[lit-ideas] Re: Linguistic Botany
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 22:50:46 +0200
When Hart does legal philosophy he starts, as he should with ordinary
language, and how the utterers of his generation ('utterer' is a rather
pretentious bit of Griceianism) use 'law'; and I say as he should: for
what would
the good of a conceptual analysis be if it fails to cover your OWN use of
an expression.
*Wouldn't it be more illuminating, when trying to do legal philosophy, to
engage with legal language and how it is actually used in the legal process
? Nobody cares about Hart's and Grice's "linguistic intuitions." Perhaps
'linguistic botany" really means: "just the same old linguistic beans, day
after day."
O.K.
On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> When Hart does legal philosophy he starts, as he should with ordinary
> language, and how the utterers of his generation ('utterer' is a rather
> pretentious bit of Griceianism) use 'law'; and I say as he should: for
> what would
> the good of a conceptual analysis be if it fails to cover your OWN use of
> an expression.
>
> Grice proceeded ditto. And this was Austin's lesson, perhaps not Ryle. Hart
> was somewhat, generationally, between Ryle and Austin. By 'botanising',
> Austin meant to start with ordinary language, and while Ryle and Witters
> have
> been labelled 'ordinary language philosophers', when most historians of
> philosophy refer to the 'ordinary language school of philosophy' ("there
> was
> no such school!" Grice complains) they refer to Austin's Play Group which
> is enlarged a bit to include Hart (Austin never allowed anyone his senior
> to
> join the group but made an exception with Hart, and Hart and Austin and
> Grice gave a triadic seminar on Aristotle's Ethics in Oxford -- the three
> of
> them were 'university lecturers': another condition to join Austin's play
> group is that you had to be a full-time member of the Sub-faculty of
> philosophy -- and the meetings were 'by invitation' only, if not "RSVP",
> which
> they did -- in case, say, Grice had a cricket match for Oxfordshire).
>
> But the basis is Epicurus, and I'm tempted to use the phrase "Epicurean
> Grice" for this. In another passage from this letter to Herodotus, Epicurus
> sticks with the expression 'time' -- as in "What time is it?". And the
> White
> Rabbit answering, "Too late, too late".
>
> Epicurus writes:
>
> "There is another thing, Herodotus, which we must consider carefully."
>
> "We must NOT investigate, say, time in an odd way."
>
> -- (St. Augustine took this to heart, and found that he could not
> investigate time AT ALL, even if he FELT time -- this paradox fascinated
> Witters:
> how could Augustine claimed that he KNEW that p, but was unable to provide
> an outward criterion for it?).
>
> Epicurus goes on -- he is trying to convince Herodotus -- that the study of
> physics belongs in philosophy.
>
> Epicurus writes:
>
> "We must take into account the plain fact itself, in virtue of which WE
> SPEAK OF TIME as long or short, linking to it in intimate connection this
> attribute of duration."
>
> "We SHOULD NOT adopt any FRESH, rather than the simple terms of ordinary
> language as preferable."
>
> "We should always employ the usual expressions about stuff." "And by
> 'usual' I mean "ordinary"".
>
> "Nor need we predicate anything else of time, as if this something else
> contained the same essence as is contained in the proper meaning of the
> word “
> time” (for this also is done by some)."
>
> "For we should not deviate from ordinary language as expressed in ordinary
> usage."
>
> "We must chiefly reflect upon that to which we attach this peculiar
> character of time, and by which we measure it. No further proof is
> required: we
> have only to reflect that we attach the attribute of time to days and
> nights
> and their parts, and likewise to feelings of pleasure and pain and to
> neutral states, to states of movement and states of rest, conceiving a
> peculiar
> accident of these to be this very characteristic which we express by the
> word “time.”"
>
> So, Grice was very much justified to call his type of thing a sort of
> "Oxonian dialectic", with "Athenian dialectic" as its direct ancestor.
> When Hart
> wrote this thank-you note to Morty White, he added, "And let me add that
> Grice, who'll soon be giving the William James Lectures at Harvard, is a
> marvellous dialectician, far better than any of us", and he was writing
> from
> Oxford!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
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