History
Universal pragmatics (UP) seeks to overcome three dichotomies: the dichotomy between body and mind, between theory and practice, and between analytic and continental philosophy. It is part of a larger project to rethink the relationship between philosophy and the individual sciences during a period of social crisis. The project is within the tradition of Critical Theory, a program that traces back to the work of Max Horkheimer.
The term "universal pragmatics" includes two different traditions that Habermas and his collaborator, colleague, and friend Karl-Otto Apel have attempted to reconcile. On the one hand, ideas are drawn from the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, wherein words and concepts are regarded as universally valid idealizations of shared meanings. And, on the other hand, inspiration is drawn from the American Pragmatist tradition (feat. Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, Charles W. Morris), for whom words are arbitrary signs devoid of intrinsic meaning, and whose function is to denote the things and processes in the objective world that surrounds the speakers.
UP shares with speech act theory, semiotics, and linguistics an interest in the details of language use and communicative action. However, unlike those fields, it insists on a difference between the linguistic data that we observe in the 'analytic' mode, and the rational reconstruction of the rules of symbol systems that each reader/listener possesses intuitively when interpreting strings of words. In this sense, it is an examination of the two ways that language usage can be analyzed: as an object of scientific investigation, and as a 'rational reconstruction' of intuitive linguistic 'know-how'.
Read more about this topic: Universal Pragmatics
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)