History of Language Philosophy

Цель статьи – реконструировать аутентичный смысл изречения М. Хайдеггера «Язык есть дом бытия». Автор доказывает, что выраженная в этих словах идея заключает в себе квинтэссенцию концепции языка, созданной одним из крупнейших мыслителей ХХ века. И потому адекватное истолкование данного афоризма требует обсуждения ключевых проблем этой концепции. К ним относится: соотношение языка, действительности и истины; значение языка для культуры; роль духовных усилий человека в развитии языка.

Since Saul Kripke’s paradigmatic reading of rule-following that described standards of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations as a radical aporia according to which any given sign is capable of limitless interpretations, Wittgenstein scholars continue to consider whether standards of meaning in the Investigations are incontrovertibly aporetic, or if there is a solution to the Wittgensteinian paradox that allows for objectivity, and the intriguing possibility of semantic realism. Claudine Verheggen is a proponent of this latter position, but I argue that her critical reading of the Investigations is exegetically unsound and does not lead us, as she hopes, to a description of meaning that is ‘robust and illuminating' (Verheggen 2003, 307). Moreover, my position is that to accept Wittgenstein’s aporia does not mean that we must commit to Kripke’s sceptical consequence, nor should we commit to Verheggen’s semantic realist reading. Rather, to accept the aporia is to accept the many different (sometimes contradictory) meaning descriptions, as these contradictory standards of meaning are crucial to Wittgenstein’s overall description of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations.

Статья посвящена анализу малоизученного аспекта семиотического учения Августина, касающегося природы и функций языка. Автор показывает, что важнейшие лингвистические идеи этого мыслителя, с одной стороны, были обусловлены философско-теологическим контекстом поздней Античности, а с другой – сами образовали ту теоретическую «призму», которая во многом предопределяла осмысление языка в средневековой культуре.

Aristotle’s De Interpretatione has been referred to as the most influential text to be written in the history of semantics. I argue, however, that it is Plato who lays the foundation for subsequent reflection on signification. In the Cratylus, Plato confronts the two prevalent views of his time on the nature of the relationship between a name and a thing named: conventionalism, which holds that there is an arbitrary, imposed relationship between names and what they name; and naturalism, which holds that there is a natural relationship between names and what they name. The true originality of Plato’s line of reasoning consists in arguing that whether we begin with naturalism or conventionalism, we are soon forced to introduce a third, mediating term between word and thing into the relation of signification. Plato thus establishes the tertiary nature of the sign-relation, a position that Aristotle takes for granted.