Le présent travail vise à présenter la conception de l'intériorité que partagent Robert Musil et Ludwig Wittgenstein. Pour être en mesure d'apprécier à sa juste valeur l'originalité de leur pensée, il importe de comprendre que le sort du Moi, à Vienne, au début du vingtième siècle, était pour le moins incertain. À l'époque, on hésitait en effet entre deux tendances: soit rejeter complètement l'existence du Moi, soit le réifier et le recouvrir de concepts obscurs. La façon dont Musil et Wittgenstein conçoivent le rapport entre l'intérieur et l'extérieur se situe en marge de ces grands courants philosophiques, puisqu'elle n'endosse ni la thèse introspectionniste, ni la thèse comportementaliste. Pour bien faire comprendre le cadre conceptuel dans lequel s'inscrit leur pensée, nous avons mis en évidence la pensée de Ernst Mach qui a lui aussi cherché à circonscrire la vraie nature du Moi. Ne trouvant nul part une telle chose, il prononça son célèbre verdict: « Le Moi ne peut, en aucun cas, être sauvé». Musil et Wittgenstein ne vont pas aussi loin dans leur redéfinition du Moi, même s'ils présentent tous les deux une version minimale de l'intériorité. Le Moi, selon eux, doit être compris davantage comme un processus que comme une chose. Ce qui disparaît complètement chez Mach réapparaît ainsi sous une forme procédurale. Ainsi le Moi n'est pas un phénomène psychique, ni un sentiment interne, mais une capacité à transformer en pensée notre expérience du monde. Musil et Wittgenstein sont de ceux qui partagent la conviction qu'il existe bien quelque chose qui, dans l'expérience que nous avons du monde, dépasse le simple comportement, mais qu'il est difficile d'en parler directement sans s'empêtrer dans des confusions langagières. Le Moi dont parlent Musil et Wittgenstein est un Moi entièrement tourné vers l'extérieur, et pour le comprendre, il est vain de tenter de l'observer de l'intérieur. C'est plutôt par ses manifestations externes qu'il est possible de voir se profiler cette chose qui réagit d'une manière toute personnelle à ce qu'il trouve autour de lui. Nous ne prétendons pas, par ce travail, résoudre tous les problèmes philosophiques liés à la question de l'intériorité, mais plutôt exposer une conception qui tienne compte de la nature créatrice du Moi. Ce travail cherche aussi à montrer que la définition de l'intériorité que proposent Musil et Wittgenstein comporte une dimension éthique importante. En effet, cesser de concevoir l'intériorité comme quelque chose d'immuable, et la concevoir plutôt comme un processus, peut possiblement nous permettre, c'est du moins ce que croient Musil et Wittgenstein, de mieux vivre. Le pari qu'ils font est qu'une conception de l'intériorité qui nie l'existence matérielle du Moi, mais qui lui confère tout de même la fonction de donner un sens à l'expérience, oblige à se concevoir soi-même comme un processus qui évolue au fil de l'expérience. Aussi ne doit-on pas juger son Moi propre, de même que le Moi d'autrui, avec la sévérité des choses immuables, puisqu'il est toujours possible que le Moi et le monde prennent des formes différentes. Contre le pessimisme ambiant du début du vingtième siècle, et contre la nostalgie du monde d'hier, Musil et Wittgenstein proposent de retourner à la table de travail, et de faire de l'ordre dans nos conceptions du monde. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Intériorité, Moi, Éthique, Invention, Mach, Musil, Wittgenstein.

Carlo Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rhetoric (1910) is one of best examples of what Massimo Cacciari calls the early twentieth century "metaphysics of youth." Persuasion and Rhetoric is the result of Michelstaedter's academic investigation on the concepts of "persuasion" and "rhetoric" in Plato and Aristotle. Michelstaedter saw in Plato's corpus the gradual abandonment of Parmenidean "being" and Socrates' dialogical philosophy. He reinterpreted the notions of "persuasion" and "rhetoric" terms of a radical dichotomy, using them to represent two opposed ontological modalities, two epistemological attitudes, and two existential alternatives. If "rhetoric" comprehends language, institutional knowledge, and all manifestations of empirical life, then "persuasion" is defined as the unity of the individual with Parmenidean being. Persuasion is an impossible choice: "lifeless life." Being a decisive alternative to rhetoric, persuasion - much like Platonic mania - can neither be articulated nor communicated. Nevertheless, Michelstaedter speaks, aware of his inevitable failure: he will not persuade anyone.

In this thesis, I discuss John Searles account of Intentionality which includes his theory of the Background as something which is necessary, in some sense, to there being such a thing as Intentionality. In chapter one I briefly introduce the notions of both background and normativity. In chapter two, I discuss the motives and initial rationale of Searles theory. In chapter three I discuss the philosophers he has had contact with who anticipated the Background. In chapter four I claim that Searle has always been conflicted about his theory and I diagnose the root of his conflict, namely that the original rationale required the Background to be normative in nature, but over time it was additionally conceived neurophysiologically, causally, and thus non-normative in nature. I argue that his conflict is inevitable given the irreducibility of the intentional to the non-intentional, and more generally of the normative to the non-normative.

The purpose of this study is to perform both a quantitative and language philosophical analysis of the folksono-my and the tags in the Stockholm public library catalogue, which together with the Umeå university folksonomy, and the folksonomy of the Norrköping public library are the only library folksonomies in Sweden. The purpose of the first part of the study is to perform an analysis of the linguistical structure of the tags in the folksonomy. To do this a quantitative analysis has been conducted to grammatically categorize and evaluate tags using a method based on Louise Spiteri‟s article “The structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalogue” and the SAO guidelines. This part of the analysis aims to answer questions like: what characteristics do the tags in the folksonomy have and in what ways do they separate themselves from subject headings in a controlled vocabulary? Tags were here categorized according to grammatical properties like parts of speech and their social and private characteristics. A discussion regarding different semantical problems in folksonomies was conducted along with a comparative analysis between the SSB tags and the subject headings of SAO. Based on the findings from the first part of the analysis, the second part aims to answer questions about the use and meaning of tags within a folksonomy. The later theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein are used to discuss the findings of the first analysis. There is a twofold focus here: firstly, on the potential of seeing a folksonomy as a language game, and secondly, on the private characteristics of tags. The latter being a thought that so far has been neglected in studies of library and information science. This part of the analysis aims to discuss the possi-bilities of seeing a folksonomy as a language game and what it is that makes tags in a folksonomy meaningful. It also aims to discuss the possibility of seeing tags as private sensations. Different examples and discussions from Philosophical investigations are used as a theoretical framework in the analysis. The results of the analysis show that tags in the SSB folksonomy mostly consist of single-word terms  - nouns written in indefinite and concrete article  - and that they have a high social value. They highly correlate with subject headings either fully or as see also references. It also shows that folksonomies can be seen as both primitive and more advanced language games, plus that the meanings of tags are derived from the context in which they reside and the context of the folksonomy users. Discussions also show that tags may or may not be seen as private sensations depending on individual perspectives regarding the matter.

This study aims at investigating Wittgenstein&rsquo / s conception of meaning. In this sense, philosopher&rsquo / s early and later periods will be examined. Key notions of Wittgenstein&rsquo / s philosophy of language, picture theory of meaning, language-game, rule following, Private Language Argument and his assertion that &lsquo / meaning is use&rsquo / will be analyzed. Out of this analysis, Wittgenstein&rsquo / s answer to the following basic question will be sought: How is meaning derived in a language? The outcome of this query will be comparatively read with four linguistic theories so as to position Wittgenstein&rsquo / s conception of meaning with regard to the linguistic turn. As a result of this, it will be argued that Wittgensteinian meaning can be regarded as the very first step of post-structural understanding of meaning and discourse theory.

In this study, the standpoint that discourse on ethics is impossible is examined. As Ludwig Wittgenstein is the first philosopher who explicitly said that ethics is inexpressible, the main concentration is on Wittgenstein&rsquo / s conception of ethics. Analytic philosophy&rsquo / s questions regarding ethics are about the meaning of the expressions of value rather than conduct. It is generally recognized that the distinction between these questions and the emphasis on the definition of value judgements starts with G.E. Moore&rsquo / s Principia Ethica (PE). So G.E. Moore is included in the scope of this study. Wittgenstein&rsquo / s manifestation of the inexpressibility of metaphysical and ethical utterances influenced logical positivists. Hence, it is necessary that our scope should also include the Logical Positivist&rsquo / s two main meta-ethical theories, i.e., the emotive theory of ethics and naturalistic ethics. Wittgenstein&rsquo / s conception of ethics in his early and later periods are examined separately. This is because it is generally believed that his later works could provide a means of saying what &ldquo / cannot be said&rdquo / for early Wittgenstein. It is concluded that the conception of a language-game reflects well how we may have a discourse on ethics.

In recent years the normativity of thought and meaning has been the subject of an extensive debate. What is at issue is whether intentionality has normative features, and if so, whether that constitutes a problem for naturalistic attempts to account for intentional phenomena. The origin of the debate is Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, published in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke claimed, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that dispositional accounts of linguistic meaning - accounts, i.e., which attempt to reduce semantic phenomena to facts about how speakers are disposed to employ words - fail to ground the factuality of semantic statements. From this, and other arguments, the far reaching conclusion was drawn by Kripke’s Wittgenstein that there are no semantic facts, that every application of a word is “a leap in the dark”. This position has become known as meaning scepticism. In the present essay, it will be argued that meaning scepticism is incoherent, but that the normativity argument is interesting in its own right. The development of the debate will be traced, primarily through detailed consideration of the writings of Paul Boghossian, who has shifted the focus from the normativity of linguistic meaning to that of belief. It will be contended that even though Boghossian’s attempt to locate a normativity of belief fails, there is a related form of normativity that has to do with the intrinsic badness of false beliefs. Also, suggestions made by Kripke regarding the normativity of intentions will be investigated, and related to contemporary arguments in the philosophy of rationality. The tentative conclusion is that there are some interesting kinds of normativity associated with the intentional, but of a somewhat different variety than those usually discussed.

The question of the relation between religious experience and Christian belief in God is addressed in radically different ways within contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. In order to develop an answer which avoids the pitfalls of the ‘analytic perception model’ (Alston, Yandell, Swinburne) and the ‘overlinguistic’ model for interpreting Christian religious experience (Taylor, Lindbeck), this thesis offers an approach which combines a phenomenological study of feelings, conceptual investigation of Christian God-talk and ‘belief’-talk, as well as theological, sociological and anthropological perspectives. At the centre of the interpretation developed here is the phenomenological category ‘existential feelings’ which should be seen, it is suggested, as a theologically and philosophically central aspect of Christian religious experiencing. Using this contemporary concept, a novel reading of F. Schleiermacher’s concept of ‘feeling’ is proposed and several kinds of Christian experiencing interpreted (like the experiences of ‘awe’, ‘miracle of existence’, ‘wretchedness’, and ‘redeemed community’). By way of a philosophical understanding of Christian believing in God, this study offers a critical interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘religious belief’, combining Wittgensteinian insights with Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘dynamic faith’ and arguing against Wittgensteinian ‘grammaticalist’ and ‘expressivist’ accounts. Christian beliefs about God are normally life-guiding but nevertheless dubitable. The nature of Christian God-talk is interpreted, again, by combining the later Wittgenstein’s insights into the grammatical and expressive roles of God-talk with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on linguistic innovation and Roman Jakobson’s perspective on the functions of language. Finally, the claim which connects phenomenological, conceptual and theological strands of this study is a recognition of a ‘religious belief-inviting pull’ of the relevant experience. Christian religious belief-formation and concept-formation can be seen as stemming from ‘extraordinary’ existential feelings, where the resulting beliefs about God are largely but not completely bound by traditional meanings.

This thesis calls into question a currently orthodox view of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy. This view is that the social and political implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are conservative and relativist. That is, Wittgenstein's concepts such as 'forms of life', 'language-games' and 'rule-following' defend and promote: a rule-determined and context-determined rationality; or an incomparable community-determined human understanding; or a neutralist, nonrevisionary, private or uncritical social and political philosophy. / In order to challenge and correct this conventional understanding the thesis sets up as 'objects of comparison' a variety of very different examples of the use of Wittgenstein in social and political philosophy. These uses are neither relativist nor conservative and they situate understanding and critical reflection in the practices of comparison and dialogue. The examples of this 'comparative-dialogical' Wittgensteinian approach are found in the works of three contemporary philosophers: Thomas L. Kuhn, Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor. / This study employs the technique of a survey rather than undertaking a uniquely textual analysis because it is less convincing to suggest that Wittgenstein's concepts might be used in these unfamiliar ways than to show that they have been put to these unfamiliar uses. Therefore I turn not to a Wittgensteinian ideal but to examples of the 'comparative-dialogical' uses of Wittgenstein. In so doing I am following Wittgenstein's insight in section 208 of the Philosophical Investigations: "I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. And when I do this, I do not communicate less to him than I know myself." Thus it will be in a survey of various uses and applications of Wittgenstein's concepts and techniques that I will show that I and others understand them.

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