In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly
accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control
over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with
Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations
of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a
semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument.
"Fate, Time, and Language" presents Wallace's brilliant
critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of
his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis reveals his great
skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of
something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of
certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of
modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned
"the very old traditional human verities that have to do with
spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet
the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the
developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his
struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions.
This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert,
reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism
cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's
early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his
later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical
epilogue.
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