Expression And The Inner

At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. Expression and the Inner contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. Following what he takes to be a widely misunderstood suggestion of Wittgenstein's, Finkelstein argues that we can make sense of self-knowledge and first-person authority only by coming to see the ways in which a self-ascription of, say, happiness (a person's saying or thinking, "I'm happy this morning") may be akin to a smile--akin, that is, to an expression of happiness. In so doing, Finkelstein contrasts his own reading of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind with influential readings set out by John McDowell and Crispin Wright. By the final chapter of this lucid work, what's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.

What is Jewish Music? What makes a song sound Jewish? What is the place of music in Jewish history and philosophy? The author writes, What is known to us as Jewish music is actually a compilation of styles and rhythms gathered over centuries and obtained in various manners and from countless sources. However, musicologists the world over agree that the purity of the Jewish song has always been retained. The quality which makes it uniquely Jewish, regardless of the influence on it, has remained untouched and clearly identifiable. What is this quality? What is it that makes a song sound Jewish? It is a note of longing, of a child yearning to unite with his parent, a nation pining for its homeland and lost temple, a soul in this world remembering the holiness above and longing to reunite. Each song resonates with the entirety of the Jewish experience, the devastations and victories, the separations and reunifications and above all the constant bound with the eternal. The study of Jewish music is vast and requires volumes to contain it. There are many who have analyzed its unique qualities and have written extensively on it. Their examination of music is essentially a lesson in history, another means of glimpsing a rich and diverse past. There is yet another way to examine a song, and that is, to view it as an eternal message, as relevant today as it was hundreds of years ago, at the time of its composition. Each song tells its own story in the heart of the one who sings it. It evokes a unique response in each listener. A tune can touch a soul, in a way no words ever could. The study of music as response is what I aim to portray in this work. Music can be used in a myriad of ways in our everyday lives. Especially today with all of the gadgets that can convey music, we are bombarded by sound. Just by taking a long walk, a person changes zones of melodies, beats, and compositions of various types. Our bodies seem to vibrate to uninvited songs and noises that permeate the air around us. But invited

Late in his life, Hans-Georg Gadamer was asked to explain what the universal aspect of hermeneutics consisted in, and he replied, enigmatically, "in the verbum interius." Gadamer devoted a pivotal section of his magnum opus, Truth and Method, to this Augustinian concept, and subsequently pointed to it as a kind of passkey to his thought. It remains, however, both in its origins and its interpretations, a mysterious concept. From out of its layered history, it remains a provocation to thought, expressing something about the relation of language and understanding that has yet to be fully worked out. The scholastic idea of a word that is fully formed in the mind but not articulated served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, and served Thomas Aquinas as an analogy for the procession between divine ideas and human thought. Gadamer turned the analogy on its head by using the verbum interius to explain the obscure relation between language and human understanding. His learned interpretation of the idea of the inner word through Neoplatonism, Lutheranism, idealism, and historicism may seem nearly as complex as the medieval source texts he consulted and construed in his exegesis, but the profoundity of his insights are unquestioned. In unpacking Gadamer's interpretive feat, John Arthos provides an overview of the philosophy of the logos out of which the verbum interius emerged. He summarizes the development of the verbum in ancient and medieval doctrine, traces its path through German thought, and explains its relevance to modern hermeneutic theory. His work unfolds in two parts, as an expansive intellectual history and as a close analysis and commentary on source texts on the inner word, from Augustine to Gadamer. As such, this book serves as an indispensable guide and reference for hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions out of which it arose, as well as an original theoretical statement in its own right. "Consummately researched, lucidly written, and persuasively argued throughout, The Inner Word succeeds brilliantly in bringing to light this neglected but pivotal matter in Gadamer's work. Arthos is learned in the best 'humanist' way, for he succeeds in creating something new of his own that will speak eloquently to all of us." --Walter Jost, University of Virginia "Gadamer suggests that the Christian idea of incarnation is a key to his hermeneutics, but does not explain his position in a detailed or systematic manner. Arthos brings his considerable knowledge of hermeneutics and rhetoric to bear on Gadamer's insight, recounting the rich intellectual history to which Gadamer gestures, and providing an extended and detailed exegesis of this pivotal point in the third part of Truth and Method. Gadamer's account of 'linguisticality,' Arthos explains, can best be understood through his use of a complex metaphor--the 'inner word.' Arthos matches his erudition with clear and clean prose, and his account exemplifies, rather than just describes, Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy. Any scholar interested in Gadamer's philosophy should have this book on his or her shelf." --Francis J. Mootz III, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law "Arthos's strength lies for me in his careful reading of the sources. He effectively commands the literature on the subject. This work shows in a sophisticated way the legacy of trinitarian theology for philosophical hermeneutics. The very complex task of illuminating the phenomenon of the verbum interius and indicating its centrality for philosophical hermeneutics is accomplished by John Arthos with great sensitivity to the subject matter." --Andrzej Wiercinski, The International Institute for Hermeneutics

What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally.

What does the evangelical church in Palestine think about the land, the end times, the Holocaust, peace in the Middle East, loving enemies, Christian Zionism, the State of Israel, and the possibilities of a Palestinian state? For the first time ever, Palestinian evangelicals along with evangelicals from the United States and Europe have converged to explore these and other crucial topics. Although Jews, Muslims, and Christians from a variety of traditions have participated in discussions and work regarding Israel and Palestine, this book presents theological, biblical, and political perspectives and arguments from Palestinian evangelicals who are praying, hoping, and working for a just peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Inner speech lies at the chaotic intersection of several difficult questions in contemporary philosophy and psychology. On the one hand, these episodes are private mental events. On the other, they resemble speech acts of the sort used in interpersonal communication. Inner speech episodes seem to constitute or express sophisticated trains of conceptual thought but, at the same time, they are motoric in nature and draw on sensorimotor mechanisms for speech production and perception more generally. By using inner speech, we seem to both regulate our bodily actions and gain a unique kind of access to our own beliefs and desires. Inner Speech: New Voices explores this familiar and yet mysterious element of our daily lives, bringing together contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In response to renewed interest in the general connections between thought, language, and consciousness, these leading thinkers develop a number of important new theories, raise questions about the nature of inner speech and its cognitive functions, and debate the current controversies surrounding the 'little voice in the head.'