Dairon Rodríguez

The distinction between sense and nonsense is central to Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is at the basis of his conception of philosophy as a struggle against illusions of sense generated by misunderstandings of the logic of our language. Moreover, it informs the notions of “grammar” and “logical syntax”, whose investigation serves to clear up those misunderstandings. This Element contrasts two exegetical approaches: one grounding charges of nonsensicality in a theory of sense specifying criteria that are external to the linguistic performance under indictment; and one rejecting any such theory. The former pursues the idea of a nonsensicality test; the latter holds that illusions of sense can only be overcome from within, through the very capacity of which they constitute defective exercises. The Element connects the two approaches to opposite understandings of Wittgenstein's conception of language, and defends a version of the second approach.

Recent work has focused on the ordinary concept of hate speech. Yet, there remains little consensus on how to define it. Given this lack of agreement in the literature, a seemingly reasonable strategy for understanding hate speech, particularly prevalent in the philosophy of language, is to analyze what is often taken as its paradigmatic case: slurs. However, this strategy might lead us to idealize the nature of hate speech by inheriting certain assumptions present in influential approaches to slurs. Resisting such an idealization, we argue, is crucial not only for intervention, but also for revealing and identifying more subtle cases of hate speech. Thus, in the first part of this paper, we argue against what we call the idealized view of hate speech. In the second part, we explore the phenomenon of hate narratives, and present two cases. Hate narratives are often obscured by the idealized view, so we must resist it.