Rhetoric, Language, and Reason (Literature and Philosophy) - Hardcover

Meyer, Michel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271010576 ISBN 13: 9780271010571

Verlag: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding principle.

What the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer (or problem-solution) complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around.

Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michel Meyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mons and the University of Brussels and author of several books, including From Logic to Rhetoric (1986). He is also President of the European Center for the Study of Argument.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pennsylvania State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0271010576
• ISBN 13: 9780271010571
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 180
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar