De quelle notion de sujet avons-nous besoin rendre compte de nos pratiques et notamment de notre pratique du langage ? Cette question du sujet et de la subjectivité se pose à nouveaux frais dans le cadre de la philosophie du langage ordinaire et tout particulièrement à partir de la théorie des actes de parole de J.L. Austin. En effet, si le langage n’a de signification qu’en tant que parole, et même qu’en tant qu’acte d’un sujet qui prend la parole, le langage ne saurait être un processus sans sujet. Un acte nécessite un agent et si cet acte est un acte de parole, il faut un agent capable de comprendre la signification de ce qui est dit, en d'autres termes, il semble bien qu’il faille un sujet pensant, un sujet psychologique. C’est dans cette voie que s’engagèrent les premières interprétations d’Austin. Les actes de parole donnèrent naissance d’une nouvelle discipline : la pragmatique, où le rôle de l’intention dans la signification est primordial. Or, la philosophie du langage ordinaire se situe dans le projet initial de la philosophie analytique, tel que mené par Frege, Russell et le premier Wittgenstein, qui détachaient la signification de la subjectivité des représentations en la liant à la référence ou dénotation. Le sujet psychologique se trouve alors hors du champ de la pensée et de la vérité. Austin poursuit et radicalise ce projet : dans la théorie des actes de parole, la vérité devient la dimension d’évaluation de certains énoncés à l’intérieur de la catégorie plus générale de la félicité, évaluation qui n’est possible qu’en situant l’énonciation dans son contexte. C’est donc le contexte, et non l’intériorité du sujet parlant qui permet la compréhension. Ainsi, Le sujet des actes de paroles n’est pas le sujet intentionnel du mentalisme. C’est en fait un sujet pensant dont la pensée se lit dans le comportement, un sujet dont la pensée publique se fonde et s’exprime dans des conventions sociales qui le rendent responsables de ses paroles. Le sujet parlant est un sujet social pour qui l’enjeu est de parvenir à trouver et faire entendre sa voix alors même qu’il parle dans les mots des autres, un sujet responsable et mis en position de fragilité car il doit répondre de plus qu’il ne le voudrait. / What kind of a notion of subject do we need in order to account for our practices, and especially our practice of language? The issue of subject and subjectivity is raised anew within the ordinary language philosophy, more particularly within J.L. Austin's speech acts theory. As a matter of fact, if language has a meaning only inasmuch as it is a speech—the speech act of a subject—language cannot be a process devoid of subject. There must be an agent to perform an act, and if the act is a speech act, the agent must be able to understand what is meant, in other words, what seems to be needed is a thinking, psychological subject. Austin's first interpretations actually went down that path. Speech acts gave birth to a new theory: pragmatics, in which intention plays a key role in meaning. Nevertheless, ordinary language philosophy is in continuity with the original project of analytical philosophy as conducted by Frege, Russell and the first Wittgenstein, who separated the meaning from the subjectivity of representations and linked it instead to the reference or denotation. The psychological subject is then excluded from the field of thought and truth. Austin continues and toughens that project. Within the speech acts theory, truth becomes the assessment dimension of some utterances within the more general category of felicity—such an assessment being possible only when the issuing of the utterance is inserted in its whole context. Therefore, what enables comprehension is context, not inwardness. So, the subject of speech acts isn't the intentional subject of mentalism. In fact, it's a subject whose thought is to be read in their behaviour, a subject whose public thought is based on and expressed in social conventions which make them responsible for what they say. The speaking subject is a social subject whose issue is to find their voice and make themselves heard, although they speak in other people's words, a responsible subject in a vulnerable position as they must answer for more than they care for.

Chaque activité humaine nécessite d’avoir sa propre méthode pour obtenir un résultat concret et satisfaisant. C’est ainsi le cas pour la philosophie, une discipline qui compte 2500 d’histoire et dont la méthode est alors délimitée par les philosophes et les autres personnes. Quelle est donc cette méthode philosophique? Il existe plusieurs réponses. Cette thèse va donc tenter de répondre à cette question en introduisant un projet de méthode philosophique dénommée « Conceptual Tuning » [l’accord conceptuel]. Les boxeurs ne se préoccupent généralement pas de la question conceptuelle « Qu’est-ce que la boxe? ». De même les biologistes se posent à peine la question de savoir « Qu’est-ce que la biologie ». Pour eux, ce genre de questions sont extérieures à leur discipline. Cependant pour la philosophie, la question de la nature de la philosophie est une question bien interne à cette discipline. La conscience de soi est une condition sine quo non pour « faire de la philosophie ».Puisque la philosophie possède une si longue histoire et tant de traditions diverses et variées, on présuppose donc qu’il existe de très nombreuses méthodes pour « faire de la philosophie ». Ma thèse tentera donc de contribuer à cette discussion portant sur la méthodologie philosophique en proposant une méthode que j’appellerai « Conceptual Tuning ». Cet accord conceptuel sera principalement développé à partir de la méthode « Conceptual Engineering » déjà utilisée dans la philosophie depuis, dont les défenseurs s’efforcent d’améliorer nos concepts tels que « personne », « libéral », « science ». Cette thèse présentera ainsi six versions de « Conceptual Engineering », à savoir le « Conceptual Engineering » de Cappelen, la Méthode d’Explication de Carnap, le Révisionnisme Moral de Zagzebski, la Guerre Lexique de Ludlow, la Négociation Métalinguistique de Plunkett et l’Approche d’Amélioration de Haslanger. Ces six approches estiment déjà que nos concepts pourraient être défectueux, et c’est la tâche du philosophe de les « réparer ». Alors que la plupart des approches de « Conceptual Engineering » ne font que se concentrer étroitement sur la perspective de « réparation », cette thèse soutiendra que l’accord conceptuel exige que l’attention soit plutôt portée sur une perspective « expressive ». En d’autres termes, il faudrait employer cette méthode dans un cadre général de la pratique consistant à demander et à donner des raisons. Cette thèse soutiendra également que d’autres méthodes philosophiques importantes telles que la méthode de Brandomian, la philosophie du langage ordinaire et l’analyse conceptuelle traditionnelle peuvent être bien incorporées dans le projet d’accord conceptuel. Ainsi, au lieu d’être en opposition, ces méthodes sont en fait conformes à l’accord conceptuel ces méthodes s’intègrent parfaitement à l’accord conceptuel. / Different human practices require various methods to carry them out successfully. Philosophy, an activity with 2500 years of history, must also have its own method, which demarcates a philosopher from a lay person. This thesis embarks on a project of philosophical method—conceptual tuning. How to do philosophy belongs to the category of metaphilosophy or philosophy of philosophy. Boxers usually do not care about the conceptual question ‘What is boxing?’ and biologists barely ask ‘What is Biology?’. For them, this kind of question is a higher order question which concerns the nature of the thing in itself. It is an external question for most disciplines. But for philosophy, the question concerning the nature of philosophy is an internal question. Self-awareness is a sine qua non of doing philosophy.With such a long history and so many traditions, the method of doing philosophy must be miscellaneous. My thesis attempts to contribute to the discussion of philosophical methodology by proposing a method I shall call conceptual tuning. Conceptual tuning is grounded in the philosophical method of conceptual engineering, advocates of which endeavor to improve our concepts. According to the method of conceptual engineering, philosophical problems stem from defects in our understanding of concepts, and it is the philosopher’s task to fix them. While most conceptual engineering approaches only narrowly focus on the perspective of ‘repairing’ or ‘fixing’, conceptual tuning calls for attention to the ‘expressive’ perspective. In other words, we should put this method in the broad framework of the practice of asking for and giving reasons. In this thesis, I also attempt to explain some previous conceptual methods under the title of conceptual tuning, such as Brandomian method, ordinary language philosophy, and the traditional conceptual analyses.

Qu’est-ce que lire ? Qu’est-ce qu’écrire ? Ou plus généralement, qu’est-ce que la littérature et comment se ‘fabrique’-t-elle ? Ce sont les questions qui obsèdent Maurice Blanchot et auxquelles il tente de répondre. Ce questionnement incessant le conduit à construire un espace littéraire pour interroger la question de la nomination, concept-clé de son œuvre.Notre thèse se propose de faire la généalogie de cette question du processus de nomination dans l’œuvre de Maurice Blanchot et de réfléchir sur l’espace littéraire qu’elle met au jour. Nous insisterons tout particulièrement sur le rapport lecteur-écrivain à travers la différence entre langage ordinaire et langage littéraire.Nous comprenons la lecture et l’écriture, non pas comme des actes mécaniques de rédaction et de déchiffrage de mots, mais comme deux processus intellectuels qui rendent possible ce que nous appellerons dans notre travail l’impossible nomination chez Blanchot. En fait, la lecture et l’écriture comme actes littéraires ne servent pas à comprendre, exprimer et influencer le monde, le but déclaré du langage ordinaire ; elles ont plutôt pour mission de réfléchir sur la prose du monde, sorte de but dissimulé du langage littéraire. Blanchot construit ainsi tout son système conceptuel à partir de l’opposition entre le langage ordinaire (la langue comme outil) et le langage littéraire (le corps de la langue et sa fabrication comme acte de création). Et c’est à partir de ce point central que nous articulons notre projet général : comment la matière brute de la langue conduit à fabriquer la littérature, ce qui revient à interroger le lire et l’écrire en littérature finalement ? / What is reading? What is writing? Or more generally, what is literature and how is it ‘manufactured’? These are Maurice Blanchot’s obsessive questions to which he tries to answer. This continuous questioning pushes him to build up a literary space in order to make queries with regard to the issue of nomination, a key concept of his works.Our thesis aims at building the genealogy of this topic of the nomination process in Maurice Blanchot’s works and at thinking about the literary space which it brings to light. We will focus specially on the relationship reader-writer through the difference between ordinary language and literary language.We do not see writing and reading as two mechanical activities of writing down words and decoding them, but as two intellectual processes which make possible what we will call in our thesis the impossible nomination from Blanchot’s works. Indeed, reading and writing as literary acts are not meant to understand, express and affect the world, which is the declared purpose of the ordinary language; their mission is rather to reflect on the prose of the world, a kind of hidden goal of the literary language. Blanchot sets up a whole system of concepts based on the opposition between ordinary language (the language as a tool) and literary language (the body of the language and its manufacturing as an act of creation). It is precisely based on this landmark that we structure our general project: how does the raw material of the language lead to the creation of literature, which in the end comes to questioning the reading and the writing in literature?

Nous comparons deux manières de refuser le « problème de la perception » – la perception permet-elle de connaître la réalité dès lors qu’existent l’illusion et l’hallucination ? Austin et Merleau-Ponty critiquant le présupposé qui pense la perception comme étant vraie ou fausse, et affirmant la différence de la perception et de la pensée, parviennent-ils à penser une authentique vérité ? La thèse d’un « silence » des sens pour Austin, ou son insertion dans le sensible pour Merleau-Ponty sont-elles sceptiques ? Nous montrons : 1/ Qu’Austin pense une objectivité du vrai, qu’il soutient en reconsidérant le langage – en mettant l’accent sur l’acte que réalise la parole –, la signification – dépendante, mais non remplacée, par la valeur de cet acte –, et la vérité – ni une correspondance pré- donnée ni un accord intersubjectif contingent. 2/ Que, de manière similaire, Merleau-Ponty se concentre sur la parole et critique l’idéal d’adéquation, mais que, soucieux de « l’origine de la vérité », il conserve l’idée d’une signification originaire du perçu (et donc d’un silence qui n’est que de degré) et engage une réforme pour intégrer le sens à l’être, mais ne réussit pas, in fine, à rendre compte de la vérité dont il cherchait la source. 3/ Que ces réussites diverses peuvent être rapportées à l’entente que ces auteurs se font des conventions linguistiques : là où le couple de l’échantillon et du modèle permet à Austin de penser un rapport souple, mais non ambigu, entre le langage et le monde, Merleau-Ponty conserve de l’idéalisme une conception rigide du langage, où la sédimentation du sens est une dévitalisation. / We compare two ways of refusing the “problem of perception” – given the possibility of illusion and hallucination, does perception allow us to know reality? While both Austin and Merleau-Ponty reject the presupposition that perception can be true or false, and assert the difference between perception and thought, do they still manage to conceive a proper idea of truth? Are the austinian thesis of a “silence of the senses” and the insertion of silence in the senses by Merleau-Ponty sceptical thesis? We show: 1/ That Austin does believe in the objectivity of truth, which he shows by reconsidering language – focusing on the act of speech –, meaning – dependent on, but not replaced by, the value of this act –, and truth – neither a pre-given correspondence, nor a contingent intersubjective agreement. 2/ That, similarly, Merleau-Ponty focuses on speech and criticizes the ideal of adequacy, but that he also cares about the “origin of truth” and for that reason maintains the idea of an “originary meaning” of perception (and thus of a silence which is only relative) and reforms ontology in order to integrate meaning into being in such a way that he does not succeed finally in accounting for the truth he was looking for. 3/ That these different results should be linked to the way both philosophers understand linguistic conventions: whereas the couple of pattern and sample allows Austin to think a flexible and vivid, but non ambiguous, relationship between language and world, Merleau-Ponty inherits from idealism a rigid conception of language, for which the sedimentation of meaning is always a devitalization.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present dissertation purports to analyze the relationship between the notions of reference and ontology in the Peter Frederick Strawson‟s philosophy. Strawson wants to defend an ontological realism, in which the basic entities are material bodies. We have occupied ourselves with the analysis of the role of identifying reference in his argumentation. In the first Chapter, we analyze how the ontological problem is formulated by Strawson, within ordinary language. The phrase Linguistic Turn‟ is used to denote the set of issues around this topic. Our analysis concluded that ordinary language is the most general and pervasive language, which also has the means necessary for metaphysical researches. In the second Chapter, we deal with the elucidation of the conditions in which an identifying reference is successfully made. The analysis showed that, when referring to particulars, to consider the contextual requirements it is necessary to make a successfully identifying reference, which necessarily include spatio-temporal elements this condition is not necessary when we refer identifyingly to general things. Thus, we use the term spatio-temporal particulars to designate a class of items, which are, in a philosophical sense, concretes. In the Third Chapter, we examine how Strawson uses the notion of identifying reference to get the notions of independent and basic, which ought to be attached to the notion of materials bodies, if the philosopher intends to be a metaphysical realist. Through the analysis of the concept of reference, Strawson comes to the notion of a unified framework of knowledge of particulars, which is necessary for us to refer non-demonstratively to spatio-temporal particulars. However, a condition of this unity is the independent existence of spatio-temporal particulars. Although material bodies are basic in the category of spatio-temporal particulars, the identification of particulars of various subcategories rests on the identification of material objects. In the end, discuss some criticisms of Strawson‟s arguments and make another argument in support of Strawson‟s argument. / A presente dissertação tem como objetivo analisar a relação entre as noções de referência e ontologia na filosofia de Peter Frederick Strawson. Strawson pretende defender uma ontologia realista, onde suas entidades básicas são objetos materiais e pessoas, assim, ocupamo-nos em elucidar o papel que a noção de referência identificadora cumpre nessa argumentação. No primeiro Capítulo, analisamos o modo como o problema ontológico é formulado, por Strawson, no âmago da linguagem ordinária. A expressão Giro Linguístico‟ é tomada para designar o conjunto de questões em torno desse tópico. Nossas análises obtiveram como conclusão que a linguagem ordinária é a mais geral e penetrante, a qual também disporia dos meios necessários para as investigações de caráter metafísico. No segundo Capítulo, ocupamo-nos com a elucidação das condições em que uma referência identificadora ocorre com sucesso. As análises mostraram que, quando nos referimos a particulares, é necessário, para o sucesso em referir, a consideração de requerimentos contextuais, os quais necessariamente incluem aspectos espaços-temporais e são dispensáveis na maioria das referências a entidades gerais. Destarte, passamos a usar o termo particulares espaço-temporais‟ para designar um conjunto de itens, os quais seriam, num sentido filosófico, concretos. No terceiro Capítulo, analisamos o modo como Strawson usa a noção de referência identificadora para chegar até as noções de independente e básico, as quais devem estar relacionadas com a noção de objetos materiais, caso o filósofo pretenda defender um realismo metafísico. Através das análises da noção de referência, Strawson chega até a noção de quadro unitário de conhecimento de particulares, o qual é necessário para que possamos referir não-demonstrativamente para particulares espaço-temporais. Porém, uma condição dessa unidade consiste na existência independente de particulares espaço-temporais. Não obstante, objetos materiais são básicos na categoria de particulares espaço-temporais, pois, a identificação de particulares de várias subcategorias descansa sobre a identificação de objetos materiais. No final, serão analisadas algumas críticas aos argumentos de Strawson e será indicada a possibilidade da formulação de outro argumento em suporte da argumentação de Strawson.

This dissertation is an attempt and, if you will, a temptation to engage with the ‘disturbing’ prospect of the truth of skepticism. All of Stanley Cavell’s works refer to the truth of skepticism, and yet the discourse surrounding this concept is sparse and often engaged minimally. The truth of skepticism is that “the human creature’s basis in the world as a whole, its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing, anyway not what we think of as knowing” (The Claim of Reason, p.241). In order to make sense of what he means by what “we think of as knowing” Cavell provides a philosophical framework in which to understand skepticism and what it threatens: through his notion of “criteria” taken from Ludwig Wittgenstein; the concept of the “ordinary” derived from the works of J.L. Austin; and the “search for community” as a problem of “acknowledgement” or “avoidance” as opposed to a problem of knowledge. I argue that the “standard” (Stephen Mulhall’s) reading of Cavell fails to fully account for the truth of skepticism and I propose reading Cavell as a Nietzschean Versucher – one who attempts and searches endlessly, never fully embracing any particular view. By reading Cavell in this way, I explore how to do genuine philosophy and consider how to address the role of traditional epistemological problems in the face of Cavell’s framework. Beyond the traditional philosophical questions of skepticism, I address how the theoretical musings of the first half of the dissertation can be used in practice – or one could say how they reflect on the ordinary. Following Cavell, I connect philosophy and art as sister disciplines concerned with similar problems such as epistemological skepticism itself. To show these connections I analyze two plays and three films: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Othello, alongside The Philadelphia Story (1940), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Her (2013). By engaging these pieces with Cavell’s philosophical framework in mind, I show how sexual jealousy is a form of living one’s skepticism in a real context that cannot be so easily dismissed by philosophers who claim that skepticism is somehow empty, confused, or nonsense. By showing how the threat of skepticism is a part of our ordinary lives, I conclude by considering how we might recover from our skepticism. Skepticism is not the end, it is the beginning.

MAAS / Centre for African Studies / This study explored the adaptability of indigenous African marriage songs to piano. Music education has always been biased towards Western music content to the exclusion of local musical traditions. A vast amount of musical repertoire within indigenous African societies exists. Formal music education, however, seems oblivious of this resource despite some educators decrying the dearth of materials. There is a need for music curriculum which is located within an African context and which includes indigenous African musical practices. Such need is also expressed in the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document. This study explored the feasibility of building a repertoire of indigenous songs for classroom purposes. A number of songs, were collected, transcribed, analysed then placed in various levels of difficulty. These were then matched with the requisite proficiency levels congruent to other graded piano regimes commonly used in the school system. The assumption is that the adaptation and arrangement of indigenous marriage songs will help to bring indigenous African musical practices into modern music education space. Furthermore, it is envisaged that the philosophical understanding and the knowledge attendant to music practices yielding these songs and the context in which they are performed will form the basis for further advancement.

This essay sets out to examine my own practical knowledge as a socioculturally inspired preschool teacher conditioned by a capitalist ideology. Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology,as something reproduced by daily human actions, is used and the focus rests on language, or rather language use, especially in relation to the ‘autistic child’ as met in the preschool context. The analysis is supported by two specific traditions of thought: ordinary language philosophy – represented foremostly by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond – and Marxist psychoanalysis, as particularly developed by Slavoj Žižek. The overall conclusion is that the preschool’s practical treatment of the autistic child can be read as a reaction to both ideological resistance and ideological disclosure. The autistic child is interpreted as representing a certain kind of imagination which is considered a threat in the capitalist/sociocultural preschool discourse. A discourse whose conditional criteria the essay also more thoroughly aims to uncover, using said traditions of thought.

The general topic of the thesis is the history of the Ordinary Language Philosophy. To be more precise, it deals with the critical arguments, which were raised against is. The thesis offers a short historical and sociological review of the Ordinary Language Philosophy. Critical analysis shows two things: 1) the main reason for the rejection was a different understanding of meaning (and consequences of such a understanding); 2) critics begged the question and already assumed the justification of these rejections in their arguments. The area of this criticism was: the paradigm case argument, the empirical nature of the statements of meaning produced by the Ordinary Language Philosophy, the structural elements of meaning and the political implications of the theory of meaning. The thesis criticizes the Ordinary Language Philosophy in those parts (and in such interpretations), where its understanding of meaning does not differ from the understanding of the critics and where they share common assumptions. On the other hand, the thesis argues for an interpretation, which avoids classical understanding of meaning in all its consequences. Finally, the thesis asks how the Ordinary Language Philosophy can be useful for contemporary debates.

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to achieve philosophical clarity on an interpretative problem I have been struggle with in Euripides’ Medea: That Medea murders her own children, while claimingto love them. Situated within the philosophical and literary tradition of ordinary language philosophy and ordinary language criticism, the thesis draws on ideas, theoretical discussions, and concepts from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toril Moi, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, and Niklas Forsberg – but also Søren Kierkegaard. The analysis is divided in two parts. The first is anarticulation of the grammar of my problem through Cora Diamond’s conception of the phenomenon “a difficulty of reality”, and an emulation of a hermeneutical strategy to deal with such problems, which I identify in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. I reach the conclusion that the co-existence of Medea’s murder och love is a paradox, which cannot be thought. The second part of the analysis is an attempt to step out of this paradox. Here, I compare Medea to Stanley Cavell’s readings on the Shakespearean tragedies Othello and King Lear, and Cavell’s ideas on “lived scepticism”, “avoidance of love” and “best case of acknowledgment”. By doing this, I am able to form the hypothesis that Medea’s understanding of “love” has been severely damagedafter Jason’s betrayal, and that she actually fails to sensically mean that she loves her children. In its use of my own confusion as a starting point and in employing Toril Moi’s views on reading, this thesis continuously stresses the individual reader’s responsibility in literary interpretation, as well as the importance of daring to voice or personal struggles, questions, and interests – even (or especially) when reading great classics.