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Who speaks when you speak? Who writes when you write? Is it "you"--is it the "I" that you think you are? Or are we the chance inheritors of an invasive, exterior parasite--a parasite that calls itself "Being" or "Language?" If our sense of self is best defined on the basis of an exterior, parasitical force that enters us from the outside, then the "self" is no longer a centralized or agential "inside," but rather becomes reconfigured as the result of an "outside" that parasitizes the "inside"-as-host. Rough versions of this model can be found in several traditions of continental philosophy: in Lacan, Derrida, Serres, Kristeva, Foucault, Baudrillard, to name a few. However, the full implications of this ontological model have yet to be addressed: what are its consequences for a theory of subjects, objects, and the agencies that intersect with them? How does this framework alter our understandings of the human and the non-human, the vital and the material?An off-kilter point of view is required to consider this historical and philosophical situation. Language Parasites argues that the best way to conceive of the "self" or "subject" as something linguistically and ontologically constituted by an aggressive and parasitical outside is by asking the following question: "what is the being of a parasite?" In addressing this challenge, Braune combines speculative philosophy with 'Pataphysics (the absurdist science, invented by Alfred Jarry, that theorizes a physics beyond both the para and the meta, resulting in the pata). These theoretical collisions betray a variety of swerves that extend to the social (as a parasite semiotics), the cultural (as the invasive force of memes), the aesthetic (as the transition of postmodernism to postmortemism), the linguistic (as found in Saussure's paranoid researches into the paragram), the poetic (as seen in Christopher Dewdney's journey into "Parasite Maintenance" and Christian Bök's attempts to embed a poem in a bacterium), and the literary (as para-cited in Henry Miller's experience of housing a parasite named "Conrad Moricand"). The "voice" of the parasite can be found in what Saussure calls the "paragram"--the uncanny messages that lurk hidden underneath the written word. And what does the parasite say? Or, does its speech reject human ears?If the voice of the parasite mutters in the ear of the subject, then an anterior theoretical listening--a phorontology--is required, one that can negate the anthropocentric regimes of binaristic thought: the dyads of good and evil, right and wrong, male and female, inside and outside, etc. Language Parasites effectively transjects these dyads and emerges from these revealed sites and para-sites with a banquet of new philosophical concepts. Each of these concepts--such as "postmortemism," "hyperhistory," "the subject-of" or the "transject"--is selected for its intrinsic usefulness: they are scalpels and tools that can helpfully transcend anthropocentric dyads in order to unveil the continua of the non-human.The careful reader will already realize that Language Parasites is the result of a philosophical continental infection: it is the location of a meeting between the Derrida-parasite, the Serres-parasite, the Lacan-parasite, the Foucault-parasite, the Hegel-parasite, the Laruelle-parasite, and many other philosophical parasites. These parasites act as the hosts of other philosophies, each parasiting the other. Philosophy qua philosophy becomes the complex locale of a vigorous negotiation between host and parasite--a complex world that also implicates the author (lying on the postmortem slab) and the reader (requiring some form of medical or philosophical intervention). Language Parasites offers exactly this kind of medico-philosophical treatment: it is a tincture and a curative for your philosophical needs and ailments. You will feel full after reading this book.

Semantics (Philosophy) --- Ontology. --- pataphysics --- linguistics --- paragrams --- parasite semiotics --- phorontology

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Originally published in 1970. Many contemporary philosophers have thought that certain philosophic disputes could be settled by using the concept of meaninglessness. To solve philosophic problems in this way, however, it seemed necessary to provide a reliable criterion for deciding when a particular sentence or statement is meaningless. But devising such a criterion has proved to be very difficult. In fact, in recent years many philosophers have become quite skeptical about the adequacy of the standard criteria of meaninglessness. Some of the more radical skeptics have even argued that the concept of meaninglessness, as it is used by philosophers, is itself defective and would be even if an adequate criterion could be found. Professor Erwin, in a systematic study of the concept of meaninglessness, begins by examining the standard criteria of meaninglessness proposed by philosophers. These criteria include operationalist, verificationist, and type or category criteria. Each of these criteria, he argues, is inadequate. Erwin then turns to the question, What kinds of items, if any, should be said to be meaningless? Most philosophers concerned with this question have claimed that only sentences, not statements or propositions, can be meaningless. Erwin argues, however, that this is wrong: statements (and propositions) can be meaningless. Once this is demonstrated, it can then be shown that the more radical skepticism about the philosophic use of the concept of meaninglessness is misguided. In particular, Erwin shows that the following assertions of the radical skeptic are false: that what is meaningless is relative to a given language or to a given time, and that the concept of meaninglessness forces us to condemn as nonsense metaphors comprehensible to competent speakers of English. In his concluding chapter, Erwin considers the implications of there not being any adequate general criterion of meaninglessness. He then tries to show how the concept of meaninglessness, when interpreted in the manner he suggests, can be profitably used by philosophers, despite the many persuasive objections to its use that philosophers have raised in their disputes over it.

Meaninglessness (Philosophy) --- Nihilism (Philosophy) --- Philosophy --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Skepticism --- History of philosophy, philosophical traditions

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This translation of the work of one of the founding fathers of literary structuralism and semiotics in Italy is a timely introduction to the theoretical study of literary communication. Marcello Pagnini is a leading figure in the post-structuralist endeavor to return the text to something resembling its social matrix. He explores not only the dynamics of the author/reader rapport but also the connections between the literary text and its sociocultural and historical contexts.

Pragmatics. --- Literature --- Pragmatique. --- Litterature --- Philosophy. --- Philosophie. --- Literature and philosophy --- Philosophy and literature --- Pragmalinguistics --- General semantics --- Language and languages --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Theory --- Philosophy --- Literary theory

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"Philosophy in a Meaningless Life provides an account of the nature of philosophy which is rooted in the question of the meaning of life. It makes a powerful and vivid case for believing that this question is neither obscure nor obsolete, but reflects a quintessentially human concern to which other traditional philosophical problems can be readily related; allowing them to be reconnected with natural interest, and providing a diagnosis of the typical lines of opposition across philosophy's debates. James Tartaglia looks at the various ways philosophers have tried to avoid the conclusion that life is meaningless, and in the process have distanced philosophy from the concept of transcendence. Rejecting all of this, Tartaglia embraces nihilism ('we are here with nothing to do'), and uses transcendence both to provide a new solution to the problem of consciousness, and to explain away perplexities about time and universals. He concludes that with more self-awareness, philosophy can attain higher status within a culture increasingly in need of it."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Life. --- Meaning (Philosophy) --- Meaninglessness (Philosophy) --- Nihilism (Philosophy) --- Consciousness. --- Apperception --- Mind and body --- Perception --- Philosophy --- Psychology --- Spirit --- Self --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Skepticism --- Life --- Consciousness --- Friedrich Nietzsche --- Martin Heidegger --- Meaning of life --- Metaphysics --- Nihilism --- Ontology --- Problem of universals --- Transcendence (religion)

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One of the fifty most influential living philosophers, a "self-promoting charlatan" (Brian Leiter), and the orchestrator of an "online orgy of stupidity" (Ray Brassier). In Skirmishes: With Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals, Graham Harman responds with flair and wit to some of his best-known critics and fellow travelers. Pulling no punches, Harman gives a masterclass in philosophical argumentation by dissecting, analyzing, and countering their criticism, be it from the Husserlian, Heideggerian, or Derridean corner. At the same time, Skirmishes provides an excellent introduction to the hottest debates in Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology, a speculative style of philosophy long foreclosed by the biases of mainstream continental thought, but which has turned in recent years into one of the most encompassing philosophies of our time, with a major impact on the arts, humanities, and architecture.Part One considers four prominent books on speculative realism. In dialogue with Tom Sparrow's The End of Phenomenology, Harman expresses agreement with Sparrow's critique while taking issue with Lee Braver's "transgressive realism" as not realist enough. Turning to Steven Shaviro's The Universe of Things, Harman defends his own object-oriented model against Shaviro's brand of process philosophy, while also engaging in side-debate with Levi R. Bryant's distinction between virtual proper being and local manifestations. In the third chapter, on Peter Gratton's Speculative Realism: Problems and Prospects, Harman opposes the author's attempt to use Derridean notions of time and difference against Speculative Realism, in what amounts to his most extensive engagement with Derrida to date. Chapter Four gives us Harman's response to Peter Wolfendale's massive polemic in Object-Oriented Philosophy, which he shows is based on a failed criticism of Harman's reading of Heidegger and a grumpy commitment to rationalist kitsch.Part Two responds to a series of briefer criticisms of object-oriented ontology. When Alberto Toscano accuses Harman and Bruno Latour of "neo-monadological" and anti-scientific thinking, Harman responds that the philosophical factors pushing Leibniz into monadology are still valid today. When Christopher Norris mocks Harman for seeing merit in the occasionalist school, he shows why Norris's middle-of-the-road scientific realism misses the point. In response to Dan Zahavi's contention that phenomenology has little to learn from speculative realism, Harman exposes the holes in Zahavi's reasoning. In a final response, Harman gives a point-by-point answer to Stephen Mulhall's critical foray in the London Review of Books. Amidst these lively debates, Harman sheds new light on what he regards as the central bias of philosophical modernism, which he terms the taxonomical standpoint. It is a book sure to provoke lively controversy among both friends and foes of object-oriented thought.

Analysis (Philosophy) --- Analysis, Linguistic (Philosophy) --- Analysis, Logical --- Analysis, Philosophical --- Analytic philosophy --- Analytical philosophy --- Linguistic analysis (Philosophy) --- Logical analysis --- Philosophical analysis --- Philosophy, Analytical --- Language and languages --- Methodology --- Philosophy --- Logical positivism --- Semantics (Philosophy)