David Simpson

In Nietzsche’s later work the problem of the possibility of philosophy presents a significant interpretative and practical dilemma. Nietzsche attempts to undermine the idea of the absolute, as a source of value, meaning and truth, and to tease out the traces of this idea in our philosophising. He is thus one of those who has given us the means to complete the Kantian project of moving beyond metaphysical realism and a representational understanding of meaning. However, along with the gift comes a paradox. For Nietzsche’s diagnosis seems to make it clear that desire for the absolute is intrinsic to the practice of philosophy – that in important respects, philosophy just is the (hopeless) attempt to frame or discover overarching, context-less objectivity. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s analysis of philosophy is accompanied by a recognition and critique of the nihilism that arises in reaction to the collapse of absolutism. I suggest that we can find (in Nietzsche) a resolution of this paradox that involves the continuation of philosophy, not through a consciousness for philosophy, but through understanding philosophy as a process without a subject. That is, understanding philosophy as a practice that does not involve a moment that is the resolution of the paradox at all, but which is a process, involving the continual crisis of its paradox (which we might see as a constitutive paradox).

Within the philosophy of language, irony is not a terribly popular topic. For the most part its status is that of a peripheral and derivative oddity, and when it has been discussed, it has tended to be as an aside to a discussion of its more popular purported cousin, metaphor. My major goal here is to help drag irony towards the centre of attention, in two ways. First, in the course of sorting through the account of verbal irony I want to show how this phenomenon, to the extent that it is a communicative-interactive phenomenon, challenges a supposed centrality for literal assertion in our accounts of meaning, communication and interaction. Second, I want to show how the ironic process, as a psychological process and as an interactive process, ought to sit at the forefront of attempts to give an account of the self.

The question of whether lies by those who govern are acceptable receives a clear focus and an ideal case in the Republic. Against C. D. C. Reeve, and T. C. Brickhouse and N. D Smith, I argue that the Republic’s apparent recommendation of administrative lies is incoherent. While lies may be a necessary part of the City’s administration, the process and practice of lying undermines that nature which is necessary for any suitable ruler – rendering the ideal impossible. I argue that this analysis, while concerned with an ideal case, also applies to the political realist’s regrettable-but-necessary defence of such practices.

I address the assumption that communicative interaction is made possible by knowledge of a language. I argue that this assumption as it is usually expressed depends on an unjustified reification of language, and on an unsatisfactory understanding of ‘knowledge’. I propose instead that communicative interaction is made possible by (Rylean) know-how and by the development of (Davidsonian) passing theories. We then come to see that our focus ought to be, not on propositional knowledge of a language which we internally represent, but on the practical application of know-how in our understanding and interpretation of others

Austin's distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts has offered a fruitful way of focussing the relation between language and communication. In particular, by adopting the distinction we attend to linguistic and communicative subjects as actors, not just processors or conduits of information. Yet in many attempts to explicate the constitution of illocutionary acts the subject as actor is subsumed within the role of linguistic rules or conventions. I propose an account of illocutionary acts in which rules or conventions are secondary to what I call communicative skills. These skills are taken as the primary component of communicative competence. They are derived from the principle that linguistic communication is not ultimately a linguistic matter, but relates instead to the way a communicator uses language. This principle is found in the work of Donald Davidson, but Davidson has tended to concentrate on semantics, and leaves the details of linguistic communication for pragmatics. The aim of this paper is to defend the general principle and supply some pragmatic details.

In this paper I argue that Donald Davidson's rejection of the notion of language, as commonly understood in philosophy and linguistics, is justified. However, I argue that his position needs to be supplemented by an account of the development and nurture of pre-linguistic communicative skills. Davidson argues (in ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs' and elsewhere) that knowledge of a language (conceived of as a set of rules or conventions) is neither sufficient nor necessary for 'linguistic' communication. The strongest argument against the initial formulation is that while Davidson may have shown that knowledge of a language is not sufficient, he failed to show that it is not necessary. Subsequently, Davidson has invoked his Triangulation' thesis, to show that understanding can rest on the apprehension of mutuality in a shared objective world, and does not presuppose the sharing of rules or practices. I argue that the starting position arrived at from the triangulation thesis itself presupposes the possibility of communication. The triangulation thesis needs, therefore, to be supplemented by a (non-reductive) naturalistic account of non-linguistic communicative skills. In such an account we must posit shared practices (practices of mutual engagement with a shared world), but not an account of practices conceived on the model of rules or conventions. I note, finally, that by adopting such an approach we offer a way of explicating the formulation of passing theories, which in Davidson's account are the point at which communicative understanding occurs.

Even those aware of Nietzsches ambivalent (rather than purely negative) attitude to Plato, tend to accept Nietzsches account of Plato and himself as occupying the poles of philosophy. Much that Nietzsche says supports this view, but we need not take him at his word. I consider Nietzsche and Plato on three planes: their view of truth, their view of philosophy, and their use of certain emblematic figures (the New Philosopher, the Philosopher King) as the bearers of philosophys future. On these planes Nietzsche and Plato can be seen to be remarkably close, and to stand together outside much of the tradition that separates them. In defence of these claims, (1) I draw a distinction in Plato between an absolutist theory of truth and one that treats truth as situated and partial; (2) I interpret Nietzsches perspectivism as an ethical theory of truth (a theory which is, like Platos situated theory, both non-substantive and not equivalent to pragmatism); (3) I claim that both the Philosopher-King and the New Philosopher are given the task of balancing between absolutism and nihilism; (4) and I draw from these tensions an image of philosophy as an inherently unstable process