Interview with Robert Brandom

Interview with Prof. Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburg, about Inferentialism, pragmatism, philosophy of language and Hege

Um arco do pensamento: a trajetória de Rorty do materialismo eliminativo para o pragmatismo

Tradução de Marcos Carvalho Lopes

Towards Reconciling Two Heroes: Habermas and Hegel

Abstract I describe my engagement with Habermas's ideas, and sketch a way of reading of Hegel that I take to be consonant with the deepest lessons I have learned from Habermas. I read Hegel as having a social, linguistic theory of normativity, and an exclusively retrospective conception of progress and the sense in which history exhibits teleological normativity. Keywords: Habermas, Hegel, normativity, discourse ethics, history. Part One I first heard Jürgen Habermas's name more than 30 years ago, in the Spring of 1979, when I had just arrived at the University of Pittsburgh as a new Assistant Professor. Those who know my Doktorvater Richard Rorty will not be surprised to hear that, although his own masterpiece Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature had just appeared, rather than talking about that, at the time he was much more interested in passing on his enthusiasm for Habermas's book Knowledge and Human Interests. Following his recommendation, I read that work-with mounting excitement. It did wonderful, original things with lines of thought I had always been interested in, but had never seen how to integrate with my central interest in the nature of language and its role in our lives. It was able to do so in part by offering a reading of huge swathes of the philosophical tradition since Kant. The ambition and sheer power of the work exhilarated and inspired me then-as they still do today. More than anything else, I think it was the invigorating prospect of a new way of thinking about how philosophy of language could legitimately be thought of as "first philosophy" that caught my imagination. The familiar starting-point is the conviction that the most important event in human history-simply the biggest thing that ever happened to us (or, alternatively, that we ever did)-is the rolling and still on-going transition from traditional to modern societies, practices, and modes of thought. (If someone wants to hold out instead for the antecedent advent of civilization-large-scale cities, organized agriculture, the accompanying specialization and division of labor

Asserting

In this paper, written more than ten years before Making it Explicit, I take a close look at the pivotal role which assertions play in human interactions. Tending a bridge from the Kantian theory of judgements to Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, with the Fregean notion of conceptual content providing the pillars, and relying on the teachings drawn from the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy as keystones, I begin by questioning the dominant view of representationalism in analytical philosophy after Russell, Carnap and Tarski. It is here that I begin weaving the conceptual network that will eventually blossom into the program of pragmatic rationalism with logical inferentialism and semantic expressivism as pivotal notions, manifest in our game of asking for and giving reasons. It is for these reasons that I agree that a bilingual version of this early piece seems a good starting point for the reflections on what unites and what divides la philosophical visions of Wittgenstein and my own

Paradoxien der Autonomie (second edition)

Die Reihe „Freiheit und Gesetz“ ist einer Idee gewidmet, die die moderne praktische Philosophie begründet – der Idee, dass die Freiheit des Subjekts und die Verbindlichkeit von Normen („das Gesetz“) nicht im Gegensatz zueinander stehen, sondern durch einander zu erläutern sind: Ein Gesetz ist nur dann verbindlich, sofern wir es uns selbst gegeben haben, so dass sich in dessen Wirksamkeit zugleich unsere Freiheit verwirklicht. Eben darin besteht die moderne Idee der Autonomie. Die Reihe dient der kritischen Untersuchung dieser Idee. Sie fragt nach den Spannungen, die in ihr aufbrechen, den Voraussetzungen, auf denen sie aufruht, und den Folgen, die ihre – politische, rechtliche, soziale – Verwirklichung hat. Der erste Band der Serie beschäftigt sich mit dem Verdacht, dass die Idee der Autonomie von dem Paradox bedroht ist, in Willkür oder Heteronomie, in grundlose Setzung oder unfreie Selbstunterwerfung umzuschlagen. Dieses Paradox, so der Verdacht, besteht darin, dass sich hinter der Verknüpfung von Freiheit und Gesetz Zwang oder Gesetzlosigkeit auftut. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes diskutieren kontrovers, ob diese Diagnose zutrifft; ob die Idee der Autonomie sich in ein Paradox verstrickt; wie das Paradox der Autonomie, wenn es aufbricht, zu verstehen ist; und wie sich das Paradox vermeiden oder so entfalten lässt, dass es lebbar wir

The habitus and the critique of the present. A Wittgensteinian reading of Bourdieu’s social theory

I tackle some major criticisms addressed to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus by foregrounding its affinities with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of rule-following. To this end, I first clarify the character of the habitus as a theoretical device, and then elucidate what features of Wittgenstein’s analysis Bourdieu found of interest from a methodological viewpoint. To vindicate this reading, I contend that Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following was meant to unearth the internal connection between rules and the performative activities whereby rules are brought into life. By portraying rules as tools that allow agents to stabilize and renegotiate practices, I illustrate the active role social agents play in the production of shared accounts of practices. I conclude by showing that, if viewed through this prism, the habitus proves to be meant to provide guidance on how social theory helps historicize and denaturalize the social world

Bourdieusian Reflections on Language: Unavoidable Conditions of the Real Speech Situation

The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of language. Although he has dedicated a significant part of his work to the study of language and even though his analysis of language has been extensively discussed in the literature, almost no attention has been paid to the factthat Bourdieu’s account of language is based on a number of ontological presuppositions, that is, on a set of universal assumptions about the very nature of language. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by offering a detailed overview of 10 key features which, from a Bourdieusian point of view, can be regarded as inherent in language. On the basis of this enquiry,the study seeks todemonstrate that——contraryto commonbelief——there is not only a Bourdieusian sociology of language but also a Bourdieusian philosophy of language, which provides a useful theoretical framework for examining the unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on the flaws and limitations of Bourdieu’s approach to language

Judgment and imagination in Habermas' theory of law

Political Philosophy and Ethic

Nietzsche’s Pragmatic Genealogy of Justice

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche’s early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche’s writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert and accounts for Nietzsche’s lack of historical references. On the other hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism’s conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche’s failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree