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.
Page-Barbour Lectures
General
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