The Phenomenology of Language and the Metaphysicalizing of the Real

Authors

  • Robert D. Stolorow Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles
  • George E. Atwood Providence, Rhode Island

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.v6i1.1564

Abstract

This essay joins Wilhelm Dilthey’s conception of the metaphysical impulse as a flight from the tragedy of human finitude with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of how language bewitches intelligence. We contend that there are features of the phenomenology of language that play a constitutive and pervasive role in the formation of metaphysical illusion.

References

de Mul, J. (2004). The tragedy of finitude: Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

Dilthey, W. (2002). Selected works: Vol. 3. The formation of the historical world in the human sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1910)

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper and Row. (Original work published 1927)

Husserl, E. (2001). The shorter logical investigations (D. Moran, Ed.). New

York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published 1913)

Inkpin, A. (2016). Disclosing the world: On the phenomenology of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Stolorow, R. D. (2007). Trauma and human existence: Autobiographical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical reflections. New York: Routledge.

Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (2013). The tragic and the metaphysical in philosophy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Review, 100, 405-421.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Publishing.

Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Published

26-Mar-2017

How to Cite

Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (2017). The Phenomenology of Language and the Metaphysicalizing of the Real. Language and Psychoanalysis, 6(1), 4–9. https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.v6i1.1564

Issue

Section

Original Articles