolution Society e depois publicado em
formato de panfleto, é considerado uma peça clássica do debate político moderno, uma vez que situou as bases da discussão para a interpretação imediata da Revolução Francesa na Grã-Bretanha. Como o leitor poderá ver neste discurso, Richard Price encontrou, em sua pregação religiosa dissidente, um traço de continuidade entre a Revolução Inglesa de 1688 e as duas revoluções contemporâneas, a Americana e a Francesa. Sua interpretação receberia uma severa crítica de Edmund Burke, que, em 1790, escreveu contra Price e a Revolução no país vizinho, a sua obra mais famosa, Reflexões sobre a Revolução na França, um texto que hoje é parte da bibliografia básica em disciplinas dedicadas ao século XVIII em um grande número de cursos de Filosofia, História e Ciência Política em todo o Ocidente. Na esteira deste debate, uma série de pensadores políticos da mais absoluta relevância se esmerou em discutir a questão da Revolução e dos Direitos produzindo obras que também se tornaram clássicas, dentre as quais, as peças mais conhecidas são Os Direitos dos Homem (I parte em 1791 e II parte em 1792) de Thomas Paine; Reivindicação dos Direitos dos Homens (1790) e Reivindicação dos Direitos da Mulher (1792) de Mary Wollstonecraft; e Letters to the right honourable Edmund Burke (1791) de Joseph Priestley. O contato com o texto que abriu os caminhos para este debate, agora disponibilizado em português, pode ajudar o estudante lusófono a compreender de que modo as bases desta importante discussão foram assentadas, sendo este uma referência
a mais para mapear este rico e complexo contexto. (N.T.)

This article is concerned with the writings on resistance by Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, the leaders of the Rational Dissenters who supported the American and French Revolutions, from the late 1760s to 1791. The article discusses the differences between Rational Dissent and mainstream (Court) Whig resistance theory, as regards history in particular: the Dissenters viewed the Glorious Revolution as a lost opportunity rather than a full triumph, and claimed the heritage of the Puritan opposition to Charles I, some of them justifying the regicide. Price’s and Priestley’s views on resistance are assessed against the benchmark of John Locke’s conception of the breach of trust. While both thinkers presented themselves as followers of Locke, they departed from his thought by their emphasis on the constantly active role of the people. Each in their own way, they also argued that early, possibly peaceful, resistance was preferable to violent resistance as a last resort against a tyranny. In the end, Price and Priestley articulated each an original theory derived from Locke; their views were very close and their main difference concerned the treatment of history, Price’s caution contrasting with Priestley’s justification of tyrannicide.

Scholars have been paying increasing attention to the republican theory of liberty developed by the eighteenth-century British radical Richard Price. This article studies his narrative of a revolution of liberty, which consists in the downfall of oppressive powers, the establishment of republican institutions, and the introduction of a utopian age. In distinction from work that has focused on the millennial aspects of Price's narrative of emancipation, I highlight its political contexts and functions, situating its early development in utopian speculations about agrarian equality and population, demonstrating how the American Revolution had transformed it into a rallying cry for revolutionaries, and reconstructing its role as a source of politically mobilizing hope. This study differs from much of the scholarship on Price in looking beyond the Anglo-American context and presenting his work as part of a European conversation on the prospects of republican utopia, a conversation whose participants included Rousseau, Turgot, Mirabeau, and Condorcet.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

Rémy Duthille, « Célébrer 1688 après 1789 : le discours de la Revolution Society et sa réception en France et en Angleterre », dans Lumières et histoire / Enlightenment and History, dir. Tristan Coignard, Peggy Davis et Alicia C. Montoya. Honoré Champion, 2010, pp.245-262.

The article focuses on the writings of Thomas Paine, Richard Price and William Godwin, to show that although the French Revolution introduced into the socio-political debate in Britain notions of tolerance, sympathy, and religious liberties, the negative stereotype of the Jew never diminished. The paper argues that though these writers opposed and countered conservative thinkers, their view of the Jew and his place in society is not only unclear but also assumes the xenophobic and negative perception of the Jew, deployed by their conservative counterparts.

L’ouvrage analyse le discours de John Cartwright, de Richard Price et d’autres radicaux anglais qui justifient les réformes politiques par les droits de l’homme et par la constitution anglaise. Leur position à la fois patriote et cosmopolite est difficile à tenir pendant la Guerre d’Indépendance américaine.

I am planning a history of the concept of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that it goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first nonsensicalist, whether Kant was a nonsensicalist at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

I discuss Charles Pigden’s paper ‘Coercive theories of meaning, or why language shouldn’t matter (so much) to philosophy’ and ask whether theories of meaning whose primary purpose is to discredit rival philosophies as meaningless necessarily employ artificially narrow conceptions of meaningfulness.  In the course of my argument I ask whether the colloquial-rhetorical use of words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘meaningless’ has made it difficulty for philosophers to see just how novel and radical their own accusations of talking nonsense are.

I consider the dispute, not with a view to reaching a final verdict, but for the light it sheds on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  How does it look to a sceptic about philosophical nonsense?  It is generally agreed that the Tractatus is an unsatisfactory work, if the traditional reading of, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe or Peter Hacker is correct.  But is it any better on the ‘resolute’ reading of Cora Diamond or James Conant?  I maintain that it is more difficulty to handle the concept of nonsense than nonsensicalists of any stripe realise.  If the ‘ineffable truths’ and ‘important nonsense’ of traditional readings raise problems, so too do the contrast between meaningful frame and nonsensical core, Diamond’s idea that one can imaginatively identify with the nonsense-talker and the mysterious new entity, ‘transitional’ nonsense.  Meaning and communication, I suggest, keep reappearing precisely where they should not.

TO READ THE WHOLE BOOK -- PLEASE GO TO THE "CHAPTER" SECTION FOR POETICS WHERE EACH CHAPTER HAS ITS OWN PDF. It has been published in 1990 and is also available for free download from the University of California Press.

The romantic, nineteenth-century image of the Bedouin as fierce, independent nomads on camelback racing across an endless desert persists in the West. Yet since the era of Ottoman rule, the Mzeina Bedouin of the South Sinai desert have lived under foreign occupation. For the last forty years Bedouin land has been a political football, tossed back and forth between Israel and Egypt at least five times.

This paper goes naturally with my earlier paper 'The importance of Russell's Theory of Types for the emergence of twentieth-century nonsensicalism'.  In it I discuss the method Prior proposes in his paper ‘Entities’ for dealing with Russell’s Paradox without appealing to the concept of nonsense.

Edmund Burke, 1790 yılında, Fransız Devrimi’ne karşı çıktığı ve onun çok daha büyük çaplı, yıkıcı ve soğukkanlı bir dönüşümün habercisi olduğunu duyurduğu Fransa Devrimi Üzerine Düşünceler adlı kitabını yazdığında henüz ne Fransa Kralı XVI. Louis ile Fransa Kraliçesi Marie Antoinette devrimin insanca icadı giyotinde can vermiş ne de Fransız Devrimi kendi çocuklarını tek tek öğüteceği Terör Dönemi’ne girmişti. Tedirgin edici bir kesinlikle Fransız Devrimi’nin aşırılıklarını ve nihai sonunu öngörebilmiş bu çalışma, Thomas Paine’in İnsan Hakları adlı kitabı başta olmak üzere, Aydınlanma düşüncesinin temel yapıtlarının ortaya çıkışını kışkırtmış; kısa sürede muhafazakâr siyasal felsefenin bir başyapıtına dönüşmüştür.

I discuss Charles Pigden’s paper ‘Coercive theories of meaning, or why language shouldn’t matter (so much) to philosophy’ and ask whether theories of meaning whose primary purpose is to discredit rival philosophies as meaningless necessarily employ artificially narrow conceptions of meaningfulness.  In the course of my argument I ask whether the colloquial-rhetorical use of words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘meaningless’ has made it difficulty for philosophers to see just how novel and radical their own accusations of talking nonsense are.

« Célébrer 1688 après 1789 : le discours de la Revolution Society et sa réception en France et en Angleterre », dans Lumières et histoire / Enlightenment and History, dir. Tristan Coignard, Peggy Davis et Alicia C. Montoya. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010, pp.245-262.

Many people today identify Locke's political legacy solely with right-leaning libertarianism. But the truth is more complicated. This chapter explores two strands of thought within Locke's 18th and 19th century reception. The 18th century liberal republican strand radicalized Locke's conceptions of consent, constitutionalism, and the role of the state, while the 19th century natural property rights strand, itself composed of a libertarian camp and an egalitarian camp, developed his conception of individual property rights to address the moral problems raised by industrial capitalism.

« Célébrer 1688 après 1789 : le discours de la Revolution Society et sa réception en France et en Angleterre », dans Lumières et histoire / Enlightenment and History, dir. Tristan Coignard, Peggy Davis et Alicia C. Montoya. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010, pp.245-262.