The debate between Husserl and Marty focuses on the notion of general grammar. Nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to have been a clear outcome, and the terms of the debate remain quite unclear. Moreover, while both authors make striking use of historical references, their entanglement seems to call for some clarification. This paper aims to shed light on this debate, by considering it from an historical perspective. In doing so, two putative candidates will be introduced as (conceptual) precursors of the ‘allgemeine (...) Grammatik’: the Grammaire générale et raisonnée of Port-Royal (1660), and the medieval grammatica speculativa, which included a group of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century philosophers of language known as the Modistae. I will first identify Husserl’s and Marty’s respective critiques, distinguishing, between Husserl’s critique of the conflation of the a priori and empirical, and Marty’s of the conflation of meaning and forms of expression. Second, I will place these critiques in an arrangement involving two types of cross-reference: on the one hand, Marty and Husserl can be seen as standing in opposition to their historical predecessors; on the other hand (and more significantly), Marty and Port-Royal can be seen as standing in opposition to Husserl and the speculative grammarians. (shrink)

This article aims to expose and comment on the theory of meaning presented by Heidegger in his "habilitation dissertation” on the Grammatica Speculativa in that time attributed to Duns Scotus. Heidegger, in his interpretation, interweaves elements of the theory of meaning present in Husserl and Duns Scotus. The doctrine of modes of meaning, of understanding and of being, of the Grammatica Speculativa, is read since an intentional phenomenological analysis. This article tries to expose this interlacement, point (...) out the correspondences between the Husserl’s theory of meaning and the doctrine of the modes of meaning, of understanding and of being, in the Grammatica Speculativa. (shrink)

The Destructions of the Modes of Signifying (henceforth: dms) is an anonymous fourteenth-century polemic against modist speculative grammar (grammatica speculativa). Wielding Ockhamist logic and metaphysics, the dms repeatedly attacks the very root of modism: the claim that the grammatical features of language are grounded in the metaphysical properties of the world. I call this the Modist Correspondence Thesis (henceforth: mct). In its most general form, mct says that every mode of signifying exhibited by an utterance corresponds to a (...) mode of being exhibited by a thing. The Emptiness Argument of the dms tries to show that mct fails to accommodate certain special cases, such as privative, fictitious, and divine utterances, like ‘blindness’ (caecitas), ‘chimera’ (chimaera), and ‘deity’ (deitas). The modist Thomas of Erfurt directly addresses the Emptiness Argument, anticipating the anti-modist criticisms present in the dms. In doing so, he points the way to alternative formulations of mct that are immune to those criticisms. (shrink)

Duns Scotus's Doctrine of Categories and Meaning is a key text for the origins of Martin Heidegger's concept of "facticity." Originally submitted as a doctoral thesis in 1915, it focuses on the 13th-century philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus. Heidegger first analyzes Scotus's doctrine of categories, then offers a meticulous explanation of the Grammatica Speculativa, a work of medieval grammar now known to be authored by the Modist grammarian Thomas of Erfurt. Taken together, these investigations represent an early foray into (...) Heidegger's lifelong philosophical concerns, "the question of being in the guise of the problem of categories and the question of language in the guise of the doctrine of meaning." This new and unique translation of one of Heidegger's earliest works offers an important look at his early thinking before the question of being became his central concern and will appeal to readers exploring Heidegger's philosophical development, medieval philosophy, phenomenological interpretations of the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The authors of mediaeval treatises on the modi significandi (often entitled De modis signi­ficandi, or Summa grammatica, or Summa modorum significandi, or Grammatica speculativa) have come to be known as the Modistae who taught in the late Sixties of the 13th till the Thirties of the 14th centuries. The present study is an account of the grammatical theories of this group of mediaeval scholars (mostly the work of Thomas of Erfurt), set in the appropriate context of situation (...) and seen in terms of the part they played in mediaeval semiotic theory, since their theory rests on the study of words and the properties of these words as signs of things. At the end of the present study the influence of the speculative grammar on present linguistic theories is announ­ced. Some influence of the speculative grammar one could discover in many contemporary lin­gui­stic theories like those of Noam Chomsky, Ronald Langacker, Robin Lakoff and even Ray Jackendoff. (shrink)

This volume forms part of the series of the Princeton Studies in Humanistic Scholarship in America, under the general editorship of Richard Schlatter. Uitti's exposition of theories of language and literature from ancient Greece to contemporary America is oriented toward the proposal for a coordination of studies of language and literature in a sort of modern trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In the first part of the book, the author concentrates on Platonic "symbolic" and Aristotelian "analytic" ideas about language, (...) and then traces these two currents throughout the Middle Ages, paying special attention to Priscian, Anselm, Abelard, Petrus Hispanus, Dante, and the grammatica speculativa. He then brings the survey up to modern times, examining Descartes, the Port-Royal grammar, Du Marsais, Diderot, and Rousseau. Condillac and Coleridge are treated in detail as representing two modern theories of expression/communication, the one analytic and linguistic, the other synthetic and aesthetic. The second part of this work deals with a history of both linguistics and of American literary criticism, stressing I. A. Richards' descriptivism, new critic theories of metaphor and irony, and Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature. Uitti singles out Roman Jakobson as being most prophetic in outlining future cooperation of linguistics and literary theory, and in this light analyzes various papers in Style and Language, in particular C. F. Voegelin's and Michel Riffaterre's. This survey of the contemporary American scene points to the fact that ours is a sign-oriented culture, and that recent studies in linguistics and in literary criticism of the poetics type have been sharing the same philosophical assumptions. The author thinks that language and literature studies would function best in the future as disciplines united in the broad matrix of cultural process, and using linguistic categories. He thus shares an oft-expressed hope for a cumulative literary "science," in which individual studies are oriented toward the broader construct. This book is addressed to the nonspecialist, but the expert will profit from Uitti's generous style which opens up new vistas on every page.--C. M. R. (shrink)

In questo articolo rifletto sulla nascita della grammatica araba e il suo sviluppo come fonte dell’esegesi coranica dall’VIII al XIV secolo. Il legame tra esegesi e grammatica è stato oggetto di diversi studi che esaminano le origini delle categorie grammaticali. Sebbene non ci sia evidenza di uno spiccato interesse per la grammatica da parte degli esegeti coranici, essi hanno comunque dovuto adoperarla per spiegare i significati del testo sacro. In particolare, nei commentari classici è data particolare attenzione (...) alla lessicografia e meno alla struttura grammaticale. A ogni modo, in alcuni passaggi, anche se sporadici, le categorie grammaticali stesse fungono da spiegazione, essendo portatrici di significati. Questo si evince dalla letteratura sufi dove le terminologie della grammatica araba sono simboli delle stazioni dell’anima nel cammino spirituale, come nella _Grammatica dei cuori_ di al-Qushayrī. In questo articolo, analizzo il ruolo della grammatica nelle Scienze Coraniche secondo il teologo al-Ghazālī e dopo una panoramica della storia della disciplina nel periodo classico della storia islamica, e evidenzio il modo in cui le terminologie grammaticali servono per la comprensione profonda del significato nella Sūra al-Fātiha nel commentario sunnita di Ibn Kathīr. In this article I reflect on the emergence of Arabic grammar and its development as a source for Qur’ān exegesis from VIII to XIV century. The connection between exegesis and grammar has been the subject of several studies examining the origin of grammatical categories. Although there is no evidence of a clear interest for grammar by Qur’ān exegetes, they necessarily used it to explain the meanings of the sacred text. In particular, in the classical commentaries there is a particular attention to lexicography and less to the grammatical structure. However, in some passages, even if sporadic, the grammatical categories themselves perform an explanatory function, being bearers of meanings. This is manifest in Sufi literature where Arabic grammar terminologies are symbols of the stations of souls in the spiritual path, like in the _Grammar of the heart_ by al-Qushayrī. In this article, I analyse the status of grammar in Quranic Sciences according to the theologian al-Ghazālī and after an overview on the history of the discipline in the classical period of Islamic History, and I highlight the way grammar terminologies serve as a key to understand profound meaning in sura al-Fātiha in Ibn Kathīr’s sunni commentary. (shrink)

An exploration of panpsychism in Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology.

This paper explores Whitehead’s concept of law as an immanent order, arguing that it can be successfully used to cover the whole semantic field denoted as ‘law’, and especially law in its juridical sense. After showing the features that make it more plausible and more desirable than the opposing view of law as a transcendent imposition, law will be defined as the expression of the modes of existence of individuals within their environment. It will then be tested as a key (...) for understanding the link between life and law and showing the inadequacy of Foucault and Agamben’s biopolitical reflections: if law is an immanent order, then life is identical with its own inherent normativity. Finally, drawing on Deleuze’s philosophy of right, the fundamental features of an immanent practice of law, a “speculative jurisprudence” which confirms the binding between law, life, and immanence, will be sketched as a proposal for a practical philosophy consistent with Whitehead’s process cosmology. (shrink)

This paper comprises four moves at understanding trust. 1. By opposing it to pragmatic calculation and justification and linking it to a kind of „intrinsic” reasonableness present in relationships of trust; 2. By studying the implicit ontology of relationships of trust : trust involves a certain conception of world, self, others, time, etcetera; 3. By studying certain characteristics of trust like a certain unreflexive, spontaneous surrendering of oneself; 4. By studying trust as a specific personal relationship with essentially „embedded” or (...) „incarnated” meaning . In this context one can begin to understand the connection between trust on the one hand and loyalty or faithfulness on the other). (shrink)

‘Wij hebben niet de capaciteit verloren om vriendschappen te koesteren, maar alleen de gewoonte ze met de grootste ernst te nemen en er diep over na te denken. Door ons weer vertrouwd te maken met de rijke discussies over vriendschap in de werken van Aristoteles, Cicero, Montaigne en Bacon, die allemaal aan de bakermat stonden van het Europese humanisme, kunnen we misschien beginnen het vocabulaire te hervinden van het denken over wat het betekent een menselijk en sociaal wezen te zijn.’.

L’aramaico antico: Storia, grammatica, testi commentati. By Frederick Mario Fales and Giulia Francesca Grassi. Udine: Forum, 2016. Pp. 315, illus. €35.

The Danish scholar Jan Pinborg made outstanding contributions to our understanding of medieval language study. The papers in this volume clearly demonstrate the wealth of Pinborg's scholarly interests and the extent of his influence.Though centered on medieval theories of grammar and language, the collection ranges in time from the fourth century B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D.; theories of the pronoun, of mental language, of supposition, of figurative expressions and of mereology are among the topics discussed; and the papers deal (...) with both humble anonymous teachers of grammar and with such well-known men as Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Peter of Spain, Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, William of Ockham, Domingo de Soto, and Suárez. The papers are in English, German, or French. (shrink)

In zijn verhelderende opstel over De eigen aard van het geloof in de wijsgerige theologie van Vincent Brümmer, gaat Henk Geertsema vooral in op ‘de aard van de geloofskennis zoals die in de Utrechtse school [en met name in mijn geschriften] wordt gezien’ . De centrale vraag voor Geertsema is ‘of de wijze waarop Brümmer de kennis die eigen is aan het geloof, opvat recht doet aan het eigen aard van het bijbelse geloof als bepaald door de levende omgang met (...) God’ . Twee gezichtspunten zijn hier vooral van belang:’ de verbinding van geloofskennis met de praktische levenshouding, die kenmerkend wordt geacht voor het “verfijnd theologisch realisme” van de Utrechtse school; de typering van de wijsgerige theologie als “grammatica van het geloof”‘ . In mijn antwoord zal ik vooral ingaan op Geerstema’s bespreking van het ‘verfijnd theologisch realisme’. Ten aanzien van ‘het grammatica van het geloof’ zal ik volstaan met een opmerking over Geertsema’s onderscheiding tussen ‘de taal van de wijsgerige theologie’ en ‘die van het concrete geloven of van de Bijbel’ . Ik kan hier kort zijn omdat Marcel Sarot in zijn bijdrage uitvoerig op dit punt ingaat. (shrink)