| Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will Contributor(s): Wallace, David (Author), Cahn, Steven (Editor), Eckert, Maureen (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0231151578 ISBN-13: 9780231151573 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $17.96 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2010 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Free Will & Determinism - Philosophy | Metaphysics - Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - Semantics |
| Dewey: 123 |
| LCCN: 2010022971 |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.5" W x 8.1" (0.65 lbs) 264 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. Fate, Time, and Language presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. |
Contributor Bio(s): Cahn, Steven: - Steven M. Cahn (PhD, Philosophy, Columbia) is Professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York Graduate Center, where he served for nearly a decade as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, then as Acting President. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including From Student to Scholar (Columbia, 2008), Fate, Time, and Language (Columbia, 2010), Polishing Your Prose (Columbia, 2013), Freedom and the Self (Columbia, 2015), Happiness and Goodness (Columbia, 2015), and Religion Within Reason (Columbia, 2017); his textbooks and anthologies on ethics, philosophy of religion, and introduction to philosophy, published by Oxford, have appeared in multiple editions. |