Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

In the always connected and fast-paced modern world we live in, questions about who we are, what our values are, and how to act are more pertinent than ever. What better way to reconcile these questions than turning to a seemingly out of touch 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche? Interestingly enough, Nietzsche lamented that his contemporaries would never understand his work; similarly, he thought of his own work as directed towards ‘philosophers of the future.’ As any present moment passes and as history progresses, we, in a sense, run away from ourselves. This projecting of oneself into the future is unavoidable. Could one ever strictly pin down oneself in such a way to eliminate this problem of time? Of course not! This is an absurd question. What we should really be asking is can we at least exist in a way that is at one with the movement of time and the immediacy of modern technology? The purpose of this paper is to illuminate what would be involved in the task of figuring out how to authentically be-alongside-oneself in this way, qua Nietzsche. However, once we, if successful, are able to achieve a mode of being-alongside- ourselves, it is fruitless, in a sense; we are always being thrown into the future and are therefore no longer alongside-ourselves as such. This is why we shall pivot at the end of this paper in order to suggest how it is possible to orient our being- thrown-into-the-future in the most useful and timely way.

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.