About the Book
What is language, and how has it been conceived since Frege? How did the development of thought about language lead to a renewed interest in rhetoric in the twentieth century and ultimately to the ‘problematological synthesis’? These are the main questions treated in this book. A constant intertwining of historical and topical viewpoints characterizes the author’s approach.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, p1; 2. Part One: Logic and Language, p3; 3. 1. Frege or the Recourse to Formalization, p3; 4. 1.1. Logic before Frege, p3; 5. 1.2. Function and concept, p5; 6. 1.3. The ideography and the principles of Fregean language theory, p7; 7. 1.4. Sense and reference, p8; 8. 1.5. Sense and meaning, p10; 9. 1.6. Conclusion, p14; 10. 2. Russell's Synthesis, p17; 11. 2.1. Formalization and natural language, p17; 12. 2.2. Definite descriptions, p19; 13. 2.3. Propositional functions, p20; 14. 2.4. The theory of types, p28; 15. 2.5. Conclusion, p33; 16. 3. Wittgenstein: From Truth Tables to Ordinary Language and the Implications of Generalized Analyticity, p35; 17. 3.1. The Russellian heritage and its contradictions, p35; 18. 3.2. The immanence of logic in language, p37; 19. 3.3. Sense and reference, p38; 20. 3.4. The language image (the picture theory of language), p41; 21. 3.5. Negation and the other logical constants, p46; 22. 3.6. The Tractatus as initiation into silence, p49; 23. 3.7. Ordinary language and its rules, p55; 24. 3.8. Conclusion: Russell vs. Wittgenstein, a heritage, p61; 25. 4. Hintikka or the Theory of Possible Worlds, p65; 26. 4.1. Introduction, p65; 27. 4.2. Referential opacity, p65; 28. 4.3. Ontological commitment and the elimination of single terms with Quine, p68; 29. 4.4. Possible worlds and propositional attitudes, p70; 30. 4.5. The implications of the alternativeness relation and the theory of modus, p74; 31. 4.6. The ontological commitment, p75; 32. 4.7. The interpretation of quantification as a question and answer game, p77; 33. 4.8. Wittgenstein and Hintikka: A concluding comparison, p83; 34. Part Two: Language and Context, p85; 35. 5. Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Argumentation, p85; 36. 5.1. The three levels of language, p85; 37. 5.2. Logical syntax, p86; 38. 5.3. Formalization and natural language, p88; 39. 5.4. The renewal of argumentation, p89; 40. 5.5. Perelman's new rhetoric, p92; 41. 5.6. Argumentation in language or the 'new linguistics' of Anscombre and Ducrot, p94; 42. 5.7. Conclusion, p96; 43. 6. Dialectic and Questioning, p99; 44. 6.1. Dialectic and Socrates, p100; 45. 6.2. The middle dialogues: Dialectic and the hypothetical method, p105; 46. 6.3. The late period: The question of being or the shift from the question to being, p110; 47. 7. Argumentation in the Light of a Theory of Questioning, p115; 48. 7.1. Why language?, p115; 49. 7.2. The two major categories of forms, p115; 50. 7.3. What is to be understood by 'question' and 'problem'?, p117; 51. 7.4. The autonomization of the spoken and the written, p118; 52. 7.5. The proposition as proposition of an answer, p121; 53. 7.6. What is meaning?, p121; 54. 7.7. Meaning as the locus of dialectic, p129; 55. 7.8. Argumentation, p130; 56. 7.9. Literal and figurative meaning: The origin of messages 'between the lines', p133; 57. Footnotes, p137; 58. References, p143
