Language, Truth, and Reason: Gadamer with Nishida
Open Access
- Author:
- Johnson, David Won
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 13, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Dennis Schmidt, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Leonard Richard Lawlor, Committee Member
Veronique Marion Foti, Committee Member
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Gadamer
Nishida
language
truth
rationality
linguistic disclosure
comparative philosophy - Abstract:
- One of the hallmarks of contemporary life is a widespread feeling of resignation about the ability of human reason to reach truth in ethical and political matters. This dissertation outlines the philosophical sources of this crisis and then sets out what I see as a way forward in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s rehabilitation of dialogical rationality, which holds out the promise of our uncovering this kind of truth in and through language. This contention poses two tasks for this project. The first task is to give an account of the event through which the truth-disclosing function of language grounds our normative claims. Here truth is uncovered in the linguistic space opened up and constituted by the participants in a dialogue. In this process, the individual actions and intentions of the participants are taken up into a movement that has its own dynamic, such that the truth is something that acts on our understanding in an event of self-presentation. I shed light on the ontological foundations of this difficult and radical concept of truth by comparing it to Nishida Kitarō’s distinctive philosophical account of the structure of experience, which is founded on an attempt to display the perspectives of subject and object as moments within a more basic and encompassing reality. Finally, the claim that truth ‘happens’ when things come to presentation in language relies on an understanding of language as essentially disclosive rather than referential. The second task of this dissertation is thus to give a fuller account of the nature and workings of linguistic disclosure.